Friday, May 11, 2007
well it's been lovely being here on blogger, but i have outgrown what blogger can give me, and i have now moved to my own domain (christopherwilkie.com. i will continue to blog there, but i can now combine my twitter, jaiku, blog and photo/video sharing onto the one website rather than have several services. i hope you will continue to follow my work :)
Friday, May 04, 2007
i'm all about lifestreaming and i'm all about creating a more seamless link between people's lives, how they interact with others, and the devices they use to interact.
i am sure it's all be thought of before, but i wanted to outline an idea of mine.
i want a solution that works across the different systems i use, be they computer, phone, car, plane, watching tv, etc. any system for my everyday life that can intelligently be connected to create useful and meaningful information and help. primarily for the average person, their main devices are their mobile phones, their computers, their tvs, navigation systems and vehicles. as people lead more and more hectic lifestyles, finding the time to interact with others, though very important, is sometimes hard for most of us. this is where i feel lifestreaming is going to come into our lives in a big way as a means of keeping in touch with those around us, so we continue to maintain valued relationships.
overall, all devices and systems should be able to interact, but because the market is driven by money rather than by solving a problem, there is no way for companies to work together, or collaboratively and achieve anything worthwhile. i want this to change. i want the competitors to remain competitors, but all for the cause of pushing for better and more efficient development. anyway, aside from that, my idea;
i want the devices around me to read me, and not require me to tell them what to do, what to think, etc. i want my computer to read my facial features and detect changes in my voice so that it can start doing certain things. these abilities could detect when im angry and start playing soothing music, though recognizing i am working on a ducment that has a deadline set for 2 days from now, it decides to suggest relaxation methods that don't take much time, but are effective. it can meanwhile update my lifestreaming page with my current mood should i want it to. a lifestreaming page is going to be a page on the net that is all about you. it will have your current location, your emotion, your updated picture, methods of contact, what you do for a job, and all bits of information are shown dependant on who the viewer is, and what you have decided to show. imagine a jaiku/twitter, facebook, friendster, blog mashup. this site will be your profile, streamlined so that it is generic enough to be used by systems without needing much hacking and chopping, but is unique enough to be a digital identity for the real you.
my phone should be location aware, whether that awareness is based on the wifi network it is currently connected to, or by gps hotzones. these hot zones can be marked out areas, by yourself, can be used for a few different things. apart from providing a location for literally every phone carrier on the planet (and ask yourself, is there really a big brother out there who is going to spend his time watching you, or would you prefer the police be able to find you should you be kidnapped, or worse, your child be taken), it can be used as a trigger. my lifestreaming page can show my current location should i choose, also my phone could give me information on the closest restaurants, cafes or shoe shops. these hotspots can also aid in data collection by local councils so that infrastructure can be bettered, services can be made more efficient, all leading to a beter standard of man made environments.
aside from this, nearly every phone has a calendar, but it is a dumb tool that tells you what you have programmed in. why not have the work intelligently depending on the devices in use at any certain time. for example my phone knows my university schedule, so it turns my phone on and off silent when im in and out of classes. it can post to my lifestreaming page that im studying law atm or doing my management practical work. all depending on how much info you want it to post. a fun idea might be that it uses its gps functionality to detect how fast your travelling, and post that you either walking, driving or speeding down the freeway! aside from that, now it recognises i have work and does what every digital calendar should, and reminds me to leave because at 12.40 to be there by 1 because it has taken into account my location and calculated the commute time to be around 15 mins. all this time, my lifestreaming is being updated with whether i am in class or not, and whatever other info i want projected there. i start playing my music and put my earbuds in as i walk to my car. when i get in and switch the vehicle on, my stereo picks up on the phone's presence and fades the phone's music off and takes over playing my music through my car speakers. it also recognises i have an event coming up (work) and gets the location info i have put in for that event in my calendar. my gps intelligently maps my route to work for whatever location im starting from. i get to work and rather than putting events directly into my phone, i log into my own lifestreaming page and use the online calendar that is always in sync with calendar because now there is no central place for my calendar, instead it is an entity that floats from each device, without actually needing to be transferred. each calendar (on my phone, in my car, on my personal computer or on the web) is a sync of all others, as its presumed i'm only putting events into one calendar at a time.
