The Taliban is a large group of young men who were orphaned at a very young age, during the fight against Russia.
They were raised in violent circumstances, and only the ruthless survived. Those who were not willing to kill for food, clothing, and shelter, died. They raised themselves, and did so by the law of the wild: eat or be eaten.
Those that survived were then scooped up by Pakistani fundamentalists. They were provided food, shelter, and education -- an education that was exclusively religious, and fundamentalist at that.
These feral young men were then sent back into Afghanistan, where they quickly gained dominance through their ruthless slaughter of everyone who opposed their fundamentalist demands.
These people are far removed from humanity due to the nature of their upbringing. They were raised in conditions we don't subject even domestic animals to, were educated with lies, and released as a pack to go wild and savage.
The question I want an answer to is: how could that be allowed to happen? Surely someone knew what was happening -- why didn't we intervene to stop what was otherwise inevitable?!
Couple of points, though: Afghanistan can not declare war. There is no Afghanistan: what we, outside of that territory, call a country for sake of convenience, is not viewed as a country from within. Internally, it is a handful of tribes at ill-ease with each other, who co-operate only so far as it benefits their own tribesmen.
The Taliban is not a ruling party so much as a gang of thugs who represent only themselves. The Taliban can declare war, and the US can declare war on the Taliban.
Secondly: surgical strikes. Not only by special-ops troops, but also remotely. The military can map the land to inch-resolution using spy satellites and surveilance aircraft, both of which are at an altitude well out of range of the Taliban.
With these detailed maps, ground targets are easily identified. And with companion bombers, also flying well out of range, Very Big Bombs can be dropped with exacting precision on those targets. With no warning.
Terrorist training camp, kiss your ass goodbye.
These high-altitude attacks don't have to take place right now (and probably shouldn't: only a fool would have an active camp this month!)
Yes, but the photographic essay seems fairly convincing.
I note that the school isn't entirely cardboard: there is timber framing, and the tubes are capped by steel doohickeys. Yes, that is the construction-trades technical term for them.
I'm not sure if you're approving or disapproving of my message, but either way you're bound to be satisfied: it's been moderated up as interesting, and down as over-rated!
Slashdot moderation: it's the jumbo shrimp of the online world...
Fido was a lousy system for communications. The message format and controls just got in the way of discussions. It was, in short, not well-designed for "talking."
It was great for files, though. Really kicked ass there. And it was good for pure information sharing, of the question-answer style.
Now, what was (and is) great for communication -- that is, discussion and discourse -- was/is the Citadel-style BBS. Man, that thing was honed for chatter: streaming sequential messages, closer to dinner-party conversation than anything else.
I do hope that this documentary doesn't ignore the discussion-based BBSes. There were a lot of people who shared a lot of opinions on those systems... and some of us even had our minds changed because of their persuasive arguments!
Sorry, but whoever wrote that greatly underestimates how desperately America strives for social conformity.
You don't get kids kicked out of school for wearing Pepsi T-Shirts during a Coca-Cola employment drive day, if you don't love conformity.
You don't get Jerry Falwell if you don't love conformity. My god, if there's a man and his masses who would love everyone to conform, it's that gang of hoodlums.
You don't get Sikhs going turbanless this month in a country that doesn't threaten their lives for not conforming.
And you certainly don't get Brittany Spears and the other kiddy bands if conformity isn't desired.
Cameras to enforce conformity? Hell, yes! It's the American Way!
In a way, *Opera* is to thank for this. If they hadn't been truly innovative, in that they thought to take the uncommon idea of mouse gesturing and applying it to browsing, this would never have made the radar.
I dunno... seems to me it took frigging forever to scramble a fighter to deal with the incoming terrorist jets. Hesitate to guess what kind of hold-ups and hitches there'd be for launching an ICBM.
I'm sure you got moderated down as a troll or flamebait. Hardly surprising, but rather short-sighted of the moderators.
I was originally going to counter-post to your seemingly paranoid and certainly morbid outlook on the government. But I decided not to.
Several hours later, I'm more or less randomly browsing the web, and what do I stumble across? Confirmation of your view:
"SCOTT SHANE & TOM BOWMAN, BALTIMORE SUN, April 24, 2001:
U.S. military leaders proposed in 1962 a secret plan to commit terrorist acts against Americans and blame Cuba to create a pretext for invasion and the ouster of Communist leader Fidel Castro, according to a new book about the National Security Agency.
"We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington," said one document reportedly prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," the document says. "Casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of indignation." The plan is laid out in documents signed by the five Joint Chiefs but never carried out, according to writer James Bamford in "Body of Secrets."
