Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram Restricted in Southern Turkey
netblocks.org
netblocks.org
It's kind of incredible how that head line are so terrifying. The only explanation for this is that people don't want information getting out of that area. It's so fucked up.
Maybe this is a bit naive to say but I really hate that this is just how things are. We all know what's going to happen and there's nothing that can be done about it. It doesn't really seem like it'll ever change either.
(And yes the video is from RT but if you can find a more reputable source debunking it I'd like to see it.)
If a couple of bytes of information every now and then is too expensive to fetch with Starlink in poorer countries, it is too expensive to use for normal internet use for normal people anywhere on the planet.
Since you are using normal internet except for fetching the IPs, you are not subject to government snooping or sabotage any more than you would be normally. It also would require normal people at maximum the same level of tech-savvyness as a VPN to just connect to Starlink for a second.
Another key difference would be that a VPN requires you to reach the VPN server somehow, and the country can arbitrarily block cable traffic if they have the resources and will. Whether it's technically feasible for most VPNs is another question. But anyway, for Starlink... You would really need to wreck their satellite off the orbit or mess with their radiosignals to block it.
Not that social media companies would do anything to piss off authoritarian leaders / oppressing governments. But they could if they thought it's right
People talk about Starlink like they never heard of RF engineering or something? I mean really, what does Starlink change when the entity doing the blocking is a state level actor?
But seriously, your comment makes me want to find an article on how the Chinese have been thwarting bluetooth mesh chat in HK protests.
Fighting oppressive regimes is not something I remember Must doing, yet. And he has no problem setting up shop e.g. in China.
Radio is difficult if not impossible to block with clever operators. The system is known.
Satellite will always be subject to whoever is in power at the time and it won't work within a building.
If you want to get information in and out the best option is—and possible always will be–a network of skilled radio operators.
The knowledge is free and available to all and not that difficult. Amateur, citizens, and even AM/FM are cheap and easy to operate.
We are talking about how people get a message out in a martial law / wartime scenario. Radio is your best bet because no one can really stop you the way they can block and DNS server or just outright tell the ISP to shutdown.
The only thing we can do is strengthen non-authoritarian governments. Unfortunately, western business leaders made the mistake of strengthening authoritarian countries for a profit. We have a dark two to three hundred years ahead of us.
EDIT: 2014 also: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26677134
> This comes after PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to "wipe out Twitter" following damaging allegations of corruption in his inner circle.
Note how my argument does not depend on whether we're talking about a good war, bad war, just war, evil war, etc.
Turkey has a long history of blocking web sites, even in peacetime. The last time I went there, I was surprised how many web sites I couldn't access.
1) You can't get an internet connection at the airport without giving up PII - either your ticket info, or your cellphone information.
2) They block Wikipedia in the airport and on the in-flight WiFi on Turkish Airlines.
Twitter and Facebook are HORRIBLE tools to rely on. They spread more wrong information than right information.
If free speech is going to survive it will require open systems and responsible journalism. Twitter and Facebook are tools that promote neither.
Bad information, I suppose, is better than no information… but damn have we regressed in a lot of ways.
To exfiltrate information, all the Social Media anti features are a plus.
Having strong equality between man/women shouldn't be the only parameter when you are picking up your allies. US and Turkey are member of NATO and we have operations together since then. (Including Korea, Afghanistan and Iraq). Situation for Syria is a little bit different here. Because, it is too close to Turkey. If you cut connections to Turkey, it will cost you more.
If hostile paramilitary forces were organizing attacks on the other side of the Mexican border at a time when the Mexican government and military itself had collapsed, I can promise you the US would have no problem establishing a safe zone beyond its formal borders.
"Turkey is the country that killed most ISIS fighters."
This is very doubtful and should either be supported by some facts or retracted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey%E2%80%93ISIL_conflict#2...
vs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_military_interve...
Coalition killed ~80,000 vs Turkey killed ~6,000.
