Month: February 2011

Unacknowledged Ironies

February 27, 2011: J. Rosencrantz

This month, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton waxed about internet freedom, a silent protester was forcibly whisked from her presence and administration lawyers subpoenaed Twitter in their effort to crack down on Wikileaks operatives.

From Partnership for Civil Justice:

As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave her speech at George Washington University yesterday condemning governments that arrest protestors and do not allow free expression, 71-year-old Ray McGovern was grabbed from the audience in plain view of her by police and an unidentified official in plain clothes, brutalized and left bleeding in jail. She never paused speaking.

From Democracy Now:

In an unacknowledged irony, Clinton’s comments came just as government lawyers appeared in a Virginia court to argue their case for cracking down on the online whistleblower WikiLeaks. The U.S. Department of Justice has subpoenaed the internet company Twitter for personal information from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and four other people linked to WikiLeaks, including Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a member of the Icelandic parliament. The subpoena asks Twitter for all records and correspondence relating to their accounts, including apparently private direct messages sent through Twitter.

Contagion

February 19, 2011: J. Rosencrantz

Solidarity

February 19, 2011: J. Rosencrantz

“Egypt Supports Wisconsin Workers: One World, One Pain”

Found at Mother Jones, from Muhammad Saladin Nusair’s FB photo album.

2 Down…

February 14, 2011: J. Rosencrantz

Now that popular uprisings have forced Tunisia‘s Ben Ali and Egypt’s Mubarak from power, tyrants throughout the Arab World are on the defensive:  Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen is facing a third day of clashes between his police and protesters calling for change; in Algeria, a pro-democracy alliance vows weekly protests of the government of Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has responded by pulling the plug on the internet and a mass deletion of Facebook accounts; King Abdullah of Jordan has been pushed by protests to replace his Prime Minister and widen public freedoms; in Saudi Arabia, the first political party has emerged, as King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz’ forces arrest protesters; Omar “Darfur” al-Bashir of Sudan has violently cracked down on peaceful protesters;  Iraq‘s Nouri al-Maliki has announced he won’t run for a third term; Iran‘s Green movement is calling for protests despite a government ban; and the Sultan of Oman had to cancel his travel plans.  Syria and Morocco seem, for the moment, immune.

Update: Historian Juan Cole is closely following developments and links to relavant videos here.

Update: The image has been slightly updated, reflecting critical discussion in comments.

!تحرير

February 11, 2011: J. Rosencrantz

إن شاء ال

“If the true choice is between Muslim fundamentalist theocracy and Western liberalism, we are lost.”

February 7, 2011: J. Rosencrantz

By throwing their support behind Mubarak’s newly appointed Vice President (and C.I.A. rendition-to-torture liaison) Omar Suleiman, U.S. and its European allies are seeking to block the pro-democracy movement in Egypt, which explicitly seeks to replace the Mubarak regime.

As this struggle between democracy and despotism rages, al Jazeera, whose offices were bombed for practicing un-embedded journalism under Bush the Lesser, has been continuing to distinguish itself as an essential source of news and analysis in English.

Al-Jazeera hosted, for example, the following discussion between Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek on Riz Khan’s show, which focuses on a central question: “‘Can Egypt’s revolt lead to new political alternatives?”

The discussion leads to perspectives that can hardly be expressed on U.S. based news networks: