Dissent

(by Juan Cole) January 25 marked the third anniversary of the revolution that overthrew dictator Hosni Mubarak, and Egyptians observed it in three distinctively different ways. In the iconic Tahrir Square downtown, thousands of supporters of the military coup of July 3, 2013, gathered for a big party. People never used to dance to patriotic […]

Arab Spring

3 Years Later, Young Bloggers who made the Tahrir Revolution are in Jail

The military “interim government” in Egypt is cracking down on virtually all meaningful form of assembly, association, or opposition. Following the passage of a November 2013 law banning peaceful protest, dozens of activists and organizers have…

Egyptian Professor Defends Himself from Coup Gov’t’s McCarthyite “Grand Espionage” Charges

(By Emad Shahin) Statement to my Students, Family and Friends January 23, 2014 It was with severe shock that I received news that I have been named in a case known as the “Grand Espionage,” which also included former President Mohamed Morsi and senior leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. These claims are baseless and politically […]

NSA Surveillance is about Control & Leverage, not Security

By Alfred McCoy | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – For more than six months, Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency (NSA) have been pouring out from the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, Germany’s Der Spiegel, and Brazil’s O Globo, among other places. Yet no one has pointed out the combination of […]

Gov’t used Surveillance of MLK in Bid to Destroy Him: Now they want us to just Trust Them

(By Juan Cole) Among the ironies of Barack Obama trying to sell us the gargantuan NSA domestic spying program is that such techniques of telephone surveillance were used against the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. in an attempt to destroy him and stop the Civil Rights movement. Had the republic’s most notorious peeping tom, J. […]

US Intel Officials keep Talking about Killing Snowden, then say “trust us with your data”

(By Mike Masnick) The Fact That The US Intelligence Community So Readily Admits To Fantasies Of Killing Ed Snowden Shows Why They Can’t Be Trusted (via Techdirt) We’ve mentioned things in the past like former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden “jokingly” talking about how he’d like to put Ed Snowden on a “kill list” […]

Assange on Obama Speech: “Embarrassing,” Dragged Kicking and Screaming to Reform by Snowden

Julian Assange responds to Obama speech on NSA reform at CNN AFP reports: Obama surveillance pledge will change little: Assange (via AFP) WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Friday dismissed President Barack Obama’s proposals to curb the reach of the National Security Agency (NSA), saying they would change very little. In a speech intended to quell […]

censorship

3 Years after Democratic Revolution, Egypt Decides it Prefers North Korean Model