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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.
The Turks don't want anyone to talk, write or even think about Armenians or Kurds. And they don't care for Jews all that much either.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
'Telecommunications and Communication Ministry' has placed a ban on various ips of google, ranging from google analytics to youtube.
despite the cause on the surface is shown deragotary videos of kemal ataturk on youtube, nothing could justify banning analytics ips. so, in the end one of the ministers slipped the real reason - google doesnt pay tax to turkey.
there is no reason why it should either. google is a corp that is centered in america, and according to treaty to prevent double taxation, it should not pay tax here, since it pays tax in usa. so there is no legal justification for trying to tax them.
but then again, you cant expect reasoning, or, abiding by laws, from an islamist government.
Read radical news here
This is very worrisome given that it is coming from what is supposed to be the crossroads country between the west and the middle east. If a country like Turkey is engaging in acts like this, what hope does the rest of the Middle East have?
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
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.
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
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.
apparently he was some sort of political correct idiot or a muslim.
im in turkey. we have an islamist government which clearly stated they are islamist, on top of us. they are engaging in innumerable ways of censorship, of this google thing, is only one of them.
their main censorship tool is attacking the media outlets which do not publish in the manner they like, with the finance ministry, which is the ministry that governs taxes. if you are such a media company, suddenly finance ministry starts to review your previous tax payments, and, without fail, comes up with a lot of fines to fine you. so high that you cant pay, and they confiscate your company. approximately 2 major media groups consisting of 2-3 major newspapers and a television channel each, have been foreclosed in this way, and have been sold to their backers by zero interest loans from government banks.
google is an outside company. they were not able to do the same thing to google. therefore, they are trying the method of banning, to subdue google.
and, to the idiot - dont use your mod points in subjects you dont know about.
Read radical news here
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.
Meanwhile, Christianity also has no corner on the market for truly pious, love-thy-neighbour actions -- one of my good friends growing up made it his life's mission to open an elementary school for the poor in his home town, and a book drive at our high school helped get him the beginnings of their library. A fellow named Ali, who is Bangladeshi, and Muslim.
Just sayin'.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Your overuse of caps-lock precludes anyone from taking you seriously. I just thought I'd let you know for any future crazy rants...
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Unfortunately this kind of thing happens all the time, and the government cannot do anything about it. Even the president has criticized the ban last week, but it's all up to the courts.
According to Turkish law, *any* PA can ask for a preliminary injunction to ban *any* web site. The web site has to comply within a month, otherwise TK (which is the telecomunnication authority) will have to block the web site in question. Nobody (including prime minister, or the president) cannot stop the ban (unless the website complies).
So if a person from a small town complains about a web site (for example Youtube, or Blogger), and the PA for that town finds the case worthy, he/she request a court order for the ban. This has actually happened (Blogger was banned since some bloggers published world cup matches, and the local TV stations which bought WC rights have complained).
The Google ban comes from Youtube ban. Previously they only removed youtube.com from DNS servers, but people have installed alternate DNS servers, and all was fine. Now they decided to block based on server IP, which is probably shared with other Google services as well.
Anyways they are trying to amend the law, so that this kinds of bans will be restricted (not just any random PA in any random town), but the best would be abolishing the law altogether.
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!
Google retaliates by banning turkeys.
Can I be blamed for others lack of critical thought? The quote begins:
;)
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century...
Anyone who is thinking as they read instead of blindly ploughing through the words would have realized that Earth has not reached it's final century yet?
And it was fully sourced too..
Shh.
"Turkeys reportedly banned Gobble"?
"Muslim" is probably too big of an umbrella - Bosnia and Herzegovina is Muslim in half (and it seems that part of population was one of less warmongering during Balkan wars), is on the way towards EU membership with which it shouldn't have major issues; and generally with integrating. Germany has also large Muslim population, which despite any problems is quite succesfully integrated; Turks, accidentally. Spain should be do well in the future, too; with already over one million Muslims, and more (mostly Moroccans) surely to come.
There would be of course a problem with many Muslim countries of the group that is more or less bordering the EU sphere of influence, but nobody considers their accession; on either side(*). Except the case of Turkey, of course - and it seems that one might be clearing up soon, eh? (hm, I wouldn't be too surprised if the current situation is considered desirable by many parts of the EU; and with the hopes of slightly pouring oil on the fire - not as some sort of conspiracy of course, but as common goal)
(*) There's the issue of unwilling to integrate immigrants from many of those places, but that's a separate thing.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Probably not, but "DNS" has been a rising keyword in Turkey over the last 6 days.
What's Turkish for "proxy"?
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
I'm not sure that's what the word means...
M-W to the rescue... seems to be a perfectly cromulent word :-)
I can Karma-Whore and google for you, but you'll need to do the actual reading:
GP's Point 1 - http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/iran-inks-deal-to-send-enriched-uranium-to-turkey-20100517-v8uc.html /. post.
