I feel much better today after a difficult afternoon yesterday. Thanks everyone for the comments. They helped a lot… Today I just want to share a significant story that I think is being underreported by the media and make a brief comment about it...
Like Egyptians and Tunisians, Syrians are utilizing social media websites like Twitter and Facebook to plan major protests against their government. The protests are scheduled for February 4 and February 5.
Most of the media outlets reporting about the upcoming Syrian protests are just mentioning that there are people organizing them. However, the following link shows what the actual webpages Syrians are using to organize the upcoming protests look like and provides links to these webpages in case a person wishes to monitor the growing support for these protests in the next few days:
The part about this story that I find most interesting is that social media websites like Facebook and Twitter are banned in Syria, so Syrians are circumventing their government’s attempts to limit social interaction and attempts to inhibit people from organizing protests. If the crowds at these upcoming protests are significant then we might see a more prolong and strong government opposition movement in the country.
I think people should pay some attention to what happens in Syria over the next few days because Syria is one of the most repressive regimes in the region and in the world. If Syrians are able to resist their government like people in Tunisia and Egypt have resisted their respective governments then you could see people living under equally repressive or even more repressive regimes elsewhere in the region (like in Saudi Arabia where public gatherings are illegal) rise up using Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria as inspiration.
It seems we live in interesting times…
