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Taliban Seizes and Burns PCs, Cell Phones To Stop Obscenity
retroworks writes "As translated from Central Asia Online, Cellular News reports that militants from South Waziristan set ablaze about 300 cellular phones and a number of computers in Wana because the devices were allegedly used to spread obscene materials. Prior to taking the action, they gave everyone fair warning with 'leaflets.' 300 cell phones down, 5 or 6 billion to go.
I know association that would be happy to do the same here in the US.
I knew I shouldn't have browsed that one site where a woman showed her ankle!
burn the devil box, it showed the chin of a female!
If they were smart they would burn the internet ...
Because destroying the hard drives wasn't enough, wasting tens of thousands of dollars in perfectly good hardware was the right thing to do.
how is babby formed?
First objective is to hide what they are doing. This is accomplished by no one able to photograph their brutal actions and so the Leaders will not be photographed for later intervention by NATO.
Second is to control the media and what the people are told. Hopefully create more little zealots to continue the cause.
The toxic chemicals released from burning all that hardware gave them all cancer.
HA HA.
Of course, they copied off and kept all the good porn for themselves before they destroyed the hardware.
Much more efficient than blocking DNS, you have to concede that.
There's no scientific consensus that life is important.
Forget about this...
Compared to throwing acid on a young girl's face because she wants what we consider an elementary education - now that's worth some outrage.
Children are to be cherished and encouraged to reach for their full potential. Any society that fails to do this is failing, period - USA included.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
It's the Taliban's leaders that should be raided! They all watch porn and force their spouses to wear the Burka so no one will find out it's a MAN! You're not gay if everyone thinks you're with a woman.
I even got a speeding ticket last week! Cop asked, "You know what the speed limit is?"
I answered: "Um, somewhere around 186,000 miles per second?"
Go on, find some law you hate and then freely make absurd comparisons...
I'm with you with the following proviso:
You must GUARANTEE, BEYOND ANY DOUBT WHATSOEVER that EVERY SINGLE LIVING BEING within the AoE is a willing follower, enabler, adherent, and/or card-carrying member thereof.
Once you've done that, Bombs Away!
-AC
ALLAHU AKBAR!
There are people in the US that are ready and waiting to do the exact same thing. Some of them are corporations.
The RIAA and MPAA wish all this would go away.
The Dominionists and other so-called-Christian radicals (note the location of the hyphen) would burn all modern communications technology and "unchristian books" (meaning anything other than the bible) in a heartbeat.
--
BMO
Now we know the REAL reason bin Laden moved to Pakistan!
About the militia maintaining a monopoly on electronic communication to prevent a rebellion or infiltration by the government or other tribal leaders?
Remember, these villagers are mostly Muslim, and they pray five times a day. And somehow I doubt the people in the militia will be burning their own phones and computers.
The motive is (IMHO) most likely to express and increase their power over the people affected rather than the stated one. Eliminate something that gives those people power, and show them how weak they are against their new rulers.
Or maybe instead of resorting to violence to achieve your goal (like the tailban does) we could try and teach them to think for themselves so they arent so easily brainwashed by religion.
According to Joe Biden, the Taliban is not the US's enemy so it's okay.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/joe-biden-taliban-america-enemy-gopers-romney-santorum-mccain-pounce-article-1.994760?localLinksEnabled=false
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
There are two possibilities. Either they are eliminating all cell phones, or only the cell phones of the non-Talaban under their control. If the get rid of all cell phones, then their ability to coordinate and send/receive timely information will be seriously impacted. They will become less effective.
If they keep cell phones for themselves, they become much more obvious targets. It will be easier to listen in on their communications because they will be the only ones talking. Even just detecting a cell phone signal will flag the location of a Talaban member. Not such a good move in the era of loitering UAVs with GPS enabled munitions.
It's nice when your enemies are such stupid fanatics that they either shoot themselves in the foot, or paint a target on their backs. I hope they find even more ways to use their religious fanaticism screw themselves up.
Why is Snark Required?
maybe we should also just round up a few thousand of them and ship them to cuba and torture them until they tell us where all the bad guys are?
i bet that would work, this war would be over tomorrow!
"Taliban Seizes and Burns PCs, Cell Phones To Stop Obscenity"
Contrast with:
US Government Seizes and Burns DNS domains, To Stop Copyright Infringement.
Discuss.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
"a) the Soviets, a communist government that ran extermination camps that killed about 10 times more people than the holocaust,"
WTF?!? Nazis have killed around 20 million people in the USSR during the WWII. There's simply no way Stalin could have killed 10 times more people.
God bless you. That was quite a sneeze :-P
The parent commenter was probably taking pop statistics to calculate that. Figure 6 millions Jews killed (which is not the whole story) and the use the 60 million figure that is commonly touted for Stalin (which is way overestimated according to anything I've read about it; that doesn't make it less heinous, however).
