What to Do if Skype is Blocked Where You Travel (and Why We Should Care)

Her Is an a rticle i have found on the internet and i think its verry usefull

For the article soruce

I was testing my new iPhone Skype set up in Belize. It wouldn’t connect. I was connected to the internet via a wireless connection. I had Skype installed and it worked back home. But every time I tried to log in, it would simply hang. Nothing.

In Belize, Skype is blocked.

I quickly found out that the entire country of Belize uses a single carrier for internet service, Belize Telecommunications (BTL). And BTL, seemingly in a desire to force people to use their long distance services has blocked Skype (and other VOIP programs).

I think there’s a comfort in thinking that these kinds of things only happen in faraway places like China or North Korea. But the scariest part? It’s becoming more common. There were some cases of individual internet providers in the US blocking Skype, and until October of this year, AT&T didn’t allow iPhone users to access Skype either. A NY Times piece about allowing wifi access on planes suggested Skype access could be blocked.

As travelers, the ability to connect back home is part of what makes travel possible for many people. Sure you can buy a new cell phone in each country, but if you’re trying to run a business out of your backpack then you need a single number where you can reached. Skype provides that service. It scares the heck out of telecoms who can’t see any reason why everyone wouldn’t flee their expensive long distance plans and make all of their calls online.

How Do They Do That?

In all of the countries that block Skype or other online destinations, there is a manual process involved. Usually they have a firewall that restricts specific websites or data ports. Because all of your web traffic passes through their firewall before it reaches the outside world, it’s an effective block for anyone trying to get to a program or website directly.

How to Get Around It

The work around is connect to a VPN. A VPN bypasses the firewall, because after you make your initial connection (which your ISP can still deny) you have formed a private tunnel between your computer and your VPN’s server. So when you go to use Skype you’re not going through the firewall at all. You can basically do whatever you’d like.

The big caveat is that part about “after the initial connection”. Certain free VPNs have become so popular that they too have been blocked. And if you can’t connect, you can’t make the private tunnel, and you’re still stuck behind the firewall. To work around this, certain VPNs will change their IP address (the number that identifies them) and it creates a cat and mouse game of how fast they can change verses how fast the telecom can block it. Sometimes you’ll have a VPN that works for a year, or a month, or just a few days. The telecoms can’t keep up, and that’s unlikely to change.

Ways to Get a VPN

There are tons of websites that offer this service for free, and my best advice is to just try out a few and see if they’ll work where you are. Things change on a daily basis, so keep switching around if you hit a roadblock.

Free VPNs

Hotspot Shield

Yupee Phone

Log Mein

Wippien

Open VPN

Iopus

Voip Sol

Subscription VPNs

VPN Accounts

Banana VPN

Pro VPN Accounts

Countries that block Skype

This list is compiled from several reports and may include a single carrier, a government based block or a limited to a certain service area. If you have updates or additions to the list, let me know. I’m sure this list will be outdated before it’s even posted, but I’d like to try to keep it as fresh as possible.

1. Anguilla (blocked by Cable & Wireless, aka LIME)
2. Antigua and Barbuda (blocked by Cable & Wireless, aka LIME)
3. Bahrain*
4. Barbados (blocked by Cable & Wireless, aka LIME)
5. British Virgin Islands (blocked by Cable & Wireless, aka LIME)
6. Belize
7. Brazil (blocked by Brasil Telecom)
8. Cayman Islands (blocked by Cable & Wireless, aka LIME)
9. Cuba
10. Dominica (blocked by Cable & Wireless, aka LIME)
11. Germany (blocked by T Mobile)
12. Grenada (blocked by Cable & Wireless, aka LIME)
13. Guyana
14. Jamaica (blocked by Cable & Wireless, aka LIME)
15. Kuwait (blocked by Qualitynet)*
16. Montserrat (blocked by Cable & Wireless, aka LIME)
17. Myanmar
18. North Korea
19. Oman (blocked by Omantel)*
20. Pakistan (blocked by Cybernet, PCCW, PTA, PIE, Flag Telecom)
21. Paraguay
22. Qatar (blocked by Qtel)*
23. Saint Lucia (blocked by Cable & Wireless, aka LIME)
24. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (blocked by Cable & Wireless, aka LIME)
25. Singapore (blocked by Singtel)
26. St. Kitts and Nevis (blocked by Cable & Wireless, aka LIME)
27. Syria
28. Trinidad and Tobago (blocked by Cable & Wireless, aka LIME)
29. Turks and Caicos (blocked by Cable & Wireless, aka LIME)
30. UAE, Dubai (blocked by Etisalat)*

*May allow computer-to-computer calls (unconfirmed by specific telecom).

