The funny thing about all this, is that people keep acting like Putin is some rational actor who can be bargained with.
But he’s not, listen to his speeches, listen to what he says he believes and wants. Some of it may be propaganda for internal consumption, but a lot of it seems consistent with his actions.
He sees the existence of an independent Ukraine as an existential threat, he ether wants it gone or under a puppet regime that he has throughly locked down. He doesn’t believe that Europe and the United States want peace, he is convinced that there is a shadowy deep state in Europe and the US that holds a consistent foreign policy across multiple administrations across multiple countries, and he see that foreign policy being to subjugate or destroy Russia.
The man has surrounded him self with conspiracy theorists, from disciples of Lyndon LaRouche to advocates of Eurasianism. He is detached from reality, swirling about a toilet bowl of yes men. He is not someone who can be compromised with or offered off ramps, he’s been repeatedly given off ramps and rejected them every time, thinking them to be traps.
The only end of this conflict is when internal power structures in Russia shift away from conspiracy theorists, or Russia’s ability to commit aggressive action is less than the defensive capabilities of its neighbors.
Enough with the ‘it’s the worst and it will get even worse’ stories. Start publishing the names and actions of those who benefitted from these catastrophies. Start publishing their plans to ride out the crises when the rest of us struggle in a disaster they made. Start publishing the actions they took to sabotage the world’s search for energy independence and sustainability. Start publishing how much money they made/stole with this. Start publishing the number of lives lost per person who benefitted from this.
I don’t understand the f***ing pacifist strategy against a bunch of greedy sniveling mass murderers.
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.
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.
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 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.
Cross-posting this from /c/socialism because I think it’s a quality analysis.
This is also a reminder that you’re on Beehaw and our one rule is to bee nice. We’ve seen a lot of comment threads on this conflict turn into cursing matches, lets not do that again please 💜
This is a really good article, and I like that they made their data public and put a link to it right in the article.
Also, I knew it was bad, but looking at these numbers it’s even worse than I thought. I recommend reading this one.
Like, this part:
Asymmetry in how children are covered is qualitative as well as quantitative. On October 13, the Los Angeles Times ran an Associated Press report Opens in a new tabthat said, “The Gaza Health Ministry said Friday that 1,799 people have been killed in the territory, including more than 580 under the age of 18 and 351 women. Hamas’s assault last Saturday killed more than 1,300 people in Israel, including women, children and young music festivalgoers.” Notice that young Israelis are referred to as children while young Palestinians are described as people under 18.
During discussions around the prisoner exchanges, this frequent refusal to refer to Palestinians as children was even more stark, with the New York Times referring in one case to “Israeli women and children” being exchanged for “Palestinian women and minors.” (Palestinian children are referred to as “children” later in the report, when summarizing a human rights groups’ findings.)
A Washington Post report from November 21 announcing the truce deal erased Palestinian women and children altogether: “President Biden said in a statement Tuesday night that a deal to release 50 women and children held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners detained by Israel.” The brief did not mention Palestinian women and children at all.
That is so fucked up. And there are a bunch of other examples like it re. the disparity in the language these newspapers use.
Tangentially, and though this is a whole can of worms and rather beside the point we should be focusing on at the moment: I am also disturbed that it’s apparently still common practice to bundle women together with children like this - if they just mean “noncombatants” or “caregivers” then they should say that, just saying “women and children” like this demeans female combatants and male caregivers alike. I can sort of understand an argument for it in certain contexts where women are subjugated and denied a lot of rights, but this language is used regardless of social contexts.
Yes, the US news media has a fairly long complete-since-the-founding-of-the-US history of dehumanizing people of color in their language. No surprise it’s kicked into overdrive with this “conflict” in particular.
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