The day part of the Internet died: Egypt goes dark

[giblets]

Uhh Albert, what exactly is your point?

[Fake Boris]

He's trying to say that poverty does not stimulate terrorism, because anyone earning more than $2/day is not poor.

[Hueij]

He's confirming my point. It's the middle class that is revolting.

[Hueij]

He's trying to say that poverty does not stimulate terrorism, because anyone earning more than $2/day is not poor.

Are you really that stupid?

[HalfLotus]

Of course it wouldn't happen in the US, the US isn't a dictatorship.

As Egypt goes offline US gets internet 'kill switch' bill ready

As Egypt's government attempts to crackdown on street protests by shutting down internet and mobile phone services, the US is preparing to reintroduce a bill that could be used to shut down the internet.

The legislation, which would grant US President Barack Obama powers to seize control of and even shut down the internet, would soon be reintroduced to a senate committee, Wired.com reported.
...

Senator Susan Collins, a co-sponsor of the bill, said that unlike in Egypt, where the government was using its powers to quell dissent by shutting down the internet, it would not.

[Al B. Sure!]

My point is that it's not the poor people revolting or the poor people who turn to extremism out of poverty.

I'm also bringing up the bigger point that everyone, especially the media, seems to have a misguided conception of The West vs The Rest, the rest consisting of poor exploited usually brown or yellow people. The fact of the matter is that while that may have been true in 1950 (and even then, I doubt it and the gap was recent even then [How much different were the lives of the typical American, Italian, Argentine, or Arab in 1850? 1900? 1930?]), the world has changed and there's a lot of 'in-between' now.

Egypt is one of the poorer of the Arab countries but its poverty rates and development are on par with or even better than most of Latin America.

This isn't a case of a Third World poor person revolt. This is the middle class of a middle-level country.

[Fake Boris]

Are you really that stupid?

Yes, absolutely.

[Al B. Sure!]

As Egypt goes offline US gets internet 'kill switch' bill ready

What the holy ****?

Amazing timing, Susan Collins!

[Fake Boris]

Anyone sincerely thinks that the US government wouldn't do that?

[Hueij]

Whoah! Looks like our Google overlords are doing something right. Most of what I heard is in Arabic, but still...

Edit: forgot the link... http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/...hopefully.html

[giblets]

Wary of Egypt Unrest, China Censors Web
By EDWARD WONG and DAVID BARBOZA
Published: January 31, 2011

Spoiler:

BEIJING — In another era, China’s leaders might have been content to let discussion of the protests in Egypt float around among private citizens, then fizzle out.

But challenges in recent years to authoritarian governments around the globe and violent uprisings in parts of China itself have made Chinese officials increasingly wary of leaving such talk unchecked, especially on the Internet, the medium some officials see as central to fanning the flames of unrest.

So the arbiters of speech sprang into action over the weekend. Sina.com and Netease.com — two of the nation’s biggest online portals — blocked keyword searches of the word “Egypt,” though the mass protests were being discussed on some Internet chat rooms on Monday. The use of “Egypt” has also been blocked on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.

Censoring the Internet is not the only approach. The Chinese government has also tried to get out ahead of the discussion, framing the Egyptian protests in a few editorials and articles in state-controlled news publications as a chaotic affair that embodies the pitfalls of trying to plant democracy in countries that are not quite ready for it — a line China’s leaders have long held.

The English-language edition of Global Times, a populist newspaper, ran an editorial on Sunday about the Tunisian and Egyptian protests with the headline “Color revolutions will not bring about real democracy.” Though Global Times is not the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party, the message of the editorial was consistent with official thinking, saying bluntly that whether democracy “is applicable in other countries is in question, as more and more unsuccessful examples arise.”

Some Chinese news organizations have also seized on the ambivalent American reaction to the Egyptian riots to underscore the hypocrisy of the United States in sometimes backing dictators over democracy. They argued that those who appear to be the greatest advocates of democracy sometimes have conflicted feelings about its spread, especially in the Middle East, where the United States fears the proliferation of populist radical Islam. China Youth Daily noted in an editorial on Sunday that “the increasing turmoil in Egypt is causing a ‘headache’ for the decision makers in Washington.”

Some of the news coverage of Egypt that has appeared in People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s main newspaper, and Xinhua, the official news agency, has focused on attempts by China to evacuate its citizens, simply leaving out the political discontent at the root of the unrest. Xiao Qiang, an adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and an expert on Internet censorship in China, said propaganda officials had recently ordered Chinese news organizations and Web sites to strictly follow Xinhua reports on Egypt.

