Pakistan YouTube Block Breaks the World

Allen54 noted a followup to yesterday's story about Pakistan's decision to block YouTube. He notes that "The telecom company that carries most of Pakistan's traffic, PCCW, has found it necessary to shut Pakistan off from the Internet while they filter out the malicious routes that a Pakistani ISP, PieNet, announced earlier today. Evidently PieNet took this step to enforce a decree from the Pakistani government that ISP's must block access to YouTube because it was a source of blasphemous content. YouTube has announced more granular routes so that at least in the US they supercede the routes announced by PieNet. The rest of the world is still struggling."

Comments

But how did they do it?

[suso]

So the article isn't clear on it. Does this ISP have an AS number that allows them to upload global routes? I would say that they should lose it. I can't think of another way that a single ISP could take out the whole internet's access to something. Pretty crazy.

Re:But how did they do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

PCCW apparently wasn't filtering prefixes announced by PieNet. Very stupid.

Re:But how did they do it?

[rustalot42684]

A zealous ISP ignorantly decides the best way to comply with the decree is to re-route all of YouTube's IP addresses to whatever site they thought was more appropriate. The first repercussion was that YouTube disappeared from the Internet for almost an hour. I suspect the second repercussion was that Pakistan's Internet access crawled to a halt as all of a sudden they were handling IP requests for one of the busiest sites in the world. So I suspect that they do have an AS number that allows them to upload global routes. I agree they should lose it though; censoring your own country is bad enough, but screwing up the rest of the world is absolutely unacceptable. I need my dancing cats!

Re:But how did they do it?

[Aladrin]

Or maybe they aren't as stupid as we think... Maybe, just maybe... They did this on purpose to give global awareness to this censorship.

Maybe I give them too much credit... But it's possible.

Re:But how did they do it?

[suso]

Yeah that is very stupid. Why would you allow one of your customers to modify global routes when they don't have an AS number themselves?

I imagine that this event will introduce a lot of people to how high level internet routing works. Yes, its that vulnerable folks. Scary, but fortunately these events don't happen often. I think back in late 90s was the time when someone in Pennsylvania introduced a global route for everything to go to 0.0.0.0, which brought everything down for a day.

Re:But how did they do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The route was announced by AS17557.

Re:But how did they do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if the article would link to the actual story instead of linking every word to its definition in order to appease the losers who are incapable of tying their own shoelaces or using google, it would be easier to understand for those of us who actually DO have technical know-how and don't need it spoonfed to us.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080225-insecure-routing-redirects-youtube-to-pakistan.html

Basically, pakistan telecom blackholed the network using BGP to advertise that all traffic to those destinations should go to a nonexistant router in their network. Then, instead of keeping that in their own network, they "accidentally" (never ascribe to incompetence what can be explained by rabid extremists) published their route publicly, where it was picked up by the rest of the internet, because the rest of the internet just assumes that nobody would ever fuck up something as arcane and complex as BGP, and makes no attempt to determine whether or not the origination of a given routing rule matches with who should actually be in charge of routing that network.

Re:But how did they do it?

[Brian Gordon]

Not to mention that they should keep ALL manner of global routing out of countries that censor the internet.. it's just a no-brainer. Probably should move a lot out of America too..

Re:But how did they do it?

[neokushan]

I'm not exactly up to date with the whole "how the internet works at a high level" sort of thing, I don't suppose you'd be so helpful as to post a wiki article or something explaining it?
I'd search for it myself, but I'm not exactly sure what I'd be searching for>,,,

Re:But how did they do it?

[suso]

Probably just search for BGP routing and AS numbers on wikipedia.

Re:But how did they do it?

[suso]

Ding ding ding! You win a prize. Wow, this is one of the most useful comments I've ever seen on Slashdot. Not that its really useful now. But it does answer my original question accurately.

Re:But how did they do it?

[Shakrai]

The BGP article on Wikipedia is as good a place to start as any. Beyond that you can do some Google searches for it.

Basically BGP is the protocol used by routers to exchange route information with each other. A real oversimplification would involve three networks/routers, A, B and C. C receives it's network connectivity through A. C announces the networks it's responsible for to A, whom aggregates them before announcing them (and it's own networks) to B.

In theory, A shouldn't accept any routes from C for IP addresses not owned by C. Apparently that wasn't the case here though, or Pakistan's little stunt wouldn't have impacted anybody outside of Pakistan.

Re:But how did they do it?

[rvw]

Probably just search for BGP routing and AS numbers on wikipedia. Here you go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Gateway_Protocol/

Re:But how did they do it?

[Atlantis-Rising]

The problem is that if they did that, they'd have nowhere to put it.

Unless you want to create an international organization with its own territory (sort of like the UN headquarters) that controls global routing- it can't be subject to any national law because it's got its own extraterritoriality (although international lawyers would tell me it's not true extraterritoriality, blah blah blah).

But somebody has to control THAT organization, and unless its mandate is simply to maintain the internet routing in a transparent manner between national-level routing domains...

Re:But how did they do it?

[Atlantis-Rising]

Probably be remarkably ineffective. Sovereign governments are, as a rule, immune from civil suit.

Re:But how did they do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's obviously not going to work, because internationally "your side" is good and the other side is bad, no matter whose side you're on. The only reasonable solution is to add cryptographic authentication to route announcements. The address registries would have to list a public key with all IP address assignments and routes to those addresses would only be accepted with the correct signature.

Re:But how did they do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally! English!

Re:But how did they do it?

[selvan]

I would say you're giving them enough credit. After all, they did create the first computer virus for the PC.

Re:But how did they do it?

[socsoc]

Yes it does, remove the trailing slash...

Re:But how did they do it?

[X0563511]

take the '/' off the end.

Re:But how did they do it?

[The Cydonian]

I would say you're giving them enough credit

That was BrainNet. These guys are a different ISP. In South Asia, genius and stupidity compete for the same internet-ready demographic. :-)

Re:But how did they do it?

[mpe]

Not to mention that they should keep ALL manner of global routing out of countries that censor the internet...

Thing is that there dosn't appear to be a candiate country to do this. You'd need one without any culture of censorship and a strong enough military (including globally targeted nuclear missiles) not to be pushed around by the countries interested in censorship.

Re:But how did they do it?

[seanadams.com]

In theory, A shouldn't accept any routes from C for IP addresses not owned by C.

If you already know whose IP address are whose, then what do you need the routing protocol for in the first place? BGP inherently depends on the honor system - that is the crux of the problem. There is no "in theory" where this is really solved (yet).

Re:But how did they do it?

[Shakrai]

If you already know whose IP address are whose, then what do you need the routing protocol for in the first place?

Because multi-homed networks may wish to have finer control over which links traffic comes in on then allowed for with simple static routes. Because my above example (A/B & C) was a drastic oversimplification and the actual internet involves tens of thousands (hundreds?) of different networks connected in different ways and trying to manage static routes for all of them would be virtually impossible.

Imagine if the process of connecting a new network to the internet involved having to update static routing tables in every core router on the internet and you'll start to understand why BGP exists. Hell, there are routing protocols meant for internal usage (OSPF), because static routes become unmanageable if you have more then a few routers/netmasks to contend with.

BGP inherently depends on the honor system - that is the crux of the problem

Not strictly. The "honor system" should really be limited to the Tier 1 providers. Anybody else really should be filtering the routes that they will accept. There are already provisions in place to remove the "honor system" from consideration -- it seems that Pakistan's upstream provider choose not to use them.

This really isn't anything new. This kind of stuff has happened before. It's not even unique to the internet either -- the POTS network has a routing protocol used to setup calls/announce which switch is responsible for which number/range. One would suspect that SS7 can be abused by "bad" telcos as easily as BGP can be abused by "bad" ISPs.

Re:But how did they do it?

[Shakrai]

You'd need one without any culture of censorship

Sweden!

and a strong enough military (including globally targeted nuclear missiles) not to be pushed around by the countries interested in censorship

Oh. Shit. Well, ya had to muck things up with that requirement, huh?

Wait, I know! The United States can take over Sweden! Then we'll have one country with no history of censorship and nuclear missiles! It's perfect!

Hmm, free software/movies and Swedish chicks for me..... warmer weather and cheap blue jeans for them. Sounds like a win win for everybody concerned... and if any of those Swedes complain we'll just censor them ;)

Re:But how did they do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

But they arent immune from tea parties!

Re:But how did they do it?

[DirkGently]

I can't seem to get to it. Youtube having issies?

Re:But how did they do it?

[bluesky74656]

Pakistan Telcom does have an ASN number. Just for kicks, try this:

Head over to this site. It visualizes the BGP routes between different AS's. Click 'Start BGPlay'. The prefix in which YouTube lives is 208.65.153.0/24. Set the start time for about 24 Feb 2008 10:00, and the end time for about 25 Feb 2008 03:00 (times are UTC). Start the simulation.

You'll see a bunch of ASNs. Two have red circles around them. You can get their name by clicking on the number. On the left is YouTube, and on the right is Pakistan Telcom. Click play and watch what happens.

For those too lazy to actually watch this: All the routes destined for YouTube head towards Pakistan Telcom instead. Then, midway through, you see PCCW get wise and shut down those routes, and everyone slowly starts finding the actual YouTube. It's pretty neat to watch.

Re:But how did they do it?

[greedyturtle]

FYI: This YouTube video is just anti-Islamic propaganda, and unrelated to the subjects at hand. Don't waste your time on it, unless you feel like watching yet another technically-true, obviously-slanted video. I've had my fill of those from the election.

I guess I should mention that if you haven't yet bothered to get a little background on the widely accepted facts of the prophet's political barbarism, you should look into it... just don't do your research with crappy YouTube videos. And you should also be sure to follow up with Christianity's ascent to mainstream popularity.

Re:But how did they do it?

[Amouth]

First rule of BGP - NEVER advertise a route you don't own.

Re:But how did they do it?

[ThreeGigs]

Same mistake I'm occasionally still guilty of, which is leaving a trailing slash on the URL, probably because of the example code in the post screen.

Try it without the slash:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Gateway_Protocol

Re:But how did they do it?

[rs79]

"The route was announced by AS17557"

Youtube had a route for 208.65.152.0/22 (208.65.152.0 - 208.65.155.255), but Pakistan's main ISP in Hong Kong announced a route for 208.65.153.0/24 (208.65.153.0 - 208.65.153.255) to keep youtube off their net. What they didn't understand though is this really needs to be kept as a local routing policy so it only affected Pakistan, but it sorta snuck out and affected the entire network.

Routing is the soft underbelly of the net.

Re:But how did they do it?

[TMB]

Second rule of BGP is you DO NOT talk about BGP!

Re:But how did they do it?

[Shakrai]

Are you joking?

Yes.

Re:But how did they do it?

[sjames]

Even when you DO have an AS number, it's not uncommon for upstreams to filter your announcements down to the set that you're verified to be assigned or at least require that you call someone and tell them you're going to announce it. Otherwise, it's too easy for a simple typo in a config to really screw things up for the world.

There really is no systemic security on route announcements. What does exist is ad-hoc.

Re:But how did they do it?

[SleptThroughClass]

Well, it's almost English. Needs a different word than "routers". But it's not Pakistani.

Re:But how did they do it?

[ElizabethGreene]

First, you need to know that on the internet, the most specific route wins. A Pakistan based ISP, ASN17557 announced more specific routes than YouTube's ISP, and their peers/upstreams did not have appropriate filtering in place to keep those routes from propagating to the rest of the internet. As those routes propagated across the internet, They directed all the traffic to a webserver to display "approved" content. Unfortunately, YouTube is a very busy site, and this caused some infrastructure problems in-country. Pakistan responded by null routing (an efficient way to silently discard) the incoming youtube traffic. Today, or last night depending on the time zone, PCCW "unplugged" Pakistan to force them to stop advertising the routes. In this case, the more appropriate response would have been to filter out the inappropriate routes, (which they should have done in the first place.)

It's worth mentioning that these "filters" aren't huge boxes or physical devices. They are 3 or 4 lines in a configuration file.

router bgp xxxx
neighbor x.x.x.x prefix-list from-paki in

prefix-list from-paki deny 208.65.153.0/24 le 32
prefix-list from-paki permit 0.0.0.0/0 le 24
(This permits any route except for routes inside www.youtube.com's /24. Not a good idea to do, but it shows how simple this would have been for Pakistan's upstreams to setup inbound or for Pakistan to filter outbound.)

One of the issues with BGP that people have difficulty understanding is that there is no single place to enforce a policy like "drop all routes from Pakistan". Because BGP runs on a distributed system, like an imperfect mesh, it becomes exponentially harder to filter bad routes the farther they are away from their source. According to the APNIC route policy listing, 17557 announces routes to 1239 (Sprint) and 5400 (BT). Both of these are large ISPs with a great number of peers, big enough that filtering routes to other peers is generally infeasible. Once the routes were "received and believed" by the two major ISPs, the route was went to the "whole" internet. Curiously enough, I have worked with Sprint here in the states and they perform vigorous route filtering when connecting to small peers and customers. As Pakistan doesn't have enough pipe to be a "big" isp, I wonder which ISP was caught with their filters down.

-Ellie

Re:But how did they do it?

[kalirion]

So basically internet routing functions on the honor system?

Re:But how did they do it?

[buzzedlightyear]

BGP = blasphemous gateway protocol

Re:But how did they do it?

[Anonymous Buzzword]

That site doesn't work for me. Could you please upload the video to YouTube or someplace.

Re:But how did they do it?

[mikael_j]

If you're talking about reverend Åke Green he didn't just say "I think homosexuality is bad", he called homosexuality an "abnormal, a horrible cancerous tumor in the body of society". And he while he did stand trial he was not found guilty of any crime.

/Mikael

Re:But how did they do it?

[rcw-work]

Second rule of BGP is you DO NOT talk about BGP!

The final rule - if this is your first day at BGP, you HAVE to flood.

Re:But how did they do it?

[hullabalucination]

...and a strong enough military (including globally targeted nuclear missiles) not to be pushed around by the countries interested in censorship...

They may not have nukes, but they DO have the Swedish Bikini Team, which is a powerful force for good. For example, name one time when North Korea has invaded Sweden. Just one. I rest my case.

* * * * *

"Buying the right computer and getting it to work properly is no more complicated than building a nuclear reactor from wristwatch parts in a darkened room using only your teeth."
—Dave Barry

Re:But how did they do it?

[Tony Hoyle]

static routes become unmanageable if you have more then a few routers/netmasks to contend with.

I'd say anything more than 2-3 and you should be using dynamic routing. If a route goes down you want something that can find another path.. eg. we have 3 VPNs linked together using EIGRP. If A-B goes down the data automatically goes A-C-B without being noticed (except a slight increase in latency). I'd hate to have to do that all manually.

Re:But how did they do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you already know whose IP address are whose

You don't need to know whose IP addresses are whose, you only need to know what your customers addresses are and filter out anything that doesn't match but that came from that customer, if everyone did that, then the core routers would be able to trust each other without problems like this occurring. In other words, the router in Korea which received the original bad route from the client ISP in Pakistan should have said "hey wait, this ISP is in Pakistan and doesn't serve youtube, why am I getting announcements for youtube's address" and shitcanned it.

It's similar to the egress filtering ISPs should do, which would block off a large chunk of ddos attack traffic originating from some guy's cablemodem in florida but with a source address of somewhere in argentina. The ISP should know where their traffic is supposed to be coming from and block anything that isn't.

Re:But how did they do it?

[Zeinfeld]

No, I doubt that the reason for blocking YouTube was motivated by the purported concern for the prophet.

Rather more likely is that this has something to do with the recent elections in Pakistan. The Musharaf just lost the election he had hoped would allow him to complete his transition from dictatorship to elected President. Instead he lost control of the process with the assassination of Bhutto.

Independent TV is a much bigger threat to the regime than independent press. Blogs have rather less credibility than actual video of a demonstration.

I suspect that the ISP chose this method of blocking the traffic for precisely the reason that it would cause the maximum notice. Implement a local block in Pakistan and the Pakistanis complain. Implement the block in such a way that it affects the whole region and you have so many more people working to circumvent the censorship.

BGP security has been a big concern for me for some time. In fact it is such a concern that it is one of the issues I did not address in my book on Internet crime precisely because I did not want to give people ideas.

Re:But how did they do it?

[Kozz]

My ! There's dancing cats on YouTube? What have I been doing with my life?

Re:But how did they do it?

