Stop Press: New Omani Blog Community Queer blocked by ... Omantel

Update: 15 Feb.
Community Queer is now magically unblocked! Perhaps 'someone wearing a tie' got involved... And as Abdullah pointed out, Community Queer got a lot of free advertising and now undoubtably more popular than ever. So try to take advantage of the opportunity Scudder and Finns.

Photo: Unaccountable employees of a private company decide what you can see on the internet in Oman. And if they want to block harmless blogs by local Omanis, they can.


Well, how spookily coincidental, following a mini-post on Freedom of Expression in Oman. The arbitrary and almost absolute powers over our internet access, wielded by the faceless technocrats at a publicly traded company - Omantel - have decided to block a promising local blog called Community Queer.

Shame on you Omantel. Shame on you TRA.

Community Queer is authored by 2 Omani homosexuals (OK, one is bi-sexual). This in itself was unique and encouraging. The blog was totally innocuous.

Here's their header and info.

COMMUNITY QUEER IS COMPOSED OF TWO MEMBERS OF THE ARAB YOUTH WITH HOMOSEXUAL TENDENCIES. HAVING FOUND EACH OTHER IN THIS CLOSETED REGION OF THE WORLD, WE'VE DECIDED TO MAINTAIN THIS BLOG AS OUR LETTER TO THE WORLD, TO THE LOST YOUTH. IT IS A DECLARATION OF OUR EXISTENCE AND AN APPEAL FOR TOLERANCE, ACCEPTANCE, AND OPEN DISCUSSION. IT IS A MESSAGE TO YOUNG PEOPLE EVERYWHERE THAT THEY ARE NOT ALONE. OK, PRETENTIOUSNESS OVER. UM... BOOBS.


ABOUT US

COMMUNITYQUEER
MUSCAT, OMAN
The members of Community Queer will hereby be known as Scudder and Finn. Scudder is a famously closeted and sexually inclined female of the lesbian variety. She likes boys too, when they look like girls (I guess she's bisexual, but whatever, right?). She enjoys classical music, quality books, and the colors purple, yellow, and green! Finn is the male half of the Queer duo. He likes boys. A lot. He likes girls too, but only if their clothes are on. Along with boys, Finn enjoys music, books, and throwing dirt at people.

So, who is it that decides these things on our behalf? Who are these people who decide, without review, without published guidelines, to impose arbitrary censorship on the entire country? George Orwell would be proud. This is fascism folks.

I wouldn't care so much if it was just for Omantel customers. But these people have monopoly control over access to the entire internet for the entire country, no matter what service provider.

So, people. Send Omantel an email asking them to unblock their site. (just try to follow the link on the blogroll on the right and you'll be offered an opportunity to send a message to the censors).

You can also refer to an old post here on the expert solutions to circumventing such low tech internet filters. You can even use Google as your proxy. I'll up date the blogroll link to do that for you automatically soon.

UPDATE: Done. See the last link or click here to tunnel around the basic Omantel censor if you are in Oman. Isn't Google so neat?

I also trust this will be perhaps picked up by the international media. Who knows what stories they'll decide to tag the story with, in a search for ironic local context?

Well done faceless idiot in Omantel!!! [just a hint, Omantel filter manager troll, you've probably got about, oh, maybe 1 day before you might find yourself really really regretting such a stupid thing as blocking this site and bringing the world's attention to this article). Think about it, you dimwit.... got it? Maybe ask someone wearing a tie.

It's not like the block is even effective against an average 9 year old.

Omantel filter down, Omani Inflation soars

Omantel filters having problems…
As many of you may know, Omantel's internet filters have been down since Thursday. And as of this post, the big brother filters were still off! So, nows a great time to go to all those previously blocked sites, like:

http://www.goremy.com

And any other naughty sites you might be missing. Now is the time to download proxy software, as these sites are always blocked. Go for it!

Update: Just checked the filters again, a few hours after posting this, and they are back up. If it was my fault, apologies. I fail to understand why www.GOREMY.com has been blocked tho.

Government Continues Inaction on Inflation front
As inflation roars ahead in Oman, fuelled by a weak dollar-linked rial and huge growth in both the domestic money supply (more than 35% pa), loans, the housing bubble and big increases in Government spending, the Government decided to hold a press conference to describe the new cunning plan.

The ministerial committee dealing with the impact of price hike has come out with an action plan that includes a number of recommendations and mechanisms for implementation, according to Maqbool bin Ali Sultan, minister of commerce and industry.

Full article in
Times of Oman

Mostly the actions are:
- import fish and restrict fish exports
- subsidise flour
- set up more talk shops about getting more agricultural production within Oman
- soft loans to allow Omanis to buy big boats to catch fish deeper/further offshore
- track inflation

Well, that’s it really. Oh, and ask people to stop spending so much money...

As for consumer awareness on rationalised consumption, the minister said rationalising consumption and changing our consumption patterns would alleviate the price hike.

Yeah, that’s a great policy response. Not. As is trying to talk down prices by pressuring the traders and subsiding basic foodstuffs, as reported today in Times of Oman

None of these actions will actually address the core problems in the economy. These will at best provide a very temporary pause. Step 1 has to be revaluation (or even better a switch to a basket of currencies that would allow interest rates to be increased), and something to boost the economy’s real capacity for domestic production and employment.

Money supply seems to be expanding without heed, and with current oil prices still running at double the basis for the Government’s budget, and no effective policy tools to take money out of the economy, its getting worse, not better. So, expect inflation in Oman to continue to accelerate, as the housing and stock market bubbles continue to grow increasingly out of control. Meanwhile, ordinary people are borrowing to speculate on the stock market and real estate.

Its all going to end in tears…

Proxy Servers and Oman

Sorry team, I was off on business for a while, and then had to be a bit careful postwise. The Ministry IT team were snooping... Hmmmm. As they say, sometimes the paranoid are right.

Anyhow, for those who want to avoid the Omantel filters, there is a programme that - well, at least as of today - will work in Oman to automatically find proxy servers. And the site is available [unlike most of them], so if you are interested in surfing without Omantel looking over your shoulder, act fast kids, before it joins the list of blocked sites.

Its called Invisible Browsing v6.5:

http://www.download3000.com/download_46788.html




or try:

http://www.newfreedownloads.com/find/invisible-browsing.html




Good luck surfers!

Please note: this will get you around Omantel filters, and hide your TCP IP address, but if Omani Internal Security really, really want to find you, they probably still can, as anyone who's seen the series 24 can explain...