Reporters Without Borders: Internet Enemies

[SealLion]

This is the same news that you hear about everywhere else. Of course, it's not just these country's that are internet enemies.

Take a look in your own backyard, if you can.
There might even be some interesting things that you may find out about your own country and how it keeps, or at least tries to, control the flow of information or data.

Check it out:

According to Reporters Without Borders.....

“The 12 ‘Enemies of the Internet’ - Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam - have all transformed their Internet into an Intranet in order to prevent their population from accessing ‘undesirable’ online information,”....

North Korea should be pretty obvious. It'd be pretty fortunate for you to even own a computer considering the amount of money that country spends on national defense projects and armaments, let alone even be asked by a person in an offficial position, 'why' you want a computer.

Saudi Arabia. That's not much of a surprise either.

considering that country's human rights abuses as made clear by such organizations as the Human Rights Watch and another group you've all heard of a.k.a Amnesty International and a few others as well.

These organizations have made critical reports of Saudi Arabia's various political, legal, and social domains. That includes limitations of women in that country.

so a Saudi national such as a reporter or even just an ordinary citizen that want's to get critical information on the Saudi Arabian kingdon obviously is going to be limited, yes??

Makes sense??

...“All these countries distinguish themselves not only by their ability to censor online news and information but also by their virtually systematic persecution of troublesome Internet users,”

YOu understand what I'm saying now with respect to Human rights abuses??

A total of 70 cyber-dissidents are currently detained because of what they posted online. China is the world’s biggest prison for cyber-dissidents, followed by Vietnam and Iran......

To see China there is no surprise either. From what I recall reading on the news last year, some Cyber-cafe's actually do have Cyber-cops stationed in the area where customers drink their latte's and cruise the internet.
To make sure your not going on the internet where you're not supposed to go, of course.

Did you know that the firm that ensures China's filtering of the internet's website base is from a Western nation??
The US in fact.
I can't recall the name of the firm that makes to help filter internet sites for China, but I do recall that it is a firm from that country.

Now is that a surprise??

One last thing:

......Reporters Without Borders has placed 10 other governments “under surveillance” for adopting worrying measures that could open the way to abuses. The organisation draws particular attention to Australia and South Korea, where recent measures may endanger online free expression.

Australia was in the news recently regarding internet filtering and freedom of expression.
IMHO, I think laws would help best as opposed to filtering the internet.

here's the link:

Reporters Sans Frontières

[shadowww]

There is big variety of reasons why countries from your lists ban/throttle internet for their people. I will not go now into agreeing or disagreeing with anything or anyone, I' ll just write down one fact:
Bhutan (one small country in Himalayas region) got their television after 1999 year, and yet their people, according to many researches, are one of happiest nations on earth.
Isn't that amazing?

[SealLion]

WEll, I hope you come here more often. Slikrapid and I are pretty lonely here in the News, you know. LOL.

And as a matter of fact, why not speak your mind. If there's something that you disagree with regarding this issue, then this is the best place to put your opinions.

If you agree (or disagree) with some of the things that are happening in the world now-a-days, then this is the best place to debate it (if you do that is, as I don't know what your opinion on the subject is yet).

That's why I make these News reports b/c I think that some issues may be of interest to people here on the forums.

Now you mention that there's reasons why some countries ban or throttle their countryman's internet activity.

It's to control them.
And that is said in the shortest possible statement.

When governments are threatened, what to do....??

Batten down the hatches.

Peo0ple in government are afraid that information, that isn't supposed to be revealed, is revealed.
they cower in fear
and they trample down the very people that they are mandated to serve, into the dust.

When a reporter who might work with the organization, Reporters Without Borders, is threatened to have his family harmed if that same reporter doesn't get out and leave the region or country because he or she exposed something that is damaging to that particular government, some agency or police department that are or is involved in corruption.

I made a post about that in my last Reporters Without Borders News section not long ago.

So with the people in Bhutan being happy people b/c they have access to news and information, doesn't' surprise me.

