Judicial Positioning

Here's some more 'ah zat! addled yeah' for you.

The Chief Justice Lahore High Court Khwaja Sharif decided to take time out from his "35 to 37-year-old friendship with the Sharif brothers" - his own words - to give his opinion on the Pakistan Peoples Party's agitation against former Sindh Inspector General Police and fugitive from law Rana Maqbool's appointment as Prosecutor General in the Punjab Government (recall that Rana Maqbool is a proclaimed offender in a case in the Sindh High Court for allegedly torturing then inmate Asif Zardari).

According to various reports, the unbiased and independent judge announced at a public gathering of lawyers in Hafizabad:

"If someone cannot digest that, he should part ways with PML-N government in Punjab."

Good to know that, while Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah's in London, someone's got the PML(N)'s back. I mean, if friends can't watch out for your interests, who can? Or dare we say it's a case of putting one's mouth where one's boti is?

If you can bear the incessant shouting and periodic forays into tangential party rhetoric from the participants, here's Samaa's Newsbeat tonight on the issue:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Is Pakistan Run By A Moronocracy?

Please go over to this entry on the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) website and read about what the Government of Pakistan secretly has in store for netizens in the country. APC has managed to get its hands on a confidential document submitted by the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) to the Lahore High Court (LHC), detailing how it plans to monitor and censor the internet in the future. The document was submitted after the Facebook ban, and before the current bout of moronic behaviour banning seven websites including search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing from the Bahawalpur bench of the LHC (PTA said subsequently it would only "monitor" some of the sites including email provider Hotmail).

According to the document (the following has not been edited to correct any of the usual illiteracy of bureaucracy, all mistakes are in the original):

"On the recommendation of the [inter-ministerial] committee [whose existence is not public knowledge], Federal Government shall issue directive to PTA for blocking of website(s) either at IP level or URL [within 24 hours] which contain the following:

a. All information pertaining to any objectionable content

b.Undermine Islam or ridicule, disparage or attack any religion, ethnic group, region or any group's reverend practices.

c. Brings contempt to the country or its people so as to undermine integrity and solidarity of the state / country.

d. Violates any provision of the constitution of Pakistan or law of the land.

e. Promotes or supports sedition, terrorism, anarchy or violence in the country;

f. Brings contempt of the Defense Forces, Police, Air Force or any other institution of Government of Pakistan or to divulge any secret information relating to Defense and other services.

g.Contains propaganda in favor of any foreign state having bearing on any points of disputes or against any friendly foreign state;

h.Hurts national sentiments"

So basically, here's a draft for another one of those stupid laws / plans that can mean just about anything and probably will. Some other specific points about the above-mentioned clauses:

a - takes care of all search engines
b - interestingly, would it mean banning the websites of Jang and Nawai Waqt et al that have columnists spouting hatred against Ahmadis, Christians and Jews?
c - this would ban even the New York Times e.g.
d - banishes most bloggers or anyone questioning anything
e - as if such sites were allowed in the first place, ask the Baloch nationalists
f - I have no idea why the Air Force is singled out in this (are they not part of the Defence forces?) but basically anyone criticizing corruption even in the Seed Corportion of Pakistan also stands to be blocked. Geo would be blocked for running stories about the Pakistan Steel Mill. And that story on Express Tribune about policemen taking bribes - you're out too ET.
g - so you cannot say, e.g. that India may have a legitimate point when it protests Pakistanis like Ajmal Kasab coming over and killing 200 people in Bombay or that it was American CIA and Saudi money that fueled our jihadis
h - if anything was left, here's the catchall phrase that encompasses it.


You can try all you want but you ain't going to find a more absurdist bunch of nincompoops running a state on the face of this earth.

5 Idiots - Updated

Can we just stop with the uber-moronic behaviour, please?

Top 5 technologically and logically illiterate bozos of the day (in ascending order):

5. Muhammad Sidiq / Siddique, petitioner of writ no. 3246/2010 in the Lahore High Court
4. Latifur Rehman, advocate for Muhammad Sidiq / Siddique
3. Muhammad Hussain Azad, Deputy Attorney General Punjab
2. Aslam Dhakkar, President High Court Bar Association Bahawalpur
1. Justice Mazher Iqbal Sidhu, Judge Lahore High Court

As evidence I present the following news item from the front page of The News today:

LHC orders blocking of Google, Yahoo, 7 other sites

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

"BAHAWALPUR: The Lahore High Court has directed the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to immediately block nine websites for publishing and promoting sacrilegious material, and ordered the PTA chairman to appear in the court on June 28, 2010 along with all relevant material.

Justice Mazher Iqbal Sidhu of the LHC Bahawalpur Bench, while hearing a write petition on Tuesday, ordered blocking of nine websites including Yahoo, MSN, Hotmail, YouTube, Google, Islam Exposed, In The Name Of Allah, Amazon and Bing.

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."

That's right. It seems the Lahore High Court has nothing better to do these days than to entertain frivolous applications and to pass even more frivolous judgements on them. Is it the job of the judiciary to be constantly policing the worldwide internet (remember the Facebook fiasco!)??? Even more pertinently, is it the job of judges who obviously have not even the slightest knowledge of technological matters - after all five of the sites drawing the judge's umbrage are search engines while one is an email service provider and another an online store - to be pronouncing orders about them? Should the Chief Justice not take suo moto action against such in his own ranks who make Jamshed Dasti look like the most sagacious man around?

