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drat what a great career, get paid what like $200,000/yr to be constantly wrong all the time. Only accountability is if you just start spanking your cock in the middle of a work meeting (banned for six months) or believe an inaccurate source in the course of criticizing a chickenhawk president's mendacious foreign war (permanent disgrace). Anywho so does our feminist friend Massoud Jr hate women now or what's the official line on this
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Aug 21, 2021 15:21
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Al-Saqr posted:Massoud Junior has given up to the Taliban:- The very next tweet in that thread says that Massoud denies these reports, so it seems like at the very least there's no deal yet. https://twitter.com/Natsecjeff/status/1429086197003980809 In addition, his various advisors and spokespeople are fiercely denying it (at least for now). https://twitter.com/alinazary/status/1429081283112677376 The fact that negotiations are happening at all suggest there isn't necessarily a ton of will to fight on the side of the Northern Alliance, but the failson hasn't publicly admitted giving up just yet.
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Aug 21, 2021 15:41
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Main Paineframe posted:The very next tweet in that thread says that Massoud denies these reports, so it seems like at the very least there's no deal yet. I've never been a big Sufjan Stevens fan but this is ridiculous.
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Aug 21, 2021 15:50
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Anyone know if anyone is tracking how many flights out are going out every day? We're trying to strategize a plan for my fiance's sister and her family in Kabul. If it's still two flights a day or whatever I'm going to suggest they covertly just stockpile food to survive the aid shut off and potential sanctions until we can figure out a safe route to a place to attempt refugee status.
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Aug 21, 2021 16:18
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Zedhe Khoja posted:Anyone know if anyone is tracking how many flights out are going out every day? We're trying to strategize a plan for my fiance's sister and her family in Kabul. If it's still two flights a day or whatever I'm going to suggest they covertly just stockpile food to survive the aid shut off and potential sanctions until we can figure out a safe route to a place to attempt refugee status. As far as I'm aware, flight trackers are operating normally. There's definitely a lot more than two flights per day. Politics aside, the presence of the US is clearly having a stabilizing influence - I would think that leaving Kabul is not likely to get any easier than it is currently. However without any visa the family may not have a particularly good opportunity regardless. It's likely that they would have a better idea of how to navigate that issue than any foreigner. https://flightaware.com/live/airport/OAKB Kaal fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Aug 21, 2021 |
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Aug 21, 2021 18:14
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once the US is out you're left to the whims of international acceptance of the Taliban and commercial flights.
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Aug 21, 2021 18:26
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Quincey posted:I presume this is a joke but it's not a funny one. Just because you don't like the behaviour of some Christians where you are doesn't making lazy generalisations about millions of people ok. There are good and bad Christians like with every religion (and with the non-religious.  lol(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Aug 21, 2021 18:33
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It was in the context of a place where Christians are a tiny minority so yeah joking about persecuting religious minorities is obviously a lovely thing to do, and making fun of someone else for being upset about that is too, wtf.
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Aug 21, 2021 18:35
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i don't know what people here think of Matthew Ygelsias but I thought this thread had some good points about the withdrawal. https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1428913308053262338 https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1428916105159008256 You can click on the links for the rest. I'm not good with Twitter and I don't know of another way to paste all the posts that wouldn't be really annoying. Eric Cantonese fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Aug 21, 2021 |
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Aug 21, 2021 18:37
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I mean, the actual safe evacuation would have been an agreement with the Taliban to allow the US to systematically withdraw people and assets on a timetable, with the Taliban moving into areas once the US is done there.
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Aug 21, 2021 18:49
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talked with an on-the-ground guy who dropped their strategic consulting gig in afghanistan some time ago because it was a mind-sucking hellpit of waste and imperial hubris by rights, according to them, the last time you could have had an orderly withdrawal timetable was apparently two or three years ago after that point, the taliban was enough in charge of the ground that at any time the united states would have started a full withdrawal of citizens and staff, that would have been the moment the kabul government and army would have engaged in the exact same immediate, rapid disintegration... as everyone withdrew instead of dying for a lost cause. it was gonna happen as soon as the withdrawal timetable actually started up, at any subsequent time the people in charge knew this, they just wanted to punt it to any administration that wasn't them
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Aug 21, 2021 19:06
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Kaal posted:As far as I'm aware, flight trackers are operating normally. There's definitely a lot more than two flights per day. Politics aside, the presence of the US is clearly having a stabilizing influence - I would think that leaving Kabul is not likely to get any easier than it is currently. However without any visa the family may not have a particularly good opportunity regardless. It's likely that they would have a better idea of how to navigate that issue than any foreigner.  incredibly useful. also I don't know why you'd think they'd have much idea of how to navigate any of this lol, especially given all the inner Kabul people with actual paperwork and familiarity with western systems of administration are currently throwing themselves at barbed wire because they don't have any idea what else to do
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Aug 21, 2021 19:15
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Pakistani PM showing what they thought about US presence in Afghanistan LMBO:Imran Khan posted:Chains of slavery were broken in #Accept #Afghanistan : Prime Minister #ImranKhan Or possibly trying to curry favour with the new regime, but either way I don't think the US will be happy with that.