People appreciate the flow of information.
I feel that it should be a right.
A right to the correct information without it being corrupted into something that it isn't supposed to be.
.....false information.
Information that journalists feel they have a journalistic right to express to their readers.

[shadowww]

Sure, I will join any debate when I feel its right time. I just sometimes don't want to start making any claims first. My primary interests are (3rd world) geography and oriental-eastern culture so thats sth. where I can contribute most.

I basically agree with you on a controlling part. Control the media, control the nation.

But on the Bhutan case I was trying to illustrate you their isolation from outside world, which was partially enforced by their conservative govermant. And how this isolation was not in direct relation with happines of their people, which should be primary goal for any goverment from my point of view.

[kelly]

iirc China has banned youtube as well. Apparently its not the first time that its being banned

WSJ: China bans YouTube | Digital Media - CNET News

[shadowww]

Maybe they don't have youtube but they do have few similar alternatives, and thhey does not lack of content at all. I may search for links if anyone is interested.

[SealLion]

But perhaps those similiar alternatives are only the alternatives that the Chinese internal affairs want's it's citizens to have access to.
Even then, the alternative videos (since we're using that as an example), are probably filtered from another source.
In other words, let's say something comes from YT, is filtered, and is then sent of to Chinese version of YT.

as for the case of Bhutan, what kind of happiness do they experience??
there's many kinds of happiness.
Did this article specify what kind of happiness??
Family happiness??
Happiness in being content in being isolated??
Happiness in their own government's performance??

what kind of happiness??
It'd be nice to see that article.

and if Bhutan is happy with being isolated from the rest of the world, what I can add is that Bhutan is not entirely isolated from the world.

Here's the link from wikipedia, even though Wikipedia isn't entirely impartial, nevertheless:

Bhutan used to be one of the most isolated nations in the world. Developments including direct international flights, the Internet, mobile phone networks, and cable television have increasingly modernized the urban areas of the country. Bhutan has balanced modernization with its ancient culture and traditions under the guiding philosophy of Gross National Happiness (GNH). Rampant destruction of the environment has been avoided. The government takes great measures to preserve the nation's traditional culture, identity and the environment. In 2006, Business Week magazine rated Bhutan the happiest country in Asia and the eighth-happiest in the world,

That country's happiness that your talking about is not related to isolationism with respect to a country controlling it's populace.

Bhutan's happiness is more specifically related to balancing it's culture, traditions, with newer developments. Not with preventing access for it's population to media and allowing them to have what-ever information that they want.

The government doesn't control the media there as China control's it's own media and prevents or dissuades people from visiting Tibet.

there;'s a distinct difference between the 2.

Also:

One of the main attractions for tourists is the country's culture and traditions....

If visitors are coming to Bhutan to see the sights and sounds, more than likely the Bhutanese have access to the people that are visiting them. Talking to them, etc...etc...

Not having access prevented.

Here's teh liink:

Bhutan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[shadowww]

Here is two chinese youtube's:
???-????????,??????,????,???? and ÍÁ¶¹Íø_ÿ¸öÈ˶¼ÊÇÉú»îµÄµ¼ÑÝ_ÔÚÏßÊÓƵ¹Û¿´,Ô*´´ÊÓÆµÉ Ï´«,º£Á¿ÊÓƵËÑË÷
As I said they have lot of various content, but we agree that they are probably monitored for anything "politicly incorect".

Well happiness in Bhutan certenly didn't began just when they opened their doors to the world :)))
Sure they try to balance cultural heritage with upcoming modernization but thats just because to preserve their happiness ^^
To understand why they are happy you should get familiar with buddhistic filosophy, their values and ways of understanding things.

