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The Implications of Google Restricting Access To Anti-Islam Film
ideonexus writes "While the decision has been a footnote in most news stories, the Washington Post is raising the question of what it means that Google can shut down access to the anti-Islam film in countries where that film has sparked riots, something the American government cannot do thanks to our First Amendment. A popular meme in the Information Age is that the Internet spreads democracy by enabling citizens to organize and speak out, but we forget that much of that speech is now hosted by third parties who are under no obligation to protect it."
that shutting down access to anything in this country can't be done by the American gubmint "thanks" to our First Amendment then let me sell you this bridge I own...
this movie is not at all "free-speech"! this movie is a conspiracy!!! this movie was designed to cause riots!!
watch the movie trailer, all parts with mohammed and anti muslim intent are COMPLETELY DUBBED IN!!
the actors themselves have stated that they did not know that the movie was about Islam, but was casted under the title "Dessert Warriors"
it screams psy-ops or simple chaos sowing.
First Amendment is BS. Read up on the Tarek Mehanna case .
Exactly four years ago this month I was finishing my work shift at a
local hospital. As I was walking to my car I was approached by two
federal agents. They said that I had a choice to make: I could do
things the easy way, or I could do them the hard way. The “easy “ way,
as they explained, was that I would become an informant for the
government, and if I did so I would never see the inside of a
courtroom or a prison cell. As for the hard way, this is it. Here I
am, having spent the majority of the four years since then in a
solitary cell the size of a small closet, in which I am locked down
for 23 hours each day. The FBI and these prosecutors worked very
hard—and the government spent millions of tax dollars – to put me in
that cell, keep me there, put me on trial, and finally to have me
stand here before you today to be sentenced to even more time in a
cell.
In the weeks leading up to this moment, many people have offered
suggestions as to what I should say to you. Some said I should plead
for mercy in hopes of a light sentence, while others suggested I would
be hit hard either way. But what I want to do is just talk about
myself for a few minutes.
When I refused to become an informant, the government responded by
charging me with the “crime” of supporting the mujahideen fighting the
occupation of Muslim countries around the world. Or as they like to
call them, “terrorists.” I wasn’t born in a Muslim country, though. I
was born and raised right here in America and this angers many people:
how is it that I can be an American and believe the things I believe,
take the positions I take? Everything a man is exposed to in his
environment becomes an ingredient that shapes his outlook, and I’m no
different. So, in more ways than one, it’s because of America that I
am who I am.
When I was six, I began putting together a massive collection of comic
books. Batman implanted a concept in my mind, introduced me to a
paradigm as to how the world is set up: that there are oppressors,
there are the oppressed, and there are those who step up to defend the
oppressed. This resonated with me so much that throughout the rest of
my childhood, I gravitated towards any book that reflected that
paradigm – Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and I
even saw an ethical dimension to The Catcher in the Rye.
By the time I began high school and took a real history class, I was
learning just how real that paradigm is in the world. I learned about
the Native Americans and what befell them at the hands of European
settlers. I learned about how the descendents of those European
settlers were in turn oppressed under the tyranny of King George III.
I read about Paul Revere, Tom Paine, and how Americans began an armed
insurgency against British forces – an insurgency we now celebrate as
the American revolutionary war. As a kid I even went on school field
trips just blocks away from where we sit now. I learned about Harriet
Tubman, Nat Turner, John Brown, and the fight against slavery in this
country. I learned about Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs, and the struggles
of the labor unions, working class, and poor. I learned about Anne
Frank, the Nazis, and how they persecuted minorities and imprisoned
dissidents. I learned about Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King,
and the civil rights struggle. I learned about Ho Chi Minh, and how
the Vietnamese fought for decades to liberate themselves from one
invader after another. I learned about Nelson Mandela and the fight
against apartheid in South Africa. Everything I learned in those years
confirmed what I was beginning to learn when I was six: that
throughout history, there has been a constant struggle between the
oppressed and their oppressors. With each struggle I learned
All Internet 'speech' is hosted by third parties, if you go far enough up the chain. Even if you avoid Youtube etc., and post a video/article to your website, someone can complain to your webhost and get your hosting yanked. Colocate or own a blade in a datacenter? Datacenter owner can yank you. Use Akamai or another CDN? They can yank you. If they're getting DDoSed because of 'speech' on your site, they'll find an excuse in their EULA to justify dropping you.
