War in Context

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• Edward Snowden’s latest statement
• The ethics of whisteblowing
• Senators tell Obama to stop violating international law at Guantanamo
• Hackers falling out of love with the NSA
• Entire U.S. energy system threatened by climate change
• Egypt’s rulers look for legal pretext to keep Morsi in jail
• New split in Syrian opposition
• Washington supports Egypt’s new rulers
• Music: Bossacucanova — ‘Samba Da Minha Terra’
• How Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages
• The slaughter of migrating songbirds
• Hollywood’s collusion with Hitler
• As Bush was the Guantánamo president, so Obama is the drone president
• Obama sells ambassadorships for $1.8m per post
• When is a coup not a coup? When Washington says so

Edward Snowden’s latest statement Posted: 12 Jul 2013 09:55 AM PDT At Wikileaks, Edward Snowden writes: A little over one month ago, I had family, a home in paradise, and I lived in great comfort. I also had the capability without any warrant to search for, seize, and read your communications. Anyone’s communications at any time. That is the power to change people’s fates. It is [...]

The ethics of whisteblowing Posted: 12 Jul 2013 09:17 AM PDT Ben O’Neill writes: Provisions of the Espionage Act are now being brought to bear against [Edward] Snowden to try to put him in prison. But what is more interesting than consideration of the provisions of an Act of the US Congress is to appeal to the science of jurisprudence to determine the normative question of [...]

Senators tell Obama to stop violating international law at Guantanamo Posted: 12 Jul 2013 09:15 AM PDT In a letter sent to President Obama on Wednesday, Senators Dianne Feinstein and Dick Durbin said: We write to urge you to use your Presidential authority to end the unnecessary force-feedings of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Earlier this week, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Gladys Kessler also expressed [...]

Hackers falling out of love with the NSA Posted: 12 Jul 2013 09:13 AM PDT Mashable reports: At last year’s DefCon, the world’s largest hacker conference, NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander showed up in blue jeans and a tucked-in T-shirt to give the keynote speech, asking hackers to join forces with the NSA. “We can protect the networks and have civil liberties and privacy, and you can help us get [...]

Entire U.S. energy system threatened by climate change Posted: 12 Jul 2013 09:11 AM PDT The New York Times reports: The nation’s entire energy system is vulnerable to increasingly severe and costly weather events driven by climate change, according to a report from the Department of Energy to be published on Thursday. The blackouts and other energy disruptions of Hurricane Sandy were just a foretaste, the report says. Every corner [...]

Egypt’s rulers look for legal pretext to keep Morsi in jail Posted: 12 Jul 2013 09:09 AM PDT The New York Times reports: Egypt’s new rulers gave new credence to a court case against the ousted president, Mohamed Morsi, and members of the Muslim Brotherhood on Thursday over their escape from prison during the uprising that toppled his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak. The case was transferred from an appeals court to the State Security [...]

New split in Syrian opposition Posted: 12 Jul 2013 09:07 AM PDT Reuters reports: Syrian rebels said on Friday the assassination of one of their top commanders by al Qaeda-linked militants was tantamount to a declaration of war, opening a new front for the Western-backed fighters struggling against President Bashar al-Assad’s forces. Rivalries have been growing between the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the Islamists, whose smaller [...]

Washington supports Egypt’s new rulers Posted: 12 Jul 2013 09:05 AM PDT Hürriyet Daily News reports: The Obama administration has still refrained from calling former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s ouster a “coup,” but top U.S. officials have thrown their backing behind the military rulers. “It’s clear that the Egyptian people have spoken,” said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, when asked whether Washington still considered Morsi the legitimate [...]

Music: Bossacucanova — ‘Samba Da Minha Terra’ Posted: 12 Jul 2013 09:04 AM PDT

How Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages Posted: 11 Jul 2013 07:09 PM PDT The Guardian reports: Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users’ communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company’s own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian. The files provided by Edward Snowden illustrate the scale of co-operation between Silicon Valley and the intelligence [...]

The slaughter of migrating songbirds Posted: 11 Jul 2013 04:09 PM PDT If there was a league table of suffering, designed to remind us of the issues that deserve the greatest share of human concern, the plight of songbirds might not come high on the list. Yet rather than attempting to adjudicate how concern should be sliced and apportioned, maybe we should instead reflect on the insidious [...]

Hollywood’s collusion with Hitler Posted: 11 Jul 2013 04:06 PM PDT Alexander C. Kafka writes: A debate is raging over Hollywood’s alleged collusion with the Nazis. At stake: the moral culpability of Jewish studio heads during cinema’s golden age. The catalyst is a forthcoming book from Harvard University Press, The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact With Hitler, by the 35-year-old historian Ben Urwand. The book is still several [...]

As Bush was the Guantánamo president, so Obama is the drone president Posted: 11 Jul 2013 04:03 PM PDT Stephen Holmes writes: ‘It is not a function of not trying to take people to Guantánamo,’ the US attorney general, Eric Holder, told a Senate subcommittee on 6 June as he struggled to defend President Obama’s targeted killing programme. His ungainly syntax betrayed his acute embarrassment. He is not the only government spokesman who finds [...]

Obama sells ambassadorships for $1.8m per post Posted: 11 Jul 2013 04:00 PM PDT The Guardian reports: Barack Obama has rewarded some of his most active campaign donors with plum jobs in foreign embassies, with the average amount raised by recent or imminent appointees soaring to $1.8m per post, according to a Guardian analysis. The practice is hardly a new feature of US politics, but career diplomats in Washington [...]

When is a coup not a coup? When Washington says so Posted: 11 Jul 2013 03:57 PM PDT Jean MacKenzie writes: It hardly pays to be the head of the most powerful nation on Earth any more — just ask President Barack Obama, whose semantic tightrope-walking over Egypt is gaining him new and powerful critics, even within his own party. His government has signaled it will carry on delivering F-16 jets and other [...]