The commerce of suffering

During the chaotic withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan in August 2021, thousands of people stormed the Kabul airport. In a desperate attempt to escape the Taliban, some climbed onto a moving military cargo aircraft on the runway. At least two individuals fell from the sky, and one became trapped in the plane's wheel. A video taken by a cellphone from inside the plane shows a lifeless body and its limbs swaying violently in the wind at a high altitude. It was later reported that human remains were found lodged within the aircraft's wheels.

Just days later, a gun store in Auckland, New Zealand, began selling T-shirts emblazoned with the words "Kabul Skydiving Club." Beneath the text was an image of two people who had fallen from the plane, captured in their fatal descent.

At the same time, these same T-shirts were sold on the Etsy website in America. Today, I came across the picture of those shirts again, so I looked them up online to see if they still exist or are being sold. Today, I discovered that identical T-shirts, though without the image of the falling individuals, are still being sold on a website called "American Triggers Pullers." Who truly wants to wear these T-shirts? What must they be feeling?

After seeing the images of those t-shirts, it felt like a wound in my soul was torn open anew. It was a stark reminder of our profound suffering and how our experiences and traumas are stripped of their context and transformed into tokens to be sold. 

Ah, what a world we are living in! Our pain and suffering have been commodified, transformed into garments for others to wear and enjoy. Our agony is frozen into images and sold for profit, enabling people to build capital and indulge in pleasure. Our anguish becomes a pretext for mockery and scorn. Our misery fuels companies' profits, ensuring the chariot of capitalism never ceases its movement and our blood has become the lubricating grease for its wheels.

How seeds of greed are planted in children

Yesterday, I saw Amir my newphew's homework. The title of one of his readings was "Needs and Wants." He had answered one of the questions incorrectly. The question was, "What did you learn in paragraph 4?" It was a multiple-choice question. Amir chose, "Life is hard without a phone." 

But the correct answer was: "Wants can make life easier and more fun."
Implicitly what it says is that your personal desires (wants) are a legitimate pathway to happiness and an easy life.

This is the textbook example of cultivating a culture of greed. It is deliberate conditioning of children towards perpetual wanting. The entire edifice of capitalism is built on this very foundation: to become an endless consumer, fulfilling desires. 

Now, think about it. a 10-year-old boy, who understands very little about wanting and having, implicitly being told/taught that happiness and enjoyment are synonymous with possessions. This is how the seeds of greed are planted. How can I explain this to a refugee child that material possessions do not bring happiness and do not make life easier? How can I explain that contentment is the source of happiness and generosity makes life easier, and that materialistic values are ephemeral and sources of unhappiness? 

Welcome to the world of capitalism and greed.

Afghanistan's internet blackout and the anatomy of fascism

For the past few days, I have not been able to talk to my family members, and like me, thousands of diaspora Afghanistanis have not been able to speak to their loved ones.

Two days ago, the Taliban, an ethno-religious fascist group, imposed a wholesale internet blackout in Afghanistan. First, they severed the fiber-optic internet connection, and then yesterday, they shut down the telecommunication.

So, why did the Taliban shut down the internet in the entire country?

This act of digital authoritarianism is clearly linked to the core tenets of historical fascism. To grasp it, let's do an autodidactic practice. Copy and paste the following questions one by one on Google and press enter, and see what comes up.

What constitutes the core of fascism? What is fascism, anyway? What is the goal of a fascist system?

Whatever answer you get, you will learn that one of the key features of fascist regimes is relying on controlling information to suppress citizens and cement their centralized control.

The Taliban is a fascist group based on a Pashtun-ethnonationalist agenda, which at the core promotes an exclusive "Afghanness" (a euphemism for Pashtun supremacy) and a Pashtun tribal form of Sunni Islam. Controlling and restricting the internet has no reason other than keeping the people in the dark and severing their connection with the outside world. This way, it is easier to control and govern them.

Now, the media has reported that the reason for the internet blackout, according to the Taliban, is "morality." Morality from the Taliban's point of view is: anti-woman, anti-religious and ethnic minorities, anti-Hazara, anti-education, anti-modern values, anti-human rights—basically anti-anything they had not seen in the caves and mountains over the past few decades. Some commentators, clinging to civility, describe the Taliban as merely an extreme group. The raw reality, however, is that this is a terror group that descended from the mountains and caves.

So, what does the Taliban's "morality" look like? It is a heinous strategy used as a tool for social engineering. By implementing their own "morality," they want to create a specific moral subject, one whose worldview, interactions, and consciousness are being shaped solely by the Taliban's ideology.