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Pakistan Blocks YouTube
Multiple readers have written to tell us of news that Pakistan has ordered its ISPs to block access to YouTube "for containing blasphemous web content/movies." This follows increasing unrest in Pakistan over a Danish newspaper's reprinting of cartoons which depict Islam in a less-than-favorable light. The cartoons also sparked controversy when they were first published a few years ago.
We really need to bring these people up to speed with the 21st century. What's the best way to do it? Just start trading with them like anyone else, it's not their fault that they are a bunch of ignorant, gullible sheep (cue the "omg its like teh USA!!!1" comments).
Yes it will take time to achieve any results, but economic prosperity and theism are inversely related, and theism in places like Pakistan is really fucked up and needs to be eliminated or at least marginalized.
As a religion Islam is the petulant, spoiled bully child on the playground - always accustomed to getting what it wants. If it doesn't get its own way, it resorts to acts of barbaric aggression.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
The danish thing has been going on for a while, it took them this long to ban it for that?
Otoh there were elections a few days ago and there were multiple clips about rigging that happened in the election.
Forward to 1:20 or just search for pakistan rigging
What's the more probable cause for the ban?
Youtube is in the USA. Owned by Google to be more precise. They are banning something from USA politics.
Fuck you. Banning Youtube is stupid, but that doesn't mean that Islam itself is bad. There are lots of tolerant Muslim people out there.
Okay, so maybe it wouldn't end human suffering, but it would certainly remove about 90% of the motivation for mistrust and a lot more. Some say religion is just the "given" excuse for violence and oppression. But I hold that the majority of people who claim they are killing and oppression for "god" really believe in what they are doing.
Religion is also a large part of the reason for suppression of knowledge, increases in fear and the idea that "ideas are dangerous."
But once you subtract 'religion' and 'morals' from the minds of many, you'll find they actually don't know how to think.
Why is presenting "Bad Thing B" in answer to "Bad Thing A" still considered a acceptable method of debate?
>There are lots of tolerant Muslim people out there.
Maybe but there sure isnt enough of them to say "Hey, lets do away with theocracy." The fact that theocratic governments are allowed makes me think that they arent as 'tolerant' as people like you claim.
Cue the moral relativist crowd and the people who are going to reply to this by blaming western powers in 3.. 2.. 1..
It is really shameful how religious leaders continue to try to impress their own (private) values on the rest of the world.
:)
No later than 9/11 we (in the democratic world) were made aware how narrow the scope of some Muslim leaders is when quite a few of them spoke out with understanding or even admiration for the criminals that crashed these planes killing thousands of innocent.
Of course this type of behaviour is not limited to Moslims, just look at the retards that, especially in the USofA, are trying to ban education on Evolution or bomb medical clinics.
Here in The Netherlands we had a nice one last night, around 01:00 in the night one of the public broadcasters decided to air the old Deep Throat movie, in (eager?) anticipation quite a few religious leaders protested as if they did not have an off button on their TV
In the case of YouTube there might be a link to my country as an extreme nationalistic member of the Dutch Parliament (Geert Wilders) is readying a movie/ documentary called Fitna (Arabic for Evil) about what he perceives as the dangers of Islam and the Quran.
More and more politicians of wholly undemocratic Muslim nations are protesting with the Dutch government and demanding a stop to this movie as it would be an insult to Islam.
Mr. Wilders has so far not found a regular broadcaster to air his work and has said he'll distribute it via the net, starting with YouTube.
The problem will not go away until religious people, starting with their leaders, learn to accept there is more in this world than their own (narrow) view and that a cartoon or critical movie is generally not meant as an insult or attack but to further discussion and even educate on the subjects covered.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
"Where are they hiding?"
In plain sight. By virtue of not being fanatical jihad-monkeys they tend to blend in pretty well with their surroundings just like peaceful Jews, Christians, Wiccans, etc..
Or did you not know that Muslims can look just like anyone else, speak reasonably, and contribute positively to their communities in unassuming and humble manners?
Hell, if nothing else it is nice having Muslims in your community because their bodegas are open on Christian holidays. Try getting out in the real world once in a while.
And yet from these supposedly assimilated folks a disturbingly large amount of funding flows to the Middle East, and they don't seem to protest much when Wahhabi hate literature starts to be distributed in their community.
Printing them again, knowing what it might cause: provocation.
