First it was Evil Bert showing up on posters in Afghanistan, now this:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991584
Documents found strewn on the floor of a Taliban recruitment centre in Kabul, apparently describing how to build a thermonuclear device, may not be as frightening as they first seem.
The papers were picked out by BBC correspondent John Simpson and showed, he said, “how dangerous Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network aspired to be”.
But the sentences shown in focus by the camera also come from a famous document called “Weekend Scientist: Let’s Make a Thermonuclear Device”, which was first published in 1979 as a humour piece by The Journal of Irreproducible Results.
…
Some of the more obviously absurd parts of the original are missing from the document in Kabul, such as a paragraph starting “in next month’s column, we will learn how to clone your neighbor’s wife in six easy steps.”
I wonder what other bits of “useful” information we can pass along to them…
its weird what your evil bert link does.
it doesnt link to a site, but to a response instead.
Zenster
November 25, 2001, 1:18am
3
[George Harrison (from The Simpsons)]
It’s been done.
[/George Harrison (from The Simpsons)]
Er, whoops.
and whoops on the thread title too. Further .
Sigh.
And I previewed and everything. Just not very well.
to do their interpreting. Remember that guy with the eyepatch and huge beard who worked out of their Pakistan embassy translating for their ambassador?
Etaoin
November 25, 2001, 2:28am
6
Drewbert, could you provide the real link?
Evil Bert again , checked, double-checked, etc.
Actual excerpts from the Taliban Penal Code, a copy of which was found left behind in Herat at the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.http://chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0111230194nov23.story
Taliban penal code exacting, unforgiving
<snip>
Any man who wears his hair “Beatle-ly” will be arrested and his head shaved.
Those who fly pigeons–a favorite Afghan pastime–will be imprisoned until “their pigeons disappear from their home.”
<snip>
A kite seller will be imprisoned for three days. The owner of a house will be punished if women are heard singing during a wedding. No images or photographs are to be posted in public places.
The following are considered “unclean things”: “pork, pig, pig oil, anything made from human hair, satellite dishes, cinematography, any equipment that produces the joy of music, pool tables, chess, masks, alcohol, tapes, computer, VCRs, televisions, anything that propagates sex and is full of music, wine, lobster, nail polish, firecrackers, statues, sewing catalogs, pictures, Christmas cards.”
<snip>
Merchants importing products such as shampoo would find that Taliban customs officials had gouged out the eyes of the female models on the boxes. The merchants were then required to display the products with black tape over female faces or be subject to a beating or jailing.
Some people didn’t think it was so funny.
Near the end of the Taliban reign in Herat, many officials went south to Kandahar. But not everyone escaped. As the head of the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice attempted to leave last week, he was chased down and shot to death by a group of youths.