Posts tagged syria

Slate uses a comic to explain the 1949 Syria Military Coup that many believe was the first supported by the newly-formed CIA. The rest, as the say, is history. Click through to view the whole thing.

Slate uses a comic to explain the 1949 Syria Military Coup that many believe was the first supported by the newly-formed CIA.

The rest, as the say, is history.

Click through to view the whole thing.

Syria: Songs of Defiance

Al Jazeera will begin airing a documentary on the Syria uprising that was shot entirely on an iPhone. According to the network, Al Jazeera cameras are banned in Syria and their correspondent went undercover to meet “resistance fighters, protesters, Syrian army deserters, footballers-turned-revolutionaries and cigarette smugglers who have joined the fight.”

Journalism.co.uk adds the following from an Al Jazeera press release:

I can’t tell you my name. I’ve spent many months secretly in Syria for Al Jazeera.

I cannot show my face and my voice is disguised to conceal my identity, because I don’t want to endanger my contacts in Syria.

Because carrying a camera would be risky, I took my cell phone with me as I moved around the country and captured images from the uprising that have so far remained unseen.

Songs of Defiance begins airing this Wednesday and will run through next week. Al Jazeera has posted its schedule here.

Syrian Media Activist, US Reporter, French Photographer Killed in Homs

Full story via Al Jazeera.

Who’s Who in Syria, an Illustrated Explainer Slate’s running an illustrated explainer of who’s who in Syria’s power family with brief overviews of how they got there. So, for example, you have Bashar “the accidental dictator,” his younger brother “the elite army commander” and first cousin Hafez Makhlouf “the spymaster” among others. Image: Detail from Syria’s First Family, via Slate.

Who’s Who in Syria, an Illustrated Explainer

Slate’s running an illustrated explainer of who’s who in Syria’s power family with brief overviews of how they got there.

So, for example, you have Bashar “the accidental dictator,” his younger brother “the elite army commander” and first cousin Hafez Makhlouf “the spymaster” among others.

Image: Detail from Syria’s First Family, via Slate.

Blasts kill 28, injure 235 in Aleppo, Syria The government blames terrorists. Some US analysts appear to agree. The opposition accuses the Assad regime of setting off the blasts. Image: An explosion took place outside a police building in Aleppo, Syria. Via Reuters/BBC.

Blasts kill 28, injure 235 in Aleppo, Syria

The government blames terrorists. Some US analysts appear to agree. The opposition accuses the Assad regime of setting off the blasts.

Image: An explosion took place outside a police building in Aleppo, Syria. Via Reuters/BBC.

A group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army hacked the Al Jazeera English Web site yesterday with messages supporting president Bashar al-Assad Via Ars Technica: Targeting the news organization’s “Syria Live Blog,” which has been providing ongoing coverage of the Arab League’s observer mission to Syria and developments in the ongoing unrest in the country, the hacker group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army posted pro-Assad and pro-Syrian government images to the site… …On their own site, the Syrian Electronic Army announced the “code re-penetration” of the site by a “professional Syrian battalion” of hackers, denouncing Al Jazeera for broadcasting “false and fabricated news” to “ignite sedition” among the people of Syria and achieve the goals of “Washington and Tel Aviv.” Image: Pro Assad image posted to Al Jazeera English’s Syria Live Blog. Via Ars Technica.

A group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army hacked the Al Jazeera English Web site yesterday with messages supporting president Bashar al-Assad

Via Ars Technica:

Targeting the news organization’s “Syria Live Blog,” which has been providing ongoing coverage of the Arab League’s observer mission to Syria and developments in the ongoing unrest in the country, the hacker group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army posted pro-Assad and pro-Syrian government images to the site…

…On their own site, the Syrian Electronic Army announced the “code re-penetration” of the site by a “professional Syrian battalion” of hackers, denouncing Al Jazeera for broadcasting “false and fabricated news” to “ignite sedition” among the people of Syria and achieve the goals of “Washington and Tel Aviv.”

Image: Pro Assad image posted to Al Jazeera English’s Syria Live Blog. Via Ars Technica.

Basil Al-Sayed, Who Chronicled The Syrian Uprising, Is Dead. From NPR: This was the last thing Basil al-Sayed, a citizen journalist in Syria, filmed before he was shot in the head by security forces: According to activist Rami Jarrah, yesterday, al-Sayed succumbed to his injuries at a hospital in the restive city of Homs. He was 24. “We have thousands of citizen journalists,” Jarrah told NPR’s Deb Amos. “But Basil was one of those who stood out.” Jarrah said al-Sayed filmed security forces opening fire directly at protesters, and that put him at serious risk. “He was documenting stuff that no one could actually get hold of,” Jarrah said. “I don’t want to say this was expected, but he was always in those situations where you could expect something would happen to him.”…. Foreign journalists have been mostly banned from entering Syria since a popular uprising against the rule of President Bashar Assad began in the country 10 months ago. In many cases, the videos uploaded to YouTube by citizen journalists have been the only way for the outside world to see the clashes that have cost more than 5,000 people their lives in Syria.

Basil Al-Sayed, Who Chronicled The Syrian Uprising, Is Dead.

