France Will Block Web Sites That Promote Terrorism

An anonymous reader writes In the first use of government powers enacted after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the French Interior Ministry on Monday ordered five websites blocked on the grounds that they promote or advocate terrorism. The action raises questions about how governments might counter groups such as the self-declared Islamic State on digital platforms.

Comments

Necesary Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes censorship is necessary, mainly to stop weak minded people from doing stupid things.

Re:Necesary Censorship

[Dutchmaan]

Just like AC is used to shield weak minded people from their stupid things.

Re:Necesary Censorship

[king neckbeard]

Except that basically all extant religions feed on ANYTHING that can be construed as persecution. By trying to censor, you only strengthen their resolve. Same shit with Neo-nazis and Mein Kampf. Nothing could do more damage to that movement than exposing that Das Fuhrer had the language skills of a middle school American sleeping through their first semester German class.

Re:Necesary Censorship

[Opportunist]

Oh, glad that those misguided idiots now can't have access to content promoting hatred in the name of religion.

Unless of course he goes to his local mosque. So let's shut down the mosques. Then they'll get together somewhere else.

Face it. There's no way you can keep idiots from being caught by sects. What you can do, and best would be such a way as this, is to make this harder to observe by your security forces.

Re:Necesary Censorship

[NatasRevol]

So, you're saying the websites of places like army.mil are going to be blocked?

Re:Necesary Censorship

[Opportunist]

Seriously. If more people had read Mein Kampf, a lot of shit would have been spared from us. Simply because more people would have noticed just what a lunatic that guy was.

Personally, I'd make it mandatory lecture for every neo nazi just to show them what kind of fucked up megalomaniac they idolize.

Re:Necesary Censorship

[ebcdic]

This is often asserted, and it would be nice if it were true, but is there any actual evidence for it?

Re:Necesary Censorship

[TheCastro1689]

That's state sponsored terror, so it's ok.

Re:Necesary Censorship

[Tom]

By trying to censor, you only strengthen their resolve.

Ignoring them doesn't work so well, either. You miss the point where your "ANYTHING" includes nothing - if you do nothing, they will make something up. Heck, look how the right-wing christians in USA speak of being prosecuted.

Re:Necesary Censorship

[rbgnr111]

really??? Mein Kampf??
that book is a terrible read! the it starts out as a bit interesting, but quickly goes into what really comes across as a high school kids rant about something..
that book wasn't even popular within the nazi party other than people would have it to show their support of the Hitler.
I think he showed more merit in his art than in his writing.

Re:Necesary Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

That's exactly the point. Had more people read it, they'd have seen that Hitler wasn't some genius savant, but an angry loser who wasn't deserving of praise or following.

Re: Necesary Censorship

[ShieldW0lf]

He wasn't a genius, he was a figurehead for a popular opinion of the time.

Understanding that is key to preventing a repeat. For reasons that made sense to them, they chose him because he said "Let's get those fuckers" and they reacted eagerly.

Re:Necesary Censorship

[Opportunist]

Yup. Exactly.

If more people had read that drivel, maybe more people would have noticed what kind of pantsless Emperor that little man was.

Re:Necesary Censorship

[ne0n]

They started by blocking all US Gov't web properties. LOL.

Re:Necesary Censorship

[Kjella]

Seriously. If more people had read Mein Kampf, a lot of shit would have been spared from us. Simply because more people would have noticed just what a lunatic that guy was. Personally, I'd make it mandatory lecture for every neo nazi just to show them what kind of fucked up megalomaniac they idolize.

Doesn't matter, he was the perfect talking head. He got people engaged, he got people enraged, he was speaking directly to a gravely wounded national pride. You might think the captain of the boat is a total idiot, but you're not going to stage a mutiny as long as he's on the course you want to be. Never underestimate the power of telling people what they want to hear.

Re:Necesary Censorship

[blue9steel]

It's impossible to stop weak minded people from doing stupid things, block one thing and they'll just do something else stupid. In the meantime censorship hurts everyone else.

Re:Necesary Censorship

[Dutchmaan]

The fact that you guys are championing censorship itself.. is a glaring example of just how far humanity has fallen.

Re:Necesary Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

As Indonesia discovered recently the terrorists are now targeting children, and that makes them worse than paedophiles.

Re:Necesary Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

There already IS a process to stop weak minded people from doing stupid things. It's called the Survival of the Fittest.... Just leave it up to Darwin...

Re:Necesary Censorship

[cascadingstylesheet]

Except that basically all extant religions feed on ANYTHING that can be construed as persecution.

Refusing to see the difference between "A" and "B" (you: "hey, they're both letters!) is unwise.

Re:Necesary Censorship

[Midnight Thunder]

The only question, is whether government sites will be blocked too?

All kidding aside, while I don't agree with terrorism, it needs to be defined in a very strict legal terms, such that other inconvenient sites don't also get blocked, due to some vagueness of definition.

Re:Necesary Censorship

[Vinegar Joe]

I wonder why so many people wear Che t-shirts..........have they ever read any of Che's prose?

"The situation was uncomfortable for the people and for Eutimio so I ended the problem giving him a shot with a .32 pistol in the right side of the brain, with exit orifice in the right temporal." - Che Guevara

Re:Necesary Censorship

[Vinegar Joe]

Seriously. If more people had read Mein Kampf, a lot of shit would have been spared from us.

What are you smoking? Mein Kampf was best seller and Hitler got rich off its sales. People knew exactly what they were getting.

Re:Necesary Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever read mein kampt? If you had you would not be saying that the guy was a crazy lunatic. The book was a great treatise on realpolitik. It was at least as good as 'The Prince'. His words are dangerous to those in power, so it is necessary for those in power to belittle his book. The same thing can be said about Ted Kaminski's manifesto. It was at least as good as 'A brave new world' and talked about the same kinds of issues. One is a classic. One is considered the work of a lunatic. Mainly because society has changed in the 40 or so years time span between Huxley and Kaminski. If Huxley had written the book in 1995, there is now way it would be a classic. Instead it would he the work of and unsettled mind.

He who controls the present controls the past, and he who controls the past controls the future.
Let's us all thank the lord that we live In a free society, where we our thoughts and words are not controlled by others. All other societies are enslaved. Only you are free. That is what your controllers want you to believe.

Re:Necesary Censorship

[CrashPoint]

Sometimes censorship is necessary, mainly to stop weak minded people from doing stupid things.

Censorship IS weak-minded people doing stupid things.

Re:Necesary Censorship

[lsatenstein]

Except that basically all extant religions feed on ANYTHING that can be construed as persecution. By trying to censor, you only strengthen their resolve. Same shit with Neo-nazis and Mein Kampf. Nothing could do more damage to that movement than exposing that Das Fuhrer had the language skills of a middle school American sleeping through their first semester German class.

Your comments are just if you are dealing with rational individuals. But when an individual becomes ultra whatever, (from religion to being anorexic to drug addiction), rationalism is out the window. Censorship drives that drivel underground, and that way the reach to a number of susceptible individuals is greatly reduced. And of the ones converted, they are lost.

We now hear that many that went to Isil (Isis) are disillusioned about the terrorism. They can't leave for fear of death. Only sadists remain truly committed.

SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid

[lesincompetent]

Hooray for terrorism!
Au revoire, slashdot!

Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid

[CrimsonAvenger]

Hmm, wonder if they'll have to block French History sites that mention the Reign of Terror? After all, modern France wouldn't exist without that bit of, dare I say it, terrorism....

Jaysus, can you imagine how high the Louis number would be with a couple more centuries of them???

Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid

[zlives]

its only terrorism when those we don;t agree with do it.

Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid

[ralphsiegler]

I think whatever party is in power should declare all other political parties terrorists and have their web sites blocks.

Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid

[tnk1]

"It is time that equality bore its scythe above all heads. It is time to horrify all the conspirators. So legislators, place Terror on the order of the day! Let us be in revolution, because everywhere counter-revolution is being woven by our enemies. The blade of the law should hover over all the guilty."

Some French people have been pleased to call the tactics that they agree with "terror".

Terrorism is very simply producing terror in a population as a tactic for political gain. What the "jihadis" are doing is terrorism. They aren't killing warriors sent to fight them or even politicians, they're killing aid workers and journalists. Women and children. On purpose and via staged video releases.

This has nothing to do with agreement, and everything to do with intent. You can create terror without intending it, but when your goal is terror, it is terrorism. It is certainly valid to compare the numbers of lives lost on both sides and count the expense in lives of even non-terrorist actions, but it is wrong to take that comparison and ignore the intent of terrorists to generate civilian casualties as a primary goal, as opposed to military action which produces civilian casualties as a side effect.

Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid

[zlives]

Well said.

I agree that what ISIS is doing is reprehensible to the highest degree. However the question isn't about what they are doing is terror but rather blocking websites (free speech) in the name of terror.

Maybe in a historical context those sites and their contents will be "allowed" once again but effectively it is an infringement at this time. Islamist, jihadists, muslim extremist or terrorists are all words that we can label them with and rightfully so. However when we start blocking/censoring ideology, religious or otherwise, because we disagree with it or find it distasteful or even horrifying, we start to fall into the trap of ideological warfare ourselves.

