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Afghanistan Bans Internet
aristotle2000 writes: "Suprisingly, the Taliban has prohibited the use of the Internet in Afghanistan. Apparently, the Internet can deliver un-Islamic, immoral, or lewd material. Who can believe that a country that has such an open attitude towards women, minorities, religions, and the press would object to the Internet?" I guess I'm unclear on the concept here: if the government is also forswearing the internet, who is going to monitor to make sure the peons aren't secretly dialing up to AOL? On the plus side, .af domains should be real cheap.
"Muttawakil said the Taliban wanted to keep society away from trends promoting obscenity and immorality through the Internet."
Individual decision? Zip, gone. Access to information other than that of the ruling party, gone. I don't like pornography either, but this is absurd. I feel sorry for those who are trapped in this place and aren't quite so fanatical. They got a raw deal.
"AIP did not say when the ban was imposed and how the Taliban planned to ensure that telephone lines were not being used to access the Internet."
There is only one possible way I am aware of - monitor all phone connections. If they don't have an infastructure built right now they can rebuild it by running all lines through a central monitoring system. Brrr.
"But most Taliban decisions and edicts on conduct are ruthlessly enforced by their powerful religious police working under the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice."
Thought police anyone?
Some companies (e.g. - shell) have their own satellites and tend to shuttle all kinds of data off them, not just do surveying.
How're they gonna stop them?
It's impossible without pissing off an extremely large company that can crush an entire country (after all, they must buy their refined petrolium from somwhere... and you piss off one, with that kind of government you piss them all off).
Our victory is assured? This is news to me.
Not that I'm suggesting the Taliban has any chance of being anything other than an ugly footnote to history - they are despicable in the extreme, they turn their faith into a monstrosity, and should be hunted down like the mad dogs they are and have their own throats slit in the streets - but nonetheless it does nobody any good to assume that social cancers like this are assured of failure. History teaches otherwise.
If you think that you can go around slaughtering people and calling it a "culture", I'm perfectly willing to cut your throat. Call it "judgement" if you want. Philosophy, meet Truth.
Islam in and of it's self is a very whole and sound religion. But like Christianity and Catholocism, it has been used in the name of violence and repression. I think that we can all agree on that. It needs to be stated that the Taliban perversion of Islam is NOT accepted by ANY OTHER Islamic sect. The other sad fact is the terrorism, middle east countries, and Islamic faith are all intertwined. A very western view. Is it accurate? I don't know, I don't care, Terrorism sucks. Compared to our vantage point, countries in the middle east do seem extremeist and repressed. And please remember that Hitler and his f'ed up Germany did get the collective Sh*t kicked out of them.
The Taliban are extremists in the extreme. Take everything you'd consider to be religious fanaticism and turn it up to 11, then you have a general idea of what the Taliban are like. First they kill women for exposing some skin; then of course there's the destruction of centuries-old relics that don't align with their religion. They shun all forms of entertainment as far as I can tell. Why it took them this long to ban the use of the Internet is beyond me.
For those who want a really good look at the atrocities of the Taliban, check out RAWA. Be careful what you click on, though; there are VERY graphic movie files and pictures on that site. Don't go there unless you have a strong stomach. We're not talking about annoying Congressmen here; these people are killers, plain and simple.
I was born in Afghanistan, but I have lived in the US for most of my life. I would like to comment on the cultural aspects of the Internet and its relationship to the brand of Islam espoused by the Taliban.
To start off, I will try to give a perspective of what it's like as a Muslim (I'm not a Muslim, btw) trying to face American values. I quote from "The Islamic Declaration", written by Alija Izetbegovic.
"For more than a century now, many nations outside the western civilisation, have been facing the problem of which attitude to take towards that civilisation. Finding oneself face to face with it, should one assume the attitude of absolute rejection, cautious adjustment or accept indiscriminately all the aspects of that civilisation? The tragedy or triumph of many nations was decided by their answer to this crucial question."
This speaks to me, as I feel the same thing living inside the US. As a citizen of the US and forced subject of its culture, I have to discriminate between the aspects of the culture that I would rather not become, and those that are wonderful and magnificent.
This is often a very difficult process to undergo. Alduous Huxley himself wrote in the forward to the second edition of "Brave New World":
If I were now to rewrite the book, I would offer the Savage a third alternative. Between the utopian and the primitive horns of his dilemma would lie the possibility of sanity--a possibility already actualized, to some extent, in a community of exiles and refugees from the Brave New World, living within the borders of the Reservation. In this community economics would be decentralist and Henry-Georgian, politics Kropotkinesque cooperative. Science and technology would be used as though, like the Sabbath, they had been made for man, not (as at present and still more so in the Brave New World) as though man were to be adapted and enslaved to them. Religion would be the conscious and intelligent pursuit of man's Final End, the unitive knowledge of the immanent Tao or Logos, the transcendent Godhead or Brahman. And the prevailing philosophy of life would be a kind of Higher Utilitarianism, in which the Greatest Happiness principle would be secondary to the Final End principle--the first questino to be asked and answered in every contingency of life being: "How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the achievement, by me and the greatest possible number of other individuals, of man's Final End?"
I mention this source to suggest that it's not easy for people even living in the western world to address its culture. The Taliban, simply not being able to find the sanity among the modern western world, have decided to turn away from it altogether, the same thing Huxley did in "Brave New World" because he could see no possibility of sanity within the direction the west seems to be taking humanity.
So, the Taliban are certainly misguided, IMHO, but we must forgive them and recognize our own shortcomings in what we perceive as theirs. They are trying to force with law and government what they really wish would happen as a result of a transformation in the hearts and minds of people. How is that any different from what goes on in the US? The war on drugs, for example, is symptomatic of trying to use guns and force to stamp out an essentially crisis of the human spirit. In some ways, having any government providing such a "service" contributes to the problem and perpetuates the cycle since it distracts people from the root cause. People start thinking that big brother will come along and save them, and start to lose sight of their own individual will and spirit. While not particularly effective, people often commit crimes simply because they want to demonstrate that the whole approach of trying to prevent crime through negativity as opposed to positivity is misguided.
From Izetbegovic:
Well, I'll admit the phrasing "gets off with a beating" is unintentionally funny.
Let me remind you that ISLAM was the first relgion in the world that actually gave women a status.
Sorry, can't remeber that. It's not true. Well, I guess it depends on your definition of status. Also, the remark only means something to a people who believe that women should have status. Besides that, the rest of your comment was good.
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Have you read my journal today?
Judeo-Christian religons, Muhammed, Buddha, et al-- they all stood for peace, love, humanity, and understanding. And oh yeah... righteousness.
They have? I don't know who you were talking to. Religion generally believes in doing what the Creator tells you to do. The purpose of the various actions is relegated to reasoning, which is irrelevant to the main purpose.
The concept of "righteousness" has led to the "My God is bigger than your God"
I'm sorry. We're you talking with adults or children? I find this comment to be *very* insulting.
Americans probably have no problem with this, since most of us are pretty open-minded about religious differences.
I believe it's because most Americans aren't very religous, therefore they don't care. If you don't take sides in an argument does that automatically mean that you are "open-minded"?
Which God you worship and how you worship him determines where you will live, how you will vote
Where did you get that from? How you'll vote? You'll vote with your conscience. Should your conscience tell you to follow a certain leader, so be it.
There's no reason in the world why this little piece of land can't handle people of two differing sets of religious beliefs.
Well, the *amount* of people on that small land sure has its problems. Then there are water issues and the like.
Oh, except of course that the Palestinians believe that they own the land by rights, and it was taken by the Israeli's when they claimed it in the name of "The God of Abraham."
Actually that is not what they claim.
And the same Israeli's belive that since God gave THEM the land,
A good deal of Israeli's don't even believe in G-d. Possibly a majority.
they should be able to kick the Muslims the hell out.
You really should be better informed. You haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about.
The fight is in the West Bank and Gaza Strip for the most part. The UN had a plan to separate the lands between the two peoples; Israelis accepted; Palestinians did not. Israel allow many other religions to live there and protect their religious items and places. The argument is whether the State should have a Jewish identity or not.
Since the governments and religions are one in the same, the diplomatic approach is little different than the religious approach; with neither side wanting to give.
You are obviously ignorant in this area, and your remarks will surely offend anyone and everyone. Please restrict your comments to what you know.
Drop a 20 megaton nuclear warhead square on the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, and let them sort out the resulting mess.
You're disgusting and revolting! That you can even joke about death is horrible. That you talk about killing millions is aboimindable.
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Have you read my journal today?
So God can talk about death and destruction all He wants, but a mere mortal cannot do so on /. without being called "disgusting and revolting"?
A "mere mortal" can talk about what he wants to. But look at the tone of the article. The author tries taking a holier-than-thou, I'm not getting involved in your petty infighting approach. Then, after he feels he has laid down the groundwork, and has the reader in agreement, he suggests dropping a bomb to rid us of the nuisances. The reference was obviously in jest, but it shows that he wouldn't care if it actually did happen. *That* is disgusting and revolting.
