Syria Drops Off the Internet As Turmoil Spikes 94
CWmike writes "In what appears to be the latest bid by a government to throttle access to news and information amid growing civil unrest, the Syrian government Friday shut down all Internet services. Internet monitoring firm Renesys reported that starting around 7 a.m. EDT today, close to two-thirds of all Syrian networks were suddenly unreachable from the global Internet. In just 30 minutes, routes to 40 of 59 Syrian networks were withdrawn from the global routing table, Reneys' chief technology officer James Cowie said in a blog post. The shutdown has affected all of SyriaTel's 3G mobile data networks as well as several of the country's ISPs, such as Sawa, INET and Runnet. Also down are the Damascus city government page and the customs web site. The only networks that appear to be somewhat reachable are a handful of government-owned networks such as one belonging to Syria's Oil Ministry, Cowie noted. 'We don't know yet how the outage was coordinated, or what specific regions or cities may be affected more than others,' Cowie wrote. 'If Egypt and Libya are any guide, one might conclude that events on the street in Syria are reaching a tipping point.'"
Re:Calling for bets (Score:5, Informative)
Not only do they already have these images - Today was "Children's Friday" demonstration - where kids marched in the streets, carrying placards with the images of Hamza Al-Katib.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/06/20116392427645443.html [aljazeera.net]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/syria-internet-services-shut-down-as-protesters-fill-streets/2011/06/03/AGtLwxHH_blog.html [washingtonpost.com]
Re:Calling for bets (Score:4, Informative)
Insightful comment you made. Just to hopefully add a bit, I think the success of a revolution depends upon the proportion and status (in a very ill-defined sense) of the people the regime has bought off to the point where they depend upon the regime for survival (pick yer survival: religious, political, economic, etc.).
In Syria, the minorities have a stake in the government because the overwhelming majority of the people are Sunni whereas the regime is Alawite which a branch of Shi'ism. The Christians and other religious sects and the Kurds and other ethnic groups believe the government protects them from Sunni domination. Saudi Arabia's emphasis on Sunnism make the division sharper, just as they f-cked up the situation in Bahrain (there was no hint of Iranian involvement but those Saudi saw an Iranian behind every grain of sand). So the Syrian regime gets support it doesn't deserve, they cannot protect their minorities except through violence which will only make the Sunnis think of the minorities as ill-deserving of protection.
In Libya, the sects aren't a problem, it's the tribes. The Q. Dolt has been playing them off each other for decades. That kind of suspicion won't disappear overnight. Nor do the tribes feel any sort of common purpose, the tribe comes first. So the opposition has been diffuse. And the oil revenue has be paying for a certain segment of the population. That segment won't willingly give up.
The militaries in both countries depend intellectually and financially on the central government with no outside influence. With Egypt and Tunisia, there was Western influence. The consequence was the latter could see an existence separate professionally from the State. Syria and Libya's militaries can see no existence separate from the state because the State is their sole reason to exist.
Re:Calling for bets (Score:5, Informative)
Also, the fact that the libyan rebels are killing left and right black people just for the crime of being black has planted the seed for a long lasting conflict not only among libyans but between the libyans and their neighbors that are not that happy with the establishment of a new apartheid regime in North Africa.