BANNED
@ 2006-07-20 - 23:34:22Its great to be back online!! The Indian Government in all its infinite wisdom had decided to ban all access to blogspot.com. So all the ISP's in India went ahead and stopped all access to blogspot. I must mention that since blog.co.uk was not on the governments hitlist, I was able to access the domain. But this does raise a much larger question about censorship and the freedom of expression in a democracy. India is not an authoritarian state like China or Iran where website bans are regular and it does not speak much for the right to information. Luckily due to a massive public outcry and sharp criticism against this myopic step by the government the sites are back online.
The real story is that the government had an objection to certain websites that were spreading anti Indian propaganda. Some of those websites were on blogspot.com. Now the overzealous ISPs in India decided to just take down blogspot altogether, including critical public service sites like mumbaihelp.blogspot.com. This was a ridiculous step taken by the government and was done to satisfy one of the coalition partners- The communist party of India. All that netizens had to do to access the blogspot sites despite the ban was to access www.pkblogs.com and then type in the required url, simple as that. Some of the banned sites include mumbaihelp.blogspot.com(I cant understand why you would ban this site), exposingtheleft.blogspot.com(posted by an American and surely in no means a security threat to India) and hinduunity.org( I will stand by the govt as far as this site is concerned). But really a lot more thought must go into implementing bans and the UPA must think before they act.
The best thing to come out of this entire episode is the way the Indian public stood up to the ban and nowadays Indians have definitely come to the end of their patience with regard to the widespread political corruption and inaction prevalent throughout the nation. People are beginning to stand up for what they believe in, which is translating into action and accountability.
For all the Mumbai bomb blast victims, please take a moment to do this:
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If your government starts behaving like the Chinese government, change your government.
To the Government:- if you see something bad about you online, and it is true then you should go, and if it is false who cares what it says. Either way, governments should not expect to be able to control what people say about them, except in China, where people seem delighted to put up with Fascism, and no Dorothy, whatever they have there, it surely am not Communism.
 | arion [Member] http://www.ataraxiaportfolio.blogspot.com 08/03/07 @ 14:27 |
Nor am I, Walrus....nor am I!! I think that the form of governance in China is not what you could traditionally classify as communistic, but a combination of capitalism and communism. This form of government is something that I classify as Capitalistic Communism. In this grand age of widespread consumerism,..all governments are heading towards a certain degree of capitalism.
If you cant beat them,..hell..Join them!
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