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Pakistan seems ready to ban the Internet (again) (well, parts of it)!

On the face of it, this is Internet banning silly season all over again. But wait. Maybe, this is different. Maybe, its not even a bad thing! Maybe, this is exactly what we need!

But before I explain why this may be so, here are the essential facts. The machinations of banning the Internet in Pakistan are not new. It has sometimes been done to silence political speech (and here), but its more common and certainly its recent incarnation is in the name of religion. Of course, the frenzy was at its height recently with the ‘Facebook ban.’ Now it seems that the Lahore High Court has ordered the banning of an entire range of websites, possibly including Google, Yahoo, MSN and Bing. Supposedly, the government’s position is that “no website will be blocked without investigation,” but also that websites will be blocked to comply with the court’s rulings.

Why, you ask. Here is how the report in The News explains it:

A citizen, Muhammad Sidiq, filed a writ petition No. 3246/2010 in the LHC, seeking a ban on the websites for publishing blasphemous materials and twisting the facts and figure of Holy Quran. Deputy Attorney General Muhammad Hussain Azad also endorsed the viewpoint of the petitioner and demanded blocking of these websites. Counsel for the petitioner, Latif-ur-Rehman Advocate presented CDs and other evidence in the court, showing that the said websites were publishing sacrilegious material. Later, President High Court Bar Aslam Dhakkar said the court has given a historic decision. He said the legal fraternity would observe a complete strike in Bahawalpur on Wednesday (today) against publication of such material by these websites. He said a meeting would also discuss the situation today.

It is not yet fully clear exactly what will happen because of this ruling, but it is very clear that no matter what happens we are going to keep getting a host of such cases. People will find things on the Internet that they are offended by. While I have never understood why people spend so much time and energy trying to find things that offend them, it is the nature of the Internet that everyone (and I mean, everyone) can find lots of things on it to be offended by. Conspiracy, idioticy, lies, ridicule. Its all there. What you choose to see on the Internet is your choice, not the Internet’s. (Maybe the Honorable Judge Sahib should have booked Mr. Muhammad Sidiq for visiting blasphemous site. Why is his faith so insecure as to be shattered by a website. After all, why is he going around searching for blasphemy!).

It would be too easy, however, to blame the Judge for giving a ‘wrong’ decision. Its too easy for Internet Freedom advocates to seek a reversal of the decision. But the fact of the matter is that the decision is NOT wrong. Under the laws of Pakistan, as written, blasphemy is indeed punishable and such sites should, indeed, be banned. The problem is not the judges or their decisions. The problem is the laws as they are written. And that means that the solutions will not come through the courts, but through society and through legislation.

I also was unaware that being captured on a battlefied while practicing warfare in violation of the Geneva conventions was now considered kidnapping.

And I was unaware that being arrested while going about one's peaceful business in Pakistan, hundreds of miles from the nearest battlefield, and illegally handed over to the US military, was now considered "being captured on a battlefied (sic) while practicing warfare in violation of the Geneva conventions".

(FYI, while there are no official figures, it is widely believed that fewer than 10% of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay were captured on a battlefield by Coalition forces.)

I also find bizarre your apparent belief that the US should not have to obey the Geneva Convention if the enemy wasn't obeying the Geneva Convention. By that argument, the police should be allowed to break the law because criminals break the law. That wouldn't lead to a society I'd particularly want to live in...

Iraq's national seed bank, established in the 1970s, is feared lost, although samples of Iraqi varieties are held in trust at an agricultural institute in Syria.

in June 2004, US Coalition Provisional Administrator, Paul Bremer III, imposed a list of 100 laws on Iraq which insure that the US dictates every feature of Iraq economic life according to Washington free market wishes. This includes governing of an Iraqi central bank, an essential aspect of national sovereignty. It includes rules on Iraqi trade unions. And most significantly, it mandates the future rules of Iraqi agriculture production to conform to the wishes of Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow Chemical and other US-tied agri-business giants that are aggressively pushing for control of world food production through Gentically-Modified (GM) seeds and plants.

Less visible than the butchery of Fallujah are the country's subsistence farmers who are losing the rights to use saved seed and their right to produce their local food

This is already done with ships: This site has an article and a couple of pictures.

Ships are hauled up on to the beaches of Bangladesh and taken apart piece by piece until there's nothing left but toxic waste.

Authentication against what, you twat?

Well, that's certainly an intelligent retort. I hesitate to reply to such, but what the hell.

Even without any foreign databases, this information can be used to establish a record of international travels. You don't necessarily need to authenticate them against their home country's records. There is value in authenticating a person as the same individual who enterred two months ago from Canada, using a different name.

Want to hide those trips to Libya? Well, just use your other passport when entering the U.S.. Want to obfuscate any travel records? Just use a new one each time you come & go. With fingerprint records, they can much more easily catch passport fraud.

And, what makes you think that foreign governments will not share fingerprint databases? Other countries have immigration related fingerprint databases:
France, EU, EU, Australia, considers a system similar to the U.S.,

The U.S. already has immigration controls tighly integrated with Canada, and it would not be surprising at all to see the EU, Australia, Japan, and others cooperating on this.

1. "IRAQ WILL SUFFER INCREASING SHORTAGES OF PURIFIED
2. 
   WATER BECAUSE OF THE LACK OF REOUIRED CHEMICALS AND
   DESALINIZATION MEMBRANES. INCIDENCES OF DISEASE, INCLUDING
   POSSIBLE EPIDEMICS,WILL BECOME PROBABLE..."

Cornell, from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, is a particularly young Nobel laureate at just 39 -- though not the youngest. William Lawrence Bragg won the same prize in 1915 at the age of 25.

The Independent also published an article by Will Hardie. There's an opinion I don't particularly agree with about signing atoms at Jang.com.pk. Good reading nontheless.

Also check out Major English Papers in Pakistan at The News and Dawn for up to the minute coverage.