Why We Should Care

It’s a dangerous precedence. It’s about money, which a powerful motivator. If other countries see that the attempts by telecoms to restrict access to VOIP services like Skype massively backfires when they are unable to stem the flow of traffic via VPNs, then that’s a good thing. As I was researching this article, I found people aren’t talking about this. Even at Skype.com they only acknowledge that UAE has a block on their service. It’s the quiet the scares me.

With Cheap Food Imports, Haiti Can't Feed Itself

The earthquake not only smashed markets, collapsed warehouses and left more than 2.5 million people without enough to eat. It may also have shaken up the way the developing world gets food.

Decades of inexpensive imports – especially rice from the U.S. – punctuated with abundant aid in various crises have destroyed local agriculture and left impoverished countries such as Haiti unable to feed themselves.

While those policies have been criticized for years in aid worker circles, world leaders focused on fixing Haiti are admitting for the first time that loosening trade barriers has only exacerbated hunger in Haiti and elsewhere.

They're led by former U.S. President Bill Clinton – now U.N. special envoy to Haiti – who publicly apologized this month for championing policies that destroyed Haiti's rice production. Clinton in the mid-1990s encouraged the impoverished country to dramatically cut tariffs on imported U.S. rice.

"It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake," Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 10. "I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else."

Clinton and former President George W. Bush, who are spearheading U.S. fundraising for Haiti, arrive Monday in Port-au-Prince. Then comes a key Haiti donors' conference on March 31 at the United Nations in New York.

Those opportunities present the country with its best chance in decades to build long-term food production, and could provide a model for other developing countries struggling to feed themselves.

"A combination of food aid, but also cheap imports have ... resulted in a lack of investment in Haitian farming, and that has to be reversed," U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes told The Associated Press. "That's a global phenomenon, but Haiti's a prime example. I think this is where we should start."

Haiti's government is asking for $722 million for agriculture, part of an overall request of $11.5 billion.

With Cheap Food Imports, Haiti Can't Feed Itself 2

That includes money to fix the estimated $31 million of quake damage to agriculture, but much more for future projects restoring Haiti's dangerous and damaged watersheds, improving irrigation and infrastructure, and training farmers and providing them with better support.

Haitian President Rene Preval, an agronomist from the rice-growing Artibonite Valley, is also calling for food aid to be stopped in favor of agricultural investment.

Today Haiti depends on the outside world for nearly all of its sustenance. The most current government needs assessment – based on numbers from 2005 – is that 51 percent of the food consumed in the country is imported, including 80 percent of all rice eaten.

The free-food distributions that filled the shattered capital's plazas with swarming hungry survivors of the Jan. 12 earthquake have ended, but the U.N. World Food Program is continuing targeted handouts expected to reach 2.5 million people this month. All that food has been imported – though the agency recently put out a tender to buy locally grown rice.

Street markets have reopened, filled with honking trucks, drink sellers clinking bottles and women vendors crouched behind rolled-down sacks of dry goods. People buy what's cheapest, and that's American-grown rice.

The best-seller comes from Riceland Foods in Stuttgart, Arkansas, which sold six pounds for $3.80 last month, according to Haiti's National Food Security Coordination Unit. The same amount of Haitian rice cost $5.12.

"National rice isn't the same, it's better quality. It tastes better. But it's too expensive for people to buy," said Leonne Fedelone, a 50-year-old vendor.

Riceland defends its market share in Haiti, now the fifth-biggest export market in the world for American rice.

But for Haitians, near-total dependence on imported food has been a disaster.

Cheap foreign products drove farmers off their land and into overcrowded cities. Rice, a grain with limited nutrition once reserved for special occasions in the Haitian diet, is now a staple.

