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Posted
8 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Personally?  I'm actually kinda hoping that some gestapo dumbass makes the mistake of arresting, disappearing, and deporting me.

I have the means to get help (financial and otherwise) wherever I end up, rather quickly.  I have the legal resources at hand (real-deal friends and some rather skilled acquaintances) to fight back and make as big a fuss and test case as you can imagine.  I'm real close to wishing a muthafucka would.  Because I am a dream plaintiff.  That's what we need, for these overreaching fascists to fuck with the wrong plaintiff.

Sounds like I can count on you to get me out of El Salvador right

Posted
15 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Personally?  I'm actually kinda hoping that some gestapo dumbass makes the mistake of arresting, disappearing, and deporting me.

I have the means to get help (financial and otherwise) wherever I end up, rather quickly.  I have the legal resources at hand (real-deal friends and some rather skilled acquaintances) to fight back and make as big a fuss and test case as you can imagine.  I'm real close to wishing a muthafucka would.  Because I am a dream plaintiff.  That's what we need, for these overreaching fascists to fuck with the wrong plaintiff.

 

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Posted
3 minutes ago, Eskimohorn said:


Brisket’s got friends in every town and bar from here to the Aruba. He speaks one language and a little latin, knows grammar and penmanship. He'll blend in, disappear; maybe sweat a bit. With any luck, he's got the grail already.

[cut to Brisket pissing himself in an El Salvadorian prison]

To be fair, I also know a little German.

german-little.gif

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Posted
On 3/28/2025 at 3:30 PM, SubliminalHorn said:

Sounds like I can count on you to get me out of El Salvador right

Sorry, you’re gonna have to John McAfee your way out of that situation.

Just don’t head to Spain where you might get picked up on tax charges and “commit suicide” in prison.

Marvel Studios Smile GIF by Disney+

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Posted
On 3/28/2025 at 12:08 PM, safe sex said:

Have had multiple patients who are keeping their passports on them at all times now. My heart broke the first time one of them pulled out the little blue book before weighing himself.

Absolutely unreal. We are a "Papers, Please" country, and we all know that having your papers doesn't even necessarily matter either.

my wife and I actually went out on a fun date last night. First time in awhile that we carved time out for ourselves. 

our uber driver last night on the way home was Venezuelan. his worry? His fucking wife and daughters being fucking deported.

this is our country.  fucking Kristi noem adverts telling people to go home and never come back. 

Fuck all yall

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Posted

Canceling the refugee resettlement plan is putting Afghan students who were promised visas under threat of being deported back to Afghanistan, where they'll assuredly be in physical danger.

‘They Will Label Us as Spies’: The Afghan Students Abandoned by America
Students at the American University of Afghanistan in Qatar fear having to return to their Taliban-ruled homeland after aid and visa cutoffs by the Trump administration.

When she finds it hard to focus, Nilab jots down her worries on slips of paper and pins them to her wall, a strategy she picked up in a seminar on mental health at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul.

She makes a mental note to deal with the issues at a scheduled time and then gets back to studying. That kept her sane when the U.S.-backed Afghan government was overthrown in 2021, when the Taliban made it illegal for women to receive an education and when she left in July 2023 to study at the university’s campus-in-exile in Qatar.

Now, in Nilab’s dorm room in Doha, the little notes are stacking up. The Trump administration’s shutdown of foreign aid and refugee admissions has left her terrified that she will be forced to return to Afghanistan.

There, she would be alone and deprived of any rights as a woman. Her hard-earned American-style education would be all but worthless.

She imagines the worst. “How can girls go back to Afghanistan?” said Nilab, 30, who asked that only her first name be used to protect her identity. “What will happen to us? Rape, forced marriage and death.”

On Jan. 20, just as Nilab was planning her final project for her cybersecurity degree, President Trump signed an executive order suspending refugee resettlement. The U.S. government had promised refugee status for her and her classmates, but Nilab’s hopes of rejoining her family, who received asylum in the United States after the Taliban took over, were shattered.

A month later, her university lost most of its funding when Mr. Trump dismantled American foreign aid programs, to reorient spending in line with the administration’s foreign policy goals. Funding was partly restored on March 16, the university’s leadership said, but only enough to operate into June. If the university closes, students will lose their housing, cafeteria meal plans and Qatari student visas.

A third thunderbolt came on March 15, with word that Mr. Trump was considering putting Afghanistan on a list of countries whose citizens would be barred from entering the United States. Nilab does not know when she will ever see her family again, much less resettle with them.

As she and other Afghan students find their lives thrown into chaos, they are caught between the infinite possibilities promised by a university education and a crushing sense that there are no doors left to open.

“I thought this long journey was finished,” she said. “I was wrong.”

