Syria Cuts Off Internet As Civil War Continues
Internet connections between Syria and the outside world were cut off on Tuesday, according to data from Google Inc and other global Internet companies.
Google’s Transparency Report pages showed traffic to Google services pages from the country, embroiled in a civil war that has lasted more than two years, suddenly stopping shortly before 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT). Google traffic reports continued to show no activity there about four hours after the drop-off.
“We’ve seen this twice before,” said Christine Chen, Google’s senior manager for free expression. “This happened in Syria last November and in Egypt during the Arab Spring.”
It is virtually impossible to definitely determine the cause of such disruptions unless a party claims responsibility, experts said. In the past, Syria’s government and the rebels fighting to topple it have traded blame.
Google’s data showed traffic disruptions limited to Syria and spanning the entire country. Shutting an entire nation from the Internet is possible because IP addresses, individual connections established by each device, are geographically specific and the government has control over the country’s Internet service providers.
Source: anarcho-queer



![UN: Obama Administration’s Indiscriminate Use of Force is Killing Afghan Children
The Obama Administration recently underwent its first U.N. treaty body review, and the resulting concluding observations made public last week should be a cause for alarm.
The United States is violating the human rights of children in Afghanistan, according to the new report from the United Nations, which, according to the ACLU, “paint[s] a dark picture of the treatment of juveniles by the U.S. military in Afghanistan…”:
one where hundreds of children have been killed in attacks and air strikes by U.S. military forces, and those responsible for the killings have not been held to account even as the number of children killed doubled from 2010 to 2011; where children under 18 languish in detention facilities without access to legal or full humanitarian assistance, or adequate resources to aid in their recovery and reintegration as required under international law. Some children were abused in U.S. detention facilities, and others are faced with the prospect of torture and ill-treatment if they are transferred to Afghan custody.
US attacks and airstrikes have killed hundreds of children in recent years, according to the report, “due notably to reported lack of precautionary measures and indiscriminate use of force.”
Some US military officials are unhappy about the criticism they sometimes receive when Afghan children are killed or injured because of US operations, claiming that insurgents recruit children to plant bombs, so killing children is actually fair game. “It kind of opens our aperture,” said Army Lt. Col. Marion Carrington. “In addition to looking for military-age males, it’s looking for children with potential hostile intent.”](http://24.media.tumblr.com/104a003554fc50516c0c16f4fa7a94cd/tumblr_mi93klI2rV1r4vpxio1_r1_1280.jpg)




