India "accidentally" cuts access to blogs
The Indian government is now saying it simply meant to block a small number of inflammatory blog postings, but that overeager ISPs went too far. ABC News reports this morning that in "scrambling" to comply with an order to block 17 anti-Muslim web sites, "some of India's Internet service providers have simply blocked users from looking at entire domains such as blogspot.com - and the thousands of blogs, or online web journals, hosted there."
When it comes to censorship, bloggers are a touchy and enterprising lot. "Since I don't feel like linking to an mp3 of a wakeup call let me write this in caps - this is CENSORSHIP," wrote Neha Viswanathan who has been following the situation at withandwithout.com. "If this isn't censorship, I don't know what it is." Boing Boing has also joined the fray, offering a clearing house for rumors as well as strategies for "routing around" the blockage. The government's response to the response has also been swift. In an email message sent to Columbia University journalism professor Sree Srinivasan, A.R. Ghanashyam, India's Deputy Consul in New York describes the inadvertent blocking of all blogs as "unfortunate" and says the "Department of Telecommunications have now clarified the issue and the error is being rectified and it is expected that normalcy in respect of blogs will soon be restored." Of course, that does leave the question of whether the blogs actually targeted really did "create serious law and order problems," as Ghanashyam and the Indian government have maintained. Opinions anyone? We should encourage anti-terrorist blogs, not discourage them. Islam has been overtaken by terrorists and is no longer a religions but is a terrorist political entity, deserving every disgust and maximum anti-terror blogging. India should be ashamed for censoring the anti-terrorist blogs
supposedly, the blogs said inflammatory things about the prophet muhammad, islam, etc.
given the experiences of the scandinavians after the cartoon fiasco, this was a bit of cowering to pressure/fear...unfortunate the larger issues in my mind are: 1. should india discourage this type of 'dialogue' albeit hateful...or should anyone for that matter censor something for fear of fanatical/irrational reprisals from extremists? 2. islam and its believers can barely co-exist with each other so is there any hope they can live amicably and productively in a non-sectarian environment? depending on where you are, my $.02 or 2 paisa for your thoughts rgds, mr natwarlal desi diarrhea http://www.desidiarrhea.blogspot.com The originally targeted blogs were anti-Muslim. The Indian government was afraid that these would create tentions between Muslims and Hindus. The government needs to create more clear standards than indulge in painting with a broad brush (which some of the sites also do).
One wonders whether it's better to restrict expression through blogs as it happened in India or to allow them only to snoop on them as it is supposedly done in the US. Seems like the Indian government is tripping over its heels in trying minimize the after effects of the bomb blasts. Voicing of opinions against perceived support for such dastardly acts are nothing but natural phenomenon of the human behavior, portrayed in this case thru blogs. However, controls on opinions thru access restrictions blocking of sites does little to diminish people's anguish as it restricts one of mediums for debate. Moreover, India does claim itself to be a democracy that allows freedom of speech. This is another misguided effort fuelled by improper communication that puts India on the same parallel as China or any other restrctive regime.
More censorship worldwide. In Germany, Ernst Zundel is on trial and David Irving in jail for Freedom of Speech.
In the US, the book "America Deceived" by E.A. Blayre III is forced off Amazon and Wikipedia and the gov't cages peaceful protestors. And now India joins the fray by censoring the internet. Free Speech is on its last legs. Final link (before Google Books is censored): http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?&isbn=0-595-38523-0 this is typical of the stalinist congress govt ruling india today. some of the websites they have targetted are
princesskimberley.blogspot.com exposingtheleft.blogspot.com see if these websites are inflammatory. these retards are after muslim votes. sounds like china and google to me.
Hey blogs are there for us people. But if it gets out of hand, then you need to find a way to control it. So big deal government shut it down. We use to have freedom to chat on chat lines but it was also shut shown because of some fools went out of control. Just say to yourself: Do I really need to say what I say? And then everything is fine.
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