Tag Archives: Freedom

An Underwear Security Arrangement Between Lebanon And U.S.

08 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by in LB Social, Lebanon, USA, World

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Credible defense sources informed Lebanon Spring blog that a major security agreement is underway between the governments of Lebanon and the United States of America.

The security agreement will foster close relations between the armed forces of both countries while combating terrorist or comedian bombs. The sources confirmed that the two countries will specifically focus their efforts on underwear after their major known breakthroughs in this field.

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A foreign Saudi plot to expose foreign poverty in foreign Saudi

19 Wednesday Oct 2011

Posted by in Arab Spring, Arab World, Media Monitoring, Other Arab issues, Politics, Social Media

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You can call it the carrot and stick policy; Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah recently unveiled a public benefits package worth $37bn, and his authorities arrested three bloggers apparently for a ‘minor’ issue this week.

On the eve of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on Monday 17th October 2011, Khaled al-Rasheed, Firas Bughnah and Hosam al-Deraiwish were detained on Sunday after they produced a YouTube video about poverty in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. The video was part of a series they did called ‘Mal3ob3lena’ which means ‘fooling us’.

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BBC Panorama – Syria: Inside the secret revolution

29 Thursday Sep 2011

Posted by in Arab Spring, Arab World, Media Monitoring, Politics, Syria, TV

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Couple of days before 15th March 2011, I joked and laughed (not funny now) with my friends about a planned ‘freedom’ protest in Damascus in Syria, called for by some activists on Facebook. The Arab Spring was already underway then, but we always thought Syria is different. Different as in the regime’s brutality can’t be matched by any other current Arab regime. They crush anyone who dares just to think. We got to it from day one, while the world has been watching since then.

We, then, said that the protesters number will barely 10, and they won’t make it to the Hamdiyah market due to the eyes and ears of the intelligence service(s). And if they did make it, they will surely not make it back home. But they made it, they were around 10-15 people, and they were the bravest. They showed up in a relatively quiet march, which drew a lot of ‘audience’. The rest is history and marked in the below video. ‘Something’ happened in Daraa around the same time, and it spread across the country fuelled with high morales due to other Arab uprisings.

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A crime file – Irvine 11

24 Saturday Sep 2011

Posted by in MB Politics, MB Social, MicroBlogs, Politics, USA, World

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“A Crime File”

Date of sentence: 23rd Sept 2011
Verdict: guilty
Culprits: 10 Muslim students (Irvine 11).
Jury: Orange County jury, California
Crime: Practising the American First Amendment of the Bill of Rights
Method of crime: protest in a form of heckling
Location of crime: University of California, UCI
Date of crime: 8th February 2010
Subject of protest: Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren
Aim of protest: highlight the Israeli occupation to Palestine & its crimes
Evidence: below video…
Academic performance of UCI: note towards the end of protest @5:20, how apparently an orthodox bearded ‘teacher’, happened to have a Jewish cap on, was telling them ‘you are failing your exams’.
Question1: what would the verdict be if the students were of a different religion?
Question2: what would the verdict be if the Ambassador was not an Israeli person?
Question3: has the ‘teacher’ been disciplined?

“propagating murder is not an expression of free speech”

Caricature of the day: a Saudi offensive one

23 Friday Sep 2011

Posted by in Arab Spring, Arab World, Caricature of the day, Other Arab issues

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One of the outcomes of the Arab Spring (on the ‘soft side’ of things) is the increase of the national pride of the nations that experienced uprisings, especially where the revolutions were successful. Egypt’s revolution has been called ‘sexy’, and revolution in Tahrir Square (or Tahrir Roundabout) became a role model for almost anyone writing or planning a protest. Egyptians and Tunisians are proud of themselves and of the outcomes of their revolutions.

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Anonymous message to the Syrian regime: ‘Operation Syria’

14 Wednesday Sep 2011

Posted by in Arab Spring, Arab World, Media Monitoring, Social Media, Syria

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The below video is a warning message from the hacktivist group Anonymous to the Syrian regime.

If the real Anonymous is behind this, I will be worried if I was in the Syrian regime propaganda tools shoes. Anonymous, with a bit of anarchic background, had been involved before in high profile hacks (usually for good causes hence hacktivist term). Anonymous  got big names under their belt like Bank of America, Sony, and many governments around the world. They have been heavily supportive to Wikileaks by targeting governments which censored their leaked documents.

They participated in the Arab Spring before by hacking government websites during the uprisings in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria. Syria’s share accumulated last month by hacking into Asma Assad (the Syrian President’s wife) personal website, and the website of the Ministry of Defence. They published passwords of email addresses of officials from Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco during the pro-democracy protests. They supported the Green Movement in Iran by participating in launching an Iranian Green Party Support site called Anonymous Iran, but they still defended the Iranian nuclear programme by announcing an attack on the Israeli Knesset website. Continue reading »

Why the reforms in Syria are not possible

15 Monday Aug 2011

Posted by in Arab Spring, Arab World, Syria

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For all those who believe that Bashar Assad can and wants to reform, this is for you:

If you did not see the need for reform before what happened in Egypt and in Tunisia, it is too late to do any reform. This is first. Second, if you do it just because of what happened in Tunisia and Egypt, then it is going to be a reaction, not an action; and as long as what you are doing is a reaction you are going to fail.

…It is not realistic to have a timeframe because you are not living in situation where you can control the events. I just started by saying that every week we have something new.

