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The Surprising Truth About Internet Censorship In the Middle East
An anonymous reader writes "Internet censorship is common in conservative majority-Muslim countries, but it may have more to do with politics and technology than with religion. I.e., Iran is not so different from Cuba and China. From the article: 'in an attempt to uncover the various reasons — and ways — that countries clamp down on Internet freedoms, the U.S.-based watchdog Freedom House investigated the issue in 47 nations and released a study of its findings this year.
Employing a number of factors ranging from blogger arrests to politically motivated website blockades, the study ranked each country according to its degree of online freedom.
And, as it happens, Islamic countries do not stand out for their degree of censorship.'"
No shit, Sherlock. Dictators control communications to strengthen their power.
However, when religious leaders are encouraging this, they are guilty.
This is a false dichotomy. The question is whether religion leads to oppressive politics and low technology, not whether oppressive politics are more correlated with oppression and low technology than religion.
Currently hooked on AMP
Does the submitter not realized that there's not much difference in predominantly Arab countries.
That's not surprising at all. Almost nothing about the alleged "conflict" between these countries and "the West" have to do with religion and it has a lot to do with post-colonialism and the Cold War. It's just that on both "sides" many people like to spin the issues in the direction of religion. It's ridiculous enough to speak about "Islamic Countries" as if they were a homogenous force or fraction.
Sorry for the many scare quotes but they are all appropriate in this case.
Can't say I'm surprised to hear this. Censorship is everywhere, in every culture for whatever offends that cultures ideologies, power structure, and economic models.
Blocking piracy for example is censorship, blocking the free exchange of information, because that combination of ones and zeros are the property of Microsoft Corporation. Where elsewhere in the world people couldn't care less about downloading music, but if you post a message calling the king a horsef**ker, you'd better be ready to be carted off in the night like Richard O'Dwyer.
Slashdot user Michael Crawford is currently in jail for exercising his first amendment rights.
According to report linked to in TFA, the US government has no internet surveillance and does not spread misinformation! Sounds like their report was censored!
What moron thought this was surprising? China doesn't censor internet for political reasons either, remember? It's due to porn and other moralizing.
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
I thought everyone realised that the conservative suppressive elements of a cuture are less to do with the religion itself but with the conservative suppressive people at the top.
If a certain ideological view point holds power over the masses, usually through fear, those in power will use it to their advantage. This is true whether it is a political, moral, or ethical idea.
Silence is a state of mime.
Islamic countries are asking for international censorship of the whole Internet. So let them block anything they don't like at home. But they should not be allowed to expand their censorship policies to the whole Internet.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Oppressive regimes in the Middle East rank among the worst (but not particularly worse than) other oppressive regimes in other parts of the world? Is that a "surprising truth"? If anything this just confirms what we already knew - those in power there are interested singularly in that power, and Islam has just been a convenient way to justify it to their population. Not that Islam is conducive to free speech or any other advancement of the human species - but it's not the main reason these countries are censoring the internet.
Religion leveraged for a power play? Say it ain't so.
Money, Religion, Politics, people seeking power or in position of power and enjoying it (even if they started "innocent") is the key. I would go one step further : they are only symptoms. The real reason is that some type of people seek power, and power structure (as aforementioned) self-promote such thinking. No religion, plutocraty, or political regime is exempt of it. The trick is thru law, civil protest, constitution and the various tools the common folk have, to LIMIT and keep in check those pwoers. Even if it means getting the guillotine and axes sharpened and blooded from time to time. My only fears is that with the new technological tools, be it military , IT, or economics, a very small group can nowadays cocnentrate an enormous amount of powers, and hold it. And trust me on that one, if history teach us anything, is that those who hold pwoer are quasi never benevolent, empathic, and generous. More like egoistic, greedy, and with a sense of entitlement against the common folk.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Where the obvious and un-newsworthy are posted with impunity. Please give me more stories with studies finding tv as a babysitter is bad, religions are oppressive or fanatical and governments only care about their own interests.
With that out of the way, a fanatical religious leader who holds authority via his office over his people only leads to more extremes of the above mentioned.
religious dogmas are being used to further political goals ... I am shocked! Shocked!
bad article , gee this is about as bad as hollywood stats....i know lets make shit up and point to some business website....
right....
If you actually look at censorship Germany, UK, Canada, and many others implement blocking of sites. It does not matter who is doing it, what the content is, or why. It's still censorship. The United States may not have this in place although it does have significant control and influence that it need not implement it. It has successfully attacked objectionable sites all over the world. Pornographic, piracy related, and political. To declare the average American's Internet free is a crock of shit. In just about every one of these countries the only free Internet is over Tor and only to the extent you are connected to .onnion sites. Even here it isn't free as the connection is being limited by the available bandwidth and having to work around the censorship.
We should not outlaw censorship. We should outlaw the interference of communications and interruption of content thereby making it illegal to seize servers, disconnect users's/organizations/companies connections, reduce the speeds of Internet connections, change / add to the communications (mislead), shape traffic, or arrest persons for any communications or associations.
This would or should as I interpret prevent governments from doing things like saying two ex-cons can't communicate with each other. Freedom of association as I think of it does not exist with such laws in place. Democracy does not exist with such laws in place which prevent voting (imprisoned persons).
The threat to a persons speech and liberties should never be removed under any circumstances.
