Slashdot Mirror
YouTube Bans Terrorist Training Videos
Virtual_Raider sends in an Australian news story that begins "Terrorist training videos will be banned from appearing on YouTube, under revised new guidelines being implemented by the popular video-sharing site. The Google-owned portal will ban footage that advertises terrorism or extremist causes and supporters of the change hope it will blunt al-Qaeda's strong media online campaign. The move comes after pressure... from Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman... [T]he new YouTube guidelines includes bans on videos that incite others to commit violent acts, videos on how to make bombs, and footage of sniper attacks."
This just adds a bit of legitimacy to their cause. Now they can rightfully claim that they are being persecuted and censored. This is the same as what happens in parts of Europe where all things related to Nazis and Hilter are banned.
It just drives it underground and gives it more street cred. If these things are out in the open it is a lot easier to keep tabs on and to criticize it which in turn makes it more likely that people will see it for the bullshit it really is.
What ever the problem, censorship is almost never the answer.
siener's youtube channel
But how does youtube define "Terrorists"
Enemies of the USA? (Banning Islamic military videos)
Enemies of Islam?(Banning USA military videos)
With the current admin, those are called freedom fighters. With the next admin, that may change.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I give it a day or two before Scientology starts augmenting its fraudulent DMCA takedown notices, adding the charge that its critics are "extremists" and thus worthy of censorship.
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
Give me a break, when was the last time you heard of a clinic getting bombed? It was a handful of nut jobs, and they are in prison. Clinton tightened the regulations on distance from the clinic, and protests kind of faded. They have adopted less confrontational approaches.
It probably feels good to go on Slashdot and compare Christians to Al Qaeda, you could go diary on Daily Kos and get told how wonderful you are, but it would be the same BS as here.
There is zero comparison between people protesting an abortion clinic and some people going too far than an organized movement to kill civilians haphazardly to advance a political agenda.
On some level you have to realize that the "internal justification" of the anti-abortion murderers is their belief that they are preventing murder, while the Islamist Terrorists are pursuing an agenda of despotism and establishing a Caliphate military dictatorship. The former are targeting the specific people that they believe are currently in the process of taking a life (in the view of the actor), the latter are looking to kill or maim as many as possible.
Not justifying the abortion clinic attacks, just suggesting that the actions were at least targeted at preventing what they consider a wrong, while the terrorists we are fighting are NOT targeted at preventing a wrong (I'd suggest that their attacks on our troops aren't terrorism, just asymmetrical warfare, our troops are a valid military target, for that reason I'm hard pressed to classify the hit on the Pentagon as a terrorist attack since it's a military target)... they may have a goal that they believe in, but their methodology is simply evil.
So they're going to ban Mythbusters clips now? I mean, last week they showed how to make an improvised explosive using coffee creamer as the fuel. This week, they determined the necessary explosive amount required to blow up your average genetically-altered great white shark (albeit under the watchful eye of a California bomb squad.)
Seriously, a bomb is fuel, oxidizer, and a containment vessel. Technically, the propane tank on your barbecue grill counts as a "bomb" in the right context.
...then only outlaws will have outlaw videos.
Freedom of Speech means freedom for everyone. Yes this includes and is not restricted to; Terrorists, murderers, rapists, pedophiles, stalkers, bomb makers, nazis and holocaust deniers.
I do not have to apologise for saying these people have a right to speak. You need to apologise for suggesting that they should not have that right.
If you want rights for some and not for others, go live in Saudi Arabia or China or Russia. But of you right rights for all the people, then you need to stand up for those rights no matter who they are taken from.
May the Maths Be with you!
Sometimes common sense, uncommon thought it may be, just has to prevail...
and we're still waiting...
the united states is a nation of laws; badly written and randomly enforced -- frank zappa
I dunno. I'm in Germany, where nazi things are as forbidden as it can possibly get, but I'm not aware of neo-nazis having much street cred or too many people thinking of them as freedom fighters. From the limited and flawed sample I have, it seems to me like there are more neo-nazis, white-supremacists and the like per capita in the USA where it's not forbidden.
Bear in mind that most of Europe has been fucked up hard by WW2. You yanks know WW2 as this war that happened somewhere else, you had a one or two hundred thousand soldiers total, and generally it mostly happened to somewhere else. Here it's a lot closer to home. Germany got not only to lose over 5.5 million soldiers in the war and over 1.5 million civillians in the firebombings, but got to deal with the whole Gestapo and all first hand. There are familes who've had a member or two gassed by Hitler just because they had some chronic disease when that eugenics program was tried.
Now there _are_ a few nostalgiacs about that time, and a few trolls posing as neo-nazis, but on the whole there just isn't that much reason to pine for those times. Which would kind of be required for them to have any significant amount of "street cred."
Germany largely went pacifist and socialist after the war, mostly as a result of still remembering the war and the far-right dictatorship. (Not unlike the USA went pacifist after WW1, but without the isolationism aspect.)
