{"id":13527,"date":"2011-12-29T15:21:21","date_gmt":"2011-12-29T11:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=13527"},"modified":"2011-12-29T15:21:21","modified_gmt":"2011-12-29T11:21:21","slug":"the-dramatic-volte-face-of-syrias-bloggers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-society\/the-dramatic-volte-face-of-syrias-bloggers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dramatic ‘Volte-Face’ of Syria’s Bloggers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Two pieces of interesting reading today. The first from the unmissable Qifa Nabki, who notes that the blogosphere\u2019s support for Bashar has made a remarkable u-turn.<\/strong><\/p>\n

From this:<\/p>\n

“For the first decade of Assad\u2019s presidency, most Syrian blogs I read were fairly supportive of the regime”<\/p>\n

To this:<\/p>\n

“Several bloggers have defected from the regime\u2019s side in disgust, and a number of them have written compelling mea culpas”<\/p>\n

Health warning, Elias does mention me. Read the rest of Syria\u2019s Defecting Bloggers<\/a> at the New York Times Latitude blog.<\/p>\n

And the second article is truly essential reading. It\u2019s by a Syrian called Yazan (not that<\/em> Yazan<\/a>) who argues that although support for the regime is crumbling, that doesn\u2019t mean we should jump on the Syrian National Council bandwagon. It\u2019s called What Syria Deserves<\/a>, and it\u2019s at KabobFest.<\/p>\n

“I, and members of my family, had high, high hopes for Burhan Ghalioun. Yet, his statements and actions over the last few months have utterly burnt him.<\/p>\n

It is neither for him nor the SNC to decide what political alliances Syria makes. It is for the Syrian public to make that decision. His, and the SNC\u2019s position, on negotiating for the liberation of the Golan, for example, are no different for the Asad regime\u2019s position vis-a-vis the Zionist State.<\/p>\n

When activists like\u00a0Maysaloon\u00a0<\/a>and\u00a0Ammar Abdulhamid<\/a>\u00a0and \u2018opposition\u2019 figures in the SNC speak about the desperate need \u2018to make deals with the devil\u2019 in order to topple the regime, it is sheer senselessness. They are damning the soul of the nation, the intifada, by repeating the cycle of foreign dependency and will ensure a fa\u00e7ade of liberty.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the groveling and praises of gratitude towards Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries for their \u2018support\u2019 of the intifada are vomit-inducing. These are countries that have worked to crush the courageous Bahrain protesters, have ignored the sentiments of the awe-inspiring Yemeni protesters, and have horrible track records in regards to how they treat their own population, among numerous other faults. If this is a true uprising about liberty and dignity, we cannot accept to deal with those that flaunt this and have worked as counter-revolutionary forces in this region during this volatile time of ours. They are not our allies.<\/p>\n

When organizations like SNC and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights grossly exaggerate the deaths that are happening or fabricate certain incidents, which they have done, in order to garner more sympathy, it is no different from what the regime has done in its existence.<\/p>\n

When human rights-activist organizations, like the Human Rights Watch and Avaaz, and media agencies, like Al Jazeera and the Guardian, regurgitate these distortions without scrutiny (from the Gay Girl in Damascus scandal to the over estimation of deserters), it empowers the regime and its supporters. Worse, it ignores the\u00a0real<\/strong>\u00a0victims<\/strong>, the thousands imprisoned, tortured, or dead, who are nameless, and do not ever become convenient, easy-to-sell, symbols.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEWS FROM SYRIA: The former Chairman of the Syria Computer Society, a certain Bashar Assad, had a lot of support from the blogosphere in his first decade. Not any more. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":13528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[154,483,482,5,317],"tags":[67,10482,628,18303,703,125,677,18275,143,18330,9779,10480,1541,2278],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13527"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/81"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}