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YouTube Blocked In Pakistan
kokoko1 submits this snippet from The Telegraph, which reports that Facebook isn't alone — now YouTube, too, is being censored in Pakistan. "The blocking of YouTube comes a day after a Pakistani court blocked Facebook amid a growing row over a competition on the social networking website to design cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad." Update: 05/20 18:58 GMT by T : According to an anonymous reader, Wikipedia and Flickr are out, too.
Update: 05/21 12:11 GMT by KD : And now add Twitter to the blocked list. This post claims that more than 1,000 sites are being blocked in Pakistan.
Update: 05/21 12:11 GMT by KD : And now add Twitter to the blocked list. This post claims that more than 1,000 sites are being blocked in Pakistan.
In a poor country with only a fraction of the people being affected by blocking the internet, the critical mass for any push for change is absent.
ya, just look a China for example. (and good thing for them they have a lot more people)
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
>-|-O
This is great that people are pushing to force governments to drop their censorship. But it's not going to work, at least, not in the short term. The reason? Pakistan will be able to find at least a few people or companies that will build local versions of social networking sites, search engines, etc. that comply with their censorship requests. It's how capitalism works, only the government is saying "we've made you a captive market if you only play by our rules".
Ultimately censorship will be killed by end to end encryption and onion routing.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
(((:~(>
Filter error: Your comment looks too much like ascii art.
Well duh!
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Facebook is only banned in Pakistan, not in Saudi Arabia or India (I think second largest muslim population) or Indonesia. Some muslim countries may not care I guess.
O
/ ^ \
* | -- Mohammad Carrying a bomb
^
/ \
Perhaps now, Pakistan will ban /. and we can stop hearing about stupid Pakistani Muslims who get offended of stick drawings.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Apparently Twitter supports Unicode, which opens a whole range of new possibilities ;-)
http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2009/01/14/how-to-insert-graphics-in-twitter-messages/
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
[snark]...blocking the internet ultimately resulted in such an increase in work productivity that Pakistan shot to the top of the list of developed countries in record time! [/snark]
and nothing of value was lost...
I'm just sayin'
The funny thing is that "old-timer" Protestants often destroyed or vandalized Catholic paintings and statues precisely for the same reason: They were considered examples of idolatry. Just go to e.g. Malta and see the faceless statues in some of the old churches there.
I find that a lot of these foreign developing countries that seem to be oppressive and support censorship are usually pretty much just as bad as any developed nation.
I mean, what with Australia airports checking for porn, US Military blocking the Press with the Wikileaks video, Germany and its whole Anti-Nazi thing. Each country has its quirks, we seem so quick to condemn Pakistan for blocking a web site when we don't even have our own house in order.
Just confirming that Flickr is indeed blocked. Trying to access the site gives a "This Site is Restricted" msg. Wikipedia on the other hand seems to be working just fine.
How is killing people or even just protesting over a drawing not equating the subject of the drawing to godhood? In other words, these idiots have turned Mohammad into an idol by their actions and words, and so are violating the very law they seek to enforce on others.
That counts as one big FAIL in my book.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Except that this isn't a principle that started when the religion was founded, the whole anti-depiction thing only started about 2 or 3 hundred years ago. The religion itself is older, and has depictions of Muhammed.
And nothing of value was lost.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Such websites would be illegal in Texas
Citation needed.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The more religion/superstition is questioned via the internet, the more provocative negative responses from superstitionists will result.
This is good. Every opportunity to expose foolish nonsense is to be exploited.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Shouldn't they be blocking Google as well? I mean... 1.990.000 results on Google Images. Isn't that like mass blasphemy or something?
The non-overly religious pakistani that WE - the westerners, should very, very much care about. Because they are the only thing that stands between nukes and religious fanatics.
If that isn't a reason enough for anyone living in the West, I don't know what could possibly be one.
O-
Now if folk's wanted to be offensive they could claim otherwise. I'm not. It's Dave.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Balls. Didn't work. Please mod into oblivion. Worked on Twitter though: http://twitter.com/_The_Geoff_
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
You can give your people the internet when you get them sewers and a secular government first.
We'd have to ban the Internet in the United States if those were the rules.