You can't suspend some freedoms or speech temporarily for the benefit of the arts, economy, etc. Either you have it or you don't. The US, Canada, Australia, and Europe do not have it. Canada, Australia, and Europe have laws against certain speech. This includes the denial of the holocaust.
[censorship] may have more to do with politics and technology than with religion
There are only a few country where politics rule! Almost all of the world is ruled by religion!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
When you have a government stifling free speech and expression, a government that is not for the people by the people, than you have either a dictatorship(iran mullah, north korea jim "ding dong ill", etc..) or monarchy(saudi arabia). Theocracy is a another method used by dictators and monarchs who are really capitalist to control the people. Dictators and Monarchs have wealth and live a luxury life while the people live in shit. Castro lives like a king while the people live in poverty, who is the capitalist here? Castro, he is the one with capital. People need to stop worshiping governments and the so called religious leaders altogether. People in power will always look after #1.
Internet censorship is common in conservative majority-Muslim countries, but it may have more to do with politics and technology than with religion. I.e., Iran is not so different from Cuba and China.
Not really the most fitting use for "I.e." It translates as "that is," so would make more sense to write it as:
Internet censorship is common in conservative majority-Muslim countries, but Iran is not so different from Cuba and China - i.e., it may have more to do with politics and technology than with religion."
From the article: 'n an attempt to uncover the various reasons
"n an attempt"? That mistake leaps out of the page. I'd usually joke about editors not even reading submissions, but it's getting beyond a joke.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Capitalism is a law of nature, like evolution. Communism is a religion, like creationism.
They shut down websites because they go against the values of their leaders, we also shut down websites because they go against the values of our leaders, only in our case those values are measured in US dollars and the driving motivation is not a (perhaps misplaced) belief in a higher power but instead pure, unadulterated greed.
It took that long for people to figure out the leaders behind fanatical islam don't give a fuck about the religion they're pushing? Next you'll tell me the leaders of the Catholic Church actually care about Christianity!
It's all politics, and the easiest way to control and manipulate people is to control and manipulate something they hold dear to them. Religion, family members, etc.
Keep them dumb
make sure they cant read
make sure anyone who isnt the above two is on board with your crap, or at least, not fighting it.
kill anyone who isnt brainwashing or at least pretending to be.
Voila, control.
Question:
Do we really have more freedom in the U.S., or do we just permit freedom for ideas we believe in? Are we smug, hypocritical American exceptionalists?
Javed Iqbal was sentenced to 5 1/2 years for offering Al Manar on his cable TV system.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2009/04/2009423233919457969.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Manar#Banning_of_broadcasts
Occupy Wall Street wasn't allowed to express its First Amendment rights to assembly.
I'll take support for human rights whether it comes from the left or right. Freedom House seems to be the latter. I do wish they would show more concern about attacks on freedom of people like Javed Iqbal in their own backyard, but that may be an unreasonable request when you consider the source of their funds,
Here's what Chomsky said about Freedom House. Fair?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_house#Criticism
Chomsky and Herman argue that the group's history has been characterized by excessively criticizing states opposed to US interests while being unduly sympathetic to those regimes supportive of US interests. The authors suggest this can be most notably seen by the way it perceived the US ally El Salvador in the early 1980s, a government that used the army for mass slaughter of the populace to intimidate them in the run-up to an "election", but Freedom House found these elections to be "admirable". Chomsky further claimed in 1988 that Freedom House "had interlocks with AIM, the World Anticommunist League [sic], Resistance International, and U.S. government bodies such as Radio Free Europe and the CIA, and has long served as a virtual propaganda arm of the (U.S) government and international right wing."
Wikileaks
Before you get the free will of childhood, you're circumcised or baptised. You are described as a $RELIGION child not a child of $RELIGION parents.
You DO NOT GET a choice when you're born to religious parents.
No.
But there are religious leaders all around who use their religion as reason to commit the atrocity.
For most of human history people living in an area where a religion was a dominant --um, thing, no, force, well had a dominant influence it was understood, or believed, that a person was born into that religion. If their parents were of that religion they were born into it. This idea of changing one's religion would seem very alien to a Jew in Warsaw 100 years ago, a Buddhist in parts of SE Asia, a Hindu still today, a Lutheran in parts of Scandanavia....etc. etc.
For many people in the world today the issue is not can they voluntarily change or choose their religion, but rather can the idea of changing their religion even be thought. Not external censorship, not internal censorship, but it would be so alien as to simply be "unthinkable."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority prefer you to be poor/subservient/defenseless so that they can promote/protect their hegemony in the pretext of patriotism/democracy.
Casteism
a muslim country? the EU raison d'état a polireligious thing and the echelon project an urban legend i guess. How better we are because ... they have a saying here : in the land of the blind, one-eye is king (roughly translated), they got lots of wisdom here but no one seems to get it
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
and a /.er, and I could spend lots of my time here talking about Islam and refuting peoples' misconceptions, but instead I'll just refer to a website: www.turntoislam.com
For a community that prides itself on critical thinking and questioning authority, you'd expect /. to be a little more objective when believing the popular media's impression of Islam. Unfortunately, though, these days often skepticism and freethinking are only labels, and are only claimed to be done. It's much easier to label yourself a seeker of truth than to actually seek the truth.
Middle East will witness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perestroika
Casteism