Imports also put the country at the mercy of international prices: When they spiked in 2008, rioters unable to afford rice smashed and burned buildings. Parliament ousted the prime minister.

Now it could be happening again. Imported rice prices are up 25 percent since the quake – and would likely be even higher if it weren't for the flood of food aid, said WFP market analyst Ceren Gurkan.

Three decades ago things were different. Haiti imported only 19 percent of its food and produced enough rice to export, thanks in part to protective tariffs of 50 percent set by the father-son dictators, Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier.

When their reign ended in 1986, free-market advocates in Washington and Europe pushed Haiti to tear those market barriers down. President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, freshly reinstalled to power by Clinton in 1994, cut the rice tariff to 3 percent.

Impoverished farmers unable to compete with the billions of dollars in subsidies paid by the U.S. to its growers abandoned their farms. Others turned to more environmentally destructive crops, such as beans, that are harvested quickly but hasten soil erosion and deadly floods.

There have been some efforts to restore Haiti's agriculture in recent years: The U.S. Agency for International Development has a five-year program to improve farms and restore watersheds in five Haitian regions. But the $25 million a year pales next to the $91.4 million in U.S.-grown food aid delivered just in the past 10 weeks.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization also distributed 28 tons of bean seeds in mountainous areas this month, with plans this week to distribute 49 tons of corn.

The G8 group of the world's wealthiest nations pledged $20 billion for farmers in poor countries last year. The head of the FAO called this week for some to be given to Haiti.

President Barack Obama's administration has pledged to support agriculture in developing nations. U.S. Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana has sponsored legislation to create a White House Global Food Security coordinator to improve long-term agriculture worldwide, with a budget of $8.5 billion through 2014.

Even Haiti's most powerful food importers have joined the push for locally produced food.

"I would prefer to buy everything locally and have nothing to import," said businessman Reginald Boulos, who is also president of Haiti's chamber of commerce.

But one group staunchly opposes reducing food exports to Haiti: the exporters themselves.

"Haiti doesn't have the land nor the climate ... to produce enough rice," said Bill Reed, Riceland's vice president of communications. "The productivity of U.S. farmers helps feed countries which cannot feed themselves."

Germany's New Bank Fee Will Pay For Future Bailouts

The German government plans to introduce a levy on banks to ensure that they pay for the costs of any future crises, sparing taxpayers, officials said Monday.

Leaders of Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition agreed that "banks cannot in future gamble at the taxpayer's expense," Volker Kauder, the parliamentary leader of her conservative bloc, told ZDF television.

They decided that "provisions must be made so that they – if it gets difficult – pay for things themselves," he added.

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble's spokesman, Michael Offer, said a formal decision by Merkel's Cabinet is expected March 31.

He gave no details of the plan but said the levy would be at a "bearable" level and take into account the fact that some banks are still affected by the crisis. He stressed that it would be designed not to harm banks' ability to hand out credit.

Kauder gave no details on the size of the fund that would result from the levy, but said it would run into the billions of euros.

He said banks that pose a "higher systemic risk," for example with their own trading operations, would be asked to pay more than others.

Last week, the Association of German Banks, which represents private-sector banks including Deutsche Bank AG and Commerzbank AG, said it would support a privately financed but state-controlled stabilization fund that could intervene in future to rescue or wind up troubled lenders.

The Federation of German Industries said it was "legitimate" for the government to seek to involve banks in the costs of saving and stabilizing financial institutions.

