Use BBC.com or the new BBC App to listen to BBC podcasts, Radio 4 and the World Service outside the UK.

Find out how to listen to other BBC stations

Episode details

World Service,12 Sep 2011,10 mins

Syria, Lebanon and Ireland

From Our Own Correspondent

Available for over a year

James Reynolds introduces personal reflections, wit and analysis from BBC correspondents around the world. In this edition, Mishal Husain in Beirut meets the cyber-activists who want to change Syria, while Fergal Keane finds a new realist streak in Irish patriotism. The revolution will not be televised - but tweeted Earlier this year, two young men from Syria, Rami Nakhle and Omar Edilbi, began to campaign for change in their country. They are members of the Facebook and Twitter generation which has led the Arab Spring. But there's more to their struggle than coding and communicating. It's turned into a dangerous, personal war. The two have been forced to flee to Beirut, in neighbouring Lebanon, and are continuing their activities from there. Mishal Husain has been to meet them. Snapshot from a vanished age; hopes for a new one A single picture can make you stop and think. That's what happened to Fergal Keane this summer when he went back home to Ireland on holiday, as he does each year. He came across an old black and white photograph of a stern-looking policeman - triggering a reflection on his country's mood, and the real meaning of patriotism in times of crisis.

Programme Website
More episodes