US politics

The big question is whether Detroit’s bankruptcy and likely further decline is a fluke or whether it tells us something about the dystopia that the United States is becoming. It seems to me that the city’s problems are the difficulties of the country as a whole, especially the issues of deindustrialization, robotification, structural unemployment, the […]

CIA

Obama Administration Facing Congressional Rebellion, Civil Suits over NSA Surveillance

Juan Cole

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU, among other important civil society organizations, are suing the Federal government over the National Security Agency’s unconstitutional domestic surveillance. The administration is also facing House hearings on the issue. By the way, the argument made by Homeland Security and other such officials that the NSA’s domestic spying could […]

Domestic Surveillance

Obama Explains his NSA Domestic Spying & Why it differs from Bush’s (Cartoon satire)

Juan Cole

Cartoon satire: “President Obama explains why Americans should not be concerned about the NSA’s secret data collection program and that he is very different from George W. Bush.” The video is here:

US politics

Guns and Sissified Punks (Friday Scene)

Juan Cole

From the 1995 stoner movie “Friday”: The father [John Witherspoon] of Craig Jones [Ice Cube] warns him against carrying a gun in the local neighborhood if he wants to be a real man: The video is here:

US politics

Whites and African-Americans in America by the numbers

Juan Cole

88% of African-Americans in a recent Pew poll said that there was “a lot” (46%) or “some” (42% ) discrimination against them. Only 57% of whites agreed, and only 16% of whites said there is “a lot” of discrimination against African-Americans: Average household net worth of whites: $110,000. Average household net worth of African-Americans: $5000 […]

Domestic Surveillance

UK’s Channel 4 Schools US Media on How to cover NSA, Snowden

Juan Cole

This report by Channel 4 News in the UK, covering Edward Snowden’s application for asylum in the Russian Federation and his revelations of collaboration between Microsoft and the National Security Agency struck me as everything that US “news” coverage is not. The reporters don’t just parrot the Washington line. They point out that the transit […]

US politics

Murderers where the Victim was White are Far more Likely to be Punished in US (Graph)

Juan Cole

In the US, as Amnesty International points out: Percentage of murder victims annually that are African-American: 50% Percentage of executions for murder annually where the victim was white: 77%

al-Qaeda

FBI Discriminates Against American Muslims & lets White Terrorists Off the Hook (Harwood)

Juan Cole

Matthew Harwood writes at Tomdispatch: The evangelical Christians of Greenville County, South Carolina, are afraid. There has been talk of informants and undercover agents luring young, conservative evangelicals across the South into sham terrorist plots. The feds and the area’s police want to eliminate a particularly extreme strain of evangelical Christianity opposed to abortion, homosexuality, […]

US politics

Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def) force fed under standard Guantánamo Bay Concentration Camp procedure

Juan Cole

There are 120 prisoners at the extra-legal concentration camp at Guantanamo Bey. 44 are on hunger strike and being force-fed against their will, in contravention of international law. Rapper Yasin Bey (formerly Mos Def) demonstrates how that’s done