Wednesday, April 12, 2006

The Blogspot Ban Continues



Using the pretext of preventing Pakistanis from accessing the contraversial Danish cartoons our military regime took advantage of the situation by simultaneously blocking a number of what it perceived were unfriendly sites.

In the process, it would appear the Islamabadi Neaderthals discovered what blogs were all about. For brief period the ban on Blogspot.com was lifted but it was soon clamped on again.


While there are still ways of publishing posts on Blogspot.com, I seriously wonder how long it will take before the censors find a way to forestall that as well. Until then I will continue to uphold what I believe is my inherent right as a human to free expression.

Truth is I suspect that the Musharraf regime is getting a bit wobbly. With the US starting to drift away from Musharraf, coupled with all the troublesome fronts that the regime has so unnecessarily opened up, there is a bound to be growing sense of unease and insecurity.

It is when things go awry do dictators, and their associates in power, lose their grip on common sense. If this state of insecurity begins to verge on panic then expect further and possibly harsher crackdowns. But then as they say it is always darkest before dawn.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

ur blog is v educational.if they block blogspot completly move to wordpress or any other hosting services

Richard said...

Our sympathies to you & the plight you face in maintaining yr right to free blog speech.

I would also urge you to consider wordpress as it is superior (but a bit more technically challenging) than Blogger. Then of course, w. Wordpress you have the problem of needing a web host. If the authorities can shut down yr web host or deny you access to its server, then you still have problems. But I do believe it might be a better, more free solution than continuing on Blogger.

In addition, the Pakistani authorities will know about Blogger since it's the biggest blogging platform in town. That makes it an automatic target. They won't know much if anything about WordPress which may be another advantage for you in that it might keep you under the radar.

Anonymous said...

hey

rabfish said...

I didn't realize you were blogging from Pakistan itself. I just found you and very much appreciate your writing, it would be disappointing if the ban further crippled your current means of posting. The Glass House--yes, that is the appropriate name for a blog about Pakistani politics.