Saudi Arabia Bans Facebook 227
gandhi_2 sends in a brief Associated Press piece on Saudi Arabia's blocking of Facebook. "An official with Saudi Arabia's communications authority says it has blocked Facebook because the popular social networking website doesn't conform with the kingdom's conservative values. ... He says Facebook's content had 'crossed a line' with the kingdom's conservative morals, but that blocking the site is a temporary measure." Some reports indicate that at least some individual Facebook pages can be reached from inside the kingdom. There hasn't been an official announcement; the source noted above requested anonymity. Earlier this year when Pakistan and Bangladesh banned Facebook, it was over particular content — cartoons of Mohammed — and the Saudi ban may prove similar once more details emerge.
yep... (Score:4, Insightful)
... and nothing of value was lost.
(in either direction, IMO)
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Hmm, actually...
Just yesterday there was some "draw offensive depictions of Mohammed" thing going on with the explicit goal of getting them blocked.
I wouldn't be surprised if this was related.
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... goddamn brain. I meant "going on on 4chan"
Re:yep... (Score:5, Informative)
Bahrain is another "entertainment center" for Saudis. The joke in Bahrain is, "Allah cannot see across the causeway."
I guess now they can go there for alcohol, prostitution, and Facebook.
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IPv6 will shake things up on the blocking front. There is nothing stopping web sites like Facebook having scattered IPv6 addresses in the background for each user and internally routing back to the core range of addresses for admin and help. This will force backward isolations, oh no, we can't maintain control if people freely discuss ideas, countries to block the whole internet and only allow access to predefined IP addresses. So if you want to gain access to a web site that is not on the approved list yo
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They (especially the richer ones) go to London for the same things. London s also good for gay Saudi's (like the King's grandson who was recently convicted in Britain of murdering his servant who he apparently had a horribly abusive homosexual relationship with), those into gambling, and, in general, want to get away with more than is allowed in the UAE or Bahrain.
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In other news, the median Saudi IQ score went up a point.
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tl;dr.
Re:yep... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:yep... (Score:4, Insightful)
To be precise, they didn't lose liberty. They simply never had it.
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Imam al-Diesel: What are you smiling about?
Paullah al-bin-Walker: Dude, I almost had my freedom!
Imam al-Diesel:You almost had your freedom? You never had your freedom! You never had any of your rights!
Cut to shot of Paullah al-bin Walker standing alone in a desert
[Directed by M. Night Shymalan]
Re:yep... (Score:4, Insightful)
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I find it ironic that we're spending american lives on bringing "Freedom and Democracy" to Iraq and Afghanistan, when our close friends the Saudis are a hugely oppressive monarchy.
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oil
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Yes, but the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam in Iraq were much worse than the weenie Saudis. Mind you, both are scared to death of women, but Saddam gassed the Kurds and the Brits uncovered about 300,000 Shi'ites in mass graves where Saddam had stored them for safe keeping. The Taliban used Al Qaeda as shock troops much like the SS, which incidentally they derive much of their philosophy. It was nothing to them to go in and kill an entire village of Hazaras (Hazaras are Shi'ite, the Taliban are Sunni, gen
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Its also ironic that Iraq is, in many ways, more oppressive than it was under Saddam Hussein - for example, Iraqi Christians (and other religious minorities) are being driven out of the country by concerted murder and percsecution. This was entirely predictable, and the US government was warned of this by Christian groups (including the Catholic church) before the invasion.
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I find it ironic that we're spending american lives on bringing "Freedom and Democracy" to Iraq and Afghanistan
What's really ironic is that, in case of Afghanistan at least, neither freedom nor democracy was brought. The new Afghan constitution, approved after the "liberation", explicitly declares Afghanistan an Islamic state, and Sharia a supreme law of the land which trumps anything else. For extra fun, both of those provisions are declared as immutable, and cannot be amended in any legal way.
This isn't just words on the paper, either. There have already been real persecutions for "blasphemy" and "apostasy" in the
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Also, since he said "in either direction", I should point out that I'm extremely upset that I will no longer be able to find random burqa-clad hotties to cyber-sex with. This is a disaster of epic proportions.
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Profoundly Islamic nations don't have "liberty", they have religious law, and that is by their choice. They violently defend that law against transgressors.
