This article is about manufacturing consent for the next foreign war.

For the last decade of occupation, at least, the Taliban controlled all the tribal regions, which is the majority of the nation. Do you think these crimes against humanity were not occurring then?

So how come now, after the withdrawal and end of the occupation, are news organizations suddenly devoting so much masthead to covering them?

People tend to believe that propaganda means lies, but the most effective propaganda is the truth. It’s putting out information that is designed to elicit a specific emotional response or reaction. That is what this torrent of post withdrawal Afghanistan articles are about.

How much coverage has been devoted to women’s rights versus the American post withdrawal policy freezing Afghanistan bank accounts to repay victims of 9/11? A policy that was directly linked to famines and food insecurity across the country.

That is serious question and my point isn’t some reductive America is bad argument. It’s that only one of those stories advances a pro-western military intervention narrative.

I will repeat what I already said, the story of that women is horrific and the Taliban is full of evil sadistic pieces of shit. But that is exactly why those narratives have been selected, because they help condition Western readers to be ready for the next foreign war.

If you don’t believe me, look through all of the replies here that are using the emotional resonance of that woman as justification for military occupation.

Just a wild guess here, but I take it that you never got very good marks for reading comprehension. But whatever, I’ll answer your bad faith question:

The racism is ignoring all of the ways in which colonial powers have fucked, refucked, and then triple fucked, the collection of tribal regions known as Afghanistan, which only exists as a nation state because of colonial powers drawing politically convenient lines on maps.

All while pretending that religion, and not the colonial conflict legacy is the root cause of these problems. Because admitting that colonialism is why we’re here, isn’t a very good narrative for selling the next war.

So great, now it’s the white Savior’s moral obligation to fix the problems that these brown people created all on their own, and definitely did not happen as a result of over a century of colonial violence , resource exploitation, and constant warfare.

And not for nothing, but you also clearly don’t have a clue about the crimes against humanity level shit that happened during the occupation.

So stop and think, why all this coverage now, and not for the last decade of occupation?

Manufacturing consent for the next foreign war.

Probably overkill and possibly even overly complicated for an MCU.

This probably just requires some good old reverse engineering the original apps bluetooth API and an app to connect to the shoes.

If they’re really lucky, it’s simple unencrypted packets they can just capture via Wireshark, but I really haven’t looked into it any further than this article summary, so I could be wrong.

If if they can work by simple packet replay, that would be the most simple, and definitely doable by the Flipper.

To be fair, anyone who thought their life needed SaaS supported shoe laces, definitely had this coming.

In terms of cosmic corporate evildoers, Nike may not currently be a top ranked contender, but their definitely an old school hall of fame level player.

So while not saying they were doing the world a favor by dropping cloud shoe lace support, I am saying that the situation is hilarious.

No, it’s a religious fundamentalist thing and is hardly unique to Iran.

If anything, the Iranian version is relatively more moderate then their counterparts in places that practice forms of Sunni fundamentalism like Saudi Arabia, or Afghanistan.

Not trying to pretend the Iranian morality police are good, or reasonable, but relative to those other two examples, they aren’t as bad. Which is saying something, since they are clearly awful in their own right.

Although to be fair, it might be less philosophical or theological reasoning that account for those differences, and just more the practical reality that Iranian women generally have more rights than those in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan.

New Labour are really just a strain of neoliberal Democrats. Ole’ Starmy is New Labour, through and through.

I don’t even know where to begin with the levels of idiocy contained in your remark.

Like, do I start with the realities of how Western PMC mineral extraction fed into the cycle of extremism and poverty, the problems inherent with trying to use foreign military occupation to create a functioning centralized state out of a tribal society who’s only a nation because colonial powers drew lines on maps, or just the raw racism of believing that the white saviors should invade and occupy poor brown countries because we have to show those savages how to be better people.

…and how many more years of military occupation would have prevented that?

