flickering pictures

When all this first started with Tunisia, I didn’t think there was any way the people could oust their president after some 24 years in power. I’d spent just a couple of weeks there in 2008, and people seemed more or less willing to accept the corruption of a government that was at least […]

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As it was in Tunisia and Iran, Twitter is a major organizing tool for dissidents in Egypt, and it was certainly one of the sites the government was most concerned about when it took the unprecedented step of shutting down all Internet access across the country a few days ago.
Back on Saturday, I posted a […]

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So it isn’t news anymore that Egypt has followed in Tunisia’s footsteps, in taking to the streets to overthrow a multi-decade dictator. You’ve probably also heard that to prevent protesters from organizing, Egypt has cut off broadband and mobile Internet access to its 80 million residents in the biggest Web blackout the world […]

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Why does it always have to be “Death to so-and-so”? Is there no middle ground between “Long live Imam Khomeini” and “Death to the dictator”? Why not something a little more constructive, like “Stop beating and killing unarmed protestors for no damn reason”?
With temperatures dipping to a nippy 3°C on National Students’ Day, […]

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This summer, the Iranian government brutally suppressed citizen unrest following an election that incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad won in a landslide. The consensus — on the left, on the right, and everywhere in between — is that the election was rigged.
Five months later, the anti-Ahmedinejad protests have become more muted — probably due in […]

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Islamic literature is full of references to “jinn” — spirit beings, both good and evil, that can move objects, cause misfortune or even possess people. Tom A. Peter at the fledgling Global Post has put together an interesting (if slightly fluffy) piece on a Jordanian exorcist who runs a hopping business casting Regan MacNeil-type […]

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A tiny island chain, isolated and all but forgotten off the coast of Yemen, is home to one of the most fascinating and unique ecosystems on Earth. It also looks like something Lewis Carroll might have dreamed up after way, way too much absinthe.
I have to go there.
From the New York Times:
Some 250 million […]

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Remember Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the Iraqi reporter who last December threw his shoes at George W. Bush, yellng “this is from the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq”? That gesture just earned him three years in prison, and something tells me that if he’d been a white guy tossing shoes at Bush […]

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In case you’re not an automotive engineer, that translates to the strength of about 104 trained athletes at peak output, or 2.4 Hyundai Accents. Take that, Spock.
I’m not inclined to put much stock in this one, and I can’t find any independent verification of this anywhere, but according to this video report from Egypt’s […]

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Unless you haven’t turned on a television lately, you know that ten days ago the Israeli army launched a full-scale attack on Hamas forces in Gaza, with the stated aim of halting the barrage of homemade rockets that have been launched into Israeli towns since 2000. As I write this, the fight has left […]

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