I'm Being Censored.

It's currently around 11:40 on Febuary 3rd and I'm writing this in an Internet cafe. This is because since around 17:00 yesterday (2/2/12) my home Internet connection has been blocked.

Apart from antagonising me this is being done because the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) are currently in closed session over Syria. In the coming days they are expected to vote on a watered down resolution that calls for nothing other then a political transition in the country so will have no effect other then to endorse the current foreign backed insurgency in the country. Things have only got this far because Britain has made it quite clear to Russia that they will keep coming back the UNSC until they receive that endorsement. Unfortunately what the Russians haven't realised during all this brow beating is that if a resolution is passed on Syria then Britain will be back asking the UNSC for a resolution on Somalia by August and possibly Nigeria by the end of 2012. So the obvious solution would be for Russia to force a vote now because both Britain and the US both know that they don't have enough votes to even force a veto.

I wouldn't mind so much but all I wanted to do yesterday was to use my five years experience working in crowd control at football stadiums to explain in detail why I think that the Port Said disaster was the result of incompetence rather then conspiracy. The fact I'm being prevented for doing this and Egypt appears to be tearing itself apart over the tragedy should tell you all you need to know about the west's attitude to Arab revolutions.

Interestingly the way the US are blocking my Internet connection is through something called the DNS register. If the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) were to pass in it's current form this is a sanction that US authorities would be able to legally use against websites that breach copyright. So while something clearly needs to be done about online piracy I obviously think SOPA is a step to far. In fact if I was able too I would like to go through it line by line to see exactly what needs to be kept and what needs to be improved but I guess once again everything else will have to wait because Israel's got an existential threat.