So what? These people need to be continually provoked until they understand and accept that there's no percentage in getting upset about it. People using threats and intimidation to censor other people should offend every civilized human being.
Look, this is the bully syndrome at work, and by not continually provoking them, by giving in to their threats, you're simply following a policy of appeasement. That never works with a bully, ever, because next time they'll want more. I am not prepared to give it to them.
Furthermore, we're talking about material published on the Internet in another country. They have zero grounds for imposing their own sense of what is acceptable on the rest of the world. It's time they grew up and accepted the fact that the rest of us don't care what they think. As an American, I have to suffer through enough irrational and outright wrong anti-U.S. crap every day, but I don't go around making threats or demanding the Web sites be blocked just because I don't like it.
These people just need to grow up. Until they do, trying to avoid "provoking" them is not a concern of mine, since they don't seem to care if they provoke me. Not, I might add, that it matters what they say about me or my country. I'm an adult, my skin is pretty thick in that regard.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I know the reason they /gave/ is that YouTube content is blasphemous, but what they /didn't/ tell you is that there have been a lot of really embarrassing videos on YouTube recently. One you might have seen in the news was the one where they showed that there was a gunshot before the explosion that officially was supposed to have killed Benazir Buttho. But it's my understanding that there have been a lot of videos that are /personally/ embarrassing to politicians in Islamabad as well, and this is more probably the motivation behind the ban.
It serves all the sitting politicians' interests to paint this as a religious thing (including the Bush government); it's up to us to try to see through the propaganda.
"And yet from these supposedly assimilated folks a disturbingly large amount of funding flows to the Middle East, and they don't seem to protest much when Wahhabi hate literature starts to be distributed in their community."
Immigrant populations send money home and will continue to do so until exchange rates don't make it profitable to come live in western nations while supporting families elsewhere. Most of that money is going to families who are trying to make do in their ancestral homeland, not terrorist organizations.
As for hate literature, I have yet to see this happen in my community. On the contrary there are minimum two major interfaith events a year co-sponsored by the largest local mosque and the largest local synagogue not to mention the year end Unitarian celebration that includes Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Christians, and anyone else who wants to attentd.
All I have to cite for you is my personal experience gathered while living across the USA in places like L.A., N.Y.C., and now New England. Each of these places has visible Muslim populations, and the examples of interfaith cooperation are everywhere for anyone who cares to look.
The only really dangerous experience I have had with a religious group was with the 'Black Israelites' in NYC. And anyone who has dealt with them will tell you that there homegrown religious threats as virulent as any imported Muslim variety.
It was all of them this time, unlike the first time the were printed. The cartoon in question was the "bomb in turban" drawing from the top of the original article. The were reprinted as a reaction to an alleged murder plot against the cartoonist.
I'm not sure what kind of reasoning will lead anyone to attempt to murder somebody for insinuating that their prophet inspire violent behavior. By doing so, they just prove the cartoonist right.
We need a night of long knives where every imam, every priest, every rabbi, every religious "leader" wakes up with a slit throat.
Yeah, violence is the best way to solve the world's problems.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Saudi-Arabia is one of the richest countries in the world, and also one of the most oppressive theist regimes in the world.
And like Pakistan, we already trade with them, so I don't think you are on the right path.
Oh, yeah?
["Where are [moderates] hiding?"] In plain sight. By virtue of not being fanatical jihad-monkeys they tend to blend in pretty well with their surroundings just like peaceful Jews, Christians, Wiccans, etc..
But they don't seem in any affective way to be reigning in the actions of their fanatic counterparts. It's as if they don't care that a small percentage of fanatics are ruining the reputation, economy, and safety of their own country. There are no counter-protests, for example. No red-state-blue-state kind of active political debates.
Something is out-of-whack. It strongly appears as if they secretly condone such behavior and only complain against it to naive foreign journalists.
Table-ized A.I.
So what you're saying is that pakistanis are backward monkeys who see communication devices as western witchcraft. Nice tolerance you got going there, in another context i'd mistake you for a muslim.
Yes, it is. The whole discussion here is just disgusting. I'm against censorship, but I'm against closed-minded stupidity, too. And the people posting here seem to have plenty of it.
