the olive ream

Interviewer: Mr. President, is the U.S. Planning to attack Iran?

The President: We are not planning to attack Iran, but all options are on the table.

Interviewer: But Mr. President, during your 10th January speech, you mentioned Iran six times!

The President: Of course! Iran is a threat to the region. Ahmedinadinadinadinajaad is building nuclear weapons over there.

Interviewer: Yes, but the speech was about the civil war situation in Iraq.

The President: Was it? … really? Yes, well, uhmm…. ahh.

Interviewer: I think your earpiece fell out Mr. President.

The President: Oh sh*t! No wonder I couldn’t hear the lines to answer you. Wait a second, let me put put it back in. Ah! that’s better. Yes, well Iran is directly involved in creating the civil war situation in Iraq.

Interviewer: So are you planning to order an attack on Iran?

The President: We are not planning to attack Iran, but all tables are on the option.

Interviewer: But the recent moves by the US navy, specifically the positioning of aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, points to an attack on Iran.

The President: We are not planning to attack the tables, but all the options are on Iran.

Interviewer: But it is clear that Israeli prime minister, sees the attack on Iran as a as necessity because he classifies Iran as the biggest threat to Israel, even though Prime Minister Olmert himself accidently admitted in public that Israel possesses nuclear weapons.

The President: We are not planning to option Iran, but all tables are on the attack.

Interviewer: Even the most prominent neo-conservative members of your party are now beating the war drums for Iran.

The President: We are not planning to table all the options, but the attack is on Iran.

Interviewer: Aha!! so you admit it.

The President: No wait! … I didn’t mean to say that….yet.

Interviewer: So how do you plan to drum up support for the attack?

The President: Wait for it.

Interviewer: Wait for what?

The President: Shhh!!…wait and listen.

[[[[[[ [[[[[ [[[[ [[[ [[KABOOOOM!!!!!!]] ]]] ]]]] ]]]]] ]]]]]]

The President: There’s the support I need. Now no other option is on the table BUT to attack Iran.
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Disclaimer: This is a fictional account of what could actually turn out to be the reasoning of a future, non-fictional event.

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After the release of the last Don’t Block The Blog (DBTB) Press Alert, I’ve been in discussion with several Pakistan based bloggers regarding the problems they are facing accessing specific blogging platforms and blogs in general. While Teeth Maestro expertly continues to source technical solutions to the problem, I’ve been updating with various international (free speech) organizations regarding the blogging problem in Pakistan. The most prominent of these Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF), also known as Reporters Without Borders, has been fighting for the protection of journalists and free speech in general for the past 22 years. RSF strongly supports and continues to fight for the rights of all international bloggers.

I have been fortunate enough to be in communication with RSF from the start of DBTB. In my recent discussion with Mr. Julien Pain (Head of the Internet Freedom Desk at RSF), we were both in agreement that the blanket ban was not just an a strong interference for Pakistani bloggers but may actually turn into a deterrence where some bloggers might just get fed up with the problems with the accessing their blogs and give up blogging altogether. We cannot allow this to happen. With that concern in mind I have a small reminder for blogspot domain bloggers to please source alternate solutions for hosting your blog. Launch a new blog on typepad, wordpress or livejournal, until such time when a concrete solution is provided to you for accessing your blogspot blog so you can permanently transfer all your old posts to your new blog. The point is to continue blogging and invite others to blog. I realize that there are no guarantees with either of these other blog solutions but it is most likely to be better than blogspot.

To additionally encourage Pakistani bloggers to exercise the right to free speech, DBTB would like to announce a small writing competition which for Pakistan based bloggers. RSF which provides a paid solution for prominent political and social bloggers to host their blogs at the RSF blogging platform, has decided to award a free blog, on my behest, to the winner of this competition. The topic for the writing competition will obviously will have to do with free speech. The formal announcement and rules of the competition will soon be highlighted on DBTB blog, Bloggers.Pakistan, and the respective blogs of the DBTB team members.

What is the advantage of (winning and) owning a blog at rsf.org?

