I encourage anyone who cares about this to travel to Afghanistan themselves and see it with their own eyes before relying on what publications like the Guardian have to say about it. One thing about the article that is probably not true is the claim that the girls were labeled “infidels” by the state. Why this claim is suspicious is that there is no word for “infidel” in the languages spoken in Afghanistan. The closest equivalent would be کافر (kafir), which can refer to someone who isn’t Muslim, but not wearing hijab is not considered to be any kind of proof that someone is not a Muslim. It’s highly doubtful that they were excommunicated for this.

The guardian claims that the government in Afghanistan mandates that women must be covered “from head to toe, revealing only their eyes”, which is clearly not true. When I was in Kabul I saw many women without their faces covered. This is one clear case where the Guardian gets facts on the ground wrong. A lot of women there are wearing surgical masks as a form of face covering that also doubles as protection from pollution and disease. As the girl quoted in the article said, they are doing this as a “precaution”, in other words, the government doesn’t in fact require face covering, but they are doing it anyway because they think they have to.

The article implies that girls were specifically targeted for going to English class, as if they have an issue with learning English. Government officials themselves also go to English classes, so that in and of itself was not a relevant matter to the story.

As for them getting beaten for “confronting the men”, of course you are going to get beaten if you resist arrest or argue. That’s true in most countries, but particularly in Afghanistan the authorities tend to hit people if they are not compliant.

The other issue is that the rule in Afghanistan is not well developed or consolidated, which means that these men who committed these acts like the beatings and arrests were acting outside the law, and the central government doesn’t necessarily support this action. Because of the rudimentary form of government different local elements of the Taliban can act differently or independently, so what the spokesperson quoted in the article said about this being unusual was probably telling the truth. This was only one incident, and hopefully it won’t be repeated elsewhere.

Says Apple lol

We are the intelligent few

it looks like they removed it in 10.15

Things have really gone downhill

Did OS X even include emacs???

Already there agha

His family also got the first iMac running OS X, and that was such a beauty to behold. I mean, maybe the design wasn’t as colorful or iconic as the G4 generation, but man that OS was sweet.

It was such an iconic machine. Ironically, at the time I hated them. (I probably still wouldn’t want to use one even now, but now I only have to look at pictures of them, and they admittedly are nice to look at.)

I had a friend in high school whose family had one of these in their living room, and it was running OS 9. It was practically useless, but I forget what he did on it. I seem to remember that it ran World of Warcraft, but now I’m questioning my memory if that was really possible or not.

looks like a mistake

I’m sick and tired of reading this sentence…

Me too, but when I think about it, I realize its necessity

To be honest I’m not even sure what the point of student associations is anyway. Shouldn’t students all have access to services without joining associations? If students can form associations, does it matter that much what the association is about? I understand from an organizational standpoint that a Jewish organization wouldn’t want to incorporate or support something that’s against Judaism, but you can’t really stop students from associating, can you?

Sad that it’s even come to this point

It was in fact reported by the UN. As for the claim that Muslims approve of the treatment of Uyghurs in China that is false. The envoys you mentioned are not Islamic and do not represent Muslims.

I’ve criticized America much more than I ever criticized China. You are hypocritically collecting lists of US crimes and not Chinese crimes. Hmm I wonder why you neglect that. Oh yes confirmation bias.

Anyway your assessment of me is baseless. Keep harping on that dumb claim that I hate China.

Your whataboutism is pretty useless. China also uses its tech companies for spying. China’s mass surveillance program is larger and more ambitious. If anyone has been duped by propaganda it’s you.

Actually according to the UN China is still using slavery. I agree China didn’t do all the bad things America has done yet, but does some and will do more. It’s the nature of power and wealth. China is already exploiting foreign lands, as I live in one of them. There are other inaccuracies in what you wrote but this much suffices.

I did not claim anywhere what you wrote in your second paragraph. Just throwing out “white western chauvinism” is absurd. What kind of nonsense is this?

Stop fetishizing and othering China by claiming it’s exceptional and angelic. It’s just a normal country like any other and the issue is not China’s rise, it is what its politicians will do after the rise that’s important.

I don’t see how that stops the state’s mass surveillance programs

This is not entirely accurate, but you are right that they haven’t developed to that stage yet of invading countries on the other side of the world, but if the power level gets high enough that’s exactly what will happen. USA was also where China is at now and it took a while to get to that point. China has its own version of some of the things you mentioned, and some other things that are not pleasant. Your optimism that China will be a better hegemon than past ones in history is sadly naive.

That’s all tied under US surveillance. The PRC has its social media operations and tech companies too. Basically everything you hate about the USA, they are doing it too

They’re #2