The Skeptic الشكاك

799 Syria ‘Tightens Control Over Internet’

Mazen Darwich‘s Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression reports that 161 (mostly opposition) sites are blocked in Syria and that the government has become more savvy about plugging up loopholes. Phil Sands in The National:

In a sign that the censors are becoming more technologically advanced, a series of software gaps that existed in online controls a few months ago have been closed. It used to be a relatively simple matter for internet surfers to get around the censors using freely available programmes. Now accessing prohibited pages is much more difficult, and requires specialised knowledge.

I’d love more details, please!

776 Two and a Half Disasters

• A car bomb killed 17 people near an important Shia shrine in Syria yesterday, putting a chink in the government’s reputation for keeping the country under lock and key and raising fears of sectarian spillover from Iraq.
• Egypt’s National Theater caught fire last night. Three firefighters were killed. The damage looks bad. Considering the Shura Council fire was only a month ago, it’s easy to see why some see both disasters as symptoms of decay.
• A disaster in the making? Al-Masry al-Youm reports that residents of Istable Antar, a slum in the shadows of Cairo’s Moqattam cliffs, are putting gas tanks and sulfuric acid on their roofs. According to the newspaper, they’re threatening to blow themselves up if the government proceeds with its plans to demolish the neighborhood and move the inhabitants out to the desert for fear of another Manshayat-Nasser-style disaster.
  But can we believe Al-Masry al-Youm anymore? The paper has become more and more unreliable over the past year or so, and this one in particular smacks of sensationalist rumor, or, more charitably, of loose talk from residents defiantly beating their chests in the face of the bulldozers. I’m particularly suspicious because I have heard at least one story of a government journalist spreading false rumors that residents of Manshayat Nasser had stabbed reporters, presumably so the rumor-monger wouldn’t be assigned to go back into the slum on security grounds. Along the same lines, see also Amnesiac‘s account of her middle-class colleague who feared Istable Antar’s poor as a terrifying mass just waiting to extract revenge on his hoity-toity, English-speaking ass.

773 Syrian General ‘Killed for Role in Nuclear Investigation’

The Associated Press:

The chief UN nuclear inspector says a Syrian official taking part in his agency’s investigation of an alleged covert atomic program in the country has been assassinated.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, gave no names or details, but he appeared to be referring to the killing of Brigadier General Mohammed Suleiman last month.

[Full Story]

591 Hagg Mohammed

Hagg Mohammed: bicycle repairman, block patriarch, and gracious subject.

News:

• Hundreds of Botherhood protesters clash with police in Tanta
• Egyptian MPs demand government resign over bread crisis
• Egypt bans issue of Der Spiegel
• Israeli spooks complain about Iranian-Syrian SIGINT program

Entertainment:

• Irshad Manji vs. Asad Abu Khalil (via Arabist)
• Secret U.S. military research

[tags]Iran, United States, Israel, Syria, Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood, Fitna, Islam[/tags]

568 In your nerves and in your bed…

…coming down around your head.

The evergreens:

• There’s a tense political stalemate in Lebanon.
  • The Arabs are divided.
• Israeli military strikes are killing Palestinians in Gaza.
  • Al-Jazeera is all dead babies and grieving grandmothers.

What’s really new:

• The Israeli strikes are killing more Palestinians than usual: 112 since Thursday, Al-Jazeera reports (incidentally, the Wall Street Journal agrees). An Israeli official threatened Gazans with a “holocaust.”
  • This time the strikes hit the offices of (Hamas) Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. (Fatah) President Mahmoud Abbas at last felt compelled to leave the peace talks. People the world over were surprised to hear the peace talks were still in progress in the first place.
• A small Turkish force raided PKK positions in northern Iraq.
• Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has become the first Iranian president to visit Iraq.
• The United States announced it has warships off the coast of Lebanon. (Can someone please explain to me why? What possible good can come of this? An unnamed U.S. official told news agencies the USS Cole is there as “a show of support for regional stability,” but I’m still baffled. What stability? Or rather, how will the warships establish regional stability?)

560 Mass Protests in Gaza and Cairo

• Thousands of Gazans have formed a human chain along the Israeli border to protest the continued closure of the Strip.
• In other border-related news: Egyptian soldiers fatally shot an Eritrean woman trying to cross the border to Israel illegally today.
• Thousands of students at Cairo’s Ain Shams University protested against the military trial of 40 leading members of the Muslim Brotherhood yesterday. The tribunal is expected to deliver its verdict tomorrow.
• From RSF:
  

  Blogger Tariq Biasi, who has been detained since 7 July 2007, denied posting comments critical of Syria on a website when he was questioned by a Damascus state security court on 22 February. The authorities identified him as the author of the offending comments on the basis of the connection through which they were posted, but he told the court he shared it with six other subscribers including an Internet café.

  Aged 22, Biasi is to be tried on 17 March on charges of “undermining national sentiment” and “publishing false information” under articles 285 and 286 of the criminal code, which carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

  There’s a petition for his release here.

