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Maybe time to name and shame? In the following news, the name of the country has been replaced with Syria. Can you guess the country? Bonus points if you know
by bitcartel 14y ago
Maybe time to name and shame? In the following news, the name of the country has been replaced with Syria. Can you guess the country? Bonus points if you know the year.
[1]
"For hundreds of thousands of Syrians, getting to work, school or the market has been virtually impossible since Syria’s latest anti-terror campaign began. Now, they won’t be able to get online, either."
"The Syrian army stormed the office building where six employees were believed to be staying in order to maintain Internet service during this difficult time"
"Explosions were heard and the fate of the six employees is unknown."
[2]
"Syria cuts off internet access. Most of the major internet service providers in Syria are offline following week-long protests. Syria appears to have cut off almost all access to the internet from inside and outside the country from late on Thursday night"
"Every Syrian provider, every business, bank, internet cafe, website, school, embassy and government office that relied on the big four Syrians ISPs for their internet connectivity is now cut off from the rest of the world."
[3]
"What Internet? Syria region cut off 6 months."
"20 million people without links to the outside world since the government blocked virtually online access, text messages and international phone calls after ethnic riots in July. It's the largest and longest such blackout in the world, observers say."
"Residents are without Internet links unless they flee to farflung places... One customer had traveled 750 miles just to get online."
"Region now has no e-mail. No blogs. No instant messaging. The government this month promised Internet access would resume "gradually," but it also said the same thing in July and not much has changed. So far, only four restricted Web sites, half of them state-run media, have returned."
Answers (link shortened so no cheating!)
[1] http://goo.gl/IpcrA http://goo.gl/IpcrA
[2] http://goo.gl/WewSI http://goo.gl/WewSI
[3] http://goo.gl/BaFli http://goo.gl/BaFli
- untog 14y agoNot that I'm passing judgement either way, but your first one is a little inaccurate. It should be: "For hundreds of thousands of [one set of people], getting to work, school or the market has been virtually impossible since [a different set of people's] latest anti-terror campaign began."
- tkahn6 14y agoFirst one took place during the Second Intifada. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Intifada http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Intifada
- vidarh 14y agoYour point being?
- jlgreco 14y agoYou might want to mention that you modified the secondary locations in those snippets as well. Threw my guesses off, because I was trying to be clever. ;)
- bitcartel 14y agoHa, good point. For [3] I've updated the location name to be 'Region'.
- nir 14y agoIs there a point to this? Since the situation is vastly different in all the three places you mention, isn't this just empty relativism?
- bitcartel 14y agoI think this is an useful exercise. I wasn't actually aware of [1] and [3] until I decided to find examples to post.
- nir 14y agoSo, what did you learn from doing that exercise? Did your perception of that issue improve or just get diluted?
- bitcartel 14y agoA couple of things come to mind. - It's easy to condemn a country for cutting off the internet, but can it be justified under certain situations? - The UN Human Rights Council deemed that basic internet access is a human right, but is it a fundamental human right which should never be taken away? - What if we're isolated from the outside world but can still access local email, banking, websites, etc. to carry on our daily lives. Does that count as being cut off from the internet and having a human right violated? - The sheer scale of shutdown is surprising - not just a few days, but for months on end. How long could we last without access to the internet and how far would we travel to get it?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- saraid216 14y ago> - The UN Human Rights Council deemed that basic internet access is a human right, but is it a fundamental human right which should never be taken away? I think it can be qualified. The notion that free speech, which I think we can mostly agree is an equal if not more fundamental human right, can be qualified with things like "fighting words" or "clear and present danger" suggests that other rights can similarly have exceptions. I don't know what those are, and I have a hard time accepting that our historical examples are a good indicator, so.
- anigbrowl 14y agoInteresting and important though those cases are, I can't help feeling that you're diminishing the consideration of today's news by surfing on it a bit for other examples.