Re:yep... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not this tired theme again. We get it - you think it's cool to despise Facebook, a kind of geek goth cred. Whatever.
For millions of people it's a way to keep in touch with friends and family which is easier and more effective than e-mail or other means, and that has value. For millions more, it's a relatively harmless diversion.
Deal with it.
temporary measure (Score:3, Interesting)
Ya, until they can either blackmail or threaten FB into compliance.
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Threaten them with what, loss of a miniscule market?
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Not threatening Facebook as a company but I'm sure there's some crazy ass fundy willing to publicly threaten Zuckerberg's life. Hell, they did that over a South Park episode and Comedy Central caved.
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I doubt that death threats are anything new to Zuckerberg. He probably gets them every day from privacy kooks.
Hollywood execs are not reknowned for courage.
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According to Facebook user stats [facebook.com], that's pretty small. It's 37th on the list of top Facebook countries. That constitutes less than 1/2 of 1% their users. That's not something you'd want to lose, but that's not something you'd risk a successful model to chase, either.
Re:temporary measure (Score:4, Funny)
Not really, unlike RIM, it's not practical or even commercially sound for Facebook to abide by KSA's "conservative values". There is also no inherent benefit on Saudi Arabia's part to have Facebook operate there. Except maybe monitoring citizens, but they already have full control over any means of communication so that's just unnecessary.
The only reason I can see for them calling this a temporary measure is a PR move. They are shifting the blame on Facebook, saying they would unblock it as soon as it's compatible with their values. Of course everyone knows what's going on, but that's how PR works. They opened a university or two to women and last week they got elected to UN's women's rights agency. Maybe now their shooting for a position on Internet Freedoms board.
.
Re:temporary measure (Score:4, Insightful)
> ...last week they got elected to UN's women's rights agency.
You need to put "elected" in sneer quotes. The candidates for these positions are always determined in advance by backroom deals, with the number of candidates normally equalling the number of openings. This one was actually unusual in that there were 11 candidates for 10 positions. Of course, the organization itself only exists for propaganda purposes. It will not benefit women in any way (except for those female politicians who use it to futher their careers).
Re:temporary measure (Score:4, Insightful)
It will not benefit women in any way (except for those female politicians who use it to futher their careers).
Great, lets hope the female politicians in Saudi Arabia use it to further their careers.
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No problem (Score:2)
A little AI and a routine to overlay an abaya on any image that looks remotely female and all is well.
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A little AI and a routine to overlay an abaya on any image that looks remotely female and all is well.
Micheal Jackson in an abaya. Not a bad thought ...
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And a system that prevents women from posting on the walls of men unless they're a male relative, who by happy coincidence is likely to at some stage become their husband. Nothing says family values like boinking a first cousin.
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Hey, if it's good enough for the Southeastern US...
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Hey, if it's good enough for the Southeastern US...
Oddly enough, except for the difference in religion, they essentially hate the same things. They both hate:
1. Religious freedom
2. Freedom of speech
3. Intelligence and free thought
4. Creativity
5. "Elites" which are anyone who has half a brain in their head and uses it (as opposed to actual elites like the Saudi "royal" family which uses their inherited wealth to oppress people).
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Oddly enough, except for the difference in religion, they essentially hate the same things. They both hate:
1. Religious freedom
2. Freedom of speech
3. Intelligence and free thought
4. Creativity
5. "Elites" which are anyone who has half a brain in their head and uses it (as opposed to actual elites like the Saudi "royal" family which uses their inherited wealth to oppress people).
That is a very 4. Creative and 3. Intelligent stereotype. You sound like one of those "stick up your ass" elite types though.. the o
You can't pick and choose (Score:2)
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You'll be surprised how many ISP's actually already do block certain countries. Nigeria and China are frequently blocked. Not just by ISP's, but also by websites individually. (And yes I did double-check that it was not China itself doing the blocking.)
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I remember one time Dattebayo (wildly popular fansub group, notoriously fast and loose with the banhammers) banned the nation of Australia from all their content over a single (but very determined) Australian troll in their IRC rooms.
I don't know if they ever got unblocked now that I think of it...
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maybe ISPs should block Saudi Arabia entirely from the internet. See how they feel about censorship then.
