Social Networking Spurs Activism Against Repression 303
The New York Times Magazine is running a story about the rise in political activism in Egypt through sites like Facebook, which allow citizens to gather and share ideas in ways they otherwise aren't allowed. A state-of-emergency law has been active in Egypt since 1981, which, among other things, "allows the government to ban political organizations and makes it illegal for more than five people to gather without a license from the government." As affordable internet access has spread throughout the country, the government is having a much harder time keeping wraps on the ideas of dissidents. Blocking access to the sites isn't a good solution for the government, because many non-dissidents use it for mundane communications. As Harvard's Ethan Zuckerman puts it, "...doing so would alert a large group of people who they can't afford to radicalize."
That gets a lot done (Score:2)
Re:That gets a lot done (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation:
The people living there, if given the freedom to decide their own fate might decide to do do something I don't approve of.
Hence only I deserve such rights.
Re:That gets a lot done (Score:5, Insightful)
as a Vet of Iwo jima once told me. His words We fought for your right to make a choice even if I don't approve of it.
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Better Translation:
The people living there, if given the freedom to decide their own fate, will almost certainly call for more violence between Israelis and Muslims, leading to decades of war, in which tens of thousands of innocent people will die. Hence, they should be deprived of such rights, just as I would be, if I openly supported the murder of innocents.
You ought to learn a thing or two about that part of the world before saying that everyone should have the right to freedom of speech and expression.
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And to further this all talk in american media of how egyptions should have basic rights like freedom of speach should be banned since it can only inflame things further.
Sure it would hurt some americans rights but that's a small price to pay!
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Where did I say a group couldn't be opposed later?
I'm as willing to write code to help people sidestep censorship after they've elected the nutjobs and decided it was a bad idea as I am willing to write code to help those who don't like the other kinds of repression.
If genocide becomes likely then the UN should step in, they're too slow to be much use but that's another problem.
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If genocide becomes likely then the UN should step in
I think if I had modpoints today I would give that a "+1, Funny" right there.
The UN is a joke, this has been proven time and again. Leaving it to them would be an end to the Christians in Egypt.
But hey, they're just Christians, so that's ok, right?
Preventing violence is as important as picking up after it.
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The UN is mainly a joke because it's never been given control of a UN army. The original idea was to give the UN it's own military so that when it decided to intervene it had the ability to allocate the troops and send appropriate orders.
Then there's the bit where America or the EU will take pot shots at the other using the UN as a means, but the sames the case with the WTO as well. I mean it's not as if those organizations have better things to be doing.
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The UN has it's own army. There's just one problem. The whole institution is based on preventing war. They're not very big on ending a war with superior violence.
After all, that's what Bush would do. It's also the only thing that works.
The UN puts armies on the ground and instructs them to never attack anyone. Either the soldiers are bad (UN mission to katanga, the rape cases of the UN armies in Western Sahara (yes that regiment was a muslim regiment, and it's not an accident at all), ...) or they don't do
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Well, the UN is only a joke in that it is more like a local bar than a local police station: it's job is not military activism, it's job is to facilitate talk. Ideally, crazy people announce some deranged plan of theirs, and the rest of the patrons try to talk them down. It's low cost, and the victories are mostly the lack of anything happening.
And so ... ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Huh? Why not? Why couldn't we put trade embargoes on them?
You might want to note that we didn't invade Germany during WWII because of what he was doing to his own people. We did it because he invaded other countries.
And don't we have trade restrictions with Iran?
The problem with your reasoning is that it quickly results in the USofA being the "policeman of the world" and our country cannot AFFORD that.
I think that you need to read up on some history.
But you never ask the question WHY the majority of voters in Egypt would WANT to elect them.
It doesn't matter if you outlaw one political party. If the majority of the people have the same beliefs as that political party, then they will, eventually, become the government.
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"Trade restrictions" (meaning the country has to trade through China or Russia) versus bullets (atomic bombs).
Good luck with that ...
And about that history reading : do you in some way deny that muslim's "prophet" committed 5 religious genocides ? Do you deny that muslims proclaim daily that they want to follow his example ? Do you claim that, when asked, they say that their prophet was a monster for committing those genocides and therefore that part of islam is evil ?
It is VERY clear who needs to read up o
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By your reasoning Hitler was the "rightful ruler" of Germany, and could not be opposed on the basis of what he did to his people, after all, he got their permission once.
