Anas Qtiesh

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 and as a part of the Obama administration’s policy of engaging with Syria, according to William Burns, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.

A tweet by Alec Ross, the techdel’s leader, summed up the United States’ attitude towards the visit:

This trip to #Syria will test Syria’s willingness to engage more responsibly on issues of #netfreedom

Of course Net freedom is craved by Syrian users; Censorship is strict and many popular websites are blocked by the Syrian government (Facebook and YouTube to name a couple), and perceived cyber-dissidents have many a time received prison sentences ranging between 3-5 years in most cases. What the techdel seems oblivious to is how much the U.S. sanctions on Syria are complicit in further limiting internet freedoms for Syrian users. Jared Cohen, Member of Secretary Clinton’s Policy Planning Staff and a member of the delegation, tweeted:

Big gap between older & younger Syrians on challenges to business. Youth blame lack of education, not sanctions

Just to show how misguided that statement is, I’ll draw up a few comparisons between Syrian governmental censorship and U.S. imposed IT sanctions: Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to a Syrian tweet bot, I keep on top of everything that’s said about the country in the Twittersphere. And Today I came across a rather interesting AP article: Netanyahu: Israel open to peace talks with Syria. What caught my attention was not the doublespeak of an Israeli official about peace with Syria. Israelis have expressed no interested in returning the occupied Golan to Syria; To them, Syria has nothing to offer in return. Peace in their logic, is overrated. A simple search in prominent Israeli media shows how prevalent that opinion is.

I was especially interested in the particular use of words in the article. I quote:

It has been a quarter-century since Israel and Syria fought directly, but Syria backs anti-Israel forces like the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamic organization Hamas. Israel’s sworn enemy Iran backs Hamas and Hezbollah.

In this article, Hamas and Hezbollah were not referred to as.. *gasp* “terrorist organizations.” Now I was not able to determine if this was an AP policy not to refer to them as such outside of a direct quote, or whether there’s more to the matter. I’m going to layout a few happenings, and let the readers come out with their own conspiracy theories.

Read the rest of this entry »

Karim Arbaji has just been sentenced to three years in prison for defending human rights in Syria. Meanwhile, the Syrian blogosphere is bustling with posts advocating admirable and worthy campaigns. There’s the astounding campaign against masturbation, the noble Blogging Week for Moral Decay, and the enlightening campaign for Blogging Against Fossilized Thinking.

The background of this story is this post by Abu Fares, a response ridiculing the infamous call for a campaign against masturbation. The commentators on that post eventually came up with their own ideas for  random blogging campaigns. In essence to further mock that blogger, and the perceived religious bloggers he’s associated with.

I have to say that upon reading about the anti-masturbation campaign I cracked up. Also, I posted about it on Global Voices, sans-sarcasm. Some people were amused by the idea and tweeted the link of the article and a friend of mine wrote to me saying that the campaigner is likely to have a crowd supporting his campaign that you could fit in a phone booth. So, many people find – me included – that idea outrageous, But does that warrant the ridicule of the blogger? Does that make it ok to put aside all the great words and thoughts I’ve seen many Syrian bloggers write on each of their blogs to combine forces to fight this supposed “common enemy” called religiousness?

Read the rest of this entry »

بدون تعليق

من جريدة الوطن الصادرة صباح اليوم

The text reads: “A New Dawn For Humanity, 70 Days Till Bush Leaves the White House”

This was taken from the top of the front page of Al Watan Daily Newspaper.

هؤلاء

[جميع التعليقات مأخوذة من سيريا نيوز.]

ملتقى وطني حول جرائم الشرف
دمشق – رنا داود

بالتعاون ما بين وزارتي العدل والأوقاف تقيم الهيئة السورية لشؤون الأسرة ملتقى وطنياً حول جرائم الشرف وذلك في الفترة ما بين 14-16\10\2008 في قاعة الأمويين بفندق الشام. وذكر تقرير صادر عن الهيئة بأن سورية وضعت في مقدمة الدول التي تنتشر فيها هذه الجرائم وهي الخامسة عالمياً والرابعة عربياً في الوقت الذي تتبوأ فيه المرأة في سورية مكانة متقدمة في مختلف مواقع القرار سياسياً و اقتصادياً واجتماعياً، لذلك سارعت العديد من الجهات المعنية الفاعلة في الحقل الاجتماعي لتحديد نقاط الضعف في العديد من القوانين الوطنية وآخرها كان تشكيل الفريق النوعي لدراسة واقع الجرائم التي ترتكب باسم الشرف، كون المشكلة لا تكمن بعدد الجرائم التي ترتكب ولكن تكمن بألية ومنهجية التفكير وفي نمطيته وفي أعماق وأبعاد رؤيتنا لهذه المشكلة

ما دام القانون يجرم الضحية ويكافئ المجرم فليس هناك أمل في تغيير العقلية الجاهلية التي يفاخر بها مجتمعنا العربي العتيد، وطالما تتم ملاقاة المجرم بالزغاريد والأفراح كأنه فتح الأندلس فلا فائدة ترجى من أي ملتقى أو تجمع أو دراسة، وبما أن جميع “الجهات الفاعلة في الحقل الإجتماعي” بعيدة كل البعد عن صناع القرار و المشرعين فلن نرى أي تغيير في القانون نحو عقاب حقيقي للقتلة الذين في ظروف أخرى يحلمون بالحصول على الحد الأدني من العقوبة وهو عشر سنوات بينما قاتلو الشرف يستضافون لمدة ثلاثة إلى ستة أشهر ثم يعودون سالمين غانمين ليعيشوا في ثبات وبنين

ولكن أنا دائماً أحاول النظر إلى الجانب الإيجابي من الأمور، على الأقل يمكننا القول بأن سوريا احتلت مركزاً متقدماً عالمياً في شيءٍ ما، المركز الخامس في قلة الشرف

“So is it you [the Syrians] or the Iranians next on the American list?” Asked a friend of mine in a recent IM conversation, and continued with the following statement “well since both Syria and Iran are democracies and the people elected their governments and can hold them accountable for their actions, they deserve to face the American Wrath.”

I won’t comment on the fact that both regimes are democracies and people can hold their governments accountable. You can’t argue with that since both “repeatedly introduced themselves to the world as being democratic.”

The last outburst of American Wrath has cost the Iraqis 2 million lives and turned about 4 million of them into refugees scattered around the world. Iraqi young women – even minors – resorting/forced into prostitution just to keep there families from starving to death (I’ve personally came across families that can’t afford a daily meal of more than a couple of loaves of bread a day for the entire lot of 6-8 people!) Iraq’s infrastructure is devastated beyond repair, and new explosions are shedding Iraqi blood into the Euphrates so often that even news agencies lost interest in covering the daily hell on earth Iraqis are forced to live through as a consequence of American Wrath. But hey, they had it coming.

Saying that is worse than saying that rape victims brought it upon themselves by wearing revealing clothes, might as well advise them to lay back and try to enjoy it! Despite the “NO it’s not” answer I got when I asked, I still hope the whole idea was nothing more than a sick joke.