Beginning yesterday morning, all internet communication with Syria was cut off. According to internet monitoring firm Renesys:
Starting at 10:26 UTC on Thursday, 29 November (12:26pm in Damascus), Syria’s international Internet connectivity shut down. In the global routing table, all 84 of Syria’s IP address blocks have become unreachable, effectively removing the country from the Internet.
Multiple sources are also reporting that mobile phone service has been disrupted as well.
In an effort to work around this blackout, Google has set up a way for Syrians with access to landlines to speak into the phone, which will then be set out via twitter:
More below the fold.
In addition to the communications blackout, most flights in, out, and over Syria have been canceled. This is as of about 7:35am Eastern Time in the United States:
Flights to Syrian Airport Canceled Amid Reports of Rebel Clashes
There are reports that Syrian jets bombed rebel targets near the airport, which led to the closure.
There is also a video of the aftermath of a bombing in Aleppo, Syria. Footage is on Live Leak : WARNING – this is graphic and disturbing.
To be honest, I have not been following the news in Syria much lately. I am hoping that someone with more knowledge can chime in on the situation. I just saw that there wasn’t a story on this yet, and wanted to aggregate some information to raise awareness. A country going into a communications vacuum in the midst of rampant military violence is a recipe for disaster.
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for more than 20 months now and deaths have climbed to over 40,000. No end in sight as the uprising / civil war has deteriorated into war crimes all around. All prisoners are summarily executed. The civil war has turned into sectarian war with etnic cleansing, a disaster waiting to happen. The world community following the Yugoslav scenario, our Secretary of State had previous qualifications when she landed under fire at Tuzla airfield in Bosnia in the `90s.
The US thought the Libya blue print would work as well in Syria and did not heed the warnings. Just recently the SNC opposition groups have done a thorough make-over at a Qatar meeting. The opposition group of foreigners is now called an alliance and have been supplied with SAM missiles. In a 24 hour period, a Syrian helicopter and military fighter jet were destroyed. Rebels attacked the road leading to Damascus airport and caused the shutdown. No civilian flights will be coming in or out of Damascus.
The UN envoy Baradai has concluded that ground forces will be needed to end the hostilities on the ground once the Assad regime is overthrown. No other means to stop the foreign jihadists now doing most of the fighting against the Syrian troops and committing the same war crimes as the Assad regime.
An ugly scene in Syria that will cause a decade or more of hardship and instability in a volatile region. If I was Israel, I would have preferred the sectarian regime of Assad instead of the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists now ready to slaughter the Christians, Alawites and Assad supporters. Democracy in the making …
The many terror bombings by the rebel forces in and near Damascus were detonated by gsm signal. Sometimes prisoners are forced to drive the car bomb into the district the rebels want to target.
I do hope Obama is wise and do a make-over of leadership in the State Department. Susan Rice is not my choice and failures all-around in the first 4 years.
Thank you for the summary – other than the initial fighting and occasional flare up, I see nothing in the news here regarding Syria. It’s been months since I recall seeing any stories anywhere near a front page, and I haven’t sought out any information. In fact, it is only because they disappeared from the internet that I noticed anything this time, as that’s my primary news focus (I work in the industry).
Well, uhhh…yeah ejmw.
This is only the second “blackout” in this situation. The first? The U.S. news blackout (and to some degree a European blackout as well) that has been going down for months. Can’t have the marks getting all upset when there’s a number of fixes to be run, now can we?
Syria and Ron Paul. Both unpersoned by the media.
It’s all lies. Omitting the salient facts of a matter is a lie just as much as is telling untruths about it.
The U.S.S.R. at one time called its own news service “Pravda.” “Pravda” means both truth and justice in Russian. A stunning lie. A boldfaced lie, backed up by the physical repression of the Communist Party at the time. All Russians with even an ounce of brainpower knew Pravda to be an ongoing set of lies, but they could do nothing about the situation because of the real truth behind it…the Gulags or worse.
The international PermaGov media? So much more sophisticated. Misinformation, disinformation, useless information about millions of worthless things like Lindsey Lohan and the food truck craze. I noticed today an article in some major media outlet about how much the French love hamburgers. Please. Masses of trivia, not a word about mass murder. Who needs gulags? We got trulags. The endless black hole of the media.
And after however many years that you have been an adult, you are still surprised?
Please.
You been in the trulags too long.
Bet on it.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn had nuthin’ on you.
Oh.
I guess he did have something on you after all.
He couldn’t fool himself that it wasn’t happening.
We have to wake up now, ejmw.
All of us.
We are told that we are “free,” but the fact of the matter is that we are not free. We are certainly “free” enough to publicly post opinions that if enclosed in a private letter in Solzhenitsyn’s Russia would have gotten us imprisoned and exiled, but since our voices are so easily disappeared by the massive media noise machine it really makes no difference what we say or think. We are essentially as exiled as was Solzhenitsyn, only more comfortably.
WTFU.
Please.
24/7.
There are no “surprises” from the PermaGov.
Only business as usual.
Bet on it.
AG
God dammit Arthur, does everything have to result in some long-winded admonishment for not meeting your obsessive standards of informedness?
And where the hell are you getting that I am surprised by the lack of coverage? I made the observation that there IS a lack of coverage, admitted that I hadn’t been actively seeking out the news, and pieced together a very hasty diary to try to bring a little attention to the subject.
That is all that this was, and then you come in with a comment four times as long as the original diary that tells me NOTHING about what’s happening Syria. Sheesh.
Your title:
I know…in a direct manner…no more than do you about what is or is not happening in Syria. In a system of total disinfo, only what can be inferred by the media disinformation coverage of any given set of events (or lack thereof) can be considered “information.”
I do know what is happening in the U.S. media, though. As you said, the Syrian situation is being given scant coverage. It is being “disappeared,” as the Argentinians liked to say.
Are my standards of knowledge “obsessive?
Or are they just well-focused?
Your call, as you must. I can only affect what is happening here.
If that.
I do keep trying, though.
Sorry if I bothered you.
AG
P.S.
So…size does matter?
I had some free time. I used it here. Sorry. No news is good news…right?
WTFU
Have you seen any reports on how the 1.5 million Iraqi refugees in Syria are impacting the conflict?
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In the war propaganda against the Syrian regime, Turkey was complaining of influx of 100,000 Syrian refugees. Turkey is a participant in the war by supporting rebels, permitting cross-border intrusion of jihadists and arms. Turkey has a population of 75,000,000. No one speaks of the hardship for Syria and the 1,500,000 Iraqi refugees due to the Bush invasion and destruction of Iraq. So while the West supports the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafists and Al-Qaeda elements in the overthrow of Assad, the Iraqi Christians will face persecution and death in the near future. Most likely they will seek refuge in Lebanon.
Can’t see where Lebanon could welcome more refugees. The fragile political/ethnic/religious balance in Lebanon is more similar to that in Syria than the other Sunni dominated countries in the region, but existing Sunni refugee camps harbor all of the groups you’ve named and are eager for a fight. An influx of Christian refugees from Syria could be a spark. According to Sy Hersh from a few years ago, Saudi Arabia has been inserting and funding such rebels for activation at a later date.
Unnoticed in the US press is that Hamas has split from Assad — it was always a weird marriage of convenience.