Currently browsing posts tagged: syria.

On March 15

March 15, as it relates to Syria, holds two meanings for me. First, of course, it marks the anniversary of the beginning of the uprising that has claimed thousands of lives and caused so much damage — not just on the ground, but in the way it has divided the Syrian people, brother from brother. [...]

15.03.2012

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On Syria’s Media Narrative(s): A Rant

This week’s Listening Post–the Al Jazeera program that includes clips from citizens all over the world with varying views–discusses “Syria’s media tug of war.” I haven’t listened yet (I’m at a conference) but the subject is pertinent and timely. Today, there are two stories making the rounds that illustrate this “tug of war” perfectly. The [...]

03.03.2012

10 Comments

On Syria

In the corner of many Twitter avatars is a small Syrian flag. Whether pro-Assad, pro-opposition, or something else entirely, it is the same flag, the red, the white, the black, and two green stars. Because in Syria, regardless of your stance on the regime, you are a Syrian. (Anas Qtiesh rightly points out my inaccuracy: [...]

08.02.2012

4 Comments

Global Copycats

It’s difficult to write this blog post in the aftermath of SOPA/PIPA, but honestly, it’s just a coincidence; I discovered an old hard drive in a drawer this morning that contained photos from my first solo European trip–to Munich and Prague–in 2005. Looking through the photos, I discovered this one: Dobrá čajovna, according to Wikipedia, [...]

05.02.2012

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Do solidarity campaigns really help bloggers?

Edit: A Saudi contact points out that campaigns have been helpful in the cases of Manal al-Sharif and Feras Begnah, but adds: “It seems that only when it’s way too silly to arrest people, massive attention will be given and the government is likely to [surrender].” When Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy was briefly detained–and beaten–by [...]

29.12.2011

6 Comments

To Regulate (Or Preferably Not): On Mueller’s claim of misdirected resistance to surveillance technology

A pair of blog posts this week from Milton Mueller have sparked multiple conversations filling my inbox (as well as an unprecedented amount of passive aggression, of which I do not approve, but the sheer number of people practicing it makes me reticent to name names). The posts take on the emerging cottage industry of [...]

29.12.2011

3 Comments

Another Arrest

I am really fucking tired of seeing my good friends, one by one, arrested by hideous regimes. First it was Ali, who remains in hiding from the US-supported Bahraini government, then it was Slim (who thankfully went free shortly thereafter), then Alaa, who might miss the birth of his first child because of the US-supported [...]

04.12.2011

4 Comments

#Hashtagging Real Life

Ever since my good friend Zeynep Tufekci brought me a revolutionary t-shirt from Egypt, I’ve been fascinated by the popularization of hashtags outside of Twitter. And by outside, I don’t mean on blogs, Facebook, and Flickr, where they’re increasingly appearing, but offline. T-shirts, posters, graffiti, and protest signs all make use of hashtag symbolism; rather [...]

16.10.2011

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Twitter Trolling as Propaganda Tactic: Bahrain and Syria

First, a note: I’m no expert on either of the two countries that are a focus of this piece, nor do I intend to be comprehensive in my analysis. I know a bit more about Syria than I do about Bahrain, having studied its history closely and traveled there, but nonetheless, I intend purely to [...]

12.10.2011

1 Comment

Can a Tweet Prevent a Massacre?

I just published a post over on Global Voices with the same headline, specifically quoting Syrian opposition and their supporters, who have been attempting to trend the #RamadanMassacre hashtag today. In looking for tweets using the hashtag, I came across one from Andy Carvin that got me thinking. Can Twitter prevent a massacre? I know [...]

01.08.2011

12 Comments

Journalistic Verification, Amina Arraf, and Haystack

How did a Syrian blogger, who told beautiful and heartwrenching stories of life as a lesbian in Damascus, manage to trick so many people? How did an American software engineer, whose passion for the Iranian cause led him to build what he dubbed the safest of circumvention tools, do the same? The stories of Amina [...]

10.06.2011

18 Comments

IFEX 2011 Liveblog: Ramsey George of Tactical Tech Discusses Info-Activism

Ramsey George of the Tactical Technology Collective conducted a session (several times, and in English and Arabic) on new media and advocacy strategies. Basing his talk partly on Tactical Tech’s excellent “10 Tactics for Turning Information into Activism” film (copies of which were offered to participants), he made the point early on that what people [...]

