We Cut When Asked -- PTCL’s New Censoring Role

-- PTCL’s New censoring policy........very good.

There was a time when censorship was a problem for us in Pakistan.

Now it appears that such a ``silent`` censorship is now reaching the US.


Ras

Dear manophd(#17): What makes the censorship policy good? Did you watch porn before the censorship? If you don`t watch porn and someone forces you to, will you approve of it? Why then do you approve of stopping those who do?

The issue of pornography is, by its very nature, subjective. For example, I see pornography as poor taste. Umberto Eco (whom I suspect has all the qualities of a classic “dirty old man”) says that pornography is nothing but the mundane – that is, something which takes no imagination. Some would say that Pushto films are pornography. I would agree, even though there is no nudity.

Mr. Daudpota, if I can read his intention correctly, is attempting to highlight some of the contradictions inherent in PTCL’s blocking policy: That while the government is intent of banning, say, www.sexwithanimals.com, it is grouping the South Asian Tribune into the same category. So much for PTCL’s classification policy. Personally, I find Mr. Shaheen Sebhai an opportunist who has, with some merit, made it good. Attempting to block his views is about is futile as thinking that banning pornography on the internet will curb vice.

For those who think the policy is enlightened: Visit Zaitoon Plaza on Lahore’s Hall Road. There, amongst the thousands of prated DVD’s on sale (Hollywood and Lollywood) are films with such wide and varied titles as Aik Din ki Dulhan, Dulhan Hum Lay Jain Gai, Faisalabad ki Nursain and, the ever popular, Hala Farooqi video. To the shopkeepers, who all take time off for Friday prayers, selling pornography is a business, the purchase of which is dependant on individual tastes. In other words, they just stock the stuff, it’s the people who buy the videos who are “immoral.”

By way of explanation, I would like to say that my knowledge in this area was obtained, of course, purely for scientific purposes.

But the point is this: Pakistan cannot “ban” pornography. Such intention presupposes that pornography is solely of Western creation. This is not so: Sex exists in Pakistan. In droves. It exists in the cities and the villages, and permeates most features of life. Just why do you think women are required to cover their bodies? Surely purdah is not meant to act as an age-old sub-block. It is protect them from the lascivious stares of Pakistani men. And what do you think they are thinking? Really, anyone who thinks Pakistanis are puritans are wrong, unless they know that, as has been revealed by history, puritans are obsessed with sex.

As for pornography on the internet: One of the web’s favorite Pakistani/Indian pornsites is www.desibaba.com, which showcases mostly Hispanic women sporting a bindya (I’ll reveal the source of this trivia in a second). What’s most hilarious about the site is that, during the entire month of Ramzan, the site remains shut, with nothing but a clock indicating the hours, minutes and seconds till eid!!

A friend of mine working as a software developer in Lahore was recently hired to construct a website. His client, he informed me, was strange in that he kept on asking his religious views. Turns out that “Khan Sahib” is in the pornography business. He is setting up a site from Lahore (I think it’s called Sins of India), and which reveals (literally) his collection of Spanish and Latin American beauties. In his words, “It’s only business, yaar.”

But let’s not forget PTCL. Towards the end of last year, PTCL (or the new regulatory body, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, I can’t remember which) sent notices out to all ISP’s requiring them to remove Internet Telephony from its list of services. Meanwhile, PTCL introduced its own Internet Telephony service. In other words, choori and seena zoori. Really, it has to be remembered that the guys who run PTCL are not tech-savvy types. They are regular bureaucrats who, most importantly, implement the orders of their superiors. It’s anyone’s guess who the mastermind behind this clean-up drive is.

MR. Daudpota,


At the start of the article, you want us to think of crack as heroin, where as crack is cocaine, and grey hound might be a dog, but in the writers words, its the Greyhound bus service of america, which is always late as per schedule, and an ``arrived before time`` scinario is usually suspected on a stoned driver, like it is in our blue line services.