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Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

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Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, one of those two countries has a no-first-use nuclear doctrine, so I imagine there's a probability conditional there.

Doctrine is just a paper. It's not even constitution. It could be changed in a minute if necessary (or even post-factum or some sketchy justifications could be made up). It surprises me sometimes, how much value people put in some documents, disregarding those who can change or ignore those documents.

Everything is just paper or words. The constitution? Words. Only power is power. Only shackles constrain. Even computer code is just code. But in my experience, documents count for something because of the result of violating the documents. If your experience is that nothing you've said or written holds water, then so be it. We will see, in time, whose approach leads whom to a better life.

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#82
I read the comments you guys probably have no idea what is going on in here. Let's talk about it from the start. It's 2021 and Imran Khan is the PM of Pakistan and US is leaving Afghanistan. Now US would certainly want to have their military airbases in Pakistan to keep an eye on Taliban government, they made an undercover request which was denied by Imran Khan on a Tv interview[1]. Which really unpleased the Biden Government. And then they started to hatch a plan to oust him. It finally started to happen in the start of 2022. The plan was to remove him through vote of no confidence. But Imran Khan found out, a US official formally asked to Pakistan Ambassador for removing him as PM through VONC, otherwise Pakistan will face consequences. Which happened in the most dramatic way by buying the members of Imran Khans party. You will be surprised to know that Pakistan Army was on paper with US. And that cipher was actually for Qamar Jawad Bajwa the Army chief of Pakistan forces. Well he was ousted.

He was ousted but not defeated. The day he was removed masses protested on the streets of Pakistan. He just wanted them to hold elections so that people can get to choose. For that he resolved his 2 provincial assemblies. In the mean while he survived 2 assassination attempts one time narrowly escaped the gun shots and second time planned killing by a moob.

According to Pakistani law after the dissolving assemblies Election commission has to hold elections within 90 days which did not happen until 2 years. And in 2023 August National Assemblies also completed its tenure. Which supposed to get members within 90 days. Which did not happen as well. Again abrogation of law.

During this time, as Imran Khan party named PTI (Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf) was popular. They tried to break his party through false flag operations against him accusing him for the master planner of attach on a military houses(termed 9th May) by his supporters who were protesting against his illegal arrest from the courtyard of High Court Islamabad. Hence they dismantled his party in a the most funny way possible. They will hostage someone and ask him to do press conference and confess that Imran Khan is the planner for 9th May. Thousand of supporters including women and party members was arrested and lots disappeared.

And then the announced the elections on 8th Feb. But they sentenced him for 24 years in different cases and dissolved their marriage accusing him for marrying his current wife before his period is done and sentenced 7 years both him and his wife. And Pakistan Supreme court took his party official sign for voters and declared each of his candidates contesting as independent.

So today was 8th February and election day, to prevent his voters from voting they turned of Mobile service which is still of at the time of writing and you will be surprised to know his party won with simple majority and election results are still awaiting.

You may get an Idea what is happening in here. And you will be surprised to know this 21st century regime change operation is going in Pakistan with the help of Pakistan Army by USA. And since then whenever us official were asked about Pakistan they replied this is according to the Laws of Pakistan. But they do not reply the same for Iran or Venezuela.

We want people to raise the voice of Pakistanis.

[1]: https://www.dawn.com/news/1630278

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#83
post #40

The craziest thing is that Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And not only that, the weapons are at the disposal of the local (very high ranking) commanders. It also is a country where the military is really in charge, only occasionally giving back the control to a civilian government. Sometimes people think that Eastern Europe is the most likely place to get nuked, or perhaps some American carrier off the coast of China.…

This stuff is what keeps me awake at night.

"No rational person would use nuclear weapons first" Well, who's to say that the people in charge of the nukes are rational? All it takes is one madman and we could have one of the biggest disasters in human history. We tend to underestimate the likelihood of such disasters and don't prepare for them (COVID is one example.) One day, someone will fire a nuclear weapon at civilians and we just have to hope it isn't in our lifetime.

Nuke-wielding dictatorships are the scariest because they can eliminate the checks and balances in the way of a launch. If Putin falls ill tomorrow and thinks the Americans poisoned him, what's to say he won't nuke them as final revenge? What about Kim Jong Un? What about Xi Jinping?