Other countries have even less reasons to cheer for it. France has been bombed by us in one direction, and then by the Allies on the way back. I haven't done a poll there, so I might be talking out the arse, but I don't think many of them pine for those times. And forbidding nazi symbols and the like, doesn't seem to have made people pine for those times more.
Now there seems to be a signifficant amount of French nationalism, but really that's actually mis-labelled. France's "nationalism" and "right wing" aren't as much about nation or race, as about language and culture. The theme doesn't seem as much "go home if you're not white or French" as "go home if you don't freaking want to learn French." In a lot of countries that wouldn't even be considered "nationalism" or "right wing", but rather the baseline as expectations go.
Just about the only countries where racism and nationalism have made a come-back are in the former Eastern Bloc. But there it's not forbidden, so you can't blame it on that.
Finally, note that it's somewhat misleading to paint it as Europe forbidding it _all_ or that it's not allowed to talk about it in the open. We still have documentaries, books about it, and learn history in schools, ya know? So, yes, it is very much possible "to keep tabs on and to criticize it which in turn makes it more likely that people will see it for the bullshit it really is". Most of it, at least. All that's forbidden is nazi propaganda/hate-speech and, depending on the country, the sale or public display of crooked crosses and other nazi symbols.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
...is another man's freedom fighter. The speed that politics moves, I wouldn't want to have to be the guy who chooses what's allowed and what's not. Who knows which groups the next president of the USA considers to be "evil terrorists" or "democracy loving freedom fighters".
Don't ban others speech. Speak better than them.
Censorship is an act of desperation on the part of a losing ideology... and I hardly think that's applicable here.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Or are we working on another "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it" here?
And it seems to me that psychological terrorism could apply to an interesting range of things-- an al-Qaeda rant or an "evil empire" or veiled "all our options are on the table" rant from an American president for example.
Yes, because Israel, a loyal US Ally/Satellite that has advanced US Agenda in the mideast,...
Huh? Unless the US agenda is supporting Israel, I'm not really seeing it. Certainly, if the USA agenda were to be reducing terrorist attacks on the USA then Israel is working directly against that goal.
...and contained its military operations to self defense,...
If what Israel is doing to the Palestinians is "self-defense" then what Apartheid South Africa did to black people was also "self-defense".
...should be abandoned because an artificial liberation movement has become the latest leftist craze.
How is it "artificial" or "liberation" or even "leftist"? The most common viewpoint I've seen is that Israel should not discriminate or promote segregation.
The people in the disputed territories are in a crappy situation, which Israel HAS been attempting to negotiate a solution for.
Like by continuing to drive them off their land to make new settlements?
However, the Arab world's insistence on arming them to the teeth...
Israel might qualify as "armed to the teeth". A few crude explosives and a few automatic weapons is hardly "armed to the teeth".
...and paying them to die,...
I've seen some attempts to mitigate the effects of Israel's collective punishment - but it's kind of hard to pay someone who is dead.
...plus keeping 3 generations of people in "refugee camps" instead of settling them...
The right solution is to let the refugees settle wherever they want. If they want to go home to what is now Israel then they should have that option. If they want to go elsewhere then that should be allowed too.
(roughly the same number of Jews were kicked out of Arab countries as Arabs that fled Israel during the 1948 War) like Israel settled the Jews the Arabs kicked out,...
Let's not forget the Palestinians displaced in the other wars - but, yeah, two wrongs don't make a right. Jews that fled the surrounding Middle Eastern countries should be allowed to return to those countries.
...has prevented a solution.
Most fundamentally, Israel's continued insistence on segregation and discrimination has prevented a solution.
Arafat the Egyptian embraced lefty rhetoric and style, so like Castro, became seen as a darling of the left who love dictators if they embrace "revolution."
The people I know weren't big fans of Arafat - but they wanted to discrimination and the segregation to end.
The fact that their aid dollars went to his corrupt regime and killing civilian Jews mattered way less than their embrace of a "freedom fighter."
I've known some people who've donated to Palestinian orphanages - but, now, even that tends to be illegal. On the other hand, plenty of US Zionists have donated weapons to Israeli settlers to continue to drive the Palestinians off their land. It's also worth pointing out that Israel kills roughly ten times as many non-combatants (e.g. young children) as the Palestinians.
The fact that he also used the resources to systematically terrorize Arab Christians probably also ingratiated himself to the secular left.
Certainly some Palestinians are Christian - but do you have any evidence that they were terrorized - or are you just making stuff up?
The amount of land in dispute is TRIVIAL, except to Israel that is in physical danger without it.
Given that Israel has one of the largest nuclear arsenals in the world, a bit of land isn't really going to make a difference. What would make a difference would be to stop the discrimination and segregation - sort of like how Apartheid South Africa has seen a lo