Thanks for sharing your thoughts A. Nothing that is a surprise to me, and most others too. But the stupidity is incredible.
Actually I saw this news over a week ago, when Saurav posted it. At that time I was wondering if the unexplained silence of the riverlink group at yahoo shut down because of this. More than likely it is the reason. But my question is this: Is the Indian union so weak, that its leaders would rather deprive hundreds of thousands of its citizens of the use of the Yahoo Groups in the Internet, than let some curious citizens go visit the dozen or so Khasi seccessionist group's discussions/posts advocation seccession of the Khasi nation? Big Brother in its incredible paranoia and a great example of cutting off one's nose to spite its face is how *I* see it. The Khasi group is probably laughing its guts out over the terror it spread in the hearts of the custodians of India's territorial integrity. What will be interesting is HOW the Indian Big Brothers will react next, if some teenage ( or even adult) Internet prankster puts out something else to terrorize them in some other forum. In fact if there is no change in the infinite wisdom of desi-cyber-darwans, the entire Internet could be shut down for Indians. Imagine that. That brings me to the topographical map/s of India and its scarcity. I spoke to folks at both USGS and maplink.com. The USGS has topo maps of south-east Asia, which shows a tiny part of eastern Assam, a copy of which I purchased. They referred me to maplink.com, who has maps of most every part of the world, including now Russia and even, imagine that, China - I mean PRC. But none for India. The USGS guy told me that India strangely does not allow mapping of its territory. Anyway, I did purchase copies of topo maps of eastern India from, guess who?-- US Army Defense Mapping Agency, which is HQed in St. Louis, from maplink.com. It is not that detailed but enough to give me a fairly good idea about the lay of the land from the Chinese borders to B'desh borders, showing contour lines at 500 feet intervals and spot grades at selected locations. I needed something at at least 100 ft. elevation intervals. Do you think the bureaucracy of India can do better by its people? I think this desreves at least an IgNoble prize. c-da At 4:09 PM -0500 10/3/03, Alpana Sarangapani wrote: >I sent it just to make your day/weekend, C'da. Did it work? :) > >Seriously, I think its the proper and measured response. Its one thing to >ensure freedom of expression, but quite another to allow someone to fan >anti-national feelings in the name of freedom of expression. The Patriot Act >II is much more restrictive, isn't it? > >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Chan Mahanta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: "Alpana Sarangapani" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; ><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 3:55 PM >Subject: Re: [Assam] India's ban on Internet forum > > >> What do you think of the Indian Govt. response, A? >> >> >> c-da >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> At 11:45 PM -0500 10/2/03, Alpana Sarangapani wrote: >> > Has anybody heard of the group called 'Kynhun' ? Read it in Houston >> >Chronicle (AP news) this morning that "a ban on an Internet discussion >> >group run by an obscure separatist movement has ended up blocking access >> >to popular unrelated Yahoo forums in nearly all of India." The forum >is >> >called "Kynhun Bri U Hynniewtrep", "which has about two dozen members >and >> >is run by a separatist group called Hynniewtrep International Liberation >> >Council. The little-known organization says it represents the ethnic >> >Khasi people and wants their home region, a small slice of the country's >> >north-east, to secede from India." ---- What's new? Seems it happened >> >at the end of last month. Here is a web site: >> >>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3148288.stm____________________ >_____ >> >______________________ >> >Assam mailing list >> >[EMAIL PROTECTED] >> >http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/listinfo/assam >> >> >> >> > >_______________________________________________ >Assam mailing list >[EMAIL PROTECTED] >http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/listinfo/assam _______________________________________________ Assam mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/listinfo/assam
