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Internet Censorship's First Death Sentence?
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Feb 02, 2008 03:21 PM
from the that's-a-bit-harsh-i-think dept.
from the that's-a-bit-harsh-i-think dept.
mrogers writes "A journalism student in Afghanistan has been sentenced to death by a Sharia court for downloading and sharing a report criticizing the treatment of women in some Islamic countries. The student was accused of blasphemy and tried without representation. According to Reporters Without Borders, sixty people are currently in jail worldwide for criticizing governments online, fifty of them in China, but this may be the first time someone has been sentenced to death for using the internet. Internet censorship is on the rise worldwide, according to The OpenNet Initiative."
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1st censorship death sentence (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:1st censorship death sentence (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:1st censorship death sentence (Score:4, Insightful)
*paraphrasing ben franklin
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Re:1st censorship death sentence (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides, your analogy is completely misleading. What if it's 2 lambs and a wolf voting on what's for dinner? You're implying that the minority has an inherent right to protect itself via violence from the outcome of a vote. Do you really want to open the door to wahabists buying guns and contesting votes via shootouts because in America, they're the lamb in the minority? Didn't think so.
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Re:1st censorship death sentence (Score:5, Interesting)
Alas if it is left alone, we get a repeat of the same situation that led to the reason we had to 'help' [koff] them in the first place.
The Taleban used to execute women for, well, pretty much anything. That's not good, but neither is it representative of the entire population.
The problem is, there are a fair few million people who are Afghans, and they'd rather not leave, what with it being their ancestral home of many tens of thousands of years. What do you think would happen if, say, Utah lost proper government for a while and became a place ruled purely by the whims of religious men with absolute power and no desire to let things change?
Do you think the normal folk in Utah would all think it was ok to leave and let the state collapse/be fenced off? Or that they might perhaps want a little help to sort things out.
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Re:1st censorship death sentence (Score:5, Funny)
Fifty states and you picked that one as an example? :)
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Re:1st censorship death sentence (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:1st censorship death sentence (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:1st censorship death sentence (Score:4, Interesting)
Totally agreed.
However, accept that you're going to get royally fucked unless you're in the majority. Your rights are great and all, but the herd hates a mutant.
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Re:1st censorship death sentence (Score:5, Insightful)
Hope!?
That was one of the saddest and depressing posts ever, bereft of any hope for humankind's future whatsoever!
What are the basic implications of his stance? That there shall be always majorities voting to kill minorities? That the way to go forward is a landscape of bunkers with deranged, rabid, paranoid occupants eyeing each other's "neighbours" through squinted eyes and the sights of the ever bigger guns in their formidable arsenals while looking for a slightest sign of "aggression" so that they can open up with their canons, rockets, nukes and what not on each other, "until they run out of ammo"? That the societal structure be based on the size of one's armory?
And this is hope?! Me thinks you should look under the heading of "nightmare" in the dictionary and you will find the definition much more fitting.
The sad, pathetic and wholly uninspiring assumption of that post is that humans will never be able to dis-entangle themselves from their evolutionary reptilian brain baggage and will forever remain snarling, greedy, short-sighted, delusional, unreasoning and completely despicable creatures they are now, forever clawing each other eyes out over some pathetic plastic trinkets or incomprehensible ramblings of long-dead senile imbeciles enshrined in some "holy" book.
And what is even more depressing, is that some here seem to gleefully and impatiently look towards their dream of some sort of apocalyptic shootout coming true, where the last man standing with the biggest gun and the longest dick swinging "wins".
"Hope" he says...
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Re:1st censorship death sentence (Score:4, Interesting)
Your Orwellian rant is the speech of a man who expects always to be in the majority, and expects others to protect him if he's not. While your attitude may serve you in a pluralist democracy, it hinges on the existence of the men whom you despise - men who understand that vigilance is not just a necessary evil, but a way of life.
Vigilance and self defence do not mean having a private arsenal in a concrete bunker, and being paranoid of anyone who comes near you. They DO mean keeping informed of the world around you, being ready to defend yourself and others, and seeking to cultivate similar attitudes in those around you. It can be as simple as starting a neighbourhood watch, or as complex as organizing an armed neighbourhood militia to defend your streets, as some of your fellow citizens had to do recently in Louisiana. Ask yourself, how well could you provide for your family tomorrow if a New Orleans scale disaster hit your city? Only fools and sheep depend on others for their defence. It's YOUR life! Protect it!