And what can one say about the cheerleading lawyers and officials whose idea of 'history' is how many cups of doodh pati they had in the bar room that afternoon. Morons the lot of them. And all fit cases for being put in the lunatic asylum where they enact as many "historic judgements" as they want.


::: IMPORTANT CAVEAT:::

As reader Huma Imtiaz has pointed out in the comments, the Express Tribune has a different take on the story. According to their story, the bench has NOT called for the immediate blocking of the aforementioned sites and has only asked for the Ministry of Information officials to appear on June 28 to decide about the matter. If so, my remarks against the judge - based on The News' reporting - may have been premature and wrong and I withdraw them with apologies.

I still do think the petition itself is frivolous and should never have been entertained. And my opinion of the rest, based on their reported stances in The News, still stands.



::: UPDATE THURSDAY 24 JUNE :::

So it would seem that The News' story was indeed correct. Dawn's story, appearing today, seems to corroborate the fact that the judge has indeed passed an order blocking the sites, though the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has not yet complied. The lawyers under the able leadership of Moron Dhakkan Dhakkar, boycotted courts on Wednesday to protest the websites and passed resolutions against the PTA. According to Dawn:

"The resolution criticised the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) for not taking prompt action, urging the authorities concerned to ‘realise their responsibilities in this connection’. The resolution further warned PTA that in future if it failed to take action on its own against such websites, the bar would move the high court against the authority."

I take back all my caveats about the judge. You know, I've always suspected that these compulsory black coats in the stifling heat of places like Bahawalpur are liable to screw up people's brains. But must we endure the repercussions of their battles with climatically challenged wardrobes?

The Cretinous Republic of Pakistan

How cretinous can we be?

The Lahore High Court has ordered the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to block Facebook in Pakistan because of some lame-ass campaign originating out of Seattle to make caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH). According to the wire new agency Xinhua:

"Judge Ejaz Ahmed Chaudhry instructed the Ministry of Telecommunication to enforce the ban on the use of Facebook in Pakistan and submit a written reply by May 31.

Officials told the court that the government has already blocked parts of the Facebook relating to the caricatures competition but the petitioner argued that no part of any website can be banned unless the whole website is blocked.

Chaudhry Zulfikar Ali, lawyer for the Islamic Lawyers Forum, said that the competition of blasphemous caricatures created concerns among the Muslims across the world."

Widespread evidence, including personal, indicates that this ban has already come to pass.

Now, I should point out that I am no fan of this allegedly 'free speech' campaign, which is Western liberal cretinism taken to its extremes. Why? Because I personally think it is entirely hypocritical. There are laws in many parts of Europe for example (even in Denmark which flew into a rage over the Islamic world's reaction to the earlier blasphemous cartoons issue) which make any questioning of the scale of the massacre of Jewish people during the Nazi era, a jailable crime. You simply cannot even say anything that goes against officially sanctioned history and a number of people have been jailed for writing books that have been deemed to be a denial of the Jewish Holocaust. There are also laws (in Europe) that make blasphemy a cognizable offence, with the caveat that blasphemy is considered to be only against Christian beliefs. The US 1st (free speech) Amendment does legally protect all forms of speech but even in the US, it is socially and politically suicidal to say anything in the mainstream media that questions certain sacred cows, such as the right of Israel to exist, having sex with those 'under age', or to make fun of Jesus. I am not weighing in on the merits of these prohibitions, only pointing out that the freedom always exists within certain limits prescribed by society. The clash in this case is that the limits in the West are different from those other cultures or societies have set for themselves. And that what happens in one part of the world is immediately transmittable to another part through the power of the internet.

Secondly, my problem with this campaign is that it is not a little bit patronizing - as if the only issue left to ensure freedom of expression in the West is that these 'uncivilized and illiberal' Muslims need to be taught a lesson. In a world wracked by the perception (right or wrong) of a clash between Islam and the West, it is grossly irresponsible to further fan flames of bigotry and racism.

Having said all that, however, one can only rue our own immensely cretinous response to this silly campaign. Why do I think that? Consider:

1. Why, oh why, does everything in Pakistan boil down to banning this or that? Will we ever realize that 'banning' things does not really make them go away? Remember, Indian films were banned in Pakistan in the early 1960s and alcohol was prohibited for the country's Muslims in 1979...

2. Does Judge Ejaz Ahmed Chaudhry even know what he is passing judgement about? Does the moron Chaudhry Zulfikar Ali? I have serious doubts they even understand what social networking sites - indeed the web - are all about. Did the court even take advice from any technical expert? Or did it base its judgement on what a moronic Islamic Lawyers Forum lawyer said to it? What does that say about the competence of our legal profession and higher judiciary?

3. Are we masters of cutting off our nose to spite our face or what? Will Pakistanis not being able to access Facebook in Pakistan stop this campaign? Will it prevent those Pakistanis who want to access the cartoons from accessing it in a number of other ways? Will we ban email subsequently?

4. What the hell does Facebook even have to do with this? From what I can gather, someone merely created a page in support of this campaign - like the millions of other pages hosted by the site - while the main campaign is hosted here, which is accessible still. It is akin to banning Facebook if Geo runs something the government does not like, just because Geo has a fan page on Facebook, while letting Geo continue its television transmission. But before some other bureaucratic moron decides to block that link, however, let me just quickly point out that there are a number of other places on the web where the same material is hosted. The only way you can block it all is by banning the internet altogether.


Given our history of legal and bureaucratic cretinism, I wouldn't be surprised if that's the next thing Chaudhry Zulfikar Ali demands. And gets.