Slashdot Mirror
Pakistan Lifts YouTube Ban For 3 Minutes, Finds More Blasphemy
On Saturday, Pakistan briefly lifted the months-old ban on YouTube, spurred by the widely distributed U.S.-made video presented as a trailer for a film titled "Innocence of Muslims" and decried in many places around the world as blasphemous toward Islam. "After months of criticism of the ban, the government decided to allow Pakistanis to have access to YouTube again, saying steps had been taken to ensure that offensive content would not be visible. But those efforts apparently failed, and the authorities quickly backtracked," writes the New York Times. "Quickly" is right: access to YouTube was apparently open for just three minutes, which seems about right; it shouldn't take longer than that to discover things on the site to which adherents of any particular religion might take umbrage. What's surprising is that this took lifting the censorship on a wide scale, rather than just taking a smaller peek through tunneling software.
Even Pakistan has better broadband than we do.
[Sigh]
Have gnu, will travel.
LO
The darn transistor is the root of all blasphemy. It should be banned from the nation-states of the faithful!
There are millions of people in these countries that support this. You will have to change their minds first.
If you're a US Citizen, "we" is the correct term, like it or not. The US Citizens elect the US government.
I suspect that the average Pakistani thinks little of their government; thus anything the government blocks must be good and should be checked out. I suspect that the total amount of blasphemy watched is higher in the end as the population end runs any poorly implemented systems the same way Canadians end run the whole "This content not available in your region."
Hey! I voted for Ron Paul!
Keep that blasphemy going out. The nuttier religions need criticism, ridicule, and opposition. As soon as a religion gets temporal power, like the power to put people in jail, it's in the politics business. Leaders of such religions have to take all the heat politicians do.
If the only way to tame out of control religions is war, that's worse for everybody, including the leaders of the religions. Historically, leaders of militant religions don't do well when they lose a war. See most of European history prior to 1800 or so.
I'm surprised it was up for a full 3 minutes.
Must... resist...
That's what SHE said!
Sorry, had to.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
The average Pakistani probably has no idea about any blasphemy on youtube, the people who are viewing the most blasphemy on youtube in pakistan are the people looking for it within the government so that they can block it.
portfolio
It's no the sensibilities of your god that worries me. It's the sensibilities of the primates that have appointed themselves as his/her/it's guardians and spokesmen.
If there really is a wise and loving god, he must surely be sitting there wondering firstly, why the fuck people are dying over cartoons and silly videos, and secondly, why he doesn't do something to stop it? It'd save use some hassle if he could ditch this vague communication through personally revealed and contradictory revelation to some yahoo in a cave. I remember back in the old days when, if God was pissed, he'd be personally smiting your arse. None of this vague tossing of tornadoes in to areas already known for naturally occurring tornadoes - with churches and brothels alike being smashed. Of course personal appearances would fuck with free will, while tornadoes and allowing nut jobs to run wild is free will for the poor victims. I'm not even sure how free will is any different whether the information is provided via divinely revealed texts, or a simple one-one-one communication with every single person? Either way, free will is impacted by external interference. I'm not even convinced that free will is necessary, if the angels who rebelled lived in Heaven and still had the free will to rebel. Fuck it. Tell us the deal and let us decided. Unless that happens, we'll continue to live on a ball of rock infested with people who hurt and confuse people by claiming to speak on behalf of a god that no-one seems to understand.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
No, not really. It depends on which state he was in. If he was in a Red state, he effectively voted for Obama; in a Blue state, he effectively voted for Romney. In either state, if it wasn't close to being a swing state, it really didn't matter, his vote wouldn't have affected the results anyway.
Regardless, it's the fault of US Citizens that this ridiculous election scheme persists.
It doesn't matter if you vote or not; you're a Citizen, so the government is your responsibility, just like Arab countries' governments are those citizens' responsibilities, and when they got sick enough of them, they rose up and overthrew them. If you don't like your government, it's your responsibility to overthrow it.
But if we did that it would cut off the world largest market for goat sex pornography: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=goat%20sex&cmpt=geo
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Or they could stop claiming to speak on behalf of a God that they do not actually speak for.
God told us to kill the infidels! God told us homosexuality is evil! Bullshit. You decided that on your own, and you're sticking divinity on it for the power.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Several things are wrong with your post but let me just point out three things:
1) you do not have to be perfect in order to pass judgment on evil (otherwise evil will always get a free pass)
2) we may not be perfect but we don't have laws requiring a raped woman to provide 4 male witnesses or else whip her for adultery and we do not hang gay people off cranes in public squares, so there are degrees of perfection you may wish to explore
3) Not being able to right every wrong does not mean you should not right at least some wrongs
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
If so, he could hardly blame us for not believing in him, as he hasn't exactly left an abundance of evidence proving that he exists. Free will still exists, I frequently disobey almost everything I'm told, sometimes for no reason at all. I'm fairly sure if God proved himself and said "thou shalt sex for procreation only", I, and quite a lot of others, would go straight to hell.
