[Reader-list] Fwd: [PR] Is FaceBook Down Tonight?

Wed May 19 18:46:29 IST 2010

Yasir ,

Just stumbled upon a blog ....so thought of sharing it with readers .
Others , please note that I am not the athor of this blog...

Source : http://umairkazi.wordpress.com/

Congratulations, Lahore High Court. You just sent Pakistan back
hundreds of years.

To counter the “Draw Muhammad Day” group/event on popular social
networking site Facebook, the Lahore High Court has ordered the
website to be banned till May 31 2010, at the petition of an “Islamic”
forum of lawyers. Here’s what I’m wondering:

By this logic, Pakistani authorities should ban every immoral thing on
the internet. Bring in the moral police!
Why ban facebook altogether for the actions of a member? Is the
foreign ministry also thinking of banning USA altogether because the
alleged initiator of this movement lives in Seattle?
Unless I am overcome by curiosity and actively search for the page and
the pictures, how would my life change? The event is opt-in, not
opt-out.
Consistency is necessary. Now unless we block Facebook for every “Fuck
(insert religious concept here)” group, we’re practicing selective
justice.
You’re restricting Pakistanis from accessing 400,000,000 Facebook
users. The world is moving towards a global village and you’re locking
us out. Might as well live in a cave.
Don’t play favorites! Block Google too, they’ll probably list the
offensive images too.
Now we can never complain about being labelled terrorists because some
of us choose that path. If all of Facebook is evil because some
facebook users are holding this event, then all of Pakistan is evil
because some of our people like to blow up stuff.
Nobody gives a shit about a tiny facebook group. People do, however,
sit up and take notice when governments ban stuff on the internet. You
just made the Hate a lot louder than it would’ve been otherwise.
Now every time a punk wants to make a big fuss in the international
arena he can just make a similar page and wait for the Pakistani
government to react.
I could be wrong about all this.
I still think we should live and let live. The world is tough,
confusing, and chaotic. Closing your eyes won’t make the ugliness go
away.

On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 6:32 PM, يا سر ~ ɹısɐʎ <yasir.media at gmail.com> wrote:
> it was working during the last hour on my service: wateen, but not any more
>  :)
>
>
> On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 5:43 PM, Claude Almansi <claude.almansi at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Now also reported on
>> <
>> http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1260582/Pakistan-court-orders-block-of-Facebook
>> >,
>> via Reuters:
>>
>> "A Pakistani court ordered the government on Wednesday to block
>> Facebook after press reports of a competition being held to draw the
>> Prophet Mohammad, a lawyer said.
>>
>> Pakistani media recently reported that a caricature competition is
>> being held on May 20 about Mohammad on Facebook.
>>
>> "The court has ordered the government to immediately block Facebook
>> until May 31 because of this blasphemous competition," Azhar Siddique,
>> a representative of the Islamic Lawyers Forum who filed a petition in
>> the Lahore High Court, told Reuters.
>>
>> "The court has also ordered the foreign ministry to investigate why
>> such a competition is being held."
>>
>> A spokesman for the official telecommunications watchdog, Pakistan
>> Telecommunication Authority, said the government on Tuesday ordered
>> Internet service providers to block websites showing these
>> caricatures, but that they had not received the court orders as yet.
>>
>> Any representation of the Prophet Mohammad is deemed un-Islamic and
>> blasphemous by Muslims.
>>
>> But some warned the court's response could backfire.
>>
>> "Blocking the entire website would anger users, especially young and
>> adults, because the social networking website is so popular among them
>> and they spend most of their time on it," said the CEO of Nayatel,
>> Wahaj-us-Siraj.
>>
>> "Basically, our judges aren't technically sound. They have just
>> ordered it, but it should have been done in a better way by just
>> blocking a particular URL or link."
>>
>> "The PTA's decision (to block the URL) was rational and good, but
>> let's see how they will implement the court decision."
>>
>> On the information page on Facebook for the contest -- which was still
>> visible on Wednesday -- the organizers described it as a "snarky"
>> response to Muslim bloggers who "warned" the creators of the Comedy
>> Central television show "South Park" over a recent depiction of the
>> Prophet in a bear suit.
>>
>> "We are not trying to slander the average Muslim," the Facebook page
>> creators wrote. "We simply want to show the extremists that threaten
>> to harm people because of their Mohammad depictions that we're not
>> afraid of them. That they can't take away our right to freedom of
>> speech by trying to scare us into silence."
>>
>> Publications of similar cartoons in Danish newspapers in 2005 sparked
>> deadly protests in Muslim countries. Around 50 people were killed
>> during violent protests in Muslim countries in 2006 over the cartoons,
>> five of them in Pakistan.
>>
>> Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on Denmark's
>> embassy in Islamabad in 2008, killing six people, saying it was in
>> revenge for publication of caricatures."
>>
>> On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 9:46 AM, Awab Alvi <drawab at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\05\19\story_19-5-2010_pg13_6<http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010%5C05%5C19%5Cstory_19-5-2010_pg13_6>
>> >
>> > LHC issues notice to PTA on plea to ban Facebook
>> >
>> > LAHORE: Justice Ijaz Ahmad Chaudhry of the Lahore High Court on Tuesday
>> > issued notice to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority secretary to
>> reply
>> > until Wednesday (today), on a petition seeking a ban on Facebook, which
>> is
>> > holding a competition of caricatures of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). Islamic
>> > Lawyers Movement filed the petition through Chaudhry Zulfiqar advocate,
>> who
>> > stated that a competition was announced on Facebook on April 20 which
>> would
>> > continue until May 20, asking all the members of the website to create
>> their
>> > caricatures to participate in the competition. Zulfiqar said under the
>> law
>> > no practice against Islam could be allowed in the country. He told the
>> court
>> > that the website, having various features against the injunctions of
>> Islam,
>> > is banned in various countries. Zulfiqar submitted that there were 45
>> > million users of Facebook in Pakistan, adding that the PTA was
>> responsible
>> > for its spread in Pakistan. He said the PTA has already blocked various
>> > websites in the country but was reluctant to ban Facebook. He said
>> students
>> > and various segments of the society have already started protests in the
>> > country, which could be harmful for the public property. He requested the
>> > court to issue directions to PTA to put an immediate ban on the use of
>> > Facebook in the Pakistan. staff report
>> >
>> > Awab Alvi
>> >
>> > Blog: http://teeth.com.pk/blog
>> > Twitter: http://twitter.com/DrAwab
>> >
>>
>> --
>> This is the People's Resistance Mailing List
>>
>> Send only RELEVANT discussion emails to
>> PeoplesResistance at googlegroups.com
>>
>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
>> PeoplesResistance+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com<PeoplesResistance%2Bunsubscribe at googlegroups.com>
>>
>> Or visit this group at
>> http://groups.google.com/group/PeoplesResistance
>>
> _________________________________________
> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
> Critiques & Collaborations
> To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header.
> To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list
> List archive: &lt;https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>