[Shakrai]

I'd say anything more than 2-3 and you should be using dynamic routing. If a route goes down you want something that can find another path.. eg. we have 3 VPNs linked together using EIGRP

Even without alternative routes you can still make a case for dynamic routing being easier to deal with then static routing. We used OSPF at my old job even for links without redundant connections because it was just easier to deal with -- we could work on parts of our network without worrying about having to deal with the routing tables on that router three hops and two cities away.....

Setting it up in the first place was a headache (the old configuration was a hodgepodge of networks using static and dynamic routing) but we never regretted doing it. Made our lives that much easier.

Re:But how did they do it?

[Fatal67]

BGP does not rely on the honor system. Every provider has the ability to lock down announcements to the finest of detail. They may choose not to, but that's just piss poor network management.

Every External BGP session (EBGP) SHOULD be configured with a very specific access list as to what that particular session will be allowed to announce to you.

Obviously, tracking 20K plus announcements from a provider and creating an access list for it, daily, is a bit tedious. This is why Route Registries were created and many tools that will look up an AS in a route registry and generate the appropriate ACL are already in existence and in use. The problem is a lot of networks do not keep their registries up to date unless forced to by a peer / transit provider.

A correctly configured session will allow only announcements of the specified address space at the specified length. Any major transit provider that allowed this should be looking at their advertisement policy and figuring out how to prevent it in the future. Solutions do exist and are used by the majority of large providers already.

How the hell did /25's get propagated anyway? There are still transit networks that allow prefixes that small to be accepted externally?

Re:But how did they do it?

[spun]

But they arent immune from tea parties! Right. That's going to phase Pakistani leaders. "I say chums, let's protest this outrage by dumping their tea!" will be followed closely by the sound of gunshots, and silence. These aren't exactly Brits we're dealing with, "Oh no! Our tea! Whatever will we do?" isn't exactly the response I'd expect from them.

Re:But how did they do it?

[robfoo]

I second that! It sounds like a cool visualisation - especially to help explain to non-tech (or non-network admin!) people.

I could get to the site, but the java applet appears to be modal (or maybe it's my firefox), and then it tries to connect to some random port across the interwebs which I don't think my company's firewall is particularly kind towards..

Re:But how did they do it?

[kent_eh]

the POTS network has a routing protocol used to setup calls/announce which switch is responsible for which number/range. One would suspect that SS7 can be abused by "bad" telcos as easily as BGP can be abused by "bad" ISPs. It can and does happen.

Though it's usually caused by error rather than malice.

It doesn't take much to screw up call routing, usually by passing traffic to the wrong exchange which then either gets analyzed and sent on to it's correct destination via a longer-than-necessary route or ends up in a routing loop, and eventually chokes up the trunk group before the call fails.

Re:But how did they do it?

[Shakrai]

It doesn't take much to screw up call routing

Indeed. And I've seen some really great stuff happen since number portability came out. Case in point:

Friend has Time Warner's "digital phone" VoIP offering. Switches to Vonage to save money and ports her number. Now Time Warner customers are unable to call her number -- they get a generic error message. Everybody else gets through just fine.

Vonage refuses to do anything about it (their customer service really sucks, doesn't it?) because it's "Time Warner's problem". Time Warner refuses to do anything about it because "You aren't a customer anymore". My friend gets screwed.

Worst part is, there doesn't really seem to be any appeals process for this type of thing, other then leaving Vonage and going to a provider that would actually enforce her number portability rights. At least with regulated POTS service you could likely file a complaint with the state regulatory agency (the PSC here in New York) and get something done that way. No such avenue for people relying on VoIP products.

Re:But how did they do it?

[appleguru]

Here ya go :) (Might take a few minutes to come online)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBAnCsmf2A4

Re:But how did they do it?

[DimmO]

Needs a different word than "routers"
"cars"?

Re:But how did they do it?

[jcr]

Are you joking?

Well, some moderators apparently thought so.

-jcr

Re:But how did they do it?

[jcr]

This YouTube video is just anti-Islamic propaganda, and unrelated to the subjects at hand. Don't waste your time on it

Funny, but whenever someone tells me not to watch something, and especially when they go so far as to try to censor it, it makes me go and watch it. Call it the Anti-Scientology response.

-jcr

Re:But how did they do it?

[Jesus_666]

Interestingly, my ISP (Deutsche Telekom AG, AS3320) apparently didn't pick up the bad route. I don't know whether that's good, bad or pure coincidence...

Re:But how did they do it?

[skyz]

as it happens i was watching a 13 part series call 'esoteric agenda' on youtube and all of a sudden it went down - i had a moment there of thinking 'conspiracy theory censorship' - how odd with all concerns of WMD the real weapon of mass disruption is so easily assailed either by accident or with malicious intent

Re:But how did they do it?

[Shakrai]

"cars"?

Nah, it's not like a big truck see..... it's more like a series of tubes actually.

Re:But how did they do it?

[fm6]

Your video blasphemes the FSM! Take it down or die, you potato-eating infidel!

Re:But how did they do it?

[mikael_j]

He was first convicted of "Hets Mot Folkgrupp" (Swedish Hate speech law that makes it illegal to publicly make statements that threaten or expresse disrespect for an ethnic group or similar group regarding skin color, national/ethnic origin, faith or sexual orientation) by Kalmar Tingsrätt (lower level court) but was later acquitted by Göta Hovrätt (mid level court) who ruled that while he did break Swedish law a conviction by the court would most likely be overruled by the European Court of Human Rights.

/Mikael

Re:But how did they do it?

[greedyturtle]

Streisland Effect. But hey, forming your own opinion about something isn't really a waste of time.

CBG

[Zedekiah]

Worst. Title. Ever.

Re:CBG

[owlnation]

Worst. Title. Ever.

Closely followed by the award for most incomprehensible summary. I've re-read it twice. I have no idea what is happening. Seems Pakistan has destroyed the internet or something. Although, despite living in the People's Republic of (formerly Great) Britain, my internet seems to be working. I can even access YouTube.

Unless it's all a cunning plan by my Governemnt to make it seem like I can connect, but reality I'm behind Hadrian's Firewall and surfing the UK Intranet. Which, admittedly, knowing the UK Government is perfectly possible... All I know is living in the UK I'm in no position to criticize the Pakistanis, because their country is much freer than mine.

Re:CBG

[Shakrai]

Closely followed by the award for most incomprehensible summary. I've re-read it twice. I have no idea what is happening

Basically a Pakistani ISP decided to implement the block of Youtube by announcing a new route for the IP addresses owned by Youtube that presumably directed all of that traffic into /dev/null or elsewhere. By accident (one would presume -- there is no reason to do this on purpose) those routes were announced outside of Pakistan by said ISP, whose upstream provider then relayed them to the rest of the internet (sheer stupidity on their part -- their configuration should have prevented this). Said upstream provider then decided to cut Pakistan off until they are able to correct the problem.

All I know is living in the UK I'm in no position to criticize the Pakistanis, because their country is much freer than mine.

Yeah, I can't help but remember how Gordon Brown seized power in a military coup and allowed a leading member of the opposition to be brutally assassinated by extremists. It's amazing how far the UK has fallen, isn't it?

C'mon! As an American I can certainly sympathize with your disillusionment over your own Government's policies but get some perspective. It's not yet that bad. Freedom in the United States or United Kingdom isn't dead until people stop fighting for it and become as apathetic as you sound when you make statements like that.

Your country gave us the Common Law, the Magna Carta and the foundations of Representative Democracy. You stood alone against Hitler for all those lonely months between the Fall of France and the involvement of the Soviet Union and United States. That stand likely saved Western Democracy from Communism or Fascism. Start fighting for your freedoms instead of whining online about how much better Pakistan is. I suspect that the people fighting and dying for Democracy right now within Pakistan would have zero sympathy for your point of view.

Re:CBG

[TheRaven64]

Although, despite living in the People's Republic of (formerly Great) Britain, my internet seems to be working. I can even access YouTube Did you try yesterday? YouTube was offline yesterday from the UK when I tried from two unrelated ISPs.

Re:CBG

[Eli Gottlieb]

How, exactly, are citizens of the UK (and less so the USA) supposed to fight for their rights again?

Re:CBG

[xtracto]

Lol, is it me or nobody else here understood the joke:
Comic Book Guy

Re:CBG

[sacrilicious]

Freedom in the United States or United Kingdom isn't dead until people stop fighting for it and become as apathetic as you sound when you make statements like that.

Consider that reading someone's jaded apathy might be the very thing NEEDED to motivate people to fight. Right now, one of the huge problems is not exhaustion, but complacency... the battle is not yet well joined. For people to choose to fight, they have to believe something is wrong to start with.

Re:CBG

[robot_love]

Yes, I agree. It is the duty of the technorati to inform the population. I believe this is the great failing of the geeks of the world. We do not yet understand that we are the magicians from the fairy-tales. Our understanding of technology gives us insight in to issues and problems that many people just can't understand. And with that knowledge comes the ability and the duty to protect thoso who cannot understand the danger and have no defense against it.

Re:CBG

[cmclean]

Unless it's all a cunning plan by my Governemnt to make it seem like I can connect, but reality I'm behind Hadrian's Firewall and surfing the UK Intranet. Which, admittedly, knowing the UK Government is perfectly possible

Really? Are you sure you don't mean: "Which, admittedly, knowing the UK Government is unlikely as it's impossible for them to do something related to IT without ballsing it all up and spending skip-loads more taxpayer money than they promised (mostly to consultancy firms, with whom the MPs involved co-incidentally have board membership) then eventually dropping the whole thing after two years of laborious committee-based failuremongering blaming the sub-contractors for everything and giving CBEs to the management so they don't leak to the press"?

Re:CBG

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Yeah, I can't help but remember how Gordon Brown seized power in a military coup and allowed a leading member of the opposition to be brutally assassinated by extremists.

Brown didn't have to seize power in a military coup, as our entirely undemocratic electoral system gave it to him anyway. No-one ever voted for him or his administration, other than whatever internal politics may have happened within his party. His predecessor was elected on one of the smallest proportions of the popular vote in history, and even then it was on the basis of a clear promise that he would serve a full term (and therefore that people were explicitly not voting for a party that would have Brown as leader before the next general election). And yet, despite all of this, Brown now commands an absolute majority in Parliament.

As for assassination, we don't do that sort of thing yet. Well, unless you get on the Tube, anyway. Then it's OK for the police to shoot you, and face no real consequences. We don't silence government critics, either. Unless you're a long-standing member of the party and Holocaust survivor with the audacity to shout a one-word heckle during your party conference, in which case you must be removed by several heavies and then barred from re-entering as a terrorist threat. But don't worry, if you keep your head down you'll be fine. Unless someone mistakes your mobile phone for a gun, in which case you'll be arrested at gunpoint and have a permanent record placed on file of not only your DNA but also the fact that you were suspected of a firearms offence so if the police ever visit you in future they'll come with guns every time. Fortunately, we have the IPCC to challenge the police when they do abuse their authority, and the effectiveness of that particular check on the power of the elite is clearly demonstrated by the way 100 of their legal team just resigned in protest at the absurd incompetence/corruption in the organisation's leadership. Anyway, those records are just another precaution the government need to take, like wanting the DNA of every citizen on file. That solved a couple of murders this week! And it's never abused, and mistakes are never made with data. Unless you're one of 25,000,000 people whose personal data was lost by the child benefit people, say. That was only enough for any identity thief to completely take over someone's life, but don't worry, we have an Information Commissioner to help ensure personal data is properly handled, even if his department is massively underfunded and when he warns about all these problems with the surveillance/database state people nod but nothing changes. And hey, even if that fails, we can just declare an arbitrary state of emergency, at which point the law says the government can restrict freedom of movement and association, confiscate property without compensation, and all sorts of other things in violation of what we used to call basic human rights.

So no, it's not really a free country we live in. The state can and has killed people, silenced critics, and instituted quite literally the most privacy-invading surveillance regime in the world. There is way too much summary justice and far too few checks and balances that still carry any real weight if you find yourself on the wrong side of the system because someone made a mistake. And neither the political leaders nor their instruments in the police and security services have any real accountability to the people for any of it. The only difference between the current regime in the UK and some of the more obviously abusive ones in other countries is one of scale.

For whatever it's worth, some of us in the UK do still care about democracy, privacy, freedom and the like. But the kind of principled leadership that once led to fighting the good fight and establishing basic laws in the interests of justice such as those you mentioned has been sadly lacking of late. Until we can get rid of the current wave of unrepresentative politics,

Re:CBG

[Shakrai]

How, exactly, are citizens of the UK (and less so the USA) supposed to fight for their rights again?

Maybe by using the freedom of speech that our forefathers died to give us? Maybe by holding our Congressman/MPs accountable to the voters instead of the corporations/lobbyists that donated money to their political campaigns? Maybe by doing what we can to limit the power of the party (be it the Republican/Conservative/Democratic/Labour one) at the expense of the people? Maybe by getting people involved in the process again?

I'm working with the Barack Obama campaign here in the United States. He has generated a lot of excitement and gotten a lot of new people involved with politics. One of the things that I'm trying to do is encourage all of those people to remain involved with the political process after the election. We can bemoan the state of affairs in Washington/London until we are blue in the face but nobody has bothered getting involved with the process and trying to change that state of affairs. If there is anything that we should have learned from the past it's that our involvement with Representative Democracy does not end at the ballot box.

Re:CBG

[Shakrai]

Woah... time to dust off your history book.

After the French Armistice on 22 June 1940 the UK, alongside the Commonwealth (Canada, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa) was the sole remaining major power that was still fighting Nazi Germany. She did fight alongside the other nations that were invaded (Greece comes to mind) but those nations capitulated fairly quickly, leaving the UK to fight on alone.

The UK remained alone until the launch of Barbarossa exactly one year (22 June 1941) after the signing of the French Armistice. Even at that, it seemed likely (at the time) that Germany would beat the Soviet Union and Churchill wasn't sure the Allies would win until after Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war.

So yes, I give the UK a lot of respect for standing alone against the Nazi War Machine during that period. It was arguably the finest moment in British history and likely saved the Western Democracies from becoming conquered slave-states to Nazi Germany or Communist Satellites of the Soviet Union.

Re:CBG

[Paradise Pete]

As a britt living in the US I have to say. "Here freaking Here".

I can understand Americans not knowing any better, but you guys invented "hear hear," so I'd have expected a Brit to know better. But then of course I'd also expect him to write Brit, not britt. Are you sure you're British?

Re:CBG

[Maxo-Texas]

Thank you...

It is going pretty much the same in the US.

My "vote" has mattered *one* time in over 20 years. Every other time, the system is so gerrymandered that it doesn't matter if I vote for or against someone/something.

The federal government is basically becoming a fascist dictatorship and we are rapidly growing a "noble" class with different rights and privileges than the "wage slave" class. Capitalism has been restructured to create a slave state for most people- giving the illusion of just enough freedom and control to prevent them from revolting.

Re:CBG

[mike2R]

This is more than a little silly:

Brown didn't have to seize power in a military coup, as our entirely undemocratic electoral system gave it to him anyway. No-one ever voted for him or his administration, other than whatever internal politics may have happened within his party.

He's an elected Member of Parliament, and supported by a majority in the Commons, which makes him Prime Minister. He could be turfed out tomorrow if he loses a motion of confidence, and parlimentary elections MUST take place by 2011.

His predecessor was elected on one of the smallest proportions of the popular vote in history,

OK, the first past the post system can throw out some weird results, and Labour does happen to get the best of them. Sixteen years of Tory government hints that this isn't a huge issue however.

and even then it was on the basis of a clear promise that he would serve a full term (and therefore that people were explicitly not voting for a party that would have Brown as leader before the next general election).

That is an issue of whether the Labour party has broken a commitment - this can be judged by voters at the next election or by MPs any time.

Well, unless you get on the Tube, anyway. Then it's OK for the police to shoot you, and face no real consequences.

That was horrendous I agree, and the investigation after it not a great deal better. That said, it did happen 1 day after an attempted suicide bombing of the tube, and 1 month after a successful one. If the police where ever going to overreact it was then.

Unless you're a long-standing member of the party and Holocaust survivor with the audacity to shout a one-word heckle during your party conference, in which case you must be removed by several heavies and then barred from re-entering as a terrorist threat.

And will later be featured on national news, and (even before that) receive a grovelling apology from the Home Secretary. The reason that one went away was because the apology was accepted - maybe it shouldn't been but as you said the chap was a lifelong Labour member, and he can make his own decisions.

Agree with you on the DNA thing, but you don't help your argument by starting off with a badly supported rant.

Re:CBG

[Ulven]

Brown didn't have to seize power in a military coup, as our entirely undemocratic electoral system gave it to him anyway. No-one ever voted for him or his administration, other than whatever internal politics may have happened within his party.