That's bullshit. Only the people that voted for Romney voted for Romney. People who voted for Ron Paul voted for Ron Paul. Don't try to lay the guilt trip on those who didn't vote for your favorite candidate.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"Innocence of muslims" has to be one of the worst pieces of film I've ever watched. It was quite clearly created to insult and enrage muslims.
However I would suggest to the Pakistani authorities that if they REALLY want to stop their sensitive southerners from getting enraged at the west, perhaps they need to have a word to their american friends about those drone bombers. I figure if I was in a targetted village it would be the drones, not some silly infantile troll video, that would be my major beef.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Is God the only supernatural force capable of slinging tornadoes around?
Sometimes I wonder how many people believe in God without believing in the devil.
While the majority of the Pakis are Muslims, the Pakistan population is *NOT* 100% Islamic.
There are Hindus and Christians living in Pakistan.
Just because something is viewed as "blaspheme" to _some_ of the Muslims that doesn't mean it is blasphemic to the Hindus or the Christians.
To ban Internet just because of the "Islamic blaspheme" is to exercise the "Tyranny of the Majority" rule.
Imagine if America set up a law banning open prayer due to "noise pollution" - that would certainly makes the lives of many Muslims that bit tougher, wouldn't it?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The fundamental problem with your reasoning is that you don't seem to understand that things are like this in those countries because the people in those countries like it that way.
The fundamental problem with your reasoning is that you don't seem to understand that not ALL the people in those countries like it that way. And no, I am not one of the morons who through Iraqi people would welcome us as liberators but I am one of the morons who thinks that Iraqis will be much better off in the long run as a result of the invasion and that other countries in the region will be better off as well as a knock off effects of the invasion, already visible in the "Arab spring" and protests in Iran. Yes "those people" are really just like us, they like freedom too. People act in accordance with cultural memes of the their time and place not by rational thinking. 500 years ego in Europe you would have probably said that people like the iron rule of the Church and burning of witches and if you had a poll they would have probably voted that way too, and yet that was changed. And no I do not support invading country after country, but I do support rejection of the prevailing chickenshit cultural relativism in the Western countries and for standing up for better and more human ways of organizing a society. Islamic countries are a black hole in the modern world when it comes to basic human rights and we are not doing them any favors by saying that that's ok.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Go live in a cave!
It came to me in a dream; God spoke to me, she said "those that are offended should go live in a cave, ascetic lifestyle, ftw"
"But lord, are you saying they're righteous?" I countered
"Not at all," she replied "this way those who won't do as I wish won't screw it up for the rest of you living in the 21st century."
I know you don't believe me, but may God smite the earth and destroy it, RIGHT NOW, if I am wrong!
See? Nothing happened, therefore I am God's messenger!
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
You're really naive if you believe that shit.
For one thing, many women do like it this way. They're taught this shit from the time they're born, so a lot of them believe it. It's sorta like Stockholm Syndrome, except worse when you're taught that you're good for nothing besides making babies from the time you're old enough to talk.
And of those who are smart enough to realize it's all bullshit, what are they going to do? Women are smaller and weaker than men. If they refuse to let their men have sex with them, they're going to be beaten to a pulp or worse. We used to do that here in America too, and the police were complicit. In some areas (Arizona City), they still are.
Women have zero power in those regions of the world. Women only have the power they do here in the West because society at large allows them to have that power, thanks to laws and a society that believes (more or less) in gender equality and equal rights for all. It took us centuries to achieve this; you can't force societal values like this on another society by force, they have to evolve it themselves. We've been trying to push our values on many places in the world like this for decades, and it's only made things worse. Iran used to be a very progressive place, probably the most progressive in the entire Middle East. Then their democratically-elected leaders did something to piss off the US government (didn't want to give them the best prices on oil), so the CIA overthrew them and installed the Shah, who was a brutal dictator. So much for Western values of equality and justice, huh? Well the Iranians got pissed off at this, overthrew the Shah (which the US is still mad about), and installed a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy. This is what happens when people react to outside interference: they become extremists. The exact same thing happened in Afghanistan, which also was a rather progressive place with pretty advanced women's rights (for the region, compared to now), until the Soviets invaded. The Islamic extremism in that region of the world is entirely the fault of the USA and the USSR.
