Red carpet memories from Pakistan Blog Awards 2010 - Photo: PCWorld Pakistan

It’s happening – It’s happening! The excitement might suggest I am about to become a father but that’s not true. I am excited for the 2nd season of the glorious, umm glamorous and prestigious Star Screen Awards Pakistan Blog Awards.Well the excitement is all about the biggest platform that recognizes the year long efforts of Pakistani bloggers which makes it no less than Oscars for bloggers.

The recent few years haven’t been easy for journalists/bloggers in Pakistan especially keeping in mind the fact how threatened the free speech here. Yet we have something to celebrate i.e. the bravery and courage of Pakistani bloggers who have stood against all odds and have participated in literally all sorts of activism. Not long ago we practically beat the shit out of dictatorship and have stood for democracy, free speech, equal rights and what not!

As matter of fact, I have been nominated this years Best Infotainment Blog category as well, but to be honest, winning or losing doesn’t matter anymore to me. It’s all about celebrating the colours and voices of Pakistan. Blogging practically on all the topics, Pakistan’s blogosphere or in fact the social-media-sphere has come a long way that it now seems to have almost every colour of the rainbow. Be it political activism, human rights activism, humor, entertainment, infotainment or virtually anything! Instead of writing anything fancy as my vote appeal, I’d dedicate this blog post to all the colours of Pakistan’s new media and blogging with a special thank to the organizing/sponsoring bodies of the awards. I’ll drink to all that, cheers!

According to the report, Rehman Malik says government reserves the right to ban Google and Youtube if they don’t cooperate in investigations in terrorism. Also, that he has ordered a lawsuit against Google Pakistan’s “administrator” for apparently no reasons.

Apparently, no other channel or news media reported this and chances are that this could just be a sensationalism from ARY. But again, what can’t be expected from our very own Interior Minister Rehman Malik who’s got an ever declining repute and apparently no one takes him seriously. Oh by the way, you know the banana/apple connection, right? RIGHT…!?

We tried contacting Badar Khushnood, Google’s country consultant for Pakistan, to know whether ministry has officially tried to request any support or cooperation from the technology giant Google but we haven’t heard from him as yet. However, the updates on his social media profiles suggest that he also got no clue on what’s going on.

Even if he didn’t, ordering to file a case against him for what? Under what law? Have you gone nutts? oh no nuts, banana I should say? or apple? I don’t know. And you say you reserve the right to ban Youtube or Google, eh? You tech illiterate! Is this the way to ask for coordination from technology giant! You damn are totally threatening them!

I’d like to convey this to the concerned authorities that whoever had this horrible idea of attempting to ban internet(yes I say it internet because Google is a sort of gate of internet!), really stinks! Like seriously.. it’s a bad..BAD idea! Mark my words and take it as caution; messing with the technology sector(which is trying hard to survive on its own) to cover your own incompetencies or impotency I should say, would lead you nowhere. You’ll ultimately face a worst sort of retaliation or even rebellion. This is the start, we at Guppu.com are creating a new category where we’ll be keeping an eye on censorship and will do our best to defend the freedom of speech.

The channel is called MakkahLive and airs live prayers from Makkah including taraweeh prayers. In the sidebar of the video, a live comment widget has been placed. Which in total brings a real spiritual experience this Ramadan for Muslims across the world.

There’s no doubt in it that Facebook WAS biased and discriminated the whole issue in the name of “freedom of speech.” Still I believe Censorship is NOT the solution to anything. Or for that matter, there was no point of blanket ban when that particular URL could be banned.

Is the Censorship really a Solution? NO! It’s NOT!

• By creating all this “protest” and “boycott” hype, we actually helped them achieve their anti-Islamic motives as we made them important.

• By this censorship, you are no longer connected to the worldwide Facebookers to give your point of view or to counter any such activity.

• This censorship has risked the living of hundreds of thousands of Pakistani developers and IT professionals who make their living and do their business online.

• Political motives of censoring the New Media are being achieved with the help of this censorship.

• This censorship gives a shortcut reason to curb or censor anything in the name of religion which otherwise can be dealt in a better way.

• We could have used the power of “new media” to spread the peace message of Prophet Muhammad SAW and Islam.

Why and how all this happened?

All this censorship happened after the orders Lahore High Court. LHC gave the orders after hearing a petition filed by the so called “Islamic Lawyers Movement.” Unfortunately, the Islamic Lawyers Movement lied and deceived the court about the facts related to the entire issue. As they misguided the court about the number of Pakistani users on Facebook and about the revenue that Facebook earns from us.

There are certainly the political motives behind this censorship and YOU have to figure them out! Also, I am a Muslim and I love our beloved Prophet Muhammad SAW and still I protest against this ban on internet platforms because I believe the matter could have solved otherwise as the cartoonist Molly Norris had already seek the forgiveness from Muslim world and Facebook was ready to ban that particular page in the respective countries.

How delightful it is to ask your service provider about which celebrity they are planning to sign in future, telling them that their service needs a service, asking about their whereabouts, recruitment and just about everything! That’s what these social networking websites have done to the traditional concepts of sales and marketing.

Telenor’s easypaisa is one service which has come to the ground level and helped change its customers life by providing him ease and freedom in life. The brand manifested itself through a common man in several of its ads which have been actively promoted on mediums such as Facebook and Youtube. For easypaisa platforms on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and online competitions are sources of domestic and global connectivity. A further manifestation of easypaisa’s commitment to this revolutionary medium is its tradition of regular Events like ‘Bloggers Meet-up’ which have become a regular tradition in many cities of the country and Telenor stands as one of the biggest organizers of such events.

This all helps in giving users opportunities to stay bonded to a podium from where they can shout as loud as they want!

The usage and utilization of such podiums is yet to reach its pinnacle. Masses will get educated with time, and then only will we be able to feel what power these social networking websites hold in them.

So if you want to get interactive with easypaisa you can join them on the following social networks.

• Facebook
• YouTube
• Twitter

If you see on YouTube, most of the videos titled ‘Zardari Shut up’ are still blocked. So I got a friendly message to Mr. President Asif Ali Zardari and that is; there’s nothing bad if you got angry on someone from audience who might have provoked you on some sensitive personal issue but what you did wrong is; tried to censor the words of your own! If you are so much embarassed about that video, why did you say such thing at first place, and now that you had said that already, what stimulated you to block that?

I dont know when our ‘tech ill-literate’ government will learn that in the age of new media, things cant be banned like this. You should realize that if you’re imposing a ban on any content within Pakistan, people can still access that with the help of a number of ways. In short, it is impossible to restrict the free speech in this age.

You don’t believe me, see this video of yours I am posting here on my blog and if you can dare blocking my website, you’ll see your video on almost every website of Pakistan and on many websites abroad. Would you go ahead to block all of them?