With midterms approaching, Nilab has little time for her concerns. She has a presentation on arrays and algorithms due soon.

So she writes down her fears and pins them to her bulletin board.

cont'd

Quote

 

Piece of America
The American University of Afghanistan was established in 2006 as a coed liberal arts college, with instruction in English. It was designed to educate the next generation of Afghan leaders and innovators, imbued with Western ideals of justice, freedom and democracy. Students called their campus “Little America.”

The U.S. government has invested more than $100 million in the university, and until last month, funding from the United States Agency for International Development, or U.S.A.I.D., covered more than half of its operating costs.

(The agency has also provided scholarships for more than 100 Afghan women — including Nilab’s sister — to study at universities in Oman and Qatar, among them the American University, and those students face a similar budget freeze.)

When the American military hastily withdrew from the country in August 2021 and the Taliban returned to power, the American University was an obvious target. Militants rampaged through its buildings, scrawling graffiti that derided students as “U.S.-trained infidel spies” and “wolves in sheep’s skin.”

Administrators worked to get more than 1,000 students out of the country as quickly as possible. Nearly 700 were evacuated to sister universities in Iraq, Kyrgyzstan and the United States.

The government of Qatar agreed to host a temporary campus-in-exile. One hundred students arrived for the term starting in August 2022, and another 100 — Nilab’s group — landed a year later.

Most of the students eventually left for the United States on so-called Priority 1 visas. When Mr. Trump took office in January, the remaining 35 were waiting for their final interviews and pre-departure medical checkups. Some already had airplane tickets.

They now wander the near-empty halls of their temporary campus in a stunned daze, not knowing what will happen next.

“We thought all our traumas were finally coming to an end, so we could start to breathe again,” said Waheeda Babakarkhail, 23, a programmer who dreams of working as a white hat hacker, testing computer programs for security flaws.

“I had accepted that I couldn’t stay in Afghanistan,” she said, “but now even the future I thought I would have has been lost.”

Aspirations have been derailed across the campus. Abbas Ahmadzai, 24, a business major, had a job in event management lined up in New York. Faisel Popalzai, 23, was hoping to get a job at Microsoft. He developed an A.I.-assisted computer program that can identify potentially fraudulent financial transactions. The app, called Hawks.Ai, won the Microsoft Hackathon last year in Doha.

If pathways to the United States are cut, Mr. Popalzai said, the country will lose a valuable investment: “our minds, paid for by the American people.”

Sense of Dread
If the university is forced to close in June, the students face an alarming prospect.

They will lose their student visas and their right to stay in Qatar within weeks. If they cannot find a Qatari employer to sponsor them, or obtain a job or scholarship offer in another country, they will have to return to Afghanistan.

They are keenly aware that “the way we were educated is in contradiction to everything the Taliban represent,” said Hashmatullah Rahimi, 24, a business major. “We were taught to speak freely, to be independent. Not a single person in the Taliban government wants that.”

The university’s administrators say there has been no documented persecution of its graduates since the Taliban takeover. But students fear they would be viewed as a threat.

“If we go back,” Mr. Popalzai said, “they will label us as spies, sent to infect Afghans against the Taliban with our American ideology.”

For female students, the risks are obvious. The Taliban have banned education for women and girls after sixth grade and barred women from most forms of employment. They cannot travel without a male relative, they are required to cover their faces outside the home, and their voices must not be heard in public.

“Maybe we won’t be killed if we go back,” said Rawina Amiri, 24, a business major who dreams of becoming a professional volleyball player.

“Does that mean we should accept having our rights violated?” she added. “We have the right to learn, to contribute, to work. Do people in the United States expect us to give up those rights because the Americans promised us a visa, then changed their mind?”

Nilab remains in limbo in the U.S. visa process. On Tuesday, a U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled that the Trump administration must admit thousands of people granted refugee status before Jan. 20, which could include several of the university’s students. But the ruling is preliminary and could be reversed.

What has really thrown Nilab for a loop is the potential for Afghans to be included in a travel ban.

She has not seen her parents and younger siblings since they moved to Northern Virginia. They were granted asylum because her parents had worked for the U.S. government in Afghanistan. But because she was an adult, she was not eligible to join them.

Nilab tries to hold on to hope, relying on the coping skills she picked up as a freshman four years ago. She is applying for scholarships in Europe even as she studies for her exams.

“The Quran says that when one door is shut, another opens,” she said. “But if you don’t knock, the doors won’t open.”

 

 

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Posted
12 minutes ago, bolverk said:

She imagines the worst. “How can girls go back to Afghanistan?” said Nilab, 30, who asked that only her first name be used to protect her identity. “What will happen to us? Rape, forced marriage and death.”

In fairness, that's the plan for the US in the coming years, too.....so turn that frown upside down, Nilab!  You're going to be a second-class citizen and chattel in either country soon!