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Re:1st censorship death sentence (Score:4, Insightful)
Wolves at each other's throats, forever then! Would-be tyrants clawing their way to the top to replace the ones being "kept at bay" via bullet holes in their skulls by "patriots" sporting portable tactical nuclear missiles, then anti-matter, than some kind of planet-busting time-space continuum weapons, until the end of time! (or the premature end of the unfortunate planet Earth having given birth to such a hopeless flock of pathetic trogloditic morons)
Huh? Wha? Orwellian? In minority? Protect?!! Do you have any clue what Orwell's distopia was actually about?
Nice try. But no cigar. These supposed vigilant "defenders" exist solely because of those of their own kind ON THE OTHER SIDE. If it weren't for macho, gonad-thinking, greedy, power-hungry, religious lunacy infested and heavily armed imbeciles elsewhere, enlightened societies would not need to tolerate their own pet zoos of macho, gonad-thinking, greedy, power-hungry, religious lunacy infested or other kinds of armed imbeciles as a counter-measure to unleash on the other idiots if needed.
And that is the fact so very uncomfortable to all these would-be "defenders" of our "freedoms" (who usually congregate in some sort of new True-blue Patriotic Neighbourhood, Homeland or Motherland Security organizations, usually complete with demands for everyone else to "temporarily" relinquishing their freedoms so that they could be "vigilanty" defended).
All of this shit is pure base animal "logic". The stuff that fills reptile brains. Kill or be killed! Eat or be eaten! Rat-think. Far below what the so-called "technologically advanced" and "civilized" society should strive for. The very fact that so many here cannot seem to raise above the level of thought processes of a snake, is a sad testimony indeed as to how far humanity is from any sort of hopeful future.
Indeed! Informed out of the pages of Der-Sturmer, being ready do defend yourself from the taxman (or the mailman) and to cultivate similar attitudes in those around in your Montana "militia", while on patrol for them "illigul immigrunts", around the still.
The moment the citizens if my country need an "armed militia" "defending the streets", the country would be done for. There indeed would not need to be a point to a such a country anymore as it would have by then devolved to an anarchy of roaming bands of self-appointed thuggish banditry calling themselves "militias" and final rule by the barrel of a gun. Usually at first by the upper-class trigger happy "militiamen" "defending" their God-given hoards of stuff against them "unwashed thieving lazies", only, given enough time, to be followed by a swift reversal when the "unwashed ones" figure out that they have 10:1 numerical advantage.
There is a world of a difference between living in a c
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Re:1st censorship death sentence (Score:5, Insightful)
Completely ignoring the fact that wolves are likely to be well armed too and much better trained and more ready to use violence.
Our rights are based on the insight that everyone's in some kind of minority and that it's important to protect the rights of everyone instead of just the will of the majority.
In other words: We should have written the constitution and the law books as the US did in Japan after WWII, with some minor input by the Afghanis, to prevent stuff like this from happening. Yes, that would have alienated a lot of them but they don't love us now either. And if we have to go through an insurgency that will probably last for another decade we should at least make sure that we do it for a new order that's actually worth fighting for, not for a slight variation of the old one that's almost as oppressive but a tad less ready to export terrorism.
Another problem's of course that too many people in the West are ready to throw out 200 years of lessons learned the hard way to protect themselves against terrorism, the 456th leading cause of death in the western world.
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Clarification, please (Score:3, Insightful)
All the other posters replying to your post seem to be of the opinion that the point of the analogy you drew was that armed lambs will be able to defend themselves against attack by the wolves. A naive interpretation, such as mine, of this analogy would instead be that in a constitutional republic, the constitution acts as the guns of the lamb - both figuratively and, through its agent the Executive, literally - to protect it from assault by the wolves, despite them being in the majority. This could be r
Re:1st censorship death sentence (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:1st censorship death sentence (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:1st censorship death sentence (Score:5, Insightful)
To polarize this by religion is ridiculous when its a governing body making the judgement to begin with. Yes, they are the clergy in afghanistan, but they're just humans maintaining their positions of power not widely accepted views from the entire world of islam. If I were to use the same tactic in reverse, i'd be spouting things like
"What part of "Thou shall not kill" is so hard to understand?" like the onion, or perhaps suggesting one contemplate when it was that executing the mentally challenged was finally banned in texas....part of the proverbial bible belt yes?
