Slashdot Mirror
Internet Blackout in Myanmar Stalls Citizen Report
StonyandCher writes "The government in Myanmar has reportedly cut off Internet access in the troubled country.
The loss of Internet access in Myanmar has slowed the tide of photos and videos shared with the rest of the world but people outside of the troubled country continue to use new media sites and other technologies to protest military activity in the Southeast Asia country."
Printer-friendly link.
I guess this goes back to the idea that if you can control the information going to and from people, you can control the people themselves. It is really a statement of where the internet is today in terms of importance around the world. I would like to see if anyone from this country manages to make an "underground" makeshift connection to the internet. Also, does any one else find it interesting that the group forming together to protest for the rights of the monks is on facebook?
I don't think your average autocratic police state is that tech-savvy - Burma is run by peope whose expertise lies more in the area of killing and torture.
It may simply have not occurred to them to do this
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149/
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2549/
Myanmar == Burma
It has large quantities of oil and gas...
WTF do you think there are problems in the place all of a sudden? Do you think it's coincidence there are problems and unrest in oil producing countries now that world oil production has fallen for the last few years?
http://www.worldoil.com/INFOCENTER/STATISTICS_DETAIL.asp?Statfile=_worldoilproduction
Deleted
as someone mentioned before, call the country Burma. That's the name which signifies that you don't accept the legitimacy of the murders who have stolen the country and ruled over it for all these years.
Also, I don't get the anti-bush tag, he seems to be doing a lot more than most to help the situation...
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Err there already IS a real government and one with a Presedent-elect who is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
The whole point of the protests is that the ruling junta never allowed her to take office after they won the election.
Burma is a very resource-rich country. The problem is that rather than the wealth going to the people, it is funneled into the pockets of the military generals (who then splurge on their daughters' weddings)
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Burma has tons of oil. Chevron and Total are the two Western companies profiting the most, but China, India and Russia all have significant (read multi-BILLION dollar) investments as well..
I'm sorry to say this, but this is complete, total rubbish, probably born of ignorance.
If you knew ANYTHING about the societies which were (they aren't now) run on a system of caste organisation, you would know that the monkhood is open to everyone.
In India, in all Indic-influenced countries, one of the things that a monk undergoes is the renunciation of his ties with the world, including his birth, his caste, and his society. He is a free spirit. There is a saying, "Never seek the source of a sannyasi or a river." This basically means that once a person is a renunciate, that's it, you don't bother what he was before his new life, the old self is dead. This is the position taken by everyone, from the ultra-orthodox to the most liberal, and is the way things have been done for millennia.
A part of renunciation includes conducting a full and proper funeral for the "old self", where all links to the past are cut. It is a difficult thing to do or undergo, but once it is done, that's it, it's over. You have no caste, no gender, no ties with the world, no regard for the taboos of your society, and no fear of the power structures within it.
As for the allegation that monks do not do their duty to society - isn't it the exact opposite that is happening here? Aren't the monks acting as a rallying point for the protests?
the American firm Fortinet, which runs the Myanmar Wide Web.
Protect your liberties. Donate to the ACLU