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Islamabad (Dawn/ANN) - In November, the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) attempted to filter 1,500 words out of SMS messages.

The initiative was ridiculed into oblivion, and one thought the government would take a hiatus from clumsy censorship. But no.

The National ICT Research and Development Fund, under the aegis of the Ministry of Information Technology, recently advertised a public tender for the development of an Internet filtering and blocking system. The move indicates how completely out of touch the powers that be are with contemporary Pakistan, the 21st century and democratic values on the whole.

Internet service providers (ISPs), who finance the fund, have defended the filter, arguing that it is not a censorship tool, but a means by which to make existing efforts to block online content more time- and cost-efficient. This is utter nonsense. The power to efficiently and effectively block up to 50 million websites, as per the tender's demands, is an incentive for widespread online censorship.

Many indications that the government will take improper advantage of a censoring mechanism already exist. Pakistan currently ranks 151st out of a list of 179 countries on a 2011 media freedom ranking by Reporters Without Borders. This is hardly the environment in which to introduce an Internet filtering system with the hope that it will be judiciously deployed.

The tender has also been announced at a time when it is clear the authorities are hurting from relatively unrestrained media coverage of their activities: last month, the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority announced new regulations for private television channels, which prevent the broadcast of material that undermines Pakistan's sovereignty, compromises the national interest, or ridicules organs of the state. It is also no coincidence that the call for an Internet filter comes the year before a general election - a last-ditch effort to minimise critical discourse about the government in campaign season?

The political motivations behind the tender suggest that the criteria for blocking online content will be harsh and arbitrary. One can expect much benign content to be censored. Clearly, no one at the Ministry of Information Technology is thinking about the fallout of limited information access for students, businesses, scientific researchers and others trying to engage with and compete in an innovative, global marketplace.

It is also worth noting that the Internet filter tender not only foreshadows censorship to come, but also highlights the extent to which it is rampant. Private-sector ISPs are agreeable to financing the filter in response to continued pressure from the civilian government and army to block online content. When talking to free-speech activists, they defend their actions by arguing that the Internet is already being censored, the filter will simply automate the process to save time and money for the ISPs. In sum, censorship is already a fait accompli in Pakistan.

It is appalling that this tender was announced during a civilian government's tenure. Freedom of speech is a fundamental requirement of a functioning democracy. The fact that this government is willing to pay money for technology that institutionalises censorship speaks poorly of its democratic credentials, its long-term vision for the country, and its aspirations for Pakistan on the international stage.

Pakistan's luddite politicians may not realise this, but in the 21st century, the freedom of the Internet is a gauge of a country's genuine commitment to democracy and human rights (lest we forget, the United Nations has declared Internet access to be a human right). This is especially true when governments seek both to censor their citizens and invade their privacy: in addition to blocking websites, the proposed filter will seek to infiltrate encrypted content. If Pakistan goes ahead with this inane plan, its civilian government will be spoken of in the same terms as prior dictatorships: regressive, authoritarian, undemocratic. For a moment, let's concede that the Pakistan government cannot comprehend that censorship is bad, and that while it stifles dissent in the short run, it sparks social discontent in the long run. There is still no excuse for the government's failure to think through this initiative strategically.

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COMMENTARY: Internet access: A human right

10-03-2012 13:12 Western Wolves Racing Division created a tournament on iRacing that hosted a number of drivers racing at Zandvoort in the Mazda MX5. This is the main event of that tournament. We had a wide range of drivers going from tintop specialist to iRacing's best drivers who compete in the Drivers World Championship. The race is 16 laps long that lasts approximately 30 minutes. Prize money was given to the top 3 positions. Commentators: Chris Ford and Chris Wilkinson Interviews at the end: Teemu Iivonen and Evan Maillard

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WW.Racing MX5 Challenge Sponsored by Western Digital Main Event - Video

The movie-making business can be a lucrative industry. Money flows in from producers, theater-goers, advertisers, dvd/digital sales, and merchandising. An often overlooked source of money for the film industry, however, are state governments.

Tax incentives and expense reimbursements are what cash-strapped states offer Hollywood to get it to spend money and Washington is no different.

Washington filmmakers got a big boost from the state yesterday when the legislature voted to reinstate film subsidies for locally-sourced productions. Lots of states seduce the film industry, but Washington at least demands to be treated like a lady. The Film Credit Bill (SB 5539) would pay back 30 percent of production costs to any movie, but only those whose crews employ a large majority -- 85 percent -- of Washington workers .

Supporters have framed the bill as a boost for Washington jobs. During a recession, voting for jobs sounds like a no-brainer, and the legislative break-down reflected that reality. The bill passed 40-8 in the Senate and 92-6 in the House.

Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Ross Hunter was one of the few who opposed the bill. He argued that the subsidy was flawed in that many of the jobs created would be temporary and that the money could be better used elsewhere, like hiring more teachers instead of actors.

So do subsidies really get Hollywood to spend money in Washington?

