(Opinion) Afghanistan: Shitstorm Central

In general all wars are pointless, but the war in Afghanistan has to take a very bloody biscuit. with no clear mission or even an exit strategy, the allied forces find themselves in a land were they are unwanted and hated in equal measure. They face an enemy who seem, despite heavy losses, to be two steps ahead and is slowly gaining support, a public who have as much appetite for occupation as they do for a shit sandwich, and a  political class and security force which are both corrupt and inept.

With the recent scandal involving a US soldier,suspected not to have acted alone, killing sixteen Afghanistan citizens, the already chainsaw proof tension between the people of Afghanistan and their western occupiers will intensify greatly. This incident comes in a growing line of  public relations nightmares with the burning of the koran by US troops and the released footage of US troops urinating on dead Taliban fighters, which not only seems to reveal a certain lack of discipline but the realization of the soldiers of just how pointless their mission is as it has become apparent this is a war that the allied forces cannot win .

This scandal will almost certainly culminate in revenge attacks most likely to be perpetrated by the Taliban, who have already sworn retribution.this will also serves as powerful recruitment propaganda for the Taliban and Al-Qaeda if lack of economic opportunity wasn't enough of a motivation. the Obama administration has set out to apologize for the afghan deaths caused by a US soldier knowing full well it won't help forestall the tragedies to come when even the US installed president 'mayor of Kabul' Karzai acknowledges such an act cannot be forgiven.

In sum, all arguments aside, pro or anti war, Afghanistan is not a country and hasn't been for last forty years. it has played the hostile host to tyrannical rulers, conquest hungry empires, and death and suffering beyond human imagination. the best favour or help the US can lend to the country is to leave and to leave quickly as an ill defined mission, the corrupt and inept organs of the afghan political system and security force, and the growing number of violent incidents involving US troops will surely lead to more loss of life on all sides in a nation that has grown accustomed to conflict.      

   

Slavoj Zizek interview with Charlie Rose

Word of Warning !!!

Anonymous gives all in favor of SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) a healthy reminder the internet won't be straitjacketed without a fight

Opinion: SOPA the censor's wet dream

Governments are efficient at producing two things: bad ideas and bad outcomes, which is why SOPA will quite quickly after it's inception kill the 'freedom without walls' existence of the internet as we know it.

It comes at no surprise that a bill like this was coming as the open ended nature of the net has many enemies, almost all of them corporate and powerful.The net has a history of causing trouble for numerous industries primarily as the music and film industry, who would be no doubt singing and dancing to the SOPA beat. However the irony is that thanks the cultural freedom facilitated by the net, more people than ever before are watching films and listening to music and it has been the failure of both industries to capitalize of this trend. 

With the enacting of SOPA the characteristics which have defined the internet such open access, free expression, and free culture will disappear as sites that offer free culture will be shut down. unfortunately this will be a very expensive game of wack-a-mole as free culture sites are shut down new ones will set up shop.

however it appears that various governments are prepared to pay the price with the seizure of Megaupload and indictments of its figureheads  wracking up a number of charges against it's founders including copyright infringement and 'internet piracy'.

in protest, Wikipedia among others staged a 24 hour blackout of its site as it and other sites dependent on user content will be heavily affected as such sites are at the mercy of their users who can and often do upload copyrighted material. the hacker collective anonymous also shut down the Department of justice website as well as a other involved in the legislation.

the biggest argument against SOPA is that it will  engage in 'DNS blocking' which threatens to turn the open road of the information superhighway into one big roadblock.  thereby undermining the other goals of cyber-security  . As a measure of preventing online privacy, SOPA will mean the government using the same techniques hackers use in redirecting users from a site with pirated content to another, which the White house are against.   

In sum, SOPA must be stopped because it at once stops free culture dead in its tracks and as a by product hinder free speech and expression on the net as it doesn't only hurt the sites involved but also hurts the important equation in this issues, the user.

      

             

R.I.P to Polemic Heavyweight Christopher Hitchenss