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Wikipedia blocked in Turkey

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Re: Wikipedia blocked in Turkey

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of western Europe, we should care because we don't have internal OR external border controls, and Turkey is a neighboring country with a lot of refugees to dump on us. I wish I understood why there isn't a move to reinstate border checks in the Schengen area. It seems ludicrous to me to keep internal borders open when it is clear that the external borders have failed.

All borders should be abolished. No human being has the right to tell any other human being where he can or can't go (with the exception of trespassing on private property, of course).

>(with the exception of trespassing on private property, of course).

This ought to be removed too, along with the whole concept of property.

Re: Wikipedia blocked in Turkey

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of people care, but what are we supposed to do about it? Here in Europe Erdogan makes the headlines from time to time, right before the referendum he made several speeches where he called the politicians of multiple countries "descendants of nazis" and similar. Everybody knows that he cares more about suppressing the Kurds than ISIS. He holds Europe hostage by threatening to release large amounts of refugees i…

I think we should stop communicating from the top. Many problems right now are because heads of state, not necessarily people. Erdogan, Putin ... We should try to get real people to talk, about who they are, what they want (peace ? surely .. war ? not so sure). So peoples in every nation start to avoid the national/patriot filter when thinking and voting.

Real people rarely want war, they all want the same basic things: food and shelter, a good future for their kids, and to live in peace. This is universal over the whole world, unless they've had their minds poisoned by leaders with their own agendas, be it political or religious.

However, most people also don't really care that much about other people, especially in other countries. So they elect people to handle that for them, and then believe what they're told. Mark Twain's quote "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness" seems fitting. With modern tech you can communicate with people all over the world without traveling (I'm in my underwear in Sweden right now for instance), which helps widening the gap between the "liberal elite" and the rest who feel left behind or that their country is taken away from them.

One thing that contradicts that in a way is the fact that a majority of the expat Turks living in Europe voted for the new referendum giving Erdogan much more power. More than 63% voted yes in Germany for instance.

Re: Wikipedia blocked in Turkey

#123
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be implying that because they're Muslim but not really Islamic and very western that it's somehow not desirable for them to become more Islamic. How about you let them decide what's good for themselves? Why is it scary just because it's Islamic? I detect racist undertones in your post. And I don't think much of Erdogan at all, and how he thinks censorship is cool. But you don't get to start deciding what'…

I like that you think people living under dictators "decide for themselves".

They can. Revolution is an option too. "Decisions" do not begin and end with a paper ballot; ultimately, everyone is human and can be ousted from power or killed by an angry mob.

"The army" that would defend him are countrymen; the wealthy who help maintain the status quo are a much wider group of individuals whose interests can be led to differ from his own.

That said, I do not think it should have to come to violence. If "the 49%" are steadfast and "the 51%" are beginning to doubt, calls could be organized for another referendum or neutral third party arbitration or such. The EU or UN would at minimum have something to justify a closer look. Though I haven't been following this too closely, so maybe it's too late idk.

Re: Wikipedia blocked in Turkey

#124

Consider if you will - a diffrent approach to infrastructure altogether. There are no cables, no centralized Servers - just wifi capable devices. How does it route, i hear you asking? It routes by likelihood of connection to social plankton. Social plankton is every group your device ever connects to- and is constituted by those members of the group, which who can gather the most "Yes"-votes about theire prediction,…

I believe you're on to something, and there is a technical solution here. (Mainly I believe that because it's something I've been saying for years )

Here in the states, the NSA was allowed to view data on telephone calls 3 or 4 levels out from a terrorist. So, for instance, if a terrorist called A, and A called B, and B called C, and so on? The NSA could track C or D.

The argument against that is that it would cover something like 80 or 90% of the population.

Well, there you go. Assume one trillion connected devices and each device is accessible through a "path" of connected devices over 4 or 5 hops, with a percentage_success and average_network_lag time tracked for each path.

Add in a few GB of buffering and the requirement that every connected device use up 10-20% of its bandwidth on public, anonymous access, and you've got a mesh system that's decentralized.

The only other limit I'd add is probably some kind of rules to prevent DDOSing, say a 64Kb message size and a few other things like that.

It's just a math problem.

Re: Wikipedia blocked in Turkey

#125

I think 2016 will go down as the high water mark for a global Internet. I see a lot of countries looking at the success of China in keeping political control, and the failure of Egypt, Tunisia, etc where the open Internet was used to overthrow the regime and deciding that allowing an open, free internet is not in their best interests. If you think that Western, liberal democracies are exempt from this, just look at t…

I think it's cyclical-- remember the original consumer internet was based on portals such as MiniTel, CompuServe, AOL, Prodigy, then the portal concept shifted to a search/Google based "portal" as people wanted content access outside of the curated portal content. Walled garden devices are pretty irrelevant though because unless that wall blocks the internet, there is little effect. Current walled gardens are about a…

>> so device walled gardening has nothing to do with information access generally.

