June 18, 2001
Afghanistan. No nation in the
Afghanistan. No nation in the world is suffering more, and with no nation is the rest of the world so helpless.
What is happening in Afghanistan goes beyond tyranny, beyond injustice, beyond cruelty. The reign of terror to which the Taliban have subjected their people is an abomination. It is humanity at is very ugliest, a hideous testimony to how thin the barriers really are between civilization and savagery. Afghanistan's descent into madness in the past twenty years should chill us all. None of us are immune from the horrors that have unleashed itself on this small landlocked Asian country. And once entrenched, evil takes on a life of its own, an evil that grows ever stronger despite any and all attempts to stop it.
Sexism and the oppression of women are nothing new, of course; they have been omnipresent in human society for thousands of years. But the ruling Taliban party in Afghanistan have taken it to extremes that boggle the mind. Not sufficient is it that women be forced to wear long robes like the Saudi hijab; the Taliban have come up with the even more oppressive burqa. Wearing this outfit, a woman is completely invisible. The curves of her body are totally hidden in massive layers of cloth. Even her face is covered with a thick black screen, through which it is difficult to see. The heavy garment is torture in Afghanistan's desert heat; yet to venture outside without it is a crime punishable by death. Taliban police, consisting mostly of teenage boys, cruise the streets freely, armed with machine guns, ready to shoot without mercy anyone who attempts to defy them.
So great is the Taliban's fear of women's bodies that even the burqa's extreme concealment is not enough. Women are not permitted to go out of doors at all without special permission, and even then must be accompanied by a male relative. Some women have been arrested even for going to the hospital when giving birth. And even at the hospital, a woman may not speak to a man who is not a relative, not even in life-threatening circumstances. Even in their own homes, the Taliban have ordered that all windows be painted black so that women cannot be seen from the outside.
Most of the schools in Afghanistan have been closed, since most of the teachers were women. Girls are forbidden to go to school at all; few boys, either, are able to attend without any teachers. Many children starve because their mothers are no longer permitted to work and have no means of survival. After twenty years of civil war, the country is littered with mines. Crop lands have been destroyed and industrial activity is almost nonexistent. Nearly half the population would starve without the support provided by the United Nations and charitable organizations. Yet the Taliban's spiteful venom does not spare even humanitarian activity. Female aid workers are often stopped, beaten, and even killed by police. Male aid workers are not permitted to even be in the same room with an Afghan woman, making food distribution and shelter difficult to provide. Repeatedly, the Taliban has harassed aid organizations, expelled them, and done everything in its power to work against them.
In control of 90 percent of the country, the Taliban will stop at nothing to gain the control of the other 10 percent, under the control of remnants of the former government overthrown by the Taliban in 1996. The Taliban have massacred whole villages, poisoned farm lands, and cut off food supplies to civilian populations in order to starve them into surrender.
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Posted by Tyrone at 10:31 PM | Comments (0)
June 02, 2001
The internet as we know
The internet as we know it is dying, trampled under the brutal heel of corporate control. The villain of the piece is the notion of intellectual property - the idea that knowledge, creativity, and ideas are marketable commodities that can be bought and sold and are the exclusive possession of a single individual or entity.
Intellectual property is something that, at first glance, ought to be anathema. Throughout most of human history, ideas were in the public domain once they originated. Many, indeed most, of the greatest writers, philosophers, and scientists in history collected little remuneration from their work, but took pleasure in the joy of discovery and the magic of invention.
Science cannot flourish if access to vital information is closely guarded and made available only for a high price. The usual justification for this is incentive theory; the notion that, without incentives to receive profit from the ownership of their ideas, artists and inventors will have no incentive to produce.
In point of fact, this is absolute nonsense. An artist who produces music that the public likes will always be well-paid; an inventor will receive monies, a software developer who makes quality software will be handsomely paid. The more fundamental question is: does the creator of an idea deserve compensation for every individual use of their work?
I would argue that the answer should be no. Knowledge is the domain of all humanity. The only exception is if the creator's idea is being used to make money; if someone is making money based on someone else's ideas, the originator of the idea is within their moral rights to expect compensation.
In this case, Britney Spears would have the right to sue anyone who began selling CDs of her music without her permission. She would not, however, be able to sue anyone who downloaded MP3s from Napster without her permission. Napster, in turn, would only have to compensate the copyright holder if it was selling access to its file-sharing servers.
Similarly, in this vein, students have every right to photocopy textbooks and journal articles freely, as long as they do not publish for profit any of the material contained therein. Copyright laws also have a legitimate use in preventing plagiarism; acknowledgement of the original.
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Posted by Tyrone at 06:22 PM | Comments (0)