i finish work and start driving home, only to find my dinner date has arrived early at my place. my house video calls my mobile phone, streaming me a feed of what my video intercom is seeing. i tell my house to start trusting this person, and it lets them in, switching lights on and turning the tv on to the entertainment channel because it knows she is a guest. i get home and am excited to show her the photos i took on my phone (that actually incorporates a decent camera, because people dont want to carry more than one device if they dont need to) and use my ps3 to stream the pics from my phone and throw them up on my high definition tv.
another intelligence should be between my phone and my laptop, each device detcting when the other is present and adjusting settings accordingly. for instance, i dont want to have both my phone and laptop inform me i have new mail. when i'm in front of my computer, i want it to let me know, and when i'm out on the road or not at my desk, i want my phone to tell me. but i still want both devices to give me access to the same things. so when my laptop knows my phone is close by, it tells me i have new mail, and tells the phone not to worry about letting me know as well. just like when im away from my desk, my phone lets me know, and my computer doesnt have piles of notices for me to click out of when i get back to it. of course, any mail i do read or not on either device will be mirrored on the other. my phone even lets me take and make video calls on my computer because its easier for me that way rather than holding a phone up in front of me. whats even cooler is that as my phone knows where i am, it can tell the caller i am unlikely to take a video call in my lecture, but a voicecall is fine.
back home, i'm watching tv with my housemate. my tv has posted what tv show im watching to my lifestreaming page. my housemate has specified not to be alerted of new mail, but i have chosen to be alerted via the tv if my phone is not with me (proximity sensors will sort all that out) because i run my own business and dont want to delay on replying to clients. a small notification box pops up in the top right and i go to my computer to reply to my new mail. i then go out as i have to see a client and on th way home, i stop by the shops. the shopping has already been done for this week, but my housemate has been craving chocolate and so wrote that on the wishlist the fridge displays as part of its interactive menu. because the devices can talk to each other across mediums (over wifi, phone service and internet), my phone knows im at the shops, as does the fridge, and so the fridge asks my phone to tell me to get the chocolate my housemate wants. my fridge is very intelligent as well. it knows my timetable because it can access my calendar, so it knows when i will be home so the groceries can be delivered. my fridge can also start recognising trends of how many people are usually in the house at what times, what days and what months during the year so nothing is bought when its not needed.
i tell my calendar i want a haircut sometime this week, and it will contact the hairdresser and find a time they can cut my hair, and that i am free too, taking into account commute time of course. it will then book it in for me.
something controversial and not supported by everyone is the reporting of location awareness info to authorities. i put it like this; people can choose whether their info is freely available, or available in an emergency. my lifestreaming page knows where i am, but do i want police tracking my every move?...well in some instances, yes i do. my phone will be able to realise if im in a precarious situation, whether ive just had a car accident or that someone is holding me hostage, and contact authorities and people i have listed as emergency contacts. alternatively i have been missing but my phone hasn't realised anything is wrong. my housemate has though, and had my location not bee posted to my lifestreaming page, authorities could request it, but only after going through the right legal channels. big brother isn't going to watch everyone, or anyone for that matter.
i think systems developers need to be more focused on having their products work seamlessly together than to try and have their product used the most, and incompatible with anything else. people want integration, not mutual exclusivity between their devices.
i am sure it's all be thought of before, but i wanted to outline an idea of mine.
i want a solution that works across the different systems i use, be they computer, phone, car, plane, watching tv, etc. any system for my everyday life that can intelligently be connected to create useful and meaningful information and help. primarily for the average person, their main devices are their mobile phones, their computers, their tvs, navigation systems and vehicles. as people lead more and more hectic lifestyles, finding the time to interact with others, though very important, is sometimes hard for most of us. this is where i feel lifestreaming is going to come into our lives in a big way as a means of keeping in touch with those around us, so we continue to maintain valued relationships.
