What in God's Green Goodness Are We Up To In Afghanistan?

The Taliban are sitting on $1 trillion worth of minerals the world desperately needs

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS02aWM7zWACPr2t9ALLZL6J2b2vLra8qhwjg&usqp=CAU

Good article from the FT this weekend, on the atmosphere among the new generation of young people in Kabul in the weeks before the fall:

The last days of the 'New Afghanistan'

https://www.ft.com/content/4a276093-cf85-4da7-9093-6af6443bb53a

Boris Johnson personally overruled Ben Wallace to allow Pen Farthing's animals to leave Kabul on a charter plane, friends say

Friend of Farthing Dominic Dyer told Mail Plus: "Mr Johnson's wife Carrie 'most certainly had something to do with the change'"https://t.co/14wwGzSfMg

— Sam Coates Sky (@SamCoatesSky) August 25, 2021

Nothing more English than favouring a good dog over a funny-looking human.

I've never heard of any of those people except for Boris Johnson.

i think Pen Farthing is a good friend of Raleigh Grifter

lol POLITICO:

https://i.imgur.com/VM4pUSE.jpg

ISIS may not have the biggest army, but sure seems to have the most media savvy.

How terrifying to be a kid evacuated from war-torn Afghanistan to South Korea to be met my people in full covid gear:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https%3A%2F%2Farc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost%252Es3%252Eamazonaws%252Ecom%2Fpublic%2FWYDDSRQGK4I6ZM6EYRRLD3OPZA%252Ejpg&w=992&h=662

by people

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E93JEF0XoAESiEB?format=jpg&name=large

"I'm relieved for me and feel happy for the animals"

nation of animal lovers in all its glory

i feel so many things, but one of them is deep hatred toward The Sun

who would read the sun

yes, i know, velvet underground, who loves the sun, not everyone

if there ever any posh Brits with names Pen Farthing or Tuppence Middleton they are almost guaranteed to be evil tory scumbags, but with impeccable animal rights credentials.

are you fucking kidding me? they evacuated dogs and cats over people?

i love dogs and cats but it's obscene.

Cats are probably okay under the Taliban? The Prophet himself was a cat lover. (Story goes he cut off a sleeve of his robe when he needed to leave instead of disturbing the cat sleeping on it.)

"The sharpest of Zakaria’s criticism of white feminism is reserved for white female journalists. “There’s a certain arc that the editors want,” she says, that these journalists deliver. “In the case of Afghanistan, there was very much an idea that this was America taking feminism to Afghan women,” and “liberating them from the Taliban. There are colonial precedents to sending female reporters out there. These white women are sent in as emblems – our women are brave and they are out taking pictures and writing stories and getting your story out to the world. But the assumption is that there isn’t anyone in Afghanistan who can write in English and tell the stories of Afghanistan to the world.”"

https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/28/rafia-zakaria-a-lot-of-white-female-professors-told-me-to-quit?

“There’s a certain arc that the editors want,” she says, that these journalists deliver.

Then the female journalists are just doing the job they are paid to do. Don't jump on them; jump on their editors for wanting to steer the news in a predetermined arc without regard for the truth.

who’s doing what now

"Then the female journalists are just doing the job they are paid to do. Don't jump on them"

I'll jump on them then.

If a journalist fails to deliver what an editor requires, that journalist gets no further assignments and the editor finds a different journalist who will deliver what the editor wants. Then the story in the media looks exactly the same as before but with a different byline.

... which is why top-paying journalism jobs are so full of cynical careerists.

To be fair it’s easier to shit on journalists on the internet.

If a journalist fails to deliver what an editor requires, that journalist gets no further assignments and the editor finds a different journalist who will deliver what the editor wants. Then the story in the media looks exactly the same as before but with a different byline.

― it is to laugh, like so, ha! (Aimless), Saturday, 28 August 2021 bookmarkflaglink

Your full of shit.

"To be fair it’s easier to shit on journalists on the internet."

thank goodness.

