The heartbreaking image of three-year old Aylan Kurdi lying face down washed up on a Turkish beach has triggered an international foreign policy re-examination of the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa.
Last month, Egypt’s official military spokesperson posted a poem on his Facebook page, which boasts over 5 million likes, explaining the country’s armed forces are facing two wars—one on the ground battling terrorists and another against some foreign journalists who (it claims) are waging an information war.
This Ramadan, spliced into the TV soap operas that are popular during the fasting month, Egyptians will also be seeing some confrontational ads about sexual harassment. The ads launched in early June by Harassmap, a local Egyptian organization, is part of a campaign that began last month called “Harasser = Criminal.
Algerians will have to go without internet for the rest of the night as Algerie Telecom, the country’s telecommunications provider, upgrades its fibre optic networks.
Even after the promise of 2010-12’s Arab Spring freedom uprising and the expansion of Internet usage in the region, an offending tweet or Facebook post could still have you arrested and charged in many Arab countries, says a new report.
A Facebook user commenting on a post on the Smuggling Syrians from Turkey to Europe page caustically asks, “if we drown, do we get our money back?”
The Egyptian government decided last week to demolish the torched headquarters of former president Mubarak’s now dissolved party the National Democratic Party. Protestors had burned the building hugging the corniche of the Nile during the heady days of the Egyptian revolution on 28 January 2011. It was a potent symbol of the secret cronyism and corrupt elitism that marked 30 years of Mubarak’s rule that was eventually toppled.