Huh? Why not? Why couldn't we put trade embargoes on them?
You might want to note that we didn't invade Germany during WWII because of what he was doing to his own people. We did it because he invaded other countries.
I think his point was that Hitler started out in a democracy and ended up in a dictatorship. Do you consider the dictatorship valid as a representation of the people, simply because it started as a democracy? I'm not talking about whether it's right to go to war with Hitler, just what you think about a party that is democratically elected, but then has a little revolution that ends in dictatorship.
If the muslim brotherhood gets control over the state of Egypt, world war III starts. It's that simple.
But you never ask the question WHY the majority of voters in Egypt would WANT to elect them.
It doesn't matter if you outlaw one political party. If the majority of the people have the same beliefs as that political party, then they will, eventually, become the government.
For democracy to work you need an educated populace. You need laws protecting the voting process, and a governm
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Come on. The idea that outsiders can't study and judge a group is completely ignorant. Often, the outside group is more impartial and makes a better judgment.
I'm sure you have more to your viewpoint than what you wrote but simply dismissing somebody's post as "orientalist rhetoric" doesn't bode well. Where's the nuanced and thoughtful post that I've come to expect at slashdot?
Let's take his first statement. "The problem is that they would use force against minorities, against everyone including themselves."
Re:That gets a lot done (Score:5, Insightful)
The ideas they espouse are disgusting, and yet they manage to obtain web hosting services in the United States.
Of course, it would be even more disgusting if they were not allowed to get a website BECAUSE of their ideas.
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plus they hate us for our freedom!!!
Perhaps if we required everyone to wear shock collars which stunned them whenever they had a violent impulse... it would reduce their freedom but people who would otherwise be murdered would survive!
Life before freedom!
Liberty, life and property (Score:5, Insightful)
Not at all. Get your priorities in line, man. It is MORE important that people survive than that they're free.
"They may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom".
Or in the South Park version:
"Gobble, gobble gobble gobble, gobble gobble gobble gobble, gobble, gobble gobble, GOBBLE!!!"
And I seem to recall a gang of rebels, oh-when-was-that-around-1776-I-think, who'd rather die at the hand of their oppressors than pay taxes if they didn't have seats in the government.
And I'm sure you can find other historic examples of people willing to die for freedom.
Just something to consider...
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Well, no...
'No taxation without representation!' is already an unwieldy battle cry, but it turns out it was never used by the Americans in their war of independence. Furthermore, it would have been idiotic for the early Americans to feel unfairly treated by the taxation on them; the vast majority of the British taxpayers at the time were not eligible to vote, and furthermore they payed many times more tax than their American counterparts. Finally, there were no huge shipments of cash back to the King; almos
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Not at all. Get your priorities in line, man. It is MORE important that people survive than that they're free.
New Hampshire State Motto:
Live Free or Die.
Not everyone would agree with you.
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Best state motto ever. Of course, some people did sue to keep that off their license plates, which is really stupid when you think about it. "I don't want to even give the impression that I'd defend my rights to the death, and I will defend my right not to do so via lawyers."
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Not at all. Get your priorities in line, man. It is MORE important that people survive than that they're free.
Neither is categorically more important. Sometimes it worth giving up freedom to save lives and sometimes its worth sacrificing lives to save freedom.
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Sad thing is that all the right-wing neo-fascist nuts (Rush Limbaugh included, who also said a lot of things like this) are always mentioning this. Basically, "you have no rights if you are dead." Democracy is doomed if there are lots of people like you.
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Lots of talk. But when the time comes to do the dying, you never see progressives turn up.
In fact you frequently hear something about moving to Canada in that type of case.
Imagine that, people having a big mouth and tiny balls ... who'd have thought ?
Re:That gets a lot done (Score:5, Funny)
Civilized? Who wants to live in a civilized society? I mean hell, civilization is why I have to wear pants and go to work. And worse still wear pants while going to work.
Re:That gets a lot done (Score:4, Informative)
You may not be able to see the connection, but attitudes like yours led directly to the rise of the Taliban.
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Many in Egypt fear that if free elections were allowed, the Muslim Brotherhood would quickly achieve a dominant position in their legislature.
So freedom is great as long as it's only used to promote ideas that you think are morally OK?
