Activists fighting repression in the Middle East aren’t just social media gurus: they’re formidable makers, creating DIY weapons, patching together cellphone networks, building governments, etc.But they are not charging their cell phones with glasses of water.This is what one Syrian activist leader told PBS a couple of weeks ago:We used to — a glass of water with two batteries, Duracell or something else. This already exists everywhere. We use it, keep the batteries in the water for one hour or 30 minutes. Then you put the USB adapters inside the water and start charge.His clarification this week:“Electricity had been cut in Daraa for the best part of a week. Omar explained that the batteries on their Blackberries and other phones would often run out during protests so they needed a way to recharge on-the-go. However, they couldn’t carry any bags with them as that would draw the suspicion of the security forces, who would always search anyone carrying a bag. And the charger was too large to fit comfortably in a pocket. So, as he tells it, they chose large mugs to carry their portable charger in. When they needed to charge on the street they would simply sit down and hook their phone up to the charger inside the empty mug, so it would look like they were having coffee. The reference to AA batteries was meant only to refer to the portable charger which is powered by those batteries.A YouTube video, however, purports to demonstrate the magical insurgent phone charging technique at work:Could this bit of bunk science be a rebel internet meme, a subtle psyops bid to exaggerate their plight or their craftiness? Dunno, but the Times got me thinking about that whole fog of war thing.So just to clarify: the protesters are not magicians. But they are hiding their AA-battery-powered cell phone chargers in coffee mugs because they don’t want to be seen using electricity to power their devices, which are already magical enough to serve as war-crime-evidence-gathering machines.
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