03.06.2011

1 Comment

What Syria’s Unblocking of Facebook Was Really About

Back in February, I wrote that the Syrian government’s decision to free up access to Facebook and other sites was a risky move, potentially designed to entrap Syrians. In the nearly three months since, it seems like I was right: First came the reports of activists and non-activists being detained, their Facebook and other passwords [...]

06.05.2011

7 Comments

Threats from Syria

A few days ago, Anas Qtiesh* wrote of spam bots intentionally targeting the #Syria hashtag with neutral or pro-regime messages. I was then asked to write a piece on the subject for the Guardian‘s Comment is Free. Today, I find that I’ve been added to a list of “information terrorists” (along with the Guardian’s Brian [...]

21.04.2011

2 Comments

Microsoft Fixes Bug; Re-enables HTTPS for All Users

Yesterday, I blogged that users in Iran, all Arab countries, Burma, Nigeria, and the Central Asian nations had been blocked from turning on HTTPS encryption within Hotmail.  This was true. According to Microsoft, this was a bug that affected users not only in those countries, but also in the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, and Fiji. [...]

26.03.2011

6 Comments

Microsoft Hotmail: No HTTPS for Arab, Iranian Users

Update 2: Microsoft has fixed the bug; all users can now enable HTTPS. Update: Further testing by EFF International Activist Eva Galperin found that, in addition to Arab countries and Iran, Myanmar, Nigeria, Kazahstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan are also affected. This morning, a Syrian Hotmail user noted that he could not turn on [...]

25.03.2011

10 Comments

In Defense of Al Jazeera: A Response to Marc Ginsberg

Former Ambassador to Morocco Marc Ginsberg (during the Years of Lead, it should be noted) has penned a piece for the Huffington Post asking if Qatar-based Al Jazeera has fueled “Tunisteria” (that is, stoked the already-burning fires spreading across the Middle East toward the direction of intifada). It’s a valid question–that is, if we lived [...]

21.01.2011

6 Comments

Iranians Get More Google…

…but Syrians and Sudanese don’t. Seems like the State Department is once again deciding who is most worthy of their net freedom agenda. The latest announcement (via VOA) states that Google, after negotiating with the State Department, can now offer Google Chrome, Picasa, and Google Earth to Iranian net users.  Says Google’s Scott Rubin: The [...]

19.01.2011

1 Comment

Facebook and Saudi Arabia

I went offline for this weekend (complete radio silence) for the first time in years.  Of course, during that time, Saudi Arabia had to go and block Facebook the media went crazy reporting that Saudi Arabia blocked Facebook, but Saudi netizens are saying there was no actual block.  And then unblock Facebook.  It’s almost as [...]

14.11.2010

4 Comments

Israel as “Safe Haven” for Arabs

An interesting bit in today’s Jerusalem Post; Egyptian journalist Nabil Sharaf Eldin argues, in a rather poorly written piece, that as a journalist, he is safer in Israel than in much of the region.  His ultimate point?  That as a journalist who refuses to mince words in respect to Arab regimes, he is unsafe in [...]

11.11.2010

21 Comments

Syrian Digital Activism in the NYTimes

This morning, in the New York Times of all places, is a good article highlighting Syria’s pervasive Internet censorship.  The premise is this: a disturbing (though not particularly graphic, as the Times suggests) video of teachers beating their young students is put up on Facebook (which Facebook, shockingly but to their credit, doesn’t remove for [...]

30.09.2010

5 Comments

Digital Activism, the U.S. Government, and the Arab World

A few weeks ago, the New York Times published an op-ed by respected journalist Rami Khoury, entitled “When Arabs Tweet.” In the piece, Khoury questioned the State Department’s role in promoting digital technologies in the region. Anyone who has ever spoken with me at length about this topic knows how I feel: that the U.S. [...]

07.08.2010

9 Comments

Ich bin in Bonn

I stumble onto the escalator heading toward the train tracks.  I feel ill; perhaps it’s from not eating, and then eating too much, but in any case, I feel as though I’m about to faint.  I shouldn’t even be here right now,* I think to myself as I collapse onto a bench, grateful for the [...]

