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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.
The block didn't last long because so many people were (figuratively) up in arms about it. Given the amount of "non-offensive" material (i.e. in this case, material not criticizing the king), the government realized their own stupidity and realized it would be better to have a placated populous than risk unrest over such a small thing.
Are there parallels here? Possibly not, because I guess the blocks are for different reasons. However, it's not like a large amount of YouTube is about the comic or other representations of Mohammed, so... It will be interesting to see if the people cry out and how the government responds...
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
SILENCE!! I KIIILL YOU
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?
It's cause we own the middle east.
;)
They just dont know it
Ain't just Islam, Christianity (or take any religion of your liking) would react the same way if it had the political backing.
The current situation dictates that a lot of oil is in the hands of people who could get a tad bit upset if you don't let them have what they want, at least in terms of free speech. Free speech isn't listed at the NY stock exchange, so it's worth less than losing business with such countries.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Welcome to mTube. To upload videos, please make sure that all models are wearing mTube approved burqas. Religious discussion are to adhere to Quran aproved topics. For information on how to carry out stoning, please see the miscellaneous section.
-- All this knowledge is giving me a raging brainer.
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?
That the Muslim communities in the Netherlands, France, Sweden etc. have been so easily radicalized suggests that the barbarians are already inside the gates. Stemming the tide of Islamic imperialism means not only reducing the power of Middle Eastern theocracies (mainly Saudi Arabia), but ensuring that immigrant communities in the EU assimilate as well.
>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..
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I wonder if they have blocked this site: Skeptics annotated Quran
Science is the Real TRUTH!
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.
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.
Now there can be liberal interpretations of Islam - where each individual needs to wage "jihad" against their own evil. But this is not the traditional stance, or even an obvious one just from reading Quran. It is an assimilation of the Christian idea that "the line between good and evil runs not between us and them, but through each of our hearts".
My problem with Islam is that when a person is externally forced to behave well, that might make the streets safer if done effectively, but that person is still not a good person. The evil within them is just biding its time, waiting for an opportunity. And no external enforcement by human beings is perfect. There will always be loopholes and opportunities to do evil.
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.
You might not have meant to, but you did. Both here and here, you referred to entire religious communities, or a monolithic "they". Do you not see the danger of this habit? As a member of the Christian community, do you wish to be included in the "they" of Timothy McVey, George Habash, August Kreis, the Army of God, the Lord's Resistance Army, etc.?
["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.
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.
I think it is a difference between EU and US. There is a lot of fear among "moderate" Muslims in Europe about speaking up against the extremists. Far the majority of religiously motivated violence in Europe is extremest Muslims attacking other Muslims they don't consider "Muslim" enough. This goes from murder attempts on Muslim political leaders and academics that are speaking against the extremists, to harassment of women with Arabic names who dress in western style.
I'm not sure why this is not the case in the US, maybe it is the lower density, or that the "homelands" are farther away. Or maybe you are simply better at integrating immigrants.
Not really relevant, your whois is just showing replies for domains with a "similar" name (when it really shouldn't be doing that). You'll get varying results depending on what whois server you're asking.
YOUTUBE.COM.IS.N0T.AS.1337.AS.WWW.GULLI.COM resolves to a (lol) "hacking" and warez site of some sort. It's just someone having fun with DNS and whois.
Why are you doing a whois when you can't reach youtube? For all intents and purposes, whois is completely useless these days.
As for youtube being down... Meh, probably some routing problem, or some ship accidentally dragging their anchors over googles datacenters.
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.
Not that it's really important, but many are saying there is DNS hijacking going on.
It's actually IP hijacking (from what I'm reading on the NANOG list anyway). An ISP in Pakistan is advertising a "more specific route" to Youtube's ip space. So, routers are taking the traffic there instead.
It could easily be accidental, like someone not having the right filter in place to block that advertisement going out to everyone.
I hope they are enjoying all of the extra packets.
4096R/EF7BAFA6 79E1 DF98 D09D 898F 9A11 F6F0 DDDC 23FA EF7B AFA6
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.
The amusing thing in this case is that Pakistan screwed up their censorship an managed to knock youtube off the *entire* internet for over two hours.
The net didn't interpret censorship as damage and route around it; the net interpreted censorship as a superior path and routed everyone into it.
The belief that technology alone will protect us from political oppression is mistaken and harmful.