Course its always a lot easier to spout a knee jerk response and feel righteous about it. I suppose thats why springer existed to begin with. Look at it this way, culturally a blanket statement of "blasphemy" tends to have other people look the other way when someone is sentenced to death in that country, so that is the bent the officials used to silence their critic.
In north america, we call it "witchcraft" "communism" or "terrorism" and replace death with life without parole, economic destruction, or character assassination...except for certain states of course. We also have a culture of questioning blanket statements concerning freedom of speech, and went through our own embarrassing period with Salem and such.
Granted, I prefer here to there based on this, but i've lived in this system all my life so I cannot really compare at all. The arrogant attitude that the US is somehow of a "superior class" and shouldn't be compared with other governments is just racism enhanced by jingoism in the end though.
If we want to be angry, be angry with Hamid Karzai for not demanding a pardon. He's been dealing with western diplomats long enough to know what kind of outrage this would cause, even if he isn't humanitarian enough to do so on his own. And if he somehow doesn't have the balls to step up to the clergy, then who is REALLY in power in afghanistan currently?
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Re:1st censorship death sentence (Score:5, Informative)
It's a constitutional democratic republic, which is a form of democracy.
Our puppet government in Afghanistan is also a constitutional republic, the "Islamic Republic of Afghanistan", with a constitution adopted in 2004 [wikipedia.org]. Instead of being in the name of "We, the people", theirs is in the name of "In the name of Allah, the Most Beneficient, the Most Merciful".
Article Thirty-Four of said constitution states [president.gov.af]:
So I see they're doing as good of job of following their constitution as our government is of following ours.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Every Afghan shall have the right to express thoughts through speech, writing, illustrations as well as other means in accordance with provisions of this constitution. Directives related to the press, radio and television as well as publications and other mass media shall be regulated by law.
They're following the same way the US is, alright. Using the loopholes that allow the government to do whatever it wants to do... well whatever it wants. In the US, the weasel clause is "without due process". In the Afghan constitution, I'm sure there's a clause about not blaspheming Allah, and so "in accordance with this Constitution" means that free speech is inviolable unless it blasphemes Allah - which is whatever the government says it is.
Re:1st censorship death sentence (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why democracy can't just suddenly be implemented. The people have to want it, leaders included (or, at least, the majority of them). The U.S. democracy (or, I should say, democratic republic) only got started because the people at the time didn't want a monarchy or the like and would not have immediately voted to change it back (not like votes matter all that much as it is, they only put people in power to "represent" you).
In short, this just helps to prove that the neo-con idealogical goal of converting the world to democracy is misguided at best.
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Re:1st censorship death sentence (Score:5, Insightful)
A more correct argument would be that "Democracy can't just suddenly be implemented without extreme skill and a firm hand in control during the transition."
Alas, extreme skill - or, indeed, skill of any sort - seems to be lacking in our "nation-building" efforts of late.
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Re:1st censorship death sentence (Score:5, Insightful)
But there are a lot of significant differences between them and the nations following sharia law, and nobody has yet figured out how to bridge them.
In both Germany and Japan, there was a central figure of extreme authority, a small group of insiders hoping to be next in line, a larger group of thugs willing to do their bidding because they enjoy hurting people, and a large percent of the populace that was willing to believe that their crappy lot in life was the result of "population X" (fill in the X with Jews, Poles, gypsies, westerners, Chinese, blacks, Arabs, homosexuals, or whoever is a convenient target.) All forms of tyranny essentially use this same model. And defeating them is also quite well understood: destroy the head, remove the insiders, and the movement dies. But in those cases, it was the national government that was responsible for the war. They were well known, easy to identify, and easy to physically locate. The fact that our politicians were willing to sacrifice a lot of innocent civilians with our bombing campaigns made it that much easier.
But the current situation with violent Islamists is very different. First and foremost, their battle is based on religion, rather than politics. Despite the occasional memo coming from Osama bin Laden, there is no official head, no single "pope" of Islam dictating the violence -- mullahs all over the place are free to interpret the Qu'ran however they wish and issue fatwas of their own. Many are corrupt, seeking only to establish or maintain a power base for themselves, and the Westerners|Su'unis|Shi'a are easy and convenient targets for raising the ire of the populous. But being heads of religions, they have elevated themselves to being "above" questioning -- indeed, TFA is about the impending death of one such questioner. And the blanket of religion protects them all -- an attack by the U.S. on even a minor but corrupt mullah would rally much of ordinary non-violent Islam against the Americans. And each corrupt mullah has built himself up as a mini-tyrant, and is surrounded by a small group of insiders plus a wider group of thugs, making each individual sect almost as hard to clean up as a whole nation.