This always slightly irritates me.

We don't vote for a particular person other than our local mp, who may or may not be labour

If enough labour mps are voted in, we get a labour government

At no point do we vote for Tony Blair, or Gordon Brown.

So while saying 'No one voted for Brown' is true, it is also beside the point, as that isn't how the system works.

The rest of your post is fine, and I don't pretty much agree with it.

Re:CBG

[Shakrai]

My "vote" has mattered *one* time in over 20 years. Every other time, the system is so gerrymandered that it doesn't matter if I vote for or against someone/something.

Then get off your ass and fight to change it. You don't like Gerrymandering? Take it up with your state legislature, not your Congressman or US Senator. Your state representative(s) refuse(s) to listen to you? Then take it up with the voters in his district. Think that's too big of a task? Then start doing something on the county/city level. Find a candidate somewhere for some office (anything from dogcatcher to President) that sees what's going on and SUPPORT him or her. All politics are local and local politics allow individual voters to make a meaningful difference.

One man might not be able to make as much of a difference in an election for Congress or statewide office but you can make a difference on a local level. And that's ultimately where we are going to have to start. It's not going to be quick and it's not going to be easy but it is worth doing.

Capitalism has been restructured to create a slave state for most people- giving the illusion of just enough freedom and control to prevent them from revolting.

Then start convincing people of this fact and get them to "revolt". You still have your freedom of speech in both the UK and the US the last time I checked. The only reason that cooperate interests have so much power in Washington (and London?) is because the population isn't paying attention. Work to change that.

Re:CBG

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I'd accept your argument if people voted for their local MP in their own right, but most people don't. Instead, they vote for the candidate put forward by a particular political party because of the party affiliation, and the choice of party by the voter is greatly influenced by the leadership in place, as indeed are the policies of the party at that time.

In other words, while officially we vote for MPs, in practice almost everyone votes for a certain party. Claiming otherwise is like claiming Labour have a mandate because all those Labour MPs got in, even though they're doing things that most of the population don't support and a substantial majority of the population who voted at the past election opted for parties who don't support those actions. The rules say that Labour can do those things anyway, but that just demonstrates that the rules are broken.

Re:CBG

[The End Of Days]

I can't tell if you're joking or just really full of yourself.

Re:CBG

[Cederic]

You mention Bloody Sunday yet omit the Omagh bombing which killed more people. You mention shoot-to-kill yet fail to mention the Australian backpackers killed by an IRA bomb in Holland. You mention internment without trial yet fail to mention kneecapping, the murder of informants, the Remembrance Day bombing of Enniskillen..

At least share both sides of the story. The British behaviour in Ireland may not be admirable but the actions of the Irish are at least as bad.

Re:CBG

[afidel]

You must have missed the part of history class where they taught about the Lend-Lease Act. The US was very much involved in the war starting in March of 1941, we might not have had boots on the ground but without our help the UK wouldn't have stood much of a chance. Even before the formal act the US had been sending quite a lot of supplies to the UK under various other programs.

Re:CBG

[sacrilicious]

Becoming apathetic is never a good thing

I'm not sure. My (admittedly speculative) point is that it's possible that some critical mass of a population becoming vocally unhappy might spark a wider-spread awareness of -- and resistance to -- whatever issue is at hand; and apathy is a form of unhappiness. This theory would probably apply to situations where the variety of oppression is subtle or non-obvious... e.g. technological or financial oppression, rather than street-level warfare.

Seriously, "Pakistan is more free than the UK"? How else should I respond to that type of statement?

I wasn't trying to suggest support or opposition to parts of your response other than the part I quoted.

people aren't shooting us when we try to change the course of our nations.

Mostly true, the troubling spate of recent tasings aside. Though this won't be a validation of our government's restraint until people engage in protests on a large scale... *then* we can talk about who does or doesn't get shot.

Re:CBG

[Shakrai]

You must have missed the part of history class where they taught about the Lend-Lease Act. The US was very much involved in the war starting in March of 1941, we might not have had boots on the ground but without our help the UK wouldn't have stood much of a chance.

And you must have missed the part of history class where they taught that the Battle of Britain started in June 1940, nine months prior to the passage of Lend-Lease.

Seriously though even if Lend-Lease/other assistance (destroyers for bases comes to mind) was the sole thing that keep the Brits going, how does that diminish the bravery that they showed in continuing to fight on alone? They could have easily sought an armistice and probably would have emerged better off for doing so (the Empire would have survived instead of being bankrupted). The free world owes them a debt of gratitude for carrying on that fight even when things looked pretty bleak.

Re:CBG

[Tony Hoyle]

But crucially we don't vote for the PM. The PM is just the leader of the party in power - they can be booted out by their own party (like Thatcher was, for example, and replaced by John Major) and the party stays in power.

The transition of power from Blair to Brown was more orderly than the usually stab-me-in-the-back politics we see, but it wasn't any kind of departure from the way the system has always worked.

In general it's Local Election == Vote for local MP, General Election == Vote for government you want in power - the two aren't always the same answer.

Re:CBG

[Shakrai]

But Britain is one big surveillance society

Then vote your damn Government out of power until they find some balance on this issue and stop building the surveillance soceity. You do still have the right to vote, don't you? Does every political party in the UK support the surveillance soceity?

Sometimes I think I would consider Pakistan versus being watched ALL THE TIME while I'm outside to be a wash.

Would you still think that if you were a woman? How about an lawyer/jurist opposed to Musharraf? Can you not still speak out against the "surveillance soceity" without being censored or punished for doing so?

It's somewhat ironic but I think the UK set the stage for this when you neutered the House of Lords. One of the things our founding fathers worried about was mob rule -- that's why they created the Senate to "cool the passions of the House" and slow the progress of legislation (to be fair, it was also a compromise between the small states and large ones).

Having an un-elected Upper House full of people who only got there based on family name might not have been ideal -- but at least it was some sort of check on the power of the Commons. The only remaining check now is one that will never be used -- the withholding of Royal Assent.

Re:CBG

[danigiri]

"So yes, I give the UK a lot of respect for standing alone against the Nazi War Machine during that period."

Indeed, they do deserve that credit.

But what about, you know, the little ones the Nazis did their war beta-testing with? I quote Wikipedia on the Spanish Civil War:
"[...] became in some cases a world war by proxy, with Germany in particular using the war as a rehearsal for many of the blitzkrieg tactics it later used in the war in Europe."

Just a sample where 22 tons of bombing "tests" were performed:
"The bombing of Guernica was an aerial attack on April 26, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War by planes of the German Luftwaffe "Condor Legion" and subordinate Italian Fascists from the Corpo Truppe Volontarie expeditionary force organized as Aviazione Legionaria. The raid was called Operation Rügen and resulted in widespread destruction and civilian deaths in the Republican held town of Guernica in the Basque Country."

Oh, and later on, no one did come to liberate us or anything. We should be getting some kudos as well, we did live 36 years of dictatorship under the Nazi beta-tester friends. The dictator was actually alive and the dictatorship in place when I was born.

Actually, as an extra bit of trivia, it was an MI6 officer who flew the soon-to-be dictator to Morocco to run the war:
" A British MI6 intelligence agent, Major Hugh Pollard, then flew Franco to Spanish Morocco [...]"

I do think we deserve kudos as well and we didn't get the USA nor Britain nor France to help...

Re:CBG

[mweather]

"Yeah, I can't help but remember how Gordon Brown seized power in a military coup and allowed a leading member of the opposition to be brutally assassinated by extremists. It's amazing how far the UK has fallen, isn't it?" Freedom != Democracy

Re:CBG

[Shakrai]

Are you sure you're British?

Maybe he's been in the states too long?

Quick, I need all Brits and Americans to fill out the following test to confirm their country of origin. No other nationality need apply -- you don't count anyway ;) (honorable exceptions: Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other members of the Commonwealth of Nations, as well as US and UK overseas territories)

• Color or Colour?
• Fries or Chips?
• Right side of the road or left?
• TV or Telly?
• Soccer or Football?
• New York Post or The Sun?
• Would rather reconquer: Panama Canal or Suez Canal?
• Hate metric system because: "My car gets forty rods to the hogshead" or "Beer is sold in pints!"
• Favorite Former-Colony: The Philippines or India?
• Favorite Last Stand against the Natives: Little Big Horn or Isandlwana?
• Most annoying ally: France or France?

(My apologies to my French friends.... couldn't resist the last one ;)

Re:CBG

[Shakrai]

Freedom != Democracy

Nope, it doesn't. But Democracy usually comes with the following rights that you'll find sorely lacking in modern-day Pakistan: Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, an independent judiciary and civilian control over the military. I could keep going but hopefully I've made my point.

There might be some benevolent monarchies left in the World where the citizens are more or less free without true democracy (maybe Jordan?) but I don't think you can make that case that Pakistan is one of them. Not while the nation is led by a man that seized power in a military coup and who routinely flaunts the orders of the Supreme Court.

Re:CBG

[Anthony]

What, no takers? As a colonial, I will have a go.

• Color or Colour?
  Colour (let me emphasise that :-)
• Fries or Chips?
  Chips
• Right side of the road or left?
  Left
• TV or Telly?
  
• TV
• Soccer or Football?
  Soccer
• New York Post or The Sun?
  Daily Telegraph is crap as well.
• Would rather reconquer: Panama Canal or Suez Canal?
  None of the above
• Hate metric system because: "My car gets forty rods to the hogshead" or "Beer is sold in pints!"
  The best beer is sold in pints, but love the metric system.
• Favorite Former-Colony: The Philippines or India?
  Western Samoa
• Favorite Last Stand against the Natives: Little Big Horn or Isandlwana?
  
• Isandlwana
• Most annoying ally: France or France?
  US

Re:CBG

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I know how the system works. I am simply claiming that it does not lead to representative government with a legitimate mandate to act on behalf of the electorate, and that in this respect the current situation in the UK is no better than the various unsavoury regimes mentioned in this discussion.

Re:CBG

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

He's an elected Member of Parliament, and supported by a majority in the Commons, which makes him Prime Minister.

Yes it does, but it doesn't give him any sort of popular mandate to act for the people of this country.

He could be turfed out tomorrow if he loses a motion of confidence, and parlimentary elections MUST take place by 2011.

He could be turfed out if MPs kicked him out in a vote of no confidence, but those MPs have a vested interest in not forcing such a vote since it will most likely be damaging to their careers. As for elections, I submit that any system where someone can become leader of a nation without a public vote and then enjoy that authority without any possibility of public accountability for nearly four years is far from democratic or representative. It's just another one of those handy average-of-averages political systems where the guys in power get to keep tweaking the rules so they stay in power longer, even when a substantial majority of the electorate wish otherwise.

OK, the first past the post system can throw out some weird results, and Labour does happen to get the best of them. Sixteen years of Tory government hints that this isn't a huge issue however.

On the contrary. The fact that we had sixteen years of Tory rule breaking things one way, to the point where Labour won a landslide and then we had a decade of them breaking things another way, to me says that this very much is a huge issue. There has to be some sort of balance in practical politics, and a never-ending "boom and bust" cycle — though which is which depends on your political views — where policies constantly flip-flop isn't really in the long-term interests of anyone.

Re:CBG

[mike2R]

Yes it does, but it doesn't give him any sort of popular mandate to act for the people of this country.

But the government is formed by the largest party in the Commons (realistically one with a majority). The fact the Blair left and Brown came in doesn't change the fact that Labour won a majority at the last election and has the right to form a government.

Now you can say that Brown should have called an election - many people do and he certainly thought about it for long enough, but at the end of the day that is not a sensible *requirement* to have in a parliamentary system. In other circumstances it might have been necessary for him to go to the country, but he decided not to and his party supported him in it to the extent that he still has a working majority. It may cost them some votes come next election, but I imagine they decided that everyone and their dog knew Gordon had been scratching at the walls of number 10 for years, and would not feel particularly ill-used when he got in (I remember the Tories trialling a campaign slogan of "Vote Blair, Get Brown" at the last election, and quickly abandoning it when polling showed many people didn't mind this at all).

The fact that we had sixteen years of Tory rule breaking things one way, to the point where Labour won a landslide and then we had a decade of them breaking things another way, to me says that this very much is a huge issue.

Labour have an advantage in terms of demographics is what I meant - it's just the way that the constituencies work out; it is easier for Labour to get a majority than the Tories. The fact that we had a 16 year Conservative government shows that despite this Labour cannot govern without popular support. Let's face it, '97 was hardly a case of things "breaking the other way", it was a truly major political sea change.

where policies constantly flip-flop isn't really in the long-term interests of anyone.

While that might be true, in some cases at least, it's hardly the call of the democrat...

If you're arguing for proportional representation then you may have a point - I'm not sure where I stand on that myself. There are obvious benefits, but our entire system is premised on the fact that a single party will normally command a working majority. I think a hung parliament around about now would probably do us good, but we'd have to pretty much redesign British politics from the ground up if we were to move into an era of perpetual coalitions, and while this may sound attractive it does mean several decades of getting it blatantly wrong before we figure it out.

Re:CBG

[mjwx]

You must have missed the part of history class where they taught about the Lend-Lease Act

. As another poster pointed out, you have missed the part that the Lend-Lease program didn't start until 1941. Also you forget that President Roosevelt repeatedly turned down Churchill's requests to purchase the "oldest destroyers" from the US as popular opinion was not to get involved in another European war. The first request was made in march 1940, the Destroyers for bases agreement was not made until September, the order (50 oldest destroyers) was not completed until mid 1941. Most of the destroyers were so old that they needed to be refitted with modern (WWII) anti-submarine and anti-aircraft weapons before being put into service. Whist refitting old destroyers was cheaper and faster than building new ones, one third of this fleet did not see service until 1942, after the "first happy time" had ended.

US sentiment was against fighting Nazi Germany despite the fact that US merchant vessels were being sunk as early as August 1940 and US Naval vessels were targeted in the second half of 1941. Nazi Germany repeatedly offered Britain peace and full sovereignty (no conditions of peace treaty) as Hitler had intended to find his Lebensraum in Eastern Europe (even conquering France was not in Hitler's original plan), Churchill and the British people steadfastly refused peace with the Nazi's and withstood the full brunt of the Luftwaffe and Krigsmarine for nearly a year before US supplies started appearing and nearly two years before the US entered the war. Many Americans don't give their allies enough credit, the battle for Africa was practically over before the US arrived and in Rommell's retreat from the British he rolled right through an unprepared US force at the Kasserine Pass (important lessons were learnt by the US forces there).

Hitler had no way of actually getting land forces from Europe to Britain. The Krigsmarines fleet of transports consisted entirely converted river barges which couldn't survive a channel crossing even if the Royal Navy wasn't and issue, the Falschimjager (spelling) would have been unable to conquer a port in great Brittan without armoured support (backbone of the Wermacht and Waffen SS) and the Nazi's had no such thing as an amphibious tank (All German tanks were far too heavy to be converted into DD tanks like Sherman's were). The popular American belief that the US saved Britain is a myth, in the worst case scenario Churchill would have been forced to sue for peace with Hitler whist still maintaining their sovereignty and the soviets would have lost 30m rather than 20m in their march to Paris.

Also, on the Pacific front, the Chinese resistance were fighting the Japanese for years before WWII started, Australian and New Zealand forces halted the Japanese land advances on Bouganville and Papua New Guinea without US assistance whist the majority of the Japanese land force spent the rest of the war fighting the Indian and Nepalese forces around Burma whilst the US Pacific fleet took care of the Japanese navy.

Group of note during 1940 to 1942. US volunteer pilots. Britain could build Spitfires faster than Germany could destroy them, the RAF's problem was it could not train fighter pilots fast enough. In contrast the Luftwaffe could train 900 pilots a quarter but could only build 600 planes. Also, US volunteers that comprised the Flying Tigers in China, without whom the US would have been completely unprepared to fight the Japanese air force.

Re:CBG

[Shakrai]

Thank you. The GP seemed to believe that the United States was the sole savior of the UK. I'm an American but even I'll admit that really wasn't even remotely the case. The United States contributed what it could (given the political position that FDR was in) at the time but it didn't really amount to much until 1942 at the earliest and even that was at the expense of commitments in the Pacific Theater (the Allies agreed on Europe First as a strategy). Meanwhile the UK had been fighting the Germans alone for most of two years and alongside the Soviets for just a few months. Both nations had already suffered dearly by that point.