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Aug 21, 2021 19:21
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I think some of it is probably realizing the US has no real need for a continuing relationship with Pakistan anymore and the withdrawal will probably speed up the process of getting closer to India now.
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Aug 21, 2021 19:29
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fool of sound posted:I mean, the actual safe evacuation would have been an agreement with the Taliban to allow the US to systematically withdraw people and assets on a timetable, with the Taliban moving into areas once the US is done there. We don't negotiate with terrorists 
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Aug 21, 2021 19:52
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Zedhe Khoja posted:Anyone know if anyone is tracking how many flights out are going out every day? We're trying to strategize a plan for my fiance's sister and her family in Kabul. If it's still two flights a day or whatever I'm going to suggest they covertly just stockpile food to survive the aid shut off and potential sanctions until we can figure out a safe route to a place to attempt refugee status. It's currently impossible for Afghans to get into the airport without documents proving some kind of foreign affiliation - evacuation flights are reserved for foreigners, visa holders, and collaborators only.
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Aug 21, 2021 20:12
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One of the taliban's first fatwahs is to ban co-ed, calling it the root of all evils. I do not expect them to construct schools for the girls and women no longer allowed to attend the formerly coed school facilities.
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Aug 21, 2021 22:10
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Eric Cantonese posted:i don't know what people here think of Matthew Ygelsias but I thought this thread had some good points about the withdrawal. Yeah, it's really obvious that some of these people are salty we got out, and what's so stone stupid about that is again, obvious, that they all had 20 years to light a fire about the war, instead they let it fall to page 12. Now we leave and suddenly they want start playing Axis & Allies, FOH with that bullshit. American media just made themselves into a bald faced joke. Honestly this country has been on a dumpster fire trend for decades. We can't keep our poo poo together to literally save our own lives. Accelerationism happened right under our noses. From the Neo-Cons and their Bond villain circle jerk across the middle east leaving us with egg on our face, to watching China hitting 3 pointers on the coronavirus like Stephen Curry while we're licking doorknobs and grocery carts in Safeway. The writing's on the wall. -Blackadder- fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Aug 21, 2021 |
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Aug 21, 2021 22:25
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Kavros posted:One of the taliban's first fatwahs is to ban co-ed, calling it the root of all evils. While they may improve from how they were and make Afghanistan more stable, it's a shame they are still lovely about women.
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Aug 21, 2021 22:56
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My understanding is that both the traditional Pashtun and the Deobandi Islamic movement have their own separate restrictions on women and the Taliban are of the opinion both should be enforced simultaneously, which basically leaves women completely unable to do anything anywhere where men who are not immediately family members might be around. It's possible they'll loosen those positions a little bit from where they were 20 years ago to avoid the most horrific outcomes in the name of better international relations, but I certainly wouldn't expect Afghan women getting much in the way of employment or education under their rule.
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Aug 21, 2021 23:10
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Eric Cantonese posted:i don't know what people here think of Matthew Ygelsias but I thought this thread had some good points about the withdrawal. My favorite tl;dr on the whole debacle is that the Afghan Government operated by Looney Tunes rules: You can walk all the way across the cliff, but as soon as you look down, you fall. There was literally no way to handle the withdrawal in a way that didn't alert everyone with their ear to the ground that cascading failure was imminent.
