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American Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford just fled the country after threats to his safety were made.

Emboldened by the Arab Spring and social media, Syrian protesters are taking to the streets over smuggled YouTube videos that appear to show a 13-year-old boy who was physically and sexually tortured while in government custody. A graphic video of the corpse of a 13-year-old boy who appears to have been sexually and physically tortured by Syrian security officials has sparked international condemnation and riots across the country. The video (see still pic above) shows Hamza Ali al-Khatib, a resident of the southern village of Jiza, and appears to have been filmed by his family after they retrieved his corpse.

Facebook shut down the Syrian military's official page, and Syrian Facebook users began encountering a primitive certificate-forging scam seemingly carried out by the government. See what happens when cyberwarfare comes to the formerly friendly Facebook. The “Facebook revolution” line has been used endlessly in the Middle East.

Protesters have developed a novel way of smuggling information to the outside world: trading in their mobile camera phones for small, discreet pen cameras. While Bashar al-Assad's government in Syria has not been engaging in violence on a Qadaffi-like scale, snipers have reportedly fired on peaceful protesters and civilian casualties were reported in several cities recently.

Syrian democracy activists on Twitter have found themselves threatened and spammed by mystery accounts. Now one prominent opposition figure claims the Syrian government may be involved. Protests in Syria are getting intense