Furthermore, no one is censoring them beyond their comment getting a bit more gray, downvotes are not the end of the world. We don't need a community of people justifying massacres because they're scared of retaliations from the same foreigners they're subjecting to brutal oppression.
There is no difference between “invading a country” and “establishing a security zone inside another country”.
It does become a lot easier for them to qualify as allies if they share core western values
A brief quote from the Wikipedia article:
Democratic confederalism is a "system of popularly elected administrative councils, allowing local communities to exercise autonomous control over their assets, while linking to other communities via a network of confederal councils." Decisions are made by communes in each neighborhood, village, or city. All are welcome to partake in the communal councils, but political participation is not mandated. There is no private property, but rather “ownership by use, which grants individuals usage rights to the buildings, land, and infrastructure, but not the right to sell and buy on the market or convert them private enterprises.” The economy is in the hands of the communal councils, and is thus (in the words of Bookchin) ‘neither collectivised nor privatised, it is common.’ Feminism, ecology and direct democracy are essential in democratic confederalism.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_%C3%96calan#Democrati...
It's pathetic that you're using this red-scare nonsense to justify a borderline genocide.
Kurdish YPG/Asayish Forces Once Again Kidnap Christians in Northeast Syria: https://wca-ngo.org/wca-news/press-releases/607-kurds_forced...
Kurdish YPG Unlawfully Closes Aramean and Armenian Schools: https://wca-ngo.org/wca-news/press-releases/613-ypg_illegal-...
Video Shows Christian Property in Syria Seized by Kurdish Forces: https://wca-ngo.org/wca-news/press-releases/591-video-shows-...
Very strong Western values, indeed.
Syria: US ally’s razing of villages amounts to war crimes: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/10/syria-us-ally...
The border security argument is a bit weak. You shouldn't need to cross a border to defend a border.
The EU, NATO, Japan, etc didn't start using that designation for nothing.
PKK also had an estimated 3000 child soldiers which were also used for terror operations and in combat in Syria: https://hrwf.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Child-soldiers-in...
The radical Kurds aren't going to win anything by engaging in it nor will the more moderate Kurdish groups gain anything by quietly supporting them.
Turkey has much to lose in the years to come by exposing their soldiers in Kurdish majority areas and they are only further alienating themselves from Europe and the world, especially if they get too zealous in the process. They haven't even faced any real resistance yet since they focused on Arab areas first. Their decision making won't be without cost.
There's no way this will be easy ride for them. Nothing in the middle east is ever like that. This is just downtime between the next major conflict. There's only so much to gain for anyone involved.
It is not logical to call some people terrorists when they are being massacred by a large professional army and try to defend themselves by whatever means they have. If the kurdish nation exists in 50 years, today's "terrorists" will be remembered fondly, just as the glorious french resistance is.
They are an authoritarian regime. Turkey is similar to Hungary in so far, that there is a cosmopolitan capital and the rest is rural. While the cosmopolits want a liberal democracy, the rural people usually don't want it. So, whatever democracy there is, the majority will vote non-democratic regimes.
It is simple to manipulate angry people with nationalist propaganda. You appeal to a sense of aggrievement to create unity among a marginalized group, manufacture an enemy to exploit fear and anger, and associate adversaries with that enemy to override rational behavior. Then exploit the divisions that creates in your enemy.
Facebook is the greatest gift to authoritarians in the history of humanity. It may be that a few hundred people will control the world at this rate.
What is special about 2019 ? Borders move, countries expand and contract. New countries form, old countries disappear. Happens all the time.
The areas that are being occupied by Turkey have been under ottaman rule since 1500s to WW-I, and only the last 100 years or so they were not! Countries like Syria, Iraq etc have borders that were drawn on maps by people who did not live there. So, long story short expect many countries in Middle East to reconfigure their borders, new autonomous regions spurt and old regions disappear.
Border changes happened all the time but the two world wars and the subsequent world order and bloc politics have frozen these changes. Now that post-war order is slowly crumbling so are the dynamics in various parts of the world.
