Slashdot Mirror
Indian Nationalists Forcibly Censor Orkut
starkravingmad writes "The Economic Times is running a story on Hindu nationalists in India threatening to wreck internet cafes that don't block parts of Orkut that the vigilantes find offensive. From the article: '"Orkut is used by many destructive elements to spread canards about India, Hindus, our gods and cultural heritage," said Abhijit Phanse, president of Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena, the student group. "We are gently telling Internet cafe owners that it is their responsibility to see that surfers do not use their facility to carry out such hate campaigns ... Or else, we will have to do that job for them." Last week, dozens of Shiv Sena workers vandalised some Internet centres, saying they were not stopping their customers from accessing Orkut groups involved in sending hate messages.'"
Why do these censoring countries and the groups in them even bother? They're just going to be twice as pissed when 13 year olds find ways around it lol. The harder you try and block it, the harder people will try to unblock it and then you look like the bad guy for trying to block it.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
These are the same who vandalize flower shops on Valentine's Day and threaten couples if they are seen doing anything they consider "obscene" in public.
Personally, I think that these guys need to have a good drink and need to get laid a little. I thought it was all about tolerance and forgiveness and all those good things? Pursuit of truth and enlightenment? No? I guess it doesn't quite have the same ring as terrorizing innocent people and flauting your ideologies about.
Jerks.
hindus upset at orkut, muslims upset at muhammed cartoons, christians upset at crosses in pee, etc:
i believe that your religion is strong and powerful and moving
apparently, you don't
for if you did, you would not be so threatened by such random fluff
or, alternately, if these stupid offenses affect you, your religious faith is shallow
you do not honor god/ allah/ shiva/ whomever by being moved by the most contrived of offenses that even a child could shrug off and roll his eyes at
when you do, you make a mockery of what they stand for, by showing that some of your religions followers (you) are of small easily swayed faith
you're a shame to your own religion, and your cheap outrage cheapens your religion
signed,
people with faith and maturity
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I hope that the RIAA doesn't change tactics after hearing about this
Orkut is apparently like MySpace, with forums and the like. Just thought I'd throw that out there, since TFA did such a great job of not saying what it is. Here's the wiki
...I thank god that I'm an Atheist.
Google Orkut... it is a social networking site, a lot like Myspace or Livejournal. Here is the orkut homepage link: www.orkut.com Here is the link to the Wikipedia article about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
commoditization of christ for easter
Yes, they're making mockery of Jesus by tying him randomly to Easter like thatg. What's Easter got to do with Jesus anyway.
It's about bunnies, people! Next thing, they'll tie him to Christmas as well. Idiots.
...As opposed to setting up shop in a country where you toe the official party line or ship out?
India continues to prove itself incapable of shaking off such middle ages thinkingThis is Freedom 101 - you need to put up with idiots and their opinions. India is perhaps the only recently independent nation that has even attempted to achieve an essentially open society. In India, we are free to express and actively promote our views - and that includes morons such as these RSS guys. What's not mentioned in TFA is that we also have recourse to the courts and the police, who, while inefficient, generally do come through in guaranteeing our basic safety.
Thank you for judging me and my entire country based on the actions of these asshats. Should I go ahead and assume that all Americans think like Ann Coulter?
This is pure, filthy politics - the Shiv Sena and their ilk are just trying to fight their own growing irrelevance - this is just to remind the UPA government that they still have the power to make life difficult - an attempt to gain leverage on some obscure internal negotiations, perhaps.
You and I are not the intended audience for this charade - the current administration is. The poor Internet cafes are merely caught in the crossfire.
And finally to all those who lament censorship in India, please don't worry on our behalf. We Indians have seen off graver challenges to our freedoms. We maintain a level of openness unmatched in the third world, and it will take more than a few assholes like these guys to change that. We're far from perfect in this regard, of course, but we'll get by just fine.
India may be a democracy, but it is not a Western nation. Being a democracy does not mean that a nation is a democracy. Look at Singapore.
The first sign that the AC is out of his league. Yes, India is not a perfect democracy ( who is anyway? ) but comparing it to Singapore - a small island nation whose citizens themselves consider the polls to be a sham (wiki link here ) - is a complete joke. Come on, at least India does not have a one-party government that tries to sue the opposition into oblivion.
India, as any other democracy, has its share of nutjobs. The BVS and Shiv Sena, as has been pointed out by other posters, are essentially groups of uneducated riff-raff that try to present themselves as nationalists to distinguish themselves from common thugs ( which they are in reality ). They have little influence beyond Mumbai.
In the India of today, honor killings are so widespread that it is a national pasttime. An honor killing is murdering a wife because her family has not provided sufficient dowry to the husband.
No my dear AC. Honor killings are not what you presented (link). They are women that are killed if they are suspected to have brought dishonor to the family (unwanted pregnancy, etc.). They are extremely rare in India and are more a part of life of our friends across the border in Pakistan ( and other such Islamic societies) than ours.
What you did state about dowry killings(link) is exaggerated. While it is true that bride burning is still present in India, due to many high-profile convictions in the recent past, it is abhorred widely and the burden of proof is on the suspected in-laws. However, unfortunately, dowry as a social phenomenon still exists in India.:(
Finally, the Indians are aggressively building nuclear weapons.