As far as some deity comes along. There are three points. They address the idea, the tone, and the result. The idea is that if a deity creates, the deity has a right to destroy.The tone is that end-of-the-world theme. Saying that *theme* is bad, is one thing. But if someone says what happens *during* that theme, it is not as bad as when said by itself. The result is that religion believes in an afterlife and thus being killed is not neccessarily a bad thing (in relation to how bad it would be if there wasn't, and this comparison matters only to the person taking action, not the person it is being done to.) Also, it is saying what is supposed to happen, for whatever the reason, and being the deity is a just judge, the statement is not made in anger.
That being said, there is a clear difference, and I therefore stand by my remark.
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Have you read my journal today?
Don't even need to know if it's a data call -- just keep track of the numbers they're calling....
clumsy-o.af
tree-and-le.af
archers-of-lo.af
Um, no. The ACLU will defend your religious civil liberties as well. The cases where they seem anti-religion are those which involve separation of church and state -- an important distinction which protects against exactly the sort of things the Afghan government has been imposing on its citizens. Keeping Christianity out of schools and local government may seem unfair to you, but in the long run it preserves the option of following the faith you choose. What if, at the founding of the country, Thomas Jefferson's edited Bible
had been declared the only acceptable version, and those who had different Christian beliefs forced
to discard them?
Hmm, rumor has it that bin Laden has been using the Internet to communicate with his terrorist group. I wonder if he'll still be allowed to do that or not.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
I have to say that the idea of a quantum black hole still seems appealing to me w.r.t tanguska...
:-)
Of course there are so many different theories about the event that it is relatively difficult to pick just one
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
"You don't see because the media doesn't report it,"
Hmm, no.
" you are the audience of the American Media, "
Doubt it
"they don't need to report this, they don't have to report it and you don't see it. "
Irrelevant.
"If you really want to see go to these countries and go down to the ghettos and look for these organizations the grass root orgs that are actually doing the fighting. You will be surprised. but I bet you don't even want to see you are contend with what you hear and see on CNN. "
CNN does'nt suck as much as you seem to imply. In fact, they set a standard as far as journalism is concerned.
--
Hey, I thought we were talking about Clinton, not Bush.
the sad part is that informative is probably more accurate than funny.
Help fight continental drift.
Since phone service in and out of Afghanistan is even worse these days than that in Pakistan (and that's saying something!), there shouldn't be too much concern about any but the wealthiest and most powerful people dialing out to AOL successfully via Afghani phone lines. And most of those people who are still in Afghanistan at all are considered enemies of the regime and under watch anyway.
For another thing, the Taliban is pretty good at using severe punishments as a deterrent. Beatings, reeducation camps and death at the hands of the morals police have brought Afghanistan's heroin-smuggling routes to a halt. Not a trickle, but a halt.
It's hard to imagine anyone risking internet access. You might see a trickle of UUCP-relayed e-mail continue below the radar via 2400-baud modem connections, but that's about it.
Make all the jokes you want from the comfort of your developed country re: how they'll monitor this, but in a country with only a few hundred outbound phone lines in working order, if that--prehistoric analog ones switched by hand--it doesn't take much to eavesdrop on all of them at once and listen for carrier tones.
actually, george carlin had a similar quote:
'hi, do you believe in god?'
'no'. BOOM. you're dead
'hi, do you believe in god'?
'yes'
'do you believe in my god'?
'no'. BOOOM, you're dead
My god has a bigger dick than your god.
--- d'oh
<sarcasm>
Yeah, cause everyone knows black people can't read.
</sarcasm>
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
But its NOT in the Koran.
Who reported this? Why? I'm sure the Taliban'd be much happier being ignorant clods of dirt smelling of goat cheese and wondering "where the wimin is!" (Answer: You shot them all jack-offs)
Gotta love the religious fundamentalists. The zealots are even worse than the hippocrites.
Remember the teary-eyed "Ah have sinned!" The Taliban would have shot his fat pink ass and not seen the irony in doing so.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Great Britain ought to send in the r.af!
Hearing impaired could set up a site for the de.af.
alt.fan.warlord could keep an archive at bu.af
(Big Ugly ASCII Font).
alt.folklore.urban regulars could find testimonials at fo.af (Friend Of A Friend).
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
There is a plainly obvious solution to this problem that the Taliban just can't touch... come on, RFC1149 - all they need is a bunch of pigeons and... Of course they could outlaw birds too.
prosebeforehos.com
If you think Jesus was lying here, how can you trust Him with your salvation? Don't succumb to New Age thinking.
OK, Commander Christian. I was born and raised Catholic, and blindly followed the rhetoric until I was 22 and realized that the church follows the creator, and The Church follows The Pope.
In response to what you've written above: you're being a blind follower and taking things too literally. You're taking the words of Jesus, as interpreted by one of his many biographers, and reported through millennea of translations through dozens of man's languages, to mean that he mean himself, Jesus Christ.
My interpretation (and this is not "New Age Thinking," it's non-literal, logical thinking, following the paths of right and wrong) is that Jesus, who was a physical representation of our creator on this earth, was saying that you will not enjoy the benefits of life everlasting unless you walk the path of truth and kindness to others as he instructed. "Only through me"-- as I am the creator, the way, the truth, and the light-- follow my example and I will count you among those worthy of sharing my kingdom.
You can live just, good lives and not believe in Jesus... you can live by his example, and still be "saved." If that is not tru,e you're going to have about four billion people to explain this to in the morning.
You can't take one passage, two passages, even a whole chapter from the Bible and have it stand as "The Word of God," although many people try. If you read any given direct passage from the Bible as we know it, I guarantee you can find an exact passage somewhere else that directly or indirectly contradicts it.
To be a true follower of God, you must accept the whole work of the Bible, accept man's failings in reporting the details... and take the messages of: Honor the Creator, Honor your fellow man, Repent you failings and Live a just life... as what God was trying to say.
It's not only that "the unexamined life is not worth living," but also that "the unexamined faith is not worth practicing."
-RT
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
I really shouldn't feed trolls, but...
Look buddy, it may be amateur philosophising, and it may be over simplification, but I'm far from an idealistic teenager.
I am a Follower of Kant; I fancy myself an intellectual with a strong affinity for Logic.
And my opinions come from deep contemplation and searching for common denominators across world cultures and societies.
Just because you have some deep understanding on how "the world," or better yet, Middle Eastern politics work, doesn't make my truths any less interesting for some people to contemplate. You don't have to agree with what I say to find it interesting, insightful, or thought-provoking.
We are here for public discourse, and I was trying to participate. I never said I was right, I only made my own observations.
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
One of the great passions in my life (one that has led me away from organized religion, oddly enough) is having conversation wih people about the hypocrisy shown by religions throughout history. "God" and "Jesus" in the Judeo-Christian religons, Muhammed, Buddha, et al-- they all stood for peace, love, humanity, and understanding. And oh yeah... righteousness.
The concept of "righteousness" has led to the "My God is bigger than your God" shit that has been going on for oh, about 4-6,000 years now. Invoking God to justify murder and destruction, all becuase you think your God is right and the other guy's God is wrong.
I submit that Gods are all the same. A creator, life-giver, a spiritual leader... we just choose to worhip them in different ways. Americans probably have no problem with this, since most of us are pretty open-minded about religious differences. Except, of course, those crazy rabid Christians who like to call Catholics "Mary fetishists," claim that the King James Version is the "Only True Version" of God's Word, and anyone who disagrees should either be converted or damned to hell by their hand. But I digress...
The point is that in other parts of the world, specifically the Middle East, Religion is everything. Which God you worship and how you worship him determines where you will live, how you will vote, and oftentime whether you will live or die when a particular "party" comes into power.
Take for example, Isreal and Palestine. There's no reason in the world why this little piece of land can't handle people of two differing sets of religious beliefs. Oh, except of course that the Palestinians believe that they own the land by rights, and it was taken by the Israeli's when they claimed it in the name of "The God of Abraham." And the same Israeli's belive that since God gave THEM the land, they should be able to kick the Muslims the hell out.
Maybe that's oversimplification, but the fact is that it's a big pissing contest. Since the governments and religions are one in the same, the diplomatic approach is little different than the religious approach; with neither side wanting to give.
Wanna know how the great King Solomon would have handled the situaion? Drop a 20 megaton nuclear warhead square on the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, and let them sort out the resulting mess. Nothing unites people like working together to recover from Armageddon, eh?
And if you can't play nice, nobody gets the toy!
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
...and people still believe religion is good.
Religion is important only if you want to prevent civilization from going forward.
Well, this time is Afganistan's people loss. My enciclopedia has info. on them, so I won't worry about not having them on the Internet. I just hope they are happy to let some religious leader to think for them.
Yes I'm a "hard agnostic".
I prefer to find satisfaction doing something usefull for humanity (or at least trying to) than hallucinating.
Anyway, I agree with you. You can have your own phillosophy, you can believe in your own God the way you want.... but that's a lot different than religion, because you are thinking by yourself.
I think it's only organised religion that one should be very wary of. Personal belief in a/some God(s) can, I'm told, be very satisfying.
:-)
Organised religion is simply one more power structure erected by those at the top to control those at the bottom (and those halfway up
Commercial organised religion is simply sickening.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Actually, there are some very good arguments for banning the internet in schools, but they don't have to do with moral arguments. It's simply that there are enough factors which inhibit that actual transmission of information in schools, the internet will just make it even more difficult.
