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Iraq introduces nightly internet curfew

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Re: Iraq introduces nightly internet curfew

#131

Post by htfu »

mc32 wrote: post #28
htfu wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not actually a conflict zone.

Sectarian violence isn’t a conflict zone? Northern Ireland wasn’t a conflict zone?

I’d say a conflict zone is an area of at least semi-active clashes. Sectarian violence may or may not cut it - were Nazi concentration camps conflict zones?

I’m not saying it’s safe or anything, but Baghdad was spared ISIS, the former green zone is open to the public, compared to what most of the rest of the country has seen these past few years I fail to see how you’d classify it as a conflict zone.

Re: Iraq introduces nightly internet curfew

#132

Post by lolsal »

aaronmdjones wrote: post #118
lolsal wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate?

Lack of competition, poor customer service, high prices, regulatory capture, lobbying preventing cities and municipalities developing their own service, price fixing, ISPs that take lump sums and tax rebates from the government for "infrastructure development and expansion" that don't materialise, lack of net neutrality, ... ?

Are we talking about Technology or Politics? As far as technology goes, it's not actually far from a 'highly-developed' country, right? Gigabit in some places (and growing), really decent broadband in others. Free wifi is ubiquitous, cellular technology is also really decent in places like the frontier states - Eastern Oregon, Montana, etc. Not to mention lots of actual technical hardware and software development happens in the US like Loon[1] and Starlink[2]. On the software side stuff like HTTP/2[3], AMP(for better or worse)[4], Chrome, Firefox, etc. originated in the US, didn't it? I'd argue the US is the most 'highly-developed' country for Internet technology, but I'm biased since I am from the US.

If you're just complaining about politics, I won't argue.

1: https://x.company/projects/loon/ 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_(satellite_constellat... 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP/2 4: https://developers.google.com/amp

Re: Iraq introduces nightly internet curfew

#133

Post by wbronitsky »

Y_Y wrote: post #9

Obviously this is wrong and tyrannical etc. I can't help wondering though if this may have unexpected benefits for e.g.: sleep quality, civility in online discussions, exercise. It's hardly intended that way, but could end up being a net benefit for the well-being of citizens, particularly if it were implemented in a highly-developed country like the US.

If I read this correctly, your post can be summarized as: "Disclaimer, people should have rights... yadda yadda yadda. But..... would it be so bad if they didn't have rights?"

I, for one, don't care at all about the positive externalities of taking away people's rights, nor do I see the merit in discussing them. It normalizes the taking away of rights when we discuss how great it could be when you aren't allowed access to information and freedom of movement.

Re: Iraq introduces nightly internet curfew

#134

Post by heraclius »

flyGuyOnTheSly wrote: post #45
emptyfile wrote: post #8

2019-10-09 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/10/iraq-protests-latest-... >At least 110 people have been killed and more than 6,000 wounded in Baghdad and in the south, since security forces started cracking down on demonstrators. And the whole world is "outraged" about HK. Here on this thread the other posters are making jokes. If they killed every single person in the country no one would give a shit. Same way no…

I have hundreds of products in my house that say "Made in Hong Kong". I don't have a single product in my house that says "Made in Iraq". It's not strange that North America doesn't care much about Iraqi plight, as we have next to no relationship with them or their people. Same as we all cannot afford to cry over every single other person's mother and father passing away, but we cry over our own parents passing.

Feeling sympathy based on economic importance seems bizarre. The economic impact of the HK protests on North America will be fairly minimal. The only reason to feel sympathy, then, is that governments are attacking their own people. That isn’t a reason to ignore Iraq.

Also it’s amusing that you’ve managed to elide the not insubstantial relationship of having started a war that killed at least a hundred thousand Iraqis and in all probability many more.

Re: Iraq introduces nightly internet curfew

#135

Post by coldtea »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #122
coldtea wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it that human nature is broken, and that we should try to compensate for it No, that if we should be aware, we should be aware for all injustices, not just follow the ones we are force-fed by hypocritical self-serving interests (e.g. our country's diplomacy and subservient media preferring this victim over that, or getting outraged at this player over that - because it suits some diplomatic plans). Especially wh…

>> not just follow the ones we are force-fed by hypocritical self-serving interests Nobody is force-feeding anybody. TV news is dead, the newspaper is dead. People read the news they find interesting. If you really think the reason people prefer read US-weekly to civil wars in foreign countries is because "The Man" then you're in for a rude awakening.

>Nobody is force-feeding anybody. TV news is dead, the newspaper is dead. People read the news they find interesting.

Newspapers and periodicals still set the tone at higher echelons, richer/older/more socially standing demographics, politicians, journalists, academics, and so on. Whether in print form or web format doesn't matter much.

And TV still has a stronghold in most families. Even with the internet, people watch more TV now than they did in the 70s and 80s ( https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/when-... ) -- and it's not all Game Of Thrones and the like.

But the point is rather moot, as the force feeding doesn't need to happen through newspapers/TV. The web, and even social media, would do just as good.

The main thing is to have the same narrative fed 24/7, with small diversions (e.g. everybody agreeing that X is the enemy du jour, but disagree on being hawks or doves against it. For even more fun, usually the "doves" don't promote a much softer touch that the hawks, just disagree on the details and subtlety).

>If you really think the reason people prefer read US-weekly to civil wars in foreign countries is because "The Man" then you're in for a rude awakening.

Not sure what the above means.

But people don't even care about civil wars in foreign countries, until their government decides to be involved, and to the degree that it reflects one or another partisan view.