Seek out more info?
PKK (and possible links with YPG) Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan_Workers%27_Party
PKK Website: http://pkk-online.com/en/index.php
PKK Guerilla TV (This is where they put online videos of their terrorism in our territory, killing our people): http://gerilatv.com/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish–Turkish_conflict_(19... https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/europe-and-central-asia...
I also would like to make a point on something but in order to do that first I invite you to imagine how is it like to fear just to travel some of your own country cities because when you are travelling there is a possibility of rocket or bomb ambush among the mountains. Imagine, teachers in those cities are captured and killed in your schools. Imagine regular people doing their job get rocket attacks thus get killed on a monthly basis. Imagine many more things like that could happen on a monthly basis in your very own country. Finally, imagine that this is going on for over 30 year and all of those attacks performed by single terrorist organization with ultimate purpose of taking control of approximately 1/4 of your country.
Now, do you think after thousands of death happend in your country for over 30 years, bombs detonated in your home cities. Would that death ratio still make sense while all of these events possibly still going on to you?
If still you think 1-5 ratio still make sense and we should stop defending ourselves against terrorists, I encourage you to do this mental exercise of imagining all of those events one more time and possibly see what are the typical reaction of countries towards this kind of hostility in their own lands. (Although I haven't done comprehensive research on 11/11 event, I think it possibly has potential to demonstrate how could one country go further when it faces with such terrorist attacks to stop it.)
Are you aware that this is wholly down to a deal between the EU and Turkey which includes, amongst others, payments of about 6bn EUR to Turkey?
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/19/gaziantep-tur...
2. It's a military invasion. The precedent of Operation Olive Branch indicates that calling this an "effort to stabilize" is an abuse of semantics.
3. Do you have any source indicating that Kurdish control is contributing to the displacement of people?
4. More about "efforts to stabilize": "Criticism of Turkish alleged support for Jihadists, including ISIL, and of targeting Kurds" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_involvement_in_the_Syr...
Then what was America doing there?
It starts with an O and rhymes with way some old timey new yorkers say "girl"
EU politicians were too afraid of the xenophobic shitstorm on the one hand, and the media catastrophe of thousands of boat-people drowning at sea.
So they complied. You never comply to a blackmail, there's no end to the demands.
And quite frankly, I don’t see any reason why Turkey would succeed. Just look how much trouble the (presumably better resourced and more experienced) US has had in setting up stable governments in Iraq and Afghanistan which (in my admittedly nonexpert opinion) seem to be the best historical parallels for attempting to create stable societies out of a legal vacuum with little-to-no useful institutions and peoples with minimal experience/exposure to operating in such a society.
It's not trying to do that, though that's the pretext. As with Turkey’s previous interventions in Syria and Iraq (and its ongoing internal campaigns), it's trying suppress the Kurds. If it's trying to create a pacified area, it's to avoid having a safe space for Kurds, not to repatriate Syrian refugees (except perhaps to repatriate non-Kurdish Syrian refugees to displace the Kurds, which is certainly a plausible Turkish strategic aim.)
Also, Wikipedia has been blocked in Turkey for two years now (see the logo at https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anasayfa - "being missed for two years"). It's just a miserable status quo... Savvier users can circumvent these censors just like anywhere else, but the peoples are powerless whether they can access information or not.
Blocking twitter, fb, and other tools, was their only chance to get information. i don't say all the information on those platforms are %100 correct but still, they are better then government provided.
Also imagine that, people on that area are just close to the border, yesterday two bombs dropped and 9 people died, 48 people injured and that is just the beginning. there was only social media for them to speak out now they don't. I don't usually follow the press but just because this is a fckng war, i read some news and articles. I can say that, if those people don't distribute the news or stuff happening there, I'm pretty sure the world will not know what is going on there and they will continue to create their own stories.
Destroying fortifications on the Syrian border [1], providing intel to Turkey.