I mean, really, have you ever seen what happens when technology becomes the focus of actual education? People learn skills that become osbscolete extremely quickly and don't really learn other things.
Take, as an example, the "current events projects" which are done every now and then in a "global studies" (i.e. history) class. What is the basic idea? Students get together a whole bunch of nearly irrelevent information that noone cares about, and then forget it. At least when they learn history and forget it there is the chance that they will actually remember some of the important bits.
The internet in schools, where it is not simply ignored, would serve a fairly similar purpose. People would do nearly anything but get actual real information which pertains to the basic subjects that they should actually be learning.
Of course, it would be fine to have some internet-enabled computers in a school available after school hours for students to use for research, email, etc.
Btw, as someone else said, imagine if the irreligious left got into power? It would be just as bad as you describe, but with different goals and a different slant.
Extremists are an interesting group. By and large they tend to be dangerous, but on the other hand, "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
As I said. Extremists are an odd group to know what to do with.
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
> Apparently, the Internet can deliver un-Islamic, immoral, or lewd material. Who can believe that a country that has such an open attitude towards women, minorities, religions, and the press would object to the Internet?"
And then there's the USA, where lots of politicians would also be happy to censor the internet if they could get away with it.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
As it seems, someone read your comment and defaced the page.
life would be much easier if you could have a look at the sourcecode
Ummm...probably because Hitler didn't thump his Bible when he massacred millions. The Taliban purports to be the guardian of pure Islam. All the Muslims I know are absolutely revolted by the Taliban's practices.
Islam doesn't endorse the Taliban, but the Taliban claims to be following the teachings of Islam.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
The Taliban belive that what they are doing is in the name of their religion. We call them Islamic fundamentalists because they claim to be. Religion is in the eye of the believer no matter what, and if these people believe they are following the Quaran(sp?) then they are.
Hitler, was most certainly not a Roman Catholic. He was, in fact, a person for which religion played little or no role. He never identified himself as religious, and only mentioned God a few times in speeches.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
no, he didn't. Hitler only mentioned god a few recorded times. You, my friend, are an idiot.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Now I personally don't advocate taking away liberties and sexism and the other more violent parts of their culture but i'm ok with them doing it, Because it's their culture.
Fuck you you glass headed idiot.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Yea, i forgot to post this in my first reply, the taliban run their own web pages!
check it out! they're funny.
www.ummah.net/taliban/
My god, how right you are. ironic isn't how they started this damned war 20 years ago to erase communism, yet now, 21 years after the battles started, the Talibs are trying to control their people in the very way the soviets did. through a very perverse and disgusting way. (afghans are STILL convinced they were the ones that overthrew the Soviet Union, as the Soviet recession from their country coincided with it's fall)
Well, i guess i'm probably more or less an authority on afghanistan, since i've lived there as an aid worker. the Taliban, a strict hardline Islamic regime, basically rule their country by fear. i know you've probably heard about the way they treat women, etc, but as it stands, all media (except for the Taliban's own Radio Shariat) is banned, and listening to or watching anything else is banned. Honestly though, i don't see why this is something that the talibs need to worry about. There is no telephone system in Afghanistan, and when i was there as an IT consultant, the best hope of "internet" was a dial up connection at 2400 baud to a mail server in switzerland. My theory on this, however, is that the taliban want to make themselves appear in "control" of their people to the outside world. any well informed person will realize that the only hope an afghan has of accessing the internet is to travel to neighboring Pakistan (i don't even mention Iran, since they're limited in internet access anyway.) This is not a realistic possibility though, as most afghans that travel to pakistan, do everything in their power to NOT return. In short, the Taliban are making another one of thier hollow threats, that in reality doesn't have any true effect on their people (especially since the only true internet users will be going through Inmarsat A or B, and the only people with that are the UN) so, i don't see the point. the really sad thing though, is that 2 companies - one chinese and one british - have just recently established a long distance (international) telephone service in the Afghan capitol of Kabul. while i was there, i was actually able to connect to a server back home at roughly 14000 bps (SHOCKINGLY good)! I wonder if that will be a possibility anymore...
Every day I realize more and more that /. is a whining majority opinion by people who have a passing opinion on things but never strong enough of an opinion on ANYTHING to do anything about it. It's like the guy in my office yesterday who said, "Hey man, Can you believe China got the 2008 olympics? that sucks." Yes we know it sucks, and yes everyone in my office thought it sucked, but nobody is going to do anything about it.
Look at what's gone down with slashdot around:
DeCSS is still banned, the DCMA is law, MSFT is still a monopoly, the Taliban bans the Net, MSN Messenger crashes for 7 days and it'll still be ok, there still is no good (honestly) usable office suite for linux, KIllustrator has to change it's name, Ximian Gnome is still broken on Debian, AOL hits 26 million users, MSNBC is still the #1 website on the net, and I can go on and on about all these things that have happened that slashdotters hate. Yet, nothing is done... NOTHING.
Why didn't VA Linux start a PAC group when it was at $100+/share? Why won't someone start a PAC right now with slashdotters opinions represented in our legislative process? MS has one, and we are starting to need one too.
We have millions of voices right now, and the mostly agree on most issues... let's have our voices heard. Right now, the only time are voices are heard is when some guy puts up a cool lego desk image on his DSL web server and finds out he has no net access for a few days.
Taliban are heavily supported by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, two of the bigest US allies, if the US wanted really to catch him, they would have done this a long time ago.
You are using relative morality ("what is right is defined by what the society says is right"). In a pragmatic sense, any system of morality can be said to have a function; a religious moral system, for example, exists to serve the desires of the god being worshipped, while a humanist morality exists to provide a better life for people. The point is that, of all the moralities that could be designed, relative morality is the most pointless; it can serve no successful purpose, and is in fact the same as no morality at all.
Do not think that you are a better person because you can accept any moral system; this is the refuge of minds that are too weak to have any thoughts of their own.
For example, abusing women is wrong; if you could live with a morality where you abused women regularly, you would be the kind of person that I would be willing to fight a war against. I would personally be willing to kill you, or die trying, to stop you.
Relative morality seems on its face like a way to resolve conflict, but in the end it's philosophical masturbation.
Go ahead and believe in Western morality, but look, and look hard, for the parts of it that are wrong. Build something that you can believe in, so when you see an atrocity you are willing to say "this is _wrong_".
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Heh, check out the moderation on that one.. "Informative". Hello? How about "funny"? Geez.
Are here:
They're all still working today, so presumably they're banning their own people from reading other people's Web sites, not banning other people from reading their Web sites...
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Was that flaim-bait?
I respect other cultures, and all that crap but F* you... The Taliban _need_ help in a hospital with padded walls. They are class A nuts. I would rather spend the day with Hannibal Lecter than set foot in that country at the moment.
now thats flaimbait
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. But give a man a terminal, and he can set-up a tele-marketing scam and feed his family for years to come.
Everyday 1000's of people sufer from disconnections and low bandwidth. Most of the people of Afghan. have never had an Internet in their life. Imagine, no slashdot, no dilbert... Forced to live on scraps of news they find on the street, theses people cannot live a normal life.
This young girl has never had the taste of caffene, while her little brother has never seen those Natalie Portman fakes. Their father is forced to work for a few $ a year at the nearby Microsoft Packing Factory, His wife is beaten for talking of Linux, and their baby is starved of EMF. They are typical of so many...
But you can help today: for just £2 a month, you can supply a family with internet access for a week. You can help bring someone into a world of porn, warez, and freedom to flame. People in the 3rd world don't want to live on hand-outs. They just want a chance to hack and pir8 their way like the rest of us. So donate just £2 a month to OxfamXXXXX i mean Slashdot, or whatever you can afford... call now, thank you
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
"Who can believe that a country that has such an open attitude towards women, minorities, religions, and the press would object to the Internet?"
Who can believe that someone with such an arrogant and narrow perspective would have such a closed perspective on other cultures?
How about learning about other cultures, talking to some Islamic people, and perhaps thinking that maybe the way you were brought and conditioned doesn't have to be better than the way others were brought up?
http://www.talknerdy.org
The fact is the goverment control all of the Telephone services and montitoring is normal, the TV, Radio and Media a government controlled and thus no criticism is allowed and anyone who dares to stand up to them dies.
It's worse than that - TV and radio are not allowed. I dunno about printed newspaper. Soon this country will be back to cave age.
Well they are successful because they are fundamentalist. When you are promised heaven if you die at war, and you believe so strongly in it, then you are not affraid of death and it makes you a better fighter. There's nothing more dangerous than a soldier who's not affraid to die.
:)
If you played Alpha Centauri you know that because of their hard religious believes Sister Miriam & the believers get a bonus during fights (but a malus at science). Of course then, I always play as the University of Planets instead, research like crazy and then just crush everyone at the end with my powerful high-tech toys
Hats off to the Taliban, working hard to make medieval despotism persist into the 21st century.
I guess someone had to show the world that the Ayatollah Khomeini wasn't as crazy as a religious whacko could get.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
>The Taliban have repeatedly stated that they are willing to hand over any alleged terrorists if conclusive proof is provided.
They haven't handed over Osama Bin Laden, have they?
> In Islam, effort must be made to ensure that people do not have access to the content that is considered forbidden.