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Or how about a third option:
c) do nothing
The Taliban didn't need our help. Our psychopathic drive to jump into every conflict on earth (ok, maybe we largely ignore Africa) is a big part of why America is bankrupt and widely despised.
So given that there were 2 sides fighting, which side do you suggest America should have supported ?
Neither, because it's none of our business?
Americans?
Following your own link and reading it contradicts your assertion.
And...
"Neigboring countries" are not Americans.
Flamebait
Troll
Douchebag
Fuck. Off.
--
BMO
How do you logic with that? The answer is you can't. I don't really expect you to understand because you're in a Westernized, modern, industrial world. You follow laws, understand technology and very likely had an education. None of these are done here, in Afghanistan where I write these words, nor have they been done in thousands of years. You know, you can drive a donkey down the middle of the road here, put a family of 4 (no eye, head or other protection) on a motorized scooter, or drive the wrong way down the road here in their capital (Kabul), right past a cop, and he won't do a thing? Mind blowing but that's how it is. After we leave, that's how it'll still be...
To be fair, OP referred to a) the holocaust (which was specifically the 6 million figure you cited) and b) the Soviets, not Stalin in particular. The Soviets killed plenty of people that Stalin was not personally responsible for. 10 times is probably a pretty decent ballpark figure. I'm not an expert on it by any means, of course. And that isn't a completely fair comparison, either, the Nazi's killed far more than just the Jews.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Communism killed around 100,000,000 people in the last century.
The Black Book of Communism
The Black Book of Communism (Translation by Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer) (Review) / (book review)
Author: Daniel J. Mahoney
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
If they think the US will win, they'll take our money to to go school. However, they have seen large power (Brits, Soviets, and now ISAF) come in, play around in the dirt, and then go home. So you tell me: If you've been abandoned for centuries by people who want you to learn to read and other things that don't directly (in your Afghani mind) put food on your table for you and your family, why would you switch sides from the guy who's been your neighbor for centures and occasionally burns your phone, kills a friend, etc? That's the choice they make, and the reality of their logic. The rest is usually, "Allah Willing." If you die or live, it's whatever Allah determined for you regardless of your decisions.
There are literacy programs, but it's usually one of the first targets of the insurgents. They also believe 50% of the population (women) are not allowed by their religion to be on equal footing, nor go to school. Attacks on little girls, here in Afghan as one example, are much more common than you will ever see on the news.
How many people did capitalism kill 'directly or indirectly'?
Sent from my PDP-11
Jew burning the Christian bible, the New Testament. Big News... Big Deal... ;)
"Rabbi Amnon Yitzhak oversees burning of a New Testament"
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4158924,00.html
It gets worse. The same dork is now burning tv sets...
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4158924,00.html
"Rabbi Amnon Yitzhak held a protest against television and its products on Tuesday evening, during which 1,000 (relatively old-fashioned) TV sets were thrown into large garbage bins. The modern "Tashlich" ceremony was held outside the Israel Broadcasting Authority's building in Jerusalem. Rabbi Yitzhak is famous for his activities which are centered on helping Jews to become more religious or observant. Leader of Dushinsky Hasidic dynasty threatens to expel members caught with 'non-kosher' cellular phones, computer with Internet connection"
Published? December 9, 2011... So much for progress into the 21st century.
What I am getting that these Amish-like sheep brains are all over. The Amish, the Hasidic and now some Moslems. I am sure that there has been symbolic burning amongst "peace-loving" Buddhist too...
Why can't people get over their religion. Sigh...
And you expect the afghans to discriminate between a US minister's words and the beliefs the US military may have as a whole after the US attacks Afghanistan for the supposed actions of a saudi guy living in Afghanistan unaffiliated with the taliban regime ? Oh, or you mean you don't take the taliban's word that they had nothing to do with the guy but they just have to take your word on that minister as scripture ? And about killing people for mere suspicion of collaborating with the enemy, how about all your laws allowing you to kill or imprison without a trial and torture anybody suspected of "terrorism" ? Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, ring any bells ? Now the latest defence authorization act allows the US to do the same thing to any US citizen it sees fit even though Obomber already needed no authorization to order the killing of a US citizen cleric in Yemen.
How many people did capitalism kill 'directly or indirectly'?
Quick answer: not nearly as many.
Note: The figures above deal primarily with those of its own citizens communist countries have killed, through policy induced famines and political repression. Although the book does address those killed in communist initiated wars, that isn't the point here. Usually those who follow up with your retort would cite all those who died in all the wars of aggression initiated by capitalist countries in order to draw some kind of equivalency, but it is not equivalent. Let's leave war casualties off the table for both sides.
