Human Rights

About 200 Palestinian youth ctivists briefly broke the Israeli blockade on fishing off Gaza past an arbitrary 6-mile limit on Monday. World Bulletin writes: “”We want to show the world that there are people under occupation who are being starved in Gaza while the world is watching,” Ishraq Mahmoud, spokeswoman of the Palestinian Uprising Youth […]

Domestic Surveillance

American Writers are Self-Censoring to Avoid NSA Scrutiny (McCauley)

Juan Cole

Lauren McCauley writes at Commondreams.org: Recent disclosures of the NSA's widespread dragnet program coupled with its frequent targeting of journalists are having a 'chilling effect' on American writers, stifling their freedom of expression at great detriment to society, says a new report Chilling Effects: NSA Surveillance Drives U.S. Writers to Self Censor. Published Tuesday by […]

Human Rights

Against Demonizing Syria’s Refugees (Seeley)

Juan Cole

Nicholas Seeley writes in a guest column for Informed Comment On a sunny fall afternoon, Abdullah joined me for lunch in the sitting room of my apartment in Amman, Jordan, and told me his story. He hails from a small town in southern Syria, a cousin to some of the families I’ve become friends with […]

CIA

How the US Government Betrayed the Constitution and invented an Imaginary Fascist One

Juan Cole

The idea of having a strong Federal government was controversial in the early United States, and one of the ways Federalists reassured Americans that it wouldn’t become tyrannical was to append a Bill of Rights to the Constitution. That attempt to prevent despotism has failed, because the Federal government and its various agencies have set […]

censorship

Johns Hopkins University Orders Cryptography Professor’s Blog Posting Removed for Classified NSA Links (Larson & Elliott)

Juan Cole

Jeff Larson and Justin Elliott write at ProPublica Citing concerns about linking to classified material, Johns Hopkins University asked a professor this morning to remove a blog post discussing last week’s revelations about the NSA’s efforts to break encryption. The post had linked to government documents published by ProPublica, the Guardian, and the New York Times. […]

censorship

Greenwald Partner falsely detained as Terrorist: How to Create a Dictatorship

Juan Cole

How to turn a democracy into a STASI authoritarian state in 10 easy steps: 1. Misuse the concept of a Top Secret government document (say, the date of D-Day) and extend classification to trillions of mundane documents a year. 2. Classify all government crimes and violations of the Constitution as secret 3. Create a class […]

censorship

Levison of Lavabits on FBI gag order: “There’s information I can’t share with my lawyer”

Juan Cole

Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now!” gets an exclusive interview with Ladar Levison, who closed down his Lavabit encrypted email service rather than comply with Federal demands that he allow it to be monitored. Levison’s plight, whereby he was ordered to do something against his conscience without a warrant and then placed under a gag order not […]

Human Rights

Burma’s Muslims driven into the hands of human traffickers

Juan Cole

While the issue of the mistreatment Rohingya Muslim minority has most involved Burma, it has roiled politics throughout Southeast Asia. Buddhist extremists have persecuted the Rohingya in Burma. In retaliation, a Buddhist monastery in Jakarta was attacked. And, Thailand now stands accused of winking at or being involved in human trafficking of the refugee minority. […]

censorship

Where is our Amsterdam? Lavabits, Snowden & Wikileaks Censorship recall age of Absolutism

Juan Cole

The long struggle against censorship in the 18th century at the time of oppressive kings in Europe involved the hand-copying and circulation of unpublished anonymous manuscripts. Sometimes dangerous or proscribed books were printed in places beyond the reach of the French kings, in Amsterdam or Geneva. The struggle against censorship was not won with the […]