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Internet Censorship's First Death Sentence?
mrogers writes "A journalism student in Afghanistan has been sentenced to death by a Sharia court for downloading and sharing a report criticizing the treatment of women in some Islamic countries. The student was accused of blasphemy and tried without representation. According to Reporters Without Borders, sixty people are currently in jail worldwide for criticizing governments online, fifty of them in China, but this may be the first time someone has been sentenced to death for using the internet. Internet censorship is on the rise worldwide, according to The OpenNet Initiative."
True, but considering the country was recently 'liberated' and democracy was 'brought' to it, it is a little weird.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
No, let's say thank "god" no one was ever killed on behalf of religious skepticism, or agnosticism, or whatever you call it.
Any kind of blind belief, where faith never bends to reason, is evil, no matter if it's faith in Islam or Jesus Christ.
Robert Heinlein said it best, in "If This Goes On -":
"Yet you are willing to assert your own religious convictions and to use them as a touchstone to judge my conduct. So I repeat: who told you? What hill were you standing on when the lightning came down from heaven and illuminated you? Which archangel carried the message?"
"I believe that a man has an obligation to be merciful to the weak
"I believe very strongly in freedom of religion - but I think that that freedom is best expressed as freedom to keep quiet. From my point of view, a great deal of openly expressed piety is insufferable conceit."
If the nation that is voting is that fractured, it has no business being a nation
Alas if it is left alone, we get a repeat of the same situation that led to the reason we had to 'help' [koff] them in the first place.
The Taleban used to execute women for, well, pretty much anything. That's not good, but neither is it representative of the entire population.
The problem is, there are a fair few million people who are Afghans, and they'd rather not leave, what with it being their ancestral home of many tens of thousands of years. What do you think would happen if, say, Utah lost proper government for a while and became a place ruled purely by the whims of religious men with absolute power and no desire to let things change?
Do you think the normal folk in Utah would all think it was ok to leave and let the state collapse/be fenced off? Or that they might perhaps want a little help to sort things out.
What is WRONG with you people--you jingoists, you untiring flag-wavers, you twin-tower-tattooing rednecks, you support-the-war-or-you-aren't-a-patriot fucks?
There's a certain segment of the population that just likes things to be simple. They don't understand the world, and they don't want to. They rely on the President or Bill O'Reilly, or hell, even Susan Sarandon to tell them what's right. If the leadership tells them something simple like "we gotta get them terrorists" they'll defend that forever. Questioning that would be going down the path of trying to understand something they don't want to.
Everyone does that to SOME degree with some topic. If my mechanic started talking about how bad Chevy transmissions are compared to Ford transmissions, and how Chevy was a rotten company for making bad transmissions, my eyes would glaze over, especially if I heard all the time how great Chevy transmissions are from my friends, family, etc. Obviously I think international politics are more important than transmissions... but my point is there's a certain amount of willful disengagement with the populace.
Your message is right, but your approach is wrong. You sound like Ron Paul (in the sanest thing he's ever said) talking about Iraq at the Republican debate the other night. People, at least in the US, don't like to listen to ranting and raving people. It doesn't matter what they're saying, it's just an automatic "this guy sounds crazy, whatever he's saying is crazy".
AccountKiller