[slikrapid]

after hearing about that Gross National Happiness (GNH) i just had to check it out

Critics allege that because GNH depends on a series of subjective judgments about well-being, governments may be able to define GNH in a way that suits their interests. In the case of Bhutan, for instance, they say that the government expelled about one hundred thousand people and stripped them of their Bhutanese citizenship on the grounds that the deportees were ethnic Nepalese who had settled in the country illegally.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_National_Happiness#Criticism

a bit about censorship there:

The forums of news portals such as the U.S.-based The Bhutan Times (unrelated to the Bhutan Times newspaper) are much less moderated; this website was temporarily blocked by BICMA, Bhutan's media regulatory body, in 2007

Censorship is less an issue than the general lack of access to information. Bhutan does not yet have any legislation guaranteeing the citizens' right to information.

During the visit of the Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh to Bhutan in May 2008, only journalists from the Bhutan Broadcasting Service and Kuensel were permitted to attend the function. Free lance journalists are also not able to work in Bhutan as officials respond only to journalists from the government media or 'authorized' private media.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Bhutan

check out those chinese tricks (as if they don't have enough land )

On 13 November 2005, Chinese soldiers crossed into Bhutan under the pretext that environmental conditions had forced their retreat south from the Himalayas. The Bhutanese government allowed this incursion (after the fact) on humanitarian grounds.[citation needed] Soon after, the Chinese began building roads and bridges within Bhutanese territory.[21][not in citation given] Bhutanese Foreign Minister Khandu Wangchuk took up the matter with Chinese authorities after the issue was raised in Bhutanese parliament. In response, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang of the People's Republic of China has said that the border remains in dispute and that the two sides continue to work for a peaceful and cordial resolution of the dispute.[22] An Indian intelligence officer has said that a Chinese delegation in Bhutan told the Bhutanese that they were "overreacting." The Bhutanese newspaper Kuensel has said that China might use the roads to further Chinese claims along the border.[23]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhutan#Military_and_foreign_affairs

[shadowww]

Ah yea, who knows, maybe one day China will just annex Bhutan, like they did with Tibet. Who would care for this few mountains and few poor people which live there, and who would oppose China, the fastest growing economy on earth. Nobody. At least not until world war 3 ^___^

[SealLion]

...
As I said they have lot of various content, but we agree that they are probably monitored for anything "politicly incorect".

......
To understand why they are happy you should get familiar with buddhistic filosophy, their values and ways of understanding things.

well, considering what I know of Bhutan from the Wikipedia link that Slikrapid gave and having read some of it from the actuall website, monitoring for things that are politically incorrect doesn't surprise me in the least.

Country's like Bhutan that are close to the Chinese border and considering how previous Chinese government behaviour has occured with countries like Taiwan, currently Tibet, Hong Kong, it doesn't surprise me how much influence would occur in Bhutan from Chinese officials residing there as diplomates.

It's the influence factor with respect to military and political strength that China has with it's neighbors such as Bhutan.

Think about it this way. We know that China has a very strong military, yes??
We know that China also has a strong and growing economy. Most especially with it's neighbors, yes??
Bhutan is a neighbor of China.
Most likely, and I'm only guessing here that a number of exports into Bhutan occur not just only with India, but also with China.

Do I sense a degree of economic strength of China in comparison to Bhutan??

Who has more economic clout within the confines of those 2 nations and even nations like Nepal??

...er...my guess is China.

There might also be some ethnic heritage that is shared amongst the Chinese close to Bhutan.
Language, similiar cultural elements, etc..etc...

But I also find your post interesting for another thing, Shadowww.

Annexation of parts of Bhutan via military strength considering the border disputes with China.

Much like what slikrapid made mention of in his post quoting some things there from Wikipedia.
Even though Wikipedia is known for some partiality on some things.

after hearing about that Gross National Happiness (GNH) i just had to check it out

Critics allege that because GNH depends on a series of subjective judgments about well-being, governments may be able to define GNH in a way that suits their interests. In the case of Bhutan, for instance, they say that the government expelled about one hundred thousand people and stripped them of their Bhutanese citizenship on the grounds that the deportees were ethnic Nepalese who had settled in the country illegally.

.......

Sounds a bit to me on the lines of 'ethnic cleansing'. Remember Yugoslavia and Rwanda....??

