Human Rights

(Via Techdirt) What Happens When You Marry The NSA’s Surveillance Database With Amazon’s Personalized Marketing? (via Techdirt) By now, most people who shop online are aware of the way in which companies try to tailor their offers based on your previous purchasing and browsing history. Being followed by strangely relevant ads everywhere is bad enough, […]

Dissent

Israel’s Curb on Freedom of Speech in Anti-Boycott Law Challenged in Court

contributors

(By Bill Van Esveld) On [last] Sunday, nine Israeli Supreme Court justices heard a petition to revoke the country’s “anti-boycott law” – a law that penalizes people or groups that advocate boycotting Israeli products, institutions or individuals – because it restricts the right to freedom of expression. The anti-boycott law’s critics are as diverse as […]

censorship

The Deep State is Vulnerable to People Power

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) My remarks below were published at Bill Moyers’ site this weekend. They came in response to Mike Lofgren’s important essay, “Anatomy of the Deep State” . Lofgren is a former congressional staffer. Mike Lofgren’s long experience on the Hill has given him a small window, he might say only an aperture, into […]

Dissent

Why won’t Western Politicians Condemn Israeli Crackdown on Palestinian Protesters, but do Complain about Ukraine?

Juan Cole

(Via AFP) Hundreds demand reopening of key Hebron street (via AFP) Palestinians held a protest Friday in the West Bank city of Hebron to demand its main street be reopened, 20 years after the Israeli military closed it on security grounds. An AFP correspondent said about 1,000 Palestinians joined by Israeli and international… RT […]

Human Rights

Falk: Edward Said was the Palestinians’ Nelson Mandela

contributors

(By Andrew Sondern) Princeton professor emeritus talks Palestinian nationalism in speech at university (via NJ.com) By Andrew Sondern Richard Falk, a professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, is no stranger to controversy. On the same… ———– […]

Dissent

The Dark State: Snowden’s Revelations on Secret Gov’t Surveillance are the Tip of the Iceberg

contributors

(By Tom Engelhardt) Intelligence officials have weighed in with an estimate of just how many secret files National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden took with him when he headed for Hong Kong last June. Brace yourself: 1.7 million. At least they claim that as the number he or his web crawler accessed before he left town. Let’s assume […]

Arab Spring

Racializing Politics: We don’t say “Slav” Democracy troubled in Ukraine, why Talk about “Arab” Failures?

Juan Cole

The troubles that Ukraine is having (and that Russia and the former Yugoslavia also had) in its post-Soviet politics, with a struggle between authoritarianism and democracy and between a Moscow orientation versus a Brussels one, are very similar to the difficulties that have beset many countries of the Arab world in the past few years. […]

Egypt

Egypt Gov’t, Clueless on Journalism, Charges 20 Aljazeera Reporters with “Terrorism” for … Conducting Interviews

contributors

(By Joe Stork) (Beirut) – Egyptian authorities in recent months have demonstrated almost zero tolerance for any form of dissent, arresting and prosecuting journalists, demonstrators, and academics for peacefully expressing their views. Prosecutors on January 29, 2014, referred three Al Jazeera English journalists to trial on politicized charges such as disseminating “false information” and belonging […]

Dissent

The other Face of Putin’s Olympics: Pussy Riot Whipped, Beaten for Protest Song at Sochi

Juan Cole

Channel 4 News: “Members of the Russian protest group Pussy Riot are beaten with whips by Russian security police after trying to perform at the Winter Olympics.”