Samuel Knight

*Vladimir Putin broke his silence on the Ghouta crisis after UN weapons inspectors left the country today. Unsurprisingly, he isn’t convinced that Assad’s side has used chemical weapons, calling the logic behind the alleged move to be “utter nonsense” when the rebels are on the backfoot. “That is why I am convinced that [the chemical […]

*The Egyptian coup government has been accused of killing demonstrators in custody. The Interior Ministry said 36 Brotherhood members died during an attempted prison breakout on Sunday near the capital, saying the prisoners had been suffocated by tear gas. Offering a very different version of events, a legal source told Reuters 38 men had died […]

According to a Daily Dot post today, a benevolent hacker named Khalil Shreateh found a bug in Facebook’s privacy settings, and informed the company about it in a rather unconventional way. After many failed attempts to get through to reps, he posted his findings on Mark Zuckerberg’s wall. While he thought the company might express […]

With the world focused on Egypt, an important milestone in Middle Eastern relations is passing with little fanfare. Two years ago today, President Obama openly called for Bashar al-Assad’s ouster for the first time. While the policy may play well on cable talk shows, where American officials and former officials can wax moralistic and strut […]

Sen. Lindsey Graham was on “Face the Nation” this morning, where faced the nation and shocked it by showing uncharacteristic intelligence and compassion discussing the situation in Egypt. Describing the military regime as coming to power through a coup, Graham declined the opportunity to chest thump in response to Bob Scheiffer’s extremely suggestive questions, which […]

*The Wall Street Journal just reported that EU officials said they plan on reviewing their ties with Egypt. They’ll be discussing the status of aid to the “interim” government in light of it’s violent crackdown on supporters of overthrown former president Mohammed Morsi. *Meanwhile, Kelly Ayotte said that she does not support cutting off aid […]

*Yes! Magazine reports that an Iraqi women is suing Bush officials in a U.S. court for that thing they did* (*ordering the invasion and effective destruction of her country). The lawyers representing her think that they might be able to find a loophole in the Westfall Act of 1988 – “which granted ‘absolute immunity’ to […]

Remember when Jeffrey Toobin ho-hummed over Edward Snowden’s disclosures, and called him a “grandiose narcissist”? What, one wonders, did Snowden think the N.S.A. did? Any marginally attentive citizen, much less N.S.A. employee or contractor, knows that the entire mission of the agency is to intercept electronic communications. Perhaps he thought that the N.S.A. operated only […]

Michael Peters, a professor of education at the University of Waikato in New Zealand and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has a thorough criticism of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) over at Truthout. While he points out that anyone should be wary of MOOCs if for no other reason than snake […]

*In his weekly radio address this morning, President Obama offered a staunch defense of his healthcare plan — one that might not sit well with the health insurance industry lobbyists he has worked so hard to appease. “In the United States of America, health insurance isn’t a privilege – it is your right,” he said. […]