visnum

UPDATE: Engelliweb commented: blogger.com was banned according to the order of Diyarbakır 1. Peace & Crime Court, 20.10.2008 of 2008/2761.

I don’t think that those bans are related to Adnan Oktar, because he was suing in Istanbul courts, however this one was a decision of Diyarbakir court.

UPDATE: (see above update) There is still no information about the cause of the ban but everybody suspects Adnan Oktar who is responsible for most of the bans in Turkey. He is bringing any content on the net to the court which supports Darwinism and mentions his name as a creationist. But whether he is involved or not in this recent blogger.com ban is still a suspicion.

Blogger.com is censored in Turkey. I’ll keep with details posted later. The ban created a huge response in Turkish bloggers almost immediately. We just see this when we try to reach blogger.com or any blog on *.blogspot.com:

blogger.com censored in Turkey

image credits: Aylin Özdemir

As you may already heard of it, we suffer from internet censorship here in Turkey. Therefore, I have to use alternatives to reach certain websites such as Youtube, Geocities, some blogs on WordPress, etc.

I won’t disclose sites from which I gather proxy information for obvious reasons but I have to tell you something interesting about two of the proxies I used.

One of them shows itself as it is from Liechtenstein. However while using it, when I surf to Google.com, I see an option below the search box and the anchor text is “Go to Google Bahrain”. The proxy is indeed in Bahrain.

Another strange thing is when I use proxies from Saudi Arabia, they work for many many long times. No downtime, and you can use it virtually forever. There is one Saudi Arabia proxy that I setup for a friend of mine a couple of weeks ago and it is still working.

People who work with proxies and surf the web are familiar to change them usually within a day or two because this is their life time. Therefore, it is strange to have a proxy working for weeks without downtime.

Moreover, on both proxies (both in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia), there is still censorship. You cannot watch videos on Youtube which are flagged as adult. You cannot look at pornographic material. Further than that, I observed that I cannot look at videos on Youtube which are about satanism.

On one hand, providing a working proxy with minimal or no downtime is a good service to the world. On the other hand, they still serve to the purpose of cruel conservatism. Yet, a non-stop working proxy is suspicious. I am not sure whether they collect user information there or not. Providing such a durable proxy requires investment and I wonder who is / are the people behind it.

Google started something called Power Readers. You can now follow what famous political opinion leaders reading and sharing. Here is the list of people that you can follow:

• Obama and McCain campaigns
• Mike Allen, POLITICO
• Chuck DeFeo, Townhall
• John Dickerson, Slate
• Mark Halperin, TIME
• Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post
• Ruth Marcus, Washington Post
• Jon Meacham, Newsweek
• Patrick Ruffini, The Next Right