Me, waking up and having another reason to hate farmers: “Must be a day ending in y”

Oh, in that case, yeah, we are mostly in agreement. I would argue that both the Sovs and the Americans attempted to form a firm national government, that both the monarchy and the Afghan Republic preceding them also attempted it, and the Taliban has (twice now) in their own grotesque way attempted the same. The Mujahideen were more interested in just not falling apart into civil war again, a very ‘symptomatic’ government of the ‘leave the locals to their affairs’ attitude that Afghanistan governments struggle to fight.

I don’t think I would say it’s impossible or prevented completely, but I would say that it’s… definitely not something that any one factor can fix or resolve. Whatever route Afghanistan takes to modernity, it will take… considerable overhaul, and that’s something only the people of the region itself can make progress on.

Yes not everything is down to ecominics, the bombs and bullets are probably a more significant factor. Being unable to feed your family is bad, burying your family is worse.

And burying someone else’s family for local disagreements is even worse.

And yes, the middle class Afghanis can’t put up a fight for many reasons, one of which is that they largely stopped existing. The moment they are locked out of their personal and business savings, they become poor desperate Afghanis.

Would you like to elaborate how the US freezing assets after the Taliban overran the country and seized control of its institutions stopped the Afghani middle class from putting up a fight against the Taliban from overrunning their country?

If the US hadn’t frozen the assets, what would have happened is that the Taliban, then controlling the levers of government, would have had access to them. But even if we assume that wasn’t an issue, what the fuck is the middle class supposed to do in the midst of a mass offensive by regional Islamist warlords? The development of a middle class is essential to democratic development, but it’s not a wall against the use of all force - the middle class alone doesn’t fight or lead wars. The middle class is glue; an ongoing war is a fucking sledgehammer. Feeding the Afghan middle class all the money in the world after the Taliban offensive started up wouldn’t have changed that.

Can you explain your disagreement or argument? I dont understand what you are getting at, and “elaborate on pre-2001 afghanistan” is a very broad topic.

The two-decades of US occupation were not some outbreak of brutality which damaged Afghanistan. Afghanistan had been in far greater unbroken turmoil since the early 1970s, and the Taliban regime which preceded the US invasion (and, now, has resumed) is far more brutal. Even the Mujahideen government which preceded the Taliban was more brutal than the US-backed national government. Afghanistan’s essential problems are not something that can be chalked up to “Bad things happened in the past five historical minutes”.

This isn’t a matter of happenstance - Afghanistan is simply not in a good position to become a functioning state - not culturally, not demographically, not economically. The ethnic conflicts are too deep and the imbalance of power too pronounced - every goddamn attempt at making a firm national government has utterly failed because the realities on the ground favor extreme decentralization of power, and not in a democratic sense - in a ‘local elites and ethnic loyalties’ sense.

The Arctic is the northernmost point on Earth and includes territory belonging to eight nations: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Canada, the United States, Iceland and Russia. All except Russia are NATO members.

tbf, that wasn’t true before the current phase of the Russo-Ukrainian War.

For real, though, from a purely realpolitik perspective, what a fucking disaster this has been for Russia. Fuck them, though. And fuck them even harder than they’re currently getting fucked, until they get the fuck out of Ukraine.

That’s no fun though.

They were waiting for the opportunity

(or this was a common typo and they had this pic saved for just the next occasion it came up)

Or maybe the two decades-long invasions did extreme damage and brought insane brutality to a poor population?

Would you like to elaborate on the situation of Afghanistan before 2001?

The middle class, the opposition to the Taliban, were growing.

Funny, then, that they didn’t put up the least bit of a fight when the Taliban came knocking.

Not everything is down to economics.

In 1916 France and the UK create the Sykes-Picot secret agreement with agreement of Russia and Italy to divide the middle east in a way so they would never be able to pose any threat and could be easily manipulated into their spheres of influence, by cutting through areas of ethnic and religious affiliations.

Sykes-Picot didn’t concern Afghanistan in the least.

108 years later on Lemmy “Afghanistan actively rejects civilization”. It’s just unfair to say such a thing when so many civilizations have contributed so much to ensure Afghanistan would never be able to be politically and economically stable.

In this much, there’s agreement - Afghanistan has never had a foundation that could be regarded as politically or economically stable, and the constant attempts to convert it into a politically or economically stable state have been utterly unsuccessful because of the actual conditions of the country.

Don’t forget the reverse, so many people shocked when Trump won the first time.

In our defense, he literally lost the popular vote.

We’re safer under this present system. And then, probably just as important, is now we are upholding our obligations to the Constitution of the United States and the rights of us as individual citizens in this country. We are deemed to be innocent until proven guilty. Bond is only set to make sure that you appear in court. So, when we talk about these things, we’re talking about somebody who has not been adjudicated guilty in a court of law yet. So, the assessment of how dangerous they are to us — and whether they’re going to reappear for court — is what we should have probably been doing all along.

The bill passed 231 to 189, with 16 Democrats joining Republicans in voting “yes.” The Democrats who voted in favor represent some of the most extremist pro-Israel Democrats in the House, as well as some of the most conservative in the caucus, including Representatives Ritchie Torres (New York) and Josh Gottheimer (New Jersey).

It’s too bad I’m already boycotting Israeli products so I can’t double-boycott them for this bullshit.

Regional health minister says those who are busy with careers can ‘create offspring’ on work breaks

Fuck breaks

What is the magic other term you’re planning to get? A pinky promise to not do it again?

My point isn’t whether this is the best possible terms that can be expected. My point is that Israel isn’t acting in good faith, and we (international observers) should all be acutely and actively aware of that fact.

As much as I’d love to believe this, ‘Gaza disarmed’ sounds a lot to me like “We’ll try this exact same thing again next year”.

Hamas attacks against IDF targets often hit and injure civilians as well. Unlike targeted attacks against civilians, such collateral damage is part and parcel of warfare.

“America is not just an idea,” he said solemnly. “It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.”

It’s funny. The people most likely to be ‘American exceptionalists’ take the one thing that is arguably at least somewhat unusual about America (that we are very much not a nation in the traditional sense) and utterly fucking deny it.

I mean, Hamas rocket attacks against IDF targets are fair game.

Cats are racist confirmed???

How much you wanna bet this costs more money than it saves in the end?