Slashdot Mirror
UK To Train Pro-West Islamic Groups To Game Google
Hugh Pickens writes "The British government's Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT), a 200-strong Home Office unit created 18 months ago, has said in meetings it wants to 'flood the internet' with 'positive' interpretations of Islam and plans to train government-approved groups in search engine optimization techniques, which it is hoped will boost their profile online and battle radicalization. A Home Office spokesman confirmed search engine optimization training is part of the government's anti-radicalization strategy. 'In order to support mainstream voices, we work with local partners to help develop their communication, representational and leadership skills. This support could include media training, which can help make their voices heard more widely, and support the development of skills which allow communities to be more effective in debate.' However the effectiveness of search engine optimization in reducing traffic to extremist websites has been dismissed by academics. A report produced by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) said young Muslims were much more likely to be directed to extremist material online by web forums and offline associates than by Google or other search engines. 'Tweaking the results for supposedly extremist terms would be largely ineffectual, not least because it is unlikely that any but the most callow wannabe terrorist would use a mainstream search engine to find banned material.'"
Dear Religion,
You are a pain in the ass. Please go away soon.
Imagine there's no countries.
It isn't hard to do.
Nothing to kill or die for,
And no religion too.
Imagine all the people,
Living life in peace.
Love,
Sane People
After all, don't we want young Buddhists to be much less likely to be directed to extremist material online?
Oh, sorry, forgot the UK government only sponsors your religion when you are violent. If you are peaceful, you are on your own. Do your own damn PR!
"it wants to 'flood the internet' with 'positive' interpretations of Islam and plans to train government-approved groups in search engine optimization techniques"
The next pasture is always greener
The headline seems to put a negative spin on this, but as government activities go it seems pretty benign. Better than beating people up or killing them. We need to find ways to encourage governments to channel more of their energies into non-destructive activities like this.
Hasn't the British government been allowing Sharia courts to operate in Britain for some time?
If they want to battle "radical" Islam then how about getting rid of the Sharia Courts? How about really clamping down on female genital mutilation happening in Britain and to British citizens?
Tweaking some search results, that's pathetic. Islam is a danger to civilized nations, so trying to weaken it is fine, but this pathetic, it will do next to nothing.
For once I'm going to have to encourage the mods to actually read an incendiary post (re: parent) in its entirety and do some fact-checking before modding the poster down. There's actually not anything I can find in this post with respect to actual citations and recent events at the hands of fanatics that isn't true. Thought some may find it deeply disturbing and distasteful, including peaceful adherents to the faith, the last paragraph is pretty much beyond factual dispute.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Please mod parent up.
Well it is an incendiary post and the author has obvious hate of islam it is thought provoking.
I for one would hope the readers of slashdot are given a chance to read this and give there opinion.
I'm all for open discussion.
Really?
>Islam is the Middle East's response to the Mormon religion/cult.
False. Islam came first.
And the rest of the statements go downhill from there. Considering that was the first line and proven false, I'd say yes, flamebait or troll. Anyone who wanted to actually create a thought-provoking post on it without using falsehood or inflammatory speech could do so with just a few seconds of logical though applied to the situation.
So, mod down, try again.
They aren't really targeting the mainstream Muslims. The intent of this is to sweep the radicals under the rug or put them in the back or the room so noone can look at them.
By flooding the search engines to bring up search results only pointing to the mainstream Muslim sites, they are attempting to stop little Johny from getting bored, finding an extremist site, becoming brainwashed, strapping a bomb to his balls in some ignorant belief of 72 virgins as a reward when he is too young to realize they will be permanent virgins so the effect would be more like living with 72 twelve year old sisters, and blowing himself and others up.
They are looking for the "out of site, out of mind" approach. If they can't find it, they won't become it. But hey, Ignoring the problem has worked so well for so long, what could go wrong? And this plan has the added benefit of the public missing out on what is happening and not demanding the government provide as much protection from the fundamentalist extremist bent on their destruction. This way the government won't have to spend so much Time, money and effort on defending the people and foiling the extremist plots before they can harm innocent civilians that the government is charged with the protection of. More cameras and license plate sensors can be installed to watch the public and track their movements and make sure they pay the taxes.
Google UK likes to please governments.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
All the more reason to vote Lib Dem at the next election, then.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
No matter how you look at it, it's the government promoting one religion over another and attempting to bury their speech to make it happen.
It seems that you agree with the end goal which I sort of do too. But what happens when this action is taken to squash all other religions or negative but rightly placed speech against the government or to create a state religion or lead the people to believe a certain thing in order to pass an otherwise unpopular law that the people wouldn't stand for? I mean could you imagine doing a search on the interweb for Iraq and finding only the "Saddam tried to get yellow cake" or "Iraq has WMDs that terrorists want or can get" sites and articles and being led to believe that Iraq posed a great enough threat to the world that an immediate war was required to limit the potential damage because the government decided to optimize the search engines to get a certain message across and hide others?
