Often I find myself debating with Syrians who are pro the regime on Facebook, twitter, and Google Plus. Below is my response to comments by a fellow Syrian who supports the regime  on a public G+ post. Feel free to click through to the post to see all the comments. Below are his(her?) comments and my response. They said:

 It is very shallow to paint the situation as angels versus demons in Syria. Both factions have criminals among their ranks. But as a supporter of the regime I can’t overlook the fact that a significant portion of the opposition is based on a sectarian ideology and bonds upon the hatred of the other rather than through any civil dogma.

it is a stand against chaos and lawlessness. It is supporting the idea of the state not the imprisonment of your friends. Though the experiences of your friends might have been tragic, which I am awfully sorry for, but still the tragedies that the community as a whole will face in case Syria slips into chaos is much more greater than any personal suffering.

My response: I’m interested in seeing where you got your stats when you said “significant portion of the opposition is based on a sectarian ideology and bonds upon the hatred of the other rather than through any civil dogma.” Please don’t try to pass your opinions as fact. The regime is trying desperately to paint the protesters in a bad light. Heck, if we want to talk about percentages, I can easily prove to you that a larger portion of regime loyalists have committed far more atrocities, crimes, and human rights abuses that any abuses committed by the protesters are a mere fraction of that.

Also, care to explain why the regime is targeting peaceful activists if the claim is that the regime is fighting armed gangs? Why did +Anas Maarawi spend two months in jail? Why did Ghayath Matar, the renowned peaceful activist, get arrested by security forces, tortured and brutally murdered? Why was Ali Ferzat assaulted? Why did the parents of the Internationally renowned musician Jandali get viciously beaten up because he composed a song calling for freedom? Why is Syrian media publishing statements by groups promoting violence against Syrian protesters AND their parents? Why am I (and my parents) along with countless others, such as Hakam AlBaba being threatened by the dirt-bag Ammar Ismail from Damascus News Network who’s heavily supported by the regime and is constantly appearing on Syrian TV channels? Why were peaceful artists and intellectuals arrested for days and threatened and almost assaulted when the court finally freed them? Why are pro-Assad thugs assaulting people in Europe and even Washington DC?

I can keep going for days. In brief, the current regime is the antithesis of the “idea of state” that you claim to support. The Assad regime is a ruthless clan clinging tooth and nail to power at any cost.

What kind of state keeps hundreds of thousands of its people stateless and without any rights for decades? Why all the repression of the Kurds?

Syria has been in masked chaos since the sixties. “Stability” enforced by human rights abuses and fear is not something to be proud of or defend. The Assad regime is a sectarian regime if I’ve ever seen one. They claim to be secular but they do everything in their powers to scare the minorities from what would happen if the regime falls.

If your idea of state is North Korea, then congratulations, the Assad regime is bringing us ever so closer to it.

au·dac·i·ty/ôˈdasitē/Noun

1. The willingness to take bold risks: “her audacity came in handy during our most recent emergency”.
2. Rude or disrespectful behavior; impudence: “she had the audacity to pick up the receiver and ask me to hang up”.

I watched Al Assad’s second speech today, to the newly formed cabinet. The main change: he did not laugh. It’s hard to laugh when people are tearing your pictures apart and destroying statues of your late father and setting them on fire.

He opened by talking of conspiracy theories and infiltrators. Not too promising. There was definitely a change of tone from the previous speech and not interruptions with poetry or parroting chants like what happened at the parliament. However, removing status law is still going to take another couple of weeks. I expect it to be announced on a Thursday.

Algeria(?) lifted their emergency laws promptly after some protests. But in Syria we still need sometime. Time we can’t afford. We have a constitution, be it faulty as it is, so why does it need weeks just to be reinstated?

Giving hundreds of thousands of Kurds citizenship, and even the thought of  establishing a Parliamentary committee to study removing the emergency law were red lines. It was unthinkable that anyone would dare discuss them openly in the public sphere.

It took a few weeks of protests by– if you were to believe the Syrian official line– “infiltrators;” “conspirators;” “agents of Bandar, Hariri, Israel, and the US,” and trained foreign nationals to push the regime to announce that they’re going to give Syrians some of their basic rights back.

Assad talked audaciously for an hour about reform. I’ll leave it to you dear reader to choose which meaning of the word applies here. Meanwhile thousands of people are rotting in jails for committing though crimes against the “beloved leader”  and motherland. Convicted felons, thieves, frauds, and the average thug are released in hours with a .frequent presidential pardon. Bigmouths aren’t so lucky.

