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Syrian Open Source Developer Bassel Khartabil Believed Executed (www.cbc.ca)
TheSync writes: The Syrian open source developer, blogger, entrepreneur, hackerspace founder, and free culture advocate Bassell Khartabil was swept up in a wave of military arrests in March 2012. A CBC report states that his wife wrote on Facebook late Tuesday that she has received confirmation that security services executed Khartabil in October 2015 after torturing him in prison. Before his arrest, his most recent work included a 3D virtual reconstruction of the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria.
At the time of his arrest, Khartabi was 30 years old -- after which he started a blog called "MeInSyrianJail" and a Twitter account called "Live from my cell." Though he spent the last three and half years of his life in prison, he once tweeted that "Jail is not walls, not the executioner and guards. It is the hidden fear in our hearts that makes us prisoners." The latest tweet on his feed says "Rest in power our friend."
Thursday the Creative Commons nonprofit described the developer as "our friend and colleague," and announced the Bassel Khartabil Memorial Fund, "which will support projects in the spirit of Bassel's work."
At the time of his arrest, Khartabi was 30 years old -- after which he started a blog called "MeInSyrianJail" and a Twitter account called "Live from my cell." Though he spent the last three and half years of his life in prison, he once tweeted that "Jail is not walls, not the executioner and guards. It is the hidden fear in our hearts that makes us prisoners." The latest tweet on his feed says "Rest in power our friend."
Thursday the Creative Commons nonprofit described the developer as "our friend and colleague," and announced the Bassel Khartabil Memorial Fund, "which will support projects in the spirit of Bassel's work."
a) Assad regime
b) ISIS
pick any one
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
F
*pays respects*
his wife wrote on Facebook late Tuesday
And the CBC report is from Thursday.
Today is Sunday, Slashdot. What took you so long to put up this story?
"Slashdot: old news for nerds, stuff that once mattered."
I only interacted with him a small amount, but he seemed like a nice guy. He was clearly very dedicated to all sorts of open-source projects and his dedication was combined with a cleverness and willingness to listen to those around him. He will be missed.
This is what will happen to Kim if the evil Yankee régime get their hands on him.
Bad guy.
The mess in the Middle East is the karma that we in the West are due. After western Europe gone done fucking things up, the USA went in and took over.
We are destined now for continuous conflict in the Middle East. It will drain our coffers and accelerate our irrelevance in the World. If we're lucky we'll end up like Great Britain - and when they stopped their Imperialism, the standard of living of the average UK citizen went up, btw.
As we continue along this path, we are headed for some very hard times economically and politically. America is not destined for greatness. In the quest to make us "great", our leaders have sent us down the road in the opposite direction. And the sad part is that most of those SOBs didn't or are not going to live to see the damage they caused.
Millennials, you're stuck with it - and the bill. Any old fart gives you shit about -anything - let'em know that your cleaning up after their stupidity and shortsightedness.
Nah, that's a false dichotomy. USA backed Syrian rebel forces, until Trump switched to backing Assad due to his Russian links.
So he's currently ended CIA training of Syrian Rebels.
We could also have stayed out of it till ISIS and Assad had fought to the end, then knocked out the now weakened winner. But that option was stopped when Putin came in to 'fight ISIS', i.e. bomb the crap out of Syrian Rebels under cover of boming ISIS.
Trump's choices are similar to the Ukraine thing, GOP platform is to provide Ukraine with weapons. Trump's rep Manasfort (as the newly chosen Republican candidate) convinced them to change that to 'non-lethal' weapons. Again due to his Russian links.
When Michael Brown was brutally executed by a police officer after robbing a store, and attempting to take that police officer's gun, I knew what it truly meant to live in a society ruled by an oppressive, tyrannical government. Like my brothers and sisters that have fought in China, Africa, Russia, Europe, and elsewhere for freedom, and ended up in mass graves, I knew that when Michael Brown was murdered in cold blood, it was time to act. It was time to BURN THAT BITCH TO THE GROUND! Hahahahaha!! I was a freedom fighter, fighting for freedom in the USA. I robbed stores because I wanted to make the world a better place. I stabbed my dad in the neck because white people (the devil) made me do it. I threw a molotov cocktail at a McDonald's for FUCKING FREEDOM!! I am anti-fascism. I am antifa. I burn books for the lulz.
