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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.

31 of 294 comments (clear)

  1. They took mine. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I knew I shouldn't have browsed that one site where a woman showed her ankle!

  2. Objective Hide their actual Activities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Objective Hide their actual Activities by EdIII · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Considering the Taliban manual specifically prohibits any Taliban from being alone in a room with an unbearded man (boy), I bet it is so that nobody can record that evidence as well.

      Which is incredibly ironic that they are trying to prevent obscenity when they are predominately pedophiles.

      Before anybody mods this troll..... if it was false why would it have to be in the manual for the Taliban specifically?

    2. Re:Objective Hide their actual Activities by 517714 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Doesn't that pretty much sum up our government's policies too?

      --
      The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
    3. Re:Objective Hide their actual Activities by number11 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Considering the Taliban manual specifically prohibits any Taliban from being alone in a room with an unbearded man (boy), I bet it is so that nobody can record that evidence as well. Which is incredibly ironic that they are trying to prevent obscenity when they are predominately pedophiles. Before anybody mods this troll..... if it was false why would it have to be in the manual for the Taliban specifically?

      Because it's a popular entertainment in Afghanistan that the Taliban want to ban?

      What makes you think it's not a problem with non-Taliban? Didn't American contractors with DynCorp pimp young boys for a party for Afghan cops (cite?

  3. Jokes on them... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The toxic chemicals released from burning all that hardware gave them all cancer.

    HA HA.

    1. Re:Jokes on them... by houstonbofh · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The toxic chemicals released from burning all that hardware gave them all cancer.

      "Why are you worried about something that will kill you in 7 years when there are so many things that can kill you tomorrow?" -- Lord of War

      Hard to preach long term thinking when most people in the community die in their thirties...

  4. SOPAliban by Kikuchi · · Score: 4, Funny

    Much more efficient than blocking DNS, you have to concede that.

    --
    There's no scientific consensus that life is important.
  5. Lesser of many evils by dpilot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Lesser of many evils by kanto · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      I think this is a perfect thing to get outraged at since it's just a different side of the same problem, "where you burn books, you will ultimately burn people also".

    2. Re:Lesser of many evils by bmo · · Score: 5, Informative

      I had to google that last quote because I liked it so much.

      For everyone's edification:

      "Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen."

        "That was but a prelude; where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people also."

        Heinrich Heine, in the play "Almansor" - 1821

      --
      BMO

  6. Ya... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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...

    1. Re:Ya... by meerling · · Score: 5, Funny

      How dare you make light of the situation. :)

      I'm betting not a lot of cops will get your joke. :(

    2. Re:Ya... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Traffic cops aren't usually the brightest.

  7. Re:Extingush the Taliban by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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

  8. Re:Oh noes by houstonbofh · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No need. The US Congress is racing to do that for them. (I wish this was a joke)

  9. Re:Oh noes by jd2112 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If they were smart they would burn the internet ...

    We' ll take care of that with SOPA.

    --
    Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
  10. Is this about blocking porn or... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  11. Re:The thing is... by bmo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Excuse me?

    In case you haven't noticed, the MPAA and RIAA have been nothing but terrorist thugs when it comes to the Internet. It fucks with their distribution system, cuts out middle men, and is generally a pain in the ass to them. They would like nothing better than to go back to the bad old days of no Internet where they held the distribution channels in their grip.

    SOPA, a bill which they wrote, is tantamount to burning down the Internet.

    --
    BMO

  12. Signals Intellegence by Required+Snark · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Clearly, this has an impact on the strategic capabilities of the Talaban.

    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?
  13. Close... by msauve · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "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
    1. Re:Close... by thegarbz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why contrast between two unrelated things?

      The USA arrested and jailed a man for directing obscene pornography between consenting parties.
      Now I'm sure some would argue what he did was manipulative and destroyed the lives of several people and liken his abuse to rape. Well the USA also arrested and jailed a man for possessing obscene comics, where no adults or children were harmed in the making.

      Let's discuss related facts shall we?

  14. Re:The thing is... by 517714 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yes. OP, please apologize to the Taliban for lumping them in with such low-life scum.

    --
    The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
  15. Re:Okay, let's examine that decision by flaming+error · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  16. Re:Ah, just like the Americans by bmo · · Score: 5, Informative

    Americans?

