Pakistan Degrades Wikipedia, Warns of Complete Block Over 'Sacrilegious' Content (techcrunch.com) 261
Pakistan has "degraded" Wikipedia in the country for 48 hours for not removing "sacrilegious contents" and warned of fully blocking the site if the online encyclopedia fails to comply with the directions. From a report: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, the nation's telecom regulator, said Wednesday afternoon that it had approached Wikipedia to block or remove certain "blasphemous" contents by issuing court orders, but said the online encyclopedia neither complied nor appeared before the authority. If the "intentional failure" on Wikipedia's part persists, the regulator will move to block the online encyclopedia within the country, it warned.
Another idea (Score:2, Funny)
Someone should remove Pakistan from the map
Re:Another idea (Score:5, Funny)
India has joined the chat.
Re:Another idea (Score:5, Funny)
No, I do not need an extended car warranty.
No I will not buy you gift cards.
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No, I do not need an extended car warranty.
No I will not buy you gift cards.
When I bought my first car I asked about what happened to the loan if the car was in an accident and written off before I'd finished paying for it. Apparently, I'd have to finish paying off the loan. Then they muttered something about GAP insurance, "but no one bothers with that". So I got it. Only a couple of hundred dollars on the top of the price I was looking at anyway.
Then, after I'd lost my job and was looking at having to surrender the car and still have about $15000 left to pay... I had a (totally g
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When the car you owed $15k on was totalled, it wasn't worth nothing, and you had to have it insured anyway. Gap insurance only covers the diference between the market value (ish) that your regular auto insurance company must pay and what you owe on it. Generally, these numbers aren't too far apart, and if you put down a substantial downpayment or made some extra payments, the insurance payout should exceed what you owe on it, making the gap insurance useless and a waste of money, which is why it's so cheap
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India has joined the chat.
This is now a designated thread.
Re:Another idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Florida is going down the same path with lots of restrictions on what you can do or say and especially teach in school.
Re:Another idea (Score:5, Insightful)
If all Floridians think all they need is just 4th grade education, well, I feel bad for the future of Florida.
Bu go ahead and pretend ignorance is better. That's always been a winning strategy...
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Except they also want to force students to take classes on "Western Civilization [alligator.org]".
Aside from the basics, students shouldn't be forced to take classes they don't want or need, and likewise they shouldn't be prevented from taking classes they want.
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Re:Another idea (Score:4, Funny)
Except they also want to force students to take classes on "Western Civilization [alligator.org]".
Aside from the basics, students shouldn't be forced to take classes they don't want or need, and likewise they shouldn't be prevented from taking classes they want.
Don't be stupid; you don't want kids to turn out like you, do you?
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Except they want to cut back on science too. Need to be home schooled so that they don't hear about things like evolution, vaccines, or contraceptives. There is a strong believe that has been around a long time, that is constantly being proven wrong, that if you don't teach kids about things you disapprove of that the kids will never hear about them. Such as: Eliminate all mentions of LGBTQ+X and then the kids will 100% all grow up straight, modest, moderate, and have sex only for procreation. Eliminate
Lets get Pakistan to degrade /. (Score:5, Insightful)
So here goes:
Fuck Allah. Fuck Allah. Mohammed was a child raping towelhead who got high on Khat in the desert. His hallucinations was not a divine vision.
And just to make clear that we are are not anti-Muslim bigots, Fuck Christ and Fuck Buddha too.
Look I am all for respecting other people, but this Muslim bullying is just BS. If they do not respect my beliefs I am goin to do the same to them.
So here goes again. Fuck Allah. And his mother. Twice on a Sunday.
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Your holy book says so. This is your perfect leader that we can't even look at because he's so perfect. What's wrong, do you not think that's perfect of him? Or are you just mad that the rest of the world thinks that's a disgusting fucked-up person to worship?
What a surpriseâ¦. (Score:5, Funny)
A deity that requires national governments to defend it does sound rather weakâ¦
Re:What a surpriseâ¦. (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. Or rather very much made up.
Re:What a surpriseâ¦. (Score:5, Interesting)
Why do you think any deity needs this? Sounds more like a man/men of poor faith, unwilling to let the unknowable plan work out as it should, and taking it upon themselves to intervene. Which is a far bigger blasphemy than some words they don't like in a website.
BTW, I am not religious at all, but I understand the concepts behind it - most atheists don't, and take simplistic digs at it like your post.
