lmao, no it doesn’t. the US didn’t go to Afghanistan to eradicate opium. the US didn’t give a shit about it at all, lmao.
do tankies so blindly hate the US that they’ll give the Taliban a bj just to try to make the US look bad? wow…
We also didn’t threaten to kill the farmers for growing it. No shit the Taliban was successful. Comply or die. They’re the ones who were profiting from it anyway. Now that they’re in charge again, religion trumps financial needs.
The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War is a summary of the Washington Post’s reporting on Afghanistan, specifically on the US government’s own internal assessments from all levels of the military and political administration. In it, you’ll find this quote:
Of all the failures in Afghanistan, the war on opium ranked among the most feckless. During two decades, the United States spent more than $9 billion on a dizzying array of programs to deter Afghanistan from supplying the world with heroin. None of the measures worked. In many cases, they made things worse.
The US doesn’t need “tankies” or anyone else to make themselves look bad as far as the Afghan drug trade goes.
lmao, so? we get it. you hate the US. what’s your point? just to come here and whine about it?
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They were directly responding to your words, to disprove them.
except they didn’t disprove them. US Marines also peed a lot while they were there, but it’s not why they are there. it proves nothing.
Do you really not see the connection between the comments?
correlation ≠ causation
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You’ve moved the goalposts, but no matter.
“I know you are but what am I?” is not a convincing argument. most people learn this when they’re 5. (borrowed form another comment)
Operation Enduring Freedom was sold as a war on terrorism
see, you even admit that it wasn’t about opium.
the US repeatedly cited opium as a target of the war because they claimed it funded the Taliban.
you’re welcome to cite sources to back up your claims. and I’ll be happy to point out how the timeline doesn’t support your assertions that the war was about opium, it just happened to be something the US did while we were there.
Or did you think it was retaliation for 9/11 or something?
what I think is irrelevant. that facts are what matter.
I have American friends who died defending those poppy fields. I remember it all very well.
irrelevant. present facts. not anecdotes or your feelings.
Also do feel free to explain how this is any way relevant to the conversation:
correlation ≠ causation
I have, repeatedly. your inability/refusal to understand is not my problem.
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This is one of the dumbest articles I ever read. The entire government changed. Taliban can be dictators. The US couldn’t. On top of this, they essentially had two years to switch to wheat before this occurred. Something that was less economically feasible over two years ago due to an unfortunate food shortage in the area now.
Asking why someone couldn’t get something done as quickly as a dictator is something a naive child asks.
Somebody else pointed out MintPress is tankie bullshit.
These scum are everywhere on lemmy.ml, I swear.What facts does that change. Do you have a seperate non-tankie source that says the US did everything it could to stop opium production? It’s quite clear letting it go on suited them.
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You are the one implying we should ignore the points in the article because of its source.
They grabbed all the oil and couldn’t even try to kill the opium industry. They fucked the whole country, bailed on it and let it go to crazies, and it’s THOSE crazies that finally do the right thing. And all it took was a couple of sticks,what a joke.
The US military complex is fucking disgusting and shits all over wherever it decides to raid next. But I guess any reason to bootlick is a good one. Pathetic.
Jaded is a great handle for you.
Moron was taken
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Ah yes, establishing a democratic country by pillaging it’s resources, letting the drug industry grow and then giving the whole country wrapped up in a bow to the Taliban. At least your country’s propaganda budget isn’t money wasted.
I’m not praising the Taliban, a group btw built by the US. I’m saying if they managed to so easily destroy the opium industry, there is no reason the US couldn’t on their “peace keeping” mission. Except there is a reason, and knowing the CIAs track record, it’s easy to guess what it is.
But keep drinking the Kool aid. “America number one. It’s not called pillaging if we are bringing democracy to savages. Our guns only shoot rainbows and we only bomb civi city centers when they deserve it.”
