Slashdot Mirror
Pakistan Blocks Twitter Over 'Blasphemous' Images
Diggester writes with this news from the Times of India: "Pakistani authorities on Friday further widened the crackdown on websites with blasphemous contents by restricting access to popular social networking website Twitter. Pakistani users were unable to log into Twitter after internet service providers blocked access to the site." The block was prompted by Twitter's refusal to take down messages promoting a cartoon contest to which the Pakistani government objects for its depictions of Muhammad. This end-run falls right in line with the pessimistic reaction from Reporters Without Borders to the Pakistani court decision calling Internet censorship unconstitutional.
Pakistan blocks yet another place for failing to obey diktats from the stone-age. Maybe they'll just discard everything with origin from the Renaissance onwards.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
There are two main issues here. The first is the rights of a country to limit internet access in line with their own laws. This could be holocaust denial in Germany, incitement to murder in the UK or copyright infringement in the US, the religion aspect has nothing to do with it (and given that no-images-of-the-prophet-Mohammed is a central tennant of Islam intended to prevent idol worship it's perfectly understandable).
The second issue is whether it's worth trying to block the offending sites when it's unlikely to be effective and there are pre-existing legal mechanisms. If I was to call for the murder of all members of $ethnicMinority then that's illegal in the UK, so should the UK government's response be to block Slashdot or to prosecute me? I'd argue that the latter is far more effective in every way, whilst protecting the freedoms of other Slashdot users.
Should I do the same but breaking the rules of another country (eg holocause denial is legal in the UK but not Germany) then it's down to the pre-existing extradition channels.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Censorship is rampant here in the West, we should clean up our own back yard before knocking on our neighbors door.
I'm not defending the paki decision, far from it, its disgracful, but we're so used to finger pointing and highlighting foreign repression we take our eye off the ball here.
a contest to draw pictures of naked children could probably get you in hot water in some more western countries as well
What Pakistan's government or any foreign government chooses to do with regard to its censorship is only relevant to those affected citizens.
I beg to differ. Access to the truth, or at least to all places where that truth may be found, is a basic human right, one which transcends borders, draconian laws, religion, etc. I assert that every person on this planet has that right. So bite me. I most certainly will not stay out of the Pakistan government's disgraceful attempt to control their citizens by cutting them off from large portions of the Internet on some dip-shit religious argument.
I actually read TFA, hoping to see what, exactly, pissed them off, but apparently Pakistan's not telling.
Either Pakistan found a way to get around the Streisand Effect (if you just mass-block an entire large site and never say which particulars caused it, it gets no publicity), or they just wanted to censor it and found blasphemy to be a decent excuse.
I almost missed that it was back again today. I participated in 2010, but nobody seemed to be doing it in 2011. Glad to see it's back, and I would have missed it if Pakistan hadn't brought attention to it.
Everybody Draw Mohammed Day serves three important purposes:
1. It reaffirms that the First Amendment is alive and well, and that the United States legal system cannot, should not, and will not knuckle under to transnational demands for Sharia-compliant suppression of "blasphemy" as defined by oppressive theocratic Islamic states.
2. To prove that in the 21st century censorship is self-defeating, as it only draws more attention to whatever is being censored than ignoring it would.
3. To provide so many targets for would-be jihadists to assault that the give up due to the futility of the task. Theo Van Gogh is dead and Molly Norris is still in hiding. Standing in solidarity with them proves to jihadists that using violence to achieve political ends in a free society is counter-productive (something people eager to attack Chicago cops with Molotov cocktails evidently haven't learned).
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Before we get all high and mighty about stupid a-rabs getting upset over pictures of muhammed, lets remember that holocaust denial is illegal pretty much everywhere in eastern europe and is strongly censored everywhere else in the modern world. This is important because even though holocaust denialism's arguments have been thoroughly refuted on every front, they still aren't allowed to make them. This is a very strange policy and likely leads to more suspicion in this day and age, with censorship of an idea almost automatically giving weight to that idea.