Now let's say you own a datacenter. Your BGP peers can disconnect from you, stranding you from the Internet. If you find a webhost that cares about free speech, people can jump over them and get their provider to disconnect the entire webhost (this has happened before).
P2P infrastructure depends on peers wanting to connect to you. If you're seen as 'toxic' then noone will.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
The film "caused" nothing. Islamists CHOSE violence, which reflects on their Superstition, not the film.
This perfectly exposes Islamists, and is well worth the few casualties the Islamists inflict. If _I_ attack Superstition that makes me not PC and a Bad Man.
Well, have some Superstition direct from the source! In your face, by their choice.
http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/us-ambassador-christopher-stevens-killed-body-dragged-through-streets-by-muslims-islam-religion-of-peace-2.jpg
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The image of the Hebrew prophet Moses high-fiving Jesus Christ as both are having their erect penises vigorously masturbated by Ganesha, all while the Hindu deity anally penetrates Buddha with his fist reportedly went online at 6:45 p.m. EDT, after which not a single bomb threat was made against the organization responsible, nor did the person who created the cartoon go home fearing for his life in any way. Though some members of the Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist faiths were reportedly offended by the image, sources confirmed that upon seeing it, they simply shook their heads, rolled their eyes, and continued on with their day.
http://www.upworthy.com/we-saw-the-violence-freedom-of-speech-can-spark-now-lets-see-the-love?g=2&c=cp1
A popular meme in the Information Age is that the Internet spreads democracy by enabling citizens to organize and speak out...
A rather one sided meme. The internet spreads hate and intolerance as well using the same principles. The internet is both a conduit and a doorstep shaped by the capacity to make perception what we want.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Rubbish. A movie can not have the intent to offend since a movie can not offend. The only person who decides who is offended is the person who gets offended at stuff. I can say whatever I want to you, if you get offended by it that is your problem, not mine. You can chose not to be offended by it. Adults generally do when children say offensive things. When retards say offensive things too.
In this case the "offender" and the "offendee" are equally retarded, and boom, you have a boom.
People supporting free speech should sponsor one such movie a week, hitting every major and minor religious figure in history, until these retards stops electing to be offended by something that is not offensive.
No One Murdered Because Of This Image
Atheism isn't AGAINST GOD. It's a nonbelief in God. Atheism isn't a fanatical belief that there cannot be a god, but the recognition that no god has shown itself even once.
You're still, as a faitheist, insisting that any and all positions MUST be a position of faith, since that is all that you think defines you. But atheism isn't a faith, in the same way as not collecting stamps is not a hobby.
There is ABSOLUTEY no need for any atheist to make this movie. And there is no credo that would impel atheists to collect together and make it.
However, those who DO believe in THEIR god and believes that the Muslims want to put a false god over them, DO have a reason to do this.
Why? Because religion is a complete load of wank and the successful ones are the ones that scare the shit out of their believers about leaving (see scientology), hound them far more radically if they leave (see scientology) and insist that anyone who ISN'T of the same faith is
a) evil incarnate
b) destined to hell for eternal punishment
c) out to destroy the REAL believers
(see scientology).
The only difference between Muslim, Christianity and Scientology is we accept the idea that Scientology has been made up by a bloke.
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
We have now recognised the necessity to the mental well-being of mankind (on which all their other well-being depends) of freedom of opinion, and freedom of the expression of opinion, on four distinct grounds; which we will now briefly recapitulate.
First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.
Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.
Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience.