I guess all logic goes out the window if you can utter the word tankie just like in the 70s when you could ignore a person points by screaming commie. Not like that word is being instilled in you specifically so you can blindly follow your leaders. I bet you don’t even know just how far down your face is bent.
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Mint Press News – Bias and Credibility
FAR LEFT BIAS
QUESTIONABLE SOURCE
A questionable source exhibits one or more of the following: extreme bias, consistent promotion of propaganda/conspiracies, poor or no sourcing to credible information, a complete lack of transparency, and/or is fake news. Fake News is the deliberate attempt to publish hoaxes and/or disinformation for profit or influence (Learn More). Sources listed in the Questionable Category may be very untrustworthy and should be fact-checked on a per-article basis. Please note sources on this list are not considered fake news unless specifically written in the reasoning section for that source. See all Questionable sources.
- Overall, we rate Mint Press Far-Left Biased and Questionable based on the publication of conspiracy theories, pseudoscience anti-Israel propaganda, poor sourcing, failed fact checks, and false claims.
Detailed Report
- Reasoning: Propaganda, Conspiracies, Pseudoscience, Poor Sources, Failed Fact Checks
- Bias Rating: FAR LEFT
- Factual Reporting: LOW
- Country: USA
- Press Freedom Rank: MOSTLY FREE
- Media Type: Website
- Traffic/Popularity: Medium Traffic
- MBFC Credibility Rating: LOW CREDIBILITY
History
Mint Press News is an independent Minnesota-based news website launched in 2012 by Mnar Muhawesh. It covers political, economic, foreign affairs, and environmental issues. According to their about page, “We focus our coverage on issues relating to the effects of special interest groups, big business and lobbying efforts and how they shape policies at home and abroad, including American foreign policy. Through the lens of social justice and human rights, we report on how these dynamics drive our foreign affairs and impact the world, and examine the effects they have on our democracy and freedoms as defined by the constitution.”
Analysis / Bias
Mint Press presents news with a strong left-leaning bias in story selection. Headlines and articles use moderately loaded language like this: NFL Freezes Policy Barring Players From Kneeling During Anthem. This particular story is republished from the conspiracy website ZeroHedge. Typically, Mint Press sources their information, but sometimes it is from Mixed factual or conspiracy websites. In general, story selection moderately favors the left, such as this Trump Administration Opens Door for Corporate Attack on Vulnerable Wildlife.
We need a bot for this. Synopsis should be added to the tldr-bot or something.
ya know, I’ve looked into it. one of the biggest problems with bots is that they have to be hosted from somewhere. that’s my first hiccup.
I’d LOVE to make this a bot, but I don’t know where I’d host it from.
You can get a cheap VPS with a couple cores and some RAM for less than $5.
can I run it from inside a docker container?
The project has a dockerfile to create the Docker image with the required LAMP stack and python dependencies.
Oracle Free Tier - 4 CPU, 24 GB RAM.
Seriously? That’s awesome
I’ve heard it’s very unreliable and people have had their VPS deleted without warning.
Have backups. :)
I mean… Sure there are major improvements that can be had in the US, but punishment and consequences as defined in Sharia law isn’t exactly something that the US can simply adopt.
May I suggest you read the article before commenting
Armed with little more than sticks, teams of counter-narcotics brigades travel the country, cutting down Afghanistan’s poppy fields.
And may I suggest you do some research before replying?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-65787391
Balancing an AK-47 assault rifle slung around his left shoulder and a large stick in his right hand, Abdul hits the heads of poppies as hard as he can. The stalks fly in the air, as does the sap from the poppy bulb, releasing the distinctive, pungent smell of opium in its most raw form.
In April 2022, Taliban supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada decreed that cultivation of the poppy - from which opium, the key ingredient for the drug heroin can be extracted - was strictly prohibited. Anyone violating the ban would have their field destroyed and be penalised according to Sharia law.
The sticks are used to destroy the fields, not beat people 🤦
And punishment under Sharia law is much more severe than getting beat by a stick, which isn’t something that obviously will never fly in the US.
