Category: Facebook & Twitter

Selections of Status Updates, Notes, Comments and Tweets made since 2009, a year which coincided with the gradual discovery by Arab and Middle Eastern activists of the potential of Facebook and Twitter as tools for social and political activism.

BBC One: UK and the Syrian Refugees

Halla Diyab on BBC One This Week – YouTube.

Bullocks! What cultural shock? Neither British nor Syrian culture is homogenous. There are almost 2.5 million British citizens who believe in the same value system that most Syrian refugees have. They are known as practicing Muslims, and although most of them come from a non-Arab background, there be enough citizens of Arab background, enough Syrian with dual nationality and enough cultural similarities between all practicing Muslims to make most Syrian refugees able to find communities where the cultural shock is manageable for all involved. There is also bound to be a certain social segment among the refugees that will find much comfort in the basic freedoms available to them in British society, and who will seek to maintain cordial human interaction with all around them irrespective of their confessional background. In all cases, and considering that the UK will be admitting a few thousands refugees at most, and that most of them will be busy for years to come trying to make a normal life for themselves in their new country, the possibility for any trouble-making is pretty minimal.

Syria’s civil war: Desperate times

Syria’s civil war: Desperate times | The Economist.

The people at the Economist are right of course. Irrespective of what we think about the armed struggle, violence and political solutions, the reality no negotiations can be successful unless a certain balance on the ground is created. We all know by now that all talks will involve drawing boundaries and carving out enclaves as part of a de facto if not de jure partitioning process, under the guise of a new administrative structure and a new system of governance. This has always been the reality we needed to contend with. But boundaries have to reasonable, and  someone still needs to be held accountable for the crimes that were committed and continue to be perpetrated. Assad and his cronies need to end up in The Hague.

Ukraine shows the ‘color revolution’ model is dead

Anne Applebaum: Ukraine shows the ‘color revolution’ model is dead – The Washington Post.

And with this, we officially enter the era of Cold War II. This is what tolerating genocide in Syria has led us into. This is our brave new world, revisited, reinvented, rededicated. Now, we bravely plod on into another black hole of an era, armed with the usual assortment of frivolous justifications and platitudes, united only in our willingness to be foolish to the very end.