YouTube is not available for browsing in Pakistan for the past one day. I say, 'not available for browsing', instead of 'banned' or 'blocked' because i have no concrete information as to the cause of the outage. The rumors are ripe that the outage is because of a ban on the domain enforced by PTA through PIE. This ban has been placed for the reason of blocking user access to amateur video of poll rigging in some parts of the country. Other rumors suggest that the ban has been placed by PTA to block access to soft pornography and other morally objectionable material available on the domain.
In my opinion if this outage is a result of a ban on the part of PTA then it is most probably orchestrated by political factions that are most hurt by video footage showing their supporters rigging the elections like there is no tomorrow. But equally possible could be the problem at YouTube end.
For the past one week or so most of what seemed credible information presented by our Pakistani media and websites now has lost its lusture merely because most of the predictions about the elections being rigged have gone sour. The media pundits have failed in providing the insiders information correctly and seemed to have been swayed away in the tide. But it can be succeesfully argued that it is this very skepticism on their part that allowed for the elections to be relatively free. In my opinion however the incidents of rigging have taken place albeit to the level comfortably desired by Musharraf, Army and the international players. PML-Q has good number of seats so does MQM. Both have sufficient numbers to keep the govt. unsettled both in the center and in the provinces. It is very difficult for me to understand that inspite of a very low turn out in these elections most of the MQM men won by a margin of atleast 100 thousand votes or more or atleast by a very very huge margin. In all possibility they took the rigging process to a new level in Karachi. PPP is no saint either when it comes to elections in Karachi but much less of an evil as compared to MQM.
Technorati Tags: YouTube, Pakistan, PPP, MQM, Elections 08, Censorship, Internet
In my opinion if this outage is a result of a ban on the part of PTA then it is most probably orchestrated by political factions that are most hurt by video footage showing their supporters rigging the elections like there is no tomorrow. But equally possible could be the problem at YouTube end.
For the past one week or so most of what seemed credible information presented by our Pakistani media and websites now has lost its lusture merely because most of the predictions about the elections being rigged have gone sour. The media pundits have failed in providing the insiders information correctly and seemed to have been swayed away in the tide. But it can be succeesfully argued that it is this very skepticism on their part that allowed for the elections to be relatively free. In my opinion however the incidents of rigging have taken place albeit to the level comfortably desired by Musharraf, Army and the international players. PML-Q has good number of seats so does MQM. Both have sufficient numbers to keep the govt. unsettled both in the center and in the provinces. It is very difficult for me to understand that inspite of a very low turn out in these elections most of the MQM men won by a margin of atleast 100 thousand votes or more or atleast by a very very huge margin. In all possibility they took the rigging process to a new level in Karachi. PPP is no saint either when it comes to elections in Karachi but much less of an evil as compared to MQM.
Technorati Tags: YouTube, Pakistan, PPP, MQM, Elections 08, Censorship, Internet
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