I wish they could have been quieter about this. My state senators (Utah) are probably already phoning them to ask how they can get a piece of that sanitized Internet pie.
There's a 68.71% chance you're right.
There are reasonable limits to how far you go with that, though. The harsh reality is that some people, and some groups of people, just aren't ready for the internet. And if you're the kind of person who thinks that the proper response to seeing a pornographic picture is to kill the person(s) who posted and host it--you should not be welcome on the internet of the civilized world. Sorry for the inconvenience.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Actually, even the most backwards U.S. states are starting to look downright liberal compared to Australia these days. Not sure what's going on down under, but they seem to be dipping fast.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
And nothing of value was lost...
Time to go get 4chan added to the list. I've already cleared a space on my shelf for the "Great Hero of Pakistan" medal.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
You don't get it. No one on ./ really does. You're looking at this from the point of "those Muslims are trying to tell us what we can say".
If you seek to understand the average Muslim perspective though, conduct the following though experiment: that you are black and some is chanting "nigger nigger nigger nigger" in your face, stopping only to pompously congratulate themselves on what champions of freedom they are. Don't get mad, you don't have to right to tell people what they can say. Well no, you don't but it certainly is offensive and contemptuous.
It's not an analogy. I'm saying this is what it *feels* like for the average Muslim. Note I say average Muslim, not extremist.
Educated Muslims will typically shrug these provocations off but they don't make up the majority. This taboo runs deep into the realm of regular working everyday people in the Islamic world. For another tortured analogy consider pissing on an altar in 1920's Sicily and see how popular you are.
Americans more than any other Westerners should realize the political potency of culture wars/traditional symbols and values.
This issue has the potential to radicalize more people than Al-Qaeda ever dreamed of. They shot their wad in Iraq with their murderous overreaching and failed to convince the Muslim masses to rise up. But this can very easily breathe new life into Islamist movements that have been discrediting themselves in the eyes of regular folks.
I'm not asking you to care, I'm asking you to understand.
That happens in Christian churches *now*, never mind "old-timer" Protestants. Look at the Free Presbyterians - wearing a crucifix necklace would be considered idolatry. Do bear in mind that they make Wahabbi Muslims look like the very picture of tolerance and acceptance, though.
It's still your fault. The politicians are ultimately elected by the people, unless the vote is completely rigged (which there's no evidence of in any western country). If the people are too stupid to vote for better politicians, and keep electing the crappy ones, it's their own fault. Sure, a minority of the people (like you in Aus and me in the USA) might complain, but we're not enough to overcome the hordes of morons who vote. So while it may not be "your" fault individually, it IS "your" fault collectively that your country's government is fucked up. (This is one of the many cases where I wish English had different words for singular and plural "you".)
As for government forces shooting at civilians, we don't have that problem in the USA. If they start doing that outside liberal anti-gun cities like NYC, Chicago and Boston, the civilians will be shooting back. The amount of firepower owned by the citizens in this country is staggering. Unlike in Australia, we never allowed our government to take away our guns, so if things ever get too bad, we can always fall back to the ammo box.
none of the profits are supposed to be immortalized
No no, you're getting your hemispheres mixed up---we immortalize profits in the West. They immortalize prophets in the East.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
That's a pretty far distance from me here in Arizona. Malta isn't that much farther for me to travel to than the UK, and Malta is probably much more interesting to visit too. The weather's better too.
Did Mohammed wear a turbin?
Generating electricity from Middle Easterners? Now that's an idea!
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Each country has its quirks, we seem so quick to condemn Pakistan for blocking a web site when we don't even have our own house in order.
Your relativism only shows that you are either malicious or ignorant. You do realize that the same powers in Pakistan pushing for this religious ban are also the ones failing to pursue the assassins of Benazir Bhutto. Not coincidentally, the first female head of state of any Islamic nation. In fact, in many papers the same crowd of leaders calling for permanent bans of facebook and youtube for religious reasons, are also remarking on Benazir's own guilt in her assassination for placing herself in harms way.
Sorry, but Pakistan's ban of media that offends the religious is a very minor symptom of much deeper, malicious and vile religious intolerance. Actually, you may have heard something of it on the news a few years ago, some of them went by the name of Tali-something or other. But who can be bothered to remember that sort of thing, we've got our own house to worry about and this couldn't possibly effect us.
