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Message from Kabul
When his message came, the Taliban had just fled, Northern Alliance soldiers had taken over his village, and everybody rushed to barbers to cut off their beards and to nearby holes and hiding spots to dig up their Walkmen, VCRs, TVs, CD players, and -- in Junis's case -- his ancient Commodore, one of four in the village. Cafes had popped up all over, with impromptu dances and parties everywhere.
Junis's e-mail -- routed to Kabul, then Islamabad, then London -- was a reminder that there are civil liberties, and then there are civil liberties. Computers had been banned under penalty of death by the Taliban (except for the Taliban themselves), along with music and TV. Junis, a computer geek obsessed with Linux, had first e-mailed me years ago while I was writing for Hotwired. He was genial and obsessed with American culture. He loved martial arts movies, anything to do with Star Wars, and rap. He was perhaps the Taliban's prime kind of target. (Now he's furiously trying to download movies he's missed and is mesmerized by open source and Slashdot.)
"I could still see the dust of the pick-up trucks carrying the Taliban out of my village," he wrote, "and some friends and I went and dug up the boards of a chicken coop where I had hid the computer. They might have beaten or killed us if they'd found it. It was forbidden, although they used computers all of the time." He claims American commandos are skulking around dressed as Northern Alliance tribesmen.
Junis describes life under the Taliban as brutal, terrifying and profoundly boring. What the people in his town -- especially the kids -- missed most was music, posters of Indian and American movie stars (he'd kept his own decaying poster of Madonna), and American TV. Junis missed the fast-changing Web and sees, he says, that he has fallen "forever behind," and that programming is more complex than ever. But at least "Baywatch," which everyone in his town acutely missed, is back, and there's already a lot of talk about "Survivor." Junis predicts "Temptation Island" will be the number one show in Afghanistan within a month.
If the world needed another demonstration of America's most powerful weapon -- not bombs or special forces but pop culture -- it got it again this week. People all over the planet fuss about whether this healthy and democratic or corrupting and dehumanizing, but people's love for American techno-toys, TV shows, music and movies is breathaking. Watching TV pictures of tribesman on horseback, it's easy to forget that technology reached deep into this culture as well. Junis says phone service around Kabul remains spotty, but reporters, U.N. workers and foreign soldiers are wiring up. He's already made his way to some sex sites, and wishes he had a printer.
There are many computers in Afghanistan, Junis said, many in clusters in cities like Kabul and Kandahar (news reports have frequently mentioned that Bin-Laden's organization used both e-mail and encrypted files to communicate). Computer geeks are already hooking up with one another all over the country; Junis isn't the only Afghan e-mailing these days. He says other coders and gamers hid their PC's as well. Meanwhile, he's especially eager to get his hands on the Apple iPod, and has been drooling over the Apple website site since he got back online. And some things, of course, never change. "I thought they were going to get Microsoft," he wrote. "I guess not."
A decade ago, when East Berlin teenagers stormed the Wall and crossed over into West Berlin, the first thing many of them did was rush to music stores to buy tapes and CD's they'd been secretly, illegally listening to for years.
The Taliban worked to create the antithesis of the American world, one without technology, computing, the Net, music, or any vestige of popular culture (not to mention women's rights, elections, a free press or any religion except fundamentalist Islam. Junis said people in his town risked their lives repeatedly, not to fight the Taliban, but to try and listen to CD's and watch videos smuggled in from Pakistan, watched in the dark under blankets and in cellars. It seems the outcome was inevitable.
blah blah
Pour a Kabul of hot grits down your pants.
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - open source hero Mike Bouma was found dead in his San Francisco home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to the open source comunity. Truly an American icon.
Your shit is getting old and tired, Jon. Time for you to find something else to talk about.
What have you been smoking? Whore
what "former level of quality"? are you on drugs?
unless you are at home and alone... What an ass, is less than -1 possible ? too bad...
Michael Jackson overthrows repressive regimes?
Please, what a loser!
I made it through a Katz story without wanting to puke !!
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
What's the deal with Baywatch? It seems to be extremely popular outside the United States, even though it gets mediocre ratings in the United States.
Bomb that shithole country until their sand turns to glass so we can see the oil better.
Truer words have never been spoken...
Hi All -
I think you all know that I don't send out hoaxes and don't do the reactionary thing and send out anything that crosses my path. This one, however, is a friend of a friend and I've given it enough credibility in my mind that I'm writing it up and sending it out to all of you.
My friend's friend was dating a guy from Afghanistan up until a month ago. She had a date with him around 9/6 and was stood up. She was understandably upset and went to his home to find it completely emptied. On 9/10, she received a letter from her boyfriend explaining that he wished he could tell her why he had left and that he was sorry it had to be like that. The part worth mentioning is that he BEGGED her not to get on any commercial airlines on 9/11 and to not to go any malls on Halloween. As soon as everything happened on the 11th, she called the FBI and has since turned over the letter.
This is not an email that I've received and decided to pass on. This came from a phone conversation with a long-time friend of mine last night.
I may be wrong, and I hope I am. However, with one of his warnings being correct and devastating, I'm not willing to take the chance on the second and wanted to make sure that people I cared about had the same information that I did.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Fuck that! I've been stuck at 52 for years now, and its really annoying. Priceless my ASS.! Posting with score +1 cause I got karma to BURN BABY! Bring me down to 51! I dare you!
come on man you know you giggle when you read that shit
I've been pretty disturbed by all the effort
;-) it's a tradition
/. presented in this way,
put into trying to make us believe the afghans
are celebrating the departure of the taliban.