It doesn't state that they mass killed them or anything like that. Just that it expelled them.
So the Bhutanese government doesn't want foreigners living in it's country that aren't Bhutanese.
It want's pure Bhutanese.

....very interesting.....

The forums of news portals such as the U.S.-based The Bhutan Times (unrelated to the Bhutan Times newspaper) are much less moderated; this website was temporarily blocked by BICMA, Bhutan's media regulatory body, in 2007

Censorship is less an issue than the general lack of access to information. Bhutan does not yet have any legislation guaranteeing the citizens' right to information.

During the visit of the Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh to Bhutan in May 2008, only journalists from the Bhutan Broadcasting Service and Kuensel were permitted to attend the function. Free lance journalists are also not able to work in Bhutan as officials respond only to journalists from the government media or 'authorized' private media.

ah...so it's censorship and control of the media.

Like we've discussed before.
Control the media. Control the populace.

give the population only what the government wants them to hear and your set for life.

On 13 November 2005, Chinese soldiers crossed into Bhutan under the pretext that environmental conditions had forced their retreat south from the Himalayas. The Bhutanese government allowed this incursion (after the fact) on humanitarian grounds.[citation needed] Soon after, the Chinese began building roads and bridges within Bhutanese territory.[21][not in citation given] Bhutanese Foreign Minister Khandu Wangchuk took up the matter with Chinese authorities after the issue was raised in Bhutanese parliament. In response, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang of the People's Republic of China has said that the border remains in dispute and that the two sides continue to work for a peaceful and cordial resolution of the dispute.[22] An Indian intelligence officer has said that a Chinese delegation in Bhutan told the Bhutanese that they were "overreacting." The Bhutanese newspaper Kuensel has said that China might use the roads to further Chinese claims along the border.[23]

Sounds familiar.....

....on the pretext of.....

next thing up: Annexation.

[shadowww]

About this expelling non-bhutanese ethnic, we don't know and can't know whats truth. How do you know that person who wrote that article is unbiased? I don't know. There is not much information on that matter so I choose to belive to noone. Its not easy to judge on person for something of that magnitude.
There is also these refuge camps for expelled ones. But. Are there only true refuges there, or there is also some other people who would want to exploit system (get financial support) as well? I'm sure there are. I'm not inclining to any side and I see debating on such matters pointless, they are just too far, that's their problems (if it is a problem), we have our own. World goes on.

[slikrapid]

About this expelling non-bhutanese ethnic, we don't know and can't know whats truth. How do you know that person who wrote that article is unbiased? I don't know.

sometimes a single news report is sufficient to start a larger interest or a debate on something - in this case i suppose a few government statements with a few reports from the scene would somewhat clarify the incident...i have a feeling you are to some extent angry about articles & co. that don't offer the 'truth', but we don't live in a perfect world (this concept is an illusion anyways), so putting aside various interests for a moment, we can only hope to find out the facts and the interpretation of these facts is what creates the 'truth' - since the interpretation varies from one person to another it is said that the truth is in the eye of the beholder, ie. there is no general/universal truth (just facts & individual views/interpretations)

I'm not inclining to any side and I see debating on such matters pointless, they are just too far, that's their problems (if it is a problem), we have our own. World goes on.

that depends, sometimes its useful to know the situation in other countries (or in ones own) in order to see some patterns that are common or happen worldwide, especially in the era of globalization, where some things affect (or are about to affect) a large number of countries, so by discussing them, sort of a wider or global awareness is achieved which allows for better understanding or explanation of events (the sayings like: one should learn from the history or the history repeats itself are constantly proving their accuracy)

[shadowww]

All nice sayings you got here indeed.

I'm of course angry when some american news whos people just found Bhutan on world map last week, write about situation on bhutanese refugees, and then some genious founds that article and copies it into wikipedia.
Doesn't even need to be american, maybe I'v gone too far.

But, when I see person (people) who was expelled and who can talk about his experience first hand, then I will make my opinion. Of course, first we need to ensure that person is not corrupt by either money or his prejudice/bias/favoritism/brain washed/IQ lesser then forest mushroom/you name it...