USA backed Syrian rebel forces, until Trump switched to backing Assad due to his Russian links.
I sure hope the U.S. does not "back" me anytime soon given what they did to Assad under Trump.
If you want to see someone who truly supported Russia, look no further than Obama (who ignored them shooting down a commercial passenger jet) - or Hillary (who sold them oodles of uranium's secretary of state).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This guy just died, and YOU are JOKING about it, jackoff.
Emacs, not systemd.
http://www.al-awa2el.com/%D8%A... http://www.al-awa2el.com/%D8%A...
In this case it has nothing to do with islam, just the usual dictator supported by other dictator, preferring to burn gis country rather than leave.
And the world did nothing just because of a previous stupid war (Irak).
We could also have stayed out of it till ISIS and Assad had fought to the end, then knocked out the now weakened winner.
Hillary Clinton could also have not assassinated Qaddafi, which left Libya a failed state and a terrorist haven. Qaddafi was not one of the good guys, but he was keeping all the local terrorism in check.
Intelligence sources brought the opportunity to Hillary while she was SOS, and also noted that killing him would be a bad idea and predicted the rise of terrorism and [something similar to] ISIS if he was killed.
Hillary overrode that decision and had him killed anyway(*).
Nah, that's a false dichotomy. USA backed Syrian rebel forces, until Trump switched to backing Assad due to his Russian links. So he's currently ended CIA training of Syrian Rebels.
He doesn't like Assad one bit (he's said as much), but he's also trying to stop the terrorism. Lesser of two evils and all that.
You know - the terrorism that was enabled by Hillary's assassination of Qaddafi.
(*) My personal view is that she did it because she wanted a "win" during here stint as SOS - something that would show leadership and decision making in her upcoming presidential run. Boy, *that* decision sure turned out to be a bad move for the rest of us!
This guy just died, and YOU are JOKING about it, jackoff.
Ah, social justice.
We're now living in a post-joke society.
just died, as in died two years ago?
It's absurd to blame Westerns for the situation in the Middle East. The various tribes there have been fighting amongst themselves for all of recorded history, and likely far before then, too.
They were fighting each other before the USA and the modern nations of Europe were formed. They were fighting each other before the Crusades. They were fighting each other before the rise of Islam. They were fighting each other before the Roman Empire.
Even with today's conflicts, it's actually more peaceful in the region than it generally has been for millennia.
Simply put, most of the region is a horrid, inhospitable desert or semi-desert wasteland with too few resources to support anything but a very small nomadic population. Trying to go against this reality, like has been happening for centuries, will inherently lead to conflict.
It's not the USA or Europe or Westerners who are responsible for the awful situation there. It is nature and the local inhabitants who are fully responsible.
In this case it has nothing to do with islam
Did you seriously just claim that about a conflict where one of the main belligerents is a quasi-state that has declared itself to be an Islamic caliphate?!
If it's true that he was a Firefox contributor, then will Mozilla be honoring him? Will they temporarily change everybody's Firefox start page to a page that honors his memory?
Play with fire, get burned.
For all those winers out there that are always complaining the U.S. is a fascist dictatorship - this is what real fascism looks like.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No crime is so severe that it justifies a government sanctioned murder.
And on the Eighth Day, Man created God.
Social justice isn't limited by your western white privileged calendar!!!
Yes, that's how smart people are able to hate equally on all religions. It's all the same to them, no need to get into the details. They KNOW that suicidal killers don't really mean what they say, are too ignorant to know the greater context, and so ALL terrorism has nothing to do with religion, it's obviously because of social-economic foreign policy-gone-wrong causes. Nope, can never be because of religion, just please ignore what the killers are actually saying, they don't know what they're saying, but we do.