The issue is perhaps somewhat complicated by one's definition of capitalism, because while those who effected communist policies leading to mass death proudly waved the communist banner, conscious of their ideology, their supposed counterparts (Custer? English landlords?) were not consciously waving some "capitalist" flag. More likely they were motivated by a sense of strong nationalism, or outright robbery, which is not a necessary attribute of a conscious "capitalist" ideology at all (which is much more compatible with liberal internationalism).
Further, by "capitalist" do we mean only modern industrial capitalist countries? Usually bona fide Capitalism is not considered to have begun until some time in the Middle Ages, with the movement away from feudal institutions. If we want to call any market economy capitalist, including, for example, that of ancient Rome, then perhaps we can lay the many deaths brought about by the dysfunctional economic policies of the late emperors at the feet of "capitalism", but this is a stretch and rather nonsensical. Even very primitive tribal cultures often have rudimentary markets--shall they too be labelled capitalistic for the sake of consistency? All the deaths resulting from slavery too are difficult to pin on "capitalism" precisely for this reason. Slavery is an institution that predates capitalism, and has existed under a wide variety of both primitive and more "modern" economic circumstances. It has been practiced in some capitalist countries, but it is certainly not a defining attribute of capitalism or a necessary consequence of it (though a Marxist cynic may disagree, he'd be wrong--and just being spiteful), and was first driven out institutionally in England under an explicitly liberal/capitalist banner (if you don't believe me check the history yourself).
If we're talking about a country that is capitalist in the full sense (an industrialized market economy, i.e. one that has accumulated much capital), what are the episodes during which many died from following a capitalist policy rather than some superior "socialist" (or other) alternative? I'm prepared to accept that there may be such an example, but I doubt it approaches anything close to the massive and tragic waste of life that resulted in the last century's pursuit of communism.
In a conflict between violence and non-violence...
You know of Tank Man, the famous protester in China? You don't know his name though. Because after the protest he vanished and was never seen or heard from again. The only force that can really counter violence is more violence. That is why most countries have a police force: A legitimate force, able to counter violent crime with violent enforcement, but willingly (-ish) subject to constraints and accountability.
Perhaps they think it better to hold great power in a country of poverty than to serve in a country of wealth?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They would be the wrong ones to ask. Rather ask Wikipedia and you shall receive: USSR was just taking back what was theirs in first place so that one was not a valid rebuke.
GP is wrong nonetheless, the Soviet Union has led an offensive war exactly two times.
1) Winter war
2) Soviet-Japanese war of 1945
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
You need to light-en up; you responded to a post that just continued the joke centered around the "relativity speed limit".
First, it's really hard to read what you're saying, when you have huge run-on sentences. I have no idea what your first sentence is trying to say, or not say. However, I'll take a stab at it. Yes, there are 0 (zero) Afghans who have watched a US Soldier burn a Koran with their own eyes. There are many who were told by TB that they were, after the TB guy burned something down and then threw a Koran into the ashes. Your second sentence seems to ramble a duplicate of the first, but I'll give a second example. The Afghan has never watched a US Soldier stop a public soccer game, bring out a 7-9 yr old boy, and then hang him from a goal post, yet quite a few watched this done by TB. So to answer your question: Yes, you should usually be able to discern conduct you watch, versus conduct described that does not follow what you've observed. Now the real issue here isn't them discerning truth versus non-truth. You seem to have skipped the entire, following discussion. The issue really is, "Who is the winning side." If they think the US is going to prevail, they'll believe whatever we tell them. If they think the TB will prevail, they'll go with whatever they tell them. This is why most are stuck between because, depending on their past, they may not like either choice. They just want to be left alone to be able to farm their land and provide for their family. Sorta like the US. You really don't care if a Democrat or Republican is the President because as long as you can provide for your family, it really doesn't impact your daily life.
I'm not sure if you're American or not from your post, but I'll go based on your comments that you're completely in the dark about US, US Law, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. US law does now allow imprisonment without a trial. Military Law allows enemy unlawful combatants to be held because there are severe jurisdiction and legal issues that arise when someone is unlawfully waging war. If a Saudi unlawfully fires an RPG provided in Pakistan, against a US and British patrol, who prosecutes? Whose jurisprudence prevails? Then, for Professionals in Arms there are two additional sets of laws. For Title 10 soldiers, airman, sailors and Coast Guardsmen (there are a few in Afghan), you have the UCMJ. This is why the soldiers at Abu Ghraib are no longer serving as they were tried and convicted under UCMJ for breaking those laws, as well as others of the last set of laws I mention, Law of Armed Conflict. There is no civilization alive that would survive a litmus test of condemning everyone for the mistakes of a few. Every military and civilian sent over is briefed on the LoAC laws and how they pertain to them. This is why if a Sniper sees an IED emplacer digging in the road, he can then watch for hostile intent. When the emplacer confirms hostile intent with an IED device being buried, he is then lawfully able (doesn't always happen) to take a shot. Let's say the shot misses its mark and the guy starts to limp away. There is no longer hostile intent, nor capability (he's left the IED behind) and the Sniper is bound by LoAC to NOT take a 2nd shot. This also happens often. A Quick Reaction Force (QRF) will respond (as usually the Sniper team will stay in place or egress as to not be found/seen) and find the blood trail, and no bad guy to be found.