A previously secret document obtained by Bamford offers further suggestions for mayhem to be blamed on Cuba. "We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated).... We could foster attempts on lives of Cubans in the United States, even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized," the document says. Another idea was to shoot down a CIA plane designed to replicate a passenger flight and announce that Cuban forces shot it down."
Good god (pun intended), what a brilliant site! It's almost enough to make me wish to give up all my morals, and start my own "sucker the gullible" Internet church. Why the heck shouldn't *I* get the credulous to throw three million buckaroonies at me? Hell, I can write more persuasively and convincingly than the turd that's running this so-called "church," and I might even be tempted to put that money to good charitable use!
One begins to suspect that the men who run Al-Qaeda -- Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri -- are far-seeing geniuses.
Their goal? Bring America to its knees.
Now, how do you best accomplish that? Well, a good start would be to lead the US Government into recanting on the values that it has always proclaimed are the heart and soul of its nation.
Is America really America when personal privacy and personal freedoms are obliterated?
[and at the same time, one can easily argue that this all plays nicely into the hands of 'big business,' and only serves to further the push towards globalization, which is surely the last thing any mid-East terrorist could want!]
"The RIAA will buy laws that let them tax your ISP for carrying copyrighted data. They will have a tax placed on blank media and will then extend it to all hardware. They will buy laws that let them view all of your data traffic, and have your ports blocked or your service throttled or cut off."
In Canada, there is already a tax on blank media, and it won't surprise me to find that a tax on data transfers is in the works.
Listen to this fellow, people: he's right on the money.
Hey, I remember using this patent back when I was a kid, looooong before this "Pause Technologies" patented the idea.
It was called blinking.
Pretty simple technology, really: (A) Look at scene. (B) Close eyes. Brain continues to recall scene, effectively pausing the action. (C) Open eyes. Live action playback is resumed.
Ah, if only I'd known that this was such an innovative idea, I'd have patented it back in '72. Coulda been a billionaire by now -- those VCRs wouldn't be nearly as useful without frame-by-frame playback!
Standardization in the telco arena is a good thing. One of the greatest hold-backs for cellular technology in North America is that we've got too many competing, incompatible technologies.
If there was no incentive to motivate, then how did Canada -- which until recently had nothing but provincial monopoly telcos -- end up with Nortel, one of the world's leading telephone technology innovators? Nortel, which was born of our telco monopolies, and which supplied them with the latest and greatest technologies. Technology which, I might add, it took *years* for the US to start using.
I am remembering what things were like, but not for the US Bell monopoly, but the Canadian (western Canadian, at any rate) Bell monopoly.
Back then, business calling subsidized local calling. Our monthly line lease rates were low, we had free local calling, and long-distance calling was expensive. We also had service-call guarantees, and didn't pay to have our house wiring or rental phones fixed.
Now that the business long-distance isn't subsidizing our local costs, we've seen a doubling or tripling of private line leasing, long-distance is cheap, and service guarantees stop at the external wall of the house. If you want your internal wiring fixed, you pay $150/hr (! quite clearly, the telco has no interest in being inside our houses; everyone, of course, contracts an electrician or alarm installer!)
As for the upgrade myth, again, you're refering to the American monopoly experience, which was a distinctly *poorly*-regulated monopoly.
In BC, Podunk got the latest digital technology when time came to replace the mechanical switches. There wasn't a shit cascade from Vancouver -> Prince George -> Podunk. No matter where the exchange, it got the latest-greatest.
BC had a very well-regulated monopoly, with consumer interests very well-represented.
You had a nearly-unregulated monopoly, and consumers were ignored.
So I can reiterate, with the confidence of experience, that a well-regulated monopoly is a Good Thing. The consumer is well-represented while the monopoly receives a fair profit.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean, really. WWIII is on the doorstep, and we're wanking about windows managers? Jaysus, people, getta grip on what's important!
[this message (C)2001 by KarmaWhore Unlimited.]
Doesn't look big?
Crikey, guy, if this goes down poorly, your ass is grass. Arab nations get upset with the US actions, and your life is gonna change.
And there's a good chance that this *is* pissing the mid-East civilians. Check out this article from India.
Now, more than ever, it is important for Americans to seek global news sources. Do Not Trust Your Media.
Perhaps what is most outrageous about the terrorist attack is that no one has claimed responsibility for it, and no one has tried to benefit by it.
It's just bizarre. Why the heck do it, if you don't take claim of it?
What the hell did they gain... except, perhaps, to start WWIII?
The Taliban is a large group of young men who were orphaned at a very young age, during the fight against Russia.