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Anyone not involved in the conspirancy on Syria?

07 Sunday Aug 2011

Posted by in Arab Spring, Arab World, MB Politics, MicroBlogs, Politics, Syria

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Lebanese Baath MP Assem Qansso reiterated this morning on the Lebanese channel MTV, the Syrian regime stance on the pro-democracy uprising in Syria: they are being controlled by Al-Qaeda leader Al Zawahiri [for now]…

The accused people of the ‘conspiracy‘ on Syria since the start of the uprising has reached a long list, resulting the accusation – making the rounds – to be the silliest ever:

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Are women allowed to be presidents?

05 Friday Aug 2011

Posted by in Arab Spring, Arab World, Other Arab issues

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One aim of the pro-democracy protests sweeping the Arab world is toppling the dictators, but the ultimate aim of the Arab Spring should be establishing democratic countries that respect of human rights in all its forms. As we know, this is NOT necessarily happening.

Sadly, there are always parasites that will mushroom and try to exploit any successful revolution to bring their respective country backward to the dark ages. One of these parasites is someone called Sheikh Abdallah Rushdi in Egypt, who was debating on Egyptian TV if women are allowed to run for presidency (imagine we are still in the ‘debate’ stage on these matters).
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30% of Middle East bloggers were threatened

05 Friday Aug 2011

Posted by in Arab Spring, Arab World

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In the wake of the Arab Spring, a Harvard University study surveyed 98 bloggers (who responded) from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) about their views on their blogging experience.

I didn’t think the survey was comprehensive enough, but still it gave a snapshot of the bloggers experience. The reason is that the survey was aimed to study the online security measures taken by bloggers, which the survey showed that it was not a top priority to most of them. This shows a lack of knowledge in this field.
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Do the Syrians really love the American Ambassador?

09 Saturday Jul 2011

Posted by in Arab Spring, Arab World, Syria, USA, World

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I never thought I would see this scene in Syria, not at least in Hama which was a Muslim Brotherhood stronghold; the American ambassador Robert Ford was greeted with flowers by the protesters yesterday when he visited the city. The French ambassador visited the city too.

Obviously, the Syrian people are not usually fond of American officials, but this scene just shows how desperate the people are. They welcome any ‘connection’ with the outside world, especially when it’s a strong connection as this: an American. Something was not allowed in general to happen, since the start of the uprising in Syria in March 2011.

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Is the Western media promoting Syrian propaganda?

27 Monday Jun 2011

Posted by in Media Monitoring, Politics, Press, Syria

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Western journalists were given access to Syria 3 days ago, which was the first time since the start of its uprising 100 days ago. I counted three organisations: CNN, Sky News, and The Sunday Times. The latter did not wish to name its reporter, but I noticed the others from their TV and Twitter reporting; they were Jeremy Thompson from Sky, Hala Gorani, Arwa Damon and Jomana Karadsheh – all from CNN (unless I missed others).

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Censorship in Beirut

24 Tuesday May 2011

Posted by in LB Culture, Lebanon

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When I read this article in Al-Akhbar last Friday morning, about the World Press Photo (WPP) exhibition in Downtown Beirut, I said: Oh God, this is not going away easily. The article was about the Beirut exhibition organised by the respected Netherlands-based WPP, which featured many international award-winning photographers including: the Israeli Amit Sha’al.
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The failed Middle East speech of Obama

19 Thursday May 2011

Posted by in Arab Spring, Arab World, Politics, USA, World

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When I started listening to President Barack Obama’s speech on Middle East in my car, I had a lot of images coming to my mind, particularly when he was describing how the Arab Spring started in Tunisia. I imagined Abraham Lincoln making his stamp on history.

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Free Dorothy Parvaz

11 Wednesday May 2011

Posted by in MB Politics, MicroBlogs, Politics, Syria

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Al Jazeera English journalist Dorothy Parvaz is still detained, after she went missing 12 days ago in Syria. She holds the American, Canadian & Iranian nationalities.

Today a Syrian official has given information to Al Jazeera that Dorothy has been deported to Iran.

This is so typical: someone ‘does’ something, goes ‘missing’, nobody knows anything, no legal process applies, and even better when gets deported to another country for no clear prospect or reason.

Does this summarize the problem, in why we are seeing an ‘Arab Spring’ in the first place?
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A fake Syrian actor

03 Tuesday May 2011

Posted by in Politics, Syria

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Loyalty in the Arab culture is what underpins the ‘popular support’ for the political regimes in Arab world, in a kind of distorted way. Some people can be so connected to a theory, person, vested interest or an ‘ex-favour’ – (through ‘wasta’) – to the extent that transparency or truth desert their logic. Although this is present across the board, but I wish to specifically mention the Syrian Actor Mr Duraid Lahham (known as Ghawwar Al-Toushe) as a test case! He recently drew my attention through an interview he gave to the Syrian state TV, and an edited video posted on YouTube (enclosed below).
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Ossama Bin Laden death & the Arab Spring

02 Monday May 2011

Posted by in Arab Spring, Arab World, Politics, USA, World

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As you can tell, this post was not planned at all this morning, but I couldn’t get away from this piece of news: Ossama Bin Laden was killed. He was killed this morning by “a small team of Americans” under the direct control by the U.S. President Barack Obama, as announced by him.

It was first leaked on twitter (enclosed photo). Now, Mr Bin Laden’s on Wikipedia page has been updated to show his death, assuming he was not involved in updating it!
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