I disagree, on iOS specifically you have no practical way to install/sideload your own applications and thus what you can and can not do is wholly controlled by Apple. Applications determine what parts of the Internet you can actually use.

My impression of "Fake News" is that it is a new push for political correctness and censorship in news publications, while it does not improve things like the quality, transparancy and trustworthiness of sources and references of news.

It could also be interpreted as a push for platform control; if you want to influence people using our platform, fucking pay for it!

Re: Wikipedia blocked in Turkey

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read through a few definitions of the word "censorship", just now, and I don't think any of them make this particular distinction.

There is a distinction between open government and censorship. Not releasing information is different than banning people from sharing information. It's related, but definitely not the same as censorship.

The problem is this treats the government as a single entity with a uniform will: yes, if you do that, then the government is merely failing to act rather than deliberately censoring anything.

However the government isnt a single entity, it is many smaller kingdoms. And The King is censoring one of his princes internally: preventing the EPA from releasing data it would like to.

Re: Wikipedia blocked in Turkey

#127
post #31

I'm a canuck who has worked with Turks and has visited Turkey. They're a wonderful people from a beautiful country with a real problem of a person in power. Turkey is almost entirely Muslim, yet they produce alcohol and tolerate its consumption within their borders, even by their own people. Let that fact sink in for a moment. Erdogan is subverting the premier secular democracy of the Islamic world, but nobody seems…

I think a major issue with Turkey is that there is a large non-secular voting bloc. Historically, that has been kept in check by periodic coupes by the Kemalist military. However, Erdogan has succeeded in taming the military (as demonstrated vividly by the failed coupe). Thus, the non-secular voting bloc has escaped the historic check. I am afraid, Turkey will become less secular in the next few years. In addition, t…

Bingo! It also seems that the quantity of secular bloc is lesser than that of the non-secular bloc. Apart from the military, Erdogan has also tamed the judicial system.

Re: Wikipedia blocked in Turkey

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a 49% in Turkey, and then there is 51%. 51 won and this happened.

We need to introduce some sort of minority action in democracy. The smaller pluralities should not be powerless against the majority... The problem there I suppose would be neutral arbitration. sigh

Or something like proportional representation, maybe?

Re: Wikipedia blocked in Turkey

#129
post #31

I'm a canuck who has worked with Turks and has visited Turkey. They're a wonderful people from a beautiful country with a real problem of a person in power. Turkey is almost entirely Muslim, yet they produce alcohol and tolerate its consumption within their borders, even by their own people. Let that fact sink in for a moment. Erdogan is subverting the premier secular democracy of the Islamic world, but nobody seems…

>> People in the West need to wake up and do their due diligence on [whatever] regime. Yep, because that is what happened with the Eastern-Europian regimes in 1956 and 1969. History repeats itself.

It's this mode of thinking that tbh kills democracies, both internally and externally. The idea that just because you're struggling, your problems are someone else's problems.

We see it here (and elsewhere) with people continually calling for and hoping for politicians to "do the right thing" rather than organize themselves (unless it's to do something easy like stand around holding signs) and think through new reforms to then push for (we even have the article 5 mechanism designed explicitly for that); we see it elsewhere with "Where is the West, why isn't anyone helping" as they forget we have literally neither mandate nor motive to solve their problem for them, and problems of our own besides.

Yes, we will likely intervene on certain actions anyways to preclude all-out wars if they loom. But if it gets to that point it will only be insofar as it protects us or defuses that war; liberation and organization is still ultimately a people's own problem we literally have no business butting into.

Re: Wikipedia blocked in Turkey

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we should stop communicating from the top. Many problems right now are because heads of state, not necessarily people. Erdogan, Putin ... We should try to get real people to talk, about who they are, what they want (peace ? surely .. war ? not so sure). So peoples in every nation start to avoid the national/patriot filter when thinking and voting.

Real people rarely want war, they all want the same basic things: food and shelter, a good future for their kids, and to live in peace. This is universal over the whole world, unless they've had their minds poisoned by leaders with their own agendas, be it political or religious. However, most people also don't really care that much about other people, especially in other countries. So they elect people to handle tha…

I have a lot to say to and ask you, but right now I'll say you're right.

Nobody wants war, but in most context people don't feel the need to handle their lives either. Democracy re-emerges after wars because the people felt hard and had to suffer and wake up, so now it's obvious and easier to act for peace and democracy.

Seems like societies just have a MTBF of 50 years and after that war acts as a reset button.

ps: travel quote is neat

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