They were raised in violent circumstances, and only the ruthless survived. Those who were not willing to kill for food, clothing, and shelter, died. They raised themselves, and did so by the law of the wild: eat or be eaten.
Those that survived were then scooped up by Pakistani fundamentalists. They were provided food, shelter, and education -- an education that was exclusively religious, and fundamentalist at that.
These feral young men were then sent back into Afghanistan, where they quickly gained dominance through their ruthless slaughter of everyone who opposed their fundamentalist demands.
These people are far removed from humanity due to the nature of their upbringing. They were raised in conditions we don't subject even domestic animals to, were educated with lies, and released as a pack to go wild and savage.
The question I want an answer to is: how could that be allowed to happen? Surely someone knew what was happening -- why didn't we intervene to stop what was otherwise inevitable?!
Right on, bro. You've nailed it.
Couple of points, though: Afghanistan can not declare war. There is no Afghanistan: what we, outside of that territory, call a country for sake of convenience, is not viewed as a country from within. Internally, it is a handful of tribes at ill-ease with each other, who co-operate only so far as it benefits their own tribesmen.
The Taliban is not a ruling party so much as a gang of thugs who represent only themselves. The Taliban can declare war, and the US can declare war on the Taliban.
Secondly: surgical strikes. Not only by special-ops troops, but also remotely. The military can map the land to inch-resolution using spy satellites and surveilance aircraft, both of which are at an altitude well out of range of the Taliban.
With these detailed maps, ground targets are easily identified. And with companion bombers, also flying well out of range, Very Big Bombs can be dropped with exacting precision on those targets. With no warning.
Terrorist training camp, kiss your ass goodbye.
These high-altitude attacks don't have to take place right now (and probably shouldn't: only a fool would have an active camp this month!)
The only safe place to train will be underground.
A better *friend* than Tony?
Hell, no. You couldn't have a better *bum-buddy* than Tony. He's eager to bend over and take it from the USA.
Don't mistake Tony's words as support and friendship. He's using you to get his own rocks off, in his own peculiar way.
Yup. Great big racks always catch my eye. Don't think I can build my own, though...
Yes, but the photographic essay seems fairly convincing.
I note that the school isn't entirely cardboard: there is timber framing, and the tubes are capped by steel doohickeys. Yes, that is the construction-trades technical term for them.
I'm not sure if you're approving or disapproving of my message, but either way you're bound to be satisfied: it's been moderated up as interesting, and down as over-rated!
Slashdot moderation: it's the jumbo shrimp of the online world...
Fido was a lousy system for communications. The message format and controls just got in the way of discussions. It was, in short, not well-designed for "talking."
It was great for files, though. Really kicked ass there. And it was good for pure information sharing, of the question-answer style.
Now, what was (and is) great for communication -- that is, discussion and discourse -- was/is the Citadel-style BBS. Man, that thing was honed for chatter: streaming sequential messages, closer to dinner-party conversation than anything else.
I do hope that this documentary doesn't ignore the discussion-based BBSes. There were a lot of people who shared a lot of opinions on those systems... and some of us even had our minds changed because of their persuasive arguments!
Point of Fact: Opera has extensive keyboard support. Almost every single keypress does, indeed, do something.
Oh, fersure. Opera certainly didn't pioneer the technology. But they did recognize a great idea and implemented it well!
What I find frustrating these days is that I can't close all my application documents by executing a mouse-squiggle. Damn!
Sorry, but whoever wrote that greatly underestimates how desperately America strives for social conformity.
You don't get kids kicked out of school for wearing Pepsi T-Shirts during a Coca-Cola employment drive day, if you don't love conformity.
You don't get Jerry Falwell if you don't love conformity. My god, if there's a man and his masses who would love everyone to conform, it's that gang of hoodlums.
You don't get Sikhs going turbanless this month in a country that doesn't threaten their lives for not conforming.
And you certainly don't get Brittany Spears and the other kiddy bands if conformity isn't desired.
Cameras to enforce conformity? Hell, yes! It's the American Way!
In a way, *Opera* is to thank for this. If they hadn't been truly innovative, in that they thought to take the uncommon idea of mouse gesturing and applying it to browsing, this would never have made the radar.
I dunno... seems to me it took frigging forever to scramble a fighter to deal with the incoming terrorist jets. Hesitate to guess what kind of hold-ups and hitches there'd be for launching an ICBM.
I've the 45Gb model. Been working flawlessly for about a year.
I'm sure you got moderated down as a troll or flamebait. Hardly surprising, but rather short-sighted of the moderators.