Adding insult to injury, Assad talked about ensuring citizens’ dignity, on day after his security forces tied down every man in Al Baida village in Baniyas for daring to protest. Heavily armed thugs gleefully walked all over the men tied down like cattle, frequently kicking them in the head and face and beating them with sticks.

Of course, the speech did not leave out political reform. Assad talked about improving life standards, supporting the drought impoverished  Eastern provinces, improving transparency in the public sector and economic processes as a whole. There was no mention of the economic titans–or Economic Bulldozers as they prefer– of Assad’s close circle, Makhlouf and Shalash, who have been treating the Syrian Economy as their personal trust fund for decades. A promising start indeed.

After the speech, some of my fellow Syrians were optimistic, hopeful, excited even with all the seemingly serious promises and apparent change in tone. I wonder how those promises are in anyway more serious than similar promises from Assad in 2000, or his promises two weeks ago that had a fair share of blood chilling jokes and chuckles as blood of Syrians were coloring the streets red.

For the time being, I’m going to hold on to my skepticism and cynicism. Studies show that cynics are more bitter than the average person, but also have a firmer grasp of reality. To my fellow Syrians that took the redpill and set themselves free I say: I’m forever humbled by your bravery and persistence. I’m honored to be your compatriot and had the pleasure of knowing some of you whether in person or online.

People following the #Syria hash tag on Twitter in the recent weeks to track the developments of the Syrian protests and the deadly governmental crackdown on peaceful protesters must have noticed two major annoyances:

First was the proliferation of what tweeps dubbed as the “twitter eggs,” a group of newly created and mostly image-less twitter accounts that cussed out, verbally assaulted, and threatened anyone tweeting favorably about the ongoing protests, or criticizing the regime. Those accounts were believed to be manned by Syrian Mokhabarat[intelligence] agents with poor command of both written Arabic and English, and an endless arsenal of bile and insults. Several twitter users created lists to make it easier for the rest to track and report those accounts for spam. Here are a couple of examples.

Second, which is more damaging, is the creation of various spam accounts that mainly target #Syria hash tag; flooding it with predetermined set of tweets– every few minutes–about varied topics such as photography, old Syrian sport scores, links to Syrian comedy shows, pro-regime news, and threats against a long list of tweeps who expressed their support of the protests.

Identifying The Cause

At first I thought this was a badly timed annoyance, and several users were already reporting those abusive accounts. However, a couple of users apparently discovered some foul play. The parody account @SyrianPresident tweeted:

Stop it mukhabarat Twitter is not #Bashar’s spam machine! > @TheLovelySyria #Syria #Homs #Aleppo #Damascus #Lebanon http://is.gd/Plii1Z

and @syrianrebels responded:

@SyrianPresident it’s a company in Syria that send automated msgs, a dedicated owner they use server of @eghna check website #Syria branch

I went to investigate the Bahrain based Eghna Developement and Support*, which among other things provides “political campaign solutions.” I searched for any affiliation with Syria, and sure enough, one of the main suspected #Syria spam accounts was featured in their success stories page.

Eghna claims that “LovelySyria is using EGHNA Media Server to promote intersting photography about Syria using their twitter accounts. EGHNA Media Server helped Lovely Syria get attention to the beauty of Syria, and build a community of people who love the country and admire its beauty.” The only problem with that claim is that the lovelysyria.com website is only a Drupal login page void of content. There’s no way of creating a new user account, and therefore any claims of fostering a community are false.

Breakdown Of Research Results

Seemingly unrelated spam accounts, with the exact same modus operandi, have been rapidly coming into existence with only enough content to appear to be legitimate automated twitter accounts instead of spam bots with a very sinister motive behind them.