If only fluff pieces like this could bring attention to the more real issues in Pakistan. Like the recent assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the first and only head of a muslim state. It's unfortunate in the extreme that the country's court has now been more effective and interested in this youtube and facebook ban than it's pursuit of Benazir's killers.
This ban is not the only thing that has been more important to many of Pakistan's leadership either. Since Benazir's widow became president, the entirety of the country's opposition parties, courts and media have given more attention to corruption charges against Benazir's widow than to the pursuit of her killers.
Former dictator Musharraf is a leading suspect as a co-conspirator in her assassination. The latest news from him is his intent to return to Pakistan, at the head of a new political party that will include the PML-Q. The PML-Q is one Pakistan's strongest conservative Islamic parties, and one the ones advocating the strongest for this ban, for charges of corruption against Benazir's widow, and one of the quietest about her assassins still running free.
Well, I guess that's my small part in trying to draw attention from the 'fluff' over this ban to the real problems it is a symptom of.
Infidel pig! May all your camels suffer from flatulence and halitosis!
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Pakistan's version or the Tea Party's version?
You're looking at this from the point of "those Muslims are trying to tell us what we can say".
Are you telling me that's not what's happening?
If you seek to understand the average Muslim perspective though, conduct the following though experiment: that you are black and some is chanting "nigger nigger nigger nigger" in your face...
What about this concept is so hard for you to get?
Yes, people have the right to do that in the free world. Freedom of speech is worthless unless it also means freedom to say things you disagree with.
Except, of course, they don't have the right to do it right in your face. Which this isn't. No one is forcing you to go to that particular Facebook page out of thousands -- but you are drawing far more attention to it than it deserves by blocking all of Facebook because of this one bit that's offensive.
In fact, someone did exactly that on Facebook, and the US hasn't blocked Facebook.
Don't get mad, you don't have to right to tell people what they can say.
Those are two separate issues.
First, it's entirely up to you whether or not you take offense. Take the "nigger" situation -- you could get angry, or you could feel sorry for the poor troll who has nothing better to do than harass you, or you could ignore them altogether.
Second, there's nothing wrong with taking offense, or telling people what you think they should say. Where it crosses the line is when you start actually preventing them from saying it at all (by censoring an entire network because of a few offensive posts), or when you respond to someone's mere expression with violence, or threats of violence.
I don't see why that is such a hard concept to get. Hate speech is legal, and the best way to deal with it is to counter with calm, rational discourse, or to ignore it altogether and thus deny its power. Death threats are not legal, nor should they be tolerated, and actions like censorship are in an entirely different category.
It's not an analogy. I'm saying this is what it *feels* like for the average Muslim. Note I say average Muslim, not extremist.
And here's how one Muslim chose to respond.
Moreover, I'm not sure whether it should feel that way at all, if you understand your own religion. Think about it: Why did Mohammed forbid depictions of himself? To prevent just what happens every time you follow his name with "Peace Be Upon Him" -- to prevent himself (or any other prophet) from being deified, from being worshiped over Allah. Merely drawing the prophet should be no more blasphemous to you than it would be to draw Jesus Christ, who, as I understand, is also held to be a prophet.
This issue has the potential to radicalize more people than Al-Qaeda ever dreamed of.
No, they do that themselves. Mere expression cannot make you hate unless you allow it to.
I'm not asking you to care, I'm asking you to understand.
Well, I am asking you to care. Watch the DawahFilms video I linked to. Don't just shrug this off, use this as an opportunity to prove us embarrassingly wrong, and to set an example to your brothers and sisters about how Islam truly can be a religion of peace.
Or you can be silent, allowing your louder extremists to speak for you. Or you can actually defend censorship and barbarism. Your choice.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
http://zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/islamic_mo_full/
If you seek to understand the average Muslim perspective though, conduct the following though experiment: that you are black and some is chanting "nigger nigger nigger nigger" in your face, stopping only to pompously congratulate themselves on what champions of freedom they are.
Well a lot of people feel the same way about a bunch of medievalists trying to tell cartoonists in free countries what they can and can't draw.