But Mr. Xiao said some Internet forums were closely tracking the events in Egypt. “I can see the Egypt story being followed and discussed by active netizens everywhere — blogs, forums, social networking services like Kaixin and Renren,” he said. “It’s just not on the front page of major Web sites.”

The Chinese authorities’ efforts to censor and shape news on the Internet have evolved over the past few years, as they grappled with unrest during the Tibet riots in 2008 and protests against the Olympic torch relay. The authorities initiated a crackdown on pornography and other “harmful information,” including shuttering a popular liberal forum, soon after the release of Charter 08, an online manifesto calling for gradual democratic reforms that gathered thousands of signatures through e-mail.

Internet controls ramped up in late 2009, when officials observed how social networking sites and other forums helped inflame unrelated outbursts of protests and rioting in Iran and Xinjiang, the restive region in China’s west.

In an August 2009 article on the Iran protests, a monthly journal published by the central propaganda department warned of the challenge posed by sites like Twitter and Facebook, which the authorities had blocked days after riots in Xinjiang. In January 2010, after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced a new United States policy to counter online censorship abroad, an editorial published by People’s Daily charged that the United States had used the Internet — YouTube and Twitter in particular — to stir up “online warfare” against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president.

The Internet’s influence on the volatile events in Iran and Xinjiang “impacted the leadership like an earthquake,” said one media investor with high-level ties to China’s regulators who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of damaging that relationship.

The fact that social networking sites have fueled the protests in Egypt will no doubt spur Chinese officials to further scrutinize such sites. And they may be right to pay attention: Zhao Jing, a liberal Chinese blogger who goes by the name of Michael Anti, said that “it was amazing netizens on Twitter cared about Egypt so much” that they had begun drawing parallels between China and Egypt. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was being called Mu Xiaoping, a reference to Deng Xiaoping, who quashed the 1989 popular protests in Beijing, while Tahrir Square in Cairo was being compared to Tiananmen Square.

Yet, there are intellectuals in Beijing skeptical of any similar protests arising in China, mainly because this nation’s dynamic economy has given many Chinese hope for a better life.

“I don’t think dissemination of such news would cause unrest in China,” said Jia Qingguo, associate dean of international relations at Peking University. “Egypt is a different type of political regime from China. They are also not a socialist country. They have their own particular problems.”

China

[Dinner]

The whole idea that the riots across the Middle East are about democracy are naive, the real cause is the spike of commodity prices.

Well, yeah. It's only partially about the desire for democracy and a much bigger part is that food prices and the price of goods (such as clothing and furniture) has gone up largely due to increased demand in Asia. That's not to say that ending the tariffs and allowing free trade can't help to lower prices and thus help make people happier. Most Arab states have extremely highly regulated economies with the state controlling much if not most of the economy largely because the dictators don't want a group of wealthy people arising who might decide to join the opposition and work against the dictator. Something like 50% of Egypt's economy is state owned as Mubarak has nationalized the businesses of potential rivals (thus removing them from their money and preventing them from funding opposition efforts) plus the control allows the dictator to make people dependent upon his regime if they want work; join the opposition and lose your job. Privatizing state owned businesses, opening up free trade, and ending the huge amounts of red tape so that private business can take off will help lower unemployment in the long run and, since private businesses are responsive to market demand, help to raise incomes over the long haul. Now, there is a major difference between removing extreme amounts of regulation designed to prevent other people from gaining power against the dictator and the deregulation we see in the US were businesses essentially bribe politicians to remove much needed safety standards. The former is good to get rid of while the later is there for a valid public safety reason and so should stay in place.

[Dinner]

Wary of Egypt Unrest, China Censors Web
By EDWARD WONG and DAVID BARBOZA
Published: January 31, 2011

Spoiler:

BEIJING — In another era, China’s leaders might have been content to let discussion of the protests in Egypt float around among private citizens, then fizzle out.

But challenges in recent years to authoritarian governments around the globe and violent uprisings in parts of China itself have made Chinese officials increasingly wary of leaving such talk unchecked, especially on the Internet, the medium some officials see as central to fanning the flames of unrest.

So the arbiters of speech sprang into action over the weekend. Sina.com and Netease.com — two of the nation’s biggest online portals — blocked keyword searches of the word “Egypt,” though the mass protests were being discussed on some Internet chat rooms on Monday. The use of “Egypt” has also been blocked on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.