They are killing all. Warriors, politicians, aid workers and journalists and anyone else they can in a bid to cement control to wipe out any individual free thought or thinker by terrorizing those they supposedly want to rule. So in the end it is a political movement based on an ideology of control rather than religion. Religion is just a convenient excuse.

In US, the populace was coerced to support wars on the fear mongering by the politicians, and what is sad that even today a sizable group supports those false premises. One direct result of the terror wars is ISIS and the mess the region has become.

Its easy for me to say "mess" sitting so far away in safety while those there are living and dying with no recourse. I only wish there had been stronger opposition to the War on Terror in US before the Iraq invasion. But back than any conversation against was considered unpatriotic and god forbid we have unpatriotic conversations.

Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid

[Rakarra]

It's terrorism when they don't win against oppressors. First they're terrorists, then they're partisans, then they're revolutionaries and "freedom fighters," Reagans description of bin Laden's group.

Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid

[cavreader]

The only real labels that matters in classifying violent conflicts is "winners" and "losers".. Anything else is just pseudo intellectual group speak. If you must hang a label on ISIS or similar groups the most appropriate one would be "murdering psychopaths".

Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid

[rtb61]

The only real labels that matter are 'innocent' or 'proven guilty in a court of law'. Corrupt capitalism seems to be doggedly reaching for more and more guilt upon accusation with zero remediation for false accusation, no matter how many times false accusations are made. This basically to be made available only to governments and those who can afford access to government, pretty much a licence to censor anyone and everyone for any reason at all and to keep them off line with repeated false accusations. Basically costs nothing to accuse someone if you are licensed and approved to do so but costs thousands of dollars to lift the ban with no opportunity to recover not only the cost of lifting the ban but also lost revenue and readers.

Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid

[Sudline]

I you want to compare, they would block sites that make APOLOGY of Reign of Terror.

Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid

[cavreader]

'innocent' or 'proven guilty in a court of law' have lost their meaning. The physical and electronic lynch mobs declare "your guilty because I don't like you" and their evidence usually boils down to the number of "likes" or the number of "tweets" supporting their opinions and when that is not enough evidence "your guilty because I said so" will suffice.

Recruiting tools

[BarbaraHudson]

Why not block portions of Facebook and Twitter, which are used as recruiting tools and communications channels? (Though a block of ALL of Facebook and Twitter would be popular with everyone tired of the "chatter")?

Re:Recruiting tools

[CrimsonAvenger]

(Though a block of ALL of Facebook and Twitter would be popular with everyone tired of the "chatter")?

Never had much (for which, read 'any') use for Facebook or Twitter. But likewise, I've never understood what the problem with either or both existing is. If you don't want to Facebook, then don't. Likewise, if tweeting (or whatever it's called these days _twitting, perhaps?) isn't your thing, then don't.

Do try to remember that even if everyone else does it, that's not actually a requirement that you do it too....

Re:Recruiting tools

[ShanghaiBill]

Though a block of ALL of Facebook and Twitter would be popular with everyone tired of the "chatter"?

Pro tip: You can stop the chatter by closing the tab.

Re:Recruiting tools

[Jason Levine]

And with any social media platform, you can control what you see based on who you follow. Don't want to see stupid memes, astrology posts, and endless photos of people's food*? Don't follow people who post these things. There are plenty of people on social media having actual conversations so you can follow them and completely block out the rest of the garbage**.

* Full disclosure: I've been guilty of posting photos of my food on social media, but I try to keep it limited.

** Always keep in mind that one person's garbage is another person's valuable content. I might not care who CURRENT_BIG_POP_STAR is dating, but other people would love to hear this information. Social media (and the Internet in general) is big enough for all of us to post our content while we ignore the content we have no interest in.

Re:Recruiting tools

[barbariccow]

Because to block https traffic to specific portions of host you need to intercept, decrypt, and resign the traffic. This defeats the whole purpose of SSL. The connection only contains the hostname, then handshake, and encrypted from there. It's called a Man in the Middle.

Re:Recruiting tools

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bother? They'd just tell Facebook to do it themselves, and they will. No questions asked. Look at them in China for instance.

There is NO corporation that willingly works against a host government. Oh, there are some that put up a nice front, but that's just marketing.

Re:Recruiting tools

[Anonymous Coward]

(Though a block of ALL of Facebook and Twitter would be popular with everyone tired of the "chatter")?

Never had much (for which, read 'any') use for Facebook or Twitter. But likewise, I've never understood what the problem with either or both existing is. If you don't want to Facebook, then don't. Likewise, if tweeting (or whatever it's called these days _twitting, perhaps?) isn't your thing, then don't.

Do try to remember that even if everyone else does it, that's not actually a requirement that you do it too....

The requirement (from Facebook) is that they will spy on you, and get your address (from your "friends"), and your email address (from your "friends"), and tag you in photos (also by your "friends"). The site also has a history of leaking info to third parties, including personally identifiable information.

The spying occurs whenever you visit a page which has a Facebook "Like" button, even if you don't click the button. The Facebook Blocker plug-in works fine by blocking access to these scripts (the similarly named Facebook Block plug-in is malware, however). The Ghostery plug-in helps with this. The Facebook Disconnect plug-in may also help, but opinion appears to be divided. Other helpful plug-ins probably exist also. However, they do nothing to your "friends" revealing your address, email, and tagging you in photos. Remember, if lots of other people are doing it, then you're being sucked up too.

Real friends (as opposed to fake "friends") don't meet on Facebook.

Re:Recruiting tools

[BarbaraHudson]

Well, there's the problem of Facebook sending messages to your circle of friends pretending to be you, recommending or promoting stuff from their advertisers in your name. Fraudulent impersonation is illegal, You agree under their ToS "you permit a business or other entity to pay us to display your name and/or profile picture with your content or information". What facebook is now doing (by sending ads that claim to have been sent by YOU) goes far beyond that limited permission. It's also, since they are the ones composing the ads, definitely NOT your content - it's theirs. This is called fraudulent impersonation here in Kanuckistan under section 403 of the criminal code:

403. Identity fraud

403. (1) Everyone commits an offence who fraudulently personates another person, living or dead,
(a) with intent to gain advantage for themselves or another person;
(b) with intent to obtain any property or an interest in any property;
(c) with intent to cause disadvantage to the person being personated or another person; or
(d) with intent to avoid arrest or prosecution or to obstruct, pervert or defeat the course of justice.

Clarification

(2) For the purposes of subsection (1), personating a person includes pretending to be the person or using the person’s identity information — whether by itself or in combination with identity information pertaining to any person — as if it pertains to the person using it.

Punishment

(3) Everyone who commits an offence under subsection (1)

(a) is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than 10 years; or
(b) is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.

Re:Recruiting tools

[cjb658]

Is that where all those "Bob invited you to like Acme Taco Corp" emails come from?

Re:Recruiting tools

[Jason Levine]

I agree that's sleazy. Just add it to the vast pile of reasons why I don't use Facebook. My social media experience tends to be with Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, etc. Those sites don't show you content unless you explicitly say "show me what this person posts." It makes it easy to avoid what you don't like and just view what you like.

Leniency

[Anonymous Coward]

A takedown order beats a massive fuel air bomb suffocating everyone.

Re:Leniency

[Opportunist]

I vote for an empiric research of the subject.

People

[scsirob]

Blocking websites is useless if they are unwilling to block the people coming to Europe to spread the poison of islam. With EU having a very weak outer border, nothing stops extremists from coming in to spread hate and indoctrination under young kids. We are now seeing kids as young as 12 years old heading for Syria. Where did they pick up the desire to do that? Who is poisoning their young minds? Blocking a website will have zero effect if the mosque or islam school next door aides extremists.

Re:People

[ShanghaiBill]

Where did they pick up the desire to do that? Who is poisoning their young minds?

Maybe they feel alienated because their websites are censored, they are told how to dress, and so many Europeans think they should "go home". In America, Muslims are as free to speak as anyone else, they are welcome to wear their head scarfs to school, and they are well integrated into society. They are also a tenth as likely to join ISIS.

Re:People

[Reaper9889]

While I agree that stopping terrorists are important, there are things worse than that. Removing our freedoms (like here: freedom of religion) seemes to me to be one of them. It is reasonable to prevent people from aiding violent extremists of any kind, but there is little link between that and islam. I.e. there are over 1bn muslims. How many muslim terrorist have we seen the last 50 years? If it is not more than 100,000 (which seems magnitudes too large), that is still less than 0.01% which is basically just a rounding error.

Re:People

[king neckbeard]

So, you're saying that if we treat our fellow human beings like humans, they are less likely to try and murder us? That sounds ridiculous.

Re:People

[Shakrai]

^^^^^^^^ This ^^^^^^^^

People who think the United States is hostile towards immigrants should spend some time in Europe as one, particularly one of color.

Re:People

[itzly]

Also, for best experience try to spend some time in Europe in a predominant Muslim neighbourhood, preferably as an attractive young woman.

Re:People

[Flavianoep]

You are mistake Islam, the religion, with Islamism, the ideology of imposing a certain interpretation of Islam, and features of some ethnical identity strongly associated with Islam, over people. Islam is no poison any degree more than other religions, because it is nothing more than that: a religion.

Moreover, there is a huge mistake when as it seems to be your case, one considers the main cause of terrorism perpetrated by Moslem or Islamists to be Islam itself. It is not so simple. Moslems in western countries are pushed to identify themselves with Islamists because they are discriminated as if they were so. As for the cause of Islamism, it is western occupation. Europeans, especially French and English in the past, occupied land where Moslem lived, which caused a lot of resentment. Later, the English and UN imposed a the creation of a Jewish state in what was known as Palestine with no regard to the people who lived there. And now, Americans have set foot on two Islam countries. Do you think the Iraqis should stay passive while their country is sacked by a hostile, foreign forces?

Do you think the Quran teaches to hate Christians and Jews? Jew-hating in Middle East was in the same levels, or lower, as in Christian countries until the State of Israel was created, until western countries supported the Shah's corrupt regime in Persia.

Re:People

[Shakrai]

I was actually referring to all immigrants to Europe, not Muslims in particular, though they certainly seem to get the double whammy of "you're not from around here, are you?" combined with hostility towards their religion.

Europe is traditionally a place that people leave so it's not surprising that they haven't figured out how to assimilate immigrants.

Re:People

[itzly]

In America, there aren't as many Muslims. If you have one Muslim kid in the classroom, they aren't as likely to question the teacher about the Jewish holocaust compared to when you have classroom with more than 50% Muslim kids. They'll get more vocal, and more threatening, to the point where any talk about the holocaust has been removed from the curriculum in order not to cause problems.

Re:People

[Anonymous Coward]

Are all religions poison, or just Islam?

Re:People

[itzly]

Europe is traditionally a place that people leave so it's not surprising that they haven't figured out how to assimilate immigrants.

It's not even the immigrants that are the biggest problem. It's the 2nd/3rd generation young kids (mostly men 18-25) from immigrants that came over in the 60's and 70's that are causing the most problem. Those are people that grew up there.

Re:People

[NatasRevol]

Also, get outside military out of their country. That tends to piss off most humans. Example: US Revolutionary War.

Re:People

[Anonymous Coward]

and when disenfranchised (looking at you france) are able to compare lack of opportunities compared to the "locals" ... pisses them of a little.

Re:People

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like cowardly teachers/administrators to me.

Re:People

[itzly]

Yes. But it's easier to give in than to defend, especially when confronted by a bunch of youths who aren't afraid to use violence.

Re:People

[bwcbwc]

Not to mention Japan...that's one of the big reasons they have population aging and decline. They don't have the immigrant flow because their society is so closed.

Re:People

[bwcbwc]

Though I have to admit there's a considerable "muslims go home" movement in the US as well. I may be misunderstanding this though, the people espousing that viewpoint tend to misspell "muslim".

Re:People

[ShanghaiBill]

Though I have to admit there's a considerable "muslims go home" movement in the US as well.

Considerable? I don't think so. Do you have any citation for this being more than a fringe movement? American nativists tend to focus almost all their venom toward Mexicans.

Re:People

[ShanghaiBill]

It's the 2nd/3rd generation young kids (mostly men 18-25) from immigrants that came over in the 60's and 70's that are causing the most problem. Those are people that grew up there.

In America, it is the exact opposite. By the 2nd/3rd generation they are fully integrated, speak only English, mostly marry outside their ethnicity, vote Republican, and are complaining about all the dirty Mexicans coming over the border.

Re:People

[itzly]

A lot of the "lack of opportunities" is their own fault. There are plenty of Eastern European immigrants in Western Europe that are working their asses off, even though they don't speak the language and have low education. There are Asian immigrants, and 2nd/3rd generation that are working hard and doing well in schools.

It's predominantly the immigrants from Northern African descent that don't speak the language properly, don't bother to get a good education, and don't show much respect for the non-Muslim population.

Re:People

[misexistentialist]

They can't, the population in Europe is collapsing, and the Muslims are the only ones willing and able to migrate to that shithole.

Re:People

[ShanghaiBill]

Perhaps France should do what America does, and treat history as a matter of facts and evidence, rather than having politicians declaring "winners" and outlawing opposing opinions.

Laws against hate speak are bad, but even worse is to do what France does, and outlaw hate speech against some groups and allow it against others. Holocaust denial is odious and offensive, but so are gratuitous insults against Muslims. Why is it okay for Charlie Hebdo to insult Muslims, but illegal for them to insult Jews?

Re:People

[DNS-and-BIND]

That wasn't an "outside military", it was the legitimate government engaged in putting down an insurrection by right-wing extremists. Liberty? No taxation without representation? Self-government? Ridiculous concepts, they should have let the smart people make the correct choices for them to ensure positive outcomes.

Re:People

[DNS-and-BIND]

Charlie Hebdo spent 99% of its time insulting French right-wingers. They crossed the line and attacked their allies, and the chickens came home to roost. There's a reason Obama snubbed the big protest march in favor of free speech.

Re:People

[Anonymous Coward]

Poison? You sir are a generalizing bigot. Don't mistake the part for the whole.

Also it's pretty well established that most radicalizing narratives are happening outside of mosques - online and in small groups.

Re:People

[scsirob]

Ah, yes. It's the fault of everybody but the muslims. Back in the victim role again. Meanwhile in reality, muslims are killing muslims like there is no tomorrow. The murders are getting more atrocious by the minute. But I'm sure islam has nothing to do with that.

I do think quran teaches muslims to hate jews, and in fact everybody who rejects the islam fairytale. I do think that there are far more muslims than publicly known who despise Western civilization. And I do think that the peaceful muslim majority is irrelevant (look that up for yourself). The proof is in the pudding. How else do you explain that a simple cartoon of a bearded man with a bomb sparked muslim outrage all over the world, causing massive protests, riots and even killings. At the same time, the horrendous beheadings, mass abuse of children brainwashed to become martyrs in the name of islam spark.... nothing. No peaceful muslims on the street protesting. No despise, no rejection, nothing. I'm not talking about muslims needing to apologize to Western societies. I am talking about muslims standing up in rage against those extremists who rape their 'faith', should islam qualify as a religion.

So-called moderate muslims continue to push for special rights, for ever larger mosques to be built, for segregation of man and women, for pestering gays, all while leeching from the Western social system they despise so much. Why do these 'moderate' muslims insist of inviting imams known to preach outright hatred for social events? Why do even more 'moderate' muslims want to come to such events to be poisoned with extreme islam? Islam brings death, poverty and hate wherever it goes. Islam is not a religion, islam is an ideology determined to reach world domination.

I do agree with you on one point. Religion in general is a bad way of not taking responsibility for your own life. All religions are equal in that, so islam is as much poison for the people as any other religion.

Re:People

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean denial when people point out that in Auschwitz the official number on the wall has changed from 4 million to 1,5 million but the number of "killed jews" is still 6 million, not 3,5?
And that the official numbers in other camps have also quietly come down?

Re:People

[benjfowler]

Key difference: America gets the rich, civilized, polite, loyal ones.

Europe is in a bad neighbourhood. Also, we have dumb leaders who thought for decades, that it was good idea to import the biggest lowlifes they could find from all over the world to complete with local minimum-wage labour...

So now we have TWO huge, festering underclasses -- the old white one, and the new Muslim one. All the while, real wages and standards of living are plummeting everywhere.

It's by design: the Right get to divide and further strip-mine the lower classes, and the Left get to organize angry brown people (because they treat the white underclass with contempt for not having embraced the class struggle).

Only now, after decades of torrential low-quality immigration of countless millions of useless, unskilled, uncultured and shit-poor people; have our wonderful leaders figured out there might be a problem. Unfortunately the horse has already bolted...

Re:People

[Anonymous Coward]

No way.

The hatred from Muslims runs WAY deeper than Western misadventures in Muslim countries. Islamist hate/envy of Whites is based on the fact they we were the Islamic world's major rivals for centuries, they were imperialists/slavers/thieves just like us, but their culture wasn't as good as ours and thus, collapsed into poverty, violence and abject failure.

Islamist hate is displaced anguish at the collapse of their own execrable culture. It's easier for them to lash out and attack Whitey than to confront the failure within.

We didn't do anything wrong, except to exist -- and to be dumb enough to import them by the tens of millions.

Ask yourself -- what about the countless other immigrants from other countries we steamrolled and robbed around the world? Why are they all doctors and lawyers, while Muslims are terrorists, child molesters and welfare parasites?

This is ALL about Muslim failure. We must stop blaming ourselves for the moral and cultural shortcomings of Muslims.

Re:People

[ShanghaiBill]

There's a reason Obama snubbed the big protest march in favor of free speech.

Yes, it was quite ironic to see Hollande walking through Paris beside the Saudi ambassador, while back in Riyadh, Raif Badawi was receiving 1000 lashes for a blog post.

Re:People

[blue9steel]

Islam is no poison any degree more than other religions, because it is nothing more than that: a religion.

This isn't a particularly strong statement given the record of the other religions.

Re:People

[Tuidjy]

Why is it okay for Charlie Hebdo to insult Muslims, but illegal for them to insult Jews?

Say what? They are insulting Christians more than Jews, and Jews more than Muslims. Of course, they are mostly insulting French right wingers.

Fuck, one of the last things published before they got massacred was a defense of Islam against someone they considered a crazy right wing fear-monger. There was quite a bit of schadenfreude over that is some circles.

Re:People

[Vinegar Joe]

The Somalis Bill Clinton imported were certainly not rich, civilized, polite or loyal.