22.06.2010

2 Comments

#NetFreedom in Syria, Between Sanctions and Censorship

This post is directly re-published from Anas Qtiesh’s blog, but I agree with it 100%. A delegation of US tech companies and policymakers are visiting Syria today and holding a meeting with President Bashar Al Assad and high-ranking officials. The tech delegation (#techdel on Twitter, and “techdel” hereafter) came after coordination on high diplomatic levels [...]

15.06.2010

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Net Freedom Starts at Home

David Ignatius is one journalist whose work I greatly respect. I followed his PostGlobal project with Fareed Zakaria for its duration and know that, as a journalist, he tends toward openness and honesty, with a definite global (and sometimes even developing world) slant. Yesterday, in a Washington Post op-ed entitled, “The case for spreading press [...]

19.04.2010

1 Comment

How the U.S. Censors Arabs

In my spare time, I’ve been doing a lot of talking to activists and reporters about two issues that are getting very little coverage in the U.S., despite both being facets of U.S. policy. The first is H.R. 2278, which eatbees has done a better job than I ever could of explaining here. For those [...]

29.01.2010

2 Comments

Net freedom for all? Not so much…

I’m a bit late to the party with comments on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Net freedom speech last Thursday; I was deep in work that day and spent the weekend doing fun things (like visiting with friends and finally seeing Avatar). Still, though there have been plenty of excellent analyses of the speech (check [...]

25.01.2010

2 Comments

On Travel

I remember a time when the world felt big.  Where, as an angsty nineteen year old, I told a friend over cigarettes and copious amounts of coffee that the better alternative to suicide was to run away, lose yourself in a part of the world that you’d never even imagined.  I remembered that conversation three [...]

15.09.2009

18 Comments

On Un-Sanctioning Syria

A notable news item this morning is that of the United States’ lifting two bits of its sanctions on Syria, one of which happens to be its ban on the import/export of IT, including hardware and software (the other is on the exportation of goods to the Syrian aviation industry). Syrian envoy to the U.S. [...]

27.07.2009

3 Comments

LinkedIn: Doing the Right Thing

By now you’ve probably heard about the continuing saga of #amazonfail. Even if you’re not a Twitter user, or couldn’t care less about LGBT books and their Amazon.com rankings, the term has no doubt entered your lexicon. What you probably haven’t heard about, however, is the short-lived #linkedinfail that happened when business-themed social networking service [...]

19.04.2009

1 Comment

On Homosexuality in Morocco

The Syrian blogosphere recently got fired up over the subject of homosexuality.  Specifically, a group of bloggers of a variety of backgrounds launched a campaign against homosexuality, and another group of bloggers responded rationally (though angrily).  As my dear friend Razan pointed out in this epic post: It is very outrageous for some and for [...]

31.03.2009

10 Comments

Aleppo

I’ve been home from Syria for ten days, and pathetically, I have only written one blog post. I’ve been busy, you see – looking for a new apartment, catching up on work, being human…and absorbing. Since Prague, I haven’t traveled anywhere personally significant, and even Prague, even the city of a thousand spires, didn’t meet [...]

25.03.2009

8 Comments

Syria

Just three days ago I woke up in Damascus for the last time (for now). It doesn’t seem possible, sitting here in my Cambridge office, looking out the window at a still mid-winter sky, that exactly this time last week I was watching the sun set on the road between Homs and Damascus. It doesn’t [...]

18.03.2009

12 Comments

Size Matters

I know this is an awfully silly post to kick off my new blog design.  I can’t help it.  /explanation. Last weekend Yazan chatted me up with a fun fact: Marlboros in Japan are nearly 20% shorter than those back in his home country of Syria.  His question: “Do you think Marlboro Japan is being [...]

28.01.2009

2 Comments

How can I help?

A number of people have e-mailed me asking what they can do to help financially. As the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) reports on Twitter, the Palestinian Red Crescent is in need of money for medical supplies, and the UNRWA is working on supplying flour. After failing to figure out how to donate to SARC [...]

06.01.2009

1 Comment