pandapoo

joined 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

It wouldn't even be true for the US Army, although they would have better unit level technology i.e. military grade recon drones, but yes, also potentially access to ISR.

I was being sarcastic, because the replies I read were so ridiculous e.g. all artillery recon had analysts reviewing thermal, IR, satellites, etc. to determine if a lone tank was real, or a decoy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

That's why every fire mission targeting a single tank gets up to date satellite images, high res thermal drone photos, and dedicated analysts reviewing the intelligence.

At least, that's according to other users in this comment section.

And here I thought it was forward observers and drone pilots using whatever off the shelf drones they have available.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

That's not how the majority of tactical reconnaissance is being done in Ukraine, especially when it comes to artillery fire missions.

Forward observers are either heavily augmented with, or in many cases, entirely replaced by pilots with cheap drones.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

This article is about manufacturing consent for the next foreign war.

For the last decade of occupation, at least, the Taliban controlled all the tribal regions, which is the majority of the nation. Do you think these crimes against humanity were not occurring then?

So how come now, after the withdrawal and end of the occupation, are news organizations suddenly devoting so much masthead to covering them?

People tend to believe that propaganda means lies, but the most effective propaganda is the truth. It's putting out information that is designed to elicit a specific emotional response or reaction. That is what this torrent of post withdrawal Afghanistan articles are about.

How much coverage has been devoted to women's rights versus the American post withdrawal policy freezing Afghanistan bank accounts to repay victims of 9/11? A policy that was directly linked to famines and food insecurity across the country.

That is serious question and my point isn't some reductive America is bad argument. It's that only one of those stories advances a pro-western military intervention narrative.

I will repeat what I already said, the story of that women is horrific and the Taliban is full of evil sadistic pieces of shit. But that is exactly why those narratives have been selected, because they help condition Western readers to be ready for the next foreign war.

If you don't believe me, look through all of the replies here that are using the emotional resonance of that woman as justification for military occupation.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

Just a wild guess here, but I take it that you never got very good marks for reading comprehension. But whatever, I'll answer your bad faith question:

The racism is ignoring all of the ways in which colonial powers have fucked, refucked, and then triple fucked, the collection of tribal regions known as Afghanistan, which only exists as a nation state because of colonial powers drawing politically convenient lines on maps.

All while pretending that religion, and not the colonial conflict legacy is the root cause of these problems. Because admitting that colonialism is why we're here, isn't a very good narrative for selling the next war.

So great, now it's the white Savior's moral obligation to fix the problems that these brown people created all on their own, and definitely did not happen as a result of over a century of colonial violence , resource exploitation, and constant warfare.

And not for nothing, but you also clearly don't have a clue about the crimes against humanity level shit that happened during the occupation.

So stop and think, why all this coverage now, and not for the last decade of occupation?

Manufacturing consent for the next foreign war.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Probably overkill and possibly even overly complicated for an MCU.

This probably just requires some good old reverse engineering the original apps bluetooth API and an app to connect to the shoes.

If they're really lucky, it's simple unencrypted packets they can just capture via Wireshark, but I really haven't looked into it any further than this article summary, so I could be wrong.

If if they can work by simple packet replay, that would be the most simple, and definitely doable by the Flipper.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

To be fair, anyone who thought their life needed SaaS supported shoe laces, definitely had this coming.

In terms of cosmic corporate evildoers, Nike may not currently be a top ranked contender, but their definitely an old school hall of fame level player.

So while not saying they were doing the world a favor by dropping cloud shoe lace support, I am saying that the situation is hilarious.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

No, it's a religious fundamentalist thing and is hardly unique to Iran.

If anything, the Iranian version is relatively more moderate then their counterparts in places that practice forms of Sunni fundamentalism like Saudi Arabia, or Afghanistan.

Not trying to pretend the Iranian morality police are good, or reasonable, but relative to those other two examples, they aren't as bad. Which is saying something, since they are clearly awful in their own right.

Although to be fair, it might be less philosophical or theological reasoning that account for those differences, and just more the practical reality that Iranian women generally have more rights than those in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

New Labour are really just a strain of neoliberal Democrats. Ole' Starmy is New Labour, through and through.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (7 children)

I don't even know where to begin with the levels of idiocy contained in your remark.

Like, do I start with the realities of how Western PMC mineral extraction fed into the cycle of extremism and poverty, the problems inherent with trying to use foreign military occupation to create a functioning centralized state out of a tribal society who's only a nation because colonial powers drew lines on maps, or just the raw racism of believing that the white saviors should invade and occupy poor brown countries because we have to show those savages how to be better people.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (15 children)

.....and how many more years of military occupation would have prevented that?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (23 children)

Oh, I got an idea. Let's bomb the shit out of them, including a bunch of weddings, reinvade, and install another heroin kingpin as President.

Look, the Taliban is shit and these stories are truly horrific, but where was the coverage of Afghanistan the last 10 years?

Whenever I read these stories, all I see, aside from the obvious human misery and evil, is a media class that is continually trying to rewrite history to somehow justify the failure that was the 20 year occupation, and discredit the withdrawal.

I hope this woman gets justice and I hope things improve for women in Afghanistan. But I also want the Western audiences not to be the blinded by the sinister intent that is behind a lot of the Western Afghanistan media coverage.

Not because they should dismiss this women's story, or those like hers, but so they don't forget what a failure the NATO adventure in Afghanistan was. So they don't believe that the next war, should go on forever, or that expeditionary military force and occupation can be used to improve women's rights.

view more: next ›