Re:People

[Anonymous Coward]

Well,

As I undertand it it is not actually about freedom of religion. It is about the right to force their religion on others.

They want the right to punish people who break the rules of their religion according to the laws defined by that religion. The thing is, in a society with freedom of religion, you can't do that because membership is voluntary and no one sticks with the religion that wants to stone them when they are actually free to just not believe in stoning themselves.

That's why you can't burn witches at the stake anymore (it's murder), and also why you can't stone adulterers (also murder), or force your wife to have sex with you (rape).

Re:People

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why is it okay for Charlie Hebdo to insult Muslims, but illegal for them to insult Jews?"

I find this statement absolutely ridiculous. It is not illegal for them to insult Jews. It is illegal for them to deny the Holocaust, sure (I don't agree with that); but that's just one thing which can insult Jews. However, they made many cartoons insulting Jews. They make cartoons insulting Muslims, and their offices are firebombed, and eventually they are suffer mass executions.

For you to pretend that somehow there is more pressure on them to submit to Judaism than to Islam is insane. Cartoonists and journalists and others are quite literally being executed when they mock Islam. No one is killing people for mocking Judaism.

Re:People

[Flavianoep]

*Sigh* ... I knew that.

Re:People

[Anonymous Coward]

Moslems in western countries are pushed to identify themselves with Islamists because they are discriminated as if they were so.

With the fear fanned by all the news reporting on "Muslim terrorists" and all the people who can't or won't see the distinction between 'Muslim' and 'Islamist'.

Europeans, especially French and English in the past, occupied land where Moslem lived, which caused a lot of resentment.

The "land where Muslims lived" is made up of territory overrun and occupied by Muslims in campaigns stretching from 630, when Muhammed invaded and seized Mecca, for more than a millennium, with the collapse of ruling dynasties breaking up empires until the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WWI -- the conquests creating Muslim states in these regions with no regard to the people who lived there. Britain carving up the Middle East without concern for the differences in the populations it threw together, and set up rulers without recognizing the necessity of recreating the social contract between the rulers, who imposed and enforced the law, and the ulema, who interpreted and refined the law, creating the divisions that led to subsequent revolutions, some of which merely replaced the old rulers with new ones without addressing the separation that sparked the revolutions in the first place, and in some cases actively worked to break the influence of the ulema to consolidate their power.

Do you think the Quran teaches to hate Christians and Jews?

9:29 -- "Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture—fight until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled."

There is more than enough material in the Quran, as there is in the Bible, that can, if interpreted literally, to 'justify' hatred and violence against pretty much any particular group; what distinguishes Islam from Christianity in this regard is that Christianity has already gone through the process of the faith being divorced from direct secular authority to become the means to better yourself, while Islam -- although it draws the distinction between the inner 'greater jihad' and the outer 'lesser jihad', actively enforces within itself an adherence to the strict letter of the Quran and sunna that allows the militant groups to justify their violence against non-Muslims.

Re:People

[Anonymous Coward]

You cheeky get - it's America's bloody fault Isis and their ilk and these websites exist, and you're still blowing the crap out of muslims across the middle east. You might recall a little incident in 2011. Jesus wept

Re:People

[Rakarra]

It's nowhere near as bad as, say, France. But there's a fair amount of antagonism. Remember all the furor about putting a mosque... a MOSQUE just two blocks away from the former World Trade Center? A majority of Americans polled believed it would be inappropriate to build an interfaith Islamic community center in the area. We had actual federal legislators saying things like "It is about ... territorial conquest. This mosque is a Martyr–Marker honoring the terrorists." Newt Gingrich even said the Muslim center "would be like putting a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust Museum." Over and over the comparison was made, conflating Islam and Muslims in general with terrorists.

Re:People

[Flavianoep]

Do you think the Quran teaches to hate Christians and Jews?

9:29 -- "Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture—fight until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled."

There is more than enough material in the Quran, as there is in the Bible, that can, if interpreted literally, to 'justify' hatred and violence against pretty much any particular group; what distinguishes Islam from Christianity in this regard is that Christianity has already gone through the process of the faith being divorced from direct secular authority to become the means to better yourself, while Islam -- although it draws the distinction between the inner 'greater jihad' and the outer 'lesser jihad', actively enforces within itself an adherence to the strict letter of the Quran and sunna that allows the militant groups to justify their violence against non-Muslims.

Allah and Jehovah (or Jahveh) are the same god. Also, it seems like Last Day and the Doomsday are the same concept. And about the Scripture, I have read something about the "people of the Book" in the Quran, or the like, as a way to refer to Christians and Jews, whose religions are based on a book. I know that what I say is not enough to prove you wrong, but I think it is important to say anyway :-)

How do they define "Terrorism"?

[NotDrWho]

THAT'S the relevant question here.

Re:How do they define "Terrorism"?

[x0ra]

Anything not in line with their policy, and those who wrote it for them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:How do they define "Terrorism"?

[rbgnr111]

we can go with the greorge bush term which seems to hold true if you watch the news... your either with us.. or your with the terrorists...
that always sounded to me like if your not in agreement with the government.. your with the terrorists and supporting their ideals.

Re:How do they define "Terrorism"?

[Falos]

Either you're "with us"*...

...or you're a pedorist drug dealer.

*OBEY

Re:How do they define "Terrorism"?

[Jason Levine]

Followed up with "How will the scope of this block expand in time?"

Let's say we accept that these websites are so horrible that they deserve to be blocked. Fine, they're blocked. Except now, there are some sites that the government wants blocked because they sympathize with the terrorists (though they don't actively promote terrorism). Then, there are sites that promote other heinous illegal activities that are requested to be blocked. Then some not-so-heinous illegal activities (e.g. copyright infringement). Eventually, you get to the point that any site is blocked if the government disapproves of it.

This leads to the other question: "How will the list of sites to be blocked be managed?" In other words, will it just be "Government says X should be blocked so X is blocked?" Or is there some sort of process that will keep false positives (or abusive blocks) from being added to the list?

Re:How do they define "Terrorism"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Top of the list: *.gov.

Re:How do they define "Terrorism"?

[Opportunist]

Easy. Anyone who promotes speech that threatens the status quo.

Re:How do they define "Terrorism"?

[NatasRevol]

So what you're saying is governments want sites that deal with illegal issues (i.e. copyright infringement) should be blocked.

I don't think that's new.

Re:How do they define "Terrorism"?

[NotDrWho]

And once the technological system and legal precedent are in place to block one group, it becomes all the easier to block the next group.

Re:How do they define "Terrorism"?

[Anonymous Coward]

More precisely, their sword: *.mil

Re:How do they define "Terrorism"?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Terrorism is anything I don't like" - Every government ever.

Re:How do they define "Terrorism"?

[Chris Rofot]

"Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories." - George W. Bush

Re:How do they define "Terrorism"?

[bill_mcgonigle]

In the US, already, various government agencies have defined "terrorists" as people who store food like the Mormons, support political candidates like Ron Paul, or prefer not to use the banking system.

Disappearing these people under the NDAA is already legal. I guess they could block their website too.

Re:How do they define "Terrorism"?

[Jason Levine]

No, it's not new that governments want information about how to commit illegal actions blocked, but the big issue isn't "websites engaged in illegal activities will be blocked." Instead it is "how do you know those sites actually engage in illegal activities?" It might be very easy for some random site to be accidentally added to the list or for some government official to add a site because "I think that sort of thing should be against the law." If you get a political group with enough power, this blocking could be used to silence dissent and strengthen their political power. If you go online to read the news and only see positive things about GUY_IN_CHARGE and negative things about POLITICAL_OPPONENT, you're likely to support GUY_IN_CHARGE and oppose POLITICAL_OPPONENT.

This is why checks and balances are important, but they rarely seem to appear in connection with website block lists.

Vive la Revolution

[Anonymous Coward]

Vive la Revolution

Re:Vive la Revolution

[zlives]

that's terrorist talk right there

Wait so they are going to block the BBC/CNN/Fox

[Justpin]

Because those channels promote terrorism carried out by US... Sorry I mean freedom love and ponies to underdeveloped nations

Re:Wait so they are going to block the BBC/CNN/Fox

[Anonymous Coward]

They also promote racism. It's not news anymore, it's a one sided opinion to get viewers, and the weak minded fools that watch it believe it.

Free speach == dead

[rbgnr111]

so... to protect the free speach of Charlie Hebdo, they ban or block speech that fall under the loose term of "terrorism"

Re:Free speach == dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Charlie Hebdo is not about free speech, and free speech doesn't mean you're allowed to insult and provoke at your leisure. Invoking "free speech" when speaking of the tragedy at Charlie Hebdo is an insult to the people who have for real fought and died for free speech.

Charlie Hebdo is just a bigoted little shit-magazine that lack the will and capacity of putting their criticism into a sensible debate, and instead resort to insults and mockery, and say "free speech" to defend the hateful crap they print.

Re:Free speach == dead

[Anonymous Coward]

you're an idiot.

Re:Free speach == dead

[bhlowe]

How dare they suggest that Muslims might react like insane savages when teased.

Re:Free speach == dead

[x0ra]

..., and free speech doesn't mean you're allowed to insult and provoke at your leisure.