overall, all devices and systems should be able to interact, but because the market is driven by money rather than by solving a problem, there is no way for companies to work together, or collaboratively and achieve anything worthwhile. i want this to change. i want the competitors to remain competitors, but all for the cause of pushing for better and more efficient development. anyway, aside from that, my idea;
i want the devices around me to read me, and not require me to tell them what to do, what to think, etc. i want my computer to read my facial features and detect changes in my voice so that it can start doing certain things. these abilities could detect when im angry and start playing soothing music, though recognizing i am working on a ducment that has a deadline set for 2 days from now, it decides to suggest relaxation methods that don't take much time, but are effective. it can meanwhile update my lifestreaming page with my current mood should i want it to. a lifestreaming page is going to be a page on the net that is all about you. it will have your current location, your emotion, your updated picture, methods of contact, what you do for a job, and all bits of information are shown dependant on who the viewer is, and what you have decided to show. imagine a jaiku/twitter, facebook, friendster, blog mashup. this site will be your profile, streamlined so that it is generic enough to be used by systems without needing much hacking and chopping, but is unique enough to be a digital identity for the real you.
my phone should be location aware, whether that awareness is based on the wifi network it is currently connected to, or by gps hotzones. these hot zones can be marked out areas, by yourself, can be used for a few different things. apart from providing a location for literally every phone carrier on the planet (and ask yourself, is there really a big brother out there who is going to spend his time watching you, or would you prefer the police be able to find you should you be kidnapped, or worse, your child be taken), it can be used as a trigger. my lifestreaming page can show my current location should i choose, also my phone could give me information on the closest restaurants, cafes or shoe shops. these hotspots can also aid in data collection by local councils so that infrastructure can be bettered, services can be made more efficient, all leading to a beter standard of man made environments.
aside from this, nearly every phone has a calendar, but it is a dumb tool that tells you what you have programmed in. why not have the work intelligently depending on the devices in use at any certain time. for example my phone knows my university schedule, so it turns my phone on and off silent when im in and out of classes. it can post to my lifestreaming page that im studying law atm or doing my management practical work. all depending on how much info you want it to post. a fun idea might be that it uses its gps functionality to detect how fast your travelling, and post that you either walking, driving or speeding down the freeway! aside from that, now it recognises i have work and does what every digital calendar should, and reminds me to leave because at 12.40 to be there by 1 because it has taken into account my location and calculated the commute time to be around 15 mins. all this time, my lifestreaming is being updated with whether i am in class or not, and whatever other info i want projected there. i start playing my music and put my earbuds in as i walk to my car. when i get in and switch the vehicle on, my stereo picks up on the phone's presence and fades the phone's music off and takes over playing my music through my car speakers. it also recognises i have an event coming up (work) and gets the location info i have put in for that event in my calendar. my gps intelligently maps my route to work for whatever location im starting from. i get to work and rather than putting events directly into my phone, i log into my own lifestreaming page and use the online calendar that is always in sync with calendar because now there is no central place for my calendar, instead it is an entity that floats from each device, without actually needing to be transferred. each calendar (on my phone, in my car, on my personal computer or on the web) is a sync of all others, as its presumed i'm only putting events into one calendar at a time.
i finish work and start driving home, only to find my dinner date has arrived early at my place. my house video calls my mobile phone, streaming me a feed of what my video intercom is seeing. i tell my house to start trusting this person, and it lets them in, switching lights on and turning the tv on to the entertainment channel because it knows she is a guest. i get home and am excited to show her the photos i took on my phone (that actually incorporates a decent camera, because people dont want to carry more than one device if they dont need to) and use my ps3 to stream the pics from my phone and throw them up on my high definition tv.
another intelligence should be between my phone and my laptop, each device detcting when the other is present and adjusting settings accordingly. for instance, i dont want to have both my phone and laptop inform me i have new mail. when i'm in front of my computer, i want it to let me know, and when i'm out on the road or not at my desk, i want my phone to tell me. but i still want both devices to give me access to the same things. so when my laptop knows my phone is close by, it tells me i have new mail, and tells the phone not to worry about letting me know as well. just like when im away from my desk, my phone lets me know, and my computer doesnt have piles of notices for me to click out of when i get back to it. of course, any mail i do read or not on either device will be mirrored on the other. my phone even lets me take and make video calls on my computer because its easier for me that way rather than holding a phone up in front of me. whats even cooler is that as my phone knows where i am, it can tell the caller i am unlikely to take a video call in my lecture, but a voicecall is fine.