What a tragic fall Islam has taken, from the days when Muslim Spain was the epitome of enlightenment and tolerance in Europe, to today when pig-fuckers like you proclaim that censorship is necessary.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
>Yes, I do prefer that the state educate children rather than allowing a bunch of uneducated, right-wing, extremists to "educate" their children.
Umm, what if the state is a bunch of uneducated, right-wing extremists?
Sorry, giving the state the power to tell everyone what to think is just too dangerous, no matter how benign the government of the moment might be (in your opinion.) When you cede any power to the state, make sure it's a power with which you can trust ALL future governments.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
>At least get your facts straight before you shoot off your mouth and end up looking like an idiot.
Get your own facts straight, you rag-head jackass. Your so-called "holy" book explicitly condones slavery, which is why I can dismiss it out of hand as a medieval relic of tyranny. If you want censorship, then cut your own fucking DSL line, don't try to tell me that it *must* be done because your religion said so.
Now, I'm going out and find a copy of the Satanic Verses.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
>First they kill women for exposing some skin;
They don't just kill women for exposing skin, they also kill women for getting raped (no, I'm *not* making this up.) If a woman is raped in a Taliban-controlled part of Afghanistan, she's likely to be done in by stoning, while the perp gets to claim that she tempted him to do it, and gets off with a beating, or with no punishment at all.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
*rimshot*
So, if I were to say that the Taliban leaders wallow in their own piss, shit, jizz, blood, wine, beer, and the sweat of a camel that had eaten a soup made up of the same gunk, and that they ate dog-and-pork sausage in the morgue with infidels, it might be regarded as un-Islamic? ;-)
(Unclean? Sounds like a great weekend! I cut my finger pretty bad during the wee hours of the morning, and was worried about the bleeding, so I got a stich put in by this cute Jewish med student interning at the hospital... we hit it off and met at the zoo later that morning after she got off her shift, on which one of her patients died, which was a bummer... we went to the zoo, walked around a bit, grabbed a sausage from the sidewalk vendor, saw the camels (he was looking hungry, so I fed him some sausage, even though the sign said not to, while petting him on the nose, poor thing was burning up, it was so hot outside that day), then went out for Chinese food, then went bar-hopping... then I got really drunk... Never mix beer and wine. Anyways, I remember getting laid, but I'd had waaaaaay too much to drink and I really embarassed myself. But I was too drunk to really give a damn. In fact, I was so damn drunk, she got worried, and she had to go to work anyways, so she took me to the hospital at 3:00am and left me to get my stomach pumped, which I think was a subtle signal that the relationship was over... but that's OK, 'cuz while I was getting my guts pumped out, I met this cute Hindu med student...)
*checks calendar* 1984 anyone?
There are just as many would-be censors on the left as on the right. The right-wing extremists want to ban "obscenity" and "pornography", the left-wing extremists want to ban "hate speech" and "intolerance" (and now "violence"). Their motives are different, but both groups agree that they know better than you what you should be allowed to see, and both should be opposed.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Never mind the fact that Hitler paid his Church tax until the day he died.
11 was a racehorse
12 was 12
1111 Race
12112
merely a propaganda ploy to maintain his support among Catholic Germans, Italians, and Austrians.
That was exactly why he did it. I wasn't trying to disprove that Hitler didn't like religon(hell, he equated religon to race). His stance on it was just rather odd. He knew that he couldn't just eliminate it, the people wouldn't like that so the party instituted Nazi Life Days and held Hitler youth Parades on Sunday durring mass and such.
bah I'm too lazy to go into any more(that and I really don't feel like digging up my class notes for a post on here)
11 was a racehorse
12 was 12
1111 Race
12112
I agree with most of your definitions wholeheartedly. However, searching the archives of Slashdot will unearth anti-Christian bigotry and references made frequently by Americans and Canadians, both of whom would then probably turn around and announce "Freedom of Religion" in their countries.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
If the Taliban called itself a communist movement, that's how the media would report it. If they called themselves a Christian sect then that's how the media would report it. They call themselves fundamentalist muslims so that is how the media reports it!
Speaking as a home-schooled Christian with unfiltered DSL access in his bed room, I think that you're generalizing a bit. You should never underestimate the power of a vocal minority (1d10ts from Bob Jones and any Televangilest you'll ever see) to sound like the majority. I don't think many people care if 7-11 sells porn, I think a few vocal people do. I -certainly- don't want the Internet banned/filtered in schools/libraries.
:)).
I think it's quite an unfair generalization to say right-wing conservitives are like the Taliban (I don't really see what home schooling has to do with it, other then it seems that a large home schooling segment happens to be Christian... but a large segment happens to speak English too, let's remember
Grades, Social Life, Sleep... pick two.
--Justin Mitchell
"2nd Place is a fancy word for losing" --Bender (Futurama)
Except the ones who would perpetuate homophobia with federal money.
---
Except abortion providers, of course.
Christian--someone who follows the teaching of christ. They preach that we should love everyone and be tolerant of those different from ourselves. They might believe in creation as opposed to evolution, but they are tolerant of other viewpoints of "how we got here". These people are generally decent and honorable folk who believe in the improvement of humanity.
Christian fundamentalist Idiot--someone who actively tries to enforce their religious dogma on society. For these people, following the teachings of christ is optional. Not believing in the process of Evolution doesn't not make you one of these people. You have to go above and beyond the call of duty and actively try to ban teaching of evolution in schools. Even worse, in america, these people have virtually banned school sex education education in many rural parts of the united states. In the rural parts of my state, a teacher cannot explain to students how to properly use contraception. Whole pages of textbooks are ripped out. The only kind of birth control method that can be taught is abstinance (also known as the "Just lie back and think of Jesus" method. Not too terribly effective). I find it especially disgusting that many of the rural areas in question are poor have far less social services for teenage mothers than urban areas. These christian fundamentalist idiots are responsible for giving america the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the western world. Would christ want this?
Frankly, I just think we're incompetent sometimes.
probaby (hopefully) it was just a typo
-rt-
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
The concept of "righteousness" has led to the "My God is bigger than your God" shit that has been going on for oh, about 4-6,000 years now. Invoking God to justify murder and destruction, all becuase you think your God is right and the other guy's God is wrong.
Agreed. It amazes me how religions that teach things like "love thy neighbour," can create such bloodbaths simply because their neighbour doesn't believe the same thing they do.
I submit that Gods are all the same. A creator, life-giver, a spiritual leader... we just choose to worhip them in different ways.
Again, I agree. I believe in God, being raised as a Baptist Christian, but I do not denounce other religions as "wrong" because I don't believe that way. I believe God is God, whether He is referred to as God, Krishna, Allah, Bhudda, or whatever else you wish to call Him.
Maybe that's oversimplification, but the fact is that it's a big pissing contest.
Well put. It seems to sum up the situation quite well...
A flute with no holes is not a flute.
US-Pakistan relations aren't that great.
Check out this article about the difficulty of US counterterrorism in the area - you might find it enlightening.
Quote:
"Where the Taliban and Usama bin Ladin are concerned, Pakistan and the United States aren't allies. Relations between the two countries have been poor for years, owing to American opposition to Pakistan's successful nuclear-weapons program and, more recently, Islamabad's backing of Muslim Kashmiri separatists. Bin Ladin's presence in Afghanistan as a "guest" of the Pakistani-backed Taliban has injected even more distrust and suspicion into the relationship."
--
http://www.gimbo.org.uk/
Um we funded the mujahadeen, not the Taliban. (I could be wrong, just sayig from the first half of your comment.) P Secondly, Osama Bin Laden, the more I have seen about him over the years, makes me feel even more strongly he is simply a media campaign, putting a name on the face of terrorism in general. The only way we will catch him is to make someone into him, drag him in front of a camera crew and claim victory, which will never happen. We have the best military in the world, if he really existed, there is no reason why our military would not have extracted him already, seriously.
I guess they aren't interested in things that are wrong, immoral, and against Islam, but not obscene.
Here's another story on the situation from the BBC.
Blijf.af
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
The source of confusion here is that the Taliban is claiming to be the authoritative religious interpretation. That's why these crazed terrorists get lumped in with the normal islamic types.
Not to defend Hitler here, but he never went around saying he was the Pope and that the German people must lead a holy war to wipe out the unpure...
So there is no need to demonize "western media" here...demonizing the Taliban's media is enough. They're the ones making themselves look so bad.
The Taliban really needs to get its priorities straight. I mean, there could be much more productive things the Taliban could be doing, like:
1. Ensuring widespread deprivation, poverty, starvation.
2. Smashing a few more statues.
3. Playing host to more terrorist organisations.
4. Finding imaginative ways of abusing women.
etc.
Banning the Internet should be waa-aay down its list of priorities.
This must be the post of the day. Too bad this is /., you'll probably be moderated down as a troll.
:-)
Of course that may change with this post (which will probably be moderated down though. Keep posting
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
The ISI was the primary conduit for western aid to the mujahadeen in their war against the Soviet invasion force of the late 1980s. (It should also be remembered that the Soviet invasion killed over 1 million Afghanis.)
After the Soviets left Afghanistan with their tail between their legs, Pakistan funded and trained the Taliban, and in some cases Pakistani regulars even lead them in battle. Taliban is also made up of ethnic Pashtunies, which are a minority group in Afghanistan, but are heavily represented in the Pakistani military.
