In a column written in Dawn way back in July 2000 on the subject of information technology, I raised the question : "Why is it that all government decisions are based on circumstances or happenings as they existed fourteen centuries ago?"

The answer came in a letter to the editor of this newspaper from an irate gentleman of Karachi who wished "to inform the ill-informed that to this day, rules and regulations stated by Islam are true in essence and texture. There is no problem with happenings, circumstances and their existence. The problem merely lies in their proper implementation."

The column stressed the value of education: "The prime vital issue of the nation's education has from the birth of the country been last on their lists of priorities of all our governments. The majority of the ministers who have been given the education and science and technology portfolios have not only been unconnected with either the field of education or of science and technology but have largely been uneducated men, the word 'uneducated' being used here in the profound sense of the word."

Mention was made of the two federal education ministers appointed by the second Benazir Bhutto and the second Nawaz Sharif governments - Khurshid Shah, land-grabber and building contractor, and the dubious Ghous Ali Shah - in a land where the first university in the world was established in 700 BC in Taxila, the ruins of which stand not far away from our capital city of Islamabad.

Mention was also made of Ata-ur-Rahman, the professor and scientist, whom Musharraf had wisely chosen as his minister in charge of information technology. Ata was quoted as having stated in a speech that "good governance is not possible without there being a merit-based challenging education system," and that if Pakistan was to forge ahead, education would have to be its top priority.

The startling fact then, a fact that lingers to this day, is that the total GDP of all the Islamic countries put together is half that of Germany and a quarter of that of Japan in spite of the fact that the Islamic countries control 74 per cent of the world oil business. This low GDP rating is the result of a low level of education.

It was at that time that the Pakistan Telecommunications Company Limited (PTCL) established two National Access Points (NAPs) in Karachi and Islamabad intended to block Internet telephony and pornographic websites. The aim of these NAPs was to direct all Internet traffic in and out of the country through two PTCL-controlled gateways, fundamentally faulty and with the potential to cause catastrophic damage to the information infrastructure of the country. The NAPs have of late been replaced by the Pakistan Internet Exchange (PIE), a subsidiary of the PTCL, and PIE is now the Internet backbone provider for Pakistan with their three gateways at Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi.

In October 2002, PIE banned Internet telephoning and voice chat websites. In January this year it started trying to block pornographic and 'other objectionable' websites. It then moved on to block the South Asia Tribune website of Shaheen Sehbai from Washington. As of May 30, the website is just not accessible in Pakistan. As it is impossible for it to have disappeared on its own, the only possible blocker is the government of Pakistan, though the honourable minister in charge of information technology, Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari, and the even more honourable minister in charge of information, Sheikh Rasheed, - both honourable graduates - have strenuously denied that they have anything to do with any blocking of anything.

Now this is stupid in the extreme, and serves absolutely no purpose other than to make the blocker, look ridiculous and to arouse even more interest in the contentious website. According to my IT wizard, you may well block a website, but what is posted on that website can be freely made available to all those in Pakistan who are interested in three simple ways. The simplest way to disseminate all offending columns or articles is by e-mail. All that is needed is that the South Asia Tribune editors send them off as text to their large mailing list, with the request that it be forwarded to anyone else to whom it may be of equal interest.

Then there are mirror sites on which the SA Tribune can simply replicate their text. Blocking such sites would be extremely difficult for the government, particularly if they are carried by such popular services as google.com, geocities.com, or yahoo. I myself have accessed Tribune's articles on google and downloaded them just to see what all the fuss and bother is about. It all amounts to nothing that could possibly endanger either the nebulous national interest, the non-existent ideology, or the wobbly morals of this nation.

There are also anonymizer sites which allow anonymous surfing, and PIE can have no clue as to who is accessing which site. There are scores of such sites, which can be used to access any site being blocked either by PIE or by a particular server who has received and obeyed instructions from wherever.

They may deny and deny, but our IT wizards all know, and have irrefutable evidence, that it is PIE that has shut off South Asia Tribune's website, having received, as they coyly put it, 'orders from above', from 'on high', making the 'on high' seem rather ridiculous, and in the process render a nondescript notorious - which is exactly what the man wants.

Professor Ata-ur-Rahman is still around in the corridors of power but he cannot divert or wean away the 'banners' from their stupidity and convince them of the futility of their efforts 'But you are a federal minister, are you not?' I questioned. "Yes," he replied, 'but of higher, not of basic, education."

Stupid we are and stupid we seem destined to remain.