The state film office, Washington Filmworks, which put forward the bill and has an obvious economic interest in saying "yes" says..."yes." Executive director Amy Lillard says that in the first five years that the subsidy was in place, 71 films employing 4,800 in-state employees generated a whopping $70 million in direct spending for the economy, numbers that are difficult, at best, to fact check.

That sounds like a good return on investment for the $3.5 million the state spent in the same time period. It's also a fraction of what other states offer to bring studios to town.

Nearly every state -- 39 in total -- currently has some type of legislative bait on the books, and the results have reportedly been mixed. Some states like Louisiana are courting studios with generous tax credits and claim to be turning a profit. Others like Michigan aren't as happy with the results.

"We're not seeing benefits of the subsidy," says Kurt Weiss of the Michigan budget office. "The jobs and economic activity were only temporary so the new administration has scaled way back."

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Should Washington State Subsidize the Movie Industry?

BRATISLAVA (Reuters) - The centre-left party of former Slovak prime minister Robert Fico looks on course to win an outright parliamentary majority, giving him a mandate to deliver on pledges to tax the rich and cut the budget deficit, early election results showed on Sunday.

Results from 67 percent of districts showed Smer took 46.2 percent of the vote on Saturday, which would give it 86 out of the 150 seats and displace a centre-right cabinet that collapsed in October after a liberal party refused to back a plan to beef up a fund to help crisis-hit euro zone countries.

A government led by the pro-European, 47-year-old lawyer would please Slovakia's euro zone partners, who were upset by the outgoing coalition's refusal to contribute to the first bailout of Greece and the delaying of the rescue fund.

"I predict that Smer will have won the vote ... and will receive the mandate from the president to form a government," Fico said after exit polls earlier showed him far ahead of all rivals.

Fico's strong showing would knock his reformist rival Mikulas Dzurinda's centre-right SDKU out of power after the SDKU-led coalition fell apart after less than two years.

Damaged by allegations of graft, Dzurinda's party would win just 5.5 percent, according to the partial results, a third of what it won in the last election in 2010. But it was likely to avoid being knocked out of parliament altogether.

Another centre-right party, the Christian Democrats (KDH), had 8.8 percent in the partial results.

The partial results may be somewhat skewed in Fico's favour because larger urban districts, where Fico's Smer party has traditionally been weaker, tend to be counted later. But his lead seemed wide enough to secure an unprecedented victory for any single party in Slovakia's 19-year independent history.

Final results were expected to be released later on Sunday.

TAXING THE BANKS

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Slovak left looks set for sweeping election victory

Published: Sunday, March 11, 2012 at 5:27 p.m. Last Modified: Sunday, March 11, 2012 at 5:27 p.m.

Recent tension between health care advocates and predominantly Catholic institutions about preventive health care measures that include insurance coverage for contraceptives has again highlighted conflicts involving religious freedom. It's not a new debate.

Religious organizations have sought and occasionally received exemptions from rules that apply to others. Courts have examined religious exemption clashes case by case; for example, protecting the ability of churches to make core religious decisions, but denying broader claimed exemptions from health and safety regulations.

Lawyers, scholars and civil libertarians have differed on how to resolve conflicts between sometimes competing values: an individual's right to exercise religious expression free of government regulation; the need to uniformly enforce neutral rules on important issues like rules barring employment discrimination, the obligation of government not to interfere in the core mission of religious institutions and the need to safeguard the religious freedom of those of one religious faith (or no religious faith) from being subjected to the rules of others' faith. The government's efforts to ensure that all women have access to contraceptives as part of the national health care law is creating conflict with the Catholic Church and some religiously affiliated organizations. The government's current plan is to require that insurance companies provide coverage for contraceptives for women not only to regulate fertility but that doctors also prescribe to treat a variety of medical conditions. (This includes women whose religious principles do not bar the use of contraceptives.)

But this most recent flare-up is especially troubling in Florida. Here, some of the same groups that are demanding exemption, based on religious freedom, from parts of the national health care plan are, at the same time, asking voters to give them long-forbidden access to tax dollars to help fund their religious activities.

This radical departure from Florida's 125-year constitutional tradition of "no aid" to religious institutions will appear as proposed Amendment 8 on November's ballot, written by the Legislature in a cleverly deceptive way that is designed to seduce voters into supporting "religious freedom." On closer inspection, "religious freedom" means the "freedom" to get access to tax dollars.

These Florida groups want to exempt themselves from some government laws if those laws conflict with their religious practices, while insisting that government fund those very same religious practices. They want the money but not the rules.

That position seems a bit hypocritical. It is also short-sighted. Many defenders of religious liberty and far-sighted faith leaders oppose government funding of religion in part because government money comes with government strings. It's naive to think that government will not require recipients of public funds, including religiously affiliated institutions, to account for how those funds are spent.

By asking to be let out of rules that apply to everyone else, churches also are creating a slippery slope. If churches can opt out of policies that infringe on their beliefs, taxpayers might claim the right to opt out of paying taxes used for religious practices they don't support. They also may want to opt out of having to pay taxes for even nonreligious uses they disagree with or that violate their conscience, such as funding wars or providing foreign aid.

But we can't. Taxes aren't optional.

Link:
Having it both ways on ‘religious freedom'