Taliban Justice. Then and Now

April 8, 2014 Brown Pundits Archive 1 Comment filed under Archived Authors

Kahar Zalmay has an excellent report about how he traveled with friends who wanted a small property dispute in Karachi to be solved and had to go to North Waziristan to the court of Khan Said aka Sajna, local Taliban commander. Its a must read.
Part two is here

excerpt:
Our business was related to the Sajna group of the Mehsud Taliban but there was another group too, the Hakimullah Mehsud group. I was focused on the Sajna group to get to know how it operates. For Mehsud tribesmen, there were separate offices in Miranshah, which would deal with their matters like land disputes, business disputes and family issues. Areas like Saanp, Makeen, Ladha, Speenkai Raghzai, Baarwan, etc, had their separate offices (markiz) with landline telephone numbers, which the Taliban would openly use to dial numbers across Pakistan. There were around 17 offices for different areas in the main Miranshah bazaar.

Read it all.

It also reminded me of something I wrote 6 years ago after a trip to Karachi. I am posting this unchanged (from an email I wrote at the time). It seems to me that the heroic and optimistic phase of Taliban justice may be over (comparing my 6 year old report to the new one by Kahar Zalmay). Anyway, I think it gives a good idea of how things looked on the ground to at least one pair of drivers who lived in Karachi in 2008.

I interviewed two pathan drivers from Waziristan and got identical replies from both (the affair with the sister obviously applies to only one of them), so I am posting the rough translation and leave any
conclusions up to you:
Q. Who is now ruling waziristan?
A. The Taliban, led by Baitullah Mehsud.
Q. What if he is killed?
A. He will be replaced. This is an organized movement. It is not dependent on any one person. If he is killed, someone equally capable will replace him, inshallah.
Q. How do you find their rule?
A. Much much better than the rule of Pakistan used to be.
Now, there is peace among the tribes and hundred year old disputes have been settled honorably and all parties have accepted the settlement because they all know that it is according to shariah and is fair. Now there is rule of law instead of rule of the gun. Anyone who violates the shariah will face justice. All those who live by the rules have nothing to fear.
Q. What about the war on terror?
A. Yes, the war is a problem and this will continue for some years. We expect that the Pakistani army will continue to fight us because their generals have abandoned Islam and become slaves of America. But still, rule by the Taliban is better, even with the war. Better than the rule of the political agents and their sardars.
Q. What about development work?
A. Development work increased in the last few years, thanks to the Taliban. In the past, the sardars and the poltical agents would steal all the money meant for development. But in the last 2 years, they
were warned by the Taliban to spend those funds fairly, So roads and colleges have been built. There is some problem because of the war now, but we hope there will be more development when peace is
restored. Of course, no behayaaee (shamelessness) is allowed. Half naked women and music and other abominations will not be allowed.
Q. What about your own life in Karachi?
A. The Taliban rule here too. The pathan colonies have many ANP and PPP supporters but they also have taliban representitives to handle legal disputes. We had a problem. our sister was married at an early age, but then there was dushmani and she was sent home and is now at our home. But the man
would not grant a divorce, so we could not marry her anywhere else. It was a big problem. We got a degree from a Pakistani court, but nobody could enforce it for us. We got a fatwa from the local mufti, but still the man would not give her a formal divorce. Then we went to the Taliban court here in Karachi. They called that man in. He said he needed to consult relatives in Waziristan, so the Taliban court gave him 3 days. In 3 days he came back. The taliban heard the whole case and gave a
judgement. He had to divorce her. He gave the divorce right there and then. RIGHT THERE IN THE COURT! Where else can you get justice like this?
Q. What if he did not obey them?
A. (laughing) Then he will pay a very heavy price. No one can disobey them. They are strong and they have justice and Islamic law on their side. Why would anyone disobey them?

Q. What did you have to pay to have your case heard?

A. Nothing sahib. NOT a penny. This is Islamic law sahib, not the Pakistani courts.
Q. What if they start passing bad orders?
A. Sahib, you think this is a joke, but this is not a joke. They are good people and they have changed the face of Waziristan. They are organized. They follow Islamic law. Why would they give bad orders?
anyone can make one mistake. but if they stop following Islamic law, we would all stop obeying them. After all, we know what Islamic law is. Disputes going back centuries have been settled in days. It is
almost like what you hear about the coming of Islam in Arabia. You too should do dawah and convert some kafirs in America to save your akhirat (afterlife). We Muslims should have rule of law. Look at the kafirs, they have rule of law, even though those are man-made laws, not the laws of Allah. We
should not be ruled by corrupt generals or other self seeking persons. Wouldn’t it be better to be ruled by Islamic law? Wouldnt it be better to have real justice? under the Taliban, even the weak have rights. Alhamdolillah.

