Pakistan Stops Twittering

You know, I hate most technology so much that I would probably move into a cave if one were available. But even I am outraged at censorship of free expression.  According to the Pakistan government, Pakistan shut down Twitter for about eight hours recently because Twitter refused to remove content considered objectionable to Muslims. Hmmmm Cooler heads (maybe cooler ....if you like all that tweeting nonsense) prevailed though and Pakistani Prime Minister Raza Gilani intervened to end the ban and restore access. It was banned because of a Twitter contest that asked people to go to face book for a contest that encouraged people to post their idea of what Islam’s prophet Mohammed looked like.Muslims don't like any representations of Mohammed, considering it iconic anc disrespectful.

Trying to censor such harmless speech is idiotic in this age of electronic media. Probably he government initially banned Twitter to please the nutty fundamentalists in Pakistan who seem to run the country.  But it is not possible to control use of the internet.  First, people are used to using electronic media to communicate what they feel and believe., and secondly, it is impossible for governments to censor all the electronics out there.

I think the Prime Minister probably restored twitter in Pakistan  because he wanted to avoid another of the many past situations in which the craziest of Muslims placed death threats on humans who speak about Islam "inappropriately".  He understands that individual can censor how they communicate with others, but governments can no longer effectively censor for the collective citizenry. Unfortunately, the extremists fundamentalist Muslims, the ones who long ago captured modern islam and are controlling it, do not have that understanding.

One would think they would have learned that lesson by now, because the extremists themselves use the western communication technology they claim to hate to plan their agendas and communicate their  (often subversive, deviate) policies and strategies, knowing that their communications can not be controlled by anyone else. Hmmmm.... They reason, the west can't stop us from using their technological inventions for our own purposes, but we can stop our own followers from using it. Apparently, two plus two is not four in the fundamentalist Islamic world.

In banning Twitter, Pakistan joined a list of countries including China, Burma, the United Arab Emirates and Libya that have denied their citizens access to the blogging sites like twitter.  All of them are doomed to fail in their censorship attempts. Some of the Pakistani Twitter users immediately downloaded software to circumvent the ban, while others were able to tweet via "smart phones" (I hate that personification of a phone. I doubt that either the phones or the users of them are in any way smart) . So the ban was immediately unenforceable for those with the tech savvy and desire to circumvent it.

Now....if you could just find a way to