back home, i'm watching tv with my housemate. my tv has posted what tv show im watching to my lifestreaming page. my housemate has specified not to be alerted of new mail, but i have chosen to be alerted via the tv if my phone is not with me (proximity sensors will sort all that out) because i run my own business and dont want to delay on replying to clients. a small notification box pops up in the top right and i go to my computer to reply to my new mail. i then go out as i have to see a client and on th way home, i stop by the shops. the shopping has already been done for this week, but my housemate has been craving chocolate and so wrote that on the wishlist the fridge displays as part of its interactive menu. because the devices can talk to each other across mediums (over wifi, phone service and internet), my phone knows im at the shops, as does the fridge, and so the fridge asks my phone to tell me to get the chocolate my housemate wants. my fridge is very intelligent as well. it knows my timetable because it can access my calendar, so it knows when i will be home so the groceries can be delivered. my fridge can also start recognising trends of how many people are usually in the house at what times, what days and what months during the year so nothing is bought when its not needed.
i tell my calendar i want a haircut sometime this week, and it will contact the hairdresser and find a time they can cut my hair, and that i am free too, taking into account commute time of course. it will then book it in for me.
something controversial and not supported by everyone is the reporting of location awareness info to authorities. i put it like this; people can choose whether their info is freely available, or available in an emergency. my lifestreaming page knows where i am, but do i want police tracking my every move?...well in some instances, yes i do. my phone will be able to realise if im in a precarious situation, whether ive just had a car accident or that someone is holding me hostage, and contact authorities and people i have listed as emergency contacts. alternatively i have been missing but my phone hasn't realised anything is wrong. my housemate has though, and had my location not bee posted to my lifestreaming page, authorities could request it, but only after going through the right legal channels. big brother isn't going to watch everyone, or anyone for that matter.
i think systems developers need to be more focused on having their products work seamlessly together than to try and have their product used the most, and incompatible with anything else. people want integration, not mutual exclusivity between their devices.
Monday, April 30, 2007
well...i am going to continually update this post with how my experience is going over a 2 week period. there will be a stars system. an empty star (✩) means everything is dandy, whereas a filled star (✭) means there is a problem, or that a problem still isnt resolved. the marker (|) is going to be shifted to appear after the day i am currently on.
lets see how this goes. and yes, there has been a problem on the very first day.
✭ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ | ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩
lets see how this goes. and yes, there has been a problem on the very first day.
✭ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ | ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩
for anyone interested in ken kutaragi, here is a very fitting article that puts him in the light that he well deserves.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
something lighter now...a girl who got her stuck in a pan :P
i feel bad for her but it is humorous :P
i feel bad for her but it is humorous :P
WARNING - THIS IS A SHOCKING VIDEO AND MUST NOT BE WATCHED IF YOU ARE UNDERAGE OR HAVE A WEAK STOMACH.
If anyone hasn't seen this yet, this video is of a 12 year old taliban boy beheading a man accused of being a spy. the story is below. i cannot fathom how this child can do this...
Jihadist Video Shows Boy Beheading Man
By ABDUL SATTAR
Associated Press Writer
The boy with the knife looks barely 12. In a high-pitched voice, he denounces the bound, blindfolded man before him as an American spy. Then he hacks off the captive's head to cries of "God is great!" and hoists it in triumph by the hair.
A video circulating in Pakistan records the grisly death of Ghulam Nabi, a Pakistani militant accused of betraying a top Taliban official who was killed in a December airstrike in Afghanistan.
An Associated Press reporter confirmed Nabi's identity by visiting his family in Kili Faqiran, their remote village in southwestern Pakistan.
The video, which was obtained by AP Television News in the border city of Peshawar on Tuesday, appears authentic and is unprecedented in jihadist propaganda because of the youth of the executioner.