“Siri, you’re fired!!!”

April 8, 2014 Brown Pundits Archive No Comments filed under Archived Authors

Addressed to whoever is in charge of the universe: spare us the wonderful new age where we contemplate relationship problems with our personal digital assistants. This way lies complete societal collapse as we know it. Spare the Siri so that your child does not grow up to be a complete moronic automaton.

….
One of the unexpected pleasures of modern parenthood is
eavesdropping on your ten-year-old as she conducts existential
conversations with an iPhone. “Who are you, Siri?” “What is the meaning
of life?” Pride becomes bemusement, though, as the questions degenerate
into abuse. “Siri, you’re stupid!” Siri’s unruffled response—“I’m sorry
you feel that way”—provokes “Siri, you’re fired!”

Earlier this year, a
mother wrote to Philip Galanes, the “Social Q’s” columnist for The New York Times, asking him what to do when her ten-year-old son called Siri a “stupid idiot.”
Stop him, said Galanes; the vituperation of virtual pals amounts to a
“dry run” for hurling insults at people. His answer struck me as
clueless: Children yell at toys all the time, whether talking or dumb.
It’s how they work through their aggression.

Our minds respond to speech as if it
were human, no matter what device it comes out of. Evolutionary
theorists point out that, during the 200,000 years or so in which homo
sapiens have been chatting with an “other,” the only other beings who
could chat were also human; we didn’t need to differentiate the speech
of humans and not-quite humans, and we still can’t do so without mental
effort. (Processing speech, as it happens, draws on more parts of the
brain than any other mental function.) Manufactured speech tricks us
into reacting as if it were real, if only for a moment or two.

Children
today will be the first to grow up in constant interaction with these
artificially more or less intelligent entities. So what will they make
of them? What social category will they slot them into? I put that
question to Peter Kahn, a developmental psychologist who studies
child-robot interactions at the University of Washington.

In his lab,
Kahn analyzes how children relate to cumbersome robots whose
unmistakably electronic voices express very human emotions. I watched a
videotape of one of Kahn’s experiments, in which a teenaged boy played a
game of “I Spy” with a robot named Robovie. First, Robovie “thought” of
an object in the room and the boy had to guess what it was. Then it was
Robovie’s turn. The boy tugged on his hair and said, “This object is
green.” Robovie slowly turned its bulging eyes and clunky head and
entire metallic body to scan the room, but just as it was about to make a
guess, a man emerged and announced that Robovie had to go in the
closet. (This, not the game, was the point of the exercise.)

“That’s not
fair,” said Robovie, in its soft, childish, faintly reverberating
voice. “I wasn’t given enough chances to. Guess the object. I should be
able to finish. This round of the game.” “Come on, Robovie,” the man
said brusquely. “You’re just a robot.” “Sorry, Robovie,” said the boy,
who looked uncomfortable. “It hurts my feelings that,” said Robovie,
“You would want. To put me in. The closet. Everyone else. Is out here.”

….
regards

India at the forefront of fighting Climate Change

April 8, 2014 Brown Pundits Archive 3 Comments filed under Archived Authors

Recycled lunch: Using human waste to grow food, and fight climate change

Rajanna Uganawadi and his ancestors have been working the soil on the outskirts of Bangalore as long as anyone can remember. Their seven acres are a patchwork of green plots pieced together amid the new apartment complexes sprouting up on farmland around India’s IT capital.

Next to Uganawadi’s cement-block house, a yellow tanker truck painted with lotus flowers backs up next to a stand of young banana trees. The stench of toilet water hangs in the air as a young man pops open a spout and a heavy stream of clear liquid and brown sludge sprays from the truck onto the base of the trees. It’s untreated sewage from a large apartment complex nearby.

From Waste to Resource

Credit: Bianca Vasquez Toness

Bangalore farmer Rajanna Uganawadi says by switching from synthetic fertilizers to human waste he’s increased his banana harvests to three or four from two. The practice also avoids significant amounts of greenhouse gases from the manufacture, transportation and application of synthetic fertilizer.

The man repeats this all day – draining out septic tanks and delivering the contents to farmers around Bangalore. It’s an extreme twist on the old adage “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

”So that’s it,” the man says. “I meet the need. Some people want it to be emptied and I take it from them and I give it to those who want it.”