541 Syrian Blogger Still in Detention

Syrian blogger Tariq Biassi, 22, is still detained, apparently without charge or trial, in Damascus’ notorious Palestine Branch detention center. Syrian Military Intelligence officers arrested him from Tartous on June 30 after he insulted the security services in a blog post.

Tariq’s blog is here. More information, including banners, petitions, and other campaign materials, is at the Free Tariq Web site (English and Arabic). There’s even a Facebook group.

519 Britney Spears to Convert to Islam, Ensh’Allah

Hannah Allam gives “the story behind the story” of Bush’s visit to the UAE. Bush arrived in Saudi today, close on Sarko’s heels. The French president offered the Saudis nuclear aid.

More importantly, a British tabloid reports that Britney Spears may convert to Islam to marry the “pap rat” who “lured” her with “Brummie dirty talk.”

Egyptian squash players are the talk of the town in New York.

Egyptian authorities discovered another tunnel and more explosives near the Gaza border.

The stock market continues to climb, surpassing the 11,000 mark by the CASE index for the first time yesterday.

A steel “monopoly” in Egypt… but would competition lower prices?

Fred “The Saboteur” Abrahams writes on Libya:

At the end of the day, one fact is clear: Gaddafi is interested first and foremost in protecting and promoting his own power, and perhaps in eventually ensuring a transfer of power to one of his sons. His decision to engage with the west was driven by this calculated goal, fearing he was next after the US invasion of Iraq, and his future decisions will follow that logical course.

He will never undertake radical reform, such as allowing independent media or opposition groups. But acting in concert, the west can condition its relations on small but significant steps, such as abolishing the death penalty, improving the penal code, and strengthening the judicial system, all of which Gaddafi himself has placed on the agenda. [Full story]

Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court yesterday maintained that article 33 bis of the Agrarian Reform Act is unconstitutional.

500 Syria: Rights Activist Round-Up

The Syrian Human Rights Committee reports that Security detained 22 people involved in the 2005 Damascus Declaration for Democratic Change the night of Dec. 9-10. In some cases, Security released the activists after questioning. In others, they continued to hold the activists. It is still unclear whether they’ll be released after interrogation, intimidation, and offers to become informers, or whether further arrests will follow.

Full statement in English:

The Syrian Human Rights Committee (SHRC) has strongly condemned the random arrest campaign against 22 members of the National Council of Damascus Declaration launched by the Syrian Intelligence authorities on the evening of Sunday (9/12/2007) and the early morning of Monday (10/12/2007). SHRC’s media spokesman commented that “the Syrian authorities permitted the National Council to convene, and then resumed their arrest campaign against its activists, which represents a recurred trick pursued by the authorities”. The spokesman questioned whether “the Syrian authorities aim to cast all members of the National Council in jail or to isolate a number to make an example of them as they had done with some signatories of Damascus-Beirut Declaration”. The spokesman regards the arrests as “the Syrian authorities’ gift to the Syrian people and the world on the Annual World Day of Human Rights”. “They want to set a practical proof of their practises and attitudes towards every citizen who want to achieve democracy, pluralism and human rights in Syria”.

The spokesman concluded his comment by demanding the immediate release of the detainees and to stop all sorts of repressive measurements against them and other citizens.

Background

The Syrian authorities arrested 22 members of the National Council of Damascus Declaration on the eve of Sunday (9/12/2007) and the early morning of Monday (10/12/2007). They are:

From Damascus: Fawaz Tillo (former Damascus spring detainee) 2001
From Aleppo: Ghazi Kaddoor, Piere Rustum, Usama AShour, Radif Mustafa
From Homs: Muwaffak Nairabiyah, Najati Tayyarah
From Lattakia: Kamel Abbas, Nasr Saeed
From Swayda: Ghaleb Amer
Frpm Dair Azzour: Ahmad Tomah, Fawzi Hamadeh, Fawaz al-Hayes, Abdul-Qahhar Saood.
From Dar’a: Ali Ibrahim al-Jahmani, Yussof Owaid, Mohamad al-Masalmeh

They have released four from al-Hasakah, they are Fuad Iliah, Abdul Kareem al-Dahhak, Ziyad al-Feel.

The Syrian Human Rights Committee
10/12/2007

444 Syrian Blogger ‘Kidnapped’

Update: Sami reports that Rokana Hamour called, that she is fine, and that security interrogated her for three hours about a comment left on her blog.

Sami Ben Gharbia reports that six men pried Syrian blogger Roukana Mouti` Hamour away from her three children and shoved her into a car yesterday. A security officer had summoned her for an interview a few days prior.

Two other men, Karim `Arbaji and Tarek Biasi, remain in incommunicado detention in Syria, apparently for their online activities. On September 23, the Supreme State Security Court sentenced Ali Zein al-`Abideen Mej`an to two years in prison for “undertaking acts or writing or speeches unauthorized by the government … that spoil its ties with a foreign state” because he posted comments online attacking Saudi Arabia. Blogger.com blogs reportedly remain blocked in Syria.

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