I have managed to identify at least 7 different accounts that are evidently configured to loop a specific set of tweets at predetermined intervals (usually between 2-5 minutes). Below are links their respective user pages and an explanation of what they tweet about:

• @TheLovelySyria: As mentioned above, it tweets Flickr links of photos taken in Syria. It uses #Syria hash tag and also rotates between #tags of different Syrian cities. Tweets every two minutes.
• @SyriaBeauty: Uses same set of tweets as @TheLovelySyria and tweets every two minutes. This means you’ll be bombarded by one tweet a minute of #Syria tweets unrelated to the current pressing issue which is the brutal crackdown on Syrian protesters. Same hash tags scheme.
• @SyLeague: Tweets Syrian Soccer League match results from seasons 2003-2004 onwards. Matches are selected randomly and bear no significance to the fans of the sport. Same trend as above when it comes to tag usage. Tweets every two minutes.
• @KaramahClub: Uses same tweet set as @SyLeague. Same #tag trends as all of the above.
• @SyHumor: Tweets links to episodes and sketches of popular Syrian sitcoms. Same tag usage trend as above. Tweets every 2 minutes.
• @DNNUpdates: Affiliated with Damascus News Network on Facebook. Pro-Regime.  Tweets a distorted version of the events in #Syria and repeats news about alleged armed gangs and terrorists. Only uses #Syria tag. Tweets every 3 minutes.
• @MBKing13: Harasses a large number of twitter users who support or tweet positively about the protests. This account tweets about conspiracy theories and threatens twitter users while pretending that there’s a human behind the account. Taking a deeper look at the account shows that there’s a large set of pre-programmed tweets that are used repeatedly and threats are aimed at a set of users. The account is active 24/7  and tweets at 5 minutes intervals. Tags used: #Syria, #Mar15.

Note: if you twitter links appear to be broken you probably need to go to your twitter account settings and enable HTTPS which also enhances your privacy. If the page doesn’t exist it was probably taken down, but I have screenshots that I’d gladly share and I’m sure google will cache those pages for a long time.

Conclusion

Relying on the available data it seems that the regime is upping it’s information warfare game. Instead of generating bad PR by blocking websites or solely relying on going after online activists and attempting to hack their accounts. The regime at first attempted bullying and intimidation online by seemingly independent twitter accounts. That failed miserably and ended up being an embarrassment.

Now, they are effectively diluting the discussion and making it much harder to find any info about the protests by bombarding the popular relevant hash tags with badly disguised spam. Those spammy accounts have already been reported by many twitter users for spam, but Twitter has been slow to respond and apply their TOS (terms of service) that clearly prohibit “overloading, flooding, spamming, mail-bombing the Services, or by scripting the creation of Content in such a manner as to interfere with or create an undue burden on the Services.”

Twitter is currently one of the main platforms used by dissidents and activists to disseminate information and videos of the ongoing protests, and uncover the crimes committed by the regime’s security forces against unarmed peaceful protesters. It is of utmost importance to ensure that their voices are heard. We must provide the general public and international media easy access to such information. Crimes unnoticed are crimes unpunished.

Update on April 19, 5:30 pm EST: The above mentioned twitter accounts are still active but their tweets are no longer showing when viewing the #Syria hash tag stream. I think Twitter handled this in a smart manner; the accounts are still viewable to people who are following them but are no longer cluttering Syria related searches. Thanks to everyone who reported this.

* Eghna has responded to the article. Please find their response in the comments below.

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:

According to Jared Cohen, the techdel also addressed issues of intellectual property:

Strong words from US techdel to Syria on intellectual property & emphasis on enacting laws to address this in short & long-terms

Again, US policymakers are requesting that Syrian authorities help them enforce measures against software piracy, of software that’s originally banned from Syria under the US sanctions. I don’t know what message they are trying to send here, but again it shows that the techdel came with a pre-prepared speech that’s hardly based on the facts on the ground, and shows little desire to have a proactive discussion with Syrian counterparts. It’s ludicrous that Syrian officials are asked to help effectively enforce sanctions against their country; The fine people from techdel seem to disagree. The fact of the matter remains, pirated software is the only choice for Syrians now, and in the absence of the ability to purchase original copies; all U.S. demands for measures against piracy are painfully misguided.

I personally have little hope for any positive outcome to come out of this initiative. Both sides are hardly affected by the current situation and the real victim here is the Syrian youth and entrepreneurs who are having to spend their time and energy to come up with ways to go around limitations and hurdles from local and U.S. policies. Those wasted talents would have been better invested in an [infant], yet promising, Syrian IT sector.

I hereby start a campaign to call on policymakers from Syria and the US to end unjust policies and practices that are adversely affecting Syrian IT infrastructure, and users.

How you can help

Start by contacting US policymakers, especially if you’re based in the United States.  If you’re a Syrian blogger, blogging in Arabic is a good way to attract attention and garner support internally.