    Following your own link and reading it contradicts your assertion.

    Eskander also reported that the destruction was performed by "a mix of poor people looking for a quick profit, along with regime loyalists intent on destroying evidence of atrocities"

    And...

    âoeAccording to Eskander, Saddam loyalists burned the entirety of the Republican Archive, which contained the records of the Ba'athist regime between the years 1958 and 1979. Also completely destroyed were the Ba'athist court proceedings detailing the charges against and trials of party opponents. Records of Iraq's relations with its neighbors, including Iran, Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, are missing. Iraq has accused neighbouring countries of stealing sections of its national archives.[6]

    "Neigboring countries" are not Americans.

    Flamebait
    Troll
    Douchebag

    Fuck. Off.

    --
    BMO

  17. Re:Extingush the Taliban by JohnnyComeLately · · Score: 5, Insightful
    That's the huge problem: They don't think for themselves and there are literally centuries of distrust you're working against. Iliteracy is in the high 90-percentile in Afghanistan, and no one trusts anyone outside their villiage. For example, when that whacked out minister from Florida said he was going to burn the Koran, not actually do it but said he would, there were huge protests here. NATO and UN cars trying to enter/leave base were attacked, windshields cracked from large rocks thrown at them, etc. Those were just WORDS at that point, as I don't think he ever actually did it. Then, the TB incited people by saying the US Government endorsed the guy and was part of the Koran burning. You and I know that's ludicrous, but when you're literally a goat herder in the middle of nowhere, can't read or write, what else would you believe? Religion is just the ends to justify the means. TB are murderers who use the veil of Islam to justify their evil. Think through the logic on this parent thread: It's ok to put out a video of a man having his head severed with an old rusty machette, or hang a 7 yr old child in the middle of a public soccer game, because you THINK he might be helping the US, but... it's NOT ok to take a picture of a naked lady.

    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...

  18. Re:Okay, let's examine that decision by Baloroth · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  19. Re:Okay, let's examine that decision by cold+fjord · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

    The Black Book of Communism is one of those rare books that really matters. It is the first systematic and comparative analysis of the "crimes, terror and repression" that accompanied Communism everywhere and that seemed to define its "genetic code." The book's centerpiece is a relentlessly documented narrative of political violence and repression in the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, drawing on extensive archival materials made available to researchers since the collapse of Communist rule in 1991. But The Black Book also contains absorbing accounts of Communist repression in Eastern Europe, Asia, and the Third World. . . . .

    The chapters on the Soviet Union and China are as powerful as they are in large part because their authors, Nicolas Werth and Jean-Louis Margolin, avoid excessive polemics and allow the evidence to simply speak for itself. If anything, Werth is excessively conservative in his estimates, drawing almost exclusively from not always reliable "official" party and state archival materials to verify politically--inspired deaths and incarcerations in the Soviet Union. Despite the limits of this method, Werth concludes that the Bolshevik regime was responsible, directly or indirectly, for the deaths of 20 million people between 1918 and 1956, and for the imprisonment in camps of millions more. He demolishes the notion of a good Lenin and a bad Stalin by showing that terror defined the Soviet regime from its inception. And he concludes that there is no basis for the claim that the terror of the 1930s was driven by overzealous Party and police officials acting independently of orders.

    Likewise, Margolin's chapter on China shows that the crimes of Maoism are rooted in ideological hubris and a denial of the humanity of political or class "enemies." Margolin demonstrates that Mao committed crimes unprecedented in Chinese history, and damaged the nation in everything from economics to ethics. The devastating consequences of Mao's rule: 65 million lost lives. Perhaps the deepest reason The Black Book has sparked controversy is that it argues Communism is as intrinsically perverse as Nazism. Editor Stephane Courtois argues that Communist crimes, like Nazi ones, partake of the desire to eliminate groups of people on the basis of their origins, not because of any individual culpability or responsibility. He denies that Communism's crimes have any right to be excused or qualified because they were committed in the name of egalitarian principles. Courtois shows that Communism is an exterminationist ideology which selects its enemies on the basis of class...

    --
    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
  20. Re:Okay, let's examine that decision by mirix · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How many people did capitalism kill 'directly or indirectly'?

    --
    Sent from my PDP-11
  21. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  22. Re:Okay, let's examine that decision by Ihmhi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.