North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Afghanistan [OT]
You're talking about a country with very little electricity, non-existent telecom and no running water. You do realize this don't you? Curtis On Tue, 18 Sep 2001, Vadim Antonov wrote: > > > > As already was pointed out - keeping comm channels open to Afganistan is > not an issue. The only people having access to the channels are exactly > those who will only interpret what comes thru as more crap from the > infidels. Ochlocracy is the term for what's going on over there. > > In fact, it may be quite worthwhile to close their two-way comms to make > coordination of adversarial activity abroad harder to them. > > The open access makes sense as an a tool for influencing people's opinions > _only_ when people have widely available and unfiltered access. If > Afganistan had any independent ISPs, I'd say do everything possible to > make them successful. Alas, this is not the case. > > I'd say the better way of communicating would be the classical > native-language radio translation in Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe > fashion, otherwise known as propaganda. Worked well for the USSR. > Radios are cheap and realtively available (and hard to control, too). > May be worthwhile to actually air-drop loads of small and easy to hide > solar-powered units. I'd expect a lot of people to listen to those in > hiding even when threatened with execution for mere posession. > > Given the air superiority of NATO, controlling use of those radios by the > local propaganda units can be very easy - just drop radio-guided missiles > on Taliban transmitters. > > --vadim > > On Tue, 18 Sep 2001, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote: > > > > > At 12:01 PM 9/18/2001 -0700, Randy Bush wrote: > > >>> Has anyone started to deny all traffic to/from Afghanistan ? > > >> It is my understanding that the free flow of ideas and discussion of same > > >> is detrimental to an extremist or dictatorial government. Such > > governments > > >> rarely (ever?) survive open discussions and flow of ideas. > > > > > >so i guess we should not advocate cutting off that flow, eh? > > > > Absolutely. > > > > When someone claims they are in power, or smarter than you, or just know > > better, and tell you to do something you think is a poor idea, or simply > > something you do not want to do, you should research and find out why. Do > > not just take their word for it. And the Internet is a darned good way of > > getting that outside information for many, many people. > > > > Of course, that opens a long discussion because there are obvious > > exceptions - parents and children, military personnel, bosses & > > employees. It is easy to see how someone could extend that to a government > > and its people. I do not believe it should be in most > > circumstances. Maybe I am wrong. > > > > But that is straying too far off topic even for me. > > > > > > >randy > > > > -- > > TTFN, > > patrick > > > -- ------------------------------------------------------------ Curtis Maurand System Administrator lamere.net Powered by Prexar http://www.lamere.net mailto:[email protected] Linux, OS/2, Windows (any flavor) http://www.prexar.com Cisco, OpenRoute, Lucent MySQL, SQL Server, PHP, Perl ------------------------------------------------------------
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