The PRISM slides:  two nice touches you may have missed (Someone put some real thought into presentation — this is not your grandparents’ NSC-68):

• Top secret, code word, art work.  There’s a special seal for “Special Source Operations” that has an eagle lifting a bundled globe — very impressive; and,
• Great product placement — special advertising in a top secret document.  The slides prominently feature the companies’ trademarked logos in the header. But, I wonder if this drew NSA analysts to the products or away from them?  I’d like to see the market research on this one.
• Steve Walt asks the real question on whether the USG really needs to collect all this data.
• Former general counsel for the NSA says not to worry.

More in contested politics from the week:

• UN:  Ten million Syrians in need of humanitarian assistance — estimate the number of refugees will grow from 1.5m to 3.5m by end of the year.
• Erdogan vs. Gul?
• Long-time observer, Hugh Pope, on how Erdogan can turn the protests to his advantage — but he has to do a U-Turn to do it.  I’m skeptical.
• Erdogan takes aim at Twitter. 
• Jeffrey Wasserstorm on why, after 24 years, China still won’t come to terms with June 4 — although we do have May 35 and as Dan posted below “big yellow ducks.”
• Elke Zuern on rising protests in South Africa.
• Fed up with corruption and political stalemate, 3,000 Bosnians block parliamentarians from leaving the building….

And, this week in academia:

• Something I’ve been giving a lot of thought to lately:  Donald Kagan on the future of liberal education.