"This was the voice of moderation until 13 Sept, 2025"
by Doctor Science
This post is about the attack on Lara Logan, and rape as a weapon of war and policy.
Summary: Sexualized violence, rape, and even gang rape are not just signs of bestiality, barbarism, or boys inevitably being boys: they can be military and police tactics, and they are part of the toolbox of U.S. as well as Egyptian military/intelligence forces.
SERIOUS TRIGGER AND RAGE WARNING.
by liberal japonicus One area that has never really gotten much love here is sports. According to my rather spotty memory, back in the distant past, Sebastian talked about his volleyball playing, and Slarti talked a bit about competitive swimming, which isn't really a sport so much as a freakish ability of some people (I … Read more
by fiddler
What do an Icelandic parliamentarian, a US computer researcher and a Dutch businessman have in common? They’re challenging the US government’s right to get Twitter to disclose their private information under sealed court order.
A hearing on this took place Tuesday in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, but no decision was reached; the judge is to issue a written opinion later.
The Electronic Freedom Foundation and the ACLU are representing Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of the Parliament of Iceland. Dutch entrepreneur and hacker Rop Gonggrijp, and U.S. computer programmer Jacob Appelbaum are represented by private law firms as well as local counsel in Virginia.
From the Washington Post article written before the hearing, which did not name the defendants:
The dispute cuts to the core of the question of whether WikiLeaks allies are part of a criminal conspiracy or a political discussion. It also challenges the Obama administration’s argument that it can demand to see computer data and read months’ worth of private messages, even if they have nothing to do with WikiLeaks.
The international implications haven’t been ignored:
Iceland’s foreign ministry last month summoned the US ambassador in Reykjavik to express “serious concern” about the bid to obtain personal information about Jonsdottir, the Icelandic MP.
Jonsdottir, an early WikiLeaks supporter who distanced herself from the site a few months ago, is an active promoter of freedom of information and a member of the Icelandic parliament’s foreign affairs committee.
by liberal japonicus John Emerson's guest post raised a number of issues, but as it was talking about media and the left's relation to it, what it highlighted for me was the tendency of the Left (for certain values of Left) to always have to find a balancing point between the calling out different aspects, … Read more
by Gary Farber
Revolutions have happened in the Mideast? How? Why? Because this is the 21st century, and the revolution is online.
A picture is worth a thousand words, and I will give you 5000 in five pictures:
What happened? This.
[…]
The exchange on Facebook was part of a remarkable two-year collaboration that has given birth to a new force in the Arab world — a pan-Arab youth movement dedicated to spreading democracy in a region without it. Young Egyptian and Tunisian activists brainstormed on the use of technology to evade surveillance, commiserated about torture and traded practical tips on how to stand up to rubber bullets and organize barricades.
by Eric Martin Like Erik (sic) Kain, I find myself puzzling at the sudden, arbitrary hyperfocus on deficits, debt and fiscal austerity: The notion that we need to balance the budget and pay down the debt right now is just taken for granted with no real attempt to explain why. Is inflation out of control? … Read more
Guest post by Thomas Nephew, longtime blogger, posted by Gary Farber.
Gary has been kind enough to invite me to post here, and I'm overcoming some real jitters to give it a try.
Obsidian Wings! One of the top blog sites and one of the top online communities of the past decade, hence pretty much of all time. Writing that could make you simultaneously rend your garments and thank the gods somebody, somewhere had the guts and the gift to say it – whether as writers like Katherine, Publius, Lindsay, Hilzoy, Eric, or G'Kar/Andrew, or commenters like Nell, KCinDC, or Gary. (Just to name a few, and not to overlook the rest.) Still not sure I'll belong.
Aside from jitters, though, I was also not sure how I'd fit with ObWi's recognizable "voice" — probably basically hilzoy's, but somehow the whole site's as well.
I nevertheless think I've sometimes written some fairly good stuff there, usually when I stick to a topic for a while, learn more about it, research it, and finally start to get across to *myself* what the heck interests me about it.
by russell So said Tip O'Neill lo these many years ago, and it still is so. Politics is about public life, which is lived by specific, concrete people, in specific, concrete places, at specific, concrete times. So, a quick note from the town where I live, a few miles up the coast from Boston. The topic … Read more
Guest Post by John Emerson, posted by Gary Farber, to cover Gary while traveling, but who was delayed by hotel internet service going out.
(Everything below is expressed in its maximal form, as per my normal modus operandi. Readers may want to trim certain passages in accordance with their own tastes.)
Everyone talks about the media, but no one has been able to do anything about it. I share the common opinion that the disaster of contemporary American politics is in large part the result of the corruption and dishonesty of the media, and I also believe that this corruption is deep-rooted and unlikely to change, and that as a result we are between a rock and a hard place somewhere up shit creek. Eight years ago I thought that the internet would change things, but that hasn’t seemed to have happened. A lot of us are now better-informed than the media want us to be. But there are not enough of us and we remain a powerless minority, even (it has turned out) within the Democratic Party.
I am not trying to replace the libraries of media criticism that already exist, but merely to sum up my understanding of the situation in a few snappy phrases.
AMBIENT OPINION
by fiddler
Previous Newton’s Third Law posts are Newton’s Third Law, with two updates, written Wednesday and Thursday, posted Friday midday; and Newton’s Third Law 3rd update, written and posted Friday. Now that it’s Saturday, most of the new articles are roundups of older ones, but I’ve found (and been sent) some things that didn’t surface before — articles about methods, connections, ethical and legal questions and more. As in previous posts, all typos and bad grammar in original source material have been left unedited. I have also not corrected for variant spellings of HBGary.