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Reading 18/6/2012

Before I even knew I would lose her, and even as I held her hand in the hospital, I knew but couldn’t fully fathom just how much my mother’s death would change my life. I’m leaving everything I know and taking on the world for the same reason I told her – in the end – it was okay to let go:

We will find our home everywhere we are brave enough to travel.

Of all the uprisings of the “Arab Spring,” the Syrian revolt has been the one arena where pro-regime information warfare has been a central element in the ongoing conflict. While the regime has not been able to shape the information environment completely, it has nevertheless had some success in sowing confusion and reinforcing the fears of its target audiences. What’s more, the pro-regime information operations have found resonance in some rather unexpected corners in Washington.

On Egypt (worth a read even post-elections; apologies, I read most of these earlier in the week and am just now collecting them):

This time as millions go to vote, millions of others will not vote – boycotting or spoiling their ballots. They will do so, not because they don’t believe in democracy, but because they refuse to choose a lesser evil, and in turn be complicit in a political process that has been used to prevent change and not to bring it.

Far from disenfranchising themselves, they will be laying their bet on the only movement that has forced the army to bend and cornered the Muslim Brotherhood into decisions that have destroyed their popularity – the revolutionary movement.

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