Censoring the Internet is not the only approach. The Chinese government has also tried to get out ahead of the discussion, framing the Egyptian protests in a few editorials and articles in state-controlled news publications as a chaotic affair that embodies the pitfalls of trying to plant democracy in countries that are not quite ready for it — a line China’s leaders have long held.

The English-language edition of Global Times, a populist newspaper, ran an editorial on Sunday about the Tunisian and Egyptian protests with the headline “Color revolutions will not bring about real democracy.” Though Global Times is not the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party, the message of the editorial was consistent with official thinking, saying bluntly that whether democracy “is applicable in other countries is in question, as more and more unsuccessful examples arise.”

Some Chinese news organizations have also seized on the ambivalent American reaction to the Egyptian riots to underscore the hypocrisy of the United States in sometimes backing dictators over democracy. They argued that those who appear to be the greatest advocates of democracy sometimes have conflicted feelings about its spread, especially in the Middle East, where the United States fears the proliferation of populist radical Islam. China Youth Daily noted in an editorial on Sunday that “the increasing turmoil in Egypt is causing a ‘headache’ for the decision makers in Washington.”

Some of the news coverage of Egypt that has appeared in People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s main newspaper, and Xinhua, the official news agency, has focused on attempts by China to evacuate its citizens, simply leaving out the political discontent at the root of the unrest. Xiao Qiang, an adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and an expert on Internet censorship in China, said propaganda officials had recently ordered Chinese news organizations and Web sites to strictly follow Xinhua reports on Egypt.

But Mr. Xiao said some Internet forums were closely tracking the events in Egypt. “I can see the Egypt story being followed and discussed by active netizens everywhere — blogs, forums, social networking services like Kaixin and Renren,” he said. “It’s just not on the front page of major Web sites.”

The Chinese authorities’ efforts to censor and shape news on the Internet have evolved over the past few years, as they grappled with unrest during the Tibet riots in 2008 and protests against the Olympic torch relay. The authorities initiated a crackdown on pornography and other “harmful information,” including shuttering a popular liberal forum, soon after the release of Charter 08, an online manifesto calling for gradual democratic reforms that gathered thousands of signatures through e-mail.

Internet controls ramped up in late 2009, when officials observed how social networking sites and other forums helped inflame unrelated outbursts of protests and rioting in Iran and Xinjiang, the restive region in China’s west.

In an August 2009 article on the Iran protests, a monthly journal published by the central propaganda department warned of the challenge posed by sites like Twitter and Facebook, which the authorities had blocked days after riots in Xinjiang. In January 2010, after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced a new United States policy to counter online censorship abroad, an editorial published by People’s Daily charged that the United States had used the Internet — YouTube and Twitter in particular — to stir up “online warfare” against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president.

The Internet’s influence on the volatile events in Iran and Xinjiang “impacted the leadership like an earthquake,” said one media investor with high-level ties to China’s regulators who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of damaging that relationship.

The fact that social networking sites have fueled the protests in Egypt will no doubt spur Chinese officials to further scrutinize such sites. And they may be right to pay attention: Zhao Jing, a liberal Chinese blogger who goes by the name of Michael Anti, said that “it was amazing netizens on Twitter cared about Egypt so much” that they had begun drawing parallels between China and Egypt. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was being called Mu Xiaoping, a reference to Deng Xiaoping, who quashed the 1989 popular protests in Beijing, while Tahrir Square in Cairo was being compared to Tiananmen Square.

Yet, there are intellectuals in Beijing skeptical of any similar protests arising in China, mainly because this nation’s dynamic economy has given many Chinese hope for a better life.

“I don’t think dissemination of such news would cause unrest in China,” said Jia Qingguo, associate dean of international relations at Peking University. “Egypt is a different type of political regime from China. They are also not a socialist country. They have their own particular problems.”

China

CNN had a piece on how Cuba was also trying to down play the unrest in the middle east. Apparently dictators get nervous when news about other dictators getting over thrown is spreading around.

[Dinner]

Albert, Most of North Africa is in desperate poverty and places like Pakistan, Yemen, and Oman are even worse off. We are talking about basic food and shelter issues here. Sure, there are some very well off oil states with pretty rotten economies papered over by export money made with oil sales but over all we are talking pretty darn poor and pretty damn repressed. The very fact that people riot over a $0.50 rise in the cost of bread should tell you that.

[SlowwHand]

Domino effect in progress.

Jordan's king fires Cabinet amid protests (AP)
AP - Jordan's King Abdullah II fired his government Tuesday in the wake of street protests and asked an ex-prime minister to form a new Cabinet, ordering him to launch immediate political reforms.