There are tons of civil wars and atrocities Americans don't know and don't care enough to learn about. They just take a second hand opinion on the ones they are told, from one of the opinions on offer -- if there wasn't one, they'd be blissfully discussing some actor's divorce, The Joker or whatever the media bring up next.

World affair savvy, the public, is not. Heck, most couldn't even name the name of the Vice President, or their Senator, but they can still manage to mumble that "X" (enemy du jour) is bad, because this or that news item caught their eye, it's what's talked about in editorials, and social media viral stories, and so on.

Re: Iraq introduces nightly internet curfew

#136

Post by dang »

ephemeralism wrote: post #59
flyGuyOnTheSly wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have hundreds of products in my house that say "Made in Hong Kong". I don't have a single product in my house that says "Made in Iraq". It's not strange that North America doesn't care much about Iraqi plight, as we have next to no relationship with them or their people. Same as we all cannot afford to cry over every single other person's mother and father passing away, but we cry over our own parents passing.

well, you did invade them. Overthrew their government. but sure, other than that, next to no connection.

This comment breaks the site guidelines by being flamebait, by being snarky, by being unsubstantive, and probably other things too. Would you please not post like this to this site? We're trying for something a bit better than tedious internet ragewars, which is what posting like this leads to.

Your underlying point can of course be expressed substantively and I'm sure you can do that if you want to.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Iraq introduces nightly internet curfew

#137

Post by yellowapple »

kuzimoto wrote: post #130
bjourne wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing is happening in Gaza where over 200 civilians have been killed in the March of Return demonstrations over the last year. Our Western media reporting is insanely narrow and single-minded. One can only hope that, since we are outraged about the HK situation (as we should be!), it follows that we should be outraged about other worse situations too.

The important thing to note here about the March of Return "demonstrations" is that is was not entirely peaceful. From Wikipedia: > Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Zahhar, admitted in an interview to Al Jazeera "when we talk about 'peaceful resistance', we are deceiving the public. This is a peaceful resistance bolstered by a military force and by security agencies, and enjoying tremendous popular support." So you b…

This is consistent with the typical strategy of "setup missile launchers in hospitals and schools so that when Israel fires back they look like the bad guys for blowing up hospitals and schools", literally using civilians as human shields.

To compare this with the Hong Kong protests is absurd and intellectually dishonest.

Re: Iraq introduces nightly internet curfew

#138

Post by yellowapple »

kerkeslager wrote: post #121
emptyfile wrote: post #8

2019-10-09 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/10/iraq-protests-latest-... >At least 110 people have been killed and more than 6,000 wounded in Baghdad and in the south, since security forces started cracking down on demonstrators. And the whole world is "outraged" about HK. Here on this thread the other posters are making jokes. If they killed every single person in the country no one would give a shit. Same way no…

At this point, if a person doesn't read Al Jazeera regularly, I can't take that person's opinions on global politics very seriously. It's not that Al Jazeera isn't biased, or even that it's less biased, it's just that it provides a viewpoint which is so obviously missing from western news sources, and if you're not making an attempt to expose yourself to that viewpoint, you are only hearing one side of quite a wide v…

I agree with this, as someone who rolls his eyes at the vast majority of what Al Jazeera publishes. I have a similar attitude with RT and Fox News and Breitbart; I may strongly disagree with a lot of their conclusions, but I do recognize the importance of understanding the thought processes underpinning those conclusions.

Re: Iraq introduces nightly internet curfew

#139

Post by flyGuyOnTheSly »

heraclius wrote: post #134
flyGuyOnTheSly wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have hundreds of products in my house that say "Made in Hong Kong". I don't have a single product in my house that says "Made in Iraq". It's not strange that North America doesn't care much about Iraqi plight, as we have next to no relationship with them or their people. Same as we all cannot afford to cry over every single other person's mother and father passing away, but we cry over our own parents passing.

Feeling sympathy based on economic importance seems bizarre. The economic impact of the HK protests on North America will be fairly minimal. The only reason to feel sympathy, then, is that governments are attacking their own people. That isn’t a reason to ignore Iraq. Also it’s amusing that you’ve managed to elide the not insubstantial relationship of having started a war that killed at least a hundred thousand Iraqi…

>Also it’s amusing that you’ve managed to elide the not insubstantial relationship of having started a war that killed at least a hundred thousand Iraqis and in all probability many more.

My government sending a few thousand troops over to Iraq decades ago does not bring me any closer to the people of Iraq.

If anything, it distances me from them.

I don't know anybody who served in Iraq.

I was always disgusted with Canada's involvement in the whole mess.

There are 10x as many People from Hong Kong living in Canada [0] as there are Iraqis [1].

So by that metric, Canadians in general should care approximately 10x as much about news from Hong Kong vs news from Iraq and I would say that's pretty accurate from what I have seen recently.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Canadians

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_Canadians

Re: Iraq introduces nightly internet curfew

#140

Post by flyGuyOnTheSly »

vonseel wrote: post #128
flyGuyOnTheSly wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, I was not in the military in the early 90s. I have no connection to Iraq personally. I do not collectively harbor guilt and constantly stress about the horrible things that the country I choose to reside in has done in their past. I have Hong Kong products in my house, and I interact with people who were born in Hong Kong all the time. The same cannot be said for Iraqi products or people. That is the point I a…

What’s made in Hong Kong? iPhones and electronics? I feel like most of the stuff in my house that has a “made in X” tag says something like China, Bangladesh, or Taiwan.

I own a lot of old video game systems that were made in Hong Kong, for example.
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