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Showing posts from September 1, 2004

Spillover effect

Karachi has been the target of a number of terrorists attacks - there are of several type - there are those amongst religious sects the Shias and the Sunnis, there are factions between both Shia and Sunni groups. They primarily attack eachother's mosques or assassinate eachother's leaders. Then of course there is the international 'War on Terror' - the result is some terrorists slip into the city and try to attack the consulates of the countries forming the coalition forces in Afghanistan or those who are in some way affiliated or sympathetic to the cause. The residences and offices are targetted - but these are scattered all over the city. Immediately after an attack has taken place, then all traffic on that road is stopped indefinitely - causing unnecessary traffic jams elsewhere. Things have come to such a state that many major roads cannot be used and alternative ones have to be used - this is time consuming and extremely irritating. Most Karachites are seeing

Internet surfing doomed

As can be expected from a fanatical regime, which is bent on denying everyone here the least amount of freedom - the Internet like all other media is very closely monitored, filtered and websites which people use to visit on a regular basis are now are blocked - a message called 'time out error 110', which is a way of saying 'don't ever visit this website again'. Instead of lowering charges and providing good services, the state owned telephone company PTCL is making it increasingly impossible to surf the Internet. In a population of 150 million people only 6 per cent people use the Internet - whereas in more properous countries up to 40 per cent of the entire population uses the Internet. Internet access is doomed, because the network of telephone lines does not exist, besides the majority of the people do not know how to use computers leave alone surf the Internet. The use of computers and the surfing of the Internet is a previlege not something which everyo