This idea that the United States had limitless resources and everything was a downhill march towards victory after December 7th is a myth. Real contribution in Europe didn't happen until the invasion of Italy -- the decisive intervention didn't happen until D-Day. In the Pacific it was mainly a holding action (with some incredible and hard-fought victories, like Midway and Guadalcanal) until 1944 (Battle of Saipan, and the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot) when we really went on the offensive.

in the worst case scenario Churchill would have been forced to sue for peace with Hitler whist still maintaining their sovereignty and the soviets would have lost 30m rather than 20m in their march to Paris

That would have been a disaster for history. Though I question if the Germans wouldn't have been able to defeat the Soviet Union if it wasn't for having to keep units in the West and the commitments in Africa. It would have definitely gone on a lot longer either way -- and many more would have died, as you pointed out. It's a damn good thing that the UK stayed in the war.

the Chinese resistance were fighting the Japanese for years before WWII started

That's one of the things that brought the United States into the war. We tried to leverage economic power (in the form of an oil embargo, amongst other measures) against the Japanese for their actions in China. And they came after us for doing it.

Australian and New Zealand forces halted the Japanese land advances on Bouganville and Papua New Guinea without US assistance whist the majority of the Japanese land force spent the rest of the war fighting the Indian and Nepalese forces around Burma whilst the US Pacific fleet took care of the Japanese navy.

A loss at Coral Sea could have been very disastrous for Australia. As in the other theaters it was the contribution of all the Allies that saved Western Democracy. I think a lot of people (on both sides) forget that.

Re:CBG

[Shakrai]

Hey, to my regret I've never been down to Australia (one day!) but in the spirit of Anglo-American global domination let me try and create a test specifically for you:

• Conservative Media Tycoon: Rupert Murdoch or Rupert Murdoch?
• Reason for leaving the Mother Country: "Needed to follow Puritan lifestyle" or "Better than the gallows"?
• National landmark that must appear on all tourist merchandise: Statue of Liberty or Sydney Opera House?
• Scary Conservative Guy: George W. Bush or John Howard?
• Crappiest Beer most known for even though few people back home like it: Budweiser or Fosters?
• Annoying Anglosphere neighbor who should be 51st/7th state: Canada or New Zealand?
• Name of Native Peoples with surprisingly weak immune systems: Native Americans or Aborigines?
• Birth of Nation in Battle: Lexington/Concord or Gallipoli?
• Defining Historical Moment: "Entering the war late on the right side and taking all the credit" or "Standing with Commonwealth Allies in a global fight for freedom from day 1"?

Enjoy ;)

Re:CBG

[mjwx]

I'm an Australian and I'll be the first to admit that the US was the key contributor for the favourable outcome to WWII, I have always said that the war was fought in two halves, before and after the US had joined. The addition of US manpower and manufacturing allowed us to build up our collective forces and bring decisive and overwhelming force on all fronts simultaneously prior to which most fronts were fighting defensively (Africa is really the only exception).

Without the pacific fleet the Imperial Japanese navy would have had free run of the Pacific and Indian oceans. The RN and the RAN (Royal Australian Navy) would not have had sufficient forces to deal with the Japanese carriers. whist they could have done an enormous amount of damage to Australia's Northern coast, they would have found it difficult to hit Sydney, Melbourne or Adelaide which were our production centres, Darwin was a stretch for Japanese long range bombers, they weren't able to do extensive damage. Remember that geographically Australia is as big as the US. It is far more likely that the Japanese fleet would have been deployed on the Indian front where most of the Dominion troops were fighting.

In the Pacific it was mainly a holding action (with some incredible and hard-fought victories, like Midway and Guadalcanal) until 1944 (Battle of Saipan, and the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot) when we really went on the offensive.

. British dominion forces had a few key victories before then, chief among them was in Papua new Guinea, called the Kokoda Trail from Jun 1942 to Jan 1943. PNG is one of the closest Islands to Australia so ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corp) troops were in the situation of if they failed there, no-one would be left to defend Australia. Japanese supply lines were over extended by constant fighting and ANZAC forces were able to break the back of the Japanese forcing them to retreat and by Jan 1943 forced them off of Papua New Guinea itself. It was a protracted 6 month battle in appalling jungle conditions where almost every man suffered from malaria and dysentery (on both sides). Coupled with victories like midway this was the end of Japanese expansion in Asia.

As you said, the war was fought as allies which is the greatest factor in our victory and prosperity since WWII.

Re:CBG

[Shakrai]

chief among them was in Papua new Guinea, called the Kokoda Trail from Jun 1942 to Jan 1943. PNG is one of the closest Islands to Australia so ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corp) troops were in the situation of if they failed there, no-one would be left to defend Australia. Japanese supply lines were over extended by constant fighting and ANZAC forces were able to break the back of the Japanese forcing them to retreat and by Jan 1943 forced them off of Papua New Guinea itself. It was a protracted 6 month battle in appalling jungle conditions where almost every man suffered from malaria and dysentery (on both sides). Coupled with victories like midway this was the end of Japanese expansion in Asia

Don't forget the Battle of the Coral Sea. If the Japanese had taken Port Moresby that whole campaign would probably have turned out much differently. In the end that's as important as what was achieved at Midway.

As you said, the war was fought as allies which is the greatest factor in our victory and prosperity since WWII.

Hear hear!

Re:CBG

[mjwx]

FYI, Port Moresby was at the end of the Kokoda trail, it was exactly the place the ANZAC's were trying to prevent the Japanese land forces from getting to. Had either force failed things would have not gone well.

Re:CBG

[Anthony]

I did. ;-) Seems you have done your research.

How Does One ISP Poison Everything?

[Apple Acolyte]

The first poster to account properly for what happened to our precious "Internets" infrastructure will get a ton of karma.

Re:How Does One ISP Poison Everything?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's what the BBC have to say about it.
It goes some way to explaining why YouTube became unavailable, but doesn't go into detail.

Re:How Does One ISP Poison Everything?

[Mikkeles]

Border Gateway Protocol.

See here and here for details.

Basically, the Pakistan ISP told the internet world to redirect elsewhere all packets destined for Youtube.

Re:How Does One ISP Poison Everything?

[Apple Acolyte]

Thank you, Mikkeles. So is it possible for any major provider to do this to any site on the planet? And if so, isn't the Internet a lot more vulnerable to attack by rogue entities than it should be?

Re:How Does One ISP Poison Everything?

[Klaus_1250]

That still doesn't cut it for a complete explanation. I cannot imagine that BGP allows IP-address hijacking; how can a Pakistani ISP tell the rest of the world what to do with packets destined for YouTube? They don't have any authority over that resource/address-space, so how and why are they allowed to create a black hole affecting the entire net?

Re:How Does One ISP Poison Everything?

[Mikkeles]

So is it possible for any major provider to do this to any site on the planet?
Yes (if they're major enow to be an AS).

And if so, isn't the Internet a lot more vulnerable to attack by rogue entities than it should be?
Well, I think so. It's roughly the same line of idiocy that thinks downloading executable format files and running them automatically is the best thing since sliced bread! (Sorry, no car analogy ;^)

Re:How Does One ISP Poison Everything?

[Shakrai]

I cannot imagine that BGP allows IP-address hijacking

That's exactly what it allows, if your upstream provider isn't smart enough to filter the routes that you are allowed to announce. In theory your upstream provider won't accept any routes for IP addresses you don't own. In practice that isn't always the case, apparently.

They don't have any authority over that resource/address-space, so how and why are they allowed to create a black hole affecting the entire net?

Because their upstream provider is apparently too stupid or lazy to filter the networks they can announce. Once you get to a certain point (peering links between Tier 1 providers for example) it may be easier to just trust the people you are peering with and accept everything -- but to accept all routes announced by a leaf link is just plain stupidity. I'm really kind of surprised that this happened.

Re:How Does One ISP Poison Everything?

[dumb_jedi]

To understand why Pakistan took Youtube out, you have to first read the SourceOfAllHumanKnoledge(tm)(c) Wikipedia articles mentioned above. For the lazy ( like me ) here goest a shorter explanation.

BGP is the core routing protocol of the Internet. It's used to connect really big blocks of IP address to the net, telling the rest of the Internet how to reach them. For BGP to work, all BGPs routers have to be connected to one another in a mesh network ( TCP connections ) and must have a unique number in this mesh. This number is unique in the world and is assigned by IANA. ISPs that have such number have the "power" to change global routes, and this nutball Pakistani ISP is one of them. What they did was to tell the internet, by updating a global route, that the route to Youtube is now through some router they had.

What they expected is obvious, they wanted toi redirect all request to Youtube to another site. But instead of propagating a new route to the INSIDE of their network, they updated a global route and screwed everything. Ok, they could have just changed an DNS entry and redirected all DNS queries to their DNS server, thus negating the workaround of using OpenDNS.

If they knew the consequences of changing the route is only relevant on the lawsuite Youtube should put on them. They should loose they AS number immediately. And someone should redraft RFC 4271 to give routes an "owner", so If you receive a update on your router from someone not the owner you just discard it. In this way, an router can only update their give block.

Re:How Does One ISP Poison Everything?

[petermgreen]

I cannot imagine that BGP allows IP-address hijacking
BGP allows routers to negotiate the best path to a destination, to do this peers must accept route information from each other the level of trust placed in a router by another router depends on the configuration.

If you are a small customer your upstream is likely to put filters on you to make sure you can't announce prefixes you don't own.

If you are a major ISP doing that would start to get impractical. Many customers will buy thier service off you and customers are likely to come and go on a fairly regular basis. Having to get your upstream and peers to manually unblock every route you announce would be a major PITA and unless they actively checked everyone (completely impracical) it wouldn't help much anyway. So your upstream just trusts you.

Re:How Does One ISP Poison Everything?

[budgenator]

Bloody Hell, first 5 cables get cut by sharks with fricken lasers on their heads,now this! A reasonable person might have thought "what else could go wrong?" to accept all routes announced by a leaf link is just plain stupidity. I'm really kind of surprised that this happened. I'm not, I'm not pretending that I could have predicted it but it is a logical extension of current events that the intelligence community should have been watching for, don't we pay them to be that paranoid?

Re:How Does One ISP Poison Everything?

[Apu]

And someone should redraft RFC 4271 to give routes an "owner", so If you receive a update on your router from someone not the owner you just discard it. In this way, an router can only update their give block.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you mean. But, as I understand your proposal, you would break a common use for BGP routing: multi-homing.

ISP A "owns" IP addresses/routes including 1.1.1.0/24 which they let Customer C use since Customer C has a connectivity from them. ISP B "owns" 2.2.2.0/24 and they let Customer C use it because C has connectivity from them.

C runs BGP routing so they can still be reached if either of the two lines go down. They advertise 1.1.1.0/24 and 2.2.2.0/24 to both providers and, even if the link to A goes down, the 1.1.1.0/24 machines can be reached via B and the 2.2.2.0/24 machines can be reached via A. They also get faster access to A and B's other customers since a user connected to B won't have to go through X, Y and Z to get to A and then to C; they can just talk to B and then to C.

Now, if only the "owner" can advertise routes, then C can't advertise A's IP addresses to B and B's addresses to A. No more multi-homing and now you're back to relying on A to be up 100% of the time if you want to reach 1.1.1.0/24.

Okay, so "C" gets permission to advertise A's routes as part of their contract for connectivity. But B is a competitor to A and its not in A's interest to let them advertise their routes when they can just make C pay for more connectivity to A as redundancy. So now B can't advertise the 1.1.1.0/24 route since they don't own it. Now, when A goes down, B can reach 1.1.1.0/24 because C told them about it. But nobody else can because B isn't allowed to tell anyone else.

The answer isn't "ownership" of routes. The answer is to use the filtering mechanisms already in the spec and think about what routes you are accepting from (and sending to) others. Of course, when the PHB is breathing on your neck to get the change made now, even the best plans can fall apart unless the other party is being responsible about what they are accepting (and sending) as well.

PieNet?

[UncleWilly]

I love it!

A more technical explanation/discussion is here

[br00tus]

There is a NANOG thread about this. Apparently a more specific IP route was advertised.

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

[Fenice]

Still, if the country's screwing up global routes, cut off their access.

This must be exactly the pakistanese government is dreaming of...

Orignal story is outdated

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot has happened since the original story was written.

It's too bad that my comment from yesterday, which links to detailed technical information, is still languishing buried.

Re:Orignal story is outdated

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Registering a nick may help with that 'buried' problem...

Re:Orignal story is outdated

[rs79]

No that's ok it's slashdotted anyway, at least as of this moment.

PieNet fights back

[proverbialcow]

The PieNet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. PieNet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.

Re:PieNet fights back

[proverbialcow]

Sarah: [narrating] Dyson listened while the Terminator laid it all down: PieNet, Judgment Day, the history of things to come. It's not everyday you hear that you're responsible for 3,141,592,653 deaths. He took it pretty well.

Miles Dyson: I feel like I'm gonna throw up.

John: Too much pie? Do you need some Redi-chill?

T-1: Cool Whip, dickwad.

Re:PieNet fights back

[kutuz_off]

>> It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.

You got the wrong time and date. It was March 14, 1:59:26 p.m

Re:PieNet fights back

[proverbialcow]

I know, but it's a mistake I rectified in my follow-up post.

Hey, we can use this!

[elrous0]

If we can convince the Bush administration that T-E-R-R-O-R-I-S-T-S could use this to cyber attack us, maybe we can get them on the side of good for once!

"malicious" routes

[br00tus]

I should also note that while the Slashdot story says these routes were maliciously announced, there is no evidence of this. This type of thing has happened before by accident many times. That it was accidental makes more sense anyhow - which is more probable, that there are a bunch of network wizards in Pakistan with state-of-the-art equipment decided to take out Youtube, or that a handful of overworked and undereducated network technicians in Pakistan were told by management that they had to block Youtube immediately, and in their haste their blocked route accidentally leaked to the outside world? I would say the latter, especially considering that they stopped advertising the route soon after they began getting a lot of complaints.

I should also point out that while bureaucrats in Pakistan may be bone-headed for blocking content, companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, Cisco and so forth are the ones who built things like the "Great Firewall of China". Lots of Americans like the point their finger at governments like China, whereas they could actually have more of an effect in making companies in their own countries stop building this sort of stuff.

Re:"malicious" routes

[seanadams.com]

That it was accidental makes more sense anyhow - which is more probable, that there are a bunch of network wizards in Pakistan with state-of-the-art equipment decided to take out Youtube, or that a handful of overworked and undereducated network technicians in Pakistan were told by management that they had to block Youtube immediately, and in their haste their blocked route accidentally leaked to the outside world? I would say the latter, especially considering that they stopped advertising the route soon after they began getting a lot of complaints.

It matters not. You can do whatever you want within your borders, but the moment you start fucking up the rest of the internet is the moment that the rest of the internet needs to SHUT YOU OFF. If you're going to do something as retarded as this in your own network, you'd better be damn sure it doesn't leak out, and you should be severely punished if it does.

This needs to entail serious repercussions to discourage them or anyone else from trying things like this in the future. I'd say for a start, take the whole god damned country offline for a week and see if the King gets the point then.

Re:"malicious" routes

[garett_spencley]

"This needs to entail serious repercussions to discourage them or anyone else from trying things like this in the future. I'd say for a start, take the whole god damned country offline for a week and see if the King gets the point then."

Or you might be doing him a favour ? If a government were to revoke access themselves they might find themselves facing a rebellion. If someone else does it for them then the blame is passed on. The effect is, never-the-less, the same. The Internet has been censored.

Of course I completely agree that PieNet should face repercussions from PPCW and it would be nice to see *some* level of International political outcry to send the message that raining on the rest of the world will not be tolerated.

Re:"malicious" routes

[Erpo]

I give it a 90% chance that this slashdot story's body was not carefully thought out. However, the story itself does not say that the route announcement was malicious. It says that there were malicious routes, and they were announced to the world. It's the routes (that is, routing table entries) that were malicious since they were deliberately incorrect. Censorship is always malicious.

And I agree, US companies should have better sense than to contribute toward things like the great firewall of China. They may not be able to stop their hardware from being re-sold in the Chinese market, but they surely shouldn't accept contracts for purpose-built censorship software.

Re:"malicious" routes

[STrinity]

I should also note that while the Slashdot story says these routes were maliciously announced, there is no evidence of this. This type of thing has happened before by accident many times. That it was accidental makes more sense anyhow

Propagating the change to the rest of the world may have been accidental, but the purpose -- to block YouTube throughout Pakistan -- counts as malicious in my book.

Re:"malicious" routes

[Deadplant]

I think it is clear that the bogus routes were added maliciously.
The scope of the damage was more than was intended but the intent (to break routing to the youtube IPs from within Pakistan) was by definition a malicious act.