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I've never seen any evidence of that happening at a national scale.
History is however full of governments using religion (or other philosophies such as capitalism, communism, socialism, etc) as cover for growing and consolidating their own worldly power. Most of them in fact.
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> A deity that requires national governments to defend it does sound rather weak
But He has to manage billions of planets full of immoral liberals, so needs the help of chosen mortals with funny hats & robes.
Re:What a surpriseâ¦. (Score:5, Funny)
And for some reason always needs more money
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And for some reason always needs more money
Well the God I believe in isn't short of cash, mister. - Bono
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A deity that requires national governments to defend it does sound rather weakâ¦
Yeah but, if Muslims don't show outrage over stuff like this, they get to go to hell. So thats an incentive eh.
It isn't as if God can't defend Himself, just that he likes to use this sort of thing as an excuse to torment His faithful.
Screw 'em (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah, I doubt Wikipedia is going to miss the Pakistan traffic much.
Re:Screw 'em (Score:5, Insightful)
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...the religious nutjobs you mention are making things worse for the people they have authority over. It's awful and I wish something could be done about it.
Something can be done about it. But not from the outside. The people who are being run over roughshod have to decide they're not going to take it anymore. That hasn't happened in Pakistan.
Christopher Hitchens spent a considerable amount of time in Pakistan, and related the time when a member of the family he was staying with asked him, "Why can't the Americans come in, depose the government, and leave?" The answer to that fills books with a tale of blood and tears, some of it from very recent history.
Here's an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
If your imaginary friend, who is all powerful as far as we know, is really offended by whatever is written in Wikipedia, I guess he should have the power to take care of business and shut it down.
If a god can't do what a normal human can, why bother worship it?
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If a god can't do what a normal human can, why bother worship it?
Yep. And why even believe it exists.
But the deeply religious are not rational. Or mature. Or able to fact-check. The worst of the worst the human race has to offer.
Re:Here's an idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I try not to. At the very least I avoid doing things that have been pointed out to me as irrational that I also identify as irrational, and I don't go "but X said I should, so I do it anyway".
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Emotional self-conditioning, relaxation, focus. Entirely rational. Also, advancing your skills is entirely rational, especially with the observation of a lot of people being irrational on important questions.
If you think survival is not rational, however, then you probably need to look at this: Nihilism ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ) or this: Depression ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] )
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Or in charge of governments.
You don't climb to worldly power by believing in fairy tales. You use fairy tales to distract the gullible masses while you screw them over.
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> But the deeply religious are not rational [nor] able to fact-check
Part of it is they are often taught to pray and then trust their gut, a "soft" revelation from God(s).
That is an great overgeneralization. You will find some people that have a very well thought out position in most worldviews, both spiritual and atheist. And others that don't. I can think of one religion (less than a few hundred years old old) that encourages feelings over thinking as a fundamental way to prove God's existence to yourself. But the people I know tend to have solid reasons for their own decided worldview.
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> is all powerful...should have the power to...shut it down.
If Wikipedia's servers get baked by lightning within the next month, I'll join their sect.
Back to mortal affairs, WP should provide the ability to mark pages and sections (spans) for country-specific redactions. Yes, I know, censorship of religious criticism is bad policy, but we don't and can't make the rules of other countries, and many will continue to request region-specific redactions. Better than zero access to all of WP.
Re:Here's an idea (Score:4, Insightful)
No. Better would be if people got pissed at their religious nutjobs for screwing with their access to information.
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It might be better to put a disclaimer on the "problematic" content pages saying something along the lines of "Hey, if you are in Pakistan right now, your government says you can't see this page. So please go away now."
That should meet the letter of the requirement: IF the Pakistani people respect and obey their government, then they will not be exposed to the "problematic" content. IF they do not respect and obey their government, then that's not our problem.
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> Better would be if people got pissed at their religious nutjobs for screwing with their access to information.
Like that's an easy job. Here in the US, conservatives are getting LGBTQ-related library books banned.
If roughly half your population are zealots and conspiratorial nutjobs, they will often get their way, especially in red states.
Democracy: 51% of morons tell the 49% sane what to do.
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I thought it was Word Perfect...
Re:Here's an idea (Score:5, Informative)
They're trying to distract from actual problems [qz.com].
https://www.gisreportsonline.c... [gisreportsonline.com]
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Life is just a reality show, then he votes who gets to go to heaven or hell.