So when we have mass huge contests for drawing pictures of muhammed, demonstrating our right to free speech with such a dividing, needless, harmful exercise, alienating an entire region of the earth, just remember: you aren't allowed to be disgusted when the islamic world responds with an International Holocaust Cartoon Competition.
GFA/M/S d-- s: a--- C++++ UBL++$ P+ L+++ !E- W++ N+ !o K- w--- !O !M !V PS++ PE Y+ PGP+ t+++ 5- X+ R tv@ b++ DI++++ D+ G
Mohammed had 12 wives. You have evidence of polygamy on that scale in Christian Europe?
Mohammed was 52 years old when he consummated his marriage to the 9-year old Aisha. This was common in Christian Europe?
How was this progressive? How was Europe worse? Do tell defender of Islam. .
Stay out of their internal affairs. This is not news for nerds.
Whenever one human oppresses another, particularly with ridiculous superstitious nonsense, it becomes the business of all of us. And when whole governments do it, the situation escalates into not just offensive, but an outright human rights issue.
+1 sensible
however the article should have mentioned how the block was implemented (dns, IP) and if there were workarounds people could use (simple as proxy?) making it more relevant for the "news for nerds" moniker.
There's only one main issue, and that's the basic human right of free expression, unfettered by state or religion sponsored oppression.
The examples you cite aren't even remotely related and none actually justify morally or practically suppression of free speech.
Criminalizing Holocaust Denial, whatever it's achieved or claimed sociological benefits in Germany, is a political restraint on free speech probably no longer justifiable in Germany, even by it's supporters' standards. Now it's merely a technique to suppress far right political movements, even though most far right parties have become more PR savvy and dropped the Hitlerian rhetoric and focused on more regional and contemporary issues.
Incitement to murder *is* probably a justifiable restraint of speech, but only in the same category as yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, and only so long as the incitement is literal, specific and likely to actually result in a homicide. The risk is that it will get used against people advocating for radical political change, despite the fact that even though revolutions may cause deaths, advocating for revolution isn't advocating for killing.
Religiously-derived bans on freedom of speech can't even claim some practical value as Incitement and Denial -- the only thing being "protected" is the public status of a religious figure -- they are the pure suppressions of freedom of speech. If anything, they stoke the passions which often result in violence. They're not even particularly logical -- if you follow Islam, how or why would you be swayed or even in a position to participate in anti-Islamic speech?
A ban like this is entirely ridiculous and even more so for a country like Pakistan. Pakistan needs to do everything it can to promote itself as a regional center in Asia. Religious or politically motivated suppression of human rights will only isolate them, reducing their political, economic and social standing.
I am so very, very glad I don't live in your world. Say hi to Big Brother for me.
I am from Pakistan, Twitter is working for me.
My ISP is the local telecom monopoly(PTCL), so I doubt it's a case of selective application by ISP's.
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
When their cult gains influence in your backyard it will be too late to foment effective resistance.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
What we need is to switch sides and help progressive India and China instead of the Pakiban.
The only cure for Pakistan is an Indian first strike, and the only thing barely keeping the Pakiban in their box is the Indian military.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Religion can be a force for good (even if it's accidental).
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
What Pakistan's government or any foreign government chooses to do with regard to its censorship is only relevant to those affected citizens.
I beg to differ. Access to the truth, or at least to all places where that truth may be found, is a basic human right, one which transcends borders, draconian laws, religion, etc. I assert that every person on this planet has that right. So bite me. I most certainly will not stay out of the Pakistan government's disgraceful attempt to control their citizens by cutting them off from large portions of the Internet on some dip-shit religious argument.
It's their country and their culture. They WANT it this way. Pakistan means "Land of the Pure", after all. Their capitol city is "Islamabad". This is what they want. As long as they're not invading your country, let them do as they damn well please. Oh, and their "dip-shit religious government"? They like it, thanks.