Many of our most important shared concepts for mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy came from the open and free encouragement from Islamic cultures in their golden age.
Quite a minority, actually. I'm not quite sure how "philosophy", a generally Western concept applies to Eastern cultures, but when it comes to mathematics, almost all, if not all of college-level stuff relevant today is post-1700, perhaps save for basic univariate calculus. (I think Keith Devlin noted that in some of his writings? But it should be obvious that the pace of research was uneven historically.) When it comes to astronomy, names of major stars are *the* most obvious heritage from that region of time-space, but astronomy of the High Middle Ages was hopelessly wrong on many things. (Mathematics at least had the benefit of "once proven, forever correct".)
... for stories to sit in the firehose for days.
It used to be Slashdot breaking these kind of stories.
Well, $subject says it all.
In Islamic societies, there are no objective morals, no objective right and wrong, only interpretations and personal opinions.
Everything you assume about it needs to be researched. Secularism by nature would be harsh in Islamic societies, as the opposition would be.
The more you look at Islam the more of a joke it becomes. Most religions would try to better humans, just the opposite with this piece of work.
Do not tolerate intolerance.
With all the fake news coming out, I have to wonder if this story is true.
Reminds me of the "Assad gassing his own people" flap. Turns out that Assad didn't do it, the "rebels" did it using poison gas from Turkey. But the lie was propagated endlessly (including right here on Slashdot) before the truth came out.
(As to why the rebels would do it: They were losing badly then, as they are now, and they needed a U.S. invasion to save their asses. As a large part of them were affiliated with Al Qaeda, they had the typical terrorist's concern for civilian deaths -- i.e. none.)
No, the other choices were Muslim Brotherhood - the only longstanding opposition in Syria not only during this president's reign, but also during that of his father, Hafez al Assad. As well as Jabaat al-Nusra, an al Qaeda affiliate, and other myriad Jihadist parties all over the country that united under the Islamic Front banner, and had allegance to the Saudis. The Kurds were a local force in the NorthEast, and in any case, running into problems w/ the Turks, who fear that an independent Kurdistan would just inspire their own Kurdish population in the East to either revolt or secede.
Also, this Assad was a moderate, and started off as a reformer. His father, Hafez al Assad, was a real terrorism backer throughout the region. He came to power in 1970, made Syria the successor state to Nasserite Egypt as far as being a Soviet ally went, and backed terrorist organizations throughout the region. For the longest time, Hamas and Islamic Jihad had major offices in Damascus, which they only closed when this civil war started. Hafez Assad also stood out in being one of 2 Arab regimes to support Iran in the 8 year long Ira war b/w Iran & Iraq, and did all he could to make Lebanon a de-facto part of Syria, including assassinating their president elect Bashir Gemayel. Only in 1991 did relations w/ the US improve, b'cos Syria supported the allied side against Iraq, due to Assad's personal enmity w/ Saddam Hussein.
When his son came to power in 2000, he was a novice, and decided to start a perestroika like process in Syria. Which went on well until the Arab Spring started. Once regimes in Tunisia, Egypt & Libya started falling, the Saudis decided to inspire a Sunni insurrection in Syria that would disrupt Iran's Shi'ite Crescent of Iran, Iraq, Syria & Lebanon, since that would fall under the guise of the 'Arab Spring'. Except that unlike Egypt or Tunisia which have homogeneous populations and where none of them stood to be massacred should regimes change (except the hapless Copts), in Syria, that had lethal implications for the Alawites, whom Sunnis and even some Shi'ites regard as heretics. The Baathist coalition of Alawites, Shi'ites, Christians & Druze feared that they'd be massacred if the Assad regime fell, which explains why the insurrection turned into a civil war.
