Syria Blocks Facebook
November 24th, 2007Well, Syria has done it now. Not that I think Facebook is the most wonderful thing on earth, but it was a means of communicating with the rest of the world. It was a way for the youth of Syria to show themselves as they are. It was an opportunity for them to express themselves and their interests. And to show the world that they are just like the rest of us, just like you.
It makes Syria look weak and thoughtless. And that is no reflection of the people, especially the youth. In fact, it shows them to be extremely powerful. Powerful enough to warrant such actions from the government!! And the fact that one of the reasons they gave to justify themselves was that “Facebook could become a conduit for Israeli penetration of our youth” is disgraceful and embarrasing.
This effects me, not just as a Syrian, that feels her country deserves more but also as a person that communicates regularly with her family and friends who live there. In fact my parents have just returned/retired to Syria, and now more than ever I fear the consequences for Syria. With an uncertain government that is faced with two very real and very dangerous ‘enemies’ that threaten war, Syria instead needs to think.
Syria is a beautiful country, with landscape that allows you to feel the Sacred’s presence. A rich history, and a delightful and loving people. Instead of the government fearing the youth’s exposure to the rest of the world, they should encourage and promote it. The Syrian people are smart enough to make up their own minds about what is going on in the world. And from my point of view the Syrian government has little to fear of its people. It is only with real freedom that the people can stand by their governments, and help protect their nation. Allow the Syrian people to be humanised, to be seen and to be heard, so that we can avoid another war.
So what can we do? How can we give Facebook back????
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Unbelievable!
ookay.. this just sux… So many ppl are using FB to communicate.. even potential employers sometimes look at these Social networking sites for the Profiles of the potential employees to get an idea abt it…
its like blocking MSN in 2000
there is a fair amount of anti-israel and pro-israel groups and discussions there tht they cancel each other out…
hopefully [like always] the youth of syria will find alternative ways [proxies?] to connect…
hope 2 c them online sooooooon
so what we don’t need facebook to communicate we have other Arabic websites where we can communicate and have fun I’m from Lebanon and i support Arabyeah! Spot http://spot.arabyeah.com try it . it’s awesome and the owner keeps adding new features every week . It’s still in Beta but it’s AWESOME…. YuriLuv
Come on, ArabYeah is just weird. Look at the tag cloud. “Cool” and “Sexy” coupled with the most irrelevant pictures ever throughout the site. Hardly the best place to “hang out.”
lol Esra’a guess you don’t even know how the tags system even work!!! Dah
Cool & Sexy because the got repeated … when i post a picture and tag it with ” COOL ” and you post a picture and ALSO tag it “COOl” it will look “COOL” will look Bold and big cause it got repeated more than once .
Ohh this System is not in Arabyeah only THIS IS HOW THE TAG SYSTEM WORK IN GENERAL IN ALL WEBSITES , Give me another reason honey
You didn’t refute the argument; you just proved what I said right. The tag means it’s the most topic DISCUSSED there. Which is apparently “cool” and “sexy.” Yawn. The other reason is that it’s very slow, ugly, and it’s not at all user friendly. I have no idea what’s going on there.
Did I mention the fact that it’s completely irrelevant too and is full of weird pictures? Do you even have permission to use half the pictures that are on there? None of them are of actual members – it’s a bunch of foreigner models in bikinis. In other words; what?
Is there anyone there who is even remotely interested in current events or can speak normally nt nut leik diz?
Come on guys. Work on the site before you market it. Populate it with the relevant content before you provide it as an alternative to Facebook. It’s embarrassing the way it is right now. There is no chance I’d ever register.
SLOW !! ummm weird never ever felt that it’s slow beside what are we fighting about just don’t join it all i said that there are other websites other than FB i didn’t ask YOU to join it so calm down live your life ..!!
I am giving you some advice and suggestions; not “fighting” with you. I just don’t see why the whole site is full of bikini-wearing strangers when it should be about things that actually matter.
lol OMG as FB or other social networking websites does not have members posting bikini pictures umm can’t believe it never will , but thanks any way i’m not the owner of the website i just like it and trying to help .Will tell this notes to the owner.
I’m not saying FB doesn’t have stupid or silly groups. Obviously, it does.
I’m saying at least the Arab groups there are full of intelligent people who actually discuss things of relevance and importance. Arabyeah is just the opposite. It’s not a real network where people effectively communicate on what matters, so far it seems like a waste of time, a place where bored dudes go to look at naked strangers.