Take a look at countries like north korea and china. the dangers of external freedom are taken very seriously when they threaten to loosen their grip on the control over their people.
They usually don't care about any repercussions simply because in their eyes, it risks everything. No cost is too high to protect their control. And they don't have to learn to live with it, just their people do. But they don't care about that unless they can't keep the riots under control. But them check out how skilled a
Unbanned (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40166219/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/ [msn.com]
Why? Who knows. Does it really matter?
Internet Blackholes... (Score:5, Informative)
Some country banned Facebook (Score:5, Funny)
Like
Abdullah Hamed (www.indiesaudi.com) (Score:4, Informative)
everyone,
I am a saudi who lives in saudi and here is my point of the story.
Saudi's (communications and information technology) has a solution of the shelf that blocks pornographic sites automatically (we got VPN so dont worry we get our pr0ns).
This solution keeps its own database and that external database messes up sometimes and blocks stuff that should be blocked. google and secondlife were blocked before and were unblocked. Further more, political website and radical islamic websites are blocked as requested by the government for national security.
facebook's url that was blocked today was (www.facebook.com/home.php) but if you use (www.facebook.com) it works perfectly. so it apparent that the blocking was due to a mess up in the database of the off the shelf solution.
any questions? :D
just a different flavor of "offensive" (Score:2, Interesting)
Today I've discovered that The Pirate Bay website is blocked in Italy. Previously the italian providers were forced to configure the DNS to resolve it as 127.0.0.1, but that was easy to circumvent. Now, the IP is totally unreacheable from Italy. To look at TPB one has to use a proxy, a tunnel, etc.
A similar measure is in force for unauthorized gambling sites.
I don't gamble and I don't care too much for torrents, but the very idea that my government decides which sites I can visit and which I cannot sends a
When they came for the leechers... (Score:2)
When they came for the leechers...
Getting banned by the Saudies is no biggie (Score:2)
They ban everyone for every reason unless and until they are given a reason why not.
The major difference between them (Wahabi) and the Taliban is that the Saud family have had money since the fifties.
I find the same mechanisms of oppressive paternalism are also occurring in North Korea, Burma(Myanmar) Indonesia,
Same (un)reasoning attitude.
Same appeal to the irrational.
Same hatred/fear of everything and everybody.
Saudi Arabia will destroy itself (Score:5, Interesting)
First off, a little disclaimer:
Westerners often tend to conflate Wahhabism with Islam, but that is a critical mistake that undermines any clear understanding of the Middle East and Islam itself. The movement has taken Islam from being an unquestioned powerhouse of intellectual and cultural innovation to being perceived as a force of stagnation. Islam is not the problem, the cultural baggage that it is presently burdened with is the issue. Wahhabism itself is only a few centuries old, and in that time it has deeply undermined the perception of Islam in the Western world, and undermined the social, intellectual and economic development of those countries where it has taken root.
It's why women went from being the closest advisors to the Prophet himself, to being deeply despised and treated as subhuman in certain corners of the Islamic world. The najib, the bourqua, the many, many restrictions on women - these came from outside of Islam, and were integrated into the narrative of what Islam is about. Many in the West fail to understand that Wahhabism and the myriad of ancient tribal customs that were given an opportunity for resurgence are not found in the Qu'ran.
One can find the seeds of Wahhabism. The passages and the bits of text that would inspire such an interpretation, but to say it is a legitimate part of Islam would be false. (Wahhabists would strongly disagree. ;) )
But Wahhabism is a factor that must be dealt with regardless of how legitimate it is. So here we find ourselves looking at its biggest proponent - and it's largest victim - Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia has siphoned its oil wealth off to fund the lifestyle of countless princes vaguely related to the royal family, while the rest of the young-skewing country faces unemployment and poverty.
The ruling class has tried to embrace the radical Wahhabist interpretation of Islam and use it as a uniting force in the country, while accumulating for itself the material pleasures of modernity purchased with the natural resources of the nation. It hasn't really worked. It's resulted in the aforementioned elites living the high life, while the impoverished masses watch the encroachment of western culture they are taught to despise.
It's a nation ruled by oppression and undermined with a deep-seated cognitive dissonance regarding technology, culture, religion and how it all interacts on a moral and practical level.
