Uncategorized

Real Time Earth Wind Map from Earth Nullschool.net h/t Treehugger

Colbert: NSA Spying on Online Games to Prevent non-existent Virtual Terrorism

Stephen Colbert reports on NSA spying on online games. He notes that covert NSA analysts may be a majority in some virtual hang-outs and had to institute protocols so that they did not end up spying on each other! [Juan Cole made fun a few years ago of the obsession by some security agencies with […]

Human Rights

842,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon (pop.: 4.4 mn) as UN Calls for $6 bn Aid

contributors

(By Agence France Presse) One in five Lebanon residents Syria refugees: UN (via AFP) One of five people living in Lebanon are refugees who have fled the conflict in neighbouring Syria, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said Monday. The UNHCR says there are more than 842,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon but the actual […]

Domestic Surveillance

Federal Judge to NSA: What you did to Verizon Customers was Unconstitutional

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Judge Richard Leon of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled Monday that the bulk collection by the National Security Agency of cell phone data (everyone you called, when you called them and where you were when you called them) of Americans violates the Fourth Amendment to the […]

Arab World

How Peter O’Toole Saved the Arabs (According to David Lean)

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) The late Peter O’Toole played T.E. Lawrence in David Lean’s 1963 “Lawrence of Arabia” with genius and abandon. All of us in my generation who went into Middle East studies were influenced by that film one way or another. Only later did it gradually become apparent to many of us how flawed […]

Human Rights

Indian Gays Shocked by Supreme Court Ruling upholding Colonial Sodomy Laws

csstester

(By Boris Dittrich) The day after International Human Rights Day, India’s Supreme Court published its ruling on whether the country’s sodomy law, which had been overturned by the Delhi High Court and then appealed, was unconstitutional. I’ve been a lawyer, a judge and a member of parliament in the Netherlands and each of those roles […]

Featured

Photo of the Day: Was St. Nicholas “White”?

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Fox News’s Megyn Kelly maintained this week that Santa Claus and Jesus are “white.” Russian icon of St. Nicholas of Myra on whom the figure of Santa Claus is based. Santa Claus is a Dutch corruption of Saint Nikolaos, a fourth-century saint from the Mediterranean coast of Anatolia in what is now […]

censorship

Dear Pres. Obama: Dissent isn’t Possible in a Surveillance State

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole In his stirring eulogy of Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first president to be legitimately elected, by the entire South Africa people, President Barack Obama said, “There are too many of us who happily embrace Madiba’s legacy of racial reconciliation, but passionately resist even modest reforms that would challenge chronic poverty and growing […]

Africa

After Mandela: Can Massacred South African Mine Workers get Justice?

Juan Cole

The summer, 2012, massacre of striking mine workers by South African police, which killed 44 persons and wounded at least 78, continues to wend its way through the South African system. The largest casualty toll was on August 16, 2012. The mine is owned by Lonmin and is located in Marikana. South Africa is seeing […]