The historical example would suggest a strategy such as the simultaneous assassinations of all the corrupt mullahs and their circles. And that is so heinous and illegitimate as to be unthinkable, even to our current violence-prone government, not to mention impossible to coordinate. And who would decide their guilt? Who would do the investigating? Where would the trials be held? We'd essentially be using both a Gestapo AND a schutstaffel to pull it off. It would require an absolutely corrupt process, bringing new corrupt people and a new horrible set of problems into the mix.
We in the West know very little about Islam, or how to influence it. I'm sure we're trying to find ways to convince the honorable mullahs to discredit the corrupt ones, but they already have a huge base of well-deserved mistrust for us. New meddling in their business will not endear us to them, either.
MacArthur had it easy, by comparison.
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Re:1st censorship death sentence (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3)
Some day christianity will be taught next to greek mythology - and the great men who were a part of it will still be great for the things they did, not the beliefs they held.
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Re:1st censorship death sentence (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, this case is about political censorship; it isn't about religion, or even about the journalism student at all. The student's brother is a journalist who has written pieces critical of one of Afghanistan's political factions, they haven't been able to get him, so they resorted to arresting the journalism student and trumped up some charges. This is about suppressing political dissent; there was a story about this on NPR a few days ago. It's unlikely that the student is in real danger of execution: apparently Karzai has to OK any executions. He doesn't strike me as that kind of a guy, but even assuming he was completely lacking in moral fiber, it's doubtful he would: doing so would cede power to his rivals and piss off his international allies. But I agree that Sharia is an idea whose time came and went in the Dark Ages, along with burning witches and trial by duel. When your court claims to execute God's Will, that gives it power that is difficult to check, and as seen here, that leads to abuses.
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Re:1st censorship death sentence (Score:4, Funny)
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Opportunity knocks (Score:4, Funny)
Nope (Score:5, Informative)
The Afghan Senate decided to go back on it's original decision [independent.co.uk]
But the first story / headline is much more likely to bring in people from the RSS readers / aggregators etc. Not that internet censorship isn't a topic worth discussing; but the latest information is more useful than this misleading summary.
Sheesh.
Still disturbing as fuck (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Still disturbing as fuck (Score:5, Insightful)
The government isn't the problem, it's the politicians that are currently making up the government. The framework is in place for the elected officials to lose their standing as soon as the next election comes up. It would not necessarily be a bad thing in my eyes for an entirely new senate to be elected. One side may claim its a failure of the government 'we set up', however I would see it as a beneficial option given to the citizens as a result of the government 'we set up'.
We didn't select their leaders. They selected their own leaders. The US cannot be blamed because the citizens didn't choose wisely nor know how their elected representatives would act. Picking candidates wisely comes with time and experience; many of us in the US still haven't learned how to look past the flashy smear commercials during our election time.
They are still a very young democracy with new ideals being forced upon them. There will be many more examples of this in the future. When/If Iraq's democracy takes hold, I guarantee you will see the same stories from there as well. It's up to all of us an in international community to tactfully and politically inform them that they are being idiots when they do something as idiotic as this.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
you?
Me?
Who are we to say who the afghans should have running their country?
Who is to say that their elected representatives are not acting in accordance with their peoples' wishes?
This is the whole problem with our "nation building" bullshit. We only think it's cool, when the people elect people we agree are good leaders.
News flash everyone... THE MIDDLE EAST IS ISLAMIC, AND IF LEFT TO DEMOCRACY, ARE LIKELY TO VOTE IN ISLAMIC REPRESENTATION.
Personally, I don't like it eit
We had a choice. We could have stopped it. (Score:5, Insightful)
That didn't stop us from setting policies in Iraq unilaterally, like banning anyone who was ever a member of the Baath party from holding any position in the new government. We installed the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ruled for over a year in Iraq. After that, a non-elected interim government ruled for (about) another year. I don't know offhand how that compares to our efforts in Afghanistan, but my point is this: we didn't relinquish control of Iraq until we were sure that relatively secular, pro-western leaders were going to take over.
And we damn sure should have done the same thing in Afghanistan, especially if we cared about the potential for them to become future terrorist producers/trainers/harborers.
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Patriotic Slogan (Score:4, Funny)
Sharia == Smokescreen (Score:5, Informative)
I think, but am not sure that's in the Uruzgan province where our dear Dutch soldiers are protecting such scumbags while spreading freedom and democracy.