Captions mention Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban's current top commander in southern Afghanistan, although he does not appear in the video. The soundtrack features songs praising Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar and "Sheikh Osama" - an apparent reference to Osama bin Laden, who is suspected of hiding along the Afghan-Pakistan border.
The footage shows Nabi making what is described as a confession, being blindfolded with a checkered scarf.
"He is an American spy. Those who do this kind of thing will get this kind of fate," says his baby-faced executioner, who is not identified.
A continuous 2 1/2-minute shot then shows the victim lying on his side on a patch of rubble-strewn ground. A man holds Nabi by his beard while the boy, wearing a camouflage military jacket and oversized white sneakers, cuts into the throat. Other men and boys call out "Allahu akbar!" - "God is great!" - as blood spurts from the wound.
The film, overlain with jihadi songs, then shows the boy hacking and slashing at the man's neck until the head is severed.
A Pashto-language voiceover in the video identifies Nabi and his home village of Kili Faqiran in Baluchistan province, which lies about two hours' drive from the Afghan border.
A reporter went to the village, and Nabi's distraught and angry father, Ghulam Sakhi, confirmed his son's identity from a still picture that AP made from the footage. He said neighbors had told him the video is available at the village bazaar, but he had no wish to see it.
Sakhi said his son had been a loyal Taliban member who fought in Afghanistan and sheltered the hard-line Afghan group's leaders in the family's mud-walled compound.
He blames the Taliban and wants to avenge his son's death.
"The Taliban are not mujahedeen. They are not fighting for the cause of Islam," the 70-year-old said. "If I got my hands on them I would kill them and even tear their flesh with my own teeth."
Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, who claims to speak for the Taliban, told AP he had no information about Nabi or the video. None of the group's commanders he contacted could confirm the execution, he said.
The method of Nabi's death was not unusual for Pakistan's lawless tribal regions. Suspected informers are regularly found beheaded and dumped along the side of the road in the lawless, mountainous regions along the Afghan-Pakistani border where al-Qaida and Taliban militants find sanctuary.
But such al-Qaida-style killings are rarely featured in the Taliban's increasingly frequent propaganda videos. The use of a child to conduct the beheading stands out even among those filmed by militants in Iraq.
"This is outright barbarism," Iqbal Haider, secretary-general of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said after viewing the video. "Whosoever has committed this, whether they are Taliban or anybody else or any Afghan or al-Qaida or anybody, they are enemy No. 1 of the Muslims."
The video accuses Nabi of responsibility for a U.S. airstrike that killed Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani, who was regarded as one of the top three associates of Omar, the Taliban supreme leader. He was hit while traveling by car in Afghanistan's Helmand province Dec. 19.
Osmani was the highest-ranking Taliban leader to die since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan that ousted the hard-line regime in late 2001 for refusing to hand over bin Laden following the Sept. 11 terror attack on the United States.
The U.S. military said at the time that Osmani's death was a serious blow to militant operations, and NATO commanders said this week that a feared spring offensive had yet to materialize.
Sakhi, a retired mosque preacher with a long gray beard, spoke unashamedly of his son's Taliban affiliation and wept twice during an interview in his simple home at the foot of a mountain valley in Baluchistan province.
He said Nabi fought against the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance that helped U.S. forces to victory in Afghanistan.
After returning to Pakistan, Nabi ran a religious school in the Baluchistan capital of Quetta and had regularly sheltered both Osmani and Dadullah at the family compound, the father said.
He said Nabi also bought weapons for Taliban fighters and organized medical treatment for those injured during fighting in Afghanistan.
Some days after Osmani's death, Nabi went to Peshawar and then to Wana, a tribal town considered a militant stronghold, to collect money from Taliban officials to buy guns and food for militants in Afghanistan, Sakhi said.
He said his son called at the end of January to reveal that a tribal council had sentenced him to death on charges of tipping off U.S. forces about Osmani's movements, despite his denials.
His son passed the phone to Dadullah, but the militant leader ignored his pleas for clemency, Sakhi said.
"I talked to him and said you visited us and my son was a close friend so why are you going to hang him? He just said, 'How are you?', and switched off the phone," Sakhi said.