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And so I must not allow them to have the same rights and freedoms that I have since if they did they might not want me to have the same rights and freedoms that they had.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Has he done anything to be in prison? If has he serves his sentence?
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then let him out watch him and if he actually tries to do it then you stop him and jail him for attempted murder.
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bah!
"Has he done anything to end up in prison? If so- has he served his sentence?"
Freedom is not safe. (Score:2)
That is the price of living in a Free society.
Otherwise anyone can be held indefinitely because someone in the government can claim that they said the forbidden words.
If you have served the time for the crime, you get out.
That does not mean that the cop
Doublethink (Score:2)
No, I fear that freedom of expression on the internet is a luxury that only the stable Western democracies and a few non-Islamic dictatorships can afford.
Dictatorships do not like freedom of expression. Duh! Dictatorships are bad. Freedom of expression is good. How much doublethinking have you been doing to have such a twisted worldview?
Mod parent UP (Score:3, Informative)
First paragraph is true and most people see that.
The bit about MEMRI is also true, and unfortunately not a lot of people know how that organisation selectively and misleadingly translates documents.
http://www.infocusnews.net/content/view/15069/135/ [infocusnews.net]
http://mondediplo.com/2005/10/15propaganda [mondediplo.com] (subscription required)
And there's more that I can't be arsed to link to.
JG
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Not all repression is bad repression (Score:3, Interesting)
To the extent that the ban of the Muslim Brotherhood (a theocratic group pushing for stricter religious rule) in Egypt is effective, I say "Bravo!". When people complain about political, religious, or other repression from a government, it's generally a good idea to find out what kind of group exactly is being repressed.
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they should still be given the right to express thier views, stand to be elected, etc. sure monitor them invade thier privacy to prevent terrorist acts (if you must), but by forcing your opinions on them you are no better than they are.
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I disagree. I think anyone intending to create religious rule should be disqualified from being elected.
Political liberty is less important than personal liberty. Given a choice between living under a strict Sharia-enforcing government, democratically elected, and a more libertene western government with the political form of an autocracy, I'd pick the latter every time. I believe most people would if they understood the contrast. In practice, it's doable to have a democracy-with-limits.
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If the world was made up of clones of you that would be great.
Why should you get to dictate what sort of leader I'm allowed want?
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Why should you be allowed to elect a leader that puts an imam in my bedroom?
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why should you be allowed elect a leader who doesn't let my child wear a cross to school and so damns them to hell?
(note I'm not religious in the slightest but this line of argument is just to wrong )
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Consider the alternative. Think about what it'd be like to live in a state where naming a teddy bear after Mohammad or disrespecting the Bible gets an angry mob calling for your death.
This is not the society we live in in the United States (well, not so much - some unfortunates like Matthew Shepard have found a few people willing to kill him, but their acts are at least broadly condemned, and if we look in the past, we see some pretty horrific things like witch trials that had broad-enough support to work i
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Or living in a state where merely walking around naked or taking pictures of yourself can get you labled as a sex offender for life!
In such places people do not deserve the right to free speach!!!
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Lets try this on other moral issues?
Why should you be allowed elect a leader who would make it a crime for me to save another human life?(anti abortionists who consider stopping an abortion akin to saving someone from being stabbed)
Why should you be allowed to elect a leader who believes me to be little more than an incubator? (other side)
Why should you be allowed to elect a leader who would make me do anything that I don't want to do?
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Because your leader doesn't solely belong to you. One of the central tenets of liberty is that the rights of the minority are protected against the tyranny of the majority.
Ok.
The I'm overusing the abortion topic but why should you be allowed elect a leader who forces me to be little more than an incubator?
Or why should you be allowed elect a leader who forces me to stand idley by while murder is commited?
tyranny of the majority!!!
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anyone intending to create religious rule should be disqualified from being elected.
Good idea.
And while we're at it, let's ban anyone intending to restrict gay marriage. Or should we ban anyone intending to promote gay marriage?
And we should ban people who support torture, or the death penalty.
And maybe people who support raising taxes on the poor. After all, the poor need that money -- it would be torture to tax them...
I've got it! How about we ban people who want to destroy our core rights? Rights like freedom of speech, freedom to assemble, freedom of the press...
Sorry, you're disqualif
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Bad idea. Would you approve of an openly pro-NAMBLA campaign in the US? One that would include lots of photographs of NAMBlA-sactioned activities showing how decent and wonderful it can be for your son to develop a sexual relationship with an older man? OK, thought not.