It is, and it is your fault if you are offended to the point of initiating physical violence. Charlie Hebdo has as much right to free speech than the toughest and most conservative muslim imams/rabbi/priest. Yes, it is bigoted, but before the attacks, they were about to die of their own death due to lack of funding. The attacks made them martyr, the same way we create martyr when we kill muslims.

However, all in all, all these new laws are merely tools put in place to disqualify political dissidence. The time western countries were free is long past and gone.

Re:Free speach == dead

[rbgnr111]

I don't disagree about your opinion to the magazine... but free speech gives them the right to their opinion and to make it known. Just as you are free to voice your opinion of them, they have the same right... and if it remains a free society they should be able to say whatever they want whether is pisses people off or not. free speech is exactly as it sounds... right or wrong, good or bad, the ability to say what you want or believe without the risk of retalliation by your government or authroities.
Just because your ideas or the things you say aren't popular doesn't mean they should be sensored. when it comes down to it, the founders of a lot of the countries that exist now going by todays terms would be consitered to be terrorists.

Re:Free speach == dead

[itzly]

free speech doesn't mean you're allowed to insult and provoke at your leisure

That's exactly what free speech means. If you could only practice free speech that wasn't controversial, it would be meaningless.

Re:Free speach == dead

[NatasRevol]

Um, 'hateful crap' is protected under free speech.

Re:Free speach == dead

[CrimsonAvenger]

and free speech doesn't mean you're allowed to insult and provoke at your leisure.

Actually, yes, Free Speech DOES mean you're allowed to insult and provoke at your leisure.

And then you're allowed to bear the consequences, free of GOVERNMENT sanction.

Re:Free speach == dead

[benjfowler]

Offence is taken, not given.

A reality that in the 21st century, is STILL not recognised by Muslims.

Bizarrely "Insulting a Muslim" is a criminal offence in many countries in the Middle East.

Re:Free speach == dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing good will ever come out of insults and mockery, that's the bottom line. Start using your head, it might do you good.

Re:Free speach == dead

[Anonymous Coward]

But their drawings are not opinion, they are just insults and mockery. You might as well berate someone because they are bald, fat, disabled, or whatever, and say that it's your opinion and you have the right to express it, and even dare call it "free speech".

Discuss, criticize, and debate Islam all you want. Muslims do it themselves. But stay away from the petty and hateful drawings and insults, that is not too much to ask of a respectful adult.

Re:Free speach == dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Insults and mockery is morally wrong, and it never leads to anything good, regardless of whether someone says it's allowed or not. Islam, muslims, or a few people with weapons, are not the problem, the people who provoke are the real problem. Charlie Hebdo themselves are ultimately responsible for this tragedy.

Re:Free speach == dead

[Anonymous Coward]

There are things that should not be considered free speech. What is the meaning of a hateful drawing? What would f.ex. be the meaning of me insulting and mocking you because you are bald, or fat? Would you tolerate it and call it free speech? You are confused, and you are trying to defend and put sense and meaning into pointless and petty insults. Don't taint the positive and good meaning of free speech with insults and hateful statements and acts.

Re: Free speach == dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Freedom safety. We Europeans understand all too well that leaving people free to express anything they feel like only invites disaster. That's why you cannot trade in nazi memorabilia or express politically extreme views. People must be controlled.

Re:Free speach == dead

[AmiMoJo]

Well, no, even in the US there are laws against harassment. Free speech means that the government won't limit what you can say, it doesn't mean you can impose your speech on others or expect to be free from repercussions.

Rickrolling for Freedom

[Anarchitektur]

They should just redirect all incoming traffic to a Rick Astley video.

Re:Rickrolling for Freedom

[Falos]

Compared to hearing "You will reported to the Ministry of Love for patriotic rehabilitation." I'll take a trolling any day.

It's dumb.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you allow the site to remain accessible, monitoring the traffic to/from will give you a clear bead on terrorist sympathizers in your midst. It will also give you a reading on how effective the terrorist's campaign is, and among what demographics. All of this is very useful intel for defeating them.

Also, being in the spotlight makes them more susceptible to public mockery.

Blocking it just legitimizes their position (in the minds of some), and people who are interested will just work around your blocks (most likely in ways that makes them harder to trace).

Whoever came up with this policy is either completely empty-headed, or isn't trying to harm terrorism at all (but is instead trying to endear him/her self to a group of empty-headed people who think this is a good idea).

Re:It's dumb.

[Anonymous Coward]

Blocking them only will get people more interested in their message. The trick is to not have their stuff hit the news, similar to how streakers are just not televised during NFL, MBA, or World Series games.

This action did work back in the 1980s when suicides were on the news. The press eventually stopped reporting them, and the "popularity" of suicide pacts died out.

Same with ISIS. If the press doesn't champion them or display their messages on the news, then their voice is only going to those who actively seek them out.

Cut their amplification off by the mainstream media, and that will do a good part in defanging them.

Re:It's dumb.

[BarbaraHudson]

The problem with both these positions (yours and the one above yours) is that it ignores one crucial fact - their best channel for recruiting is social media. It's free and has a wide audience.

Cut that off and what are they going to do? Send millions of spam email inviting people to join ISIS as suicide bombers?

Cutting them off forces them to fall back on older recruiting methods that are way more expensive (person - to - person), with a high risk of getting caught, and take a lot longer to produce results.

Re:It's dumb.

[tnk1]

Yes, but social media is a recruiting tool, as opposed to the means by which terrorist groups show that they are taken seriously.

I can put up any crazy stuff I want on Facebook, and no one will care. There are all sorts of wierdo groups that have blogs and social media content, but get no attention.

However, if I get on the broadcast news, I'm going to get attention. Indeed, people like to point at such social media after a newsworthy event as a "warning signs" that something was going to happen, and they wonder why no one took action.

To me, it makes perfect sense. No one looks at these sites until they generate news. They're invisible except maybe to friends and family who have gotten used to the quirks of the author.

Yes, we should remove channels for recruitment, but the mainstream attention is what is generating the widespread interest. We need to face the fact that reporting heavily on things tends to create awareness, and terrorism is more powerful when people become highly aware of it. The possibility of death in this way overcomes the probability of it because we tend to take anything on the news to be something that "must" be dangerous, when it's actually just novel.

Fact is, I strongly suspect that many of the issues we have with school shootings, terrorism, or other extreme misbehavior are actually the product of heavy exposure of those situations. They garner attention for the perpetrators, and they also bring such solutions to mind when someone is disaffected. We can't ignore that heavy media exposure can have an effect on the incidence of what it is reporting on. I do believe that the tail is wagging the dog much more often than we give credit to.
 

Re:It's dumb.

[BarbaraHudson]

Terrorist groups show they should be taken seriously by killing people. Cut off their main recruiting and propaganda tools. and you cut down the recruits, cut down the killings, and cut down on news events.

Re:It's dumb.

[AmiMoJo]

It's just politicians flailing about, unable to understand the problem or do anything meaningful about it. When all you have is a banhammer every problem looks like a website.

What about websites and paper magazines

[Anonymous Coward]

that taunt, mock, insult and spit at people and religion, for no reason other than to provoke a reaction, such as f.ex. Charlie Hebdo? Oh, that's fine? Well on form for the bigotry and hypocrisy that is the western world.

Re:What about websites and paper magazines

[Anonymous Coward]

Sarcastic atheists aren't cutting off heads.

Try again...

Re:What about websites and paper magazines

[digsbo]

Learn your 20th century history. Secular socialist/communist states were responsible for the murder of their own citizens in the high tens of millions, possibly topping over 100 million. If you include deaths through gross mismanagement of resources and criminal negligence, it goes higher, and easily eclipses the sum total of all those dead in religious wars through all of human history.

Re:What about websites and paper magazines

[x0ra]

Charlie Hebdo is fine because it is following western post-colonial xenophobic values, especially wrt. muslims. Most western countries are an inch away from shrinkage and plain fall. They *need* these value (how despicable might they be) to survive, or at least, think they do. They need something to fear, because they're failing at looking forward, and thriving.

Re:What about websites and paper magazines

[Opportunist]

Taunting insane people isn't nice, but it's a far cry from lunatics killing people.

Re:What about websites and paper magazines

[zlives]

that info is on a terror site and cannot be confirmed for truth... by the very fact you mention it probably makes you a terrorist.

Re:What about websites and paper magazines

[itzly]

Charlie Hebdo is actually anti-racist, left-wing, and will mock nationalist party National Front just as much as different religions, including Judaism and Christianity. They only seem to be anti-Muslim, because that's the only group that can't take a joke.

Re:What about websites and paper magazines

[benjfowler]

We'll keep saying that... until we import several million more useless idiots from crap countries to "replace" all the Westerners who are dying off.

Who in due course, like the mill towns of Northern England, will get automated out of existence five years after arriving, and will still end up unemployed and in the ghetto. All we're doing is storing up trouble for ourselves in the future.

I favour the Japanese solution myself. We are massively overcrowded, have plenty of technology, capital begging to be put to use... and far too many idlers as it is.

Re:What about websites and paper magazines

[blue9steel]

Well, to be fair to the religious war score count the number of humans existing in the past was much lower. I'm sure if we adjust the numbers by percentage of total population they'll pull back into the lead as they deserve.