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Jeeze man, he's busy getting people a job, making their ex come back, or helping them pass exams. He doesn't even have time to stop pedophiles, how do you expect him to create a login and edit Wikipedia?
Oh well. (Score:2)
I tried to come up more, but that's the only real response.
Religion and facts... (Score:5, Insightful)
... are not a good mix.
If Wikipedia responded to all the demands from pressure groups around the world we wouldn't have much of an encyclopedia left. Obvious casualties would be anything relating to evolution, big chunks of history, geography of contested regions, some chemistry, and don't get me started on 'woke' topics. Hell, even the flat earthers might decide to demand that some articles be taken down.
If Pakistan decides that reading an encyclopedia is blasphemy that's their loss.
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You seem to be one of the (religious?) fuckups. Facts are not "values".
Re: Religion and facts... (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, I don't believe in magic. I'm also self-aware enough to know that I don't have all the answers and certainly not arrogant enough to tell another culture thousands of miles away from me that has existed for thousands of years longer than ours how they should live.
We're talking about Pakistan here. Culturally they're pretty new on the block, being based on Islam which is based on Christianity which is a mix of Judaism and Greek philosophy. Not that the age of their moronic culture is relevant to the evil it does.
They're also complete wankers. And being prepared to condemn shit cultures like theirs is why we got off our backsides and defeated the Nazis, not some age-related pissing contest in your head. Or would you not have presumed to tell Hitler where to get stick
Re: Religion and facts... (Score:4, Insightful)
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When the most revered leader of the religion is a documented pedophile, you are off to a very bad start.
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I'll defend Islam. Mostly because what people here in America believe is not what the religion teaches. We have literally been brainwashed into thinking the worlds LARGEST religion [snip]
Nope. [wikipedia.org] (Do I get extra points for linking to Wikipedia? :) )
Religion doing what it does best (Score:3, Insightful)
We believe in xyz, and you must too!
Religion is what empowers otherwise good people to commit atrocities and feel virtuous about doing so.
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My religion teaches that everybody has the right to say whatever they want about it.
Re:Religion doing what it does best (Score:5, Insightful)
Religion is what empowers otherwise good people to commit atrocities and feel virtuous about doing so.
I would strongly disagree that these people are "otherwise good". They are at best mindless tools that fail to act on their responsibility to carefully fact-check before they do anything drastic to anybody else. In my book that counts as evil, even if only in a helper-role.
Re:Religion doing what it does best (Score:4, Interesting)
Buddhism is generally far more peaceful than many other large religions because it focuses on self-improvement instead of "fixing" others. Thus, one can be religious without being a forceful dickhead, but I guess too many dig the power trip.
Some comedian asked, "If we are all Children of God, why does he want Offspring A to punch Offspring B so often? Some 'family values'."
Re:Religion doing what it does best (Score:5, Informative)
Buddhism is generally far more peaceful than many other large religions because it focuses on self-improvement instead of "fixing" others.
That all depends on who you're listening to. There have been militant buddhists (weird but true) and also the bible says to mind your own shit before hassling other people, but nobody seems to pay attention to that part.
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Buddhists are also known to attack people of other religions too. Some Buddhist countries are very protectionist, like Pakistan is with their religion. They are not exempt from human failures.
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Myanmar is a majority buddhist country, the dictator generals are buddhists too...
Religion is the same everywhere, used to manipulate the masses.
Blasphemy?? (Score:5, Informative)
"Blasphemy"?? What is this, the 1400s or something? I guess it is, in Pakistan.
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Definitely is. They just the other day included more offenses into that category, punishable by death, btw.
Re:Blasphemy?? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Blasphemy"?? What is this, the 1400s or something? I guess it is, in Pakistan.
It is the Islamic year 1444, in fact. So, yes (sorry if you knew this).
Maybe this article is on the 'naughty' list (Score:5, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Hmmm (Score:2, Insightful)
If an idea can't withstand criticism is it really an idea worth having?
Sucks for Pakistanis (Score:2)
Good luck with your theocrazy.
Dear religious fanatics of the world (Score:2)
Get over yourselves. Most people don't care and never will.
Extreme Christians sects admire this behavior. (Score:5, Insightful)
Too many large Muslin countries are giving in to their more extreme censorship sects that are just as extreme as some Christians sects in the US that hope to do exactly the same thing (to libraries, wikipedia, anything else that they can).