There's an official denial of a "green light", but it's pretty clear that that's exactly what it was -- a surprise withdrawal and support ahead of Turkey's offensive. U.S. hardware, support, and consent.
It might as well be U.S. troops slaughtering them now, but the U.S. press seems to be treating it as something that the U.S. was not deeply involved in, or something deeply shameful for the U.S.
[1] https://twitter.com/sojtfoir/status/1175869891305451522
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/world/middleeast/turkey-a... ("Because of an American counterterrorism partnership with Turkey, Turkish aircraft were given access to a suite of American battlefield intelligence in northeast Syria.")
What I'm shocked about is how a so called ally can side and arm a vowed terrorist group for years and expect there to be no fallout, but then "Pro-Kurdishism" is a thing.
I do love however the narrative that the Kurds are this angelic force that helped us when no other would for no benefit at all. Why don't you and the west just come out and say you want Turkey broken up? It would save us a lot of time instead of being constantly gas lit.
Because a measure of self determination for the Kurds is not synonymous with I want turkey broken up’?
Self-determination is fundamentally supported in the west, like Canada for Quebec.
Look at the human rights violations and civilian casualties committed by both the PKK and Turkey here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish%E2%80%93Turkish_confli...
There are families and civilians living in the regions being bombed by Turkey right now and they are defenseless because the Kurds dismantled their battle stations under the recent Turkey-US agreement.
The Kurds have been massacred numerous times throughout recent history by Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. It would be naive to think a militant organization wouldn't form out of the atrocities committed onto them by these various nations as a means to protect themselves. Not to say this excuses acts of terrorism and corruption committed by the PKK, but a blanket bombing campaign is the worst possible answer.
There has been clashes with the governments(both pre and post revolution), but nothing like what you see in Turkey and Iraq where government targets civilians en masse based on their Kurdish ethnicity.
Have you considered the possibility that a green light was, in fact, not given, and that Putin has simply outmanoeuvred America in this case? I think the evidence points towards Russian intel backing Turkey's latest operation.
America completely failed to implement her interests in the region partly due the absolute mess of her internal politics, e.g. a still completely dysfunctional and understaffed State Department: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/11/state-d...
Three pieces of evidence that Turkey is drifting towards the Russian sphere of influence:
1. The nonchalance with which Turkey exited the F-35 program preferring the purchase of Russian made S-400 air defence systems.
2. The recent agreement between Turkey and Russia to use the Russian MIR payment system and to settle sovereign debts in Liras/Rubles instead of US dollars.
3. This latest incursion into Syria, which serves no American interest, but clearly serves Putin by taking an American ally out of the equation (the Kurds).
edit: perhaps Trump greenlit it, but America didn't.
Spending money not protecting the people who are funding it is bad enough but putting the people funding it in more danger than they were before is really bad, that’s the opposite of what the military is for.
Aside from the deeply troubling morality expressed there, you're setting yourself up to never have local allies in any future conflicts as we can all see just how well that's worked out in the past.
The answer to "how do we not fund and die in foreign wars?" isn't "go to war in foreign countries over and over again and then abandon our allies as soon as our immediate objectives are apparently met", it's gotta be more like "stop picking fights in foreign countries".
the best time to bring all US troops home was 74 years ago. the second best time is today. perpetual atonement for mistakes made in the past is really just air cover for maintain tentacles across the world, which are tantalizingly useful for continued regime change/provocation/etc.
So, to the sentiment you express, I agree! But still think this specific incident is not an example of that sentiment, and I still think it's really, really shitty.
"Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests."
Until about 1920s kurds were mostly on the same side as turkish government, and were helping turks to quell rare rebellions of non-muslim population (mostly armenians, greeks, assyrians) who were treated as second class citizens. Only in 1920s after most of the non-muslim population was killed in genocide, or displaced during population exchange with greece, Turkey started using their honed ethnic cleansing skills against Kurds.