Re:What about websites and paper magazines

[Anonymous Coward]

To use a car analogy, imagine that someone claims that all traffic accidents are caused by drunk driving and then someone else responds that less than half of all traffic accidents are caused by drunk driving. And therefore it's actually lack of drunk driving that causes traffic accidents. And that there wouldn't be any traffic accidents if everyone drove drunk all the time.

Now with regard to socialism and communism, the economic situation in (socialist) Denmark is obviously very different from the economic situation in (communist) North Korea. You lose so much credibility trying to pretend that they're equivalent that you may even just be trolling (in the classic sense of posting something so ridiculous that people feel compelled to respond).

But the question of poverty is nonetheless very important. Roughly 20,000 children die of poverty every day. And there are huge differences in poverty rates between countries. But most of the countries with the highest poverty rates fall into a gray area where both sides go through all sorts of contortions to disavow responsibility. For example, advocates of unregulated capitalism will claim that countries like India and Indonesia are poor because they're too socialist. But advocates of communism will claim that they're poor because they're not socialist enough.

Personally, I tend to agree with Deng Xiaoping (who is generally credited with developing China into one of the fastest-growing economies in the world for over 35 years and raising the standard of living of hundreds of millions of Chinese): I don't care whether the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.

Re:What about websites and paper magazines

[Anonymous Coward]

To not include Muslims would be racist, wouldn't it? I mean, to exclude a group from being made fun of.

Isn't this what South Park does, makes fun of everyone equally, more or less?

Re:What about websites and paper magazines

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, you've never read any Charlie Hebdo. They actually have the same stupid opinions as you.

Eh, shit happens

[fustakrakich]

There is no free speech protection written into the law, and basically people are against it anyway, so, whaddya gonna do?

Re:Eh, shit happens

[Opportunist]

What I'm gonna do? tor.eff.org

Re:Eh, shit happens

[fustakrakich]

I'm not sure wandering around the internet with a big red flashing strobe light on your head is a suitable solution, but good luck anyway.

Re:Eh, shit happens

[Opportunist]

Yes, I'm evading your censorship. Why? None of your fucking business.

Correction to story title

[Anonymous Coward]

It should read:

France won't block web sites that promote terrorism.

They'll try to, of course, but it won't work. Playing whack-a-mole all day long.

Containment

[bhlowe]

I think if you want to support ISIS and fundamentalist Islam in a Western country, you should be given a one-way ticket to the Islamic country of your choice. Islam and Western civilization do not mix well. Trying to fight ISIS (or the 20% or so of Muslims who tacitly support it by wanting Sharia Law applied to all) is a terribly bloody idea. Better to let the people of a country run it the way they see fit-- and if that means a 7th century lifestyle, so be it. I am opposed to a "war on ISIS", but not opposed to expelling ISIS sympathizers from any country that doesn't want them. So.. Recruit away... and off ye go to an Islamic Utopia.

Re:Containment

[DigiShaman]

Well, and add to the fact that France is one Islamic Revolution away. The tension in Paris alone is a tinderbox waiting to go off at any moment.

Re:Containment

[Opportunist]

This. A billion times this.

Dear religious nutjob: You wanna fight for your imaginary buddy? Be my guest. Go there and, as far as I care, die there. But stay there. You showed that you reject western values, western "decadency", western... you name it. Then enjoy your 7th century paradise.

To me this whole shit feel a bit like them going on a "war vacation". You know, like, checking it out and "enjoying" that good ol' country style, a bit like those "back to the roots" and "all natural" tourists spending their holidays in some place where they come back and rave about it "without electricity, without phone, without distraction, without computers, so peaceful"... but actually living in this "holiday resort"? Fuck no!

Sorry, but no. Get there and stay there. Maybe it ain't so romantic anymore when you notice that you will HAVE to live without all our western decadency, from your iPhone to your car.

Re:Containment

[Anonymous Coward]

I think if you want to support ISIS and fundamentalist Islam in a Western country, you should be given a one-way ticket to the Islamic country of your choice.

If you support that statement, how do you argue against someone else saying, "If you want to support Bibi and orthodox Judaism, you should be given a one-way ticket to the Jewish country of your choice".

Re:Containment

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be too good to be true. If the fuckers tried a revolution now they'd be sent back to their Sharia-loving countries in body bags. Muslims are a big problem, but they are nowhere strong enough to defeat humans.

Re:Containment

[Anonymous Coward]

I think if you want to support ISIS and fundamentalist Islam in a Western country, you should be given a one-way ticket to the Islamic country of your choice.

If you support that statement, how do you argue against someone else saying, "If you want to support Bibi and orthodox Judaism, you should be given a one-way ticket to the Jewish country of your choice".

The difference is that Orthodox Judaism does not force its values/punishments on others. As soon as it does, the statement still holds.

Re:Containment

[bhlowe]

We can cross that bridge when the Jews (or Amish, or Presbyterians) start murdering people over cartoons. A much bigger concern is the religious minorities already living in Muslim-majority countries. If on the other hand, you're referring to the huge rise in antisemitism in France, 95% of that comes from the Muslim immigrants, which will now have an opportunity to separate themselves from their dreaded boogieman.

Re:Containment

[Anonymous Coward]

Muslims make up 7-8% of the French population at best. Islamists are a fraction of that group. Violent Islamists are at best a tactical threat.
Your inflated assessment of the danger of an Islamic Revolution brings your credibility into question.

Re:Containment

[misexistentialist]

Doesn't mesh with the agenda of having puppet governments in that region, it's really an offensive war, so you become the enemy just by buying the plane ticket, which is why it's now a crime punishable by decades in prison

Re:Containment

[jader3rd]

Trying to fight ISIS is a terribly bloody idea.

So what do those people do who don't want to live under an ISIS government, but ISIS has rolled into their neighborhoods and are subjecting them? They should just suck it up and not fight back?

Re:Containment

[Anonymous Coward]

Islam and Western civilization do not mix well.

Think, for a minute, about all the different people in he United States - the rich and the poor, the highly educated and the profoundly ignorant, the generous and the selfish, the beautiful and the ugly, the honest and the dishonest, the happy and the sad, the hardworking and the lazy, the violent and the peaceful. And realize that the vast majority of Americans consider themselves to be Christian.

But also realize that the there are huge countries where most people consider themselves to be Muslim (e.g. Indonesia is the 4th largest country in the world by population after the USA which is 3rd). Altogether there are about 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that no one who considers themselves to be Muslim has ever done, or will ever do, anything at all that is bad.

But if you think that everyone in the world who considers themselves to be Muslim is exactly like the guys in the ISIS videos then your own world view is shaped by profound ignorance. A good place to start would be the difference between North and South Korea: the same race, culture, etc but very different socioeconomic situations.

Re:Containment

[bhlowe]

Muslims that are tolerant and peaceful are welcome in every sane society. But those who want to join ISIS or think Sharia should be applied to Non-Muslims should be encouraged to separate themselves from their kufr hosts and go live in a Sharia compliant country. Win-win.

Re:Containment

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is that Orthodox Judaism does not force its values/punishments on others. As soon as it does, the statement still holds.

If you're officially Jewish in Israel then you're subject to the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. For example, within Israel someone who is officially Jewish is not allowed to marry someone who is not. But supposedly it's possible to get married in some other country that allows interfaith marriages and then have it recognized in Israel.

In the bigger picture, though, you don't want a world where every different ethnic group is huddled together on it's own little piece of land cowering in fear of every other ethnic group in the world and convincing itself that it is a (superior) victim of all the other (inferior) ethnic groups and that it needs to build up a massive nuclear arsenal in preparation for a final day of Armageddon. As a matter of basic fairness, either everyone gets to discriminates or no one gets to discriminate. Either everyone is safe or no one is safe.

Discrimination isn't just wrong when certain people do it within the USA: discrimination is wrong everywhere. That's not to say that the USA should immediately declare war on every country in the world that has problems with discrimination (in that case, it would also have to declare war on itself). But the USA shouldn't just throw up it's hands and declare discrimination is OK as long as it happens in other countries.

If Americans are going abroad and working against the fundamental principles that Americans are supposed to believe in then that's a problem. For example, it's not OK for Americans to try to create a countries that engage in religious discrimination (violating the first article in the Bill of Rights). I have no objection to laws that punish Americans for such activities - even when they're outside the USA - as long as the laws are applied equally and fairly.

Re:Containment

[AmiMoJo]

In their minds god owns the entire world and wants all of it to be under Sharia law, so they can't stop until everywhere is converted. Most of the people where ISIS are don't want them there anyway, and if they do manage to establish their own state it will just become a training ground for an even more organized and well equipped army with expansionist goals.

Re:Containment

[d34thm0nk3y]

I think if you want to support ISIS and fundamentalist Islam in a Western country, you should be given a one-way ticket to the Islamic country of your choice.

I do not agree with what you say. Not only will I not defend your right to say it, but I will try to get you deported. --definitely not Voltaire

I'm guessing you live in "The Land of the Free."

Re:Containment

[Anonymous Coward]

If you support that statement, how do you argue against someone else saying, "If you want to support Bibi and orthodox Judaism, you should be given a one-way ticket to the Jewish country of your choice".

Someone who wants to leave a country with Western values to move to Israel, which also has has Western values, should be welcome to leave, of course. I don't think I should be paying for his plane ticket. But that guy isn't dangerous.

The guy who wants to join ISIS, on the other hand, should be deported far away from my family as soon as possible.