Aimless, your Mr Logic routine is embarrassing you here.

But, my mother was a Terran!

not funny, as usual

(checks piss, none missing)

Surprised you've got anything to check.

surprise!

lads

Haven't checked in here for a few months. I can see I've really been missing out.

This whole thread is currently a shitshow, not just any single contributor, but Aimless your logic there boils down to the attitude my father used to describe as "I vass chust followink orders".

(My bad transcription of his imitation of a German accent -- since his father was abusive and had a German accent I'm going to say his imitation was probably pretty accurate.)

Sorry. I should have noticed those feminists were Nazi guards at extermination camps.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-im_CKn9PPI8/T0dtSJ0lUFI/AAAAAAAAAzY/0vIyQ9SYpt4/s1600/abe-simpson-gif.gif

Yeah I should have preemptively issued a Godwin warning ikr.

The logical point stands though -- being a subordinate is no excuse for carrying out unethical directives. But no I don't literally think they're anywhere near the same level of malfeasance as SS officers.

similar in kind, different in magnitude, i see

wait viborg if you’re saying that these reporters are literally the same as SS troops then i must say good day to you sir GOOD DAY

christ this thread

I'm not so sure that the unethical aspects of the dynamic being criticized are especially clear cut. The editor and the journalist discuss the assignment in advance. The editor makes it clear that she is looking for a certain kind of story, not because she is asking the journalist to misrepresent the facts, but because she wants her readers to become aware of the plight of women in the society in question and to understand the ways in which western involvement might be beneficial for them. It's an attempt to educate the readers and engage their sympathies for the women involved.

Since neither the editor nor the journalist are members of that society or experts who've studied it in depth, this proposition sounds eminently reasonable, even philanthropic, to both of them. The journalist then flies into the country, seeks out the sort of story she was sent to find, and reports it. The problem originates with the editor's pre-screening of the type of story the journalist is assigned to seek out, not out of malice or willful deceit, but out of ignorance and misplaced ideas about what makes a 'good' story.

This does not make the dynamic I described ethical. It describes why the journalist and editor have difficulty identifying its unethical aspects because the shallowness of their vision is not evident to them.

you're describing neocolonialism. if you have an actual point besides not-justifying-but, you should make it

"The sharpest of Zakaria’s criticism of white feminism is reserved for white female journalists. “There’s a certain arc that the editors want,” she says

In reading the article, I thought her criticism of women she directly worked with, who belittled her perspective, silenced her, thwarted her, or ignored her in favor of their own power and privilege was much sharper and more damning than her criticism of the journalists sent to Afghanistan.

the point is presumably that they are not separate issues

if this is all about whether or which journalists are "bad people" or what level of bad they are compared to whom then it's a boring and pointless argument, i think the dynamics they participate in (regardless of intentions, motivations, justifications) are more interesting and relevant

not actually regardless of intentions, motivations, justifications since they're part of it (see: invocations of feminism, LGBT rights etc) but you know what i mean

xps -yup. neocolonialism. you nailed it. but my point was that the presumption that these journalists were being given unethical "orders" which they could easily recognize as such and so their only recourse is to resist is faulty. the racism involved is buried under layers of ignorance, unexamined premises, socially-embraced deceptions, and the weight of accumulated history. Reducing that morass to the simplicity of 'don't carry out unethical directives' is not a realistic appraisal of what is happening. But it is a nice, reductive binary which always has an innate appeal. So, I fully endorse the conclusion that telling people "just don't do that" will solve everything, because it establishes the locus of blame and who ever really needs to go any further than that?.

Afghani women journalists have told their story to the world, I think that's what matters ultimately. And considering what they have to say about their society prior to the Taliban takeover, female white journalists working for massive media corporation were not exactly a big problem to solve, and even less so today.

xp again the question of who or not is a bad person for being part of this is supremely uninteresting. imo

good to hear afghan women have collectively decided female white journalists working for massive media corporations are cool though, what a relief