There is as much reason for Kurdistan to be part of Turkey, as for African countries to be part of France, but Turkey not only doesn't agree to this but also fights against kurds in neighbouring countries. It can be stopped either when Turkey becomes civilized (1) country, like european countries did, or when stronger countries force it to behave in a civilized manner, like US was doing until now.
(1) denying genocide, having laws against "insulting Turkishness", oppressing minorities are not things that civilized countries do
This may be a surprise to you, but this withdrawal was announced in December of 2018, and even by then it had been discussed for months:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/20/syria-kurds-tr...
This is a Syrian civil war. Do you expect the military to take and hold territory on behalf of the Kurds? They were a partner of convenience because we happened to have a common enemy. Turkey is also an ally (like it or not), and has border issues of their own they'd like to handle.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mcconnell-joins-othe...
Turkey was an ally. I love Turks as people, spent significant time in Turkey. But it's clear that as a government, Erdogan has turned Turkey away from the West, from America, from democratic values, and decidedly toward Russia (and not just ideologically).
Turkey's NATO membership is now just a vestigial momento of the cold war.
We have some precedents in our own history, especially in the beginning of the WW II, and a lot of people are shaking their heads - we consider ourselves as important US allies but it's clearly interpreted as the sign that you can only count on yourself in this world.
I remember hearing that on the news regularly since at least the invasion of Iraq, and I still don't understand why our politicians keep repeating it. It's bullshit. To the US, we barely register on the map.
In fact, the reputation of those latter arms of our government is so deep in the dumpster at this point that I cannot believe anyone who becomes entangled with them can claim naivety.
This idea that the USA has a deep obligation to a handful of communist ethnic militias in the Middle East is an intel psyop, and you're falling for it.
> [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/world/middleeast/turkey-a.... ("Because of an American counterterrorism partnership with Turkey, Turkish aircraft were given access to a suite of American battlefield intelligence in northeast Syria.")
That is related to this: https://twitter.com/hashtag/securitymechanism?src=hashtag_cl...
The agreement was supposed to protect the Kurdish groups from a Turkish offensive by de-escalating the areas that the US had deemed "safe", while providing an umbrella of US control.
Trump then disgustingly yanked the umbrella away and let the Turks have at it.
So much propaganda from _BOTH_ sides. Even what perceived to be the "good" side also had their own dirty Social Media move.
What makes it even worse is that Social Media recommendation engine tend to create some sort of Bubble so you will see propaganda that you've already subscribed to and your counter-part will see propaganda that they subscribed to.
>Mastodon is proving to be a system so censorship resistant even its creators can't censor it. https://twitter.com/peterktodd/status/1147772867783929856
It seems like federation is actually more censorship resistant in some ways than fully distributed p2p systems. Because an ISP could block ports and things required for p2p connections, right?
Seems like it would be easier to find p2p traffic. But I don't know.
I don't think this really helps as a means of suppressing information. Unless you block everything, the information will get out and once it's out of the region, you no longer have control. I believe it's mostly about soldiers carrying their cellphones around, posting on facebook when they are idle etc, and you don't want troop movements and staging grounds to be quite that public. "Hey guys, please no Facebook" doesn't work at a large scale, blocking those sites is much easier.
Given an internet connection, you can publish information anywhere, so why need these platforms at all to publish the information?
- Viral content, more easily spread among the world network due to the nature of how these networks operate from a social perspective.
When access is restricted to these websites, what is the solution? Several options are available:
- Keep the content you were planning on publishing saved for later publishing if/when access to these resume - Given that you yourself might not make it (along with your data), it is imperative to be able to distribute your content somewhere else as quickly as possible
This leads the following proposed solutions to problems like this:
- If any internet connection is available at all, then information can be published somewhere such that it is capable of being eventually queued into your public profiles. The only way an authoritarian regime can mitigate this is by completing banning all internet activity and cell phone use (for instance, I seem to remember that you used to be able to tweet to a phone number, or use common endpoints like email to publish your messages).