How about a church sect that uses the Bible to "prove" the superiority of whites over blacks and wants to use cable public access time to preach their message? With their charitable works getting lots of mainstream coverage about all the
Why not? (Score:2)
You thought wrong. As long as the pictures did not run afoul of pornography laws. It's like making the FBI's job that much easier. The pedophiles are self identifying themselves and announcing their meetings. Let them run!
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Would you approve of an openly pro-NAMBLA campaign in the US?
Approve of what they're selling? No, absolutely not. But I would approve of their right to try.
How about a church sect that uses the Bible to "prove" the superiority of whites over blacks and wants to use cable public access time to preach their message?
There has been a supreme court case about this -- someone tried to get a show canceled on Kansas City Public Access TV. It was called, "Klansas City Kable."
A little closer to what is going on in Egypt would be if new political party came out with an clearly religious platform that included banning all religions that did not include homosexuals. With the message that by not including homosexuals these other religons were "bad for the country and must be eradicated".
Yep. Go ahead. Still just talking -- I absolutely do not agree with the message, but I'll fight to let it be told.
Burn down a few Catholic churches and Islamic mosques as a symbol of the "new order".
And this is the moment when it becomes not OK. Because this is no longer speech, it's actual vandalism, maybe violence.
Anyone actually doing this s
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By god you're right!
Democracy and freedom of speach must be done away with!
Especially in the most heavily armed countries like the US since they would pose the greatest risk to the rest of the world if this happened.
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"The screwdriver is a nuanced tool that's not right in every circumstance and should not be the only or even the primary tool in our toolbox" != "throw away all screwdrivers because they're not perfect".
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Ah I see.
So it's more like
"The screwdriver can be used to stab someone in the face, hence only I and people I like and trust should be allowed own screwdrivers"
Closer?
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No, more like "we'd like to have democracy, but if you're pushing religious rule, genocide, or similar you can't come to the party, and if there are enough of you like that, the party's cancelled until things change".
These are people who have their hands out for a screwdriver that have publicised their intent to face-stab not long after they get it.
Re:Not all repression is bad repression (Score:5, Insightful)
To paraphrase Churchill, free speech is the worst form of public discourse, except for all the others that have been tried.
Look, if we could censor only those people who advocate "religious rule, genocide, or similar," that would be great ... but who gets to decide what falls into those categories? You? Me? Glorious Leader? No, that's too personal. How about a committee of anonymous bureaucrats? Hey, I like that idea -- we could give it a catchy name, like, say, "The Committee for Public Safety," or maybe, "The Committee for State Security." Because that always works out so well.
There is no one person, and no group of people, good and wise enough to be entrusted with that kind of power. Good people, with the best of intentions, given the authority to decide what kind of political speech is and is not acceptable, will inevitably turn that power to evil. One day they're locking up the obvious loons, the next day they're locking up the maybe-loons, and by the third day it's anyone who disagrees with censors in the slightest. Because how can you disagree with us? We're Good! Good people don't do Bad things! If you disagree, you must be Bad!
Free speech is messy. It's often unpleasant. Sometimes it's actively dangerous. But the alternative is worse.
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I disagree. Permitting people to stand for election who would commit atrocities when it's likely they would win seems far worse to me. You're right that it's hard to decide what the limits should be, who should enforce them, etc. I don't think saying there should be no such limits is sensible either though - there are limits on all democracies even in broadly democratic societies. These do not always end in disaster - holocaust denial is illegal throughout much of Europe, and no great disaster has befallen
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In contrast to political rhetoric, in real life it's quite possible to build a good home on what looks like, from the point of theory, to be a "slippery slope".
If you build your house on thin soil on a mountainside, it may last for decades, but you shouldn't be surprised if one day it ends up in pieces at the bottom of a canyon. Banning candidates from political office is kind of the political equivalent of this practice: it's not quite tyrannical in itself, but it is a powerful tool for tyrants and tempt
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Many European countries have laws banning political speech that advocates fascism or the overthrow of democracy. The US doesn't have such laws, but still has laws dealing with libel, restrictions on "adult" content, and gems like the DMCA.
You seem to be saying that any attempt to restrict free speech leads to dictatorship. But in practice, there has never been a country with 100% unrestricted free speech. So where does that leave us?