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On the other side, the courts have been upholding the right of an individual to hate gays, abortion, and birth control, liberals, the environment, and to just generally be a human piece of s*(t. As much as it annoys me, this falls under the sam
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I don’t know about that. https://www.politico.com/news/... [politico.com]
Imagine if this guy unrolled a prayer mat and faced Mecca on the 50 yard line. He’d be hanging from a tree. But since it’s the “right” deity it’s perfectly fine.
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I think some of this leads to disillusionment with democracy. As in, they did things the proper democratic way and it turns out that they're in the minority and they clearly made a mistake in not creating a theocracy in the first place so that they could ban independent thinkers (Methodists and Quakers and Catholics, oh my!). Pakistan clearly has dodged this bullet by not experimenting with dangerous ideas like freedom of speech and civil rights.
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The advantage of Christian sects is that there are so many of them. Sola scriptura set us free, the Sunnah unites Sunni Islam in a way protestant Christianity can never be (as does Talmud for jews). There is still a little room to manoeuvre within its limits, but far less.
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I got it now (Score:2)
That's why it looked to bad recently. And I am not even in Pakistan.
Walk on by. (Score:2)
Don't pay it another minute of thought. Write them off and move on.
Blasphemy laws (Score:3)
I reckon everyone should the right to be offended. Everyone should have the right to express their thoughts, beliefs, criticisms, humour, creativity, etc.. Causing offence & being offended have been a part of life since humans started cooperating & communicating with each other. Small, objectionable, easily offended, noisy minorities can make life very unpleasant for the majority. They're the reason we can't have a lot of nice things. But there's also things like racism, sexism, xenophobia, incitement, & hate speech in general. With blasphemy laws it's possible to protect hate speech, so how do we deal with that?
If we don't learn to deal with it constructively & fairly, it'll severely degrade everyone's quality of life. So how do we deal with this?
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Darn... (Score:2)
Is this the same Pakistan that... (Score:4, Insightful)
gave shelter to Osama Bin Laden for years?
Fuck 'em. Cut them off from anything useful in the rest of World and let their society prosper exactly as they wish. There's only so many trillions of dollars that western nations can waste encouraging them to be safe modern liberal democracies - change has to come from within.
Self contradiction (Score:2)
Re:Cowardly reporting (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know why you are blaming the reporting. The report read "The regulator did not elaborate on what content it had asked Wikipedia to remove." The Reporter doesn't know what content is inappropriate because no one told them.
Fear of truth? Inability to disprove lies? (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't figure out the motivation of the FP, but it was vacuous and diversionary. And you chose to propagate the Subject.
My initial reaction to the topic was different, more along the lines of "If you are sure your religious beliefs are true, then why are you so afraid of anything Wikipedia says?" The real fear is that your faith is too weak? Later in this discussion there are some tangential references related to gawds, but mostly the pickings were slim.
My best guess might be that the Pakistani religious leaders don't believe there is such a thing as NPV. You're either fully with them and completely believe exactly the same religious BS as they do, or you're some kind of devilish monster! And using Wikipedia for your Satanic work!
Just reading The Crimean War by Orlando Figes. Still in the early parts where he's writing about the religious foundations of the conflict. Apostasy was a capital crime in the Ottoman Empire until 1844. Gawd says "No backsies! And how!" Websearch says there are only six such countries now, but blasphemy is punishable by death in more countries, and it's often linked to apostasy. (Most of them appear to be Muslim nations, but I didn't study the entire list in detail.)
You think the root of this particular problem might have been the British decision to create religion-based countries? Motivated by a calculated preference for the subcontinent to be weak and divided if the Brits couldn't continue ruling it. Things got pretty hot and secular back in the old days...
Re:Fear of truth? Inability to disprove lies? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fear of truth? Inability to disprove lies? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ali Jinnah: "We shall have India divided or India destroyed.".
Under Modi maybe Jinnah was right, although Pakistan has always been a mess.
The British actually ruled India fairly well. Worst aspect was allowing Indian Rajas to continue to control large parts of the the country.
Re: (Score:3)
My initial reaction to the topic was different, more along the lines of "If you are sure your religious beliefs are true, then why are you so afraid of anything Wikipedia says?" The real fear is that your faith is too weak?
All religions are too weak. Since man makes God in his own image, it is humans who can't take the heat in that kitchen.
