pandapoo

joined 8 months ago
[–] pandapoo@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

[–] pandapoo@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] pandapoo@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

[–] pandapoo@sh.itjust.works -2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

[–] pandapoo@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] pandapoo@sh.itjust.works 25 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

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

[–] pandapoo@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 week ago (7 children)

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.

[–] pandapoo@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 week ago (15 children)

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

[–] pandapoo@sh.itjust.works 26 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (23 children)

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.

[–] pandapoo@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Throws down? She might as well have said:

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

[–] pandapoo@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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?

[–] pandapoo@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

.... 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.

view more: next ›