It's a climate that is intellectually bankrupt, as it crushes new ideas while longing for the modernity it simultaneously craves / despises. It wants to mesh 16th century mores with 21st century technology. So far it has operated under the illusion that such things are possible, as the country has simply purchased what it desires from the West. But it doesn't develop much of anything on its own. The culture of Wahhabism silences innovation. It creates an environment where fear, oppression, absolutely pathological misogyny are entrenched in the social and legal fabric of the nation.
Saudi Arabia has tried to improve its position by having students study overseas, but they quickly become deeply alienated from the world that stands so far apart from the one they come from. Ideally, the men (and they are almost always men) would return with new ideas and new perspectives. But they so often end up bitter radicals. They see how their nation is widely perceived as a backwards ocean of sand that is valued for its oil and little else. Furthermore, the Western world they encounter is full of temptations they have been groomed to hate, but the promise of economic prosperity they cannot hope to find at home.
The home they return to is a stifling environment of institutionalized corruption (the name Saudi Arabia literally means "Arabia that belongs to the House of Saud"), intellectual stagnation where new ideas are deeply frowned upon, and constant reminders of the morally corrupt world they've left behind.
What hope is there for a country like that?
Even if they didn't come back a
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Saudi Arabia will destroy itself (Score:5, Interesting)
GP has a point though. Christianity was historically repressive, but it was changed from within. The serious problem with Salafi (Wahhabi) is that it is a movement that is, fundamentally, against any and all change - the ultimate dogmaticists willing to fix everything in stone and keep it that way for eternity. Where they are popular, there is absolutely no hope for Islam to evolve into something more tolerable.
Christianity has similar movements in it, but, gladly, they were never been able to catch up with the humanist revolution, and the more liberal Christian denominations were pretty much forced to accept it and play along. But there's no similar force in Islamic world today, and Salafism is going strong, spreading like a cancer.
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Blaming Islam is wrong... Blaming those corrupt individuals who exploit their interpretation as a tool of oppression is what we should focus our efforts on.
Islam was designed to be an instrument of oppression--like pretty much every religion. It's possible it can be "reformed" and its inherent purpose perverted like western religions, but Islam itself will fight this process, and fundamentalists will always have a coherent cause.
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Your whole post founders on this misrepresentation. Islam was never a powerhouse of anything. Arabic people, under less repressive versions of Islam, managed to make some significant progress. but Islam itself, like almost all religions at almost all times, is a repressive force that imposes false beliefs in non-existent entities on children, who then gro
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I'm sure the citizens of Turkey, Malaysia, Morocco, Bangladesh etc etc not to mention lots of moderate muslims happily living in the west would be very surprised to hear that. It's about as convincing as equating all christians with the Spanish inquisition.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
The Curse of Mineral Wealth (Score:2)
A fitting response... (Score:3, Insightful)
Good for them (Score:2)
Can we now please do this in America?
Yes, I know it sets a bad precedent, but it's friggin' FACEBOOK!
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Ban Flash and you stop Farmville. Two wins with one action!
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Facebook equals Farmville equals loss of productivity = ban Facebook.
Hey, that was easy!
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The atheists that created soviet Russia
Karl Marxk == Mohammed
Das kapital == Quran
Marxist are atheists in a technical sense, but they display the same amount of blind fanaticism as religious people.
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Not to mention portraits of the prophets everywhere, worship rituals, religious processions (with mandatory attendance), holy scripture and a priest class.
The last part is even funnier if you consider that the primary claimed benefit of communism was a "class-less society".
Ug (Score:2)
Marxist != Totalitarian Communist
Capitalist != Fascist
Stalin was not a Marxist. He was a totalitarian murderous dictator who claimed to be a Marxist. Just like Hitler wasn't a Christian, even though all of his soldiers had "Gott mit uns" or "God is with us" engraved on their belt buckles. Corrupt leaders will exploit whatever ideology is necessary in order to stay in power.
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While it is easy and comforting to label people such as Adolf Hitler corrupt the fact is that they are usually sincere as hell as are most of their followers.
About Gott mit Uns (Score:2)
This was actually a German tradition. It was on belt buckles even in the first world war. It was not something Hitler started. He just didn't see a reason to change an old army tradition.
