https://time.com/6263906/taliban-afghanistan-office-work-quiet-quit/
A new report says some jihadists who transitioned to desk jobs after the Taliban’s takeover are tired of the 9-to-5.
Time magazine: "we don't know how yet, but we're gonna find a way to link the rise of fascism and avocado toast"
The article is largely good quality but what even is this:
“We couldn’t destroy the Taliban, but office work destroyed the Taliban,” said one Tiktoker, reviewing articles and quotes from the report.
It doesn't even name the person. Just cherry picked some random quip from social media and pasted it into the body.
I've been hating this since Twitter became a thing. I used to read BBC news articles for (seemingly) good quality reporting, and then they started quoting random twitter users. Like, who gives a fuck?
Hell, there are even news articles only quoting Tweets.
And TV shows only re-streaming viral YT videos. I imagine these people just watch YT the whole day and call it work.
Living the dream, if you ask me. Just don't mix it with serious news. "New political coalition formed! Twitter user rear_beads commented: 'lol'"
One can view a show about humorous viral YouTube videos to be this generation's America Funniest Home Videos.
Edit: Fix grammar
It always seemed strange to me as well. Who is this person, and why should I value their opinion?
Even worse when a "news" article is just embedding a bunch of Tweets from random people and calling it news.
Editor: The article is great! All we need now is a quote from social media and we can publish.
Journalist: We haven't been able to find anything suitable, everyone thinks this story is satire.
Editor: Then just post one yourself and then quote that! But don't reference your name, that'll be a dead giveaway.
For me at least, "said" has a link to https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR7mbL8g/
That link only takes me to the front page, but perhaps if someone has a tiktok account that goes to a video (a tik? Tok? Whatever it's called).
This is like that comic today with the Viking. "History is written by the winners" he has to literally sit down with quill and parchment....
Hahahahhaha OMG. Yeah once the whole pew pew part of the insurrection is over and you actually take over the government, the whole running the government part isn't as fun now ain't it?
What a bunch of idiots.
The weird thing is that they used to be in power, before the 9/11 American "freedom spreading" spree in the region.
Nah, those guys were boomers/gen-xers and have probably either all died off or retired from this nonsense. The Taliban in charge now are millennials/zoomers who likely grew up getting told all about the glory days but not the drudgery.
And who probably skipped school since those were all gender integrated under the NA government the US was backing
And they were in power because the US helped them get there. This article praising Osama bin Ladenisn't The Independent's finest hour 😬
That's not what happened,
The US sent Pakistan materials to supply to local Mujihideen to provide support to the US assisting the Northern Alliance, AKA the guys they were later supporting against the Taliban once the Taliban basically all but chartered the planes for Bin Laden.
You'd be amazed how many of america's problems in the region trace in some way back to "Pakistan did it."
Like it's not unreasonable to guess that Kissinger croaked because his old heart couldn't take how America's foreign policy was becoming way more aligned with those "commies" in India after just a few terrorisms and genicides on Pakistan's part.
The US sent Pakistan materials
You'd be amazed how many of america's problems in the region trace in some way back to "Pakistan did it."
With the help of the US, of course, as is often the case when atrocities occur around the world..
Your name is "Viking_Hippie". I assume you're embracing a Scandinavian heritage of some kind.
Vikings committed atrocities all over Europe. Genetic studies of Icelandic people indicate that their Y chromosomes are from Scandinavia and their mitochondrial DNA is from Ireland. Mitochondrial DNA only comes from your mother (from the egg).
Why do you think Iceland was settled by mainly Viking men and Irish women? Do you think those women willingly left their homes or did they leave at the point of a sword?
I'm embracing the modern colloquial meaning of "lives in Scandinavia" (which I have since my birth 40 years ago), not the historical "commits atrocities" meaning.
You'd think that people would come to that conclusion by doing just a minimum of research into colloquial uses of regional terms before accusing me of embracing the worst acts of my ancestors.
If that's too difficult, then maybe the second half, which is much more descriptive about how I am when not discussing politics with idiots online, would be a bit of a clue 🤦
The point is that US aid ended up in taliban hands in spite of US policy, not because of it. We know for a fact that the US would have broken ties had Pakistan's enthusiastic cooperation with the Taliban and Al Qaeda been more understood at the time, and we know that because that's exactly what happened when it was uncovered that the mass shooting spree Al Qaeda launched in India was carried out using weapons supplied to Pakistan specifically to give to local resistance fighters against the Taliban.
Granted, the US should definitely have guessed better at the time given how Afghanistan routinely makes irredentist claims on Pashtunistan and Balochistan, meaning Pakistan would NEVER be a reliable ally in stabilizing the country, IE making it more able to press such claims with authority and millitary force, but the point still stands that people are waaaaay mischaracterizing the role the US plaid in the Taliban's rise.
The point is that US aid ended up in taliban hands in spite of US policy, not because of it.
So because the government violated policy it wasn't the US doing it?
We know for a fact that the US would have broken ties had Pakistan's enthusiastic cooperation with the Taliban and Al Qaeda been more understood at the time
Highly doubtful. The US never had any compunctions propping up some of the worst human rights abusers in the world if there is a strategic or economic advantage to be had. See for example every right wing dictator in South America, Saudi Arabia and various genocidal governments of Israel.
the point still stands that people are waaaaay mischaracterizing the role the US plaid in the Taliban's rise.