- Important contacts:

You can call or write to Sec. Clinton’s office:
Phone: +1 202-647-5291
Address:
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520

You can also contact advisers and members of Sec. Clinton’s team:
Alec Ross (@AlecJRoss on Twitter), Adviser for Innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Jared Cohen (@JaredCohen on Twitter), Member of Secretary Clinton’s Policy Planning Staff.

Use hash tag #freenetsy on Twitter to make it easier to organize and track tweets, and make sure to join the Facebook group page and invite your friends to join.

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.

Syria’s main beef with the U.S./Israel can be summed up to the following points and accusations: Supporting Hamas and Hezbollah, Interfering in Lebanon and Iraq, and strong ties with Iran. So what’s changed?

Hamas is being locked in Gaza with walls courtesy of the Israeli and Egyptian governments; They will be are being starved into irrelevancy. Hezbollah is no longer an upset in Lebanese politics since they failed to establish a majority in the last election and eventually all the creases were straightened out. Also, the 2006 war was a PR disaster for Israel and gave Hezbollah a stronghold in Lebanon, even though they weren’t able to translate it into votes a couple of years after that. To Israel, Hezbollah is a wasp hive best left alone. Also, the U.S. has been very successful in slyly translating the tensions in regards to Iraq into tensions between the Iraqi and Syrian governments as Washington works a slow withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

On the other hand,  Syria and the U.S. seem to be achieving progress, be it painfully slow: A promise of a gradual lift of sanctions that is yet to materialize. Robert Ford, former deputy ambassador to Iraq, is a candidate for the vacant-for-five-years job of U.S. ambassador to Damascus. He is currently awaiting Syrian approval. Iran is now occupied with internal turmoil, and sanctions keep piling up. I would not be surprised if Syria starts to noticeably drift away from its current closest ally. Politics in essence is more interest than ideology.

Does all of the above mean that Syria is working its way out of the gutter? Are Hezbollah and Hamas going to be removed from US terrorist organization lists at some point in the near future?

I do not think that the correlation of these events implies causation. Maybe I’m reading too much into the choice of words in that AP report. Still, It’s certainly interesting to see how things are shaping up. Could we be witnessing the “birth pangs of a new Middle East?”

P.S. The following Time article also uses the term “militant groups” to refer to Hezbollah and Hamas: Why the U.S. is Back on the Road to Damascus.

P.P.S. It’s important to mention Twitter in anything you write to show that you are relevant and hip — sarcasm.

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?

For those of you unfamiliar with the Syrian blogosphere some more background is in order. It is a common and accepted notion that religious Syrian bloggers (even those who don’t specifically blog about Islam related matters) blog in Arabic, and those who are liberal, non-religious often write in English. So there has been friction between the two sides more than once.

Now, I only have one thing to say to all my dear compatriot bloggers: FOR FUCKIN’ FUCK’S SAKE! CUT IT OUT!

Don’t you all see how ridiculous you all sound? You think you’re all so god damn different. Well, here’s a little table to help illustrate things a bit clearer:

Are you really that different?

Apart from a couple of sane voices out there, those guys are ready to rip each other to pieces for the good of all Syrians. What a farce! What’s crazy is that with each stand off, the same people that put Arbaji and many others behind bars are rubbing their hands and creepily saying “excellent!” Now I’m not asking anyone to go on a crusade against the security forces and the so-called justice system to get those guys out, or even worse: demand the freedom of speech for all Syrians regardless of their faith, ethnicity, or political affiliation. Also, I’m not trying to lecture  anyone in how to be a patriot or a better person (although I seem to be failing at that).

What irks me is that everyone is so focused on their own nuances that they refuse to see a bigger picture. Cancel that, you don’t even have to see a bigger picture. Just spare the rest of us who don’t care all your incessant bickering. The I-get-my-panties-in-knot-every-time-the-opposite-side-says-something syndrome is getting really old and neither of you are getting any support for whatever it is that you’re advocating with your self-righteous attitude, or venomous attempts at humor.

Some will probably attack me saying that I’m no better than anyone else [if anyone even read this post], that I’m in no position to tell people what to do and not do. I’m not assuming that I am, nor will I ever be. But it’s a shame seeing top-notch bloggers make fools out of themselves. There’s a reason I don’t blog that often: I’m very critical of my own writing and always prefer reading what my fellow bloggers to jotting down whatever follies I have running through my head. One thing remains true though, when I read what y’all have written and the only thing I can think about is going ninja on my keyboard and furiously write a post – it only means one thing: you guys suck!

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

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.