Saudi Arabia bans Facebook?

Slashdot:

gandhi_2 sends in a brief Associated Press piece on Saudi Arabia's blocking of Facebook. "An official with Saudi Arabia's communications authority says it has blocked Facebook because the popular social networking website doesn't conform with the kingdom's conservative values. ... He says Facebook's content had 'crossed a line' with the kingdom's conservative morals, but that blocking the site is a temporary measure." Some reports indicate that at least some individual Facebook pages can be reached from inside the kingdom. There hasn't been an official announcement; the source noted above requested anonymity. Earlier this year when Pakistan and Bangladesh banned Facebook, it was over particular content — cartoons of Mohammed — and the Saudi ban may prove similar once more details emerge.

Meanwhile, Turkey is more excited...



I chatted with a few Turks about this. It narrates the singer meeting his love on Facebook. He's one of those idiot celebrities who's disdained by most people in the country.

Turkey lifts ban on youtube

Reuters:

Turkey has lifted its ban on video-sharing website YouTube as material deemed insulting to Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk has been removed, Turkish state-run news agency Anatolian reported Saturday.

Ankara's general attorney ruled the site, blocked since May 2008, should be now freely accessible to Turkish users.
The ban was widely criticized, even by Turkey's President Abdullah Gul who used his Twitter page to condemn the move, and said he had asked responsible institutions for a solution.

Under the country's penal code it is an offence to insult the Turkish nation and its institutions.

YouTube said in a statement on Saturday: "We've received reports that some users in Turkey are once again able to access YouTube...We want to be clear that a third party, not YouTube, have apparently removed some of the videos that have caused the blocking of YouTube in Turkey using our automated copyright complaint process."

"We are investigating whether this action is valid in accordance with our copyright policy," YouTube added.

Parties, countries, popularity

Ambers wrote:

My Republican friends keep asking me when I’ll take the GOP seriously again and why I’ve stopped writing about ticky-tak political gamesmanship and GOP consultant tricks. When they’re a serious party with serious ideas, then we can talk

Mark Hemingway protests:

To support his decision to ignore Republican politics, Ambinder cited poll numbers straight from a liberal blog that supposedly demonstrate that Venezuela — not specifically the country’s socialist government, but the country as a whole — has a higher approval rating than the Republican party. Of course, the same meaningless CNN polling data also show that Americans have a higher opinion of Turkey than of the Democratic party. Maybe Ambinder can explain what that means — perhaps Armenians and Kurds are underrepresented in the polling sample?

Link blag

Mark Thompson: Whaddaya Mean, "Activist"?...

I wanted to give a lawyer’s perspective to the discussion of judicial activism the decision has spawned between William, John, and E.D., arising in part due to Mr. Sullum and Mr. Whelan. To be sure, I think E.D. is wrong to the extent he argues that the Iowa decision is justified because it reaches a rights-enhancing, morally just result; William is exactly right in arguing that the process by which the Court reached its decision is more important than whether the result is just.

Politico: Defense cuts deepen old wounds...

It took a while for the magnitude of the cuts to sink in, but once it did, the ritualistic wailing from congressional leaders and defense contractors that always accompanies Pentagon budget-slashing began with unprecedented fury.

And that’s because the cuts proposed Monday by Defense Secretary Robert Gates — axing six major defense weapons systems, including missile programs, helicopters, fighter jets and a communications satellite — were themselves unprecedented. Or to borrow an Obama term, audacious.

[...] “I strongly support Secretary Gates’ decision to restructure a number of major defense programs,” McCain said. “It has long been necessary to shift spending away from weapon systems plagued by scheduling and cost overruns to ones that strike the correct balance between the needs of our deployed forces and the requirements for meeting the emerging threats of tomorrow.”

This is McCain's best area of expertise, so hopefully Congress can get some of that elusive bipartisanship going. Other Republicans don't seem very cooperative, however, preferring to milk "you're cutting defense!" for political points when from a cost-benefit standpoint many programs should be cut.

Yglesias: Praise for the New Defense Budget...

For more analysis on yesterday’s defense budget analysis see Robert Farley, Spencer Ackerman, Fred Kaplan, and James Fallows. All are impressed, and all rightly so.

This is the move that justifies the decision to keep Robert Gates on at the Pentagon. Any new Defense Secretary, no matter how brilliant, would have had to have spent his first three months in office building relationships with the top military commanders and focusing on filling out the DOD civilian staff. Only a Secretary who’s already been in office could have the ability to propose sweeping change. But only a president who’s brand new could have the popularity and honeymoon effect necessary to have any hope of driving the changes through congress. Hence the appeal of the odd alignment of new president and old defense secretary.

Mark Lynch: Obama scores again, but the game is just starting...

Obama's speech in Turkey's Parliament has gotten heavy coverage and rave reviews across the Arab political spectrum. Even influential newspapers and personalities who are usually quite critical of American foreign policy have expressed frank admiration. Despite the disarray in the public diplomacy bureaucracy (where there is still no nominee for the Under-Secretary of State), I would say that Obama has already succeeded at the initial public diplomacy phase of his effort to transform America's relations with the Muslim world. And he's not done -- I'm fairly sure that despite the fact that he has lived up to his promise to give a major address from a Muslim capital, this was not even "the" speech to the Muslim world that he promised during his campaign. But now will come the real challenge: transforming the words into deeds and delivering on the promise.

Obama has conquered Europe? Video of town hall in Turkey

Overcoming Bias: occupational licensing sucks.

Digg: Man commits suicide while watching Watchmen...come on, it wasn't that bad, was it?

Gay comedy: SNL, Fast & Furious ...and this:

Maher on the marijuana question

As I said a few posts down:

Some people simply can't understand that if drugs were legal, our enemies wouldn't have a monopoly on them and be out of their lucrative business. So when you tell them enemies are financed by opium, they think we need to double down on the task of eradicating drug trade. They have no perspective on how intractable that is, or how badly we've been failing at it for decades.

Salmon Rushdie here is an example of a smart guy who doesn't get it. Good of Hitchens to set things straight.