Cisco and so forth are the ones who built things like the "Great Firewall of China" hear, hear.
When we do business abroad we should be held accountable to our own laws as well as those of the host country.
If it is illegal to dump toxins, employ child labour, build evil systems-of-mass-subjugation (great firewall 'o C) or torture insurgents here at home then you must not be allowed to to those things in other countries.

Religious purification

[TheHawke]

Sounds familiar, right along with the right to sentence to long jail terms, a few victims that got raped, letting the rapists go nearly scot-free.
They might as well isolate the country, keeping them from experiencing the interwebs altogether, it'll be impossible to keep their youth from being corrupted.

What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[goldspider]

To the people here in the U.S. who consider the Bush administration an oppressive theocratic regime, pay attention. This is the sort of thing an ACTUAL oppressive theocratic regime does.

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because other crap smells worse doesn't mean my own crap doesn't stink anymore. All oppression needs fighting, not just the blatant stuff.

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[lixee]

Tu quoque? This idiotic line is getting old. Yes, we get it. The US is better than the scum of the Earth that is al-Qaeda and their supporters. But for the love of God, quit justifying wars of aggression and other unconstitutional acts by see, it could be worse. It's only works with mentally challenged people.

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[goldspider]

My post was not an endorsement of the Bush administration or the unjustified war. It was nothing more than a simple request for people to get a sense of perspective with regards to how awful some people seem to think things are here.

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[CmdrGravy]

It's a good thing Pakistan is such a good friend of the US and it's firm friend in the war against terror otherwise things might be a lot worse.

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[DavidTC]

What are you talking about? Pakistan is apparently one of the good guys!

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[Zadaz]

This is the sort of thing an ACTUAL oppressive theocratic regime does.

This is the sort of thing a MORE oppressive theocratic regime does.

Just because I beat my wife harder than you do doesn't preclude you from being a wife beater, or make spouse abuse in any form any less abhorrent.

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[Builder]

Being the second fattest chick in the bar does NOT make you skinny!

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[ardle]

Are we not allowed to have more than one oppressive theocratic regime?
Why does it always have to be this "if you're not with us, you're against us" attitude? That kind of talk is the stuff that fuels oppression, in fact: by forcing others to conform to [whatever], whether they believe it or not, you are oppressing them.
Things aren't black-and-white in real life: only ingorant, power-hungry or insecure people require "ideal" behaviour of others.

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[sacrilicious]

To the people here in the U.S. who consider the Bush administration an oppressive theocratic regime, pay attention. This is the sort of thing an ACTUAL oppressive theocratic regime does.

Oh, I see. Either you're shooting people in the street, or you can't be an oppressive theocratic regime. I'm soooooo relieved... I'm going out tonight to celebrate this caring, secular administration we have!!! Yay!

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[GamerCowboy]

Pakistan does not strike me as particularly theocratic. Many are also alleging that the real reason for the block is because of a number of vote-rigging videos that have been posted on Youtube. This may just be Musharaf using religion as a way to justify his political goals.

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[jerry2a]

Attempting to excuse our government's behavior by saying "it's worse someplace else!" is BS. Compared to the Sudan, people in China have it pretty good, so they should be happy with their government, right? We've always had to fight for our freedoms and we'll keep them only as long as we keep fighting and not being content with the "it's better than..." garbage.

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[rucs_hack]

Well I'm not fighting anything alongside you unless you take a bath first.

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[Reality Master 201]

Actually, your post (and the explanation of it) are a rationalization of the actions of the Bush administration.

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[owlnation]

To the people here in the U.S. who consider the Bush administration an oppressive theocratic regime, pay attention.

Actually there's very little difference. It's one of media spin. In the US and the UK (actually Oceania) most of the press is owned by Rupert Murdoch. He's quite happy to have Eastasia or Eurasia as the enemy of his state. So the media will report such things as curtaining YouTube as "evil and "oppressive".

However, when Oceania governments curtail freedoms -- and they do regularly -- there's no press to speak out that anyone in the West really hears or sees.

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[goldspider]

I'm open to that theory. Musharaff doesn't exactly strike me as a person inclined to voluntarily give up power, expecially given how he came to power in the first place. I'm not entirely certain, though, how much real power Musharaff has (relative to Islamic clerics). Sure Pakistan isn't Iran, but I imagine the clerics still wield a lot of legislative power. This could suggest that Musharaff is trying to make good with the clerics in an attempt to get their backing for the upcoming power struggle between him and the new opposition government.

Most intriguing!

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[mapkinase]

It depends on how do you count. One way of counting is how much a given government oppresses all people of the world.

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[afidel]

Yeah because COPA is SO much better....

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[Oligonicella]

No, thimblebrain, he means it's not an oppressive theocratic regime here, nothing more. Those who spout that it is are purposefully ignoring what one actually does in order to try to inspire urgent actions.

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[rhakka]

Has Pakistan wrongfully invaded another country recently when I wasn't looking?

If not... are you saying that theocratic regimes may censor, but ultimately do less harm than we do?

I guess I'm confused.

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[Johnny Mnemonic]

That argument became useless when we defined our enemies by evil acts, and vilified them for it--up until we were caught doing the same thing, then we had to go back and justify how in some cases it might actually be necessary, but "trust us, the other guys are still worse" 'cause, uh, they've been doing it longer. "Look not into in the abyss".

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[mjwx]

the people here in the U.S. who consider the Bush administration an oppressive theocratic regime

By your logic,

Stalin was by better than Hitler but I still don't want to be a citizen of Soviet Russia. Being better by default is not a good thing.

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[ardle]

Al Jazeera English is based in Qatar, which is rich enough not to be heavily influenced by Murdoch.
They have some top people working for them.

Re:What a REAL oppressive theocracy looks like

[rhakka]

India and Pakistan are not friends; that's hardly all Pakistan's fault.

Bangladesh was 35 years ago, I believe. Do you want to line that up with everything we've done in the last 35 years?

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

[aicrules]

Islam has various doctrines that are meant to be trials for those who subscribe to that faith. Ramadan is meant to teach patience and improve ones ability to resist temptation. If those temptations are removed by theocratic/governmental policing, the whole point is lost. Yes, a person may not have access to one area of temptation and therefore won't succumb because there's nothing to succumb to, but just like a butterfly emerging from the cocoon; if you see it struggle and decide to help it out, it won't have the ability to survive on its own later. If a muslim never even has the opportunity to face temptation because they are shielded from it at every turn, then on the likely chance that in their adult life they suddenly have multiple temptations blinding-siding them, they will have no internal facility to deal with it other than to cave in. I think the "Islam is evil" thing you're so sure is going to happen is because of how evil the intentions the governmental bodies that try to enforce it are. This is why separation church and state is so important in this respect. It was huge in christianity during the crusades. Fortunately many have seen the light and no longer impose faith as a law.

A Better Technical Explanation

[1sockchuck]

Better technical explanations of the event are available from the Renesys blog and Data Center Knowledge. The erroneous IP assignments spread across the net within 1 minute, 45 seconds of its announcement by Pakistan Telecom, according to a timeline by Renesys. It took about 80 minutes for YouTube to inform its providers that the route had been hijacked. YouTube says it is "investigating and working with others in the Internet community to prevent this from happening again."

Re:A Better Technical Explanation

[qmaqdk]

The erroneous IP assignments spread across the net within 1 minute, 45 seconds of its announcement by Pakistan Telecom, according to a timeline by Renesys. A minute and 45 seconds to spread across the world. Really makes you think. With approx. 20000 km from one point on the planet to it's opposite that's around 190 km/sec.

obQuote

[Speare]

Evidently PieNet took this step to enforce a decree from the Pakistani government that ISP's must block access to YouTube because it was a source of blasphemous content.

The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man.
--Thomas Jefferson

Works for me

[weave]

"Works for me."

/ticket closed.

First article (Third link) is not bull

[ruinevil]

The telecommunication authorities are claiming in Pakistan that YouTube was blocked for featuring allegedly blasphemous documentaries. While this move if triggered by this motive is as foolish as burning an entire library just because on a page of one of the books someone has scribbled a couple of words against you, it is far from truth. Actually Musharraf is a very self centered and insecure man these days and has recently learned from his sycophants that YouTube carries many videos critical of his government especially his torture on lawyers and political captives and since during this campaign technology played critical role in influencing people he wants to block out every kind of criticism. This is exactly what I'm talking about.

Re:First article (Third link) is not bull

[flajann]

"While this move if triggered by this motive is as foolish as burning an entire library just because on a page of one of the books someone has scribbled a couple of words against you,..."

The burning of libraries is nothing new in the sordid history of humanity. How foolish of us to think it wouldn't take on a new form in today's technologically enhanced world.

Political, not religious reasons.

[Spy der Mann]

All Things Pakistan points out that this may have a political rather than a "cultural" reason - given that a number of videos of election rigging were posted.

Re:Political, not religious reasons.

[Demerara]

Mod Parent up - I buy the theory that they blocked YouTube because they were hosting some powerful video evidence of rigging in full flow. This, more than some blasphemous content, would motivate the authorities here IMHO (and I've lived here for 18 months) to block YouTube. But I doubt that they deliberately sought to take YouTube down. Still, stranger things have happened.

It (YT) is back working again from Pakistan this evening. Suspect the embarrassment caused by their hamfistedness forced a rethink. Time and time again, they block certain domains - for example- Blogspot was blocked during the state of emergency and in the run up to the Feb 18th Elections. Anyone with tuppence worth of skill can circumvent these restrictions by using anonymous proxies available out there. So it's a blunt instrument.

Irrational Dogma - that's what'll Break the World

[LecheryJesus]

Well, this comes as no real surprise; I think you can expect this sort of behaviour from any individual or group that has no tolerance for dissent or satire. Whilst we can pretty much say what we like in the west, don't forget that our ancestors had to fight 'the system' for that 'right'.

That the need was felt to block youtube by a sovereign government just shows how tenuous its hold on power is. As peurile as it is to say so, someone somewhere is going to label this as "EpicFail" - which it surely is.

Now even the previously disinterested have been dragged into the issue and the clips in question will undoubtedly reach a far, far wider audience than would otherwise have been the case.

Whilst Pakistan isn't yet a theocracy, this sort of behaviour (Acting 'as if') begs the question: For how much longer?

Given that they are a declared nuclear power, how do you all feel about that?

The rest of the world is still struggling ....

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

Yes, OMG! How am I going to survive this day, the day that youtube.com went down the tubes?

A bit less hyperbole might have been more apt here, dear editors.

Re:The rest of the world is still struggling ....

[ultranova]

Yes, OMG! How am I going to survive this day, the day that youtube.com went down the tubes?

It's not that you can't survive without YouTube; it's that a lot of people are going to be quite pissed at Pakistan right now. I'm sure that all the major *chans are planning an invasion as we speak, the Pirate Bay is arming torrents of mass destruction, and the botnet owners are bringing their armies to DEFCON 1.

/b-tards, pirate fleets, and zombie hords; Pakistan is going to feel the full wrath of the Internet. It will retaliate with nuclear weapons before being going down before the onslaught. A long, dark and silent winter will result; and when the first rays of Sun shine through the radiactive clouds and the remains of humanity once again begin the long, hopeless climb on the endless staircase, the memories have turned to myths and myths to legends, and even the legends are long forgotten before the Internet is born again.

So yes, the world will Break and End. It will End like there was no tomorrow, because there won't be. We'll all die, die and be forgotten, and I'll never find out how Drakuun ends. All is lost.

Just to keep a perspective

[pembo13]

Censorship aside, no one should be struggling for YouTube. That's just sad.

Arstechnica explains

[rishistar]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080225-insecure-routing-redirects-youtube-to-pakistan.html

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Redirect to thepetitionsite

[datalife]

Apparently they redirected all traffic to
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/removal-of-the-pics-of-muhammad-from-wikipedia

Most subscribers come from pakistan ;)

Why it broke, in techie

[autocracy]

I submitted this article yesterday while it was happening, but of course at that time details were even more sparse (speed vs. informative.. oh well). Some of the BGP routing information I captured is printed out on Wikinews. The basic idea is that Pakistan Telecon, BGP Autonomous System number 17557 began being chatty, saying that it owned Youtube's netblock. It did this using a /24 routing prefix, whereas Youtube exports its route as a /22 (which it should...). Because the /24 was more specific, it became the primary route of reference. This is similar to the "AS 7007" incident (Google it... there's no one good link) back in the late 1990s (one of two incidents in the history of the Internet that has brought the entire Internet down, IIRC).

I'll check back for related questions to fill in any blanks later :)

Re:Why it broke, in techie

[Tryfen]

Flix has a very good summary of the AS 7007 incident.

Re:Why it broke, in techie

[Random832]

If you were a casual observer, looking at the Internet Routing table at... I call BS - nobody who looks at internet routing tables is a casual observer.

Re:Why it broke, in techie

[sherriw]

Wow, that AS 7007 incident story was interesting. Kinda makes me think the internet is more vulnerable to global 'attack' than I thought before....

Re:Why it broke, in techie

[asterix404]

given just how easy it appears for a country to do this that believes in censorship at it's core, Is there something in the mix to prevent something like china or Soudi Arabia or now Pakistan from being able to basically ship all sights to whatever they want? Also given that youtube was being blocked specifically by Pakistan from 1h, they lost 1h worth of ad revenues... whats the chance that youtube will sue Pakistan?

Re:Why it broke, in techie

[Cervantes]

This is similar to the "AS 7007" incident (Google it... there's no one good link) back in the late 1990s (one of two incidents in the history of the Internet that has brought the entire Internet down, IIRC). Amusingly, your post, saying to check google for more info, is one of the higher ranked hits when I google for more info. :)

And since I'm old and the hamster in a wheel who runs my brain is on strike, what was the second incident that brought the net down?

Re:Mod parent down; misinformation

[cube135]

Read the links. Especially the first one.

18:47:00 uninterrupted videos of exploding jello 18:47:45 first evidence of hijacked route propagating in Asia, AS path 3491 17557 18:48:00 several big trans-Pacific providers carrying hijacked route (9 ASNs) 18:48:30 several DFZ providers now carrying the bad route (and 47 ASNs) 18:49:00 most of the DFZ now carrying the bad route (and 93 ASNs) 18:49:30 all providers who will carry the hijacked route have it (total 97 ASNs) 20:07:25 YouTube, AS 36561 advertises the /24 that has been hijacked to its providers 1 hour, 20 minutes. Or, if you want, 80.

Re:PieNet

[zarthrag]

Maybe it's because the cake was a lie.

Blaspheme doubtful

[Rampantbaboon]

Pakistan is generally a pretty tolerant country when it comes to matters involving religion. After all, they elected a woman as PM awhile ago. Musharaf is however a hardline dictator who has the power to greatly improve his country by setting a precedent for stepping down gracefully, but apparently like any other dictator, he's going down swinging. The US in praticular has a way of framing any problem with the middle east as a religious issue. It's a region with a whole hell of a lot of problems, religion being just one of them. I'm not defending any actions taken by their gov't, just trying to understand the situation. While not Arab or the first islamic nation to hold free elections, this situation has the potential to set a lot of progressive reforms on the Middle East.

Re:Blaspheme doubtful

[colfer]

You got it right, politics is too harsh for people to believe, so they key on superficial cultural stuff.

Re:Blaspheme doubtful

[XchristX]

Pakistan is generally a pretty tolerant country when it comes to matters involving religion Tell that to these (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6367773.stm) and these (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2281191.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1625976.stm) religious minorities in Pakistan.

Statistically, Pakistan has the one of the worst records of religious tolerance in the world, and is listed as a country of particular concern by the USCIRF (http://www.uscirf.gov/countries/countriesconcerns/index.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Bangladesh_atrocities). Even middle-eastern countries are actually doing somewhat better.

John Gilmore

[colfer]

Pakistan interprets politics as porn and routes itself.

Original by Gilmore: "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

heh.

[apodyopsis]

still at least the Pakistanis will now the spared the inevitable custard pie and ridicule videos that will now flood youtube parodying this fuck up.

I'm more in favor of this being motivated by the large number of vote rigging videos and independent news vids floating around youtube that are outside of Pakistani government control.

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

The content of the Quran, as read by the average reasonable person, resembles Mein Kampf in its degree of evil. Godwin's law. 10 yards back, redo the whole play.

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

[mdwh2]

'Anonymous' said:

Also, I laugh at the hypocrisy of 'Anonymous', who battle scientologists but not Islam.

And how do you know that people protesting Scientology don't have similar views about fundamentalist Islam?

How an earth is it hypocrisy? Is 'Anonymous' made up of people who also like to protest against offensive cartoons in their spare time? I don't think so.