You are living proof that the left has just as many people seeking dragons to slay abroad as the right does. Have you ever considered... just for a moment... that Pakistanis don't share your ideas, and would refuse to live by them? Do you really think it's "progress" to force them to live by your thinking? What are you going to do, force them to be "civilized"... like you?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Depict MLK as an ape
See the reaction in the US (and elsewhere).
Nobody's forcing anyone to look at these images. Anyone who really wants to will anyway. By making unenforceable laws, you simply make yourself look foolish, weak and powerless.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
It matters because Muhammad is considered an example for all Muslims to follow. His marrying Aisha at 6 (and bedding her at 9) sets the precedent for modern day child marriage and sex in the Muslim world. One famous example: Ayatollah Khomeni, who married a 10 year old. You don't have to look far to find thousands of other examples. What about Qur'an 4:34 (pick a translation on quran.com) which commands a husband to beat his wife. Could that not have something to do with the 90% of women in Pakistan who have suffered domestic abuse (or the one in four in Turkey, considered the most "progressive" of Muslim countries?) All religion is poison but some are worse than others.
Minor mistake on the statistics. It's four in ten women in turkey, not one in four. That's 40% of women. And those who think this is limited to muslims in "those" countries -- sorry. 6 out of 10 Imams in Sweden were recently found to be giving out illegal advice on domestic abuse. And that's according to Swedish state tv. I don't see why so many in the west insist on shoving their heads in the sand in the name of "tolerance" (as if domestic violence was something that deserved tolerance). If a holy book tells people to do something, there is a pretty good chance they will.
https://twitter.com/#!/SenRehmanMalik/status/203961375087788032
So that Douchebag Minister of ours is finally good for something :p
Now while I really hate the Indo-Pak rivarly that pops up on the internet, I have to say, that source in the link is an Indian newspaper.
Should I pull out my tinfoil hat?
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
In the USA the Catholic Church and other cults are working hard to prevent health insurers from paying for women's healthcare like contraception, even though that investment reduces payouts for the prevented conditions and reduces the amount the cult churches pay for the insurance. Despite the economics, logic and compassion arguing for the coverage, these cults are obsessed with preventing anyone from "blaspheming", even if the blasphemers aren't part of their cult.
Pakistan is far worse. But it's more a difference of degree than of category compared to the modern USA. Theocrats everywhere have more in common than divides them.
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Privileges taken by Mohammed were not common among Muslims, nor are they now, any more than are privileges taken by Christian popes, kings and other lords throughout European history.
Muslim law recognizes the age of consent starting at 7 years old. So does Christian law, as explained in this article that cites its sources:
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Muslim law recognizes the age of consent starting at 7 years old. So does Christian law, as explained in this article [faqs.org] that cites its sources:
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No, rights are inherent to our humanity. We create governments to protect them, not the other way around.
You are a fool, and a coward who won't even use a userID.
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Just for the record, Slashdot mods people to -1, effectively "blocking" them, for posting pictures of "goatse". The United States not only blocks but arrests people for naked pictures of children. Do you think any of that makes headlines in Pakistan? People, who have the ability, are going to block things they find offensive. And pointing out that they are blocking something you don't find offensive doesn't make you better than them.
1. No, many Pakistanis don't like it. Especially the many Pakistanis who have left Pakistan to live elsewhere.
2. Pakistan's religious oppression of rights and corrupt manipulation of communications both public and private in the service of an Islam that lets its rulers exploit its people is essential to the Afghanistan from which the Qaeda attacked America. It remains essential to the Taliban that form the core of that continuing threat to the US. It protected Binladen for years from being eliminated as an inspiration to further jihad against the US.
