For the Sake of Science

I have received a wonderful email:

Hello,

A Pakistan authority has issued a demand to block a file on your WordPress.com site:

Unfortunately, we must comply to keep WordPress.com accessible for everyone in Pakistan. We will not be challenging this demand, but if you wish to discuss what the legal avenues of appeal may be, please get in touch as soon as possible. There is usually a very short period of time in which objections can be lodged.

As a result of this demand, the file (below) on your site is now inaccessible for Internet visitors originating from Pakistan. They will instead see a message explaining why the content was blocked.

Visitors from outside of Pakistan are not affected.

And I was so close to turning the tide against believing in religious nonsense in Pakistan, too.

It tickles my fancy to know that there’s some censorious schmuck over in Pakistan tasked with finding random pictures insulting Islam from nearly 10 years ago. Of course, censorship is always a tragedy, but I suppose the silver lining here is that the sort of person who willingly censors others in violation of their basic human rights is also the sort of person who will have a tendency to go to extremes to punish those who they think should be censored. I’ve faced scum like that first-hand. So I guess it’s better that this Pakistani authority/human rights violator is sitting behind a desk rather than in a position of real power.

Also, not for nothing, but since Christianity dominates in Western culture that tends to favor free speech, my site hasn’t been blocked anywhere for posting a YMCA-Jesus pose picture in that same post.

Filed under: Humor | Tagged: Censorship, Free Speech, Pakistan |