Why, if that happened, we might see a couple of otherwise well mannered countries start a war.
...as pro-evolution content on the web is succeeding at making the creationists go away.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
I don't think you grasp what a dictator is, nor how our electoral system works.
Our country is run by the party, not by the prime minister. The Prime Minister is just the appointed representative/head of the party. Don't like the decisions a part makes? Don't vote for them. If the party doesn't like what the prime Minister does, they do a vote of no confidence or vote against his law changes. The PM only has as much power as the party allows.
Stop using monospace for your posts.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
One of the biggest problems is that their prophet is held up to be the model of behaviour--the most perfect man, and is to be emulated in all things, (and there is no expiration date on this stuff). So, when an approximately 50 year old man (who happens to be the prophet of islam) "marries" a 6 year girl, and has sex with her when she is 9, those present day restrictions are pretty hard to enforce in an Islamic country because it is well documented that Mohammed did it. And if he did it, then it must be ok.
Secondly, by saying "...there where times were similar things were common even in europe like 500-600 years ago", you are making weasel excuses. It does not excuse the behaviour, nor make it right. It does show an attempt to deflect accusations of wrong-doing.
Pedophilia (even when practiced by that Islamic prophet Mohammed) is wrong.
Let me end your guessing: you will not find similar things, as in: pedophilia being committed by one of the authors of one of the books of the Bible.
-- This koran is about 800 years old, it cannot be adapted to todays social and cultural standards.
Unfortunatly, the koran is considered a "holy" book which speaks naught but the truth.
-- You see even if muslims say those words are divine, they tend not to follow the koran in word, they adapt and interpret it.
Interpretations abound as we can see in our modern world, from peaceful to extremely violent. The interpretation of all that is messed up in the koran (which is a lot), has led to incalculable stupidity and unexcusable behavior.
-- Like what christians have done with the bible, ok anytime there are extremist people.
Don't worry, I hate christians as much as I hate muslims, and just about any other nutcase that professes to "believe".
-- But yes I also think that there are muslims, which are a threat to western society but I also take extremist christianism into account to be such a threat.
There are no doubt extremist christians in this world that pose an actual threat to their environment, but in the west, this is minimal. The "extremists" that I have seen here, usually go about picketing for the entirely wrong cause etc, but don't usually end up killing and/or maiming people. They are merely even more annoying then the regular dickwads.
In short, religion, much like assumption, is the mother of all evil, we would do well to rid ourselves of such fairytales so we can strive for a better future.
Many more people die from heart attacks and car accidents each year. Why the big fuss over terrorism?
Christianity takes its name from Jesus, and is based on the idea that if Jesus is not god (trinity), then he is at least the son of god.
Taking a look at the old books of christianity, we find that Jesus upholds the old testament. Matthew 5:17, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil."
Armed with those words, the whole bible is open as a source for religious guidance, such as rape being punishable by a payment of 50 pieces of silver to the victims father and then taking your victim as your wife. Rape victims who are betrothed are to be stoned to death. If you see a female captive who you like, then take her. Selling your daughter as a sex slave is fine.
That's just some of the parts dealing with rape. It's also O.K in the bible to kill gays, witches, adulterers, disobedient children, fortune tellers, non-believers, false prophets, anyone living in a town with non-christians, brides who are not virginal, blasphemers and anyone who works on the sabbath.
Is it "weasel excuses" to say that christians don't generally behave like that anymore, or just double standards?
It's mostly the same, in some accounts even less ghastly than the old testament (human sacrifice, child abuse etc. etc.)
The main problem with Islam comes from the fact that it has failed miserably to adapt to the twenty first century, where all other countries are moving towards increased secularism and freedom of choice, Islamic countries are still stuck in a medieval religious model circa 1200 a.d.
Secondly, by saying "...there where times were similar things were common even in europe like 500-600 years ago", you are making weasel excuses. It does not excuse the behaviour, nor make it right. It does show an attempt to deflect accusations of wrong-doing.
No, he's saying that the person who made that post and the people who modded it insightful are ignorant fools if they think that exactly the same examples of genocide and forced marriages of children can not be found in the Torah or the Bible. Really, slagging off Islam for these sort of stories in the holy book from a Christian or Jewish perspective is hipocritical.
If you are astonished at this marriage to a young girl, you would clearly be astonished by any of the cultures of the time. The parent wasn't saying it was right, they were saying it was prevalent.