The extent to which Pakistan is still pulling the Taliban's strings is unclear. Some feel the Taliban have slipped Islamabad's control.
The rteason none of thiis rarely (if ever) reported in the press is that: A.) Most western readers don't give a rat's ass about Afghanistan; and B.) Since it was a big egg on the face of the Clinton-era CIA, since Pakistan is still officially an American allie and the CIA worked closely with the ISI to arm the mujahadeen. Another problem is the lack of reliable, unbiased news from the region, as various news outletss (Afghan opposition groups, official media in India, Iran, etc.) who have reported the ISI connection all have their own agendas to push.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
I'm a Baptist too, and I know that in John 14:6, Jesus says, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
If you think Jesus was lying here, how can you trust Him with your salvation? Don't succumb to New Age thinking.
The real God does have many names: YAHVEH, ELOHIM, SHADDAI, ADONAI, I AM, FATHER, CREATOR, KING OF KINGS, LORD OF LORDS, ...
But even a very brief study of what those other religions worship will reveal a vast difference. God is not a melting pot of philosophies. He has one personality and one mind having one Law which was fulfilled by His one Son for the one (entire) population of the earth.
If God has lied to one group of people, then He is not God. If all religions are true then none of them are true. To say that all paths are correct means that there are no paths. It's like going into a wilderness and saying that the entire forest is a path, and is the right path, no less.
That means they banned .NET too!
I am !amused.
Wow, amateur philosophizing at its best. Hate to be the one to tell you this, but there have a been a lot smarter people than you and have had more intelligent things to say about religion. All Gods are the same? You need to get out and experience the world a little more, or a least expand your reading quite a bit. Your shortsightedness and bigotry makes you look like and idiot. The fact that you got modded up +4 makes Slashdot readers look even more ignorant.
--------
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
The difference is, I believe, that Christianity is not a unified religion -- Protestants differ from Catholics, and even from other Protestants, considerably more than Shi'ites differ from Sunnis. Thus the Christian impulse to kill over religion was turned on other Christians, and all hell broke loose in Europe.
--
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delenda est Windoze
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
If you think Islam the faith tolerates violence, that they sanction the type of behaviour towards women, then it it is you that is clueless. "Not judging" in such a case is an abdication of your responsibility to think.
You forgot the "red ink flows like rivers of blood" part. And the funny caclculation of Theo's CD sales...
f.
Congratulations. You (and by the looks of it, michael) have been trolled. Read the text of the item a few more times...
On the plus side, .af domains should be real cheap.
.af domain I could register like goatse.cx, but all I can come up with is rice-pil.af...
Hmmm... I was trying to thing of a clever
Hmm... strange.... here in Denmark we've got porn i (almost) every gasstation, conviniencestore and supermarked. And so it have been for the last 20-30 years.
Computers are (still) unfiltered in libraries and schools.
I haven't caught or heard anyone caught in masturbating in libraries and schools.
Hmm... perhaps it's an american thing to spontaneous masturbate when exposed to porn? Perhaps you're not exposed to enough?
Bjarne
I have a feeling that they will start to see a few more pigeons in the skies of Afghanistan.
While I understand that their beliefs are quite different than ours you think they could have at least been like China and setup a nation-wide firewall rather than deny total access.
re: population growth with killing of female babies.
Its something that has been seen several places; basically this is happening frequently not universally. Male children are considered much more of an asset (partially the tradition of dowries, partially due to the earning potential of men in the society), so families aren't often prepared to face the relative financial burden of girls. Also, under population controls (e.g. China) the temptation to hush up the daughter so that they are allowed to have a son is present. At this point though the issue of population isn't really an issue however, so your question kind of becomes moot.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
gee, that sure makes population sustaining (much less growth) really hard.
(so why didn't everyone die out in just a generation or so, if it was as you said?)
--
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
George W's administration has already made a deal with he taliban leadership. Search for "faustian deal" on kuro5hin. The drug war makes strange bed-fellows.
But I think we should at least recognize what the hell is going on there.
Not saying that it's enough, but shed a tear for them.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
"The sad thing is this is a government the Americans helped put in power with weapons and funding..." And the US is suprised that they aren't all happy and servile towards them? How many governments/nations/regimes has the US supplied with weapons that still do get along with them? Many times when the US helps prop up a regime or enhance a faction they only seem to end up shooting themselves in the foot and leaving another nations people with another tyranny to deal with...
-- Judas96
"...don't take a nerf bat to a knife fight." - Joe Rogan, said on News Radio
A brutal past compared to any other religion? Sure, it's not like any christian sects ever demeaned women or ruled through fear (I hope I don't go to Hell for saying that).
-- Judas96
"...don't take a nerf bat to a knife fight." - Joe Rogan, said on News Radio
Don't let these guys hook up with the RIAA.
Anonymous posts are filtered.
There was a documentary (I think it was called Undeer the Veil) shown on british telly recently made by the reporter Siras Shar (Not sure about the spelling). Her parents come from Afghanistan and she sneeked into the country with the help of an underground movement. The footage that was shown was very sobering, some of it showed a football stadium (ironically built by the international community to help return normality to the country) being used for very brutal executions, hangings, stonings, shooting etc.
:->
The people in Af are under the complete control of the Taliban. They are ruled with the proverbial rod of iron (which is normally used to beat to death 13 year old girls for daring to read a book). Their interpretation of Islamic law is so extreme that most other Muslims, even the most 'orthodox'(*) ones consider it over the top.
It is seeing what can happen in a country like this that puts life in the west into perspective. We may whine about companies protecting IP, or governments introducing face recognising CCTV, but thats nothing compared to what these people are living through.
If it ever shown where you live, try and watch it. It certainly made me realise just how lucky I am. At least I have the freedom to live a normal life, go to school (although I have just finished Uni but you know what I mean), walk down the street, without risking beating, or death. And I have some say, no matter how small, in the way my country is run, I have a voice. People in Afganistan have no voice, not even a small one, especially not women, who are basically non-people.
(*) I don't like the word extremist, it smacks of American cliches about Muslims, most of whome are peaceful, honest, friendly, well educated and moral. The combative tendancy in the area is like that in europe up to about 50 years ago (ignoring the balkans), not a product of religion, just of the situation, religion just tends to fan the flames (the religious wars of europe, papal intervention in politics, the holy roman empire etc)
Here endeth the lesson
Paul Leader
Most private folks in Afghanistan who can afford net access use out of country ISPs anyway. I think they just don't want internet cafes.
--Perianwyr Stormcrow
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Yeah, if we're not careful, Muad-dib might show up to lead them conquering across all of civilization.
I'd never really thought about it like that. What's interesting is that the U.S. has gone from taking millions of immigrants into a melting pot to demanding a mosaic over all else. "We must promote diversity" and all that. Now we're getting to see the problems with making it official policy.
--
Dyolf Knip
2001-07-12 11:03:43 Taleban has banned internet (articles,news) (rejected)
__
__
L.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/central/07/1 3/taliban.internet/index.html n .internet.reut/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/07/13/afgha
These are better links because you will be able access the data a year from now, while the Yahoo story will fall off the net in a few weeks.
It looks like alot of folks are commenting without reading the story. If they had, they would have noted this bit:
It was not immediately known how many people or offices use the Internet in a country in which infrastructure is in ruins because of more than two decades of war. There are not many computers and most of areas do not have electricity. Those who can afford to, including foreign aid agencies, log onto the Internet through the few telephone lines provided by neighboring Pakistan.
[...]
AIP did not say when the ban was imposed and how the Taliban planned to ensure that telephone lines were not being used to access the Internet. But most Taliban decisions and edicts on conduct are ruthlessly enforced by their powerful religious police working under the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
A special note is that, as the taliban says, "We want to establish a system in Afghanistan through which we can control all those things that are wrong, obscene, immoral and against Islam"
This will be rather difficult to do, given their particular view of technology, etc. Maybe they'll mandate proprietary Taliban systems. But who would make them? I am sure someone would, but they could be a bit pricey.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I would like to take a minute and agree with the above post. While I certainly don't condone or approve of what the Taliban is doing, has done or will do, I can't call it Islam. I am a Christian living in the US. This means I am supposed to believe that all those of Islamic persuation are evil killers that want to wipe out all who are not Islam. I see this in the news, in the movies, and in everyday conversation when this subject comes up. But I have also worked with a number of Islamic people. Every one of these have been very nice, extremely tolerent, and shhow their faith in such a way that most Christians should be ashamed.
Does this mean I think that Islam is the one true religeon? No. But it also isn't what western media portrays it as. Many things in the past (and I'm sure in the present) have been done in the name of Christianity. These are things that no real Christian could ever condone. The Salem Witch Trials in Massacheutes in the 1600's come to mind. Like many, I am guilty of forgetting the crimes preformed in the name of that which I support.
My point is simply that the Taliban may use Islamic teachings to justify what they do. That doesn't mean that those teachings are being interpreted and passed on correctly. From my experience, Islam is one of the most toleratent and accepting of religeons and it is about time that the western world woke up to that fact.
"Free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people who's leaders at last lose their grip on information will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master." - Unknown
Also used in the game Alpha Centauri attributed to
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
I think you quoted that much the same way I quoted mine above, so if you really believe that the posts on /. show how easy computers have made it for stupid people, you've provided no more leverage for your argument than if you had said you had good word that Hitler was in touch with Church officials from the moon.