- Your blog will be associated with an NGO that defends press freedom and the rights of bloggers and journalists.
- Your address will be myblog.rsfblog.org
- You can contact others in the rsfblog community, people who know about and are interested in what’s happening on the other side of the world and care about human rights
- What you post may be picked up on the front page of “Looking at the world through Blogs,” a website that reviews what bloggers everywhere are doing.
- Your details will remain totally confidential. Unlike hosts such as Yahoo! or Google, who in the past have worked with authorities in repressive countries by providing private information.
- This blog is the least likely to cause you problems as it is a paid service platform and should provide you the requisite support technically and in support of your free speech.
- It is just one of the ‘coolest’ blog addresses to have on the internet!

That’s all for now but I hope to bring you more DBTB updates and hopefully some concrete solutions to the Pakistan blogging ban issue.

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I can’t explain the current situation any better than this:

Free speech is a global issue…so get involved and stay informed.

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Dear Friends,

Please take the time to read this through to the end. It can save a life!

Little Cherry Mopotu was born in Adis Abbaba, the capital of Ethopia. She was abandoned by her birth parents and left to the care of community church. At the age of 4, she was legally adopted by an American couple, Mark and Wendy Kawalski in March of 2002. After much paper work and red tape, she was finally taken back to Kawalski’s family home in Columbus, Ohio. Little Cherry’s first few years with her adopted family were wonderful. Her new parents gave her all the love, care and attention that she richly deserved.

Two days after her 8th birthday, Cherry (lovingly called ‘Angel’ by her adopted parents), was taken for a routine medical check-up with her pediatrician. It was then that they discovered that Angel was afflicted by a rare, African strain of Spinocerebellar Forwardacrapia, a horrible malady that causes one to have an uncontrollable urge to forward insidiously rancid and horrid chain email letters to as many personal and impersonal contacts as possible.

Angel’s goal before she is terminally and permanently destroyed by this horrible disease by the age of 17, is to collect as many E-greeting cards as possible. Her project is being sponsored by Make-A-Wish-Before-You-Croak-Foundation, who will add a penny to the kitty for each greeting card received. Angel has decided that the money collected will not be used to treat her or to comfort her parents, but instead help someone else who is impoverished and desperately in need of help. She has therefore decided to gift all future donations to Save The Alien Foundation.

For those not aware of this campaign, please see the news story below as reported by the Associated Press.

Undeniable evidence of an entity of extra-terrestrial origin has been discovered in the state of North Dakota, USA. The head of what is likely an alien being was found in a region near the Killdeer Mountains, the limbs were discovered 10 miles north of the border of Little Missouri River in Badlands, and the torso which was dug up in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, had the strange alien markings/writing which were later translated to read, “I come in pieces!”

What does the above story have to do with Angel? Well, primarily it was made up by the author to fill up the space in this chain email letter to further infuriate the reader. Also, Angel would like to donate the funds to go to the project of the Restoration of the Alien. She hopes that he can be put back together, and she can eventually leave with the alien when he returns back to his planet and leave us all the f*#k alone!

And to all those readers who practice the fine art of chain-email letter forwarding, please take this quiz, and then grow the hell up! (thank you)

Now go forward the link to this post to everyone you know – your family members, friends, colleagues, neighbours, pets, large farm animals and the Albanians.

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Dear Congress,

Please find enclosed the four-volume set of the 2008 Federal Budget Books for your review – and they are absolutely free for yours to keep! I am asking you all to approve this $2.9 trillion dollar budget without the necessary due care and attention, as you have done so in the previous years. By the way, does anyone know how many zeros there are in a trillion? They tell me it is a lot, so I am suitably impressed.

Apart from pledging allegiance to the flag of these United States, I also pledge to balance this here budget by the year 2012. Now I realize that is a long ways off, but let’s be honest here, with the way things are going in the Middle East and the fight I’m soon to pick with Iran, balancing of the budget should be the last of year worries for the future.

With this budget, I intend to make my first-term tax cuts permanent! I’m sure you all will agree to that as it provides the break for all our repulsively rich fat cat friends we have sponsoring our positions in government. So let’s not hear any bitching about this later.

You should be happy to know that with this budget, we would achieve nearly $100 billion dollar in savings by expertly trimming down on increases in Medicare, the health insurance program for the 43 million retirees and disabled, and Medicaid for the poor. You see, I’ve decided to attack only those people that I know cannot hit back. So, no real change there in my policy.

