The Taliban’s Real Attitude

I remember a few years back reading, from Westerners, that the Taliban had changed, moderated its excesses, that it was softer, gentler, etc you can imagine the rest.

I didn’t believe such nonsense then, or now.

Let’s forget not the fate awaiting women and girls under Taliban, arbitrary murder:

“KABUL — A man Afghan officials say is a member of the Taliban shot dead a woman accused of adultery in front of a crowd near Kabul, a video obtained by Reuters showed, a sign that the austere Islamist group dictates law even near the Afghan capital.

In the three-minute video, a turban-clad man approaches a woman kneeling in the dirt and shoots her five times at close range with an automatic rifle, to cheers of jubilation from the 150 or so men watching in a village in Parwan province.

“Allah warns us not to get close to adultery because it’s the wrong way,” another man says as the shooter gets closer to the woman. “It is the order of Allah that she be executed”.

Provincial Governor Basir Salangi said the video, obtained on Saturday, was shot a week ago in the village of Qimchok in Shinwari district, about an hour’s drive from Kabul.

Such rare public punishment was a painful reminder to Afghan authorities of the Taliban’s 1996-2001 period in power, and it raised concern about the treatment of Afghan women 11 years into the NATO-led war against Taliban insurgents. “

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Hackers Vs. Drug Cartels

This is an unintentionally amusing piece on the proposed attack on drug cartels by hacktivists, who don’t seem that bright. It had never occurred to them how the drug cartels would naturally react if they were threatened, by killing anyone that crosses them. How terribly naive:

“Supposed members of the hacker-activist collective ‘Anonymous’ recently threatened to go after Mexico’s Zetas drug cartel, but reports now indicate that the fate of this so-called “Operation Cartel” may be in doubt.

As reported by the AP, the hacktivists’ latest project was announced in a YouTube video alleging that an Anonymous member had been kidnapped by members of the cartel. According to PCMag, the unnamed individual was said to have been “kidnapped during a street-level protest named Operation Paperstorm in Veracruz, Mexico.” The Register notes that the video was apparently uploaded to YouTube on October 6 but wasn’t translated to English until late in October.

However, doubts have arisen over the claim’s validity, and some worry about a possible backlash from the Zetas.

Following the wide distribution of the video’s English-language version earlier this week, security company Stratfor assessed the risk of speaking out against the notoriously violent Zetas and the likelihood of retaliation. “

The Syrian Revolution

We hear far too little about the rampant killings that have gone on in Syria for months and months, so this BBC documentary is rather timely:

It is also available via iplayer, Syria: Inside the Secret Revolution