Pedophilia (even when practiced by that Islamic prophet Mohammed) is wrong.
I think what you meant was that paedophelia (what a cheap shot by the way, think of the children), is considered wrong nowadays, but that it was not always so, as evidenced by the child brides in the Talmud (I believe the age in question is 3) and Christian Bible. To point this out is not a 'weasel excuse' it's to not wallow in the ignorance of expecting every age to conform to the mores of our own.
Oh, sure.
The whole Bible can be summarized as: "You are worthless bitch. Endlessly pray for forgiveness, you slave". The same for Koran (it's absolutely explicit there) and a bit less for Torah.
This whole "religions of peace" is oxymoron like "slavery for freedom".
All three abrahamic religions are fucked up. Mo just took the most perverted aspects of judaism and christianity, added his own psychopathy, and voila! - islam was born.
Religion must die and WE have to kill it.
I'm not sure what books you're reading, but as far as I know only the New Testament has much about "love" and "forgiveness". God of the Old Testament and the Torah is full of salt and vinegar, damning and cursing and calling upon his people to rape cities. I will admit that I don't know much about the Koran.
Unfortunately, the Bible wasn't written in English. The Hebrew words used there do not necessarily mean "kill"; there is very good evidence that they might mean "murder". This makes perfect sense in the context of the rest of the Bible - after all, God calls on people to kill for Him all the time in the Old Testament.
Ok, so the use of the word 'dictator' is emotive and not quite appropriate in England - yet. But to say that we are run by the (Labour) party is just not true. On the whole the country is, if at all, run from Number Ten impeded or encouraged by the civil service. The elected MPs count for very little and the party count for naught - except at election time.
Yeah man, I live right next to one of the biggest mosques in my country and you can't move for all the beheadings, child rape and intolerence.
Which is, of course, nonsense. The mosque runs a very popular cafe serving cheap curry, it's enormously popular with every demographic in the area (excluding those who don't like curry), local Muslims drink (non-alcoholic) drinks in the same pubs and clubs as the rest of us, work in the same places as the rest of us etc etc. Just because I find religion in general a little fuzzy and misguided doesn't mean the Muslims are any worse than your average Sunday churchgoer or crystal-waving new-ager.
Of course there are extremist elements all over the world, just like some evangelicals in the US marrying multiple teenage girls, or Jehova's Witnesses who will allow a child to die from a curable operation. Pick your religion, somebody does something weird and usually harmful, but it's also a minority.
The point of the original idea is that the extremists, usually by definition, shout the loudest even though they're a minority. This aims to redress the balance a little. Us atheists could take a well-thought-out leaf from that book.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Have a bit more damned respect. So far all you've done is declare Muslims infidels that we other people need to annihilate. How about you actually meet some Muslims (the construction makes perfect sense in Arabic or any other Semitic language, by the way*) and talk to them about their religion before you judge the whole thing!
* Seriously, when you're using linguistics as a reason not to like someone, you've jumped into irrational hate. Stop it.
If we're awarding points by the number of deaths, then Christianity must win by far -- just look at the numbers for the Taiping rebellion in China.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
They may be late comers, but compared to them every religious mass murderer was an amateur.
Then the obvious deduction is that they had good teachers ...
And no, in terms of body count, even Stalin has nothing on christianity.
You are right, but Jesus fulfilled Scripture in other ways too. I'm going to take a "rabbi trail" here... In Judaism, to "fulfill" something means to interpret it correctly. This is what Jesus did through the way He lived His life. He full-filled it not only by keeping the commands of the law, but by filling it full of its true meaning.
Moreover, that He fulfilled the law does not mean that we, His followers , are to ignore the law's commandments, which are "holy, just, and good" (Romans 7:12).
Look at what Paul is saying. It's not that keeping the law makes sin your master; rather, legalistic observance of G-d's commands without having understood and received His grace is what makes sin your master.
It should be noted that the ancient Greek language did not have a word for "legalism." There was only this word (in Rom. 6:14, nomon), which is always simplistically rendered as "law" in English.
Look at the context, using another version (CJB):
Is Paul saying that lawlessness is bad, but keeping the law is also bad? Sounds like a lose/lose situation for humanity. But no; Paul professes, "we confirm/uphold/establish (KJV) the law" (Rom. 3:31) But only a keeping of the law that is grounded in a relationship of trusting faithfulness in G-d and His grace for us. Christians nearly always miss this distinction.
He did what was "unlawful" regarding the Sabbath only according to the Pharisaic rabbinical laws. He did not violate G-d's law concerning the Sabbath. He simply held to a less burdensome practice of keeping of Shabbat.
Here, Jesus was, in fact, going strictly by the Book (Deuteronomy 17):