Due to Pakistani official’s paranoia, their attempts to block that country’s internet users from viewing anti-Islamic video clips on the popular YouTube site is being considered as the main cause behind the near-global outage experienced on Sunday.

After some hard tracking by YouTube’s IT personnel the site was restored after short order, but hundreds of thousands, if not millions of users thoughout the region and world were unable to access the site over the weekend for about two hours.

Google, the owners of YouTube, released a statement stating, “Many users around the world could not access our site. We have determined that the source of these events was a network in Pakistan. We are investigating and working with others in the Internet community to prevent this from happening again.”

Since it is difficult at times to determine what some find offensive, especially within religious and political circles of influence, YouTube hasn’t tried to curb free expression of ideas, satire or parody. That policy, while applauded by myself and most of ‘civilized humankind,’ doesn’t please some censors in a number of countries, particulary those under totalitarian rule or run with a heavy-hand by the religious or military elite.

I am of the opinion that if you, your ideas, your religion beliefs or political leanings can’t hold up under a little criticism, satire, parody or serious investigation, then it probably isn’t standing on a very firm foundation in the first place. Those most stable in their views and beliefs rarely become so easily offended, nor do they sacrifice their sense of humor, the most basic of human characteristics, for whatever cause they find themselves waist-deep in.