This issue has the potential to radicalize more people than Al-Qaeda ever dreamed of. They shot their wad in Iraq with their murderous overreaching and failed to convince the Muslim masses to rise up. But this can very easily breathe new life into Islamist movements that have been discrediting themselves in the eyes of regular folks.
Yeah, just like at the end of the middle ages - people challenging the Catholic Church's silly rules on what people could and couldn't say prevented the Enlightenment.
Oh wait, that's not what happened at all - people stood up to them and eventually they backed down.
Religions need to be slapped down when they step out of line. Gradually they are abraded until they are powerless. I've got friends in Iran who - unlike you - actually understand what is at stake and are much more keen for this abrading process to be completed. Because then they can live a normal life. I'm sure 90% of "the Arab Street" feels the same way.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
We don't need to be able to point Pakistan out on a map to know that over 300 women are killed there every year by their own family for having premarital sex or actually wanting to marry someone for love and not by arrangement, or that rape wasn't even recognized as a prosecutable offense there until 2006. But yeah, we're all equal. We in the west are no better just because we have a legal system that doesn't imprison women for adultery or disobeying their husbands.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
No, most of us get it. Most of us also know that the forefathers felt that the right to offend is more important than the right to not be offended. Christians, Jews, Buddhists, etc. have to put up with it and as such the Nation of Islam does too or else it can't play with the rest of us..
Here's another point for YOU to ponder my friend....the U.S isn't exactly the most non-racist country on the planet. What do you suppose will happen to innocent Muslim families here in America and abroad the moment the Nation of Islam is perceived to be nothing but violent in nature?
Or you can simply look at it this way..Muslims are coming into OUR countries...if I go to Pakistan, can I demand they speak English, worship Christ, etc. or I'll start killing them? No!?!? Why does that make their demands worth anything here? Because they'll behead me if I don't change or get more radicals who'll do worse? Yeah, that's working out really well right now since that behavior has never caused a superpower to invade and kill "terr'rists" and innocents alike(I'm not agreeing with this at all, just pointing out that it is a very real pattern). If you want your culture to be like it was in your motherland, GO BACK THERE. Otherwise you're more than welcome here if you can show some tolerance.
Seriously, if you're a nation of peace, show it and stop making threats. Sure, for a while it may be like how the KKK tries to get Blacks, etc. to be violent by taunting them but in showing that you're above them, you prevail and even grow a bit as a culture.
Yeah, when they can no longer see funny cat videos, there will be a revolution.
Infidel pig! May all your camels suffer from flatulence and halitosis!
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_libel_laws
http://www.foxbghsuit.com/nyt060199.htm
Last but not least, the law itself:
http://law.justia.com/texas/codes/cp/004.00.000096.00.html
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
I realize that's the Christian interpretation. It's certainly not the Islamic interpretation, as far as I can tell.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Chanting 'nigger nigger nigger nigger' to the face of a black guy would be harassment if he tried to leave but you kept following him acting threateningly.
The part that makes it harassment isn't the nigger part, it's the 'acting threateningly in the face of' part. If I make a song called 'A Ballade for Niggerism' that consist of nothing but racial slurs against black guys, there's nothing you can hold against that unless you're one of the PC pricks.
And the 'peaceful moderates' that Islamic people always claim make up the majority of their people really need to step up to the plate here.
- These characters were randomly selected.
The only thing really wrong with your example is this is NOT what is happening. No one is in anyone's face and no one is shouting. No one is pissing an anything. If they were, it would make sense, but they aren't. It certainly appears that the Muslims are diligently searching for a way to be offended.
First, let's see if the blacks reading Slashdot will give you death threats over posting a message with the word "nigger" here. I kinda doubt it.
Second, nobody's "chanting in their face". These Muslims are getting upset because other, non-Muslim people, are refusing to take their precious prophet seriously in conversations with each other. And, comically enough, when those other people express the opinion that Muhammed was a bloodthirsty butcher who wanted all non-Muslims dead, these muslims respond with some variation of "Silence! I kill you!", thus proving the opinion entirely accurate.