From NPR:

This was the last thing Basil al-Sayed, a citizen journalist in Syria, filmed before he was shot in the head by security forces:

According to activist Rami Jarrah, yesterday, al-Sayed succumbed to his injuries at a hospital in the restive city of Homs. He was 24.

“We have thousands of citizen journalists,” Jarrah told NPR’s Deb Amos. “But Basil was one of those who stood out.”

Jarrah said al-Sayed filmed security forces opening fire directly at protesters, and that put him at serious risk.

“He was documenting stuff that no one could actually get hold of,” Jarrah said. “I don’t want to say this was expected, but he was always in those situations where you could expect something would happen to him.”….

Foreign journalists have been mostly banned from entering Syria since a popular uprising against the rule of President Bashar Assad began in the country 10 months ago. In many cases, the videos uploaded to YouTube by citizen journalists have been the only way for the outside world to see the clashes that have cost more than 5,000 people their lives in Syria.

NPR

Syria's Digital Counter-Revolutionaries

Via The Atlantic:

As President Bashar al-Assad dispatches tanks against peaceful protesters across Syria, pro-regime forces are launching a parallel effort against the uprising on a very different front: the Internet. A collective of pro-Assad hackers and online activists, calling themselves the Syrian Electronic Army, appears to be targeting dissidents within Syria as well as sympathizers without…

…Over the past few months, their primary means of attack has been to overload the social networking profiles of government institutions and Western media outlets, flooding the Facebook pages of ABC News, the Telegraph, Oprah Winfrey, and the U.S. Department of Treasury with pro-Assad messages. Their primary method is distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks: by jamming an online portal with messages, the group keeps regular visitors out and forces institutions to remove content unfavorable to the Syrian regime. This screenshot shows a “virtual demonstration” on President Barack Obama’s Facebook page

Apart from regular Facebook spamming, the Syrian Electronic Army has engaged in several highly organized denial of service attacks on the main websites of major media organizations.

Brutally beaten down, desperate, without any chance of recourse to any countries’ law, by holding up a cell phone and filming the death of a small child they are screaming at a world they think isn’t listening.

Luke Allnutt, Radio Free Europe, The Death Of Oula Jablawi And The Democratization Of Bearing Witness.

Oula Jablawi was a two-year-old girl shot dead by Syrian forces, video of which was posted to YouTube and spread across social networks.

Allnutt writes that in the past, traditional media acted as gatekeepers of images such as this and often chose not to publish explicit and graphic material that might upset its audience.

That hierarchical model no longer holds as ordinary citizens with ordinary technology commit acts of journalism and documentation to share with one another and the world. 

Syrian forces beat then broke the hands of Ali Farzat, Syria’s leading political cartoonist.

Via the Guardian:

Ali Ferzat, 60, is one of the Arab world’s most famous cultural figures, and his drawings have pushed at the boundaries of freedom of expression in Syria…

…In a recent cartoon he critiqued the regime’s offers of reforms, with a picture of an official with rosebuds in his speech bubble – and a turd in his head.

Another cartoon showed Assad hurriedly painting railway tracks to escape from a fast-approaching train. His most recent picture showed Assad trying to hitch a lift with outgoing Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Assad has shrugged off international condemnation and continues to use security forces and thugs to kill and arrest his opponents. Arrests and raids continued across the country on Thursday with at least five people shot dead across the country and tanks sent into al-Boukamal on the Iraqi border, activists said.

Images: Selected cartoons of Ali Farzat. A slideshow of his work can be seen at Creative Syria.

The Syrian Uprising 2011 Information Center put together this Google Map that shows videos from where activists posted videos of Monday’s protests. The map and videos can be viewed via Al Jazeera.

The Syrian Uprising 2011 Information Center put together this Google Map that shows videos from where activists posted videos of Monday’s protests.

The map and videos can be viewed via Al Jazeera.

I told him, at first, I didn’t have a Facebook account, but he told me, after he punched me in the face, that he knew I had one because they were watching my ‘bad comments’ on it. I knew then that they were monitoring me.

An anonymous source to Jennifer Preston, New York Times, Seeking to Disrupt Protesters, Syria Cracks Down on Social Media.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has a brief article discussing techniques protestors and activists are using to get around the online crackdown.

Syrian Activists Technologically Connected

The Guardian reports how citizens are using video streaming to communicate with one another across Syria:

On the laptop screen is the pixelated image of a man holding an olive branch in one hand and a mobile phone in the other, which he is using as a video camera to stream, via the social media programme Qik, live images of tens of thousands of protesters in [the Mediterranean port city of] Banias directly into Nakhle’s laptop, ready for uploading to YouTube.

Over a faltering digital connection, Nakhle tells his colleague in Banias about the deaths in [southwestern city of] Deraa. The message is relayed to a protester with a megaphone, who broadcasts it to the masses. Ten minutes later the reaction comes in: “OK, now we can hear chanting in Banias, ‘With our souls, with our blood, we sacrifice to you Deraa.’ And they are in Banias, a different side of the country!”…

… Foreign media have been all but barred from reporting from Syria and dozens of local and Arab journalists have been arrested or expelled. In their place, Syria’s cyber activists are using social media and technology to ensure reporting gets out, linking the protesters on the street with the eyes and ears of the world.