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Aug 21, 2021 23:32
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HolHorsejob posted:My favorite tl;dr on the whole debacle is that the Afghan Government operated by Looney Tunes rules: You can walk all the way across the cliff, but as soon as you look down, you fall. There was literally no way to handle the withdrawal in a way that didn't alert everyone with their ear to the ground that cascading failure was imminent. I still can't get over that we put 2 trillion and 20 years into building an entire government only for it to literally just evaporate over night. Like, you have to work hard to gently caress things up that badly. And that no heads are rolling in our military and government leadership over it is just jaw dropping. The reality is there was a juggernaut amount of effort put into this, just a massive amount of human, political, military, financial, and intellectual resources that went into this project and it completely and utter failed and the fact that no one seems particularly perturbed by it, or that there's not even the slightest sense of urgency about reforming our system in the face of such complete and total catastrophic failure is really kind of amazing. Realistically any gently caress up this monumental should have mass resignations of everyone involved, maybe even people in jail, but I guess it's like the 2008 bailout, the people responsible for the bad thing are all so closely woven into the existing system that it's almost like asking the criminals to arrest themselves. And while that level of generalized cynicism certainly has a grain of truth, it's no excuse for us allowing ourselves to be dragged down by the inertia of failure. There really needs to be a serious come to Jesus moment on way we do business here. -Blackadder- fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Aug 22, 2021 |
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Aug 22, 2021 00:43
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-Blackadder- posted:I still can't get over that we put 2 trillion and 20 years into building an entire government only for it to literally just evaporate over night. Like, you have to work hard to gently caress things up that badly. And that no heads are rolling in military and government leadership over it is just jaw dropping. The reality is there was a juggernaut amount of effort put into this, just a massive amount of political, military, financial, and intellectual resources that went into this project and it completely and utter failed and the fact that no one seems particularly perturbed by it, or that there's not even the slightest sense of urgency about reforming the system in the face of such complete and total catastrophic failure is really kind of amazing. Realistically any gently caress up this monumental should have mass resignations of everyone involved, maybe even people in jail, but I guess it's like the 2008 bailout, the people responsible for the bad thing are all so closely woven into the existing system that it's almost like asking the criminals to arrest themselves. And while that level of generalized cynicism certainly has a grain of truth, it's no excuse for us allowing ourselves to be dragged down by the inertia of failure. I think a lot of the failure is because of the degree of dependence on corrupt local officials, along with worries over injecting too much money into the economy by actually spending the money in a way that goes to Afghans (aside from bribes that is). I'm not saying it's a good thing mind you. There's not much point worrying about the fact you might pay officials reasonable western salaries and the effect that will have on the seriously impoverished local economy, seeing as you end up having to pay them few times as much in bribes. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Aug 22, 2021 |
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Aug 22, 2021 00:49
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well it's more that we spent 2 trillion dollars and 20 years on the whole thing. in terms of actually trying to build a government? we spent a few billion and gave up mostly after a few years. It's anyone's guess what all the trillions actually went towards. Probably at least a few golden toilets.
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Aug 22, 2021 00:50
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-Blackadder- posted:I still can't get over that we put 2 trillion and 20 years into building an entire government only for it to literally just evaporate over night. Like, you have to work hard to gently caress things up that badly. And that no heads are rolling in military and government leadership over it is just jaw dropping. The reality is there was a juggernaut amount of effort put into this, just a massive amount of human, political, military, financial, and intellectual resources that went into this project and it completely and utter failed and the fact that no one seems particularly perturbed by it, or that there's not even the slightest sense of urgency about reforming the system in the face of such complete and total catastrophic failure is really kind of amazing. Realistically any gently caress up this monumental should have mass resignations of everyone involved, maybe even people in jail, but I guess it's like the 2008 bailout, the people responsible for the bad thing are all so closely woven into the existing system that it's almost like asking the criminals to arrest themselves. And while that level of generalized cynicism certainly has a grain of truth, it's no excuse for us allowing ourselves to be dragged down by the inertia of failure. There really needs to be a serious come to Jesus moment on the way we do business here. The reason that no heads are rolling is because everyone responsible for it has long since retired or died.
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Aug 22, 2021 00:53
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Fister Roboto posted:The reason that no heads are rolling is because everyone responsible for it has long since retired or died. a lot of the people responsible are still elected leaders and/or still have influence within their respective political parties. Some of the people responsible are also correspondents/advisors for the media, or now work for government contractors/the MIC or government think tanks or as a lobbyists.
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Aug 22, 2021 01:31
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or are literally the president right now
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Aug 22, 2021 01:40
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Herstory Begins Now posted:well it's more that we spent 2 trillion dollars and 20 years on the whole thing. I think its worth resetting expectations on '20 years' because in the context of nation building that's really a blink of an eye. The USA was fundamentally unstable when it was formed but it still took almost 100 years for that instability to manifest into a civil war. The current political makeup is arguably still unstable and possibly not enduring and we might watch that play out over this century. In England the Magna Carta was signed in 1215 but the issue of the precise place of the Crown in the English constitution was only settled 450 years and a couple of civil wars later. France is on it's fifth Republic in 200 years. Our own, mostly internal, efforts at nation building have taken centuries to pan out. Nobody should really have had any expectations of achieving anything in 20 years other than start to appreciate what the issues might be.