Being offended does not mean you have the right to censor someone nor does it mean that you have the right to lash out at others. If the movie bothered you, I refer you to JSM's points 3 & 4. Explain why the movie is wrong and fight against its bigotry.
This is actually a fascinating distinction.
Calling the President a "poopyhead" doesn't actually hold any implied physical danger what-so-ever. Saying I am gonna _________ is a future tense action statement with a verb, sure, that would be worth looking at.
The fun starts when "loss of honor" becomes worth retaliation, as another poster below mentioned. So while there's no physical action planned, "the loss of honor is unforgiveable" etc etc.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
From what I know of this "prophet" Mohammed, he was a good guy, and just like Jesus Christ, he taught love and respect for fellow human beings. He pulled his group of people together, got them working towards a better standard of living, for that time. He helped to pull his people out of poverty. Taught non-violence. But as he was nearing the end of his life, he realized they were going to create a religion with him as their central "savior", and he didn't want them to do that. Like Jesus, Mohammed told his people, "No! There's nothing special about me. I'm a man just like you!" But they didn't listen, and went ahead and made a religion about him anyway. And the Crusades created a hatred of anyone non-muslim (thanks, Catholic Church!). There will be more time needed for the un-enlightened Moslems in that part of the world to 'assimilate' with the rest of the world's free society. It's going to take a couple generations to get there, but they will. Bigotry in the U.S. still exists, though it's far less than what it was in the 1960's. The older racist generations are dying out, getting replaced with more tolerant and educated people. The same will happen eventually in the Middle East. It'll just take time.
I believe this onion cartoon explains the difference between Islam and the other major religions well:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/no-one-murdered-because-of-this-image,29553/?ref=auto
The prophet's good name ?
The problem is that most of the claims are true. The muslim prophet, by all reasonable standards, IS a paedophile, a genocidal maniac, dictator, thief, slaver. Just about the only accusation the movie makes that isn't confirmed by muslim scripture is that he's gay.
You somehow think that muslims are somehow not aware of those characteristics of the prophet. That's why it's a threat. Nobody needs to kill anyone to protect Gandhi's good name, or mother Theresa.
Muslims protect the paedophile prophet the way dictatorships protect their "great leader". It's a global threat, that goes into a circle. That's fundamentally how islam works.
So are idiots in america viewing this as a freedom of speech issue.
This is not a free speech issue, it is a freedom of religion issue. Freedom of religion is not your freedom to censor, it is my freedom to do what I want with religion. I can follow them to the letters, I can take and leave any parts, I can completely ignore it and I can mock it. The right to mock religion is a important part of religious freedom. Consider the following:
Islam claim that Jesus is only a average prophet like many others, he is even not the best one(that would be Muhammad, right?). From the point of view of a Christian, that believe Jesus is the half-devine son of God, this is extremely offensive. Your right to worship is base on your right to mock someone else's religion.
Now take a deep breath and take your stupid hate cult back to the bronze age where it belong.
Thanks,
The civilized world.
Hardly just one. Christianity today is quite moderate (mostly, there are exceptions), but it has had it's inquisitions and holy wars in the past. A large part of the reason the US was founded with a secular government was to avoid the christian-on-christian violence seen in Europe, where Protestants and Catholics had been taking turns slaughtering each other and many minority sects were banned outright. Judaism lacks the numbers to do much today other than take part in some territorial squabbles, but their own historical texts describe how they came to possess Israel by first emptying it of former occupants, and you can see the propaganda still in there describing the previous tribes as so evil the land rejected them and God personally ordered even the children slaughtered to exterminate their line. I don't know a great deal about the other significent religions, but I'm sure a little research would reveal even Buddhism - usually regarded as one of the most non-violent religions around - must have a few skeletons in the closet.
If you're going to convince me that you're truly Muslim - or at least decently educated, then you need to be able to transliterate "God is Great" in a way that follows the accepted norms. Maybe you're being dialectical, but Islam is based on classical Arabic, and there's a "proper" way to render that phrase in English. As it is, it makes me wonder if you're truly Muslim or just pouring gasoline on the fire.