Re:Not all repression is bad repression (Score:4, Insightful)
You seem to be saying that any attempt to restrict free speech leads to dictatorship. But in practice, there has never been a country with 100% unrestricted free speech. So where does that leave us?
Where we've always been -- in the middle of the struggle between those who wish to exercise their right of free speech, and those who wish to take it away. However distasteful the words of the first group may be, and however well-intentioned the actions of the second.
I do not claim that restrictions on speech inevitably lead to tyranny. I do claim that: first, such restrictions are a powerful tool for tyrants; second, those who use such tools tend to become tyrants whether they mean to or not; and third, the best way to keep this from happening is to keep pushing against such restrictions wherever they appear.
Re:Not all repression is bad repression (Score:5, Interesting)
Well I think people who are pro-abortion should be banned from running for office too! a genocides worth of children are killed every year thanks to them!!!
(I'm pro choice but this is as valid as your argument)
And people who think it's alright to murder other humans by running electricity though them after nothing more than a handful of others have decided that they've probably done something bad! People who support those things shouldn't be allowed run for office either!
And those communists! They want to take away my property! they shouldn't be allowed run for office either!
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we'd like to have democracy, but if you're pushing these views I don't like, you can't come to the party
Is that really what you want to say?
I agree with you in that I don't like genocide or theocracy either. However, if you truly believe that you cannot argue effectively against them in a world of free speech, I think that says more about the weakness of your own views than about how "dangerous" those views are.
And, indeed, if you're suggesting that views you don't like, or views you consider dangerous, should be silenced, how is that better than a theocracy, in which religions other than the state religion a
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It's closer than you'd think - we're talking about parties that say "We will institute Sharia if elected". I suggest you read about the Muslim Brotherhood.
Our tradition of debate to settle matters would not work everywhere - when you have a number of deeply religious, radicalised members of a genocidal or theocratic party, there's very little you can say to them to get many of them to change their mind. Their ideas are not usually inconsistent - you're not going to poke holes in them. They're likely to not
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Oh, so democracy is fine as long as everyone agrees with you?
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No - disagreement within certain bounds is fine (healthy in most cases). It permits exploration of various approaches to problems, provides means to limit the overambitious and corrupt, and generally makes people more satisfied with the state. Democracy has many benefits, and when possible a state would be wise to incorporate it in some form into its various institutions.
There are things that are pretty much outside the realm of democratic deliberation, and some that at least require more stringent requirem
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No - disagreement within certain bounds is fine
Right, within the bounds you are comfortable with.
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disagreement within certain bounds is fine?
great! I think murder is outside those bounds and so anyone who is pro-abortion should not be allowed disagree with me and try to get murder made legal!
Or alternatively
I think forcing women to endure the degredation of being little more than an incubator is outside the bounds!
Anyone who disagrees with me should not be allowed into public office where they might make it illegal to choose to not incubate a ball of cells.
Are you getting the point here?
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No - disagreement within certain bounds is fine (healthy in most cases).
Who sets those bounds?
There are things that are pretty much outside the realm of democratic deliberation
What things are outside that realm, and how do you decide?
Democracy is a nuanced, often-useful tool. It's not the "one true tool", nor is it our faith.
In fact, it is the worst system of government that has ever been tried, except for all the others. (Apologies to Churchill.)
Read your own sig. Censorship is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. Free speech, even speech you don't like, even "dangerous", disruptive speech, is difficult, messy, and right.
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Censorship is not simple, neat, or wrong. It is a dangerous tool, to be used very sparingly because it easily corrupts a government that uses it broadly, because it makes people unhappy, and because it cements a society into a path. In some circumstances it is appropriate, but the social harm it combats must be great and it should be distrusted as a measure.
I believe the position of free speech as an absolute, like other autonomy/liberty-absolutism, is in fact what is simple, neat, and wrong.
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Oh sure, it's fine when it's a group you don't like but
First they came for the Communists...
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First they came for the Communists...
The Communists have their own track record with repression. It isn't very pretty.
In the end, Communism collapsed on its own. There was no "them" that had any significant effect. For example, in spite of the Reagan/Thatcher claims, Communism in Poland was killed off mainly due to the efforts of a shipyard electrician [wikipedia.org].
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I was expecting people to get the reference but I guess I hoped too much...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came [wikipedia.org]...