Actually more than that

[roman_mir]

What is 'promote'? Talk about it? Investigate it? Report on it? Discuss it? Express your personal opinions?

What do they mean by 'block' and 'web sites'? If it is a torrent shared file, then what? What does block mean, what if some content cannot be 'blocked' will they (who is *they*) take France off line completely?

How do they define 'France' in this case? Who is this magical 'France' that will do all of these things?

Also why 'block websites', does that mean forums as well?

---

In Russia Putin is making it illegal for people to drive cars in a group together and to set up tent sites... these are being equated to anti-government protests and we can't have anti-government protests obviously and apparently this is not only happening in Russia, I don't see any difference between Russia and France in this case.

Works for the dumb

[barbariccow]

This will work for anyone who has never heard of TOR, proxies, tunneling, forwarding servlets.... And since from description it sounds like they are blocking by DNS or IP. Both are very short turnaround to put up a new one. And then what? 100,000 records that are tested for every entry? And what about alternate ports? So useless.

Re:Works for the dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

TOR is about as secure as using windows, they've both been hacked by 3-letter agencies.

Re:Works for the dumb

[barbariccow]

And http (without the S) has been hijacked by every single ISP ever. That's not the point. There are still many many paths to get there. Better to take a three-letter-agency's approach and leave it open, but track who is resolving those domains. That way, you know who to hassle. By forcing dumb (or just curious) people to use identity-hiding tools instead of doing it plain-faced, you lose that ability.

Filtering like this is like saying "People with mouth's cannot open the door that leads to the bank vault." It just forces these stupid people to smarten up and wear a mask, instead of allowing for the many who would try to walk in plain-faced.

Note I don't support censorship of any kind, but they could at least be doing it right.. Why be evil and not go all the way?

Re:Works for the dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to provide a source on that one, sparky?

Re:Works for the dumb

[PPH]

It also works for the target demographic of the terrorist organizations' recruiting drives. People already in these groups will find a way around the blocks. But the advertising campaign is aimed at new recruits who are not yet motivated to set up routes around the blocks. That's why ISIS got their panties in a bunch over Twitter account suspensions. Not because they use Twitter internally, but that's how they reach out to kids.

And this is a really good reason to tread very carefully when blocking porn or other marginally acceptable sites. Once you get people to install and configure TOR, VPNs, etc. to visit such sites just for entertainment, it becomes much easier to just hop over to ISIS' dark network link.

Terrorists Win!

[Anonymous Coward]

France here.

The first one (http://www.islamic-news.info/) is indeed down as of today if I use my ISP's DNS servers, although I gave up on those ages ago. I boggles my mind how they can still belive censorship has any chance of doing anything but publicizing whatever the censored object is. The mere though that censorship is an appropriate response means the terrorists won, we lost freedom and France is becoming more and more of a radical, extremist, democracy-challenged country.

I'm afraid we can't do much to stop the government overreach so I'm just going to go full Streisand and spread those links out of spite even if the sites are down, even if it's full of terroristo-pedo-nazis, even if I don't like it.

Sleeping through first semester German class

[jonatha]

Nothing could do more damage to that movement than exposing that Das Fuhrer had the language skills of a middle school American sleeping through their first semester German class.

It's Der Fuerher...

(Did you take German in 7th or 8th grade?)

Re:Sleeping through first semester German class

[K. S. Kyosuke]

He's objectifying him. ;-)

Re:Sleeping through first semester German class

[Anonymous Coward]

It's Mein Fuhrer.

(Did you even take part in the Hitler Youth?)

Re:Sleeping through first semester German class

[johanw]

It has been debated if A. Hitler had a fully functional reproductive organ, so deliberately saying "das" could be a statement.

Re:Sleeping through first semester German class

[Anonymous Coward]

Wie geil! Wie geil!!

( https://www.youtube.com/watch?... )

They missed one

[Anonymous Coward]

www.whitehouse.gov

Re:They missed one

[barbariccow]

www.whitehouse.gov

Back in the day, the .com version was better.

Gotta love the irony...

[bwcbwc]

of a bunch of politicians who were soap-boxing about freedom of the press and "je suis Charlie" engaging in this kind of censorship. All speech is free, but some speech is more free than others. I don't think there's anyone alive who is in a position to form an unbiased judgment of whether a terrorist site, a porn site or Charlie Hebdo is more offensive. Offense, like beauty, is in the mind of the beholder.

Re:Gotta love the irony...

[cold fjord]

I don't think there's anyone alive who is in a position to form an unbiased judgment of whether a terrorist site, a porn site or Charlie Hebdo is more offensive. Offense, like beauty, is in the mind of the beholder.

You've got the question wrong. It isn't a question of "is terrorism more offensive", but rather, "does the site advocate terrorism?" That is a simple and fairly objective task in many cases.

Re:Gotta love the irony...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good call!

If you don't like me, or the way I speak, then you have a problem - not me!
If what I say offends you, then you have a problem with criticism.
If I call you names, as childish as that might be - should you not rise above the childishness, and man-up, and just call me childish, or if you like, call me names back. Should I be offended for getting some of my own medicine?

This notion of bad-mouthing begins to take legal precedence, when it becomes more than name-calling, but an effort to discredit someone. It's gone so far that most people are afraid to offend someone, for fear of repercussion. Even if it is right to say "Hey, dirtbag! Stop being a ..", because they are discrediting themselves by their actions, - they could still try and prosecute you for pointing it out, and do doubt "hurting" their feelings. Boo-hoo! Grow up!

So with this stupidity in France, I'd say this: If you want to root out the terrorism, them stop acting like terrorists yourselves!
You can't have multiculturalism and expect everyone to get along. So whilst all religions claim to be the way of peace, it's often at a price. Radical Christianity gave us the bloody crusades... Islam has done the same, many times. There's constant war in Israel as far as it seems to me. So much for peace!
You want to bring that to the West? It's quite simple. Islam means peace when we're all under sheria law, practicing muslims, and all of the same demonination - shiite or sunni anyone? Whilst Christianity may seem to be more tolerant, let's not forget the craziness in Ireland on a yearly basis when we have the orange marches. Want some of that?

So how do we control our real problems? Banning websites. Yeah, that's it.

Not "block"

[Cley Faye]

A more appropriate terminology is "hide". There is zero improvement in the gov' capacity to actually block such websites from the source (which would at least have a chance to be effective). Instead, they just mess with the DNS to "prevent access" to a list of websites containing gods know what. I wouldn't know such blockage exist without news outlet since I'm not using my ISP's DNS.
And there's not much uproar about these "weapons" (the media call the recent laws "arsenal") being targeted at everyone, very marginally hitting actual terrorists (and not, in any way, hindering their capacity to communicate and recruit). Way to go France.

And yet it did NOT happen

[aepervius]

Nothing could do more damage to that movement than exposing that Das Fuhrer had the language skills of a middle school American sleeping through their first semester German class."

More than 10 million book copy were given away by the end of the war. It did not stop his rise. Neither did it help it falls. I keep hearing that showing people how bad the stuff is will actually work in favor of better udnerstanding and whatnot. All I see is actually is actually extremist spreading their stuff and nobody laughing at them , expect those which were *already* laughing at them before the spread of their toxic stuff. I am not advocating censorship I am simply stating : what you wrote is actually most probably bullshit.

Re:And yet it did NOT happen

[king neckbeard]

Hitler's literary skills probably weren't all that different from the average German/Austrian at the time, and the internet hadn't yet given such a reach to Grammar Nazis. First gen Nazis also had a shitty economy with clear oppressors to justify drastic action, while there isn't such a rallying point today.

GO FRANCE!

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish you luck.

don't censor. mock.

[v(*_*)vvvv]

The Japanese twitter meme contest was a far better counter attack than or censorship or war.

Terror is a feeling and humor is the antidote. Just as the Scary Movie franchise ruined classic horror, once it's mocked and funny, those giggling are no longer scared. They are empowered and immune to that pattern of fear. The Daily Show is also founded on this, as is/was Charlie Hebdo. France agrees with Charlie, but still fails to understand the guiding principles.

ref: http://www.nbcnews.com/storyli...

Re:don't censor. mock.

[circletimessquare]

they did mock. and they were violently murdered. just for mocking

so humor helps, but it is not a valid antidote alone. you can't rely only on humor and nothing more if someone is ready to murder you just for laughing at an idea

what happened to charlie hebdo proves humor alone is not enough. if there is a committed, long term, and serious ideology ready to murder people just for satire, then it is time for a new approach

humor is not enough

Re:don't censor. mock.

[v(*_*)vvvv]

But neither is censorship. Also humor is not the antidote for murder or war. It is the antidote for terror. The distinction is crucial. Censorship is not an antidote to anything. It just delays the inevitable flow of information.

Re: don't censor. mock.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine. I say humor and lots of guns then.

Re:don't censor. mock.

[circletimessquare]

censorship of what?

censorship is not valid for pictures of naked ladies or insults to people's prejudices or criticism of the government

censorship is 100% valid for speech which proposes death and violence at specific people

for example: "obama is a poopyhead and i hate him"

ok. do not censor

"we should murder obama"

not ok. censor

Re: don't censor. mock.

