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Turkey Has Reportedly Banned Google
oxide7 and a number of other readers sent word (from mostly non-authoritative sources as yet) that Turkey had imposed an indefinite ban on some Google properties. "Turkey's Telecommunications Presidency said it has banned access to many of Google IP addresses without assigning clear reasons. The statement did not confirm if the ban is temporary or permanent. Google's translation and document sharing sites have also been banned indefinitely along with YouTube and Facebook in the country. Other services such as AppEngine, FeedBurner, Analytics, etc., have also been reportedly banned." Some real-time commentary (much of it in Turkish) can be found at Twitter hashtag #TurkeyCensoringGoogle. We have noted in past years the censorious ways of Turkish courts.
I think this quote applies here:
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
Commissioner Pravin Lal
"U.N. Declaration of Rights"
source
Shh.
You lack the imagination to apply structure to our world? That entire page is taken from a carefully constructed and coherent extrapolation of human activity and knowledge. There are quite a few examples of quotes on the same page that are taken directly from our actual history as well. Apply your sensibility and winnow out the impossible, what is left are situations to consider. Think.
Shh.
NATO doesn't care about dictators, look at how many right-wing military coups we've supported. Heck, look at how most of NATO supported just about everyone who was anti-Soviet. They don't care about human rights, just as long as they aren't communist or allied with Russia.
All NATO stands for is opposing Russia and its allies, if you think it stands for human rights or anything you should look at the conflicts in the cold war and which side the US supported.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Ah Turkey. When they're poking their finger in Israel's eye, they're the darling of Leftists far and wide. When they censor, ban, and oppress themselves suddenly we're up in arms. Fuck 'em. It's Turkey!
> I dunno, but it seems to me that dogmatic, xenophobic, recidivist behaviour is on the rise
> worldwide -- Islam certainly has no corner on the market for running amok, not now, and not
> historically, and the term "Christian" probably carries as much negative baggage through
> the years as "Muslim" does.
This quote is a good example of an all too common species of politically correct fool. So much wrong with it. It assumes time is immaterial. That events in the dark past are indisinguishable from current events and carry the exact same moral weight. That persons, events and movements must be judged with the exact same modern politically correct intolerant eye.
We are still crawling up from the muck, people and events must be viewed from the perspective of the time they occured in. For example the US Founders lived in a time when slavery was accepted as normal and had been since recorded history began. Individual liberty of any sort was a REVOLUTIONARY idea. After exhausting peaceful means they became violent revolutionaries. And most of them understood the inherent conflict between slavery and "All Men are created equal..." but also realized the new nation wasn't ready to follow where that line of thought lead. But notice that less than a century later the only places still practicing slavery were parts of Africa and the Middle East outside the range of the British Navy. Christianity did some nasty things but went through the Enlightenment, pretending that didn't happen and judging it as if that didn't happen and that the religion of the Inquisition still exists unchanged is daft.
Islam didn't experience the Enlightenment and rejects it today. The past is just that, past; we have a problem in the here and now as a result. Islam's rejection of the foundational principles of modern civilization is a problem NOW. Coexistance isn't even possible because of their expansionist and supremisist ideas. We in the West either abandon our civilization and accept Sharia or sooner or later (and with Nukes spreading it better be sooner) we are going to be forced to end Islam as it is currently known and practiced. That means Ann Coulter's solution of "Invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." It will be the worst human rights atrocity in recorded history but I'm damned if I see a better solution. We just don't have the time left to embark on a psyops action to slowly pervert their religion so as to remove the nastier bits.
So if it comes down to them or me I'm picking me and mine. Politically incorrect selfish bastard that I am. Future generations can flagelate themselves like the modern campus set do now about the American Indians, the Monroe Doctrine, ending WWII with the Bomb, the Cold War or any of that other stuff. So long as it IS civilization having that discussion in the future and not some starving primitives worshiping an insane child molester in a radioactive wasteland. And they will be sort of 'right' in that by the more advanced civilization our hard choices will allow them to build what we will do in our day will BE wrong... but still making the same mistake modern scholars keep making of judging us by their standards. So be it.
Democrat delenda est
Historical allegory aside, my intent was actually more to point out the fallacy of couchslug's professing to have a handle on the "true Muslim character". What is the "true Muslim character"? What is the "true Christian character"? My friend is a devout Muslim, and one of the kindest, gentlest, most sincere people you could hope to meet. I'd much rather spend time in his company than with some of the self-identified Christians I've had the misfortune to know, who claim some personal connection with Jesus at one moment, and happily spout bigoted hateful venom the next.
Islam has its own foundational principles of modern civilization. That these foundational principles don't happen to match your own is an issue of cultural discourse, not absolutist violence. For that matter, some of the vaunted Enlightenment is actually predicated on learning imported from the Muslim world.
Swap "their" here for "our" -- for can we not say exactly the same thing about the US? The United States, for all its fanfare and mythologizing, has been one of the biggest thugs on the planet for the better part of a century.
Given that the core tenet Christianity is essentially "love thy neighbor", it sounds like you've hit the nail on the head here -- I'd hazard that neither Ann Coulter nor yourself are all that familiar with the underlying ideals you both seem to be espousing. Never mind the general ignorance of what Islam is. Yes, there are wacko bad apples, and yes, some of these elements happen to run countries. These do not define Islam, any more than Pat Robertson speaks for all Christianity, though they do appear to define the face of Islam as perceived by many here in the US.
Moreover, any look at the cultural friction between the many countries and political groups identifying themselves as Islamic must look as well at how the various governments of the West are fully implicated in helping to polarize and poison the dynamics at work. For instance, the situation with Iran and militant Shiism owes much to the hamfisted bungling of MI5, the CIA, and our friend in the Gulf, BP. Being ignorant of the West's role in defining the anger and resentment expressed by many of the more vocal elements of the Muslim world is fixable and excusable; ignoring it is hypocritical. The West helped create this problem, and the West must also help solve it, constructively. Sadly, Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Gaza, among other present issues, aren't helping.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."