Shut Up'? Pakistan President's Outburst Scrubbed From 'Net

When President Asif Ali Zardari says “Shut up,” he apparently means it.

A few weeks ago, a short video of Pakistan’s unpopular, democratically elected president began playing on endless loop on the dozen private channels here. In the clip, he is giving a speech in Urdu to a crowd that apparently wasn’t listening to him too closely (not uncommon in Pakistan). As he speaks, you can hear background chitchat from the inattentive audience. Well, he could hear that same chitchat too, so at one point he looked down at someone and yelled, in English, ”Shut Up!”

All the local television anchors had a good laugh featuring the video, as did those at home -- some of whom created remixes of Zardari’s outburst (see HERE, HERE and HERE) and posted them to YouTube.

“Such behavior is embarrassing for any politician, but especially for the president of a country,” wrote Adil Najam of All Things Pakistan, amoderate blog that promises to “talk about [Pakistan’s] problems constructively.”

Which brings us to the evening of Sunday, Feb. 7. At about 9:30 p.m., according to the Pakistan Twitterverse, YouTube suddenly disappeared from Pakistani Internet Service Providers.

About an hour later, it seems that all was fixed -- with one very blatant exception. The dozen or so YouTube videos featuring Zardari’s explosion in loop were still restricted. You could search for them, but you couldn’t watch them (see screen grab).