Afghanistan Hit By Nationwide Internet Blackout As Taliban Cuts Fiber Optic Cables (bbc.com) 76
The Taliban have imposed a nationwide telecommunications shutdown in Afghanistan, severing fibre-optic connections and cutting off internet, mobile, and satellite services as part of "morality" measures. Netblock is currently tracking the outages. The BBC reports: Since seizing power in 2021, the Taliban have imposed numerous restrictions in accordance with their interpretation of Islamic Sharia law. Flights from Kabul airport have also been disrupted, according to reports. Several people in Kabul have told the BBC that their fibre-optic internet stopped working towards the end of the working day, around17:00 local time (12:30 GMT). Because of this, it is understood many people will not notice the impact until Tuesday morning, when banking services and other businesses are due to resume. [...]
The Taliban earlier said an alternative route for internet access would be created, without giving any details. Business leaders at the time warned that if the internet ban continued their activities would be seriously hit. Hamid Haidari, former editor-in-chief of Afghan news channel 1TV, said after the shutdown that "loneliness enveloped the entire country." "Afghanistan has now officially taken first place in the competition with North Korea for [internet] disconnection" he said on X.
The Taliban earlier said an alternative route for internet access would be created, without giving any details. Business leaders at the time warned that if the internet ban continued their activities would be seriously hit. Hamid Haidari, former editor-in-chief of Afghan news channel 1TV, said after the shutdown that "loneliness enveloped the entire country." "Afghanistan has now officially taken first place in the competition with North Korea for [internet] disconnection" he said on X.
There's always Starlink (Score:3, Interesting)
Elon Musk saves the day again. Let that sink in.
Sorry folks I'm in a bad mood.
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Really? After the billions of rubles and dollars worth of weapons left behind, i think fiber networking was installed there a while ago..
Re:Yay Islam! (Score:4, Insightful)
Really? After the billions of rubles and dollars worth of weapons left behind, i think fiber networking was installed there a while ago..
You misspelled trillions. Roughly 2.3$ trillion dollars is the current estimate of money spent on the War on Terror (tm) just in Afghanistan. America could have been debt free, but Bush Jr. left the America in a seemingly inescapable debt death spiral.
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The propaganda might be mostly ineffective but wouldn't it be far less likely to create terrorists hostile to the USA compared to bombing wedding parties and funerals?
Of course this wouldn't make the military industrial complex rich etc, but hey maybe if the phones were made in the USA y'all would have had jobs.
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The point was revenge and stealing whatever the USA wanted: American Exceptionalism doesn't give the weak, anything else.
By voting for Trumpism, a second time, the USA proves my point: If girls continue to be tortured for going to school, no amount of toys/propaganda will stop it. The torture stops when the government puts people on the street that punish the torturer.
You can never really trust a country you invade but the USA always pretends to create Little USA, regardless. The problem is, US culture
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That would include the cost of bullets and fuel and food. Also the cost of factories that never worked and buildings the Taliban destroyed.
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There's was nothing inescapable about the debt spiral back then, especially not for a measly $2.3T. It takes decades of successive government fuckups to be in an inescapable debt spiral.
In fact technically the budget deficit under Bush Jr was less than the average over the past few decades.
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The whole planet has been wired up with fiber since the late 1990s, even the island of St Helena (google it) has fiber now.
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Well, if they didn't I'd be wondering why they weren't in the middle of a vast epidemic of constipation.
Re:There's always Starlink (Score:5, Informative)
But I predict a black market for truly global satellite internet terminals (such as Inmarsat terminals), preloaded with a good amount of prepaid credits of course.
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Penumbra.
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Re: There's always Starlink (Score:2)
There's always a usable signal directly adjacent to any given cell within the penumbra of the spot beam that covers it. It's not intentional, it's just physics. GEO and LEO alike.
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BTW Starlink terminals are geo-locked (the coverage spots of the satellites aren't shaped like the borders of countries, and yet the terminals refuse to work when in an unsupported country). Starlink terminals have a built-in GPS receiver, which the Starlink terminal uses to determine its locatio
Re: There's always Starlink (Score:2)
just from the word "penumbra" thrown out of context?
You were under the impression that satellite communication doesn't involve photons.