I just have the mental image of kids sitting at the local Dairy Queen going “LOLZ WAT ABOUT DIZ ONE, SHES HAWT. OMG KELLY CLARKSON.”
Seriously, what’s the point?
It seems pretty new so maybe I should give it a chance to grow before I judge. But thumbs down on what we’re saying there in terms of content so far.
ArabYeah Spot,
I think you have missed the point, it is not just about Arabs communicating with Arabs, it should be the Syrians, and the Arabs as a whole, communicating with the rest of the world, in Europe, America, Africa and Asia.
It is easier to start a war against a people that are not real to you. And if they are shut off from the rest of the world, they will remain dehumanised.
i told you i’m not the owner i’m just a fan who is trying to help and note that the owner is launching in BETA i will tell him your notes and comments to fix what you see is wrong
where is this bikinis pictures all i can see is the picture from MTV Show “Hill” and what models and not real you’ve gotta be kidding
did you hear about the term Texture before , guess not umm GUESS no i’m sure you didn’t hear about it ……
how do you design a website without using texture and stock photos !!!!!!!!!
OMG i’m wasting my time .
thanks Tamara you are right , will tell the owner your point of view
The owner has nothing to do with this post or her point of view! Why do you refuse to get it? Read:
It has nothing to do with Syrians having nowhere else to go due to this ban. Basically you are promoting an irrelevant site for irrelevant reasons, which pretty much qualifies as spam.
If that is their reason, then they are going to block this website any day. This is the only website I know that is run by Arabs but co-authored with Israelis.
Not to mention all the taboo topics that are discussed here by members of all faiths. I won’t be surprised at all if this site is banned. We better have it mirrored somewhere just to prepare ourselves if it happens.
First Iran, then the UAE, now Syria. Where else is this banned?
Sigh… at Arabyeah Spot
Well, there is no doubt that these socialisation sites like Facebook, Orkut, Hi5, Xuga, etc and even Hotmail, Yahoo, GMail and all others are connected to CIA, and CIA feeds MOSSAD when necessary.
They don’t care cause they’re posting here solely to advertize a website.
Hey Ali Sanaei, you are funny.
Next you will find CIA with hot line to mossad under your bed. Cool it.
Um, he was being sarcastic.
Girls; No, I was absolutely serious, but don’t worry I’m cool about it at the same time. I’ve seen their tail in more important places than my bed many times before, just used to it …
As you know better than me; Syria is over-strict on intelligence issues so they block sites mainly for this kind of reasons.
Iran is over-strict on cultural and religious issues, so they block sites mainly for these sort of reasons …
UAE, no clue!
[...] (via Mideast Youth) [...]
No you can’t be serious. Facebook, MySpace, et al, linked to the CIA?
Come on. There is no way you are being serious.
This is ridiculas. All these countries with internet censorship are pathetic. They make there citizens look like a bunch of mindless drones who have no backbone or intelligence to think for themselves and I know this is not the case. Its as bad as china’s country wide firefall/proxy. The world is here for everyone to decide for themselves and live as they wish! It sounds like your countries are going backwards to the times or slavery and bondage!
[...] kitokios priežastys privertė Sirijos valdžią blokuoti Facebook. Šalies pareigūnai, bijo, kad per populiarią socialinę tarnybą šalies jaunimui galvos [...]
How does censorship make citizen look like drones who have no backbone or intelligence? Care to explain?
I think, like Tamara implied in the post above, it’s because they would lack the ability to share their opinions, talents, thoughts with the world. They eventually become shunned; voiceless.
How many people have claimed that Yemen is “backwards”? It’s because of the extreme censorship that a lot of them come off as “voiceless” when in fact it’s just due to minimal outside communication. Most of the time we have no idea what they are thinking, so a lot of people begin assuming that they don’t have anything to share.
Well actually, what Ali said has some truth in it. These kind of networking sites are a way for, governments shall we say, to keep an eye on whats going on, who may be a threat etc..
I say.. come and watch me!!!!
But they are not products of the CIA! We have to get real here. A bunch of kids were bored in college and started coding all of these sites, with little to no interference from the government. It was only AFTER that it began creating political and social significance, especially in the case of MySpace which is now a product of the conservative News Corp.
This much is true for any other social website, blogs included. It is just paranoid to claim they were made SPECIFICALLY for this purpose. They really were not.
Why is it that anything slightly successful becomes a CIA-led conspiracy? It’s like when a bunch of freaks in the Arab blogosphere accused MEY of being funded by the CIA too. It’s simply ridiculous. Please get real, folks.