Third, I for one am getting very tired of worrying what a homicidal bunch of barbarians happens to find offensive. If Pakistan, Iran, or any other islamic hellhole wants to cut communication with the rest of world to stay in Dark Ages, fine: let them. Neither they nor their prophet will be missed. Those of their numbers who insist on living on civilized world, however, better get it through their heads once and for all that their prophet will not be revered, honored or respected by the rest of us, and all of their threats and violence will only get him hated and reviled more and more as the originator of such evil.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
They are telling us what we can (and can't) say.
The Facebook campaign was indeed a "fuck you" to Muslims. It aimed at those wishing to dominate and control the speech and beliefs of others. If I told you that I forbid you from uttering the word "abcxyz" and that if you didn't comply, I'd issue a fatwa demanding your head. You'd tell me that I was trampling on your freedom and not so kindly tell me to fuck off wouldn't you? I'm curious. Did you plea the same case when groups of Muslims were burning foreign flags and effigies? Those were also "fuck you" statements, but instead issued by Muslims to westerners. I'd wager $100 that you didn't.
Camping on quad since 1996.
If you seek to understand the average Muslim perspective though, conduct the following though experiment:
Good intentions, but vastly misleading.
The caricatures in a danish newspaper were meant for a danish and almost entirely (99% or so) non-muslim audience. They were a far call from shouting in someones face. And they still called for murder.
If you're black, and have a problem with someone on the other end of town talking to his brother in his lawn and using the word "nigger", then yeah, feel offended if you want to. If you go out and kill that person, or ask others to kill him, you're a lunatic, plain and simple.
Finally, let's not forget what this is all about. "Nigger" is something about you (if you're black), so there is a reasonable link between the word and your feelings. A drawing of some long-dead person does not have a reasonable link to murderous hatred, unless you first accept that religion is a permissible way to create entirely irrational causal links. Or in simpler terms: Unless you define insanity as normal first.
Religion is not an acceptable excuse for murderous nonsense. I don't know why we ever thought it would be. It's crazy to kill people because their imaginary friend is different from your imaginary friend. So no matter what you argue about how deep things run in some culture, it is still crazy to kill someone because he made a drawing of your imaginary friend.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
It is incredible to me that offending a people's faith is seen as a glorious example of free speech. When did that happen?
When is it okay to make fun of the Holocast or deny so many lives lost? When is it okay to keep offending a people when you know that it is something they hold in high esteem?
Yes, that's precisely what freedom of speech really means. Isaac Asimov had an essay, ("Untouchable", in the June 1991 edition of Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine) where he explains this much better than I could hope (he was referring to the issue of flag burning, but his arguments are universal). Unfortunately this essay hasn't been reprinted, and a quick search couldn't find it on the web, so I'll try to summarize it here.
Basically, Asimov's point was that the most important meaning of freedom of speech is protection of unpopular speech (be it unpopular to the government, to powerful people, or simply to the majority). There is no need to protect popular speech - there are no negative consequences to agreeing with the ones in power. In Soviet Russia, people could agree with Stalin as much as they liked, and as loudly as they felt like. And yet, you can't call this freedom of speech, because any deviation from whatever was approved took you to the gulags.
The whole point of freedom of speech is that the unpopular, the contrary, and yes, the despicable, the disgusting and the hateful speech must be protected. This can, and does cause offense at times, providing great moron-fodder to the likes of Fox News (which is just funny, since the very existence of Fox News relies on this principle). But the principle is so valuable, so useful, and, in the end so productive that it needs to be preserved carefully. Paraphrasing Asimov: he doesn't want the flag to be burned; he likes the flag, and what it stands for. But if there was a law forbidding the burning, the flag wouldn't stand for anything anymore and it wouldn't matter what happened to it.
To return to our discussion: offending a people's faith IS free speech. Making fun of the Holocaust IS free speech. The fact that some people are offended should not be a factor. Where do we stop otherwise? Lots of people are Catholic, or like the Catholic Church. Should the journalists that discovered priests abusing children be jailed (or at least muzzled) for lack of respect to Catholics? Criticising a public figure should be forbidden as well, because it annoys his or her fans and admirers? Heck, lots of people like Santa Claus, shall we make laws forbidding the portrayal or discussion of Santa?
I believe freedom of speech is one of the most impressive founding principles of Western civilisation. While there may be limits (insert fire theater example here), the judgement should almost always err on the side of more freedom, not less.