"They are the enemies of Islam," he said of the Taliban. "They are behaving like savages."
Sam Zarifi, Asia research director for Human Rights Watch, said the use of a child to commit such an act constituted a war crime and was a "new low" in the conflict in Afghanistan.
He noted the Taliban had teenage combatants but they were not recruited on a large scale because of the availability of adult fighters. He said he had seen children in the background of some jihadist videos but none in which they were directly involved in violence.
"I don't know why they would do this," Zarifi said. "The Taliban have to some extent tried to play to the public in Afghanistan and have not engaged in the complete sowing of mayhem that we have seen in Iraq. But this kind of act is really egregious. It's off the charts."
If anyone hasn't seen this yet, this video is of a 12 year old taliban boy beheading a man accused of being a spy. the story is below. i cannot fathom how this child can do this...
Jihadist Video Shows Boy Beheading Man
By ABDUL SATTAR
Associated Press Writer
The boy with the knife looks barely 12. In a high-pitched voice, he denounces the bound, blindfolded man before him as an American spy. Then he hacks off the captive's head to cries of "God is great!" and hoists it in triumph by the hair.
A video circulating in Pakistan records the grisly death of Ghulam Nabi, a Pakistani militant accused of betraying a top Taliban official who was killed in a December airstrike in Afghanistan.
An Associated Press reporter confirmed Nabi's identity by visiting his family in Kili Faqiran, their remote village in southwestern Pakistan.
The video, which was obtained by AP Television News in the border city of Peshawar on Tuesday, appears authentic and is unprecedented in jihadist propaganda because of the youth of the executioner.
Captions mention Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban's current top commander in southern Afghanistan, although he does not appear in the video. The soundtrack features songs praising Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar and "Sheikh Osama" - an apparent reference to Osama bin Laden, who is suspected of hiding along the Afghan-Pakistan border.
The footage shows Nabi making what is described as a confession, being blindfolded with a checkered scarf.
"He is an American spy. Those who do this kind of thing will get this kind of fate," says his baby-faced executioner, who is not identified.
A continuous 2 1/2-minute shot then shows the victim lying on his side on a patch of rubble-strewn ground. A man holds Nabi by his beard while the boy, wearing a camouflage military jacket and oversized white sneakers, cuts into the throat. Other men and boys call out "Allahu akbar!" - "God is great!" - as blood spurts from the wound.
The film, overlain with jihadi songs, then shows the boy hacking and slashing at the man's neck until the head is severed.
A Pashto-language voiceover in the video identifies Nabi and his home village of Kili Faqiran in Baluchistan province, which lies about two hours' drive from the Afghan border.
A reporter went to the village, and Nabi's distraught and angry father, Ghulam Sakhi, confirmed his son's identity from a still picture that AP made from the footage. He said neighbors had told him the video is available at the village bazaar, but he had no wish to see it.
Sakhi said his son had been a loyal Taliban member who fought in Afghanistan and sheltered the hard-line Afghan group's leaders in the family's mud-walled compound.
He blames the Taliban and wants to avenge his son's death.
"The Taliban are not mujahedeen. They are not fighting for the cause of Islam," the 70-year-old said. "If I got my hands on them I would kill them and even tear their flesh with my own teeth."
Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, who claims to speak for the Taliban, told AP he had no information about Nabi or the video. None of the group's commanders he contacted could confirm the execution, he said.
The method of Nabi's death was not unusual for Pakistan's lawless tribal regions. Suspected informers are regularly found beheaded and dumped along the side of the road in the lawless, mountainous regions along the Afghan-Pakistani border where al-Qaida and Taliban militants find sanctuary.
But such al-Qaida-style killings are rarely featured in the Taliban's increasingly frequent propaganda videos. The use of a child to conduct the beheading stands out even among those filmed by militants in Iraq.
"This is outright barbarism," Iqbal Haider, secretary-general of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said after viewing the video. "Whosoever has committed this, whether they are Taliban or anybody else or any Afghan or al-Qaida or anybody, they are enemy No. 1 of the Muslims."