I think the main reason in the minds of those who have traditionally been strongly against various religions to not target Islam is simply fear

So give us specific examples of people who criticise religion, except Islam, or are you just building a strawman?

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really follow everything the book says, Islam IS evil, and so is Christianity and Judaism, and Hinduism. Buddhism is okay though, i think.

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

[DigitalSorceress]

That may just be the most rational and insightful post on religion I've ever read.

Thank you.

Re:Am I the only one...

[Goffee71]

Apparently the story behind the story is that Youtube videos were showing evidence of vote rigging in the PAK elections. So this is the perfect Slashdot story, voting fraud and internet denial, surely it deserves some sort of gold star.

And religion was just a dead herring.

Re:Digital war?

[L4t3r4lu5]

Set HCF flag to 0 before browsing YouTube, just in case.

fishy smell here....

[hesaigo999ca]

Wait a second, after having read the stories about all those cables under the sea being cut, isn't it a bit of a coincidence that we (US) is now part of the blocking of Pakistan, for reason xyz.

I know I am a bit on the para side but if their intentions was to block a certain block from the rest of the world, and those cables being cut didn't quite work, I guess the next step would be to have a front story covering up what really happened, anyone can confirm with relatives in Pakistan if this is really what is going on, or just another BIG machine story the media feeds us not to question things happening over there.

Re:fishy smell here....

[pentalive]

Weren't the cut cables going to Iran, not Pakistan?

Re:fishy smell here....

[hesaigo999ca]

Yes, but in conclusion, did affect the other surrounding countries linked by that same cable...
unless they had their own cable set up to the rest of the world that I am not aware of???

Gutenberg

[Max_W]

Once the Islam world already did the same error. In 15th century when Gutenberg invented the printing press the Islam countries were a way ahead in science.

But mullahs forbade printing for 200 years, while in Europe it exploded. Mostly it was silly: religious stuff, cartoons, sex, but it was also maps, mathematics, etc.

Internet is about the same as an invention of printing was then. And again they are making the same mistake, again due to a fear of mullahs to lose their power.

Like 500 years ago it will just slow the development of their civilization.

mod parent up

[Reality Master 201]

Cause he's actually insightful.

Common law

[wytcld]

Strange thing is, common law no longer applies in Britain. Still does in the US.

Re:Common law

[Shakrai]

Strange thing is, common law no longer applies in Britain.

Maybe it should. And maybe people should study history more and realize that the rights of the people should not be taken away (by a Monarch or an elected Legislature) for any reason. That was one of the underlying principles of the Magna Carta and the Common Law -- the right to limit the power that the Monarch/Legislature/Government has over us and the idea that Governments derive their power from the consent of the Governed (to quote the US Declaration of Independence).

It seems that history taught us that we have the right to limit the power of the Monarch but not that we have the right (and necessity) to limit the power of the elected legislature. An elected legislature can trample on your rights as easily as a monarch can unless you take steps to prevent it.

Re:Common law

[Shakrai]

I don't think you realise what you are advocating. Or are you an anarchist?

*sigh*, I think you largely missed the point. Let me spell it out for you using the words of Thomas Jefferson:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it

(emphasis mine)

Every law, by its very nature, takes away the rights of the people. The only way for a government not to take away rights is to abolish all laws.

That's such a blatant oversimplification that I hardly know where to respond. The spirit of our Declaration of Independence (and all those other documents I referenced earlier) is that the Government exists to secure our rights -- my right not to be murdered by you trumps your right to do whatever you want. The Government derives it's power from the consent of the Governed and not the other way around.

How soon we forget our own history.

Re:Common law

[JesseMcDonald]

Every law, by its very nature, takes away the rights of the people. The only way for a government not to take away rights is to abolish all laws.

True, but only for one of the many definitions of "right" which is clearly not the one the GP was using.

If you start from a position of negative rights -- each person has the right to do anything which does not cause harm to others, "harm" being defined as interference with homesteaded and/or contractually transfered property rights -- then it is possible to have laws which do not interfere with rights, but rather complement them perfectly. This is the underlying principle of Common Law, which is completely independent of any sort of government. This is an "anarchic" position in a purely denotative sense (without rulers), but with none of the connotative aspects (chaotic/lawless). It is summed up by the phrase "equality under the law".

Re:Common law

[Shakrai]

Yes, and when the government outlaws murder, they are taking away that right

I'm sorry, the "right" to murder? Where is the "right" to murder outlined in the Common Law, Magna Carta, US Constitution or any other historical document of note? The whole point of Government is to secure our rights against those that would take them away from us by force. I fail to see how you can make the argument that protecting my right to "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" is taking away something from you. Your "right" to murder? Are you serious?

but it is still taking away rights regardless of those facts and regardless of whatever Jefferson has to say on the matter

Well, if you want to debate our rights being taken away then let's do it. We can start by talking about habeas corpus, the right against self-incrimination, protection from unreasonable search and seizure, the erosion of the Grand Jury, the erosion of gun rights, etc, etc, etc. But it's hard to take you seriously when you shoot down my idealism with the claim that by outlawing murder the Government is taking away one of your "rights".

While "the government should never take our rights away!" might be a nice-sounding slogan, what it actually means is a hell of a lot different to what (I assume) you intended to express.

Perhaps. It might have sounded better if I had said "The Government has no right to take our rights away without due process of law". That probably would have been a better statement on my part and more in-line with the traditions and history that I was trying to defend.

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

[Eli Gottlieb]

Actually, way too many countries still have an official, state-sponsored religion.

Irony

[Bookwyrm]

Am I the only one who sees the irony that the response to this censorship/filtering attempt is to... censor/filter the AS/routes of the ISP responsible for it?

Achmed The Dead Terrorist Upset Them?

[Toad-san]

Tch .. no sense of humor whatsoever. Or maybe it was that funny cartoon about Osama bin Laden's outtakes while making an inspirational video? Or did someone post something horrific about The Prophet? (Muhammed, not Kahlil Gibran's book.) Toad-san "Endeavor to persevere"

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

[gardyloo]

just like a butterfly emerging from the cocoon; if you see it struggle and decide to help it out, it won't have the ability to survive on its own later. You know, I'd never heard this analogy before, so I looked it up online. Every reference to it that I can *easily* find has some sort of religious message behind it.
      My own personal suspicion is that one very easily can help a butterfly emerge from its crystalis; if one doesn't damage the wings in the process, the butterfly would probably benefit greatly from not having to struggle free. It's not as though they face great epistemological issues in their daily lives.

Things in Pakistan were going peachy until youtube

[Coolhand2120]

Oh ya, Pakistan was a great place until youtube happen!

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

[mapkinase]

"If those temptations are removed by theocratic/governmental policing, the whole point is lost." No, it is not. There are natural temptations and there are temptations society could avoid.

That is why Islam has social laws against bad public behavior.

But how did they do it?

[greedyturtle]

For those of you who actually want to know "How they did it?" posted from: Renesys Blog
which was found from Cydeweys which is updating as the story progresses. Both of those sites seem to be running a bit slow, so hesitate before clicking.

Full text of Reneysys: Pakistan hijacks YouTube.

A few hours ago, Pakistan Telecom (AS 17557) began advertising a small part of YouTube's (AS 36561) assigned network. This story is almost as old as BGP. Old hands will recognize this as, fundamentally, the same problem as the http://merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/1997-04/msg00380.html">infamous AS 7007 from 1997, a more recent ConEd mistake of early 2006 and even TTNet's Christmas Eve gift 2005.

Just before 18:48 UTC, Pakistan Telecom, in response to government order to block access to YouTube (see news item) started advertising a route for 208.65.153.0/24 to its provider, PCCW (AS 3491). For those unfamiliar with BGP, this is a more specific route than the ones used by YouTube (208.65.152.0/22), and therefore most routers would choose to send traffic to Pakistan Telecom for this slice of YouTube's network.

I became interested in this immediately as I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to spend my evening watching imbecilic videos of cats doing foolish things (even for a cat). Then, I started to examine our mountains of BGP data and quickly noticed that the correct AS path ("Will the real YouTube please stand up?") was getting restored to most of our peers.

The data points identified below are culled from over 250 peering sessions with 170 unique ASNs. While it is hard to describe exactly how widely this hijacked prefix was seen, we estimate that it was seen by a bit more than two-thirds of the Internet.

This table shows the timing of the event and how quickly the route propagated (this is actually a fairly normal propagation pattern). The ASNs seeing the prefix were mostly transit ASNs below, so this means that these routes were distributed broadly across the Internet. Almost all of the default free zone (DFZ) carried the hijacked route at least briefly.

18:47:00uninterrupted videos of exploding jello

18:47:45first evidence of hijacked route propagating in Asia, AS path 3491 17557

18:48:00several big trans-Pacific providers carrying hijacked route (9 ASNs)

18:48:30several DFZ providers now carrying the bad route (and 47 ASNs)

18:49:00most of the DFZ now carrying the bad route (and 93 ASNs)

18:49:30all providers who will carry the hijacked route have it (total 97 ASNs)

20:07:25YouTube, AS 36561 advertises the /24 that has been hijacked to its providers

20:07:30several DFZ providers stop carrying the erroneous route

20:08:00many downstream providers also drop the bad route

20:08:30and a total of 40 some-odd providers have stopped using the hijacked route

20:18:43and now, two more specific /25 routes are first seen from 36561

20:19:3725 more providers prefer the /25 routes from 36561

20:28:12peers of 36561 start seeing the routes that were advertised to transit at 20:07

20:50:59evidence of attempted prepending, AS path was 3491 17557 17557

20:59:39hijacked prefix is withdrawn by 3491,

mmm pie

[BigJClark]

mmmmmm pie...

Re: Barack

[TaoPhoenix]

I went the other way -
I consider the current state of affairs a disease of the oval office - once it gets in full swing, there's no stopping it - just hang on while it runs its course.

We'll know more on March 5, but Obama is doing fairly well on the D. side. I'll have to look into what his positions are on our trampled rights. I'll be a little more involved AFTER the election, because Obama is the kind of "fresh air candidate" who will at least listen to the people.

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

[lee1]

I am far more concerned about Islamic censorship of the internet within the U.S. and other free countries, as well as intimidation of bookstores, publishers, and news outlets.

BBC said outage was only 2 hours.

[billstewart]

BBC said the outage was only for two hours.

Re: Barack

[Shakrai]

I debated whether or not to even mention my involvement with him because half of the Democratic Party has yet to accept him, let alone the other half of the electorate.

I'll have to look into what his positions are on our trampled rights

FWIW, he was a civil rights attorney at one point in his life.

because Obama is the kind of "fresh air candidate" who will at least listen to the people.

He's still going to need help. To quote him "Good ideas go to Washington to die". We'll never see any meaningful change come out of Washington until we decide to hold our Congressman to account for their actions. Nobody does though. How else do you explain that Congress (as a whole) has approval ratings in the 20s, yet people continue to send their existing Representatives back, year after year?

People are going to need to get involved in the process and speak louder and more forcefully then the special interests/lobbyists that have hijacked Congress. If that happens then I'm actually very hopeful that Obama can manage to unite this country. If it doesn't happen then I still feel that he will be a force for good -- but his grander ideas will probably fall off and die.

Flamebait?

[Reality Master 201]

Heh. Yeah, go ahead, support my point.

Religion as a cover for Political Censorship

[billstewart]

Pakistan isn't a theocracy. Pakistan is an occasional-democracy heavily-tribal state ruled by a military dictator who's in serious trouble trying to retain power when lots of people want to get rid of him. Musharraff is a Muslim, but his religiousity goes about deep enough to get him a Muslim funeral when he dies, if his body doesn't get blown up into too many little pieces to bother burying.

So if an Islamic court has any authority to order the PTT to block YouTube because of "blasphemy", it's because YouTube is carrying political news about the situation in Pakistan that Musharraff doesn't want people in Pakistan watching. If Iran had tried that kind of thing, that really would be a theocratic problem, but that's not the issue here. If they implemented it in a way that blocks YouTube from the rest of the world, it's because of incompetence, not malice. (That kind of thing happens a lot, usually because somebody does a bad job of router configuration, but usually ISPs filter out incorrect advertisements; their upstream provider didn't do a good enough job here.)

So in some sense it is similar to Bush in the US - pandering to the religious right wingers as a way to get radical right-wing politics done.

Will somebody please. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

+5 Insightful?

Will somebody please mod this person correctly?

How many documented civilian deaths since 2003 is Pakistan responsible for? (In ONLY one other country?) --For that matter, what percentage of its own citizenry does Pakistan keep in prison as compared to the U.S.?

Just because our TVs are filled with lots of colorful distractions, and our homes are nicely replete with Walmart furnishings, it does not stand true that all is right with the world. The Military Industrial Complex requires for effective functioning that a portion of its gear box be well-oiled. If you were a good little rally-attending German citizen, then life in the late thirties was also pretty good. If one is to guage the state of our governments, one needs to care about how people other than ourselves are being treated by those governments.

Also. . . People in North America are concerned about such disturbing trends as the large number of empty prison camps built on U.S. soil, and the whole Black Water thing.

I can see many reasons for people to be concerned about the U.S. government. Outward shows of totalitarianism, like having the internet lock up for a day because of religious/political dogmatic beliefs, are certainly impressive. I can't find anything in the news to soften my own reaction to the Pakistani government. But "Who is worse" arguments seem to me a distraction. There are problems all over which should all be recognized. Getting caught up in nationalism is a great way to lose focus on the actual issue.

-FL

Re:Will somebody please. . .

[XchristX]

How many documented civilian deaths since 2003 is Pakistan responsible for Try 3 million in 1971 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Bangladesh_atrocities), and 500-3000 women a year (http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/12/11/pakistan.women/), and numerous religious minorities. There is a difference between people killed in the exigencies of war (as in US involvement in Iraq), a transient phenomenon, and the pervasive intolerance and violence all across Pakistan, which lasts for decades.

Re:Will somebody please. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

Hmm. I am very hesitant about allowing this to devolve into a "Who is worse" contest; killing is killing and none of it is "better". --I realize that my original post was constructed in a comparative manner, but my intention was to offer examples refuting the notion that the U.S. Government does not bear any resemblance to a totalitarian regime and that people should in effect, stop complaining.

The problem is that there are now rumblings in the West about perhaps focusing military solutions on Pakistan. I find this very disturbing, and so I will offer some comparisons with the intention of perhaps alerting people to the false logic and hypocrisy in such lines of thinking. . .

Try 3 million in 1971 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Bangladesh_atrocities) There is a difference between people killed in the exigencies of war (as in US involvement in Iraq), a transient phenomenon, and the pervasive intolerance and violence all across Pakistan, which lasts for decades.

Well, without wanting to ignore such mass-killings, it is worth noting that according to that wiki article, the final figure (3 million) you quote is actually hotly disputed. --Though, more to my main point, it is worth pointing out that the U.S. war machine is pretty much jammed in the 'On' position. While the names of the conflicts and regions may change, I think calling the endlessly bloody results of U.S. military endeavors "exigencies" or a "transient phenomenon" is a wee bit disingenuous.

and 500-3000 women a year (http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/12/11/pakistan.women/), and numerous religious minorities.

With regard to the deaths of woman, I can only say that the Pakistani civilian culture is certainly riddled with violent behavior. I do not argue that. And while this public behavior is in many cases sanctioned by government policy, it seems to me that this problem is more cultural than political. No doubt, Pakistan is a mess.

However. . , is this a reason to condemn Pakistan and perhaps even levy Western military pressure upon the region?

Well, to me this idea seems more a result of media spin in support of the Military Industrial Complex than anything else. So I thought. . , I know! Let's compare violent crime in the U.S. civilian population to that in Pakistan, and I bet we'll discover that the U.S. is at least as violent, if not more so; heck, the murder rate in California alone is usually at least a couple thousand annually. --Then I can ask such thought-provoking and debate-killing questions as, "Given such figures, shouldn't the world community instead be sending military forces to control the rampant violence in the U.S.?"

So I looked up some figures, and I'll be blowed if the first item I came across wasn't this comparative chart, which actually places Pakistan as being the least violent place with regard to homicide rates by country, with the U.S. and Poland coming in the middle immediately after all the most screwed up countries on the world map.

So what do we do with this kind of information?

Well, for one, we have to stop right away the, "Who is worse" game. Killing is bad, period. And again, I want to stress that I only offer these comparisons to shake people up and stop them from thinking of the Middle Eastern countries as, "Bad Places Which Need Western Guidance." That message is pure war-monger nonsense, and I doubt very much that they come from people like you; such messages are marketing spin which were probably very expensive and labor-intensive to produce. The truth of the matter is that humans are treating each other abysmally all over the planet, and that evil government is a deep and wide-spread problem. And finally, I think that military intervention is the LAST thing which should be considered in any situation. --Indeed, I'm not convinced that it shou

Re:Will somebody please. . .