[circletimessquare]

i love the constitution. i love the second amendment

it refers to a *well-regulated* militia

which in 18th century speak means well-trained

so if the usa is going to adhere to the second amendment as written, people must be trained in the use of guns as a condition of them having one

not hand them out to any mouth breathing moron who wants one. if you do that, you get a high homicide rate for fucking stupid reasons. oh wait: the usa has exactly that. gee, that's funny. those founding fathers were onto something there

oh, i'm an evil gun grabber? because i'm asking for proper adherence to the second amendment? is there any responsible gun owner who wants to promote irresponsible gun use? so stand behind your beliefs: say it is right to require training. as the fucking second amendment says so

when did the right to bear arms include the "right" of irresponsible untrained assholes to carry guns?

never. if you read the actual fucking second amendment

Re: don't censor. mock.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not an american and I do not live there, so your rant is pointless (although funny, I could picture you all hot and bothered in full righteous rage for naught). However I am a gun owner (the horror! a non-american gun owner!) and since I'm a retired infantry NCO I would be part of any "well-regulated militia" any day. Ah, and SCOTUS thinks differently than nobody you. So, get fucked by the horse you rode on and then fuck you both.

Re: don't censor. mock.

[circletimessquare]

what country are you in?

do you want guns easy to get for untrained irresponsible people in your country?

Like everybody

[DavidMZ]

Terrorism: the use of violent acts to frighten the people in an area as a way of trying to achieve a political goal.

In the French Law, it is defined as: " une entreprise individuelle ou collective ayant pour but de troubler gravement l’ordre public par l’intimidation ou la terreur ."

You don't make a terrorist just by calling somebody a terrorist (although that's a useful tool for politicians...)

Re:Like everybody

[Anonymous Coward]

"the use of violent acts to frighten the people in an area as a way of trying to achieve a political goal"

So when the U.S. invades a country like Iraq and uses "shock and awe" bombing to frighten Iraqis with the intent of overthrowing the government, that makes the U.S. military a bunch of terrorists? Duly noted.

Re:Like everybody

[sconeu]

So, like the 10 Plagues. That was unleashing biological weapons to frighten the populace to achieve a political goal.

Re: Like everybody

[Anonymous Coward]

A terrorist (or whatever) is exactly who your masters decide, and you have no choice but to conform to their will. Any refusal to comply would have... Consequences.

Re:Like everybody

[DavidMZ]

Yes, assuming that the 10 plages took place and that a group of people revendicated them and have been proved to be linked to them, then, by nowadays standards*, those people would be terrorists.

* If you read the Bible by nowadays standards, you will find plenty of ruthless murderers and genocidal maniacs.

VPN is widely in use there

[johanw]

Because they bent for the music industry and actively went against downloaders, the infrastructure (massive use of VPN's in another country) to circumvent censorship is already in place.

Limits to the freedom of speech

[DavidMZ]

France, like many country, has defined limits to the freedom of speech.

Charlie Hebdo was not found to cross those limits.

Re:Limits to the freedom of speech

[benjfowler]

Damned straight. There are limits to free speech everywhere. Try publically denying the Holocaust in many countries in Europe, and see what happens to you.

It turns out that Muslims don't have the same boundaries as we do. Fair enough.

The problem here, is that we are being sanctimonous about freedom of speech, when absolute freedom of speech doesn't exist.

What we SHOULD be doing is saying, "hey Muslims, unlike in Dubai, within the limits of free speech, offence is not given, it's taken. Learn to love it -- or fuck off to a country with more agreeable laws."

also France plans to sell Air Cariers to Russia

[user.aaaaa]

to promote terrorism

Pfffft

[Tablizer]

They merely block 'em, we drone 'em

what about

[JustNiz]

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

the paradox of tolerance

[circletimessquare]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

Michael Walzer asks "Should we tolerate the intolerant?" He notes that most minority religious groups who are the beneficiaries of tolerance are themselves intolerant, at least in some respects. In a tolerant regime, such people may learn to tolerate, or at least to behave "as if they possessed this virtue".[1] Philosopher Karl Popper asserted, in The Open Society and Its Enemies Vol. 1, that we are warranted in refusing to tolerate intolerance. Philosopher John Rawls concludes in A Theory of Justice that a just society must tolerate the intolerant, for otherwise, the society would then itself be intolerant, and thus unjust. However, Rawls also insists, like Popper, that society has a reasonable right of self-preservation that supersedes the principle of tolerance: "While an intolerant sect does not itself have title to complain of intolerance, its freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger."[2]

to me it's simple: everything should be free speech, except that speech which calls for the violent removal of free speech

only that should be censored, and there is zero logical contradiction

because to allow free speech to promote the destruction of free speech is self-destruction

like how germany outlaws nazi imagery: to me, an american, this feels like arbitrary censorship incompatible with the idea of a free society. but to a german, what nazism represents is the violent destruction of freedoms. therefore, censoring symbolism which is all about destroying freedom is not a contradiction, because they have first hand experience with what allowing violent freedom destruction actually leads to

intolerance itself, and intolerance of intolerance, are completely opposite concepts. it's not hypocrisy at all

Ban Fox News

[Anonymous Coward]

They facilitated the destruction of entire countries using weapons of mass destruction. How many tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands died because of Fox news beating the drums of war to bomb more poor brown people into oblivion.

Ban all religion and religious shit

[Anonymous Coward]

The only way the world will ever be any good is to get rid of all this religous bullshit. Folks god, allah, the tooth fairy, santa, etc are all fuckin made up. It sure as shit is not worth dying for! Get real and honor your fellow human beings for who and what they are. Fuck religion........ It causes nothing but heart ache, murder and mayhem...

Censorship doesn't work

[TiggertheMad]

It wouldn't work...most neo nazis would agree with his racist agenda. But you are correct, he pretty well outlined all the fucked up plans that he carried out in the 30s and 40s back when he was in jail in the 20s. Its hard to see how anyone didn't see what was coming.

Censorship in general, never works very well, and often fans the flames. Just let them post whatever they want. Also, if I was a cia/nsa type, I would want all the extremist groups posting freely and publicly thinking they were safe, so I could intercept all communication going to and from their servers....

Re:Censorship doesn't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing has changed. Hitler advocated hatred of a group (jews at the time) as a method of establishing national unity. Today the same thing is going on. 40 years ago everyone hated commies. 20 years ago everyone hated faggots. Today everyone hates pedophiles, terrorists, and anyone with backwards thinking (meaning anyone over the age of 40). Of coarse our present hatreds are perfectly justified, unlike those racists bastards who hated the wrong sorts of people back in the olden days.

The Intercept has interesting & important Q&am

[jbn-o]

Glenn Greenwald asks a more interesting and important question than /. encourages its readers to consider when Greenwald asks "What's Scarier: Terrorism, or Governments Blocking Websites in its Name?" and then he answers it, "More damage has been inflicted historically by censorship than by the "terrorism" used to justify it.". Considering how little of a threat terrorism is in the US relative to other known dangers ('Terrorism Still Less Deadly in US Than Lack of Health Insurance, Salmonella', 'Gun Murders vs. Terrorism by the Numbers') one has to wonder about other western countries such as France.

Point out Islam is false

[zapadnik]

To defeat jihad you have to defeat the underlying ideology, called "Islam". Simply show the archeological evidence that shows the claims of Islam cannot be true. Here is a taste of modern archeology that is exposing Islam as a gigantic fraud meant to promote imperialism, misogyny, cultural supremacism and enslave human beings for the benefit of the Caliph (Emperor):
"An Historical Critique of Islam's Beginnings - Jay Smith" [71 mins]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I'm sorry the linked video is presented by a Christian, they seem to be the only ones paying attention to the march of the Global Jihad worldwide, and its goal of replacing all of Enlightenment Civilization either through force (jihad) or cultural change.

France doesn't need to censor Islam It merely needs to tell the truth about it - that it is a man-made system of control invented by Caliph Abd al-Malik in the late 7th Century in order to enslave and control other human beings.

I am never an advocate for censorship, but ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not block portions of Facebook and Twitter ...

I do not think censorship will ever work, but if the government of France is really steadfast in their decision to block/censor something, why not just blocking/censoring the one thing that creates most of the mayhem that are plaguing the world right now ( from Nigeria to Tunisia to Libya to Syria to Afghanistan to Pakistan to Indonesia ) and that is --- the Koran?

Because of that one book, people got their heads chopped off, people got gunned down, people got burned alive, and so on, and so forth

As I have said, I am never for censorship, but if one really, REALLY needs to censor something, why not do it right ?

Blocked sites

[manu0601]

Blocked sites are: jihadmin.com, mujahida89.wordpress.com, is0lamnation.blogspot.fr and alhayatmedia.wordpress.com.

But the system is incomplete: smaller ISP do not seems to be blocking them right now. Perhaps the government forgot to tell them about it.

Slashdot censors more.

[Anonymous Coward]

France is an amateur by comparison.

Blocking for dummies

[Anonymous Coward]

From a strict technical problem, those sites are banned at the ISP level (more precisely at the DNS server of the ISP), with a IP redirection to site of the "Ministère de l'intérieur" where you can read a warning about the bad guys. But if you know just a (very) little bit of technology, changing the DNS server in your network preferences will bypass banning. Yes, it's that simple. It has more to do with communication for the media than with "war against terror".

Freedom fighter

[NewYork]

A terrorist is a freedom fighter who isn't on your side.