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The Afghanistan Chain Letter Hoax.

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UPDATE SEE BELOW!
Subject: If you decide not to forward this, please send it back to me.
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 09:33:49 -0400
I know this is too true and so dreadful. Oprah actually had a show about this atrocity. This is an actual petition, and "signatures" will be lost if you drop the line. Please take 3 minutes out of your life to do your part. Madhu, the government of Afghanistan, is waging a war upon women.
Since the Taliban took power in 1996...
sarabande@brandeis.edu Even if you decide not to sign, please be considerate and do not kill the petition.
Elizabeth Gardner, SLP
The John F. Kennedy Center for Human Development
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37203
     OK. First out of the box. The Taliban are indeed one of the most oppressive outfits to ever seize power in any country in history, period. They are so extreme in their Islamic Fundamentalist beliefs most of the Muslim World regards them as almost as way out in right field, and to some degree, dangerous to their own countries as Americans do [SEE BELOW!]. The regime has knocked Afghanistan clear out of the Industrial Age. They have secluded the country so much it is almost an island in the middle of Asia. And they have systematically destroyed anything they don't like, including the country's art treasures, some dating back a thousand years or more. They seized power after the Soviet's botched invasion and pull out left the country basically direction-less, and haven't looked back.
     As for the rights of women under the Taliban, that's an easy one. They don't have any.
     Yes you read that right. A female has fewer rights than a GOAT in Afghanistan. A woman can be killed in public with or without reason by any Talib man. Instantly and without official repercussions from the state. Her kinsmen may seek revenge if they are so inclined. All the man has to say is that he saw her skin, or she made eye contact with him. That's it. Done.
     And there is NOTHING the rest of the world can do about it. Women in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, etc. live under better conditions than their sisters under Theocracy of the Talib.
     Short of declaring war on the country the United Nations, the US, Europe, Russia, China, nobody has any pull in Afghanistan at all. The country is standing alone, cut off, and isolated. And they like it that way.

Now about the chain letter.

     It's SPAM. Oprah should have a show on heart-wrenching hoax emails.

     It's a Hoax...Pure and simple. The DESK wishes it was that easy... send around an email and depose the Rule of Hell On Earth in the Name of Allah. Don't believe the Desk? Follow the links below and check it out for yourself. You've got to do some hunting, but the info is there.
HINT: Search their sites for the names in the email's send to address.

From The Kennedy Center at Vanderbilt.
     The Kennedy Center is about discovery--finding out why child development goes awry, finding ways to prevent developmental detours, and finding ways for children and adults with disabilities to lead better lives. The mission of the Kennedy Center is to conduct and support collaborative research, training, and information dissemination on behavioral, intellectual, and brain development. The Kennedy Center has teams of researchers from different disciplines working on common problems--90 researchers from 16 departments in Peabody College, the Schools of Medicine and Nursing, and the College of Arts and Science at Vanderbilt University.
The Kennedy Center

From Bandeis University. Chain Letter Announcement (January 10, 1999)
     An unauthorized mass mailing recently went out to most UNet users soliciting email to sarabande@brandeis.edu. Please do not respond in any way; the owner of that address no longer wants the mail. Due to unmanageable volume, the sarabande address has not been receiving email since January 3rd 1999, and will never be a valid email address again. postmaster@brandeis.edu will answer no more questions about this issue. Please do not initiate or propagate chain letters.
Brandeis University

7/24/01 Update.

13:32 2001-07-24 Pravda.RU

TALIBAN SOLDIERS BEAT TO DEATH AN AFGHANI FOR CUTTING HIS BEARD

The Taliban soldiers beat to death an Afghani at a checkpoint near Kabul for the fact that he had his beard cut.
Taliban soldiers were checking the passengers of a mini-bus that headed from Dzhelalabad to Gradez through Kabul. Among the passengers they noticed a man with a short beard. The soldiers dragged him out of the bus and beat him with the butts of their assault riffles. With his head smashed, the Afghani was delivered to the hospital Dzhamhuriet where he died without coming to.
After the Muslim fundamentalists come to power in 1996, all the male population of Afghanistan must wear long beards - just like Mohamed--and are completely forbidden to cut them.
Specially established police of Muslim Morals strictly oversee the fulfilment of all the orders issued by Mullah Mohammad Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taliban movement.

Published: Sunday August 5, 7:24 PM Posted on 08/05/2001 13:45:41 PDT KABUL (Reuters) - The ruling Taliban on Sunday shut down an international aid agency operating in Afghanistan and arrested 24 of its international and local staff, accusing the group of trying to convert Muslims to Christianity. A senior Taliban official, quoted by the official Voice of Shariat radio, said the eight foreign staffers of Shelter Now International had "confessed to the crime" and asked for pardon.
Earlier, the official news agency Bakhtar said authorities had found Bibles in a house of the agency's Afghan staff. Among eight foreigners arrested, six were women and two men while the rest 16 were Afghans, it said. The nationalities of the foreigners were not given.
A U.N. source in Islamabad, capital of neighbouring Pakistan, said Shelter Now was an international non-governmental organisation supported by various Western countries and engaged in humanitarian work. Taliban radio said the agency's foreign staffers were arrested while trying to convert members of an Afghan Muslim family by showing them material about Christianity through a computer.
It quoted the deputy of the Taliban religious police, Salim Haqqani, as saying the staff had "confessed their crime without any compulsion, regretted their act and asked for pardon...".
Earlier, Bakhtar said Taliban security officials found two Shelter Now computers and two computer discs containing material on Christianity.
The Taliban, a purist Islamic movement, issued an edict last year prescribing the death penalty for any Muslim converting to any other religion or those involved in such conversions. –30-

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