... We could foster attempts on lives of Cubans in the United States, even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized," the document says. Another idea was to shoot down a CIA plane designed to replicate a passenger flight and announce that Cuban forces shot it down."
I was originally going to counter-post to your seemingly paranoid and certainly morbid outlook on the government. But I decided not to.
Several hours later, I'm more or less randomly browsing the web, and what do I stumble across? Confirmation of your view:
"SCOTT SHANE & TOM BOWMAN, BALTIMORE SUN, April 24, 2001:
U.S. military leaders proposed in 1962 a secret plan to commit terrorist acts against Americans and blame Cuba to create a pretext for invasion and the ouster of Communist leader Fidel Castro, according to a new book about the National Security Agency.
"We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington," said one document reportedly prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," the document says. "Casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of indignation." The plan is laid out in documents signed by the five Joint Chiefs but never carried out, according to writer James Bamford in "Body of Secrets."
A previously secret document obtained by Bamford offers further suggestions for mayhem to be blamed on Cuba. "We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated).
Good god. Maybe you aren't so paranoid after all.
Oooh! I hadn't even thought to go there. That's a very intriguing line of thought!
Good god (pun intended), what a brilliant site! It's almost enough to make me wish to give up all my morals, and start my own "sucker the gullible" Internet church. Why the heck shouldn't *I* get the credulous to throw three million buckaroonies at me? Hell, I can write more persuasively and convincingly than the turd that's running this so-called "church," and I might even be tempted to put that money to good charitable use!
As always,
amazed by people...
One begins to suspect that the men who run Al-Qaeda -- Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri -- are far-seeing geniuses.
Their goal? Bring America to its knees.
Now, how do you best accomplish that? Well, a good start would be to lead the US Government into recanting on the values that it has always proclaimed are the heart and soul of its nation.
Is America really America when personal privacy and personal freedoms are obliterated?
[and at the same time, one can easily argue that this all plays nicely into the hands of 'big business,' and only serves to further the push towards globalization, which is surely the last thing any mid-East terrorist could want!]
"The RIAA will buy laws that let them tax your ISP for carrying copyrighted data. They will have a tax placed on blank media and will then extend it to all hardware. They will buy laws that let them view all of your data traffic, and have your ports blocked or your service throttled or cut off."
In Canada, there is already a tax on blank media, and it won't surprise me to find that a tax on data transfers is in the works.
Listen to this fellow, people: he's right on the money.
Hey, I remember using this patent back when I was a kid, looooong before this "Pause Technologies" patented the idea.
It was called blinking.
Pretty simple technology, really: (A) Look at scene. (B) Close eyes. Brain continues to recall scene, effectively pausing the action. (C) Open eyes. Live action playback is resumed.
Ah, if only I'd known that this was such an innovative idea, I'd have patented it back in '72. Coulda been a billionaire by now -- those VCRs wouldn't be nearly as useful without frame-by-frame playback!
Standardization in the telco arena is a good thing. One of the greatest hold-backs for cellular technology in North America is that we've got too many competing, incompatible technologies.
If there was no incentive to motivate, then how did Canada -- which until recently had nothing but provincial monopoly telcos -- end up with Nortel, one of the world's leading telephone technology innovators? Nortel, which was born of our telco monopolies, and which supplied them with the latest and greatest technologies. Technology which, I might add, it took *years* for the US to start using.
I am remembering what things were like, but not for the US Bell monopoly, but the Canadian (western Canadian, at any rate) Bell monopoly.
Back then, business calling subsidized local calling. Our monthly line lease rates were low, we had free local calling, and long-distance calling was expensive. We also had service-call guarantees, and didn't pay to have our house wiring or rental phones fixed.
Now that the business long-distance isn't subsidizing our local costs, we've seen a doubling or tripling of private line leasing, long-distance is cheap, and service guarantees stop at the external wall of the house. If you want your internal wiring fixed, you pay $150/hr (! quite clearly, the telco has no interest in being inside our houses; everyone, of course, contracts an electrician or alarm installer!)
As for the upgrade myth, again, you're refering to the American monopoly experience, which was a distinctly *poorly*-regulated monopoly.
In BC, Podunk got the latest digital technology when time came to replace the mechanical switches. There wasn't a shit cascade from Vancouver -> Prince George -> Podunk. No matter where the exchange, it got the latest-greatest.
BC had a very well-regulated monopoly, with consumer interests very well-represented.
You had a nearly-unregulated monopoly, and consumers were ignored.
So I can reiterate, with the confidence of experience, that a well-regulated monopoly is a Good Thing. The consumer is well-represented while the monopoly receives a fair profit.