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If anything can be a "god" of sorts now, how do I know that you're actually an atheist?If anything can be a "god" of sorts now, how do I know that you're actually an atheist?
Somebody [slashdot.org] above answered that: "portraits of the prophets everywhere, worship rituals, religious processions (with mandatory attendance), holy scripture and a priest class"
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I love responding to my overly-religious relatives when they start spouting fucking nonsense with "Even the devil can quote scripture, right? How do I know you're not the devil right now?"
No, it doesn't shut them up, because they're FUCKING IRRATIONAL. But, it does provide some levity for the rest of the family. :)
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> No, it doesn't shut them up, because they're FUCKING IRRATIONAL.
And so are you. All humans are.
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The atheists that created soviet Russia told everybody they couldn't, in the name of the state.
I am constantly amazed by those to whom people dogmatically worshipping Lenin, Stalin, and the unproven theories of communism (despite all the evidence to the contrary) pass for atheists.
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True. It completely ignores the obvious correlation between moustaches and genocidal behaviour.
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True. It completely ignores the obvious correlation between moustaches and genocidal behaviour.
Yes, I remember reading about all those mass graves discovered in the 1920's after Charlie Chaplin butchered almost six million Californians (much to the delight of Oregonians).
Re:No big surprise here. (Score:4, Interesting)
Arguably atheism was the initial state (unless you believe the ancestors of humans and primates had religion too which would be interesting
So as long as humans remain humans, plain atheism doesn't look like it would become a large majority. The "substrate" and environment has to change significantly. But I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.
Even if God etc doesn't exist, as long as the placebo effect exists (and remains significant), certain types of religions will outcompete atheism over the long run. Because strict atheism will pose no net benefits[1], whereas certain religions would produce benefits via the placebo effect. So as long as the net benefits outweigh the costs of a religion, adherents as a whole would benefit more from that religion than from atheism.
Some religions have/had very high costs of course, but not all. Plus the costs and benefits have to be taken across the group as a whole, because some religions while costing a few individuals a lot (their entire lives in fact), would benefit the group more overall.
[1] I believe most atheists would say atheism is a result not a cause, producing benefits is not applicable - it's just what happens when you hold a certain world view.
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If there can be so few "True Atheists", then it seems most people want a "Religion". Whether it one of the popular religions, or worship of the Great Communist Leader, or "Gaia", or "The Best Team in the world, and I'm willing to bash anyone who says otherwise", they just have a need to be part of a Greater Thing.
There is a nice book named "The Biological Evolution of Religious Mind and Behavior" (Springer Verlag) that says that this need to being a part of a Greater Thing is precisely what evolved in us a long time ago, for some quirky reproductive fitness reason.
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They ARE atheists. They're simply atheists who mindlessly believe in a whole host of secular bullshit. I don't think atheism means what you think it means.
Re:No big surprise here. (Score:4, Insightful)
Two caveats:
1) It's not as simple as saying, "Commies are atheists, so all the bad stuff communists did was because of atheism." History shows that Soviet authorities used religion as necessary to keep power. There is also evidence of government officials baptizing their children in spite of their government's lip service to atheism.
2) If Christians are not to be held accountable for the use of their beliefs to justify crimes against humanity (children's crusade, quoting the bible to justify slavery, a million others), why are atheists responsible for actions committed in the name of atheism?
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Yet more proof that religious folk are vulnerable to the creation of oppressive sociopolitical groups.
Half right The US props up the Saudi Arabian theocracy because an oppressed Saudi Arabia is a Saudi Arabia which delivers energy and military supremacy to the US without anyone having the chance to question it.
But Facebook isn't dangerous any more than cannabis is dangerous. That said, ban it and you'll remind the locals of your power while lazy foreigners wave their arms abourt over a loud but minor detail. It's the opposite strategy to giving US citizens guns and making them think they're well defended ag
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On the other hand, if you ban things, you also remind the people that they are powerless. Humans inherently dislike feeling as though they are not in control of their lives. Thus, in the long run, such bans are usually detrimental to the stability of a regime, particularly if you're regularly banning things that are highly popular. Eventually, the citizens discover that they have enough strength in numbers to seize control, and they do. When this happens, it is usually bloody.
