Countries That Censor The Internet

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has registered that in several countries in Asia and the Middle East, information is submitted to censorship by their governments. In some cases, the dictatorships or totalitarian regimes restrict the access to this media and impose prison penalties for uploading any “misleading” information to personal webpages.

Turkmenistan

To most Turkmen the internet is a luxury due to its high cost, a strategy used by the government to dissuade people from using it. The only internet service provider is the government, and it blocks access to a lot of sites, while monitoring all the email accounts in Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail. Also, websites run by human rights organizations and news agencies are blocked, and any attempt to get around the censorship could lead to grave consequences.

Vietnam

The government of Vietnam asked Yahoo, Google and Microsoft to give out the information of all the bloggers that use their platforms. The Government has created an agency exclusively to monitor the content exposed on the internet, blocking websites critical to the Vietnamese government, expatriate political parties, and international human rights organizations, among others.

Tunisia 

Tunisian internet service providers must report to the government the IP addresses and personal information of all bloggers on a regular basis, in order to keep them identified and under constant watch. All the traffic goes through a central net with which the government filters all content uploaded and monitors emails. Tunisia has also blocked thousands of websites (such as pornography, mail, search engine cached pages, online documents, conversion and translation services) and peer-to-peer and FTP transfer.

Syria

Any blogger who expresses any kind of anti-government feelings, or any kind of opinion that may “jeopardize national unity”, is arrested. Also sites that criticize the government are instantly blocked. The owners of Cyber Cafes are obligated to ask all of their customers for identification, leave a name registration and time of use, and report them to the authorities. In addition to filtering a wide range of Web content, the Syrian government monitors Internet use very closely and has detained citizens “for expressing their opinions or reporting information online.”

People’s republic of China

China has the most rigid censorship program in the world. It counts with providers of services that filter searches, block sites, erase any “inconvenient” content and monitor email traffic. China blocks or filters Internet content relating to Tibetan independence, Taiwan independence, police brutality, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, freedom of speech, pornography, some international news sources and propaganda outlets, certain religious movements, and many blogging websites. Fortunately, Listverse is not on their banned list (though it may be after this list).

Saudi Arabia

Around 400,000 sites have been blocked, including any that board political, social or religious topics. According to a study carried out in 2004 by the OpenNet Initiative, Saudi Arabia has “the most aggressive censorship focused on pornography, drug use, gambling, religious conversion of Muslims, and filtering circumvention tools.”





Cuba

Cuba has the lowest ratio of computers per inhabitant in Latin America, and the lowest internet access ratio of all the Western hemisphere. Citizens have to use government controlled “access points”, where their activity is monitored through IP blocking, keyword filtering and browsing history checking. Only pro-government bloggers and government employees are allowed to upload content to the internet.

Burma

Censorship of printed and audiovisual media. There is minimal internet penetration in civil life and any that exists is heavily monitored by the government, which filters emails and blocks access to human rights groups and opposition groups sites.

North Korea

Only a few hundred thousand citizens in North Korea, representing about 4% of the total population, have access to the Internet, which is heavily censored by the national government. The North Korean network is monitored heavily with only two websites being hosted under a domain name. All websites are under government control, as is all other media in North Korea. Naturally, blogging is not allowed and all content is uploaded or approved by the North Korean government.


Source

Public Toilets Of Different Countries

Invented in England, water closet is not immediately entered into the life of Russian homeowners because of the inertia and conservatism, although some sources require the invention of the toilet of the Russian naval engineer Vasily Blinov. More than 120 years ago in St. Petersburg Imperial University, he demonstrated his highly original sanitary device. By overjoyed by the respected public is present in bulk in earthenware bowl of his brainchild polvedra horse manure, and then washed it clean bucket of water. In the first years of XX century by the architect-modernist AI Zazersky in St. Petersburg was built unusual for that time a public toilet. It was a massive and spacious building with patterned brickwork, adorned with steeples and turrets. The building had 4 inputs: two ordinary "M" and "F", and yet separately for boys and girls. In addition to this legendary master of modern toilets have been built, two more simple: in the Alexander Garden and the Theater Square. In public toilets toilets were a concatenated into a single series of short lengths of cast-iron bell-mouthed pipes with pipe, flange, which were fastened to the seat. In the lower part of the team has always been in the water pipe, which comes from a flush tank. After a siphon in the floor, preventing odors from entering the premises, contamination with water periodically clean the drains. In the toilets installed urinals made of faience of different structures: flat, angular, and urinals specially designed for ladies. (Continued at the end of post)







In the cities for a long time there was no sanitation, no public toilets. People threw dirt
directly on the street, where they mixed with road dirt and manure, and need just celebrated
rivers or in urban gardens. Only at the end of XIX century there were hygiene and sanitation as urban category.


The first urban public toilet - retiradnik - in St. Petersburg was built by Michael's arena in 1871 over the cesspool built a house, and as a heater installed a Russian stove. Successful experience has prompted city officials to begin construction in the northern capital of 42 more latrines (at the Alexander Theater, at St. Nicholas Market Square). Archaeological finds in the ancient Russian cities show that in the XIV - XV centuries there were drainage system of wooden pipes for sewage disposal. But at the end of XIX century in major Russian cities begins construction of centralized sewage systems and sewage disposal. Excreta disposal has been collecting them in a pit and export in specific locations outside the city. Public toilets will be satisfied only in markets in central areas of cities, in parks, which draw large crowds of people. In private homeownership toilets were held separately from the buildings near the roadway for the convenience of emptying pit latrines. Removal of impurities by the private person - "Zolotar" on carts with barrels, and it only happened at night. In large cities were organized special carts for transporting sewage sewage that lasted up to 30 years of XX century.