Oh, I got an idea. Let’s bomb the shit out of them, including a bunch of weddings, reinvade, and install another heroin kingpin as President.

Look, the Taliban is shit and these stories are truly horrific, but where was the coverage of Afghanistan the last 10 years?

Whenever I read these stories, all I see, aside from the obvious human misery and evil, is a media class that is continually trying to rewrite history to somehow justify the failure that was the 20 year occupation, and discredit the withdrawal.

I hope this woman gets justice and I hope things improve for women in Afghanistan. But I also want the Western audiences not to be the blinded by the sinister intent that is behind a lot of the Western Afghanistan media coverage.

Not because they should dismiss this women’s story, or those like hers, but so they don’t forget what a failure the NATO adventure in Afghanistan was. So they don’t believe that the next war, should go on forever, or that expeditionary military force and occupation can be used to improve women’s rights.

Throws down? She might as well have said:

who you going to believe, me? Or you’re lying eyes?

Those choices don’t occur in a vacuum.

What do you think happens to the nonprofit foundation built entirely around a fanatical devotion to privacy, if they partnered with Facebook. Not just partnered with, but in doing so, weakened the overall privacy of their platform.

Putting aside adoption rates, how does that impact their organizational sustainment and viability e.g. their ability to draw in donations, retain talent, or stay independent?

… agreeing to be directly compatible with Whatsapp would mean they agree to surrender the privacy for every single instance of Signal-WhatsApp communication.

If the whole reason for your foundations existence is privacy, it seems that it would be an existential danger to create a partnership with the implicit understanding that it will destroy privacy.

Nah bro, if we had just stuck it out a little longer…

Putting aside the human misery and epic failure of Operation Rolling Thunder, someone should probably send him a basic Game Theory video to help him understand the difference between finite and infinite games, and then see if he can connect the dots.

What’s crazy is that your comment isn’t even endorsing any position, just stating a fact:

Michigan has a large and diverse Muslim community and without them, Biden is unlikely to win the state.

His policy on Israel’s war has lost him those votes, and that has been reflected in the polling since long before the debate.

This isn’t a new development.

No one here is debating that there is some hidden upside to theocracy. They’re bad, we get it.

His point though, is that much like the Miami Cubans, the Iranian exiles that fled after the overthrow of the Shah, tend to be part of the old ruling class that had been disempowered. At least, the most vocal ones.

Also, just like Batista, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was enabled and backed by Western powers, before revolutionaries overthrew him and ended his dynasty.

Sure, they had a system of relatively successive monarchies, but that isn’t the same as having a single running system of government. And it certainly not somehow more legitimate than theocracy, if your own benchmark is democratic rule - which you just said was the determining factor of a government’s legitimacy.

Also, not for nothing, but the last monarchical dynasty was literally installed by the British, and propped up by Western powers until the people, or at least, a fanatically religious subset of the people, overthrew them.

Again, it’s not like I’m a fan of theocracies, but saying that their current government is illegitimate is absurd, whether viewed in the context of international relations, or internal support and control.

He failed to legitimize the government that has been ruling the country since 1979…?

Presumably this website feels the Pahlavi dynasty, which was installed and backed by foreign powers and also lasted about 50 years, was the last legitimate government.

You don’t have to support theocracy to recognize the absurdity of claiming that a government that’s been in charge for 50 years, and is recognized around the world, is somehow illegitimate.

Losing one artist isn’t the implication…it’s losing all your independent venues because they won’t financially survive being blacklisted by every artist that hopes to tour anywhere else because LN is a monopoly…

So goodbye independent venues and hello to exponentially higher prices, because that’s what monopolies do…

Just duct tape some EREC (explosive reactive egg cartons) on that bitch and you’ll be good to go.

No, it won’t.

You’re clearly uninformed on the power of Operator Prayer, or Tactical Theology, and the role it plays on the modern battlefield.

With sufficient levels of belief, that bullet can achieve anything. Just remember, if you believe, your bullet can achieve.