China Keeps Censoring Google Applications

June 24, 2009 · Filed Under Politics, Tech · 1 Comment 

China has been known lately for censoring all sort of things in China, adding slowly things like certain keywords and YouTube. Recently it was just known that now China has censored more Google Applications such as GMail, Picasa, Google Images, etc. TechCrunch is reporting that Facebook and Twitter and other web services are still working in China but the way things are going they will probably be added to the list of things to be censored.

In my opinion companies need to start standing up to Chinas censorship and stop agreeing to their demands of helping them censor everyone in China.

UPDATE: It seems that everything got back to “normal” at around 6pm yesterday.

Yasser

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Price of A Life.

May 5, 2008 · Filed Under Ideas & Thoughts, Politics · 1 Comment 

As I’m doing my research for a term paper I have to do, I found this article called Sometimes in War, You Can Put A Price In A Life. The article talks about different ways and situations where prices are given to human life. If you would ask anyone rational the price of life they would say that it’s priceless. Apparently some people have thought of “great” ideas of giving price to life. In a certain case they considered $2,000 a reasonable price for Afghanistan’s life. This is a ridiculous low amount for a life, at least in my opinion. This price was given to people who got shot during the war but were innocent people. In the same scenario 50 other people got injured but received no money. It is true that war brings out the worse in people. Even people who die in airplane crashes get more money than this and those are really bad accidents. War is less than an accident. But this is just my opinion.

Yasser

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Why The United Nations Doesn’t Work ?

January 21, 2008 · Filed Under Ideas & Thoughts, Politics · 1 Comment 

The topic for discussion in my Intro to International Relations class was the United Nations. Most people know the name but know little about the organization itself. The definition according to Wikipedia is:

The United Nations (UN) is an international organization whose stated aims are to facilitate cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress and human rights issues. The UN was founded in 1945 to replace the League of Nations, in the hope that it would intervene in conflicts between states and thereby avoid war.

So the common knowledge about the U.N. is that they prevent wars and help out other countries. The truth is that they don’t do a very good job at it. And if you don’t agree with that then why was there Apartheid in South Africa for such a long time? Why is the current situation in Darfur still going on? Pick an issue and you will see that the U.N. has done little or nothing to solve this issue. But the question is, why doesn’t the U.N. work? It is a bunch of countries that gather and try to solve problems that other countries have. The important meeting where all the states get together, or all the members, is called the General Assembly. There everyone discusses topics and vote on what should/shouldn’t be done to bring peace and solve problems. What most people don’t know is that there is also a Security Council composed by 5 permanent members: China, United States, France, Russia and the United Kingdom. There is also 10 non-permanent members that rotate every year.

These five permanent members come from World War II, which is what made the United Nations exist. These five dominating countries have a great power. These five states have the power to Veto any proposal. You don’t need all five of them to veto, just one. Thus, if a proposal is given that doesn’t benefit any of the permanent members, one of them will most likely veto it in their personal interest. Meaning… nothing will ever be passed that doesn’t benefit or affects one of these states. If the U.N. would work better then there would be no permanent members, they should rotate the entire Security Council every year. Because these five countries are in charge of making these decisions before they reach the General Assembly, they will never have any repercussion from the U.N. This is a monopoly on an international level. Why doesn’t someone challenge the U.N. on this?

Yasser

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Iowa Caucuses, The Presedential Race.

January 4, 2008 · Filed Under Politics · Comment 

I haven’t been following politics lately because I already feel informed of what is going on. As usual Mike Gravel is always excluded from talking and lately from participating in the Iowa Caucuses. Surprisingly, Hillary Clinton didn’t win at Iowa but it is no surprise that she is in the lead and to me it seems pretty obvious that no matter what happens she is the candidate that will run in 2008 for president. Not that she is the best, but it is the agenda. On the other hand Dennis Kucinich was also not allowed to participate in the Iowa Caucuses which is not quite fair. Here is a little view of what the future looks like: Hillary for President, John Edwards for VP and they will win the elections. But maybe things change from here until then.

Yasser

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