Islam is the only religion where you can be considered a moderate for not supporting terrorism. Surely that tells you something. Besides, moderate Islam and terrorist Muslims are standing on a par with respect to the rationality of their beliefs. Both groups of people have a view of the world colored by an irrational adoption of some ancient dogma. In supporting one you inevitably support the other, by granting credence to the idea that "faith" is a sensible (and indeed positive) way to go about forming your beliefs. Faith is a danger, no matter who is doing it, because all of our beliefs should be thought through. Moderates give aid and comfort to extremists by supporting the concept of faith and unchecked belief in superstition. There is no such thing as "true Islam" -all brands of Islam are equally fictional. If anything, extremists are closest to a "true Islam" because their behavior most accurately reflects Islamic texts and the life of Mohammad.
The cartoons were published by many Danish papers after the police foiled a plot to murder the cartoonist. By publishing these cartoons, the papers were stating something important: we stand in solidarity, we don't give in to bullies, and the sword will never be mightier than the pen.
Indeed, it will fail just as every previous attempt to legislate morality has failed. Like every victimless-crime law in the USA, it would require a complete and total surveillance state/police state to enforce, and you can be assured that the kind of people who want to create such a police state and rule over it are not good people who care about your best interests. There is something seriously wrong with any individual or group who wants to have that kind of power and their acquisition of it is far more dangerous than whatever it was they were supposedly going to protect us from -- with no exceptions. This kind of fanatical approach to "removing evil" or "protecting you from yourself" is evil in and of itself.
What such attempts can and have done is to take "evil" behavior (be it drugs, prostitution, gambling, whatever) and drive it underground. A completely unregulated, illegal market for such things has always made them more dangerous. Additionally, I wonder if the proponents of Prohibition were willing to have the deaths of everyone who was killed by the likes of Al Capone on their conscience? That pesky Law of Unintended Consequences is something from which people repeatedly refuse to learn.
I wish we could evolve past this silly notion that good and evil are nothing more than sufficiently-comprehensive lists of "do's" and "dont's", as I think this is where the idea that "forced to behave a certain way = good person" comes from. The whole thing really is a denial of the spiritual nature of human beings and the moral struggles that occur within each person that the outside world never sees. I find it quite ironic that such denials typically come from major religions.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Have you ever wondered how radicalism came to be? From reactions to people like you.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
The government spokesman claims that its due to blasphemous videos on youtube, but you have to realize they just shut down a television station because it allowed two banned television anchors work there; anchors who said negative things about the Musharraf government. The entire nation is under martial law and opposition parties are talking about Musharraf rigging the vote. Right before he declared martial law there was courts were look into allegations of election fraud, but he removed the judges from the case immediately after martial law started.
Pakistan is currently run by a former military leader who gained power in a military coup d'etat, and has in reality always been run by the military at some level. They are a Muslim country only in name; their mullahs/imams have little affect on the government; sort of comparable to Libya, except Pakistan pretends to have a democratic society. Read into the atrocities committed by their military during the Bangladeshi Liberation War ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Bangladesh_atrocities ). I read an essay written by Henry Kissinger who compared it to the rape of Nanjing. This is the same guy who advised Nixon to aid Pakistan, in order to prevent Soviets from gaining a foothold in the area.
I've been lurking on these boards for about two-three years and the amount of hatred and ignorance on these boards whenever something that has to do with "Islam" comes up is just plain disgusting. Captain Obvious says: 1. A vicious dictatorship, which has recently been accused of the murder of one of the most prominent politicians in the world (Bhutto), decides to ban an important source of information (youtube) from their citizens... (Go see the number of Pakistani political movies on Bhutto's death) 2. They use Islam as an scapegoat to justify their actions so as divert/dilute attention from their personal political motivation by passing on the "blame" to the larger (1 billion) Muslim community 3. At the moment of reading "Islam" and "censor" the so-called freedom-sensitive western slashdotter abandons all rational thought and begins foaming at the mouth. Good job Slashdotters, your intelligence (or rather lack of) is blinding.
Yes we need to make it clear to muslims that saying sentences that come from the quran (a really, realy racist book) is completely unacceptable. Because anyone who repeats e.g. "all non-muslims are worth less than the filthyest of animals" (quran 8:55) really isn't doing good.
Oh wait this is the word of "allah".
So we just need muslims to tell allah to shut up, and change his mind, right ? Please elaborate on exactly how this works.
(and btw, in Christianity you have the story of the good Samaritan, making the exact opposite point)