3. Rights are universal to all people. It takes people a while to recognize rights and the need to protect them. Even the US, which isn't necessarily the freest country anymore, took generations to protect the rights of Black people, of women, of children, and many others who didn't enjoy the status of the founders. While it's not necessarily a priority for the US to help foreigners to protect their rights, because the US has so many other pressing problems, it is always a benefit to the US. Universally free humans would see the US much less able to spend and waste time, money and lives in wars around the country, as the pretexts for starting them would be fewer, along with fewer actual threats caused by oppression abroad.
Helping Pakistanis get their government to protect their rights is in the US' interest in many ways. Likewise, the US could use more help from foreigners who can help in better protecting our own rights.
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the specific religion that matters. Go ahead, draw Jesus having sex with little kids in your cartoon. Now do the same with Muhammad. Now sees who threatens you and how much you believe those threats. You ignore reality to make a pointless distinction. Go ahead...wide brush.
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damaged by dogma
I would like to hear different POVs here. It is important.
In my opinion (I'm no philosopher), free speech is not absolute - it depends on the category of speech.
Speech can be an idea concerning religion, philosophy, critique of government/society/church, or it can be an idea-free expression, such as pornography.
I believe that speech in the first category (ideas about religion of philosophy) must be free because one of the most important purposes of man is to find Truth, and he needs free exchange of ideas for that. This is a human right.
Speech in the second category (criticism) must also be free, because the government/society/church is much more likely to become oppressive if it can't be criticised. This is a human right.
But speech in the third category (idea-free) can be censored according to the values of the community. If a country decides to ban pornography, no idea has been blocked, people can still criticise the government (including the censorship law itself), so this is not a human right.
True religion at work.
Superstition is slavery.
And materialism is much worse.
(Supposing you are one of those Dawkins acolytes) The ideology of Richard Dawkins is not simply a negative lack of faith in God. It is actually a positive ideology, consisting of at least two positive tenets:
1) Materialism: all reality (including the human mind) can be described by the laws of physics - see, for example, http://richarddawkins.net/articles/490048-the-blue-brain-blues-materialist-ethics-and-simulated-minds
2) Anti-religious intolerance: religion is always evil and must be wiped from Earth. While religion still exists, it must be restricted to the private sphere - that is, the political activities of religious people must be restricted.
This ideology caused Marxism. Marx simply developed materialism into his "materialistic conception of History", which is the root of his philosophy. Combined with anti-religious hatred and the labour theory of value, Marxism is born.
In other words, Dawkins ideology (which of course existed centuries before Dawkins) caused Marxism, which is responsible by 100,000,000 deaths, torture, general suffering, terror, repression, censorship, societal decay and general darkness (see a satellite photo of the Korean peninsula for a physical portrait of that).
If he was just a flawed political leader (such as the American Founding Fathers), then we could separate the wheat from the chaff and praise them for their good deeds (in the case of the Founding Fathers, political freedom) while forgiving their sins (in the case of the Founding Fathers, condoning slavery).
But a man who is allegedly God's greatest prophet must be judged by much stricter standards, don't you think?
Secondly, Mohammad anti-American? You do realize he died 1100 years before America was born.
Please, it is clear what the grandparent meant: Mohammed advanced views that are counter to the virtues and rights that Americans love (such as family values and constitutionally-limited democracy).
Why is it illegal to advocate Nazism (in many countries) while it is legal to advocate Marxism?
Both ideologies are hateful, oppressive, dark and genocidal. But Marxism manages to be worse.
Nazism killed 17,000,000 people, while Marxism killed 100,000,000.
Also, praising Nazism is nearly harmless (because Nazism does not appeal to much people, therefore the praise will fall on deaf ears), while advocating Marxism is dangerous because it is alive and kicking (in several totalitarian oppressive dictatorships based on Lenin/Mao, and in several leftist governments based on Gramsci/Marcuse/Adorno).
Therefore Marxism has *more* reasons to be banned than Nazism.
Why is only Marxism banned? Simply because Hitler lost the war and history was written by the victor.
