Slashdot Mirror
More Fuel For Facebook Censorship Advocates In India
thodelu writes "Close on the heels of Friday's communal clashes in a town in India that were triggered by a Facebook post which contained morphed images apparently deriding a religious place of worship, there has been another incident. City police have removed images from another similar blog post citing 'cyber criminal' laws. There has been an ongoing effort in India to censor the web which would get more backing as a result of these events. Could we be seeing another Great Firewall of China?"
... in India, Facebook blamed. Same results probably would have occurred if dead-tree distribution was used, although it's less likely such would make Slashdot.
Really, why dont they look at the root cause, which is the communal tension and try to solve them. Oh wait, it is politicians that incite such communal hatred for political reason.
What we need is less religion, not more censorship...
The article states that a young man posted a photo on Facebook which offended several people.
Several of those offended people decided to protest peacefully in front of a police station demanding his arrest.
Other people decided to protest violently by burning cars, smashing in window stores and just generally acting like idiots.
Instituting a nationwide internet censorship policy won't address the problem: impulsive, destructive people whose first course of action is violence.
They should probably encourage facebook to keep up the good work...
Nothing intensifies feelings of religious entitlement(that, when violated, swiftly turn to violence) like continual cringing deference and nothing dissipates those feelings like a continual bilateral exchange of ridicule.
It bloody well took long enough; but thanks to the scoffers, freethinkers, and scurrilous pamphleteers(Oh, and those guys were scurrilous. Trolls respect your elders....) most of the western world can't even distinguish between a Lutheran and a Methodist, much less excitedly tell you why burning one of the two at stake is an immediate necessity. Heck, unitarians the last major surviving heresy(Arianism, Socinianism, and Catharism didn't do quite so well) are now considered to be risibly bland liberals, rather than barely-christian heretics. Even the good, old, Catholic/Protestant bloodbath just isn't what it might be. You've still got a few belligerent, probably whiskey-soaked, Irish fighting; but outside of that knowledge and care about the theological and doctrinal differences is probably at an all-time low, particularly when you consider that the ability to inform yourself if interested is at an all time high.
It takes time; but success through mockery that gradually degenerates into sheer apathy is the way to go! Censorship is an attractive short-term plan; but it will have you travelling away from the slackutopia, where nobody gives enough of a fuck to go to the trouble of brutal communal violence.
Could we be seeing another Great Firewall of China?
No, this is the beginning of the great Wirewall of India: http://www.photopumpkin.com/wp-content/uploads/electric_wire_3.jpg
But I bet you little fagets can't' mod this +5 insightful
NIGGERS
Can you?
Show me that you don't agree with what I say but will die for my right to say it. SHow me a +5 mod on this post. Hell, no need to die for it. Just spend some mod points.
We won't see it. We'll see it at -1 in short order. The United States us a bunch of spineless hypocrites.
The Chinese block shit for the sole rational purpose of absolute POWER. The Indians will block shit because of some delusional religious bullshit. Which is why China will win.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Sounds like Zombo.com
This is not the funny you're looking for.
Are you serious?
Mao outlawed religion and while he managed to solve and get rid of a lot of his problems (people), I think he made the world's problems worse.
I am so sick of all of this, "just get rid of religion and everything will be peachy" crap.
The biggest killers the world has ever know killed for the nation, the party, their culture and for themselves, not for religion.
An also, how do you plan to get rid of religions, are you going to round up the faithful and send them to camps?
One of the strange aspects of this case is something you obliquely pointed out: those news articles describe a "place of worship" and a "religious group", which enraged "youths" and offended the "other religious community". In the West (I don't know about India) this kind of bizarre omission of facts normally means that the incident was perpetrated by Muslims but the newspaper doesn't want people to think of Muslims as violent and is intentionally biasing their reporting. It's sometimes extended to other groups; for instance, political affiliation is mentioned a lot less for Democratic perpetrators than for Republicans.
Mao outlawed religion...
Mao also developed a philosophy of the moral superiority of the downtrodden ("Blessed are the meek..."?); established a cult of personality venerating him as more than a mere man; and published a handbook of his writings that outsold the Bible, and was treated in much the same manner (as a source of divine wisdom, infallibly correct).
It seems to be a flaw of the human psyche, that the most direct way to get rid of a religion is to invent another one to replace it.
Try posting a picture of a woman breastfeeding. It is banned because it offends the American Puritans.
Why shouldn't Facebook also cater to other religions? Their goal is to increase profits, so it makes sense to make the maximum number of customers happy.