Also, if one notices some of the activities of the 'rebels' during this war, there had been ethnic cleansing of Christians and Alawites from cities like Aleppo, Homs, and so on. In fact, after the first Iraqi 'democratic' Shi'ite regime came to power, the persecution of Iraqi Christians by the Shi'ites started, causing them to flee to Syria. In Syria, they joined their religious comrades, and again found themselves driven out into Lebanon. So the idea that it was just Assad who by releasing the terrorists, contaminated the 'freedom loving' pool is just hogwash. That made sense for Saddam to do in 2003, but not Assad: releasing Sunni terrorists would just increase the ranks of his enemies.
Anyway, fact remains that even w/o ISIS - which was essentially remnants of Zarqawi's al Qaeda spinoff - all the 'rebels' in Syria were Sunni Jihadists who during their campaigns massacred or drove out the ethnic peoples they opposed. If Assad were to get overthrown, it's they who would come to power, and make Syria an even greater bloodbath than it already is. Israel, which never was a friend of Syria's, made it a point to stay neutral but root for Assad: the last thing they want on the Golan border is a Hamas like Muslim Brotherhood regime like Morsi's. Egypt, which was w/ the rest of the Arab League & OIC in expelling Syria due to the war, recently decided to re-open channels w/ Syria, b'cos like Syria, they know the pitfalls of falling under the Muslim Brotherhood. Even though al Sisi is no friend to Iran or Hizbullah.
Interestingly enough, that 'golden age' only occurred at the beginning of Iran's conversion to Islam: some of the people usually lionized had unknown origins, and were clearly converts to Islam from something else - be it Zoroastrianism, Christianity or Judaism. Iran did have a great culture during the Sassanid dynasty, and that didn't collapse overnight. The Samanids, who aside from Islam, were proud of their Iranian heritage, continued to patronize that for a bit, but once their empire collapsed, it went south from there.
Aside from that, there is also the fact that a lot of the 'achievements' were imports from the east - be it China or India. They love boasting about the 'Arabic' numerals, ignoring the fact that those things, and the number zero, originated in India, and was at one time called either 'Hindu numerals' or at worst 'Hindu-Arabic numerals'. Other works were translations into Arabic or Farsi, which, while noteworthy, is not the same as being an original creator.
Also, if all these achievements were products of Islam, why wasn't that replicated anywhere else in the Islamic empire? There were a myriad number of Muslim sultanates and emirates throughout history, from Mali to Brunei. So why weren't there more Islamic scholars from these various kingdoms who contributed meaningfully to culture? Reason is that 'bida', or innovation, is considered verboten in Islam, which is why it's rarely done.
Kind of surprised this wasn't a BeauHD posting.
Another good one, although I don't have the link, is about the Saudi Arabian crackdown on Shiites in some village, who are being shelled and were told they would die if they didn't leave the village (but the shelling supposedly started before they had a chance to evacuate.)
Given the fact that the US just closed a HUGE arms deal with them, it seems like a story that should be getting more exposure, but the MSM has been totally mum on it (and nobody on either slashdot or soylent picked up the link and submitted it as a news item when I posted it a few days ago.)
He was allowed to blog and tweet from prison... in Syria? All the while being tortured and eventually executed. The world is indeed a peculiar place.
I noted you provided no links for your revisionist lies - Hillary provided uranium to Russia, that is a fact, end of story.
The link you failed to provide was probably Snopes, and if you are so stupid as to believe a known mouthpiece for Hillary over the NYT and Forbes - well I don't know what to tell you. Actually I do, it's think for yourself, but I know you will not so why bother trying?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
He's a martyr. Unfortunately for some there is a high price to pay for making a stand. This is an old Crosby Stills and Nash protest song from the 1960's protesting the Vietnam War (actually never officially declared a war, it was technically called "A police action".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nlXmYVE_X8
p> Captch: miseries
If it wasn't for the massive power vacuum that would be left behind, I'd say send an assassin in to kill Assad. I think even Adolph Hitler would have been taken aback by what that monster is capable of. But the power vacuum left behind would actually be worse in the long run. There needs to be a smooth transition of power, with Assad locked up the rest of his unnatural life, and a real functional government, that isn't slaughtering it's own citizens, in place.