Just so you know, I’m asking for a $100 billion dollars more for Iraq and the war on terror. And, this is in addition to $70 billion I asked for earlier. Now, don’t all of you get your panties in a bunch over this amount cause it ain’t much, believe me! I could have asked for much more. I expect you all to approve it as early as possible, or else I will declare all of you “enemy combatants” and then you’ll rot in a federal prison for life, without your families ever knowing where and how you are.

And I might as well tell you now; I am increasing the Pentagon budget by relatively decent 11 percent. This brings there 2008 budget to 481.4 billion dollars but I better not get any complaints from you guys, got that?! How else do you expect me to sponsor the attack on Iran? …with f*cking food stamps?!

Now go do what you do best, act like you care about the people and argue and fight about this budget, before most of you cave-in and approve everything I’ve proposed.

Take care,
Love and kisses,
George
(The Prez)

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For Immediate Release

– ALERT ! –
PAKISTANI BLOGGERS SHOULD NOT
UPGRADE TO BLOGGER BETA

It has been over eleven months since the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority has enforced a blanket ban on the entire blogspot.com domain and so far there seems no recourse to the ban despite the repeated attempts of a strong lobby of concerned individuals pressuring the concerned authorities to review this unfair ban. The latest series of improvements undertaken by Google to improve the blogspot interface seem to be causing problems for Pakistani Bloggers. Previously despite the blockade the bloggers were able to easily access the back-end of Blogspot.com which by chance happened to exist on a different IP address, with the recent improvements in Blogspot, it now is difficult to even access the back-end of the popular interface, in effect completely blocking the Google service.

The Don’t Block the Blog (DBTB) team, (with support of other Pakistani and international bloggers) would like to issue an ALERT to all Pakistani bloggers to resist the urge to voluntarily upgrade the account and start initiating steps to move to alternate hosting solutions once the upgrade becomes compulsory as it would definitely block access to their blog.

As an update, the team members of Dont Block the Blog would like to issue an advisory to all affected and prospective bloggers in Pakistan to establish new blogs preferably on other free blog hosting services like http://wordpress.com, http://www.livejournal.com or http://movabletype.com which will ensure the domain outside the envelop of the blanket ban URLs blocked by the authorities in Pakistan.

The Don’t Block the Blog (DBTB) team, continues to highlight the issues which have plagued the Pakistani blogspohere since March of 2006 in the national and the international press. Since the blockade, a couple of savvy Pakistani programmers have created sites that help by-pass the unfair blanket ban for internet users in Pakistan. The DBTB team specifically, launched the Bloggers.Pakistan web site (www.bloggers.pk), the first Pakistani Blog Aggregator, to help encourage blogging and to ensure that those unfairly banned Pakistani blogs that were not officially censored by the Supreme Court of Pakistan, have a chance to be read by the global internet audience.

DON’T BLOCK THE BLOG strongly opposes any form of internet censorship and request the national and international bloggers, media and free speech organizations to help support our cause and to continue to highlight this issue of the unfair blanket ban of blogs for the internet users in Pakistan.

Background:

The PTA (Pakistan Telecommunication Authority) had initially blocked access to the blogspot domain on the 3rd of March 2006, due to a Supreme Court decision dated 2nd March 2006 instructing the PTA to ban 12 offending websites which highlighted the blasphemous cartoons on the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). In adherence to the Supreme Court ruling, all 12 sites were blocked including one that was hosted on the blogspot domain. But rather than block the offending blogspot website, the PTA blocked the entire domain (www.blogspot.com) which happens to be one of the most popular blog hosting domains hosting upwards of 8 million blogs globally, according to some estimates.

The DON’T BLOCK THE BLOG (DBTB) campaign (http://www.help-pakistan.com/main/ ) was launched by Dr. Awab Alvi and Omer Alvie on 3rd March, 2006 in order to highlight the unfair blanket ban of the blogspot domain and additionally to show support for free internet speech in general. Approximately at the same time the Society Against Internet Censorship in Pakistan (formerly known as The Action Group Against Blogspot Ban in Pakistan – AGABBIP) (http://groups.google.com/group/AGABBIP ), a mailing list with dozens of contributing members also was formed to protest this form of censorship in Pakistan.

For Further Information:

Omer Alvie
Email: over_email@yahoo.com
URL: http://www.theoliveream.com

Dr. Awab Alvi
Email: drawab@cyber.net.pk
URL: http://www.teeth.com.pk/blog

10 comments