(the coverage spots of the satellites aren't shaped like the borders of countries
They're hexagonal cells. However the bird projects photons, not snowflakes.
GPS receiver, which the Starlink terminal uses to determine its location (among other things) and refuse to work if in an unsupported country
Surely it's impossible.
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TFS says satellite services were cut off.
Don't know how they did that.
TFA says: Mobile internet and satellite TV has also been severely disrupted across the country.
Nothing about Starlink... are they even allowed to operate there?
Re:So somebody finally did something to protect... (Score:5, Insightful)
>"So somebody finally did something to protect the children from the Internet? Where I live, a lot of people are calling for such policies"
Parents already have that power. DO NOT GIVE CHILDREN UNRESTRICTED DEVICES THAT CAN ACCESS THE INTERNET. Keep your other devices password-protected/locked. Done. There is this word called "NO."
But oh, that would mean they couldn't try to shift the responsibility and blame to someone else or to "society". They might actually have to be parents instead of trying to destroy the Internet for adults. Sorry, I have little patience for this anymore.
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There is just not much comparison about what kids today (and over the last dozen+ years) are or can be subjected to on the open internet on a device they constantly have access to, and what I and many of us grew up with. Social media gets inside their heads and really does a number on them.
I am not advocating for being a helicopter parent. Far from it. Kids should explore be independent, learn and make mistakes. But giving "the keys to the kingdom" to children is far too dangerous now. And it can't be
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You greatly underestimate children's ability to nag their parents. Sure they can keep saying no but in practice life is going to be hellish for everyone if the parents try to deny them access to things most other kids have.
It may also be bad for their social development and mental health. We are only now really starting to understand the damage that COVID did. Being locked out of the shared social spaces that their peers use could end up hurting them a lot.
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>"You greatly underestimate children's ability to nag their parents."
Oh, I am very much aware of the nag factor. But "no" is a very important part of parenting.
>"Sure they can keep saying no but in practice life is going to be hellish for everyone if the parents try to deny them access to things most other kids have."
Like I said in the other followup-post, we need to do much better at setting setting a new social norm in this regard and offering parents more tools and options for dealing with these i
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There is a middle ground between unrestricted internet access and total lockdown.
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>"There is a middle ground between unrestricted internet access and total lockdown."
Agreed. But we are nowhere near that balance with the overwhelming vast majority of children, unfortunately.
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Parents already have that power. DO NOT GIVE CHILDREN UNRESTRICTED DEVICES THAT CAN ACCESS THE INTERNET.
I mean,... it's cute that you think that. Not that I agree with the OP, but no, simply not giving your child access to the internet does not prevent them from accessing the internet. Unless you keep them locked in a cage at home and never let them out... but in that case internet may be the lesser of evils there.
My neighbour is a helicopter parent, yet her kids apparently were looking up porn on their friend's iPad.
Are you a parent? Please let me know what detailed audit you have done on every environment y
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>"I mean,... it's cute that you think that. Not that I agree with the OP, but no, simply not giving your child access to the internet"
They shouldn't have unrestricted access to the Internet. I didn't say zero access.
>"does not prevent them from accessing the internet. Unless you keep them locked in a cage at home and never let them out... but in that case internet may be the lesser of evils there."
The major damage of internet access and social media isn't the occasional exposure, but the constant acc
Re:America is next (Score:4, Insightful)
The mental gymnastics you go through to consistently place the blame on one party while making the other party look like innocent people is simply amazing.
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Not American I see (Score:1, Troll)
So we basically have two parties here. One is openly fascistic that's the Republicans and the other are milk toast administrators.
From the outside where you're at it can seem like the Democrats are the villain because they aren't stopping the fascists.
This is a human animal response. Basically if you're getting the shit kicked out of you and it feels like somebody's just standing there watching then you don't usually get angry at the guy kicking the shi
Yay let's have a crusade! (Score:2)
Led by the evangelical Christian preachers in their limos and jets. They are so HUMBLE like baby Cheesus.
Don't mind if we just sit back watch you sky god worshippers slap it out do you?
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yep, that's them!
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Yeah. What about it?
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i wonder if this has really to do with morality or rather with meddling. the formerly most powerful army in the world has just said it wants "its" bagram air base back ...