Now, if you had been smart, you'd have pasted a link in there as supporting information in order to counter my statement, but all I have is your word, and frankly that just doesn't win arguments. I'm genuinely interested in this, so please provide a link where I can read up on this.
I certainly don't deny that some barbaric stuff has been done in the name of religion, but it doesn't excuse anyone else doing it.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
NOT posted as a troll, but merely some info I found. If you had any intelligence you might try educating someone if they are on the wrong some of some bad information instead of hiding behind an AC tag while trying to display how amazingly funny you've become this morning.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Quoted from a site on the net...
Definitely not the words of a good Catholic! Sounds like you've heard one fact and filled in the rest yourself."Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Goodbye SIGINT...
You are silly. Less traffic = Less to monitor. Sounds like "the Company" has a pretty easy job to me.
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
Blarf.
You're disgusting and revolting! That you can even joke about death is horrible. That you talk about killing millions is aboimindable.
I believe in the Book of Revelation they talk about a little war between Good and Evil. Oh and guess what the results are? Millions dead at the end. I think where the battle is going to be fought, is called Armageddon. Anyhow, I digress, supposedly the author (I believe it was John) was alluding to the fact that nuclear weapons are going to be used in the battle, but at the time, he had no idea what this destructive weapon was called.
Revelations 16:16-20
So God can talk about death and destruction all He wants, but a mere mortal cannot do so on
Reality is for those who can't face Science Fiction.
...there still is no good (honestly) usable office suite for linux...
:P), office suite that not only takes over your computer, but impossible to uninstall. Yea, I'm talking about M$ Office. I wouldn't use Offie 97, 2000, or XP if I was given a free copy from MicroNuts. MicroNut weenies annoy me.
So I suppose something that requires a 1 - 2 gigs of diskspace is a usable office suite? So why not tell Sun to stop pushing it's light-weight & fairly robust office suite. Seeing no one uses it. Oh wait a second, I use Star Office 5.2 in Windows & Linux. And it doesn't require as much diskspace as your stable (hardly), bloated (yep
Reality is for those who can't face Science Fiction.
The last I heard, human intelligence was a better, abliet, much risker source of intelligence comapred to signal intelligence, et cetera. And The Company could always use more human intelligence over there then have to rely on the other alphabet soup agencies for accurate intelligence... Part of the reason the nuclear tests that happened in Pakistan & India shocked alphabet soup agencies, is because the lack of humint on the ground. They soley relied on sigint, recon, et cetera.
Reality is for those who can't face Science Fiction.
isn't blowing up statues, or summarily killing its opponents. Big difference. I think they're wrong about a great many things, but terrorists they are not.
sulli
RTFJ.
With the banning of the internet this makes the CIA's job of monitoring Afganistan much harder. Either Osama Bin Ladin will continue to use the interenet, in which case we continue on as normal. If he decides to abide by this new rule then it makes his ability to orginize terrorism more of a personal endevor and as a result much more costly for the US to monitor.Goodbye SIGINT, hello HUMINT. Problem is HUMINT is much higher risk and also much higher cost.
Since we currently know only what small town he is in, mostly as I understand it through SIGINT, then we now must move in to get any intelligence at all. If we are going to go through with that, we might as well send in the assination squad to get them for the cost of the mission. Im not sure how politically viable such a mission is because it would take alot of work to even get that mission off the ground, but it's also such a high payoff if we do...
John Gruhn
National Defense University
you want FREEDOM come here
What makes you think it's as easy as that for those being opressed to just say "Sorry, I don't like it here with your kind of government, I'd like to leave and go to the US now."?
Not that you'd welcome them to stay anyway.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
And why exactly is the above post score positive two? Hell, why is the above post 'Insightful'? It is not insightful, it is a slap in the face of everyone who fought wars like WWII and Desert Storm. The troll above should be modded down like all the other thoughtless cultural relativists.
Yes, he's also using his free speech right to call the nation that recognizes his free speech right hypocritical. Amazing how some people manage to breathe without functional brains.
How can you use my intestines as a gift? -Actual Hong Kong subtitle.
I meant the Parent, called 'Western Bullshit', not the post that was placed before mine, which is insightful and interesting and deserving of a positive two. Sorry for any confusion.
How can you use my intestines as a gift? -Actual Hong Kong subtitle.
Yeah its like closing down Napster but allowing people to have guns...
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no sig.
it's not our media inventing the link between Islam and the Taliban. The Taliban claim that their actions are based on their Islamic faith. Hitler never claimed to be on a religous crusade, he was out to secure the world for his "master race". Besides, most Islamic countries behave in the same anti-women, anti-freedom of religion, anti-information way. It seems to be standard Islamic practice (whether the religion itself teaches this or not) to try and force everyone to be faithfull to Islam. It's exactly the same bullshit the Christians tried so many years ago. The Christians however (at least most) gave that shit up and apologized.
Hrm... Between coorporate greed and religious fanaticism things look pretty bleak...
People keep comparing western ideas to eastern ideas, old religions to new religions, and etcetera. This isn't about any of that. This is simply banning access to information to maintain power. No corruptive power can maintain its position while allowing a free flowing exchange of ideas. It cannot happen. Not here, not there, not anywhere.
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As a devote Muslim, I quite often look on at the situation in Afganistan with sadness. It is a shame that the Taliban have lost sight of tolerence when our own Islamic history is full of tolerence. The most peaceful time in Palestine/Isreal was during the Muslim rule before the crusades. The Muslims of the time let the Christians ans Jews pratice their religions in peace. The same in Muslim Spain before the inquisition. Even in the life time of the Prophet Muhammed, the Muslims took protection with their Allies...the Christians.
Today many Muslim groups have lost sight of this in a way that is sickening. However, the particular situation in Afganistan is one of sadness and desperation. The Taliban without a doubt are wrong for what they are doing. However, in the West we should also take reponsiblity for our own part in the downfall of Afganistan.
The Afghanistan Mujahideen fought the Russian Army and defeated them. They were backed by the US and the UK who trained them and gave them weapons. The US and the UK were so keen on having the Russians defeated but they didn't want to fight the war themselves. The defeat of the Russian army by the Afghanistan Mujahideen brought about the down fall of the Soviet state and hence the end of the cold war. The general peace in the world that we face today is partly due to the courage and sacrifices of the Afghan Mujahideen. However, once Afghanistan had won all the other Soviet states found the strenth to seek freedom and indepence. However, at the end of the war the US and the UK pulled all support and left Afghanistan in ruins. A country with no infrastrucutre, completely destroyed by years of war with nothing exept a bunch of Armed people who knew nothing except how to fight. Of course they felt betrayed by what the West had done to them. They felt completely let down. And now today, Osama bin Laden is hunted as the world's number one terrorist when only a few years ago, he was the hero.
The West played its part in creating the Afghanistan today. If you want to make the world a better place then first correct your own mistakes. Its too easy for us to mock the Afghan people and the Taliban for what they are doing wrong. It isn't going to make the situation better though.And if you go to Arghan today, you will see that the lack of Internet, is the least of their worries.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10);'
Actually it's a combination of western propoganda in the media and western ignorance everywhere else, mixed in with an understandable level of fear and resentment when many people in a region who happen to share a religion with someone declare that your entire people are sinful and deserve to die.
I know a number of Islamic people, though I have not read many of its texts, and I have to agree with the following:
I get very frustrated now everytime I hear the Taliban referred to as fundamentalist muslims. Their beliefs are very far from what is fundamental to the Islamic faith. We have seen times when the military in Afghanistan has bullied the religious leaders into declaring things to be Islamic. They are radicals, not fundamentalists. What they are doing to the people in their country - not only how they are treating women but also the starvation and horrible economic state -is worse than criminal.
Oh, but this would be an excellent time for a wireless revolution in Afghanistan. Are there any commercial satelites that pass over there?
-mouse
Fundamentalist Christians believe the words written in the bible to be literally true. One would suppose true fundmentalists of any religion would turn to the textual sources of that religion and follow them to the letter. As someone pointed out elsewhere in this discussion, the Taliban may be doing some of that, perverting passages meant in a specific historical time of war to be applicable today.
There's certainly nothing in the dictionary definition of fundamentalism about rejecting the accepted standard. The Taliban certainly appears to be "stressing strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles" but since they aren;t principles that any other practicing Muslims recognize as Muslim, I would continue to argue that though they might be fundamentalist Talibanians, they are not fundamentalist Muslims.
As I've mentioned to some of my muslim friends here in Canada, I think part of the reason "fundamentalist muslim" reads more provocatively than "fundamentalist christian" is because there is now a long history of protestantism and various splinter churches re-interpreting christianity. When one delares the fundamentalist christians believe one thing, or the branch Davidians believe another, we don't assume that their actions stem logically from the catholic faith and that all the millions of other Christians believe as they do, only to a lesser, more temptered degree.
On the other hand, in the current world dialogue, discussion of the Taliban constantly raises fears and complaints regarding other muslim peoples; there's only been one major split in the Muslim faith and most westerners don't know about it. And it is true that a muslim taking drastic political or military action will more likely be called a Muslim Extremist in the media than a member of whatever political or military group is actually moving him to act. We are accepting the implication that Islam promotes violence against non-believers, even as its religious leaders tell us that's just not true.