I agree Esra’a,
These things are not a product of the CIA and such, they are used as a tool… but we can’t let that stop us living our lives!
Why the implied disapproval of the CIA? They are usually the good guys.
Only in Hollywood.
Hahahaha…
Come on, I know you’re not into the whole “they’re out to undermine Islam” angle, so what could they possibly be up to? They’d be arguing your viewpoints if anything, I mean, the fact that people accuse you of taking money from them should tell you something.
Dude, they’re called the CIA for a reason. If I knew what they’re up to, I wouldn’t be here. I’d be sipping an espresso with the president and high-fiving Condi over a game of charades.
The CIA is involved in far more than trying to undermine Islam, and this is not a new thing. Just have a look into the history of their involvement in certain nations in Central and South America, Africa, the Middle East or Asia.
We had some fun with this story and made a mock Syria Facebook page
http://forecasthighs.wordpress.com/2007/11/25/syrias-relationship-status-complicated/
“Syria has received 21 drinks.”
Well that just explains it all.
Tamara:
They were undermining communism and communist proxies.
Do you really think they are looking to undermine Esra’as Islam though?
Oh my God. Why do you always have to bring up Islam and then associate each thread on this site with it?
Tor,
These communists you speak of where fighting against fascist regimes that the US supported. They put these communists into planes… and when high enough, threw them out. I don’t think that is in any way justifiable.
And I do not know what you mean when you refer to Esra’a’s Islam.
All I do know though, is they are committing great crimes in the interest of the powerful in America and their allies. They are also completely unliable for their actions.
And overthrowing DEMOCRATICALLY elected leaders… leaders whom the CIA thought were “Commies”. This include the democratically elected leader in Iran, Mohammed Mosaddeq.
The thing is the CIA know who they are fighting, and they fight them because they are a threat to their interests, not a threat to their own people and not a threat to America.
Of course, I do have to say, that not everyone in the CIA is a part of this. There are ofcourse, people who are unaware of the extent of the corruption, there are constantly ex-CIA agents that speak out about these things. And it can’t all be attributed to these ex agents having an axe to grind.
Tamara (Syria, UAE & UK) Wrote:
Perhaps they should have executed them more humanely. And I do thing backing fascists against communists was the right thing to do during the cold war, otherwise they would either have aligned with the soviets for support, or been overthrown by those that would.
Tamara:
The variation that supports womens and minority rights and objects to terrorism. I could understand the allegation that the CIA was undermining Islam as Hamas and Al-Qaeda knows it, that’s what they ought to be doing.
Tamara:
I don’t think you know even that, I think you merely suspect they’re doing something, and have decided a-priori to oppose it.
Esra’a
Sorry, it was just the first contemporary, middle eastern, gripe against the cia that entered my mind, and then I was flabbergasted when Tamara answered in a way that suggested they were indeed undermining islam, among other things. I understand Tamara is something of a Deist, so I’m attempting to rule out the possibility that she is taking the Spencer line on Islam in claiming the CIA is undermining it.
This wasn’t planned. I thought I would get some sort of rationalization for opposing the cia in the middle east in the present. Or maybe it would just get people thinking who didn’t seem to be. (about that issue)
I’m happy to let it rest now.
… you have no moral high ground any more… you are either sick or fucked in the head.
I am with Esra’a on that point about potential link between FB, Myspace, etc. and CIA.
As to CIA itself, I don’t think it is different from any other intelligence force. They all act in the (political) interests of their governments.
Of course, websites such as FB and others have a lot of information about us (which we put there voluntarily), but that does not mean that CIA, or other intelligence agencies have access to it. There is a rather developed legal infrastructure that guards websites from such abuse and there is a very vibrant civil society that monitors it all. So, it is not that CIA can just knock on the FB’s door an plug a pipe into their server.
Just look at all the buzz around FB opening its platform for targeted advertisement, and imagine what would happen if CIA tried gaining access to FB’s database (or more so to Google’s database, which is much more serious deal than FB). Only recently there were numerous articles about worldwide security forces’ frustration with Skype’s encryption, because they cannot intercept conversations taking place on that platform.
So, i doubt FB and other social networking websites are getting banned because of the CIA threats. I am afraid they are getting banned because because of the grassroots interaction that is happening there, similarly to interaction that is happening on this website, similarly to the conversation we are having here…
Tor,
I don’t think I actually did suggest that. I said:
I think that actually suggests that the CIA have more important things to do than undermine Islam. They are involved in much more cynical dangerous things.
