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Pakistan To Cut Phone Services To Prevent Muharram Attacks
SternisheFan writes with this news from the Indian Express: "Pakistan's interior minister Friday said the government will suspend cell phone services in most parts of the country over the next two days to prevent attacks against Shia Muslims during a key religious commemoration. Militants often detonate bombs using cell phones and this is the first time the government has implemented such a wide-scale suspension. Saturday and Sunday are the most important days of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar, especially important to Shias. Pakistani Shias Sunday observe Ashoura, commemorating the 7th century death of Imam Hussein, the Prophet Muhammad's grandson. Different parts of the Muslim world mark Ashoura on different days —neighbouring Afghanistan, for example, observes it on Saturday. 'The suspension of cell phone services will begin at 6 am Saturday and run through the next day,' Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad. He said 90 per cent of the bombs set off by militants in Pakistan have been detonated using cell phones. Some criticized the government for suspending services, saying it was a huge inconvenience."
the whole bloody lot.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
than being a religious minority in Pakistan
Shia, Sikh, Hindu, or Christian
the West should just allow all religious minorities free passage out of Pakistan
they're being hunted
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...people kill people.
If they use a different system to detonate a bomb (and now they know the cellphones won't work, so it becomes more likely) then it will delay any call for help from the area. Can't they just set up the towers so that a new, unknown, or unregistered foreign number can only make and not receive calls? Then it's a matter of asking people crossing the border to register their number if they want to receive calls, and that makes them more traceable. In any case nothing beats good detective work, most of these "security" measures seem to be just for show, and easily defeated. Why people always seems to think that the bad guys must be stupid? Too many action movies?
Even easier - give AT&T the contract for all Pakistani cell phones. Nothing would get through, anytime.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
...and binders for their women.
no, the other kind of binder.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
In addition to turning off towers, they will need to set up phone jammers everywhere. If not, all the bad guys need to do is set up one of those portable mobile phone hacking things to enable calling the remote device from a reasonable distance. I know it seems like a lot of work, but you know? If someone is going to go through the trouble of making a bomb detinator using a phone, then it's not a stretch to imagine taking that extra step to ensure that it works.
Other thoughts? If your religion preaches intolerance, it is already a failure. (Yeah, I get it, the number of devout followers of these intolerant and violent religions would offer evidence to the contrary, but I mean failure in another sense.)
Also, Islam would do well to learn lessons from Christianity. Look at how adaptable Christianity has been! It adopts all sorts of holidays and celebrations so that people think it's religious (like Christmas and Easter) and allows participation with pagan holidays like Halloween without fear of corrupting people because it's all in fun, not to be taken seriously. Also, in the 60s, they avoided a serious departure from Christianity in the US by changing God's personality from fire, brimstone and harsh punishment to a gentle god of love, forgiveness and tolerance. And it worked! The face of Christianity in the US today is completely different from the pre-60's version. Islam is like it is stuck 1000 years in the past.
There are a lot of ways you can use a cell phone. Basically any way that triggers the speaker can be used.
The timer option is only chosen for airplanes which will be out of cell range.
Most of the time the bomb is triggered by a simple text message or phone call after it is carried into the target area
by a imbecile too stupid to understand what they are doing or an equally imbecilic jihadist convinced that the 17 virgins will be waiting for him.
The bombers are usually watching, so they can set it off early if the mule is approached by police.
(I read somewhere that the number of village idiots in Pakistan and Afghanistan has fallen to nearly zero.)
Second to garage door openers (not all that common in that part of the world) cell phones are simply the device that is cheapest and most readily available and drop dead (bad pun) easiest to find and use.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Only OUTLAWS will have CELLPHONES.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.