[MarkusQ]

How many documented civilian deaths since 2003 is Pakistan responsible for

Try 3 million in 1971,...

Last time I checked, 1971 camr before 2003. So data from 1971 can't be used to answer a "since 2003" question.

...and 500-3000 women a year, and numerous religious minorities. There is a difference between people killed in the exigencies of war (as in US involvement in Iraq), a transient phenomenon, and the pervasive intolerance and violence all across Pakistan, which lasts for decades.

That might look like a snappy rebuttal if you squint at it just right, but add in a few more facts and it doesn't look so pat. Consider:

• 3000 people a year may sound like a lot, until you compare it to the various estimates of civilian casualties inflicted by the US invasion of Iraq:
  • 15000/year (Bush)
  • 60000/year (US Military)
  • 120000/year (Lancet study)
• Also consider that, during this time Pakistan has been a US ally--we didn't invade them even though similar claims were floated as a justification of our invasion of Iraq
• Saying that the US occupation of Iraq is a "transient phenomenon" in contrast to things that "last for decades" is kind of silly when you consider that the US officials in charge of the occupation are pretty much unanimous in expecting it to last decades.

--MarkusQ

Re:Will somebody please. . .

[XchristX]

However. . , is this a reason to condemn Pakistan and perhaps even levy Western military pressure upon the region?

Yes, because unlike the US, Pakistan has no realistic system of checks and balances to address their problems. There are far more tribalized than any culture in the US, and tribal violence and massacres are embedded in savage ritualism (Google for the term "Pukhtunwali" and ignore the Pakistani Fundamentalist hate sites you get and see for yourself), and is completely out of control (given that large sections of the Pakistani Army and their Secret Police subscribe to such chauvinistic views).

So I looked up some figures, and I'll be blowed if the first item I came across wasn't this comparative chart, which actually places Pakistan as being the least violent place with regard to homicide rates by country, with the U.S. and Poland coming in the middle immediately after all the most screwed up countries on the world map.

Which is very politically correct, but factually bogus. There are much more reliable sources you can find about the complete lawlessness of the NWFP regions in Pakistan. Honor killings and such are quite rampant in the country, and the homicide rates are exponential. It's just that their government tries to suppress what really goes on in their country And women aren't murdered for marrying the wrong tribe in the US.(at least not since desegregation and the repealing of Jim Crow laws) The US doesn;t have state laws like the Hudood Ordinance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudood_Ordinance) and Hasba Bills (http://www.khyber.org/articles/2005/TheProposedHasbaBillataGlance.shtml) that persecute people institutionally and maintain backwardness like Pakistan does. With all due respect, your arguments reek of sophistry, false comparisons and an infamous logical fallacy touted by Soviet Communists during the cold war called "..and you are lynching Negroes" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes)

Bad Places Which Need Western Guidance.

Western guidance has helped many countries achieve prosperity, from Taiwan, South Korea and (some) Japan to Urban India, Turkey, Israel, and others. It is okay to protest western imperialism, but there is nothing fundamentally objectionable to western guidance, even if it is imposed by the sword at first. Disclaimer: I am not a westerner. I am a hesperophile, however.

I want to stress that I only offer these comparisons to shake people up and stop them from thinking of the Middle Eastern countries as, "Bad Places Which Need Western Guidance."

Pakistan is not in the Middle East. Learn some geography. Middle Eastern countries are generally paradise compared to Pakistan, which is why millions of Pakistanis are swarming out of their country to Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain etc. There is an Urdu meme among some Pakistani bloggers that you should look up, "1947 mein bola Pakistan Zindabad, 2007 mein bolo Pakistan se zinda bhaag" (In 1947 they said Long Live Pakistan, in 2007 they are saying flee Pakistan alive).

And finally, I think that military intervention is the LAST thing which should be considered in any situation. --Indeed, I'm not convinced that it should be considered at all, but nobody has invited me to offer my opinion at the U.N.

Well I am two minds about that. Historially, Pakistani "democracies" have degenerated into absolute chaos and were easily taken over by Muslim fanatics (like during the Kargil War under the Islamist Nawaz Sharif http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kargil_War). However, the same is true for Pakistani dictatorships as well (see Zia Ul Haq's Islamization

Re:Will somebody please. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

Yes, because unlike the US, Pakistan has no realistic system of checks and balances to address their problems. There are far more tribalized than any culture in the US, and tribal violence and massacres are embedded in savage ritualism (Google for the term "Pukhtunwali" and ignore the Pakistani Fundamentalist hate sites you get and see for yourself), and is completely out of control (given that large sections of the Pakistani Army and their Secret Police subscribe to such chauvinistic views).

I see. I rather suspect, however, that such an interventionist attitude would be very poorly received by the actual population, and that this would in effect nullify whatever high-minded attempts to establish order in the region according to the ideals of the invading forces might be tried. In any case, this is a very touchy issue. Is it okay for one nation to impose its cultural values upon another? I would be very careful before venturing into those waters, as it must be assumed that one culture is superior to another, an assumption which will be met with high criticism. We must remember that these are nations filled with proud adults, not with children.

Whatever the case, I question if the U.S. system really does have realistic checks and balances to address their own problems. A great deal of energy is expended to make it appear that way, but I'm not sure I believe it to be true, especially given recent examples of corruption in the court systems and voting systems with regard to recent elections. The appearance of civility definitely stands in stark contrast to the kind of tribal violence you describe in Pakistan, but the reality of corruption doesn't diminish, and by extension, the ability to create real and lasting change remains illusory.

Which is very politically correct, but factually bogus. There are much more reliable sources you can find about the complete lawlessness of the NWFP regions in Pakistan. Honor killings and such are quite rampant in the country, and the homicide rates are exponential. It's just that their government tries to suppress what really goes on in their country

"Politically correct"? I'll have to take your word for that. --Though, yes, I agree that Pakistan, based on what I have read and heard directly from people I have known who came from the country, is rife with difficulties which are not going to be covered by comparative charts detailing violent crimes even if they were compiled by the U.N.. --I recognize this, and figured you'd probably jump on that. Fair enough. But that wasn't really my point, and I would hope that you recognize that as well.

To be clear, my point was this; U.S. culture foments public violence and misery and lots of it. --There are many thousands of killings, rapes and other violent crimes committed every year in the United States. Violence for Violence; we are talking about real blood shed in both the U.S. and in Pakistan. Despite the reasons for this violence being extremely different culturally, the end result is still violence, and these things can be stacked in the same pile and looked at with the same eyes. I don't think this reeks of sophistry at all. --I think it illustrates just how easily the people of one culture can myopically believe that their violence is somehow "acceptable" whereas the violence of another culture is worth launching a war of invasion to prevent. --A woman stoned to death for not being submissive enough certainly inflames emotions in the West. But gang violence in LA resulting from deliberate economic warfare waged against Black and Hispanic Americans is no less vile. Indeed, given the track record of White America when it comes to any people who are not white, I wonder just how much better off the Pakistani people would be under American 'adult supervision'.

Pakistan is not in the Middle East. Learn some geography. Middle Eastern countries are generally paradise compared to Pakistan, which is why millions of Pakistanis are swarmin

Re:Will somebody please. . .

[XchristX]

To be clear, my point was this; U.S. culture foments public violence and misery and lots of it. --There are many thousands of killings, rapes and other violent crimes committed every year in the United States

Dude. How about some perspective here? The worst cases of ethnic violence in the US in the past 2 decades have been the Crown Heights riot (Blacks against Jews)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Heights_Riot some 2-3 actually died, LA riots (Blacks against Asians mostly) with some 60 people dead, and this business with Jena Six (one dead). Add the Columbine incident and the Virginia Tech incident and lesser incidents and you have maybe a few hundred actual deaths from ethnic violence in the US in the last 20 years. Even despite this the US enjoys 100% religious freedom. So much so that even $cientologists are allowed to practice. Compare that with Pakistan. Millions of Bengali Hindus and moderate Muslims murdered in 1971, 17,000 Baluch murdered in 1974 alone. Rather large numbers since then. 200 Hindus and Christians murdered at Sangli Hill in 2001 alone, some 5-6 Hindus kidnapped, raped and forcibly converted to Islam per year since 1948, some 20 Christians massacred by militant Islamists every year, and a set of blasphemy laws that present among the the worst kinds of religious oppression in the world (while Saudi Islamic laws are worse, there are practically no non-Muslims in the country). Even Iran, with it's theocratic regime, is less violent than Pakistan. Is the Pakistan-US comparison really apposite? If you want to compare the US with a better system then maybe some of the Scandinavian countries are better. But to say that the US is "as bad as Pakistan" is laughable.

feeling you were going to jump on that, though I had also hoped you might be socially evolved enough to be less mean-spirited about it given my efforts to treat you with the basic respect due to any stranger I've chosen to spend some time communicating with.

Many South Asian cultures produce aggressive argumentativeness. Don't take it personally.

To be clear, my point was this; U.S. culture foments public violence and misery and lots of it.

..and yet there is very little actual violence in the country compared to the third world, especially countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Fiji, Sudan, Somalia and other equivalent disasters. Same with Japan (a culture of violence, with very little actual violence). Big deal. You say "thousands of deaths every year due to violence"? really? Where are your statistics for the "thousands" figure? I've been in the US for a decade now and keep up with the news and stuff, and out-and-out homicidal crimes are very rare compared to Muslim countries. Lots of robberies and rapes and stuff, but very few actual murders. Show me some reliable facts and figures about violent deaths, individual or en-masse, in the US.

But gang violence in LA resulting from deliberate economic warfare waged against Black and Hispanic Americans is no less vile.

..er typically it's Blacks and Hispanics fighting each other (it's called inter-minority racism), and that violence is more due to economics than culture or ritual (unlike in Pakistan). Therefore, what the US needs is economic reform, not cultural or political reform. There is no need nor desire to segregate the US along racial lines (nobody in mainstream society wants that, whites or nonwhites). Such a need is clear in Pakistan, where millions of people are denied their right to self-determination becaus eo ftheir race or religion and actually '''want''' to secede from the country. Far fewer Blacks and Hispanics die in the US per year than women and minorities do in Pakistan. If Hispanic immigrants were truly dying in droves in the US they'd never bother to jump the border in the first place. Hell, the US was a '''haven''' for Cuban Hispanics fleeing Castro's vile Communist thuggery. The US was '''haven'' for t

Re:Will somebody please. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

You say "thousands of deaths every year due to violence"? really? Where are your statistics for the "thousands" figure? I've been in the US for a decade now and keep up with the news and stuff, and out-and-out homicidal crimes are very rare compared to Muslim countries. Lots of robberies and rapes and stuff, but very few actual murders. Show me some reliable facts and figures about violent deaths, individual or en-masse, in the US.

In 2004, the United States reported. . .

16,137 Murders 854,911 cases of Aggravated Assault. 94,635 cases of Forcible Rape

The worst cases of ethnic violence in the US in the past 2 decades have been the Crown Heights riot (Blacks against Jews)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Heights_Riot some 2-3 actually died, LA riots (Blacks against Asians mostly) with some 60 people dead, and this business with Jena Six (one dead). Add the Columbine incident and the Virginia Tech incident and lesser incidents and you have maybe a few hundred actual deaths from ethnic violence in the US in the last 20 years. Even despite this the US enjoys 100% religious freedom. So much so that even $cientologists are allowed to practice. Compare that with Pakistan. Millions of Bengali Hindus and moderate Muslims murdered in 1971, 17,000 Baluch murdered in 1974 alone.

We've been over this. You're trying to compare only recognizable behavioral sets without looking at the bottom line. Why does only ethnic or religious violence count? Why does only violence perpetrated within home borders count? I have already pointed out that the U.S. has been at war with one country or another almost since its inception; the resulting body count is in the millions. The U.S. actions in Vietnam alone was responsible for between one two million deaths of non-Americans, and over three hundred thousand American casualties, (we must not forget that a nations' own troops must be counted among the victims of an oppressive state.) --It should also be mentioned that several of these wars were used to create the infamous banana republics, and various other slave nations all now living and acting in service to the U.S. economy.

I have been trying to figure out why you are putting up so much resistance. --It's certainly not as though I am trying to say that the U.S. is "Worse than Pakistan", although you seem to keep assuming that this is in fact my message. --I don't really know why, as I have several times now made it plain that I feel such comparisons were altogether unhelpful and that there are larger issues at stake. Since I am obviously not getting this message across, I will repeat myself one more time: my intent is to illustrate why it is wrong to point to a country like Pakistan and, by way of that comparison, tell people in effect to stop complaining and be happy with the state of the U.S. Toward this end, I have made efforts to direct attention to following qualities of the United States. . .

1. Violent and oppressive tendencies internally; (see the crime figures posted above, and previous links to current prison population data, (in fact, here's a new item on it which just hit the news), and the hundreds of yet-to-be-filled prison camps built in preparation for some projected eventuality.)
2. Violent and oppressive tendencies externally; (through endless wars on other nations, also linked previously.)

Do you really not understand this? Do you really think I am spending all this energy because I am seeking to somehow diminish Pakistan's tragedies?

The U.S. hasn't experienced any genoci

Re:Will somebody please. . .

[XchristX]

In 2004, the United States reported. . . 16,137 Murders 854,911 cases of Aggravated Assault. 94,635 cases of Forcible Rape

Yes, but you haven't established that any of these are part of a systemic cultural problem. These incidents are not ethnically or culturally related, but are largely the social equivalent of gaussian white noise. Not so in Pakistan, where a pervasive culture of hatred, propaganda (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4167260.stm http://web.archive.org/web/20031114223934/http://www.mlists.net/sindh-intl/mail/mail_abuseofhistory.htm http://www.sdpi.org/whats_new/reporton/State%20of%20Curr&TextBooks.pdf) and violence causes massive deaths, specifically targeting minorities and "dissidents".

Why does only ethnic or religious violence count

Because they are part of a systemic problem in backward cultures. Normal everyday crimes are just that, normal. I know it sounds harsh, but you have to look at the big picture here. Despite all the robberies, violent crimes, rapes etc going on in the US, there is a reason why millions of immigrants from third world countries are desperately clamoring to get into the US for a better life. Because their situation in their home countries is much much worse.

The U.S. actions in Vietnam alone was responsible for between one two million deaths of non-Americans

The alternative to which was this (http://www.killingfieldsmuseum.com/). Plus, I'm sure that the 2 million or so of Hoa Hao Buddhists and tribal minorities in Vietnam who were massacred by Communist thugs wouldn't complain so much about US presence there.

It should also be mentioned that several of these wars were used to create the infamous banana republics

There is some truth to this. However, that was because US foreign policy was controlled by fascist paleoconservatives like Nixon who wanted third world countries to be rules by America Friendly dictators like Muhammad Zia-ul Haq etc. This is different from the more complex foreign policies of modern day neoconservatives who base their actions on the desire to foster self-determination and democracy. The only criticism here is that they tend to goof up every now and then (like in Iraq), but still, the basic model is sound, and should be applied to Pakistan.

Do you really not understand this? Do you really think I am spending all this energy because I am seeking to somehow diminish Pakistan's tragedies?

No. I think that, consciously or not, you are trying to foster liberal (in the American sense) self-hatred and guilt to try to deflect attention from the real problems through inapposite analogies.

The U.S. hasn't experienced any genocides on American soil since the various original wars against the indigenous population

A whole other (and largely exaggerated) can of worms. Let's not go there.

Why not? Well. . , for starters, take a look at the examples you're offering; they're incompatible with the subject proposal. --Hitler was the one trying to reshape populations at sword point. The reaction of the rest of the world was of an altogether different nature. And the U.S. was not deliberately attempting to re-shape Japan in its own image when responding to Nipponese war-time aggression. Japanese cultural change after WWII would not have come about unless there had been a corresponding desire within the population. It was not forced upon them. And with respect to Taiwan, there is again a big difference between diplomatic ties formed between two willing nations, and troops-on-the-ground enforcement of cultural changes within a resentful population. Do you see? As alwa

Re:Will somebody please. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

It's been a few days and I finally had the energy to spare to look at your last response. . .

Two things:

Despite all the robberies, violent crimes, rapes etc going on in the US, there is a reason why millions of immigrants from third world countries are desperately clamoring to get into the US for a better life. Because their situation in their home countries is much much worse.