Healthcare bill cements President Obama's legacy

Depending on their generation, most Americans will never forget where they were and what they were doing when Pearl Harbor was bombed, Jack Kennedy was murdered and the twin towers were toppled by madness and hatred. Though hardly as stark or tragic, except among the most fevered Obama-bashers, Sunday's health care vote has joined that pantheon of moments frozen in time. It doesn't matter that this bill is far less ambitious than many wanted, kicks in at an anemic pace and lets premium-gouging insurers off the hook for several more years. It's still the stuff of history. Barack Obama has pulled off the most epic piece of social legislation since Lyndon B. Johnson got Medicare and Medicaid passed in 1965. Every President since Teddy Roosevelt has dreamed of expanding health care coverage to most citizens, not just the oldest and poorest. The crusade has gone nowhere. Even as savvy a pol as Bill Clinton, described to his face at a weekend gathering of Washington political elites as the Ghost of Health Care Past, couldn't get it done. Now, two-thirds of a century after President Harry Truman's national health-insurance plan was vilified, reformers have finally prevailed against Republican obstructionists, industry lobbyists and even fretful Democrats. Whatever happens in the rest of his one or two terms, Obama's presidency is now indelibly defined by health care. He made history by virtue of his very election. By prevailing yesterday, he's assured at the very least that history's next clause won't read: "But his groundbreaking electoral victory proved to be the high-water mark of his tenure, with little of consequence accomplished by his administration." Ironically, Obama has emulated George W. Bush's model in ignoring the counsel of some pragmatic, fainthearted aides to hold off on health reform until later. Bush had no use for what he derided as "small ball," opting for more ambitious big-time policies like invading Iraq and pushing to privatize Social Security. Obama's gamble that he could do better than piecemeal, despite fierce opposition from his political enemies and dwindling support from queasy Democrats, has paid off. Had he lost, his presidency would be as much toast today as his NCAA tournament brackets. He didn't - and political history shows that success, no matter how narrow or incremental, has a way of breeding more success. "The guy is going to have more bounce in his step," said legendary political consultant Stuart Spencer, who catapulted Ronald Reagan to national prominence and advised four Presidents. "If he gets his rhythm back and the economy starts getting well, Republicans better be careful."

Ford CEO Alan Mulally Paid Nearly $18 Million In 2009

Ford Motor Co. President and CEO Alan Mulally fabricated $17.9 actor endure year, about 1 percent added than the year before, as the aggregation struggled through the affliction U.S. auto sales bazaar in decades, according to a adding by The Associated Press based on government filings.

Mulally took a 30 percent pay cut endure February, bottomward his bacon to $1.4 million, and he got no benefit for the additional year in a row. But the amount of his banal options and banal awards rose by 9 percent to added than $16 actor as the bazaar bigger and Ford's shares climbed afterwards in the year.

Ford shares rose to a five-year top endure anniversary afterwards Moody's Investors Account upgraded the automaker's debt and said Ford has the abeyant to advance its affairs even further. Ford shares rose 35 cents, or about 3 percent to $13.65 in morning trading Monday.

Mulally's advantage included $127,699 for use of a clandestine jet. Ford spent $752,203 for Mulally's air biking on accumulated jets the year before, but it began the action of affairs its accumulated jets in 2009. Ford was clumsy to advertise all 5 jets for a fair value, agent Mark Truby said, so it busy three to a allotment account and still has two up for sale. Ford aswell paid $43,447 for Mulally's security.

Mulally's 30 percent bacon cut aswell will be in aftereffect this year. Ford Chairman Bill Ford Jr. is abnegating any bacon or benefit until the company's auto area achieves full-year profitability, but he did accept $16.8 actor in stock-based advantage for 2009.

Ford's fortunes rose in 2009 even as U.S. industry sales angled to a 26-year low. The automaker becoming $2.7 billion in 2009, its aboriginal anniversary accumulation in four years. Unlike General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group, Ford abhorred defalcation cloister and didn't yield government loans. As a result, Ford reaped amicableness from buyers and concluded the year with its aboriginal U.S. bazaar allotment access back 1995.

Ford's revenues fell by 14 percent in 2009, but the aggregation benefited from $5.1 billion in cuts to manufacturing, engineering and advertising.

Mulally said 2009 was "pivotal" in Ford's transformation, but that the aggregation has cogent plan to do. The automaker, which took out big loans in 2006 to armamentarium its restructuring, concluded 2009 with $34.3 billion in debt. That puts Ford at a disadvantage to GM and Chrysler, which were able to afford debt in defalcation court.

Mulally's bacon has been a afraid point for the company's branch workers, who alone a new annular of allowance concessions in October. Many cited Mulally's actualization afore Congress in backward 2008, if he told assembly he wouldn't plan for $1 a year as a allegorical gesture.