Yeah!!! Don't judge other cultures...like Nazi Germany! Or the Soviet Union, or China. Make no mention of any civil/human rights abuses because such abuse can be covered by the "culture" nonsense - different culture so torture, rape, mass murder, FORCED suppression of their own citizens, etc are OK as long as the culture says it is. Don't say anything against it.
What kind of idiot are you? The Taliban are a minority of the country FORCING their beliefs and rules on the majority who do not share that belief system.
DO judge!
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Many Middle-eastern Muslims have never had such an experience. They've grown up in a culture where practically everyone follows Islam, where [somebody's interpretations of] the edicts of the Koran are codified directly into secular law, and where there is little access to any ideas but those which support the current religious regime.
This isn't a flaw in Islam per se. I would say it's the danger of any culture where the vast majority hold the same ideas. It wouldn't matter if the countries in question were 95% Muslim, Christian, Atheist, or Wiccan. In any case, there's the danger that the majority will find minority opinions discomforting, and seek to suppress them.
So I cannot sign off on your opinion that Islam is "one of the most tolerant and accepting of religions"; certainly not if you're going to extrapolate your experience to countries outside the U.S. Truth is, power corrupts, and in countries such as Iran, Egypt, and Afghanistan, the Muslims have all the power.
I even get a small glimpse of this pattern just from living in Utah. You would find the protestant Christians around here are infinitely more tolerant and polite than anything you would find in the Bible Belt, where Baptists rule. The majority is always in danger of forgetting that the minority deserves the same rights and consideration that they receive.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Back off! I warn you, I've got moderator points, and I'm not afraid to use them!
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
However, one does have to ask where we draw the line. Let's say America decides tomorrow that the situation in Afghanistan is abonimable. Bush dispatches the Pacific armed forces to beat them to a bloody pulp and institute a new government--probably a puppet democracy, since it's easier to guarantee they are doing what America wants them to do. Now assuming that the whole scenario I just described works... that the US military does not find itself totally unequipped for war against the Taliban, that the country isn't bombed into an unlivable hell, that the country doesn't collapse into a US military rulership... what then? Other Arab nations will probably feel threatened at such a brazen display of arrogance and hypocrisy on the part of America, to simply go in and tell a nation how its people should live (oh wait, isn't that what the Taliban is doing? Of course, it's THEIR nation). America would have a dependent nation filled with racial and ethnic animosities to attempt to handle. And it would set a precedent for world policemanship that the United States cannot afford.
I'm not saying America doesn't do this already. However, I'm not sure it's been a good idea in the past, and I think history has shown us that it's not wise to interfere in a situation like this. Yes, it shall pass. Nazi Germany fell, and a government like the Taliban cannot sustain itself for long if the people of Afghanistan have any shred of a backbone. How long can you oppress 50% of your population before the women just slit their husbands' throats and establish a matriarchy?
Yeah, the Taliban is really screwing up Afghanistan (at least in the eyes of this devil westerner). Yeah, Americans don't seem to care. I think the reason is that they can't afford to. You can only watch evil for so long before your inability to stop it makes you either jaded or insane.
Take your pick.
Take care,
Mark
Take care,
Mark
There is a solution...
I read this chain and I was surprised that all I could see was ISLAM and Taliban...ISLAM and Taliban. All I could see what how the ISLAMIC Taliban think its ok to stone their daughters, cut off heads in public. How these religion fanatics badge everyother non-ISLAMIC person. ISLAM ISLAM ISLAM.....whats up with that???
When I read about Hitler...I never read he was a Roman Catholic. I never read that what he did was just follow his religion and that it was OK in his religion to wipe out a whole race of people. I never read that Hitler sent Jews to concentration camps because he was a Roman Catholic.
My friend...this is western progoganda at its best. An attempt to dissallude people about Islam to the extent that the people who follow Islam don't know what their religion is all about. Taliban are an evil group of individuals and their activites are NOT endorsed by ISLAM. Similarly Hitler was a devil and his activities are not endoresed by Christianity.
So for the sake of GOD....don't talk confuse the activites of Taliban with the teachings of ISLAM. I don't think there is any religion in the world that teaches us to harm other beings/be disrespectful to others.
Let me remind you that ISLAM was the first relgion in the world that actually gave women a status. Before that women used to be buried at birth and were thought of as a liabilty. Islam changed the status quo.
Today these illiterate idiotic piece of waste Taliban are doing everything AGAINST the teaching of Islam.
So stop commenting or defending their activities or associating their activities with the preachings of ISLAM.
this is really interesting - what else are they planning to ban after they follow this ruling? not that i would ever travel to .af - but, if i did - would it be illegal for me to use my GSM phone to connect to the internet? or heck - i dont think they will ever see GPRS or 3G technologies! Is this a ban on the Internet, or a ban on anything TCP/IP! in the later - think about all those LAN's they have (i am sure they have some) in office and such.. wow.. this is a crazy ruling.
Anyone who wants to see what I'm talking about can do a google search on the following set of terms:
"home schooling" Christian porn ban filtering
And the nut-cases will come out of the woodwork.
Seriously, don't judge other cultures, for all the free thinking america espouses it's a pretty intolerant nation. We advocate freedom as long as the other party embraces our core values. If you look at it from extreme Islam's point of view we're just as evil as them if not more so. We are heathens to them, but that is ok because that's what they believe. Now I personally don't advocate taking away liberties and sexism and the other more violent parts of their culture but i'm ok with them doing it, Because it's their culture.
Get off your pedastal of freedom and realize what a hypocrite you are.
Oh yeah mods, mod me down as troll like that other guy but I don't care cuz i'm fucking right and I don't care what you discriminating pigs have to say
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www.shockthemonkey.org
Photos.
Hmm human rights, they consider it just as bad that our women are allowed to act as free as they do. To them it's just as bad. Now I personally find much of it disgusting but hey, taking away the internet is a minor thing. When they say it promotes western values and is anti islam they are correct, it does not work with their belief system.
Now someone else mentioned nazi germany and soviet era russia. I have conflicting views on this, On one hand we are only right in our eyes, BUT according to western philosophy (which I believe in) we must stop these offenses. This is one of the main problems that has plagued civilization. We all have our own belief systems, we will try to enforce them, history has shown that, BUT I would never say people are wrong or just stupid as some other posts have mentioned. It is different, nothing more. No more or less evil, it is all in the eyes of the viewer.
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www.shockthemonkey.org
Photos.
They've been in Tajikistan (by proxy) for some time now. Making a mess of the place.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
If you moded this up as funny, you probably need to take a vacation there to get some laughs..
I was just getting ready to post that.
Maybe they cut it off so he can get 100% bandwidth for pr0n.
"In other news, the taliban ruled that only bin Laden can use the net, and only use PGP... it's the law"
Get your Unix fortune now!
2001-07-13 23:57:29 Afghanistan's Taliban bans Internet (yro,news) (rejected)
Anyway, I'm wondering how they'll enforce this. Scan phone lines for active Internet connections, log them, and then prosecute the individuals?
Or just cut the Internet connections to the outside world?
Do you like German cars?
He's talking about current Western society. You're talking about the principles Western society was built with. Do you honestly believe the values of the Founders are guiding factors in our culture today?
Reality is indistinguishable from any sufficiently advanced fantasy.
AOL, what is that?
Afghanistan On Line?
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
Yes there is. Firs off, there is the whole international law thing to think about. We can't just send in your military into any country we like any time we like. Now I'll grant you, it's not like that stopped us in south america, however the government is being watched a bit more closely for that now. However the real issue here is the cost of doing something like that. Please remember the Taliban are ARMED and heavily so. How many of our soliders are worth sacraficing for Bin Laden? I'm betting the cost would be fairly high and it is felt to just not be worth it.
I mean even the harshest critics of the Taliban regime here on Slashdot are pretty much saying: "Yeah, well, that's what right wing religious nuts will do... ban the internet and treat women poorly." Poorly?
Yes, well, I'd love to see (strike that -- I possess an utter loathing to see) what you'd consider falls into the "horrendous" or "godawful atrocity" category... yanno, what with "poor treatment" being the routine public stonings, executions, rape, torture, and mind control to which women in that country are subjected daily for "crimes" as little as ... oh I dunno ... learning to read or perhaps leaving the house not completely coccooned in oppresive clothing and under the supervision of male relatives? Women are bludgeoned to death for that, there. Or how about the fact that women were forced out their workplaces and any property forfeit to male relatives? Or, that greatly due to this, there aren't enough health care workers in the country to help aide the sick... and there are plenty of sick, now, since the Taliban's utter mismanagement of national econmics has caused widespread famine and a total disintegration of what social services existed there. Or that suicide rates for oppressed women in Afghanistan have skyrocketed thanks to their brutal treatment. Let's not forget! of course, that non-Muslims and their homes are branded in yellow and ostracized...
If this is "poor" treatment of women and of human life in general -- I can't, to be honest, wrap my brain around your concept of what's really going on... this is, as one of my good friends once put it -- WHOLESALE FUCKING GENOCIDE. "Poor" treatment?? I've never read anything more disgusting in my life.