[SealLion]

Well, I have to agree with slikrapid on a couple of points shadowww. For one thing, it's never pointless to discuss things that are related to Human right's issues, refugee issues, people getting kicked out of the country that they live in because of reason that the Bhutanese felt to get rid of them.
My guess it's more related to ethnicity issues.

If we were to leave this issue as pointless, then I guess we might as well just say that what happened in Rwanda between the Tutsies and the Hutus was pointless and we should have just completely ignored the whole massacre of thousands upon thousands of people.

And if could say that about Rwanda and assume that even discussing that would be pointless, then I guess we could also say that discussing issues such as the ethnic cleansing that occurred in the old Yugoslavia was also completely pointless and we (spoken in the context of those nations who were involved in wanting to do something about the issue) was also pointless and should never have gotten involved.

As a matter of fact, why not go one step further and just say that it was never really anybody's business and that the massacre of thousands upon thousands of people was really, no-body's business.

Why not just say that??

The point is never to debate angrily but to discuss.

That's why I make these News posts so that people can bring their views ( and very few do...unfortunately) and discuss them here.

I like to discuss things of things that I think are important or even of an interest to others here.

The objective: To EDUCATE.

discussing things here about 'pointless' issues is to educate.
Not just you. But me too.

There is a lot of truth out there that is hidden. Truth out there that is not even suppossed to be brought up by investigative journalists, who...believe it or not have their lives placed in danger because they report on news in countries, where getting threatened and having familes threatened with harm is the norm.

And if you would think that these sort of things only happen in African or Asian countries, that would be an incorrect assumptionn.
It even happens in North America.
South America too.
Israel for sure.
Israeli soldiers are known to abuse or even, yes...even kill journalists on the pretext that it was a mistake. An accidental shooting.
When actually, some Israeli army general or colonel didn't like some journalist making an investigation into some occurrences that directly involved the Israeli Army.

There's a plethora of things that occur that are not necessarily 'pointless'.
It's worth to discuss about them.

It educates you to what's happening around you.
It's your world too, you know.
I've made a lot of News posts in the News section and a lot of it is related to corruption and abuse of human rights and so on.

I think that your just not used to having news about corruption being brought up.

Correct me if I'm wrong, shadowww, but maybe it's because perhaps you've never really come across issues of banking corruption.... Banking cartels. ...Corporate corruption.... ethnicity issues (like this topic here) and Issues related to things that were made to be not known to the general public, yet only to be known to those who were supposed to know because it was secret arrangement; or something to do with some secret parallel government existing in Bulgaria (yes. believe it or not, there actually is one. REad one of my Wikileaks articles that exposed a secret parallel government.).

And if your under the impression that some secret government in Bulgaria doesn't directly affect you, I have a hunch that there being a secret parallel government in one country isn't the only one around.


Also, if one person who may or may not be american makes some statement about Bhutan after he's pointed it on the map has you believe that all of a sudden he's smarter than the rest, then I"m sorry to say shadowww, but that would be a completely different incorrect impression.

When I read about issues like that, I like to 'read between the lines'.
News isn't all black and white.
there's words between the lines too.
News that can also be corroborated alongside other news to come to a bigger picture.

Not necessarily to have come to a conclusion, but to make a bigger picture of things that weren't all in black and white.

News isn't just coming from one place. News is a collection of news articles, statements, facts all put together to have come together for a bigger picture.

Stick around shadowww. There's news that I have a feeling that I'll be posting about that I think probably won't make you too happy.

Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but it'll probably cover issues that your not used to having discussed because you never came across such things before because probably, your not used to having the old ways and beliefs and so forth put up for debate or discussion because such things should never be discussed because they're taboo or something like that.

All I can say shadowww, is that I hope that you'll stick around for my News postings.
There's a lot that I've discussed.
Maybe have a look at some of them if you like.

News happens in all quarters of the world. Some news isn't supposed to get out. But fortunately it does.
And when it does, discussing them at least educates you about the world around you.

It's never pointless.