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I was not a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
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Why? I probably don't support their agenda (though I know nothing about it other than what you described), nor would I support any violence on their part to achieve it. I do support their right to say it, however, and if they can convince people to go along with it then I say the people get what they deserve. Some people are going to find that a particularly harsh viewpoint, but I hold the same one about the United States: If we vote for idiots and criminals to run our government, we deserve it when we g
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It's not fundamentalist about liberty, and it's different than the way you consider these things, but I don't understand the "cowardly" claim. I am simply moderate about democracy - I don't think it's a death pact. I acknowledge it's benefits and its flaws, and, like fire, consider it very useful in some circumstances, properly framed and used for the public good. I would rather us not think in terms of people deserving punishment because of their choices - that seems cruel to me, when we have alternatives.
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And in conclusion this is why these other humans do not deserve the same rights I have.
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Principle (Score:2)
You've just reinforced an idea that is the reason the United States and the west in general are despised by Muslims worldwide. We have been propping up dictatorships in that area for decades, including countries like Saudi Arabia, where non-Muslims cannot testify in court, children are married off to forty year olds, and public beheadings are commonplace.
If you don't have any principles, that's fine, and at least I'm glad you admit it. But until the end of our military sponsorships of repressive governments
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I have principles. They differ from yours.
We have a choice between several options, and we should choose the one that's least bad, even if it's still not great. That's still a principled stance.
I don't believe the Declaration of Independence is the best work of political philosophy written. It was the prelude to a failed government (said government was later replaced by the constitution), but it was interesting in its ideals and effects. None of us are constrained to agree with it.
The harm to the welfare of
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I have principles. They differ from yours.
And for that reason I think you are a danger and should never be allowed to run for public office or to speak in public!
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The problem is that a number of people don't think these ideas are loony. These are not western societies where we can take for granted that enough people will be incredibly hostile to the idea of Bible or Quran specifying to great detail the shape of society that that will never happen. These are societies where such ideas could easily take hold, and in many cases, it's taken strong leaders to prevent that.
These strong leaders have not all been saints - they range from people as great as Mustafa Kemal Atat
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These are not western societies where we can take for granted that enough people will be incredibly hostile to the idea of Bible or Quran specifying to great detail the shape of society that that will never happen.
Well, no, we can't take it for granted here, either.
But the steps to prevent it are not censorship and repressing those ideas, because they will only be more powerful when people find them.
The steps to prevent it are education -- if we truly believe these truths to be self-evident, then a well-educated person should be likely to agree with them.
Hiding in the noise (Score:2)
One good point about the net, once enough data is being moved around you can hide a hell of a lot in the noise without any real chance of getting caught.
building a group is where all the risk is. talking to each other can be achieved extremely covertly.
Simple Solution (Score:2, Redundant)
Make the Social Sites the enemies.
Since you've got state-run everything, force an ungodly amount of unreasonable requests on these foreign companies, like demanding $1 Million per user from your country (or whatever worthless paper currency your country has issued).
Report to your citizens - the people you "cannot afford to radicalize" - that they (the social networks) are being unfair and stealing taxpayer money, the main cause of child rape, or some other such bullshit. Twist, lie, and contort until it fit
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I was following you up until then. Why would Facebook (as one example) "have to block access from [their] country?" Maaaaybe if the social networking company had an office in the country we're talking about, but the vast majority of them will not -- and even if one did, that wouldn't stop all those pesky rebels from hopping on the sites that don't instead.
If I were in charge of a social networking site and
Unfortunately, activism isn't always good (Score:4, Insightful)
In this case, the Egyptian government wants to bring peace to the Middle East, whereas the activists want more violence. The Egyptian government has long been instrumental in coordinating peace efforts between the Israelis and Palestinians. The majority of the activists coordinating through Facebook are doing so to express their hatred of Israel, and their desire for its destruction.
There was an interesting interview with a Hamas leader on Al Jazeera not long ago. Essentially, he said that the leaders know that violence won't lead anywhere. The reason the violence keeps going is because the common people on both sides keep calling for it, and leaders who don't acquiesce are thrown out. If the same thing starts happening in Egypt, then it will just lead to more war, and more death.
We, people from more peaceful parts of the world, generally assume that more democracy is always good. We fail to realize that at times, the majority is wrong. The majority wants to kill the other side, because they were harmed, and then the majority on the other side wants to kill the first. It's self-perpetuating, tit for tat. The only way to break out is with strong leaders on both sides who are willing to step up and refuse to fight. Giving the vengeful mob tools to undermine that is not a good thing.
