I agree, but I try to be pragmatic. Everyone is looking for the twitter killer that will destroy it in a blaze of glory, but I am fine with it slowly bleeding users and value as Threads and Mastodon (and Bluesky?) get better and gains more users.
(US Here) Even my more progressive friends won’t go downtown because every business doesn’t have free dedicated parking. Street parking is free for the first hour and when I still drove I had lunch with no problems that way 1000 times, but nope unless where they’re going has it’s own dedicated parking lot, they aren’t going.
The lesson we Westerners can learn from this and some action we can take right now is not to support the establishment and proliferation of far right-wing extremist religious organizations anymore. The action we should not take is to get involved with Afganistan’s affairs and make the problem worse than we’ve already made it.
I don’t understand how someone can graduate elementary (or primary in England, I think?) school and still believe the 15 minute city conspiracies. They have to be some of the stupidest that I’ve ever heard. Like if you know how to put your shoes on and you don’t keep forgetting to breathe, you should be smart enough to know better.
I encourage anyone who cares about this to travel to Afghanistan themselves and see it with their own eyes before relying on what publications like the Guardian have to say about it. One thing about the article that is probably not true is the claim that the girls were labeled “infidels” by the state. Why this claim is suspicious is that there is no word for “infidel” in the languages spoken in Afghanistan. The closest equivalent would be کافر (kafir), which can refer to someone who isn’t Muslim, but not wearing hijab is not considered to be any kind of proof that someone is not a Muslim. It’s highly doubtful that they were excommunicated for this.
The guardian claims that the government in Afghanistan mandates that women must be covered “from head to toe, revealing only their eyes”, which is clearly not true. When I was in Kabul I saw many women without their faces covered. This is one clear case where the Guardian gets facts on the ground wrong. A lot of women there are wearing surgical masks as a form of face covering that also doubles as protection from pollution and disease. As the girl quoted in the article said, they are doing this as a “precaution”, in other words, the government doesn’t in fact require face covering, but they are doing it anyway because they think they have to.
The article implies that girls were specifically targeted for going to English class, as if they have an issue with learning English. Government officials themselves also go to English classes, so that in and of itself was not a relevant matter to the story.
As for them getting beaten for “confronting the men”, of course you are going to get beaten if you resist arrest or argue. That’s true in most countries, but particularly in Afghanistan the authorities tend to hit people if they are not compliant.
The other issue is that the rule in Afghanistan is not well developed or consolidated, which means that these men who committed these acts like the beatings and arrests were acting outside the law, and the central government doesn’t necessarily support this action. Because of the rudimentary form of government different local elements of the Taliban can act differently or independently, so what the spokesperson quoted in the article said about this being unusual was probably telling the truth. This was only one incident, and hopefully it won’t be repeated elsewhere.
As for them getting beaten for “confronting the men”, of course you are going to get beaten if you resist arrest or argue. That’s true in most countries, but particularly in Afghanistan the authorities tend to hit people if they are not compliant.
Your whole post was already getting into a questionable defense of Afghanistan’s bullshit, but then you start defending police brutality and violence against women as something that is “true in most countries”? You’ve already lost me and probably most of the community here.
This was only one incident, and hopefully it won’t be repeated elsewhere.
Such incidents happen often in Afghanistan, and mostly against women. The central government bans girls from education, just to name another example.
There is another article by CBS quoting representatives of the central government:
Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban regime’s chief spokesperson, confirmed the arrests to CBS News on Monday, saying “a group of women who were involved in modeling to promote clothes were detained, advised in front of their family members […]
The person said that after several hours of searching [for a woman detained by the Taliban], the family found the woman at a local police station late Tuesday evening, where Taliban officials demanded money, along with her passport and other documentation, as a penalty and “to guarantee that she will not violate the dress code in the future.”
The family member said the authorities told the family they would “take her biometrics and photos, and if she violates the dress code in the future, she will be imprisoned for a longer period.”
Recent arrests of women in Kabul Afghanistan for ‘bad hijab’, confirmed by the Taliban, regrettably signified further restrictions on women’s freedom of expression and undermines other rights,” [United Nations special envoy for Afghanistan] Bennett said in a social media post.
You start off strong then move straight to supporting the fucking Taliban, as if that’s a reasonable position to take.
I agree, the article is likely highly sensationalized, but let’s be clear the Taliban are a piece of shit government with extremely regressive and repressive views. Maybe this shit doesn’t happen in Kabul, but Kabul seems bad enough that women can only show their faces and most are even too afraid to do that. That shows you that it’s a TERRIBLE place to start with even in the best places. Unfortunately many people don’t live in Kabul and it seems that the government isn’t going to do anything to stop regional authorities from abusing their power and any young woman they can get their hands on.
Don’t travel to Afghanistan. Every dollar that goes to Afghanistan supports religious oppression.
The tofu eating wokerati want to trap us on our homes! They want us to wear ankle trackers that ensure we don’t travel more then 15 minutes from the house!
They’re trying to ensure all the most important amenities are within walking distance so they can lock us down forever and control how we breed and what we think!
Then they’ll slowly replace us with the foreigners they’re shipping in on their small boats, and before you know it we’ll all be French! It’s an invasion from within!
It’s incredible. I went to a consultation forum regarding intruding 20mph speed limits and all these conspiracy nuts just came out of the crowd like some zombie apocalypse.
Gangs are running profitable businesses inside the correctional facilities, and even have the keys to their own units. Recent rioting showed the extent of their power, posing a difficult challenge for the government of Daniel Noboa.
And for the cunts who think there is an end to this kind of bullshit - a hijab is not enough, it has to be good. After that the shade of black is wrong, or the way these women breathe, or they don’t cower in a way these fucking micropenis pig-shit eating cunts like.
What would I even be writing about without publicly exposing my personal life intimate details (don’t want to) or that hasn’t been said ad nauseam by better and more known writers at this point? What’s a sensible sex and dating column that doesn’t simply reduce into the usual “be empathetic, respect other’s space and boundaries, open dialog, know yourself, seek therapy, etc”?
You gotta make a living. Why not make a living off of those stupid idiots who value your magic ice over regular ice. It’s like selling overpriced paper cards with pretty pictures to kids who love Pokemon. Except kids are kids and these arabs are supposed to be fully capable adults. It’s a low risk, high reward game. I can’t blame them.
theguardian.com
Hot