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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.
there has been numerous court orders to ban youtube due to some laws, but telecommunications board was always banning the domain name, and leaving the ip untouched, therefore allowing everyone to use youtube by just a hosts file change or a dns change.
now, this board, which is under islamist govt's control, decided to try to tax youtube. therefore, they are trying to blackmail google by banning the ips too. the court orders are just an excuse.
Read radical news here
It is indeed to do with the AKP party - but that is nothing new for turkey - what is new that this time the army has not responded with a coup as it normally does when religious folk get out of control in turkey. I think it has happened at least 3 or 4 times so far. Since their election turkey has moved closer to Iran, and with the blockade stunt now has taken leadership of the 'resistance bloc' (as well as caused their religious followers to go totally bat shit crazy on the streets (see some of the photos)). Basically barring the army doing anything turkey has left both the western and secular realm.
This situation is quite interesting as the majority has repeatedly elected, what is basically, an Islamist party into power. The west has made it clear they dont want the army to intervene this time, but that is the only thing that can save Turkey from the Islamists. What the hell are you supposed to do if you believe in democracy but democracy spawns people who bring it down?
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
Well, the attribution for the quote was to Commissioner Pravin Lal of the UN. That position indicates someone who has earned respect of world leaders, and in that is himself a world leader.
Myself, I don't know all the members of the UN, nor all the titles within the UN. I strongly suspect most of us wouldn't. It would be easy to confuse a well written game quote, for a well written quote of a world leader. Likewise, there should be no expectation that we would all recognize every character from every video game.
Or as NATO Intelligence Chief Henry Schmit once said, "There's only a fine line between information and disinformation. We must remain diligent to the factuality of any information presented."
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
If you want to look back at history, to the time NATO was formed, around WW2, most of the world was still in some form of monarchy or dictatorship. At that time, lots of people in Europe still favored monarchy/dictatorship/fascism. It wasn't entirely clear at the time that democracy and capitalism were best. Some people even favored communism. It is understandable that NATO supported dictatorships, at a time when the moral superiority of democracy wasn't established.
One thing was clear though, even at that point, and that was Soviet communism was bad. You speak of Russia's allies, but many of Russia's allies didn't have a choice, they were only puppet governments for Russia. As far as dictators who kill their people go, only Hitler came close to the numbers that Stalin reached. Stalinism/Leninism was worth opposing, it was far worse than your average dictatorship. It is also understandable that NATO's main policy was to oppose the Soviets.
Qxe4