Having been attacked by 2 totalitarian neighbours (who are allied strongly with each other) 4 times in the last 50 years is not a good enough excuse ? Then, pray, why do the United States and Russia, which are far removed from their enemies, have the largest nuclear arsenals in the world ? Anyway, having nuclear devices without a proper delivery system can hardly be considered aggressive.
So, India is a democracy, but it is not a Western nation.
So, you took all this effort to point out the obvious. As we say in north India, shabaash mere puttar ! ( well done, my son !)
Coming back to the topic, as I said before, this is a very local event. The Economic Times is HQ-ed in Mumbai which is why it has received more prominence than necessary. From my personal experience, I can speak of places with worse kinds of restrictions in India. There are hamlets controlled by some political party/ religious group/ communists where information from the outside world, in any form, is not allowed unless they are filtered by the party thugs. But, I would be more worried by the fact that most of rural India, if they ever cared, would not be able to connect to orkut because of the pathetic infrastructure in those parts, rather than being banned from doing so by a collection of retards.
My INR 10
It's about RELIGION and should be labelled as such. Don't be such pansies, Slashdot. Call religious lunatics what they are. Don't hide them as "nationalists."
Dear, AC, thanks for your concern about my mental health. For your information, I'm not retarded. Bravo for not only hiding behind the AC option but for starting your reply with an ad hominem attack.
The US, whether you like it or not, is one of the few countries in the world where someone's religion dictates whether or not they can seriously run for office.
Polls have been taken on the subject and, when asked, something like 52 percent of Americans have said that they would not vote for an aethiest. That alone shows how much of a ceiling your religion (or lack thereof) poses in the US. Neither of the two main political parties would even consider nominating a non-Christian candidate because his/her religion alone would lose them the race: policies and job suitability wouldn't even factor into it.
Compare that to anywhere else in the developed world. I live in the UK, and I can tell you that we wouldn't give a fig what religion someone was before voting for or against them. We certainly wouldn't be using religious litmus tests as you do in the US.
Creationism? Abortion? Seperation of church and state but "One nation under God", and with the motto "In God we trust"?
As for politics and policies, I can give you clear examples of how serious political debate has been stifled in the US post-September 11th. Perhaps you missed the instances of TV shows being cancelled because of comments people made questioning what was going on and why it was happening? Or how any voice raised in dissent was shouted down as anti-American? Don't you remember any of that?
What was wrong with asking why the US was attacked in the first place? Are you seriously telling me that that's been questioned by anybody outside the fringes?
It's only now that this shit has been going on for years and it's cost the lives of over 3,000 US troops (hey, let's not think about the 100,000s of dead Iraqi civilians - they clearly don't count) that serious questions are given more than short shrift by the mainstream media.
(Still, though, the lunatics running the asylum see nothing wrong. And the lunatics wanting to replace them aren't any better: the eight Republican nominees were asked whether knowing what they know now if they would have done anything differently in Iraq, to which none of them had the common sense to say "yes". Even after seeing the disasterous consequences of the path that they've travelled, they'd still go down that road again.)
Elsewhere, District Attorneys are being fired for political purposes. But, of course, when it's discovered, the people in charge have "no recollection" of what happened.
I won't even talk about voter disenfranchisement. Go read up on that before you comment again though.
Of course, I'm sure you'll say that none of that counts. To be honest, if it wasn't helping to screw the rest of us, I wouldn't give a shit. But it does, so I'm telling you, as a friend, this shit is happening, and it does you no favours to be lecturing the world on religious and political freedoms when your own country's record in that area is far from perfect.
The politics of the US aren't any better than that of anywhere else. If you, like the person who I initially replied to, truly consider the US to be a place where religious and political freedoms are respected then you're looking through rose-tinted glasses.
Feel free to tell me I'm wrong and how. Just save the "retard" tag, OK?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Of COURSE these ignorant butt-plugs want to censor stuff. The only way anybody can keep talking to imaginary men in the sky and believing in that kind of nonsensical clap trap is to keep the blinders fully on. A quick reading of every wikipedia article for every religion shows how ludicrous every religion really is.
Go ahead, god squad, mod me down, but the days when society lacks the information to see through your horse shit philosophy systems is at hand. In a few generations, only real Luddites or actual retards will worship invisible men in the sky.
Information wants to be free. And humans want information. The days of praying to "holy ghosts" and multi-armed gods of war and love are ending. I just wish they would end sooner, like before we have another catastrophic global war, or completely destroy the environment.
*sigh* Seems unlikely though.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
I suspect it's the second and/or third.
I suspect strongly that it's the first. Most Slashdot readers have very little clue what is going on in India, and probably didn't read past the first few sentences before modding.
The act of stridently assigning blame for political ills to Communists and Islamists (as those first few sentences do) will strike a chord with most Americans, and echoes a lot of the rhetoric (historical and modern) from their own leaders. The idea that this sort of rhetoric would be happening in very different and faraway place turns the familiarity of such statements into humour.
Hence the "funny" mod. I really think that's a much more plausible explanation than deliberately abusive modding.