> Regardless, it's the fault of US Citizens that this ridiculous election scheme persists.
Democracy?
Don't like blasphemy? Don't search for it.
You're welcome!
In case you weren't paying attention, no, I'm referring to the election scheme where voters in any given US state only elect the Electors who elect the President, and worse, it's a simple majority, so that if Obama wins California by 51%, for instance, he gets all the Electoral votes for that whole state, rather than a proportion of them. Even better would be to just eliminate the Electoral College altogether, so that any US Citizens' vote counts the same as any other, rather than people from Rhode Island and Wyoming getting a bigger vote than people from California or Texas.
Free will is generally used to explain why God doesn't protect children from rapists, not why He keeps His presence a secret. That is what faith is for. Faith is believing when there is no (or at least not sufficient) evidence. Of course, there is nothing inherently virtuous about faith...if someone chooses to believe (on faith) every con artist out to get his money, we don't consider that person virtuous. So why does God value faith so highly? That is where the "mysterious ways" justification comes in.
The bottom line is simple: a priest cannot give you compelling reasons to believe, nor can a priest explain why a divine and powerful being would abide such evil. So the priest must rely on these concepts to explain away the lack of compelling warrant for belief. But, any hypothesis that justifies its own lack of evidence remains a hypotheses with no evidence, and any model that explains why it makes no sense remains a model that makes no sense.
Well also actual reality...
What an insane idea. The greatest benefits of the internet are bringing people together, undermining the control information, uncovering the lies and releasing the truth. Want to free people from the religious dark ages, you do not cut them off from information you flood them with it. Not only are the religious dark ages being tackled but also the capitalist dark ages of the last thirty years.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
As a free man, I derive enormous satisfaction from living with a free woman who stays with me because she chooses to do so.
By labelling a woman as "property" rather than "partner", you condemn yourself to never knowing such satisfaction. I wish I could say, "Your loss, asshole"--except it's your women who do the suffering.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
That wasn't a case of us pushing our values on another country. It was us sacrificing shared values in favor of perceived financial and political gain.
Ohhh - I just HATE that blue eyed white guy picture of Jesus. Granted that many slashdotters think that anyone who believes in God is a fool, I'll go one step further on the "fool" bit.
Jesus Christ was born a Jew. The Jews were a rather dark skinned people, with kinda wooly hair, dark eyes. They are related to Arabs. Both of those groups are a blend of African people, and Persians. You don't find blonde, blue eyed, pasty white people in abundance among any of those groups.
Any "Christian" who reads his Bible can find a description of Jesus in the Revelations.
Reading that description, you can almost see the late Colonel Omar Khadafy.
Anyone wanting a picture of Jesus can just hang a picture of the Colonel over their altar. All those drawings and paintings done by middle ages Englishmen and Frenchmen and Germans can be thrown in the garbage.
Of course, very few people apply even the least bit of logic to their religion.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It's saying we should not throw stones in fucking glass houses until we've taken steps to ensure our own shit does not stink. Stop the fucking shrieking about their molehills from on top your mountain.
I wasn't quite with you, but at least reading with an open mind until I hit this part. Now, for someone who's apparently knowledgeable about civil liberties I'd have assumed you better at common sense logic than this. We shouldn't cite the censorship or other civil rights violations of other countries until the US has become a paragon of justice? So, you're advocating we censor ourselves too, now? I'm sorry. Fuck you. I'll "throw stones" at everyone's glass houses, even if my own is made of sugar. I can take criticism, I've got tough skin, I'm not afraid to bruise my ego, I change shit that I find wrong with me -- I don't need a house for protection. Think this through: Only the perfect can comment on the state of the world. Holy shit man, get real.
Now if you want to see more stories like the ones you've mentioned appear on Slashdot -- Then Submit Them You Fool!
Stop the fucking shrieking about their molehills from on top your mountain.
Shouts the flea from high on the mole's arse.
As a Pakistani, I can only find this hilarious, albeit morbidly so.
You see, all they have succeeded in making sure that *every* one knows how to use proxies.
You see, as long as people got their damn facebook and youtube, no one gave a flying hoot about anything else. We (including I myself) didn't know there was even a way to access websites banned by the PTA, and since we were *good* boys and girls, we didn't care about *bad* websites being closed, so we didn't bother finding out how we could access them.
Now, they can't access youtube, well guess what, people started asking, how can we access restricted websites? Answer: Proxies etc.
We are not bad people, right? We just want to access youtube to watch University lectures (pakistan's virtual university has a youtube channel with all their lectures online), how to stitch clothes (my mom's favourite, she learnt many a good cloth making designs on youtube) etc...