I don’t suspect they are doing something. Everyone knows they are doing something. I do not claim to know what precisely they are doing. And I do not claim that that is all they do, or that everyone involved with the CIA is part of this type of thing. What we do know is that there have been and there continues to be instances where the CIA has been/is exposed of committing certain crimes, (even illegal for the CIA).
Would you care to elaborate? I’m not quite sure how you would come to such a conlcusion based on what we have been talking about, and also how this is even relevant?
I did not say the CIA was ‘undermining Islam’.
Dima,
I think their actions go beyond the political interests of their government. And undoubtedly most intelligence forces act similarly.
I think however that you are mistaken about the ability and desire of the CIA when it comes to gaining access to information on FB or any other sites that may be of interest. And as I said before, the CIA is, more commonly than not, unliable for their actions.
Well that’s exactly it!
Tamara, wow! That was one elaborate response!
I am not sure what you mean by CIA’s action going “beyond the political interests of their governments”. Are you suggesting that they have their own, independent set of interests? Or i completely misread you?
Also, as to desire to access information i don’t think they are very different from others. I do agree that they have more ability to gain it compared to others.
At the same time, the US has an entire federal agency/program dedicated to developing solutions of internet monitoring (i think the system is called “carnivore”, but i may be mistaken). As far as i understand this, if it would be so simple for CIA to plug into Google/FB/other database, there would be no need to spend millions or maybe billions of dollars on creating something like that. Am I wrong?
Not related to spying and CIA, only today i had a conversation about how wonderful it would be to have access to FB database for social research. I think we could find some interesting things…
Dima,
Certain actions of the CIA have been solely to benefit the interests of the people in power, politically and economically. one e.g. to keep a corrupt foreign government in power, by aiding in fighting off the resistance, because that corrupt government is supporting their economic interests, and thus their political dominance. There is also evidence that they have been, on more than one occassion been involved in drug trafficking from Latin America. Just do a search in google and the CIA’s involvement in certain issues, especially in a number of Latin American countries, there are released CIA documents as proof.
I am not sure I understand your point about ‘Carnivore’. This is an internet monitoring device, created by the FBI to enable the government to access and monitor information on the internet, so that they can track people. I’m not sure if you thought this, but I was not saying they created FB etc.. I was just saying they are able to, and are also likely to, monitor it and sites like it.
Tamara,
I think we are basically making the same argument using different language. From my point of view the examples you give do not contradict my point. Supporting a corrupt government X may well be in political interests of the US (or any other country, since the US is not the only ones using these tactics). Same goes for all the other examples. So I think we are saying the same thing on this point.
I did google the CIA drug trafficking and came across this article on Wikipedia. Frankly there was not much. I think my main point about CIA was that as powerful as it appears, we should be careful to maintain a line between legitimate criticism and conspiracy theories. By saying that, I am not trying to personally attack anyone. Quite the opposite. I really enjoy the very informative and down-to-earth conversation here, and it would be sad if it would take off to the wonderland of conspiracy theories.
As to the other point, maybe i did not explain myself well or (more likely) made a wrong assumption. I didn’t read your comment as assuming any kind of CIA involvement in creating of FB, but i did read in it an assumption of cooperation between the two. In any case, if Carnivore is penetrating FB and listening to conversations there, it still does not express any threat on any government, unless of course this government is using FB for some classified communication (which would be a little bit bizarre i think). And we can continue theorizing about potential scenarios forever
I think we agree on the main point, the involvement or not of CIA in FB is not the core reason for it being banned. That is the important point.
Tamara,
Thanks for this post. I found it thoughtful and articulate.
I’ve quoted you here.
Much respect,
Maya Norton
The New Jew: Blogging Jewish Philanthropy
FYI, the New York Times just wrote about it today. Link here.
Hey have you guys heard? Assad fired the Communications and Religious Affairs ministers. Here is a link to the JPost article… the only place that seems to have anything about it!
[...] post that spend a while in my drafts. I wrote it after Syria blocked FB and i got in a short conversation with bloggers on Mideast [...]
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بسم الله
والصلاة والسلام على رسول الله كيف حالكم شباب
i think it doesnt really matter, i mean its there choice, and everybody in syria is living without it, cuz instead of sitting on the computer, they are actually going out,, meeting new peeple, and comunicating with them in person, ive been to syria many of times, and all of my relatives are all warm and welcoming, they barely watch tv or go to the internet place, they’re not lazy, they are always up and moving