There is no easy solution in the Middle East, but any solution would need to start with strong leaders in both Israel and Gaza who refuse to resort to violence, not with grassroots movements calling for each other's destruction. We need to recognize that, and stop applying our own values to their situation.
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Little phrasing quibble - we're still applying our own values - what we need to do is stop applying the value-conclusions that are common and more suitable for our particular situations in areas where they would actually serve our values very badly.
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Yes.
I would go further and say that while the people and leaders of Israel are not above reproach, it is difficult to criticize the actions of the Israelis when faced with an enemy on their doorstep that openly calls for their extermination. If you had a neigobor you didn't like you could learn to get along, but when your neighbor starts every day by putting up a sign calling for your death it is difficult to imagine how you can "just get along".
Regardless of leadership, the people on the street in Gaza an
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I still say that allowing people to speak freely is the only way to ensure peace.
Shutting people up when they spout hate only makes their cause seem righteous. By censoring them, you make them look like the good guys.
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Can you give an example? We don't let the KKK spout their hate so freely any more, and it has worked wonders in diminishing their presence. It sure as hell hasn't made them look like the good guys.
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Look up the Southern Poverty Law Center [wikipedia.org]. They have launched many law suits against the KKK for hate speech leading to violence. As a result, several branches of the KKK have lost their compounds, and all of their funds. With no place to assemble, and no money to pay for advertising, their influence diminishes. It is absolutely a cause-and-effect relationship.
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We don't let them make active threats against black people, but we haven't otherwise repressed their rights to free speech. There was a KKK march near where my in-laws live around Halloween. They were granted the permits and everything with no fuss.
The local news made fun of them, though.
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If a people want to go to war, then let them go to war. If they are ultimately destroyed, it will be their own fault. We place far to much blame on leaders and are far too forgiving of the followers that enabled them. It is a form of scapegoating that ironically keeps those leaders in power. It is to their advantage that a population be considered blameless, because it enables their personal wars to be made in much the same way that corporate liability emboldens unethical business practices. The rank and fi
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That'd be all well and good if the only casualties in a war were the people who called for it. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
neither is getting bombed .. (Score:2)
Not at all, all the activists want is the ability to get rid of the government, like we do. And the activists in the far east wouldn't be so violent if they didn't keep geting bombed with US made phosphorus bombs [bbc.co.uk].
the eleventh commandment: thou shalt not criticize Israel
welcome to prison planet .. (Score:3, Informative)
--
"Freedom of speech without freedom of response is meaningless"
"Without privacy, there cannot be freedom. And without freedom, there cannot be personal or social growth"
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One other method of intimidation is the mass photographing of protectors by the Police Forward Intelligence Team
Unfortunately that was going on before 1984 in the city where I live. There used to be an annual "peace march" which was fully authorized and had city permits. It went over a bridge to the city core and the police would be up on the roof of a building beside the bridge trying to videotape every single face in the crowd (over 100,000 people one year).
For repression proper look elsewhere (Score:4, Interesting)
The worst internet censorship I saw (haven't been to all the countries in the area, mind) was actually in Tunisia where bogus MSIE error pages would be thrown back at me. In firefox. Not too long after the WSIS conference in fact, to ladle the irony on. Even sites like BoingBoing was blocked, but then I can kind of understand that :) Consider also, if facebook and social networking internet-style was so effective at fostering political opposition, there's be more successful grass-roots opposition in for example Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, etc.
There's been some arrests of bloggers in Egypt, but if you watch the Egyptian blogging community it's pretty clear they can get away with far more than many other countries. Wasn't there legislation being written in Italy that bloggers were to be held up against the same laws as journos?
In any case, with internet penetration being what it is in Egypt, even a very successful digital opposition campaign will only have limited effect on a national aggregate. I wonder if the traditional coffee shop networks or SMS for that matter (if you really want something technological to tout) as a vehicle for collective social action isn't orders of magnitude more effective.
Not to rant too hard (the blogging community there sprang from the LUG I helped set up, so I got to observe in a sense), but as an experiment in citizen media the Egyptian blogging community has at the very least outdone traditional media in one respect: sensationalising. I'd be careful where I dish out my kudos, Mr. New York Times. :)