And despite everything I've said, you still refuse to see this as anything but a war of comparisons. --I was getting ready to suspect brain damage until I finally figured out what the point is you've been stuck on all this time; correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm now thinking that you see the West as some sort of golden hope, the mythological benchmark standard by which all problems in society may be measured. Robert Conquest? For goodness sake, it should have been clear from the outset. You've turned Western socio-economic theory into a personal religion by which you hope to have your soul saved from whatever problems you see filling your world. --Which means there was never any risk of an actual discussion breaking out here; A zealot can only frame discussion in terms of defense of the Holy Word, which by definition is unassailable, and therefore closed to any editing or review. --All that can be expected are re-hashes of the same old hymn.

Second. . .

No. I think that, consciously or not, you are trying to foster liberal (in the American sense) self-hatred and guilt to try to deflect attention from the real problems through inapposite analogies.

It's almost certainly useless at this late juncture to point out that the only reason my analogies seem inapposite to you is that I didn't actually make any analogies, nor did I intend to. The math certainly isn't going to add up if you insist on using the incorrect decoder ring.

And Liberal guilt? For what? Slavery, population manipulation and general war mongering? --Well, I certainly don't feel guilty for any of this since all my choices are intended to lead away from those ends, not towards. Frustration? Yes. Jaded sadness with the human condition? Yes. But Guilt? Nope.

Just because a recalcitrant population is hostile to positive change does not mean it isn't the obligation of well-meaning people to implement the change. If we all did as you said and let backward people practice savage cultural mores then the Scandinavians and Indians would still be burning widows and South Korea would still be oppressing the Baekjeong underclasses. If I goto Pakistan today, I will be strung upside down and flogged with a stick by rampaging hordes of fanatics for being an infidel. In the US, I may be robbed once in a while (and even that is statistically unlikely anywhere except very heavily populated cities), but guess which country I'm rooting for here? This is not about disrespecting people. This is about bringing about political and social reform in countries that need them desperately, even if they don't know it. There are fundamental principles of modernity, like basic human rights, religious freedom for all and social reform to promote modernity and equality that transcend national boundaries. Countries that do not respect them should be made to do so.

Learning how to respect Free Will is one of the fundamental lessons in this reality, and it takes many runs at the wall to get over it. You'll figure it out eventually, but it sounds to me like you're going to have to go through a lot of painful lessons first. I wish you the best of luck with that.

Okay. I'm done spending energy on you. Bye now.

-FL

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

[KDR_11k]

No. Godwin's law does not make any judgements about the analogy, it only states that the longer a conversation grows the more likely a Nazi analogy becomes. The whole "thread over" thing is a corollary, not Godwin's law itself.

Re: Barack

[NormalVisual]

FWIW, he was a civil rights attorney at one point in his life.

However, like many others who profess an interest in preserving the civil rights of those in the U.S., he advocates serious restrictions on the exercise of the *only* civil right that ultimately insures the government's observation of all the others.

Re: Barack

[Shakrai]

he advocates serious restrictions on the exercise of the *only* civil right that ultimately insures the government's observation of all the others.

Hey, I didn't say he was perfect. I'm generally not in favor of Gun Control at all, which probably makes me an oddity amongst Democrats, but there you go.

Gun control will probably be one of the easiest issues for the country find common ground on. Most Democrats aren't married to the idea of restrictive gun control as a one-size-fits-all solution for the whole country. Most Republicans probably don't want to see explosive armor piercing cop-killing rounds in general circulation either. As usual an effective solution will require (*gasp*) compromise on both sides and that won't happen unless the citizenry speaks out and marginalizes the extremists on both sides of the issue.

I'm generally of the opinion that any citizen not convicted of a crime should have the right to own any semi-automatic weapon. I get nervous when the Government decides to go after "assault weapons" as though they are some special class more deadly then others. I get real nervous when the burden is shifted to the citizen to prove that he can own a gun, rather then the Government having to prove that he can't.

Fully-automatic weapons is a discussion worth having -- anybody with access to a machine shop and some basic skills can turn a semi into a full-auto, so any ban isn't really effective... But the regulation of fully-automatic weapons goes back a few decades and might actually serve a purpose.

Get it from the horse's mouth

[ZWithaPGGB]

Go read the thread on NANOG. Or read the timeline here: http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/02/pakistan_hijacks_youtube_1.shtml

The way this happened is the result of a fundamental weakness in BGP. A more specific prefix will trump a less specific one, so anyone who has a valid peer can advertise a more specific route and hijack IP space. This is frequently used by Cybercriminals to squat on unused IP space in larger netblocks.

There have been proposals to address this issue for some time. Maybe, now that a major site has fallen victim, something will actually be done about it.

Of course, we could solve the problem the way it was when the Internet was first designed: only allow trusted entities to connect at all. IMNSHO, if the Islamic world don't want to be in the 21st century, that's their choice, but they can't have their cake and eat it too. Unless and until they agree to the basic principles of the Internet: freedom of association and speech, they shouldn't be allowed to connect at all.

This was discussed yesterday, but somehow the mods didn't control the discussion degenerating into a debate about circumcision.

It's Pakistan's main telecom company

[billstewart]

Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited is the former government telecom monopoly.
Just about any ISP is going to get themselves a BGP Autonomous System Number and use BGP to communicate with other ISPs.

A long long time ago, when the Internet was smaller and more trusting, long enough ago that I've forgotten the names of the guilty parties, some company in Virginia made a mistake in configuring their router, and announced that their T1 was a really really good route to MAE-East, and about 1/3 of the packets on the Internet decided to go use their T1, for a couple of seconds before it melted... Since then, it's become a Best Current Practice for ISPs to filter out routing announcements from their customers, and most ISPs also filter their peering links with other ISPs, though some are more aggressive about it than others (plus they tend to have limits on how specific a route can be announced, just to keep router table sizes from exploding.)

But even with that, occasional glitches can happen. A couple of years ago, an ISP in South America did a bad job of route summarization (probably using RIP internally, which uses the old Class A/B/C system instead of CIDR), and announced a route for the /8 network that belonged to a major US Tier 1 ISP. Their upstream provider didn't filter it, and it was a couple of hops before you got to the US ISP, so much of Latin America lost connectivity to that US ISP because they were using that upstream. Once the US ISP saw bad route announcements about their space, they announced a pair of /9 routes to cover their /8, which was more specific than the South American route and therefore fixed everything. Many other large ISPs have done the same sorts of things as a defensive measure.

It's highly unlikely that PCTL was trying to block YouTube access for the whole world, as opposed to just for their country. That doesn't mean what they did was competent, of course, but it's not too surprising that somebody exported a route to their peers that they really only intended for their customers. Their upstream provider probably should have filtered out the announcements as well. But things like this do happen, and if you're likely to be a major target, either of malice or of incompetence, you need to do the extra work to monitor route announcements that include your address space.

broke the wind?

[SillySlashdotName]

Did someone pull their finger?!? I thought I told everyone NOT to pull their finger! Nobody ever listens to me! I don't know what they were think...

What's that? Broke the WORLD?

Oh.

Nevermind.

Bitch.

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

[trytoguess]

If a work of literature isn't supposed to be taken literally, who decides what's the "correct" interpretation? I'm sorry, but the views of the extremeists are equally as vaild as the most liberal in any religion. Sure, the liberal views are more moral for us, but what does God think? I dunno, and therin lies the conundrum.

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

[Serious Callers Only]

Have you read the Bible (old testament) or Talmud? If not I suggest you look for approval of atrocities and genocide in there - there are plenty of examples.

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

[fyoder]

The content of the Quran, as read by the average reasonable person, resembles Mein Kampf in its degree of evil.

The content of the Quran, as read by the average reasonable person, contains a central theme or concern for justice defined in simple 'tit for tat' terms -- basically don't start fights because God loves not the aggressor, but if anyone strikes you, then give 'em hell. Consequently, the Quran is much more congruent with the values of most average reasonable persons than is the New Testament with its emphasis on forgiveness and turning the other cheek.

Really

[Teflon_Jeff]

Pakistan broke the worlds internet? Awesome. Talk about a connected world, this is like the digital equivalent of a butterfly's wings.

Remember, Musharrif is an ally ...

[Bassman59]

in the War On Terror. Bushco does warrantless wiretaps, Musharrif blocks the internet. Lovely.

Well the obvious solution is...

[Smoke2Joints]

...to put the servers into friggin space, man!

Solution: ban corporate/union donations

[biggknifeparty]

That's what we have done in Canada. Only individual donations are permitted, and there is a strict limit on how much can be received. Corporations and lobbyists need to be stripped of their power, demos cratos, not corporatism!

Re:Solution: ban corporate/union donations

[Shakrai]

I'd go along with that. It gets somewhat tricker though when the unions/corporations/lobbyists start using their money to indirectly influence the election though.

A union can't directly donate money to a political campaign here in the states -- but they can donate money to a private group that runs television ads saying the opponent of their candidate kicks puppies or whatever else it takes to convince people not to vote for him.

Well that explains a lot!

[sirgoran]

With Pakistan offline it explains why my spam filter is running nearly empty!
Keep up the good work guys!

-Goran

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

[meringuoid]

Have you read the Bible (old testament) or Talmud? If not I suggest you look for approval of atrocities and genocide in there - there are plenty of examples.

Why is it that whenever anybody claims that the Koran is full of evil, someone pipes up that the Bible is just as bad? It's not as if there's a large Christian or Jewish majority on /.; I imagine most of us think Jehovah's bumper book of hate is just as loathsome as Allah's, but perhaps redeemed a little by the fact that its worshippers are more willing to retcon out the nasty bits. Find exhortations to mass murder and armed subjugation of the infidel in the Principia Discordia, then you'll expose our hypocrisy in denigrating the Koran.

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

[aicrules]

And because it's used primarily as a religious analogy, this may not be scientifically accurate, but what I was told when I first heard it was that the act of "struggling" to emerge from the crystalis is what helped form the wings (through fluid stored in the body being squeezed out into the wings). The wings, therefore, won't work, which surely isn't epistemological, but definitely would have a negative impact on their overall life expectancy.

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

[aicrules]

Please define a natural temptation versus a societal temptation with regards to what can or cannot be forcibly removed by governmental influence. If pontiff decides that sheep are too big a temptation, he can have all sheep killed. If he decides knotholes in trees are too big a temptation, all trees can be felled. Too much visually sacriligious material in the environment, gouge everyone's eyes out, mutilate their eardrums and hobble them. The mind wanders to evil thoughts? Then everyone must be put in a permanent vegetative state lest they blasphemy through thought...

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

[mapkinase]

I do not have to define anything. It is defined by particular society. Have in mind that you have no business in what is happening in Pakistan (except, of course, for the fact that they affected youtube users all over the world).

That BGPLAY applet totally hoses Firefox 1.5

[cshay]

Everytime that thing loads I have to kill Firefox. It freezes all my windows.

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

[Trogre]

http://xkcd.com/261/

Re: Lend Lease was political bunkum

[NonCow]

IANAH, but there was a sizzling documentary on the local non-commercial TV last month about the relationship between Churchill and Roosevelt. Basically it described Lend Lease as a massive confidence trick played on both Churchill and the US public to keep the US out of the war in reality, but in the war in sentimentality. Apparently Lend Lease only contributed 1% of Britain's consumed requirements during that period of the war, while the US sold itself profusely in newsreels as "the Armoury of the free world" as if it was supplying so much more of Britain's need.
Apparently prior to Pearl, Roosevelt was simlilar to current GW&co with regards to political tap-dancery and media salesmanship. Churchill initially believed in his rhetoric, then as the year of lost promises and German bombardments wore on Churchill realised thst Roosevelt was taking him for a ride (source was Churchill's diary notes). Only Pearl brought the US in to Asia and I expect there was more to why they bothered entering EU in reality than some vague concept of "dear old England". Roosevelt might have been more worried about the USSR taking EU as a final outcome of WW2. I don't think he was worried about Germany taking EU. Germany would be a good trade partner. Plenty of good capitalists there. Remember Communism had a manadate to extinuish all other cultures and social formations. Germany only had a mandate to extinguish one, and that was apalling enough.
It appears that most US citizens still believe that they saved the Brits via Lend Lease. If so, and if the preceeding analysis was accurate, then Roosevelt's confidence trick is still working today. A most enduring political success.
Remember, what is a narcissist's principle objective? And are they capable of doing anything but responding to that urge?

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

[gardyloo]

A few other people have talked about this (that I can find). For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:TenOfAllTrades/temp3#Struggling_Butterflies

    I suspect that the 1 - 3 hour act of slowly fanning the wings and relaxing after the emergence from the chrysalis is what is really important. Apparently a healthy, successful emergence can take as little as 10 minutes, with several hours of cool-down afterwards.

I don't even know if insects' hearts increase pumping rates during "exercise". I *do* happen to know that grasshoppers' respiration rates go up during activity (because it's so easy to observe the abdominal motion which comes with respiration in those large insects), but I don't know if the added motion helps waft O2 in more quickly through their spiracles, or get rid of waste gases, or what, or if there is a concomitant increase in *heart* rate.

Re:Cue "Islam is evil post"

[aicrules]

Alright, so I'll amend the analogy to include helping it out of the crystalis and spreading its wings for it. Then, just for good measure, I'll have a little boy come along and stomp on the butterfly because he thought it was gross.

Re: Lend Lease was political bunkum

[afidel]

While this quote from wikipedia is more about what was contributed to the USSR than England I think it illustrates the magnitude of the program:

For example, the USSR was highly dependent on trains, yet the desperate need to produce weapons meant that only about 92 locomotives were produced in the USSR during the entire war. In this context, the supply of 1,981 US locomotives can be better understood. Likewise, the Soviet air force was enhanced by 18,700 aircraft, which amounted to about 14% of Soviet aircraft production (19% for military aircraft)[5].

Although most Red Army tank units were equipped with Soviet-built tanks, their logistical support was provided by hundreds of thousands of US-made trucks. Indeed by 1945 nearly two-thirds of the truck strength of the Red Army was US-built. Trucks such as the Dodge ¾ ton and Studebaker 2.5 ton, were easily the best trucks available in their class on either side on the Eastern Front.[6] US supplies of telephone cable, aluminium, and canned rations were also critical.
link.

even better, Troll

[Reality Master 201]

It's fine to hate the muzzie towelheads at Slashdot. Heaven forfend you actually notice that fact publicaly.

It's a great day, moderators. Thanks for being a bunch of right wing bigots.

Re: Lend Lease was political bunkum

[Shakrai]

Wow. That just about contradicts every single mainstream historian on the subject. What was the name of this documentary that you saw? Can I look it up and review it's sources?

Here's where I started to have a problem with it, FYI:

Apparently prior to Pearl, Roosevelt was simlilar to current GW&co with regards to political tap-dancery and media salesmanship. Churchill initially believed in his rhetoric, then as the year of lost promises and German bombardments wore on Churchill realised thst Roosevelt was taking him for a ride (source was Churchill's diary notes). Only Pearl brought the US in to Asia and I expect there was more to why they bothered entering EU in reality than some vague concept of "dear old England"

FDR was taking dear old Churchill for a ride and only got involved in the European theater because of "dear old England"? Then how do you explain all of the conferences between FDR and Churchill prior to the US entry into the war? In them they hammered out the Europe first strategy, among others. The US and UK military staffs were meeting for months before the United States entered the war. Germany had already attacked American warships on the high seas because of our actions in favor of the United Kingdom.

I find it really hard to believe that FDR was taking Churchill for a ride. FDR had some of his own goals in mind (his anti-colonial positions didn't exactly favor keeping the British Empire intact) but I've never heard it suggested that he was taking Churchill for a ride, nor have I ever read any part of Churchill's writings that suggested he ever thought so. America focused on Germany and the European Front even though we hadn't been directly attacked there (unlike at Pearl Harbor). FDR and Churchill worked with each other as partners and implemented a common policy for ending the war.

I'd be really curious to see this documentary that you've watched.

Keep 'em barefoot and preggers.

[SimCash]

Ahhh, so the mullahs (Arabic for MFWIC, "Mutha who's in charge") want to isolate their flock so they can keep them stooopid. Sounds like a bad CIA plot ... what's next, cell phones (ooops).

This is not just an Islamic problem

[wolfenok]

Governments of all countries sometimes block information that is not suitable for it. For example in my country the government always blocks some opposite sites. And some people think that is it normal Do not know what does those people think about their lifes its inconceivable for me, to understand them. I found my only way to solve that kind of ****. Im using VPN tunneling service from www.strongvpn.com , actually the US IP they gives to me I can surf all internet, and do not depend to any policy. Hope this information will help you...