Hate freedom? Join the club

Last issue we waded bravely into the field of international politics by making fun of the chortling article in The Telegraph that portrayed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad as a kind of harmless geek with tanks, because he’d once been in charge of the Syrian computer club.

We suspected that this was not just a bunch of nerds in a community centre who make printers play amusing tunes, and we think we’re right: “The Syrian electronic army is basically a group of hackers built around the Syrian computer club,” Rafal Rohozinski told CNN last week.

Rohozinski has built a way for Syrian activists to use the web using online encryption precisely to avoid government surveillance by this army/club, of which he says: “Its IP addresses indicate that it is co­located in facilities which belong to the Syrian government… They have been responsible for a number of high-level hacking attacks against a variety of targets including Syrian opposition movements.”

Ah, so it’s that sort of club. Meanwhile, on a similar subject: “I was trying to identify a sensible contribution on world affairs and the Middle East for you, but my wife came in just when I had googled Jordan. Honestly,” says Charles Oglethorpe, from the doghouse.