Re:Afghanistan ? (Score:5, Insightful)
The US achieved its objective of "retrieving" Bin Laden. Putting a decent government in Afghanistan was a secondary objective of the US. Bush clearly told the Taliban before the invasion that if they gave us Bin Laden, they could avert the invasion. "Just hand him over." Afghanistan got invaded only because we wanted to prevent Afghanistan from being a safe haven for international terrorists who target the US. That objective is achieved. The Taliban would think twice or three times before letting someone the US wants hide there. So who really lost? Afghanistan lost. There are shitty government around the world, we don't go rescuing their peoples. We could have defeated the Taliban permanently if that was the objective and we didn't care about civilian lives lost. We didn't go on a full on war footing, like we did in WW2.
Re:Afghanistan ? (Score:5, Insightful)
> The US achieved its objective of "retrieving" Bin Laden.
Tell me: where exactly in Afghanistan was Osama bin Laden arrested?
Apart from that, invading Afghanistan in response for a terrorist attack perpetrated by a bunch of Saudis was perfectly reasonable.
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Just to be perfectly clear here, Bin Laden was definitely operating out of Afghanistan. 9/11 was a direct response to Clinton sending Tomahawk missiles into those camps in 1998 (that the CIA helped fund and build). The Taliban knew he was operating out of Afghanistan when Bush Jr demanded they surrender Bin Laden. They refused and the invasion occurred. That Bin Laden was later found in Pakistan takes nothing away from the initial invasion.
The co-invasion of Iraq was unjustified and I feel terrible for the
Re: Afghanistan ? (Score:3)
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We could have defeated the Taliban permanently if that was the objective
It never ceases to amaze me that the world's biggest military who lost to a bunch of Vietnamese farmers still think like this. You're no where near as superior as you think you are.
Afghanistan got invaded only because we wanted to prevent Afghanistan from being a safe haven for international terrorists who target the US.
Now back in reality, the USA actually were targeted by the taliban and actually designated the taliban as a terrorist organisation. The idea that they weren't the subject of a hunt is revisionist.
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Are you saying we couldn't have defeated the Taliban and won in Vietnam with nukes and carpet bombing?
Bollocks Re:Afghanistan ? (Score:2)
America always has to be at war with someone or it would fight itself. Look at your last 100 years. You are a violent country. Appreciate the help in WW1 and 2, late as it was, but after that it's been a shit show.
Get your civil war started already, you suffer from a plague of assholes sir.
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The Taliban asked for the evidence and Bush sent bombs instead. We couldn't defeat the Taliban because we left all the corruption in place and the people rejected that and welcomed the Taliban.
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That's exactly what happens when you try to control a country where a good proportion of the population are against you, while you're trying to protect civilians.
You end up with asymmetric warfare where the insurgents hide amongst the civilian population, and no matter how strong your military is you will never be able to eliminate them all.
Traditionally occupying militaries would have taken a brutal approach - systematically execute civilians until the attacks stop. It's pretty much the only way that works
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You can't terrorize a population into submission when they live in hell already. You simply become a tangible target for them to hate that is foreign vs their entrenched familiar hell. The majority are going to choose to take it out on you even if you are relatively better. If you play nice, then you'll still have a significant number of Stockholm syndrome people irrationally fighting you as strongly as if you were the monster.
You won't genocide even if that is OK because their land is useless so why bothe
Taliban is losing its grip (Score:2)
This blackout is because the NRF is annoying them.
too soon? (Score:3, Funny)
Flew into the Bible (Score:1)
Comedian Kathleen Madigan talked about a USO tour she did with Louis Black in Afghanistan. She said it was like they had landed in the Bible. And not the good part where there's love and such, but the bad part where God delights in punishing people, war, famine. It appears that Taliban and decreed that Afghanistan will be reverted to world of the Bible.
If they REALLY did that it would be OK. No matter how mad they got, there's just so much damage you can do with sticks and stones. Trouble is they want the a
Vice, right (Score:2)
So they're afraid that they've gone too far, and the people are planning to overthrow them... and they think this will stop that.
Great for them (Score:2)
More time to read Quran, no Facebook to distract them.