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#84

Pakistan is a sad tale. A country of 200 million+ with almost no future. The elites are busy milking what’s left of the country before it flames out. The idiotic IMF continues giving them loans to support the extremely corrupt system..the US government also supports the extremely corrupt military. This is what happens when corruption is built into the culture of your society and religious/tribal hullabaloo is more pr…

Please don't take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents—and especially not nationalistic ones, regardless of which country you have a problem with.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: you've been breaking the site guidelines so often that I've banned the account. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39307588.

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

No it doesn’t. Stop trying to patronize a country’s dire situation to push your false narrative.

I already responded to you above about starting this flamewar, but then you perpetuated it here by obviously breaking the site guidelines. We've had to warn you about this several times before:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38286516 (Nov 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37460834 (Sept 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36656318 (July 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33850494 (Dec 2022)

Worse, you've been posting all sorts of comments like this recently:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39263540

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39246417

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39245246

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39229835

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39210350

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39179655

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39069363

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39069055

Scrolling further back yet, I see even more of this, so unfortunately I think we have little choice but to ban your account and I've done so.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. But this would mean dramatically changing the comments you post—I hope that's clear.

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it indicate that? Every election in every country took place without Internet or (meaningful amounts of) cell phone service not that long ago .

Because in modern day the only reason to take that action is to manipulate votes.

i'm trying to understand how or why you would manipulate votes like this

call me crazy but i think mass-scale communication is a better way to manipulate votes, it allows people far away from each other to coordinate their numbers

but if you cut off their coordination mechanism they can't exchange information, and perhaps they might fear pushing out fake numbers in case the numbers of them plus a few others look strange. the best defense would be honesty

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#87
Pakistan's neighbor, India, has also been shutting off the internet quite a bit. 84 times in 2022:

- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/25/a-tool-of-poli...

And Punjab had its internet severely restricted last March:

- https://www.wired.com/story/india-activist-manhunt-sikh-acti...

- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/21/punjab-interne...

(I post this as someone who loves the subcontinent.)

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#88
post #2

On one hand, this is a classic dictatorship move. Senegal just did the same just after postponing elections. On the other hand, Pakistan really did have terrorist attacks just before the election, targeted at the election. So taking heavy handed steps to protect the election integrity can be explained.

IN Pakistan army decides and is the real ruler. Elections are only a face to appear as a democratic sate. In fact Pakistan elite (including army higher ranks) just is there to milk the country and build estates outside (West/UAE/etc).

[flagged]

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#89
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was curious, so I googled… - “The government grounds aircraft or reroutes flights to keep students from getting distracted during the biggest test of their lives.” - “ On the streets Thursday morning, you could hear more sirens than usual, because anyone running late to the competitive exam can call for a free police escort to rush them straight to the test site.” - “Success is defined narrowly. Get a high score on…

This test seems to control your trajectory in Korean society to a very high degree, which seems like overkill in my view, because a test can only be so reflective of real-life skills. I have a family member who did very well on the test and got into Seoul National University, which is reputed to be the best university in Korea. According to them, their IQ is "only" 120-130, but they have very good memory, and are abl…

Standardized testing does not aim to be a perfect evaluation, it aims to be a good enough evaluation that can be made highly resistant to corruption/bribery relative to its qualitative alternatives.

Re: Pakistan cuts off phone and internet services on election day

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some countries including my home country Poland impose a ban on political agitation on the election day. It means that no political content may be published on that day, but whatever has been published before that is allowed to stay. This is an old law which predates the Internet, so anything from social media posts to hanging up election posters is liable to be prosecuted and the authorities frequently do so. It's l…

Wait, do Polish people not consider themselves part of the West? Genuine question. I've met and worked with quite a few Poles since moving to the EU and my current takeaway is that it's in a really interesting fusion time between West, East, and some more mysterious third thing.

It is complicated. Most people in Poland do consider themselves part of Europe, sometimes even part of the West. At the same time people in Poland often contrast the West (as in Western Europe and US) with Poland and perceive west as something different and better. It is sort of post colonial mentality but with a twist, because it is not tied to race. This idealised “West” is often very far from real situation in Western Europe. On the other part of the spectrum you got polish conservatives who see west as degraded and fallen. They used to say things like: France no longer exists. Meaning France is not what it used to be; it is not true west because they lost the spirit of real west.
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