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Aug 22, 2021 10:34
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https://twitter.com/PanjshirProvin1/status/1429373543331020800?s=20
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Aug 22, 2021 10:57
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Praying for a quick and decisive defeat for pansjshir so this war can loving end and so Bernard Henri Levy can cry
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Aug 22, 2021 11:22
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I'm trying to imagine what kind of insane bubble they've kept Massoud's son in that he thought this was a good idea. Dude is younger than half the posters here. e: Panjshir was defensible because it was a chokepoint to the rest of the Northern Alliances territory. Which the Taliban hold and garrison currently. It's like trying to do a battle of Thermopylae after the Persians occupied the Peloponnese Zedhe Khoja fucked around with this message at 12:29 on Aug 22, 2021 |
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Aug 22, 2021 12:25
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More substantial seems to be the uprising in Baghlan. None of the articles I've seen have said who it is, but it's in the southern part of the province. Might be the younger Naderi.
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Aug 22, 2021 13:00
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Zedhe Khoja posted:I'm trying to imagine what kind of insane bubble they've kept Massoud's son in that he thought this was a good idea. Dude is younger than half the posters here. likely it's largely a fishing expedition to see how much foreign support materializes
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Aug 22, 2021 14:55
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Alchenar posted:I think its worth resetting expectations on '20 years' because in the context of nation building that's really a blink of an eye. The Chinese state as it exists formed in the post war I do get what you are saying but no, America wasn't really trying. There are patterns that form in history about what helps knit groups in a region together, and none of those were useful to American objectives there we didn't go there to build. we went there to launder money into the accounts of military contractors and to take over the heroin trade.
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Aug 22, 2021 16:21
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I would think the opium connection is obvious, didn't an American company just get hammered for not even trying to hide how much they were trying to saturate the market with opiates? It was only the year before the US invaded that the taliban ceased virtually all opium production in Afghanistan
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Aug 22, 2021 16:23
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Zedsdeadbaby posted:I would think the opium connection is obvious, didn't an American company just get hammered for not even trying to hide how much they were trying to saturate the market with opiates? You really should do more research before posting. Hint: fentanyl is a "synthetic" opioid.
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Aug 22, 2021 16:51
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Alchenar posted:I think its worth resetting expectations on '20 years' because in the context of nation building that's really a blink of an eye. A minor point: The Magna Carta was signed in 1215 and then annulled by the Pope in 1216. It didn’t work out so well. One thing I’m curious about is Japan and South Korea; those seem to be quite successful US nation building projects.
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Aug 22, 2021 16:52
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The nation-state of Japan: created in 1945 after westerners finally got in to teach the primitive tribal Japanese society how to govern a country
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Aug 22, 2021 17:07
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Rust Martialis posted:You really should do more research before posting. As is oxycodone. From what I gathered, Afghan opium (itself representing the overwhelming majority of natural opium production) makes up less than a fifth of the global opiate market.
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Aug 22, 2021 17:11
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Oxycodone is semi-synthetic opioid derived from thebaine which is itself isolated from latex that is within opium poppies (Papaver somniferum). Opium poppy latex contain opiates like thebaine and oripavine that are then used to create semi-synthetic opioids like oxycodone and hydrocodone. It is far easier to use those ingredients to create semi-synthetic opioids than to attempt a total synthesis. This is also true for naturally occurring opiates like morphine and codeine, which are also present in poppy latex and are responsible for the high and pain-killing properties that comes from opium. Morphine and codeine themselves can be isolated from the poppy latex and this is where codeine and morphine present in such painkillers come from because, again, it is far easier and cheaper to do this than attempt a total synthesis which would be insanely difficult, inefficient and costly. Diacetyl morphine (heroin) is synthesized from morphine itself. It is easy to make from morphine provided one have access to a ready supply of poppy latex (difficult) and the equipment/chemicals to isolate and process the morphine into heroin. Fentanyl, on the other hand, has the exceptional advantage of being fully synthetic and is comparably easy to synthesize in vast quantities and doesn't require poppy latex. It does require precursor chemicals but these are a lot easier to get than poppy latex. It is also extremely potent and thus can be used in extremely small quantities to achieve comparable effects and transported quite easily. Cranappleberry fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Aug 22, 2021 |
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Aug 22, 2021 17:26
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