The sticks are used to destroy the fields, not beat people
That was my point exactly.
But invoking the spectre of “Sharia law” is just as vague as referring to “US law”.
But invoking the spectre of “Sharia law” is just as vague as referring to “US law”.
right, because Sharia Law and US Law are exactly the same thing…
Something the US couldn’t do under the previous government. Plus many switched to wheat beforehand anyway due to food shortages. The US didn’t rule Afghanistan and had to work within Afghanistan’s government. That government is gone. The Taliban can act like a dictator. Sure, armed with little more than sticks, but farmers had a two year lag beforehand to switch to wheat. This ban wasn’t just announced it’s old. It was just never enforced til now. I mean, it’s ridiculous to compare the two situations. If the US did the same, at the time they were there, there would have been total economic collapse plus basically commiting war crimes.
iirc there was barely any opium production in Afghanistan pre-2001 under Taliban rule. It was in the following 20 years that the industry boomed and a lot of those government officials you refer to and their relatives got extremely rich from that, including President Karzai’s own little brother. The US put those people in power and propped them up for over 2 decades. It’s pretty clear the US decision-makers tried to eradicate poppy just as little as they tried to create peace in the region (not at all).
Editorially, MintPress News supports Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and the governments of Russia, Iran, and Syria. It opposes the governments of Israel and Saudi Arabia, and reports geopolitical events from an anti-Western perspective. In one contentious article, MintPress News falsely asserted that the Ghouta chemical attack in Syria was perpetrated by rebel groups rather than by the Syrian government.
I’m so tired of all this authoritarian propaganda on Lemmy, it’s killing the community
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Just like Facebook 😢
No, it doesn’t raise questions. We knew back in 2003 that there was never a long-term plan. The point was to kill a guy, and then to do some military spending. A major success, on those lines.
The Taliban are terrible, though.
This one is pretty simple to me: the Americans weren’t putting guns to peoples head and murdering people for drug trafficking on the spot. When the Taliban shows up at your house with guns, and just slaughters your whole family, because they think that you have opium that’s a much stronger deterrent than whatever the Americans were doing.
the Americans weren’t putting guns to peoples head and murdering people for drug trafficking on the spot.
I think it comes down to the US being tolerant because winning hearts and minds was more important than destroying Opium. The Taliban has no such qualms.
Worth noting however than this source is questionable and probably shouldn’t be used https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/mint-press-news/
Tankie propaganda on lemmy?
I’m shocked. /s
Selling it, what else.
Are there any moderators on here? Mint press news… Jesus
80% of worlds’s opioids consumption is in USA which has 4,6% of worlds population.
That’s what they are doing, waging Third Opium War on their own people.
MintPress News (MPN) is an American far-left[1] news website founded and edited by Mnar Adley (née Muhawesh) which was launched in January 2012[2] and also publishes the MintCast podcast. It covers political, economic, foreign affairs and environmental issues. Editorially, MintPress News supports Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and the governments of Russia, Iran, and Syria.[3][4] It opposes the governments of Israel and Saudi Arabia,[5] and reports geopolitical events from an anti-Western perspective.[6] In one contentious article, MintPress News falsely asserted that the Ghouta chemical attack in Syria was perpetrated by rebel groups rather than by the Syrian government.[4]
Tankie propaganda. Ignore.
Good lookin’ out. Somebody remove this garbage.
report it
Has anything ever been removed here? Seems to be no standard for news sites
you can look through the modlog in the sidebar to see
Looks like zero active mods. Guess i will look for an alternative. Thanks for the help.
I had a bunch of friends who went to Afghanistan/Iraq and they were protecting poppy and marijuana fields
Between shooting civvies and raping how did they find the time?
Canadian, not Murika. That’s how
Was opium a goal? I don’t remember ever hearing anyone talk about it in the US.
I’m sure it was a goal. There’s so much money to make with … oh wait. You meant stopping it? Yeah sorry, nevermind …
