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Comment by kragen | Hacker News Reader

Amazon hosts websites for the US government, which no doubt the Iranian government considers a terrorist group. Probably a lot of people in Yemen and Afghanistan whose family members have been killed by drone strikes would agree. You may be too young to remember when the CIA illegally funded terrorist death squads in Nicaragua by selling arms to Iran and crack to the US, but a lot of Nicaraguans would agree, too.

Maybe we should stop trying to silence people we disagree with.

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Maybe we should silence the CIA?

This is the wrong take I think, because you're trying to paint the Taliban in a positive light -- as if they're freedom fighters to disagree with.

In reality, the Talibans main export is heroine, and they get that heroine by enslaving local populaces in rural southern Afghanistan where it can grow easily and the people are defenseless economically much less educationally or physically. They do so to attain power and spread their influence to one day establish a wider Sharia based Islamic State.

I am definitely not trying to paint the Taliban in a positive light, and I don't have any idea what it is about my comment that could possibly have led you to believe that. If they were freedom fighters, I wouldn't disagree with them nearly so strongly.

You're juxtaposing legitimate beef with US policy and intervention which carries some level of nuance with the Taliban. To me, that's trying to give them some credence where they clearly have none.

Because you used the often repeated refrain of “disagreement” as if people were turning to censorship over arguments about how high taxes should be, when usually it is more about groups plotting to exterminate an ethnic group or people plotting to overturn an election violently. Calling this “just disagreement” makes many feel you are either being disingenuous or are completely oblivious.

I think it’s fairly obvious here you are extrapolating intent here that the parent clearly didn’t have. Your interpretation is likely marred by your own experiences here. It didn’t read to me (and I presume many others) the way it did to you.

Yes, but a judge should be involve. Because for the Taliban, it's clear cut, but it's not always the case.

And of course, one day, it will be abused.

Hmm, you think it's clear cut that people in the US shouldn't be allowed to read whatever official statements the new government of Afghanistan decides to release? Or do you mean something different?

No, I mean it's clear cut that it's a terrorist organization. I'm the kind of person to think people should read Mein Kampf and the little red book in order to understand history, I won't argue we should prevent people to have access to knowledge.

But I get one company may want to avoid being the one hosting it.

Oh, I agree, though I have to admit I haven't read either of those.

Note, though, that the correct idea you expressed that the Taliban are a terrorist organization would be self-contradictory to anyone who defines terrorism ahistorically as non-state or unlawful violence to achieve political aims, since now the Taliban are the Afghan state and are legalizing their terrorism.

It's Heroin. And Afghanistan is mainly exporting opium.

Thanks for the spelling correction. Afghanistan exporting opium for legitimate use and the Taliban enslaving a local populace, engaging in human trafficking, and decimating all dissent with certain death and torture is slightly different.

In case a citation is needed for the content of any of my comments on this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban

this post and the top level parent literally never used the word taliban.

The focus of the story is an Islamic State website celebrating a Taliban attack. Sounds like folks came to comment and didn't realize what they're commenting on.

> Amazon made headlines in the Washington Post last week for shutting down a website hosted on AWS that featured propaganda from Islamic State that celebrated the suicide bombing that killed an estimated 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. troops in Kabul last Thursday. They did so after the news organization contacted Amazon, according to the Post.

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