Re:Cowardly reporting (Score:5, Insightful)
Christ on a crutch, anything could be considered "sacrilegious" such as this very comment. There is no "valid" claim. Wiki has an entire article on Piss Christ [wikipedia.org] a work of "art" that was specifically designed to be sacrilegious and/or troll Christians and guess what? You can read it in any Christian country. I bet the Pope can even read it in the Vatican. Too many Muslims are just a bunch of snowflakes. They need to get over it.
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That just rings back to the old joke about how many google results you get by searching "muslims outraged..."
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For Christians outraged, I got About 20,800,000 .
For atheists outraged I got About 2,840,000 results
I think I'll stick with the atheists - much less outrage.
Re: Cowardly reporting (Score:2)
Designed to be blasphemous? On the page you link to the artist is quoted "I meant neither blasphemy nor offense by it."
Re: Cowardly reporting (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Cowardly reporting (Score:5, Informative)
Designed to be blasphemous? On the page you link to the artist is quoted "I meant neither blasphemy nor offense by it."
Riiight.
I mean, I despise Christianity as much as the next man but that was clearly an attempt to provoke anger. If he says otherwise he's a liar.
Re: Cowardly reporting (Score:3)
Bleh, Christians not Christmas
Re: Cowardly reporting (Score:4)
What member of the democratic party "lost their shit" over images of Mohammed?
Oh right that did not happen.
And I am positive that the NEA did not ask Democrats when they issued the 30k grant for Maplethorpe's show (the grant was for the show not any specific piece of art). Do you actually know any real facts about the issue?
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Hey now, don't go blaming "Muslims" for the actions of an authoritarian government that's no more Muslim than the US far right is Christian.
When a government (or faction therein) wraps itself in a religious (or any other) flag it's *always* because they want to deflect criticism for the ways they're maintaining and expanding their power, NOT because they're in any way aligned with the religion.
Kinda like how the U.S. claims to be a capitalist country, or even more ridiculously how China and the USSR claimed
Re:Cowardly reporting (Score:4, Informative)
Hey now, don't go blaming "Muslims" for the actions of an authoritarian government that's no more Muslim than the US far right is Christian.
The problem is that we have some conflicting ideologies.
Freedom of religion is important in the west. We allow people to practice whatever religion they want.
Ok, but what if that religion commands that you kill non-believers? Well then we say you can practice your religion *BUT NOT THAT PART OF YOUR RELIGION*.
That's all well and good but there's a point where what one is allowed to practice simply is a shell of what it was, and so you have to accept that either the entire religion has to be reformed or its simply not compatible with modern society.
Adherents to Islam, as part of that reform, have to accept that other people can and do have free reign to criticize or ridicule the religion as a whole or any particular figure in the religion. Followers of the religion also must be free to no longer follow the religion. The same is true for any other religion.
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You can take a single line out of any religious text and use that to make them monsters. But when you take them in context they can mean very different things. When taken in context that commonly quoted line is about self defense and not going around killing non-believers.
Context matters.
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Yeah, it's mostly the crazy zealots causing problems, but that's the same in every religion.
I think yes, that’s true, but it’s more extensive and insidious a problem than just crazy zealots. You see, when your world view is not fact based, and you are 100% convinced you’re right, you become a threat to society proportional to the difference between reality and belief. So for example, instead of looking scientifically at the problem of when a fertilized egg becomes a full fledged human with rights the side that believes it was issued a soul by god and ignores or is ignorant of f
Re:Cowardly reporting (Score:4, Informative)
In the very article you link to, it describes how religious groups sought to have piss christ denounced or banned, and how copies were intentionally vandalised by religious groups.
There are plenty of extreme christians who would advocate for such works to be banned, the only difference is the level of influence religion has over the government.
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And in that regard, they are no different than anything else.. or shall I refer you to the hundreds of "outrage" and "this must change" from the US over similar things. (anyone remember the supposed "war on christmas"? Gays? pretty much anything to do with race? abortion?).. Same shit, different hand flinging it..
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Uh, because anything that is sacrilegious shouldn't be banned. They didn't even say it's things proven false, they only said it's sacrilegious which means it offends religious sentiments. Being offensive isn't a valid standard for removal of content.
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So what is this "sacrilegious contents"? How can we judge if Pakistan's claims are valid or not?
Just showing people what the sacrilegious content was would be sacrilegious!
So, no.
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