If they are celebrating anything it's that they're
_nolonger being bombed on a daily basis_.
Specificically the reports of women taking off
their burkas sound awefully fabricated (or at
least greatly exagerated - perhaps they managed
to find one or two women willing to take off
their clothes and parade around the town - you
can always find one or two
that predates the taliban and will continue in
whatever new government is established. Even if
the UN manages to keep the laws off the books
it will not be a socially accepted norm for a
long long time.
With the Taliban leaving nothing has really
changed in afghanistan they're still wretchedly
poor which is the real problem.
It's pretty damn unlikely they'll all suddenly
decide to go and buy a new set of clothes what
with winter comming on and them being
extreamly poor and more concerned with food and
shelter.
Thing like reports of TV shops setting up reek of
propaganda trying to justify the war:
" Look - they're _glad_ we bombed the crap out of them 'cause now they can listen to music "
If these TV shops infact exist you can be sure
they're being set up by the US or others for
propaganda reasons. This story seems to be very
much in this vein and I'm genuinely saddened to
see it show up on
fortunantly the comments of other readers seem
to be setting the story strait.
Sure, except play divx files. Or has this guy a PPC board as well? Come on, this is a hoax, either Katz was trolled or he just took this out of hi ass.
asasdasasdad
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ROFLMFAO!!!
Score -1, Flamebait.
This is the best one. I agree, get Katz out of this place. He sucks
Hello. My name is Jon Katz. I am a dick head.
I opened the link at the office and suddenly my boss wants to visit me this night and my coworker gave me some flowers and said that he loves me.
awww, man! you go and write a funny post like that, then screw it up by adding the bin-Laden-ass-rape prefix to it. now the sensitive slashdot moderation crew will stomp you to the -1 floor and nobody will see the genius of your work.
Imagine the amount of spam you'd have in your inbox after so long.
from Katz? Wow!
Re:Jon Katz Suck Ass!
He's so right.
- kengineer
You're an idiot. What does it matter what he was doing since 95? Maybe he was a farmer or an accountant.
I thought his delivery could have been better...
reality is not in a book.
1984, for whatever insight it offered, wasn't anything more than a product of the imagination of Orwell.
Similarly, The Old Man and the Sea was nothing but a product of Hemingways mind.
Neither is any kind of authoritative guide on the human condition. They are both opinions and reflections of reality. You cannot use them to deduce anything more about human nature and/or 'spirit' than you could by watching 'Indiana Jones'.
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
Ofcourse he sucks, he wont be able to post, his last name saves him
Those fucking fundamentalist Puritans!
sounds odd to hear such an uninformed opinion... sound like this freedom of information thing is a little one sided, otherwise, you wouldn't be so ignorant. Are you really that stupid? Or is the crack you're smoking making you look just that little bit more FUCKING STUPID?
Honestly, the celebrating that was done by the citizens of Afghanistan when the Taliban were ousted from their cities by the Northern Alliance should be enough to show they really are opressed. Are you aware that 97% of all women in Afghanistan are sexually mutilated? Are you aware that men are jailed for "crimes" as simple as shaving off their beard?
Have you not read about the Taliban fighters who are:
a.) Killing eachother because they would rather die than surrender to the Northern Alliance (note that the Northern Alliance has offered free and save passage _out_ of Afghanistan to non-native Taliban supporters, provided they surrender their arms... also note that they are killing *eachother* willfully - not killing themselves - that would be a "immoral".)
b.) Forcing the citiznes of Konduz to fight on the side of the Taliban, or be beaten, or even executed.
c.) Killing anyone who does wish to surrender to the Northern Alliance.
If that is not oppressive, please, enlighten us all as to what is.
This post is utter garbage, completely fabricated in a feeble attempt to make americans look bad for our pop culture and the effects it has on others. If you actually read this entire post it is filled with so many holes that I am suprised its not April 1st.
The truth is YOU have the choice to do what you will with the information you receive. Information is just that, information, what you make of it is up to you. There are people who sit at home downloading porn, watching temptation island, or staring at a wall. There are also people who will read, learn, grow, experiment, and possibly become better people through use of information. We decide our own path, that is the American way, for good or for evil. Honestly, should we feel bad? We are giving the people another option in life and many, like the fictional emailer, will now have the option of other religions, view, and options. The strength in an ideal or religion is seen through the pressures brought through by open thought and free trade of information. Why is it that communistic and dictatorship countries have to censor their people? What better way to propagate a lie than through obscurity?
Sure, like "how does it feel to troll slashdot"?
I'll eat my shorts if this story actually was true. It smells completely fishy.
i was seriously waiting for Katz to say "...inside every towelhead there's an American trying to get out..."
One account up for grabs.
I took over Faulty Dreamer's account on Kuro5hin.org, and since he was so fucking stupid that he used the same password on Slashdorks (granted, it's been awhile since he participated here) I now have possesion of his account here.
In order to best fullfill the needs of the slashdork troll community, I am hereby stating for the record that the first person to log in to this account and change the password will have complete control over the Faulty Dreamer account. Therefore, you will have an account with a karma level (currentl) of 48 that you may use to spout forth your 'wisdom' until such time as you get it banned.
Go forth, and prosper my children.
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hello?