Either we cover the US political systems, it's treatment of refugees and immigrants, and the ridiculous denial of science and human welfare... or we don't and we leave other countries alone. I am as appalled as anyone by what is happening here, but why would this article be allowed, and not others that point out, rightfully, that this is due to actions by the current POTUS (probably for personal gain, too).
Confessing that human welfare is a political decision makes me sick, but look around.
Tor is blocked in similar ways, which is why we have the battle of maintaining a constant supply of bridge nodes and using obfuscation techniques like ShadowSOCKS and VMess.
I think the future of p2p is utilizing not just one protocol but many of them.
They even intercept and change DNS results from Google and Cloudflare.
Edit: if you think all these places are too far from the "western world", well, think about Catalonia. We have a lot of arrested political prisoners without trial.
Nation building is hard. Instilling modern democratic values is hard.
Those fights are worth fighting. But Hong Kong is low-hanging fruit. (There is also loss aversion, Hong Kong slipping backwards feels worse than Ecuador remaining Ecuador.)
what do you mean, exactly? This is just a personal thing, but I know many ecuadorians and I feel very strong emotions to the current events there. For me it is much closer culturally than Hong-Kong.
If Hong Kong falls, what's next? Likely Taiwan, Tibet, most of SEA...it's a disaster scenario that results in the de-normalization of Western values.
I'm from Albania. I totally understand that you may feel ignored by the world when your country too is fighting for Western values against evil authoritarians. Unfortunately, China is a bigger threat to the entire world than any shitty military dictator our countries can install.
https://www.heritage.org/report/the-collapse-clintons-china-...
"If I can get someone to do the right thing, for the wrong reason? Then score one for me!"
Also, a lot of the hypocrisy stems from the propaganda that our government puts out. The US just doesn't put out much propaganda about those other conflicts. Let's be honest, people think they are acting freely and being critical thinkers and open minded, but we are all controlled mainly by the propaganda we absorb in whatever society we live in. We Americans are no different. So really, if you have a problem with people not talking about those other conflicts, you should bring it up to the government. The people are just following where the government leads.
Really???? I spend 2 months per year in Catalonia. There are no kids without legs in the streets. There are not 4 million refugees there.
Catalonia is identical to a bunch of Rich British wankers feeling that they are entitled to "more".
https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3032041/hong-ko...?
We'd appreciate it if you'd read and follow the site guidelines, which you broke badly with this post.
Hacker News has become a forum for uber nationalistic right-winged libertarians. Be them Israeli, Catalanian, Amurrikkkan, or other, HN lays somewhere in-between 4chan and the daily stormer.
Imma keep posting what I want, Adolf.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21192430
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20956287
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20645202
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20644122
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20438487
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20384662
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20202305
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19912334
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19471335
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19325297
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18664482
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18544961
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18189135
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17197581
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17002125
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16997697
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16947646
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16397133
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16134205
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16085548
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16061393
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16058468
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16022748
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15937781
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15752730
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15585780
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15388778
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15307915
Sorry for bombarding you with ridiculously many links, but maybe that makes the point better.
And there are no political prisoners. There are people that believed they could unilaterally break the law of Spain, that is the State they currently belong to, with no consequences.
They are consequences to braking the law. Even considering Catalonia sovereighn, that is not, they would need 2/3 of the parliament to pass laws they passed with simple majority.
If they only did! Once they go out of spanish prisons for not having delivered the independence that the people voted, they will have to go to prisons of the catalan republic for the same reason; the second time will actually make sense.
But I was not talking about the coward catalan politicians that surrendered themselves. I was talking about the 7 common citizens that were kidnapped at night last week by the spanish paramilitary and are currently in jail, falsely accused of "terrorism".
Is that really something to be proud about?
Maybe you meant "By simply downvoting my comment, you don't change my opinion, so it's better to write a comment with actual counter-arguments", which would be a comment i would upvote.
But what you wrote sounds like a statement that you have an opinion which you are unwilling to change independently of arguments and facts, and that is sad.