This argument hinges on whether there is a reasonable "default" position. Given the fact that very significant numbers of people disagree on this, I would say that either there is no default position, or that it at the very least isn't atheism. (and given the fact that I like to program AI systems, I would argue that this does not allow atheism as a default position, after all, for all those bots I leave running atheism is certainly false. Why would we -really- be any different ?)
The evidence for God is mostly historical, and anecdotes. It is, imho, stronger, even to a neutral mind, than the idea that there was at some point a person called Julius Caesar that rearranged a few political posts in Italy.
This of course does not pass the standard for evidence generally utilized in physics, but neither does any other historical evidence. So that's beside the point. And as you say, while proving the existence of God is not done, disproving that same existence is impossible (and there's the little matter that if God were to perform a few miracles in front of a physicist, which he arguably did, given at least a few historical physical books, we'd be in the exact same boat as before : some scientist claims God exist, majority scream "no evidence") (and in fact this happens regularly).
(and btw. it's more the generally accepted rules of physics that stand in the way. It is quite clear that even if a huge miracle happens in front of thousands of people, physics would not accept it, after all, that's not what physics is studying. It would be quite pointless to study miracles for anyone who wants to discover the laws of nature)
Note that this sort of argument does impose quite a few limitations on the God that can be believed under these circumstances. First, such a God would mostly leave the universe alone (a very uncommon trait in world religions, allah for example, is supposed to meddle in everything inconsistently according to muslim "holy" texts, while Krishna, by counterexample, would seem to satisfy this requirement). Furthermore such a God would have to be actively involved in the world, making changes.
Very few religions show evidence of an effort for internal consistency, most being wildly inconsistent. Christianity is a big exception in that, this is mostly accepted to be an artifact of the involvement of people trained in Ancient Greek science and philosophy in it's creation. Buddhism is a weird case in that it hardly makes any claims at all, really.
If you disagree with this, I would argue you are specifically reassessing the credibility of historical sources based on your current ideology, at which point you might as well state we need to prepare for the end of the world (hey it's nearly July 2012 when the Mayan calendar ends).
I am led to the conclusion that atheism is merely currently in vogue, and that it will be a passing thing. When taken up close, while science does disprove quite a few religions, it does not disprove a few. And while science also does not disprove atheism, it cannot prove that either. So really, there are a few valid scientific positions, Christianity and atheism among them, with very little support either way. This leads me to believe that it's mostly a psychological phenomenon that's happening here, currently pushing atheism, and not some fundamental understanding. This also implies that the pendulum will swing back at some point.
Well, PTA (Pakistan Telecommunication Authority) has a filter list which includes websites like pastebin and dozen of porn websites. (twitter was blocked from the backend without notifying the ISP's) I have literally used 90% of Pakistani ISP's, from high end Nayatel to PTCL ADSL. The problem lies with the management, whenever they find something offensive their first course of action would be to block it, I haven't seen a single example where the so called higher ups would just act like grown up men and ignore things or move on. I mean how difficult is it not to watch porn or search for Muhammad pictures, what the Pakistani AUTHORITIES don't understand is that the Internet isn't controlled by them, what these so called idiots can't comprehend is that their religion isn't valid in other states and they have no right to enforce their pre-historic rules on others. But well, they don't listen. They can bone little girls, throw acid here and there and literally steal money from people but when someone on the Internet says something about Islam they can't control themsevles. The funny thing is, we don't even follow Islam here. I mean they kill, cheat, lie and do whatever the hell they want, even our President is an asshole who steals money and does nothing. I am surprised that the Internet takes Pakistan seriously. This Country has little or no potential slashdot, the people here can't change.
Follow me: http://www.twitter.com/dfg
Stop lying about underage marriage in the middle east, and stop lying about the Koran and Islam.
can't see the difference in degree then you're blind.
damaged by dogma
Even speaking as an atheist, I wish the educated and intelligent Muslim voices were a bit louder. Ditto Christians frankly. Keep it up.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.