GP's Point 2 -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaiMjAULWn0&feature=player_embedded#!
http://libertypundits.net/article/paid-mercenaries-on-turkish-flotilla-ship-and-more-censored-footage-of-violence/
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/turkish-paper-releases-censored-photos-of-beaten-israeli-commandos-1.294443
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_O'Keefe
http://trueslant.com/charlesjohnson/2010/06/06/another-cropped-reuters-photo-deletes-another-knife-and-a-pool-of-blood/
GP's Point 3 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Turkey_relations
GP's Point 4 - http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/columnists-164310-turkey-hamas-relations.html
GP's Point 5 - RTFA, what we're discussing in this
If you don't see Turkish Islamist policy driving this and the bigger picture this fits into (radical Islam, oppressive regimes vs new-internet-driven-world-order, middle-east mentality and its differences from western mentality, arab nation politics, Turkey's NATO/european membership, Turkish internal right-left struggle and dirty laundry, Turkish history (murder/slaughter of 1,000,000 armenians last decade, try mentioning that on Turkish media), you're just another one of those people who just can't get geopolitics and need an oversimplified model - namely, a little demonizing circle drawn around one of the participants of an equation (typically ends being one of Iran, Al-qaeda, USA, Israel, George W, etc) with an "evil" sign pointed at it. If only the world were that simple. Fox and Al-jazeera do it equally well, depending on direction the guys with the remote wants the arrow pointed in.
I have a demonizing-circle detector. Every time I get someone draw me one (whether Erdogan from Turkey, Benjamin Netanyahu from Israel, Ismail Hanniyeh from Hammas, Al Jazeera or Fox, I immediately know I'm being told a half-truth. Big problems don't fit in little circles, and the root causes are way more complex and way more distributed.
If complexity can be equated to pain with people who can't grasp it, I'll invoke the following:
"Life is pain, your highness. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something."
-
I thought I'd share an account of what hapened to me a couple of years ago, in Istanbul, arguably the most westernized of all of Turkey: my friend and I decided to stay at this hotel outside the center of the city, and had to take separate rooms, since we were not married. In the evening, I went to her room for a chat. After about half an hour she gets a phonecall: some guy tells her that she is not to have male visitors in her room! That's right. They have cameras in each room. Even more sadly, my turkish friend told me this as a matter of fact, "nothing to see here".
I'm not saying every hotel in Turkey is like that, but I will say this: Turkey is bad news, very fucking bad news.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
I didnt know there was a band called youtube, what sort of music do they play?
Mistermeaner than you?
Is it Slashdot bad spelling day today?
I just Googled it, and didn't find any information.
You know what they say about opinions. They're all fabulous!
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."
Turkey: "You're baaaaaaaaaanned!"
Google: "Booh, that's fowl play!"
Can only mean one thing, Invasion!
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This wasn't something about, Turkish yada yada...
This something about, abusing Law for profit.
YouTube consumes too much Bandwidth.
And Privatized Turkish Telekom new owner dont' want to spend too much to increase bandwidth.
So ?
Abuse the law...
And yes. We need improved Law about issue.
And those politics.
Wake up Western, you can't always right, you can't always win....
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
Turkey was a world leading country by 15th century in mathematics, medicine, architecture, etc.
But while Europe experienced the movable type printing revolution in 15th - 16th centuries, in Muslim countries the movable type print was banned for 200 years for "moral" reason.
Certainly, as any human invention, printing was also used for producing "adult" materials. But it was also used to produce maps, textbooks, literature, etc.
So as a result the Europe moved into a modernity, but the countries, where printing was banned, stayed behind. The "moral" reasons were rather an attempt of the patriarchal leaders of society to guard their power.
In the long run this ban did not benefit the society. Nowadays many Turks have to move to Germany, Austria, etc. to find a job. This is a result of the error, which was made by the Islamic countries' society five hundred years ago.
Many medieval churches in Europe were build by architects, who learned architecture from Islam mosques' builders. We still use Arabic numerals for mathematics. But now the Islam world is well behind in technology and science, including human science.
Unfortunately they step on the same rake again, because it is not possible for culture to develop without free discussions, without free access to information.
AKP is highly Euro skeptic. In fact, they're election was partially distrust of Europe.
Europe will not favor enlarging again for quite some time given the recent economic problems. In fact, Turkey would unquestionably join the ranks of the PIGS. I'm doubtful that Germany, France, etc. will ever feel like they've fixed the PIGS situation, so Turkey is effectively out permanently.
You know, Turkey never had very good odds for entering anyways. Greece would oppose them for military reasons. France would oppose them since France requires a public referendum for new admission into the E.U. Austria would oppose them for Austrian reasons. In fact, Switzerland would even oppose them now that Switzerland joined Schengen.
In the long run, Croatia and Montenegro will all be admitted before Turkey, but they'll vote against Turkey for religious reasons. Bosnia and Serbia might not be admitted for quite some time either, but Serbia would also oppose Turkey's entrance too.
p.s. E.U. expansionism has basically been a substitute for unpopular immigration that allows political elites to lower labor costs. Imho, they are crazy about labor costs not for competing with developing nations, but largely China. China cannot manipulate their currency indefinitely, which will remove the immediate pressure. All the newly admitted countries like Poland will provide cheap labor for some years, with the Ukraine another possible expansion if China holds out.
p.s.2 There has been however an European policy of educating people from Central and South America, kinda an opposition to the Monroe Doctrine. We're now seeing this policy provide higher quality and more culturally similar immigrants than Turkey, the Middle East, or Africa. Face it, if people see Turks or Africans they think Shira law or female circumcision, but if people see Brazilians they think Carnival and barbecue. And immigration from the Americas could easily provide the required labor force control.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Quite true. But since the invention of Copyright, Europe and most of the West have started banning the free copying and sharing of information as well.. And with the successive extensions of Copyright terms (how long until we have Perpetual Copyright?), we're caught in the same downward spiral than those countries.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.