It really doesn't. They LITERALLY couldn't have done it without both direct and indirect help from the US.
Guy I'm literally spelling it out for you, it happened because Pakistan was constantly lying about what it was doing with the stuff the US gave it
If I take a sandwich you gave me and hand it to someone I know is gonna deck you, that doesn't mean you punched yourself in the face just because you should have known better.
It does go to show that people sometimes don’t think ahead. They seem to have only ever considered the present and now reality hit them in the face lol. Similar happened to Trump when he was elected and suddenly had to…you know…work.
It does go to show that people sometimes don’t think ahead
The Independent sure didn't!
I mean, isn't this like people predicting the year 2000 from the year 1920 and people in 2020 making fun of that being wrong? In neither situation could the future be predicted.
Him and his Mujahideen were awful religious zealots back then too. That was just ignored due to the "enemy of my enemy is my friend and thus a hero" principle that the US have consistently applied to some of the biggest monsters in history.
Is it? He funded them in Pakistan because the USSR was in Afghanistan and it was fine to fund terrorists as long as they attacked your enemy. They just didn't foresee it coming back to hurt us.
Which is deeply ironic considering how they founded themselves as a rebellion against the "false gods" of capitalism communism and democracy.
As a person fed up with office culture, I'm wondering if it's now my time to destroy my government.
If you're in the US, doing that would save tens of millions of lives, both in the US and across the world.
Well, in addition to the millions of lives you’d save, millions of other lives would be threatened or ended.
Okay say what you will about the Taliban but this article is really interesting in a way.
Reminds me of this wise quote from Walter Sobchek:
"Say what you will about the tenets of national socialism, but at least it's an ethos!"
True covalence is the basis of a mutually-fulfilling relationship.
If every one of your relationships is either you giving up an electron or stripping it off some poor cation who then has to stick to you until you give it back, it’s easy to think that bonding is a zero-sum game, and that dominance is the only way to lead.
So yeah, Taliban definitely needs to unionize.
Phenomenal cosmic power! Itty bitty living space...
Everyone gets what they asked for.
It's amazing how fast you can arrive at the right conclusion when you don't have a bunch of billionaires with media and politicians in their pockets 🤷
I mean, it's not like you should expect much from the magazine that ran this cover on purpose: 
Doesn't make it okay tbh. If anything, that just means that they were instrumental in spreading and popularising it..
Greg Daniels absolutely needs to do an Afghani adaptation of The Office. It would absolutely kill and be like my fave series of all time. This whole situation is beyond absurd and mundane and also insanely great c/LeopardsAteMyFace fodder
How amazing would it be if office culture/politics was the thing (particularly "Western thing") that eventually compelled the Taliban to throw in the towel and start doing something productive + peace
Who would you cast as the Jim and the Dwight? I'm thinking Hasan Minhaj and Romesh Ranganathan.
One's Indian and the other's Sri Lankan, but it's close enough for Hollywood/BBC, amirite? 😛
Its up to you guys although I'm gonna need guarantees Jay Duplass will be playing a fairly significant role
The largest military in the world occupied their country and gave them billions in equipment to keep it and they let the taliban retake everything in weeks. I don't think there is going to be any better opportunity then that. It's obvious that the fighting population already made their choice, and now everyone just has to enjoy it.
Of course there’s a better opportunity: figuring it out for themselves. Having some rich stranger give you a bunch of stuff is a recipe for failure. Building what you have slowly and steadily is a recipe for success.
Hopefully we can stay out of their way and stop trying to give them level 50 gear when they’ve level 1 noobs. Best way to guarantee someone stays a noob is to remove them their game and try to place them into your own.
I sure hope your right, but we did not just give them stuff and tell them to figure it out, we trained them for 20 years, with the most experienced soldiers in the world. It's obviously a motivation and culture issue, so maybe after they realize how shit things have gone they may make a change, but I am not holding my breath.
The US invasion of Afghanistan basically paused Afghani political progress for 20 years, because they were too busy fighting a foreign invader. Doesn't help that the US-backed government was famously corrupt. Change in the Afghani political sphere was always going to start after, not before, the US pulled out of Afghanistan.
We gave them that training. They didn't earn it. They didn't seek it, nothing. And because it wasn't something that they earned, they squandered it.
We're enabling them. We're not doing the most helpful thing by giving them all this hardware and training. The most helpful thing would be sending them a bunch of LSD microdose pills.
Sure, blame the Afghan civilians after bombing their country back to the stone age and then trying to occupy it for 20 years with said largest military in the world only to pull THAT rug out from under them with a sudden bungled withdrawal.
It's not like the West had anything to do with the Taliban taking power in the first place, right? Right?
That’s like saying that we wanted Trump. He didn’t win the popular vote; we didn’t want him but he was there anyway.
What an absurd comparison.
Regardless, I didn't see liberals speaking with their actions and fighting a guerilla war for twenty years against the US Army.
I'll rephrase what you said:
I don't like that you pointed out something inconvenient so I will dismiss it and redirect the conversation elsewhere.
Wow that's some real clown tier shit lmao.
Redirect the conversation to the Taliban having enough popular support to fight an insurgency against a superpower again?
You know, what the conversation was before you tried to pretend the electoral college getting a narrow win, working entirely as designed, means a very large percentage of America doesn't support the fascists?