Good gods, I wish we in the west would get a clue. We've got a regime committing atrocities on par with the horrors of Nazi Germany and we sit back and say... Meh. Poor treatment. This too shall pass. Fuck, we're arrogant hypocrits.
BRx.
Life after capitalism? The participatory economics project
Their parents voluntarily gave up those children (they were called the Janissaries). The Ottomans guaranteed them a better life then the squalor of Eastern Europe. The parents were compensated for giving up their child. The parents gave them up so their children would get a better life. Those children were well educated, well fed and taken care of. Many of them became high-level government officials or generals. The Ottoman Empire treated the Janissaries better then the children native to their empire. To the people of today this seems like slavery and forced conversion to another religion, but you must remember, all actions must be taken in the context of the time they took place. To the children living in the squalor of Eastern Europe this was heaven. Religious minorities living in Islamic countries are required to pay a small tax. The tax allows members of religious minorities not to serve in the army. All Muslim males are required to serve if called up in wartime. If a non-Muslim male did not want to pay the tax they were required to serve. Muslim males can't opt out.
If you have any idea of what's going on over there, you know how much they've terrorized and punished the farmers to scare them into stopping opium farming. So, essentially, the U.S. is rewarding them for torturing their people.
How lovely. Apparently, it's more important to fight the war on drugs, than it is to fight rights abuses and total opression.
'crow, disgusted (And ftr, I'm from the U.S.)
Thank you for bringing up another one of the things about Afghanistan that frightens me. How is it that so many people didn't consider it a big deal when the Taliban began destroying ancient religious monuments? When they announced that they would be requiring minority religions to display an identification of their faith? When all the other things that have been going on have happened? Yes, there was an uproar, but it didn't seem like nearly enough.
These people have proven themselves to be diligent, determined and successful at defeating others against all odds. They show all the signs of proceeding past their current level of extremism to absolute genocide. They still have tons of expensive weapons, left over from the Afghan war and also new ones supplied by terrorists and even (possibly) other governments. The level of terror that they inflict on their own people continues to grow and grow.
If they finally defeat the United Front and other so-called rebels in the north, who says they're going to stop at their own borders? Yes, it would be insane to attack in that heavily armed area of the world, but the Taliban has shown itself to not behave sanely. There's many countries around them full of people that to them are heretics. Talk about a chance for a holy war!
This isn't like the problems in the Balkans or anywhere else that has had religious conflicts recently (I'm not dismissing these events either). It's not "just" two religions or two ethnic groups fighting. It's one group, fighting for systematic destruction of everything it disagrees with. *cough* Sound familiar at all to anyone? How about exterior religious identification? Hmm?
I'm reminded of this quote:
First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.
- Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945
I know that people probably think I'm insane to compare the Taliban to the Nazis, but you know what? Germany was considered a laughable threat too at one time. They'd been destroyed by WWI, they were never going to rise again.
It just seems to me that not enough people (or countries) care about what's happening in Afghanistan. It's the country's issue, let them deal with that. The problem with that is that it could very easily become our issue.
Think about it.
'crow
You know how the main design goal of the Internet was to route traffic around damaged nodes so as to make it extremely robust? Well, it makes me glad to see the Internet routing around the damaged node that is Afghanistan.
Invisible Agent
Invisible Agent
This post is a mirror; when a monkey stares in, no hacker gazes out.
It's funny that country where over 50% of the women are raped in their lifetime and 10% of the population has fled from the country during past five years can say that the Internet is immoral.
Afghanistan... anagram for: "A FAT SHAG INN"
What a repressed nation!
"I don't like the word extremist, it smacks of American cliches about Muslims, most of whome are peaceful, honest, friendly, well educated and moral. " Actually I like the word it implies that there are members of the religion or other group that do not feel the same way. In other words if this guy is an extremist then there must be some people of this religion that are not extreme and therefore you might agree with.
The city is being overrun by a herd of Lucy Liu's.
Nothing unites people like working together to recover from Armageddon, eh?
I hope I hear some irony in your words.
The western world succesfully integrated millons of immigrants into "their" society, immigrants from all walks of life. Making abstraction of some social problems, it worked. Actually, there are two ways to accomplish this. A cultural melting pot and a cultural mosaic. The first means integration, the latter coexistance. The melting pot is arrogance from the point of view of the immigrants, but leads to a more permanent solution. The dominance of one culture in one particular state feeds the feeling of belonging and a positive sense of nationalism. The cultural mosaic is the opposite, and is only implementable if both parties have more or less moderated nationalistic feelings. Since both the Jews and the Arabs can't work out a solution based upon one of these schemes, this matter won't be resolved easily. Fundamentalism strongly feeds nationalistic feelings, but it also goes the other way though.
It's not a very uncommon practice to ban freedom of speech and freedom of the press in totalitarian nations. The Taliban can get away with this because of the support from an important part of the population. And the western world should respect this, no matter how we feel about this. Our dogmas are not the one and only truth.
``We want to establish a system in Afghanistan through which we can control all those things that are wrong, obscene, immoral and against Islam,''
Those are the exact words of the taliban. If they weren't crazy Islamics (I'm not calling Islam crazy, they are crazy, and Islamic), then none of this would be happening. If you took away their crazyness, or Islam, then Afghanistan would be a much more tolerant place.
The taliban has bastardized Islam into thier own version of it and used it to control an intolerant, oppressive oligarchy.
BTW, a little Islamic history. In the Ottoman Empire, when the king died, all of his sons had to travel to the capital as fast as they could. Whoever got there first, became king. The rest were strangled with a silk cloth. Islam seems to have a brutal past.
D/\ Gooberguy
Karma: Meh (Mostly from meh.)
I just found some hi-quality Taleban pr0n on the net, but I guess it was just too good to be true...
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
"Liberals... claim to be open, but bitch about everything." You contrast being "open" with "bitch[ing] about everything". I'm not sure I understand the relationship here. Stating an opinion, or "bitching", is what open debate is all about. It is a lack of truly listening that is closed-minded. On the other hand, bitching that some group "bitch[es] about everything" may reveal a lack of introspection. With introspection comes empathy, and from empathy, open-mindedness.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
The reason we don't do it is that we are terrified of the reprisal from Islamic nutcase terrorists and from our "ally" Arab nations if we undertook an all-out attack on Bin Laden camps.
Yea and besides that the price of a barrel of oil would go through the roof. Don't be calling every nation that doesn't suck up to the USA terrorist nations. We back many many terrorist acts ourselves. What's wrong with this picture?
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. - Lazarus Lon
There's some story about a skeptical Muslim leader only being persuaded to adopt radio after someone demonstrated that it could broadcast the Koran.
Perhaps, we could do something similar for the Internet in Afghanistan--show the Taliban that it can be used to broadcast their propaganda. In this way, people can take advantage of the greater access to post anti-Taliban material, communicate with the outside world, and so on.
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Aaron J. Shaver
http://aaronshaver.com/
Burma has also largely banned use of the Internet. It is frequent to see anti-government activists slapped with charges of something like "unauthorized use of a telecommunications device." Of course, the reason is because the democratic resistance uses the Internet as an organizing tool (e.g. mailing lists, the Free Burma webiste). I don't doubt that the Afghan government is also thinking along the same lines: don't let people use the Internet, or they will see what's going on outside the country. The Internet can allow effective organizations that unite people inside and outside an oppressed country working toward freedom. That's why it poses such a threat to oppressive regimes. I would bet that the regime sees this as just as much of a reason for banning the Internet, but of course it doesn't sound as righteous so it's left unstated.
The Taliban have destroyed ancient religious monuments, returned women to servitude, enforced the islamic laws and persecuted non islams out of the country and proceded to commit religious genocide and we should be surprised they have banned the internet ?
The fact is the goverment control all of the Telephone services and montitoring is normal, the TV, Radio and Media a government controlled and thus no criticism is allowed and anyone who dares to stand up to them dies.
The mujahadeen have been fighting guerilla wars first against the russians and now the taliban and the country is split into warzones, the taliban now run the most fundamentalist islamic regime on the planet and provide aid and succor to terrorists - so the internet is about the easiest thing to control.
He who controls access to the world controls the world - the populace of afghanistan after the russian occupation would consider acccess to clean water and electricty a bonus - they would put computer access very very low on their interests - it remains a toy for the rich and there aren't that many of them. Most of the population would like to have enought to eat.
How about a comment on their human rights record, or their treatment of women (this is a country that condones murder as a punishment for disobedience of a wife toward her husband).
The sad thing is this is a government the Americans helped put in power with weapons and funding to fight the russians - yet they now hide people like Osama Bin Laden - US public enemy number one.
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
I would like to see the dome they put around the country to block all satelite transmissions. This would be very interesting, seeing them try to block services like DirectPC. I feel sorry for the poor people.
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- Joe
- Joe
Oh, I suppose you must follow the logic as:
The Taliban are bad.
The Taliban represent a religion.
Hence, all religion is bad.
Then the following is also true:
The Taliban are bad.
The Taliban consists of people.
Hence, all people are bad.
You and I are people, ergo: We are bad.
I'm sorry, but I do not agree. One religious movement gone awry doesn't disqualify all religion, just as I wouldn't condemn the human race simply because it contains some seriously twisted individuals.
If you find a bad apple, toss it away and find a good one. Cursing all apples won't help.
-- Excreta ergo sum.