The video accuses Nabi of responsibility for a U.S. airstrike that killed Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani, who was regarded as one of the top three associates of Omar, the Taliban supreme leader. He was hit while traveling by car in Afghanistan's Helmand province Dec. 19.
Osmani was the highest-ranking Taliban leader to die since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan that ousted the hard-line regime in late 2001 for refusing to hand over bin Laden following the Sept. 11 terror attack on the United States.
The U.S. military said at the time that Osmani's death was a serious blow to militant operations, and NATO commanders said this week that a feared spring offensive had yet to materialize.
Sakhi, a retired mosque preacher with a long gray beard, spoke unashamedly of his son's Taliban affiliation and wept twice during an interview in his simple home at the foot of a mountain valley in Baluchistan province.
He said Nabi fought against the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance that helped U.S. forces to victory in Afghanistan.
After returning to Pakistan, Nabi ran a religious school in the Baluchistan capital of Quetta and had regularly sheltered both Osmani and Dadullah at the family compound, the father said.
He said Nabi also bought weapons for Taliban fighters and organized medical treatment for those injured during fighting in Afghanistan.
Some days after Osmani's death, Nabi went to Peshawar and then to Wana, a tribal town considered a militant stronghold, to collect money from Taliban officials to buy guns and food for militants in Afghanistan, Sakhi said.
He said his son called at the end of January to reveal that a tribal council had sentenced him to death on charges of tipping off U.S. forces about Osmani's movements, despite his denials.
His son passed the phone to Dadullah, but the militant leader ignored his pleas for clemency, Sakhi said.
"I talked to him and said you visited us and my son was a close friend so why are you going to hang him? He just said, 'How are you?', and switched off the phone," Sakhi said.
"They are the enemies of Islam," he said of the Taliban. "They are behaving like savages."
Sam Zarifi, Asia research director for Human Rights Watch, said the use of a child to commit such an act constituted a war crime and was a "new low" in the conflict in Afghanistan.
He noted the Taliban had teenage combatants but they were not recruited on a large scale because of the availability of adult fighters. He said he had seen children in the background of some jihadist videos but none in which they were directly involved in violence.
"I don't know why they would do this," Zarifi said. "The Taliban have to some extent tried to play to the public in Afghanistan and have not engaged in the complete sowing of mayhem that we have seen in Iraq. But this kind of act is really egregious. It's off the charts."
Sunday, April 15, 2007
"Bravia X Series 46"" by Voice Out on Flickr.
"23rd March 2007 my ps3 & LCD arrives on same day" by send2murat on Flickr.
well my lovely lcd finally arrived to complement my ps3 :D
Thursday, April 05, 2007
hey guys, well sorry i havent posted for a while, had such a busy few weeks. im in canberra at the moment! im having so much fun im loving it. i have been spending time with one of my close friends and its been so good to hang out with him, i have managed to catch up with another friend, and shall do with 2 more hopefully very soon.
they ask me how i like canberra and i say i like it, but they think its shitsville :P...i will hopefully post some piccies up, when i manage to upgrade my flickr account to pro! (hint hint: good bday pressie :P)
missing my mum and best friend of course. and yes my other friends too :) i only get to see my darwin friends once a year, and sometimes not even that, so im really ecstatic to be here and just relaxing.
well gonna go now, dont miss me too much :P...lol i got so much work when i get back, but i just dont care, this is so fantastic :D:D:D
cya!
ps: hope you liked the video of the otters holding hands :D
they ask me how i like canberra and i say i like it, but they think its shitsville :P...i will hopefully post some piccies up, when i manage to upgrade my flickr account to pro! (hint hint: good bday pressie :P)
missing my mum and best friend of course. and yes my other friends too :) i only get to see my darwin friends once a year, and sometimes not even that, so im really ecstatic to be here and just relaxing.
well gonna go now, dont miss me too much :P...lol i got so much work when i get back, but i just dont care, this is so fantastic :D:D:D
cya!
ps: hope you liked the video of the otters holding hands :D
Saturday, March 31, 2007
this is is absolutely adorable!! watch it all the way through for maximum cuteness ^_^
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