And there are persistent rumors that Karzai (mayor of Kabul)'s brother is opium chief number one in that lovely place. Well I reckon something has to pay for weaponry and the squanders of war and newfound power. And they can cheerfully dump the heroin into countries such as Iran. You know, to stop the terrorists there.
BTW, in Iraq they now HAVE sharia law. Officially. It's only a few pages away from the oil privatizing clauses in their new and illegal constitution brought to them by the benevolent US of A. Gays are killed. Single women (and there are MANY widows there) are targeted. The whole shebang. So they get death from above, death from starvation, death from disease, and death from their own governments militia (and the madhi). Almost makes death by M16 a mercy killing, doesn't it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What I
Re:Thank god the USA invaded that country (Score:5, Insightful)
Now your grandchildren... MAYBE they might pay it off.
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Re:Thank god the USA invaded that country (Score:5, Funny)
You're so narrowminded that you could peer through a keyhole with both eyes!
(Sorry
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Re:Thank god the USA invaded that country (Score:4, Insightful)
Now that really depends on which Muslims you ask. Unfortunately the Muslims who feel that proper Islam requires Sharia Law are also much more prone to enforcing their religious views with physical force. They may even be in the minority in many places, but they are the vocal, violent minority. So yes, "it's possible to be Jewish and not follow all 613 laws in the Torah" but it is also possible to do so in Israel without being beaten, maimed, or executed.
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Re:Thank god the USA invaded that country (Score:4, Funny)
(It is Pennsylvania, right?)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The only reason we don't have a similar situation to Afghanistan in the West today is that we (including those calling themselves "Christian") ignore most of what Bible says and
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Re:nice religion ya got there, guys (Score:4, Insightful)
Would you... dare I say... sentence me to death for criticizing an Atheist government?
Religion isn't the problem, blowing shit out of proportion is. Atheists can be just as bad as Christians or Muslims or Scientologists, they are after all - people.
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EVERY religion sucks! (Score:5, Interesting)
No, let's say thank "god" no one was ever killed on behalf of religious skepticism, or agnosticism, or whatever you call it.
Any kind of blind belief, where faith never bends to reason, is evil, no matter if it's faith in Islam or Jesus Christ.
Robert Heinlein said it best, in "If This Goes On -":
"Yet you are willing to assert your own religious convictions and to use them as a touchstone to judge my conduct. So I repeat: who told you? What hill were you standing on when the lightning came down from heaven and illuminated you? Which archangel carried the message?"
"I believe that a man has an obligation to be merciful to the weak
"I believe very strongly in freedom of religion - but I think that that freedom is best expressed as freedom to keep quiet. From my point of view, a great deal of openly expressed piety is insufferable conceit."
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Re:Don't tell the RIAA they can do this... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:This is OUR fault. WE did this. (Score:5, Interesting)
What is WRONG with you people--you jingoists, you untiring flag-wavers, you twin-tower-tattooing rednecks, you support-the-war-or-you-aren't-a-patriot fucks?
There's a certain segment of the population that just likes things to be simple. They don't understand the world, and they don't want to. They rely on the President or Bill O'Reilly, or hell, even Susan Sarandon to tell them what's right. If the leadership tells them something simple like "we gotta get them terrorists" they'll defend that forever. Questioning that would be going down the path of trying to understand something they don't want to.
Everyone does that to SOME degree with some topic. If my mechanic started talking about how bad Chevy transmissions are compared to Ford transmissions, and how Chevy was a rotten company for making bad transmissions, my eyes would glaze over, especially if I heard all the time how great Chevy transmissions are from my friends, family, etc. Obviously I think international politics are more important than transmissions... but my point is there's a certain amount of willful disengagement with the populace.
Your message is right, but your approach is wrong. You sound like Ron Paul (in the sanest thing he's ever said) talking about Iraq at the Republican debate the other night. People, at least in the US, don't like to listen to ranting and raving people. It doesn't matter what they're saying, it's just an automatic "this guy sounds crazy, whatever he's saying is crazy".
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If anything, the increased media presence in Afghanistan brought about by our invasion is probably the only reason we even know about this case.
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Well, if you hold onto the Amero-centric view that nobody had posited the spheroid nature of the Earth before Columbus sailed to the Americas, I suppose one could point out to you the fact that the Aztec empire just isn't what it used to be.
Yaz.