Should we trust tech companies talking about censoring speech?

The complete lack of transparency with telecommunication firms deciding with the assistance of government if and when calls or web connections should be stopped or censored is highly disturbing. Who wants a faceless firm making such decisions? From yesterday’s UK Observer: After the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and this summer’s looting in England,…

30 years of “peace” between Egypt and Israel a sham

History is turning and proves that when a dictatorship makes “peace” with a Zionist state it breeds nothing more than resentment: On August 20, 2011 Egyptians mobilized for a demonstration in front of the Israeli Embassy demanding the removal of the flag and for the ambassador to leave. After hours of flag-burning trials. A man…

A message to Islamists in Egypt

Tariq Ali pens a few words: I address this poem to the Muslim brothers who demonstrated in Cairo’s Tahrir Square after Friday prayers on 29 July Patience exhausted You emerged from the shadows To tell us what was forbidden and why. You spoke loudly and clearly, Each chant a whiplash: God is Great! The laws…

What US occupation looks like on the ground

My following lead book review appeared in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald: INFERNAL TRIANGLE Paul McGeough Allen & Unwin, $32.99 This unblinking collection of dispatches separates the rhetoric from the reality of the post-September 11 battlefields. The new US Defence Secretary and former CIA director, Leon Panetta, recently told journalists the Obama administration was ”within reach”…

Internet won’t bring real democracy in Egypt (pass it on)

No kidding (and such news should be given to Western journalists who love talking about a “Facebook/Twitter revolution” in the Arab world): Egyptians who turned to Facebook and Twitter to galvanize their revolt against Hosni Mubarak are starting to wonder whether faith in social media as the key to Egypt’s democratic future might be a…

Obama success; US more hated in Arab world than during Bush

What does Washington expect when Israel is allowed to brutalise the Palestinians, drone attacks are killing countless civilians and Arab dictatorships are warmly embraced? The hope that the Arab world had not long ago put in the United States and President Obama has all but evaporated. Two and a half years after Obama came to…

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