Don't get me wrong---I'm no
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Well, I somewhat agree. The US has been stable partly because it's so good at delivering empty platitudes to its citizens in between times when the promise isn't delivered at all (Alien and Sedition Act, abolitionist speech, Mutual Film Corp. v. Industrial Commission of Ohio, Office of Censorship, Smith Act and McCarthyism, pre-DJB crypto, etc). When the Middle and Far East realise that this method is way more effective than honest censorship, maybe people will work it out.
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Half right The US props up the Saudi Arabian theocracy because an oppressed Saudi Arabia is a Saudi Arabia which delivers energy and military supremacy to the US without anyone having the chance to question it.
WTF? How does that make him "half-right"? Because Saudi Arabia would be a liberal paradise if it weren't for US support?
I'm starting to think that blaming the US is a religion in and of itself for some folks. I swear, I could say "looks like it might rain tonight", and some twit would jump out of the bushes and yell "Ah, but the weather patterns in this part of the globe would be completely different if American Big Business protected by the Military-Industrial Complex wasn't pouring CO2 into the atmosph
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Because Saudi Arabia would be a liberal paradise if it weren't for US support?
Given that Afghanistan and Iran were some of the most liberal and progressive societies in the region before the US, UK and USSR fucked them over for oil and a military pissing-match, that may well have been the case. Had those nations not been destroyed, they may have had a significant positive influence in the region.
A lot of progressive movements in the nations around Israel, which were fairly strong early in the century, were also abandoned when the violence (enabled to a great extent by US and UK milit
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"Yet more proof that religious folk are vulnerable to the creation of oppressive sociopolitical groups. "
No, they ARE the "oppressive sociopolitical groups".
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It would be easy enough for these countries to simply outlaw use of such browsers. Sure it would be harder to enforce than blocking individual sites, but it would only take a couple dozen public stonings for the masses to capitulate.
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SSL everything, then de-centralize DNS. The result would be anarchy, for the censors.
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The result would be anarchy, period. You can bet your ass that the "decentralized DNS" record for fox.com would permanently point to goatse. As would any other record that any significant group of technically-minded people found objectionable.
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Yep that's why if you download any Christian torrents you just end up with Dimmu Borgir videos, and why accessing Fox News through Tor also leads to goatse. On a more positive note, darknets are 100% child porn free thanks to vigilante action.
For better or worse there is no way to prevent anything decentralized from turning into 4chan. No technical means of doing this whatsoever.
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Exactly. Thanks for the reinforcement.
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One of us has a totally broken sarcasm detector, and I'm pretty sure it's you.
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Of course, it must be me!
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After carefully reviewing all posts, I'm confident yours is broken (everything in this post [slashdot.org] is false), and now you're just fucking with me.
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Well you got that half right, anyway :) I just didn't see anything worth responding to in your initial comment, so I figured I'd have some fun with it. Next time, if you actually have some sort of point to make, put the sarcasm aside and just spit it out.
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Torrents, darknets and mesh networks (and even BGP) are all examples of decentralized systems that aren't anarchic crazyfests. There are many technical methods of preventing tampering and vandalism on decentralized systems.
If you don't like sarcastic replies, avoid saying dumb things.
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"I think a good start would be a move to SSL everything. It doesn't make sites unblockable, "
And use an anonymous proxy. Problem solved.
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No, the difference is that Iran stones [examiner.com] women, Saudi Arabia beheads them [independent.co.uk]. Both agree that Facebook is immoral though.
Re:Does anyone really care anymore... (Score:5, Insightful)
>> all these backwards countries
Yeah, and the US government, media and public - all - just love wikileaks, eh? Kudos to hypocrisy.
I seem to be able to get to wikileaks from the US.
I seem to be able to make up my own mind about what I can and can not read.
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I seem to be able to get to wikileaks from the US.
Pretty sure they're still working on that little bug.
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Says you.
I'll take the inanity of Facebook over censorship in the name of religion any day.
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+1. So walk, bike or catch the bus. You're doing your health a favour, helping the environment, and depriving terrorist-sponsoring states of revenue.
Every time we fill up our gas tanks, we're helping to fund medieval theocracies.