Dissent

By Joe Stork, Human Rights Watch (Beirut) – A Cairo court on June 11, 2014, sentenced the prominent Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah and 24 others to 15 years in prison and LE100,000 fines (US$14,000) on a range of charges stemming from their involvement in a peaceful protest on November 26, 2013, in Cairo. Police […]

Democracy

Lighting the Darkest Corners of Government: Review of Glenn Greenwald’s No Place to Hide

contributors

Book review and discussion questions for reading groups In No Place to Hide, Glenn Greenwald shows that a modern investigative reporter doesn’t just need the courage to take on the United States government and established media. He also needs a whole…

Constitution

5 Falsehoods Defenders of NSA keep Repeating that Destroy their Credibility

Juan Cole

By Cindy Cohn and Nadia Kayyali Over the past year, as the Snowden revelations have rolled out, the government and its apologists have developed a set of talking points about mass spying that the public has now heard over and over again. From the President, to Hilary Clinton to Rep. Mike Rogers, Sen. Dianne Feinstein […]

Asia

Tiananmen still Under Lockdown after all These Years

contributors

By Philip Cunningham I approached the Square from Qianmen which back in the old days of the Qing Dynasty was the traditional gate into the Forbidden City; nowadays it’s the gate to a quasi-forbidden public square. In better times, one used to just walk onto the Square, from almost any direction, at almost any time. […]

al Qaeda in the Arabian Penisula

NSA Intercepting Millions of Personal Images for Facial Recognition Tech

contributors

By Sarah Lazare The National Security Agency is mass collecting facial images through its surveillance programs for use in facial recognition technology, journalists James Risen and Laura Poitras revealed Saturday in the New York Times. Secret documents exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden reveal that the spy agency views facial recognition as the next frontier […]

Censors

NYT’s James Risen risks Jail For Protecting Sources after SC declines to Take Appeal

contributors

By Trevor Timm: The Supreme Court today rejected New York Times reporter James Risen’s appeal of a 4th Circuit decision that ruled the government can compel him to reveal his source under oath. The case, one of the most important for reporter’s privilege in decades, means that Risen has exhausted his appeals and must now […]

censorship

No Regime? Egyptian Satirist Bassem Youssef Cancelled b/c “Enormous Pressure”

contributors

So, no regime then? Jon Stewart was on al-Barnamag [“The Program”] last year this time and remarked of the then Muslim Brotherhood government’s prosecution of his Egyptian counterpart, Bassem Youssef, for political libel of President Muhammad Morsi, “If your regime can’t handle a joke, you don’t have a regime.” AFP reports: Egypt satirist who mocked […]

Barack Obama

Faced w/ Global Warming Threat, Obama fudges EPA Carbon Reduction

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole President Obama’s decision to unleash the Environmental Protection Agency on US carbon dioxide emitters is a sea change in environmental policy and is extremely welcome to any who care about the planet. But its real significance does not lie in the targets for carbon dioxide reduction Obama has set. Those are way […]

Dissent

Snowden: Clapper pattern of Lies about My Complaints to NSA

contributors

After NBC confirmed Ed Snowden’s earlier claims that he had tried to make use of internal channels to question NSA surveillance programs, James Clapper released a single email from Snowden to the legal department at the NSA, which they claim shows he…