As far as I'm concerned, religious displays of violence are major sins, regardless of whether they're Muslim, Christian, or whatever. They're the ultimate in hubris, because they're basically saying that God, the Almighty, is too weak and too feeble to protect Himself, and so must enlist crowds of murderous men to do the job. God, if He is Who you say he is, could do a Sodom-and-Gomorrah on any place in the Universe, or even wipe the entire planet, if he felt the need to defend Himself. We see every day how the Earth and the heavens can be subjected to earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, plagues, meteor swarms - even supernovae. And that 's just in an apparently undirected way. If God can bind Leviathian, those are the least of punishments he could aim at the infidels if that was His desire. These mobs are about as meaningful as if a nest of ants were to rush to my defense against another nest of ants. As the Qur'an states repeatedly: "Let God be the judge".
Likewise, I'm very much opposed to suppression of offensive speech, because if you have faith, you understand that God is too powerful to be overcome by lies. That lies may eclipse the truth, but the truth will eventually prevail. And that the best way to expose lies is to bring them forth into the light of day for all to observe how their details fail, not to suppress them in the hope that no one will believe them.
There are a lot of ideals that America has discarded in the last 30 years or so, but one that we've managed to hold on to is the idea that free speech means free people. In a more authoritarian country, such slanders as this "film trailer" would either become underground "forbidden knowledge" (with all the appeal inherent), or officially sanctioned. Either way, the message would be legitimized. Instead, the controversy enabled by free speech and the freedom to view and dissect this work has exposed the tawdry underpinnings of this scheme and the lack of moral character of those behind it. Instead of undermining Islam, it may, in fact, have done the opposite. We learn a lot about people (and religions, and ideologies) by the calibre of their enemies.
So are idiots in america viewing this as a freedom of speech issue.
What is it then if not a freedom of speech issue? The only effective way to fight idiocy is to drag it to broad daylight and humiliate it publicly. If you can't criticize others because you might hurt their feelings, they'll never find out there's something wrong. Yes, the movie is retarded and offensive, but you're free to just ignore it or you can respond with another movie that's even more retarded and offensive to the other side.
As long as there are huge masses of people who are willing to kill over a retarded movie, this kind of retarded movies will need to be made. I know it sucks to be caught in the crossfire between two camps of retards but the alternative to a little disgust is to stay sorrounded by retards forever.
Why "religion" ? You make it sound like all religions have their followers pull this crap, when in reality ... it's only one of them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_violence
All religions are absolutist philosophies, with very specific ideas of good and evil based not on real life but on imaginary properties proscribed by their own scripture.
As such, they are all destined to clash with the real world sooner or later.
When that happens, there is really no choice for someone who's high on religion - you're either on the side of god, angels and good or you're on the side of evil.
And evil, as we all know, must be vanquished. Man's law be damned. We're talking higher power here.
Abortion clinic bombers don't think that they are killing doctors - they are just doing god's work, eliminating the child murderers.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Do you also think the Norwegian Labor Party should be censored because a follower of Breivik's ideology might be offended by their stance on immigration, and go on another shooting spree because they see it as a message that embraces the destruction of their white race? After all, we have to appreciate the fact that the white nationalists likely perceive the pro-immigration message as a threat.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Uh, they are. I mean, unless the Vatican isn't "Christian" enough for you.
If you owned the ground at "ground zero", you could do that.
It's called "free speech".
It would be insulting and offensive, but legal. Just like this video.
Do you remember when a cross (crucifix?) was placed in a bottle of urine in an art gallery? The Christians were rather upset, to say the least. The Pope got all bent out of shape. People protested the museum. Public funding for art was attacked, again. NOBODY FUCKING DIED. Get it?
If the Muslim world ever wants to be seen as something other than a bunch of animals, they need to learn to deal with stuff like this without killing people and rioting. It *is* free speech. Offensive free speech, actually.
Maybe it's a trap?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."