And while we are doing this to only access youtube now, well, a proxy opens the way to *all* websites.
Now even the websites they would *genuinely* want people to stop visiting (porn etc) are open to all. Guess what, my dear local mullah, you have only succeeded in making sure people now have the tools to visit the same evil websites you wanted to stop.
Yeah, all that, um, *effort*, that 15 year old kid did to find and collate a list of 780,000 porn websites for the govt to ban? The internet routes around obstructions, b'ch!
Not that the govt cares either way, they are busy making sure the bhutto dynasty can continue on... these are all attention diversion tactics, to hide the fact that I can't find gas for a week (btw, Gas means CNG in local context, Petrol is hardly ever used, though even *that* has run out! yeah our govt is awesome)
And it's not like *anyone* is pretending they are *not* using youtube; for example, TV channels often put their programs on youtube for people to view, and obviously they must be using proxies, since they haven't switched to other websites. They bald-faced-ly give links to the youtube version on their facebook page, for example.
But no one can dare admit that the youtube ban is a farce, or they will be part of the *blasphemous* campaign. Also, apparently, by Pakistan banning youtube, we have brought down Google to it's knees (I have seen actual *statistics* to that effect, don't ask me where they got their figures from), we are winning! We can't give up a step away from victory!
Vive la révolution islamique!
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
But but...
Jesus is the Son of God.
God is perfection.
Thus God is white, Jesus was half-white, and had a long reddish-blond mane, bright blue eyes, and freckles!
Don't trust the Jewish description of him. They had him killed. Likely were jealous of the hair.
Duno where this three minutes story popup, it took almost three hours for one of the largest broadband provider (PTCL) to block youtube again. They unblocked it on Saturday around 15:00 pm and then blocked back @ 17:30 pm.
http://askaralikhan.blogspot.com/
I don't know about that. I think having faith in someone you love is a virtuous thing. Even showing trust in a complete stranger is an admirable trait in my opinion. I am not a wealthy man by any means, but I think karma has been good to me. Life is a cold and ugly place for the cynical.
Trust should be based on the probability of claim(s) being valid and the risks associated with showing trust. I meet a guy in a bar, and he tells me that his wife is from Galway. I trust him, even though I've nothing to go on beyond his word on the matter. His claim is not extraordinary, and there's no obvious risk in accept it. Continuing our discussion, the stranger tells me that his wife is a rich princess, and that he needs plane fare to get back home. Of course he'll wire the money to me when he gets home, with a handsome reward on top - his wife is a fabulously rich princess! Would it be admirable to hand over the money? No, it'd be foolish. He's making an extraordinary claim which, if accepted at face value, is likely to result in my losing money to a con artist.
That's not be cynical. It's about weighing up the claims and the associated risks. A while back I loaned somewhere just south of 200 euro to a friend who was struggling financially, and had a wife and daughter to care for. Having known him on and off for 10 years, I trusted him and wanted to help. It transpired that I wasn't the only one loaning him money, and he was lying to me and others. In the end, he vanished leaving a trail of unpaid debts. Personally I'd have let him off the money if he'd just been honest, and I no-longer trust him at all. That hasn't stopped me loaning money to friends I trust, because I don't judge everyone by his actions. I am much more careful though in setting clear deadlines on when money is to be returned.
Life is a cold and ugly place for people who grant faith for no good reason. In reality there are few people cynical enough to have absolutely no faith in anyone or anything. Doesn't mean we're always good at weighing things up, but generally there is some kind of process. Christians will probably believe me if I say that I feel God's message of love inside of me, and that he wants me to go out in to the world to offer aid to the sick. Now how about if I tell them that Jesus told me I should ask good Christians to provide 10% of their salaries to support my efforts? I'm guessing that most would at that point withdraw their faith in me, and for good reason. That's healthy scepticism, triggered because accepting my initial claim carried no risk, while my second claim carries with it a great deal of risk. If a homeless guy asks me for money for food, do I give him money? Normally not. I prefer to offer to buy them something to eat, and if they accept, I return with the food. We chat a while, and if they seem pretty straight I may leave them some money. I do this because I see a lot of homeless people here, sitting around drinking anything vaguely alcoholic. I'd prefer to be certain that they've had a meal than give money to a stranger who could be investing it in their steady downwards spiral. Cynical? Maybe, but based on a fair bit of experience with the homeless.
Life is a cold and ugly place for people who grant faith for no good reason, and they'll hurt their friends and family when they make poor decisions.
-- Using the preview button since 2005