What is Obomber? Is that a misspelled October reference to an event? A reference to Obama allowing bombing, which every President for a few decades on both sides have allowed? We've been bombing militants and terrorists since before Reagan. Libia and Gaddafi ring any bells?
But controlling communication and infromation access of the people. The more ignorant they stay, the better for the Taliban.
So, let me get this straight:
The USA spent years, trillions of $$$ - amounts where the interest on it could pay for the entire financial crisis - and hundreds of thousands of innocent lives (a few of them US soldiers) on this war thing... ...and here we are, essentially where we started with the Taliban, just with more of a mess?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Sure, the police can keep a small percentage of "immoral" people in line, but if a significant percentage of people decide to act against society, then the police wont be much help.
Police often have resource problems as it is on say New Years EVE, or other special occasions, what makes you think they could handle it if crime say doubled, and they had to lock up 2% of the US population instead of 1.
If there wasnâ(TM)t a clear majority of "good" people then society would have crumbled long ago.
The Nazis were capitalists.
"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."
How was it not 'capitalist'?
Because it's not control of production by those individuals who supplied the capital to it. (I'm obviously not counting governments who use tax revenues to establish industries, firstly because they're not individuals, and secondly because it would include typical and obvious communist economies). 'Capitalism' isn't 'favouring an economy with markets in it', nor 'favouring an economy in which some people control large commercial organizations and have a lot of power over the rest of society'. It has a specific meaning: a belief that the individuals who pay for the factory should get to control it, not those who work in it, not those in government, not those who supply it, not those who live near it and not those who buy from it. It doesn't mean that those individuals shouldn't be subject to all sorts of outside pressure, nor does it mean that they should have power outside of their factory. Those may or may not be true, but that's a different question and a different concept.
Naturally, no economy is pure capitalist because such an economy would both serve its purpose poorly and because it's practically impossible with corporations of any size, or with diverse ownership, or where investors haven't got enough time to manage all of their investments properly and have to rely on professional fund managers. The Nazi economy most certainly was not capitalist - those who supplied the capital (taxpayers, people who had property confiscated, people forced to work to create it, etc) had little control over the industry.
You do realize that USSR did not have "extermination camps" in 1979 for like 25 years already, right?
Soviets in Afghanistan were teaching the locals - building schools and universities - and also country infrastructure like roads and power plants. They were supported by a considerable chunk of the population, too, the more secular part. It wasn't Soviets vs Afghans - it was a civil war, Afghan secularists with Soviet backing vs Afghan Islamists with US/Pakistani backing.
The end result is that you sacrificed the quality of life of several million people for your convenience - every madrasah built instead of a school, every mosque built instead of a factory in the last 30 years. Worse yet, you didn't even gain anything for yourself as your support for Islamists came to bite you in the ass today, and unlike Soviets, they have no hesitation about striking first, hitting your territory directly, and targeting civilians. Karma's a bitch.
To be fair, OP referred to a) the holocaust (which was specifically the 6 million figure you cited)
The holocaust was one of the worst times in human history.
But for whatever reason, people seem to often neglect mentioning the other half. Yes, 6,000,000 jews were killed. But the 5,000,000 mentally handicapped, physically handicapped, Poles, Russians, Roma, intellectuals, actors, thinkers, teachers, etc. who were just as "undesirable" nearly always fall by the wayside.
I'm in no way trying to diminish the suffering of the Jewish people, but I think that it's not only absurd but outright insulting and revolting that everyone else who was killed in the holocaust is so often ignored and forgotten.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Raping, looting, pillaging and being general all-around scoundrels is one thing, but now they're fucking with access to the Internet!
I reckon the Taliban's days are finally numbered....
Ok, first thing, the very link you gave said the work "holocaust" derived from the Greek word (holókauston) via the way of the Latin (holocaustum) and was from the Septuagint (the Greek translation by the Jews of the Old Testament) originally. The word is Jewish and invented by the Jews, so you're wrong there.
And secondly, a horrific act that was ignored at the time by many countries and to this day is denied in many Muslim countries is not made any less horrific because other people have also done horrific things in the past.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton