How Ugandans Overturned an Election-Day Blackout of Social Media Apps (vice.com) 54
tedlistens writes: When Ugandans went to the polls last Thursday in presidential and parliamentary elections, they participated in the most heavily-contested political battle since multiparty democracy began in 2005. As reports swirled of vote buying and excessive use of force by the police on opposition protesters, it was the attempt to block access to Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and mobile phone-based money services that produced the loudest reactions. In a country with the youngest population in the world, where 77 percent of the population is under 30 years of age, mobile apps have become vital to communication and commerce. During the three-day ban, an estimated 1.5 million citizens, or 15 percent of the internet-using populace, downloaded VPN software and Tor to reroute their internet connections and return to social media, where discussion about the election continued to rage.
Survival of the fittest (Score:3, Interesting)
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Yeah? Let's see it get around the ISP that cuts you off or the TLA that jams your wifi.
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Sneaker net and bluetooth AP.
Re: uganda FTW (Score:5, Funny)
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Dial down the paranoia. Just like the Republicans with President Obama this terror of an individual is uncalled for. No matter who is president he doesn't act in a vacuum. Trump will have to suffer under the same limits of power that all his predecessors labored under. President Obama managed to ram through his health care bill over all objections only because his party had control of both the House and Senate. He's also spent the rest of his presidency paying the bill for it as it caused a reversal in
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Possibly the best thing that could come out of Trump or Sanders becoming President would be the radical snipping of the 'Executive Privileged' virus that would ensue. The creeping power of the Executive Branch has grown for decades. I see Congress and the Courts snipping that stuff off instantly when the Trump or Sanders administration takes control. They can stay in charge of the Post Office and the Army. Lots of other stuff can go.
I have this dream of Office Furniture and Equipment companies going ban
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> The creeping power of the Executive Branch has grown for decades.
Hardly. The presidents authority has been regularly limited by Congress. When you say "other stuff", do you include, for example the Department for Transportation, including the Federal Aviation Authority? I don't think I'd like to see the states managing US airspace and aircraft thanks very much.
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You think a Trump or a Sanders is going to stop Executive overreach?
How do you think they're going to get their programs in place?
Sanders is more likely to work with Congress than Trump, but there's a lot of hostility to both in Congress.
Sanders is a bit more of a humble sort, but even he will probably need to get "creative" to make any of his programs have any traction. Trump will just declare that Congress is "low energy" and proceed to attempt to rule by decree.
No. None of our candidates is going to sh
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Rumor has it that the Mexicans will soon be eager to pay for and build the wall. All the jobs are moving down there and they'll need a wall to keep work-seeking Americans out.
Yeah, they may have their social media, so what (Score:3, Interesting)
They're not exactly a liberal bunch [ebar.com]. Even with all the fraud, the incumbents still have a lot of support.
Also it looks like there was lots of help from the Department of State, so let's not get all excited about this being a 'grassroots' effort or anything.
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So, they need to agree with your far-left political views to be good people? WTF? Where did that even come from?
The Department of State helped in the color revolutions too, so what's your point? Tunisia is free today because of it, and the Arab Spring was a great win for both the US President and the Secretary of State.
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Re: Yeah, they may have their social media, so wha (Score:2)
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Oh fuck off already. You obviously think it is a-okay that they hold those views, otherwise you wouldn't have railed against someone who denounced them. And playing the "but you're the real bigot" card is a tacit admission of having no defense.
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The difference is the latter group doesn't exist, because the LGBTQ community can't destroy the civilization because how in the heck could it possibly do that even
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I think that his point is that we are constantly told to respect the beliefs of other cultures, that does not appear to extend to those things that are objectionable to current thought from the same people. So, effectively, "tolerance" becomes a word used to berate people who don't have the same idea of what is "tolerable" as others.
The Spanish conquerors thought it was obscene that the Aztecs would sacrifice thousands on an altar for their religious beliefs, but yet today, much is made about how Spain wer
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:-) Heh. Good troll! But your bait is just not that attractive this time around.
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Even with all the fraud, the incumbents still have a lot of support.
It's amazing how much support you can drum up with a few lowloaders of youths brandishing bats and encouraging the populace to give them your vote.
Whats that old saying (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a perfect example.
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Anyone remember who first said "The Internet interprets censorship as a fault and routes around it" or something to that effect? This is a perfect example.
John Gilmore bud
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What's so bad (Score:4, Insightful)
What's so bad that the incumbents decided it was better to piss everyone off by banning social media than let them talk about it?
I might be a cynic (Score:3)
If you look at the map, an awful lot of African countries have long straight borders that look like they were created by someone in London or Paris with no thought for the realities on the ground.
It's entirely possible that I don't really understand Africa either, but I've often thought that the best thing would be to scrap every country on the continent, and divide the place up along ethnic lines. I know that would hardly be trouble free, but there might at least a chance for some sort of peace in the place.
his critics now charge that Museveni manipulates the military to keep a firm grip on power.
Yeah, well, it's Africa
Besigye, a retired army colonel
So probably no better than the last guy
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Upon the founding of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1963, when the continent was being decolonized, the first resolution adopted by the Africans themselves was that the white man's borders would not be changed.
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When I visited Uganda in 2012, there was a state visit from the Rwandan President, which was a big event - there was a ceremony that was televised where the Ugandan President and the Rwandan President gave each other medals to celebrate the end of the Rwandan civil war, and both men were in full military dress uniform with a chest full of medals.
It struck me then that you only ever see that from governments which are, for want of a better word, somewhat "suspect". Even my Ugandan friends admit that there i
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Much of Africa is effectively in the stage of political development where Europe was a few centuries ago. In Europe, all of this was accepted because there were Kings and Kings needed Crown Princes.
The problem with Africa today is that we have sort of made them call themselves Presidents, but they want to be Kings, and their people treat them similarly. They never had the tribalism beat out of them by long and hard experience, so they're still effectively acting like tribes who have chiefs and kings.
Ugand
The internet interprets censorship as damage... (Score:1)
west's exaggerated notion of power of media (Score:5, Insightful)
if we stick to facts as opposed to hype, we learn that while use of methods to go round the blocked media increased, it did not change much. nor should it.
same thing happened after the so called 'arab spring', all those stories about westernized arab liberals chasing away mubarak using social media. (some western media even calling it the twitter revolution.) then parties representing them got very little votes, while muslim brotherhood and other islamist parties won big. and then military took back the power.
westerners have highly exaggerated notion of power of media, in their own countries and elsewhere. in their minds success of unwanted politicians, whether they be foreign 'dictators', or local right/left wingers, are due mainly to propaganda for them, and/or censorship of opponents, through media. not so.
people and issues are more complex than that.
Election-Day (Score:1)
"Evely day."
chaussure nike air jordan pas cher (Score:1)
bye freedom of speech (Score:1)