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Posted

Ah yes, Republicans continue to fuck over Afghanis when in power, after doing nothing but criticizing the other party for not supporting them more when that party is in power. 

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Posted
1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

In fairness, that's the plan for the US in the coming years, too.....so turn that frown upside down, Nilab!  You're going to be a second-class citizen and chattel in either country soon!

First, (unfavorable) comparisons to Hamas, and now comparisons to the Taliban. Y’all are on a roll. 

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Posted
3 minutes ago, Rex Kramer said:

First, (unfavorable) comparisons to Hamas, and now comparisons to the Taliban. Y’all are on a roll. 

Gosh, I can't imagine how people might see parallels between two countries that have heavy fundamentalist theocratic influence in their ruling regimes.  It's a mystery.

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Posted
3 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Gosh, I can't imagine how people might see parallels between two countries that have heavy fundamentalist theocratic influence in their ruling regimes.  It's a mystery.

Because people are fucking morons. 

Posted
1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

I presume you are speaking of our fundagelical leaders.

I know they’re morons. People equating terrorist organizations that murder people are a bit different. You lose people with such comparisons. 

Posted
13 minutes ago, Rex Kramer said:

I know they’re morons. People equating terrorist organizations that murder people are a bit different. You lose people with such comparisons. 

Ahh, you get lost in the fallacy of degree.

These images can be of the same fire:

405.jpg

Just because one has been allowed to burn longer doesn't mean the other isn't just as great a threat.

"Only somewhat as theocratic and hasn't killed as many people yet" is not a good distinction.  Fundagelical theocratic regimes see the "other" as inferior, and almost always view women as lesser (worthy of fewer rights and such).  The common threads are in plain sight.  And waiting till the fire is burning out of control over 100,000 acres (so you can finally say "okay....NOW it's bad") is a really, really bad strategy.

Posted
21 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Ahh, you get lost in the fallacy of degree.

These images can be of the same fire:

405.jpg

Just because one has been allowed to burn longer doesn't mean the other isn't just as great a threat.

"Only somewhat as theocratic and hasn't killed as many people yet" is not a good distinction.  Fundagelical theocratic regimes see the "other" as inferior, and almost always view women as lesser (worthy of fewer rights and such).  The common threads are in plain sight.  And waiting till the fire is burning out of control over 100,000 acres (so you can finally say "okay....NOW it's bad") is a really, really bad strategy.

You’re crazy and I won’t do this with you. You should send longer messages with more words in all caps. 

Posted
3 minutes ago, Rex Kramer said:

You’re crazy and I won’t do this with you. You should send longer messages with more words in all caps. 

I'm crazy for seeing the similarities between the Taliban and the American Christofascist movement in power in many spots of our government.  Yep.  I'm clearly alone, out on an island, to be the one person to see the similarities.

GmAQm-pWEAAK_Z_.png

Posted (edited)
30 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Ahh, you get lost in the fallacy of degree.

These images can be of the same fire:

405.jpg

Just because one has been allowed to burn longer doesn't mean the other isn't just as great a threat.

"Only somewhat as theocratic and hasn't killed as many people yet" is not a good distinction.  Fundagelical theocratic regimes see the "other" as inferior, and almost always view women as lesser (worthy of fewer rights and such).  The common threads are in plain sight.  And waiting till the fire is burning out of control over 100,000 acres (so you can finally say "okay....NOW it's bad") is a really, really bad strategy.

Dude lol he isn't smart enough to understand the analogy. Seriously. It's hilarious.

e: Careful though, or blacklab will time you out for disagreeing with him. CR!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Edited by Brian Fantana
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Posted
Just now, Brisketexan said:

I'm crazy for seeing the similarities between the Taliban and the American Christofascist movement in power in many spots of our government.  Yep.  I'm clearly alone, out on an island, to be the one person to see the similarities.

GmAQm-pWEAAK_Z_.png

You’ve totally moved the goalposts. Totally. Similarities does not equate with the fact that the Taliban will straight up murder people. Any comparison, as a result, is disingenuous as fuck. 

Posted

I dunno why some of you don't just put Rex on ignore, he's a fucking moron.  But he's not MAGA!  He just doesn't like when you compare them to terrorists or Nazis.

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Posted
Just now, Rex Kramer said:

You’ve totally moved the goalposts. Totally. Similarities does not equate with the fact that the Taliban will straight up murder people. Any comparison, as a result, is disingenuous as fuck. 

Huh.

I guess we should hold off on raising the red flag on oppressive, theocratic regimes, until they are fully functioning death machines.  Until then, there's no comparison.

Because no brutally oppressive, violent, murderous regime ever started off as merely autocratic and erasing the rule of law.  Nope, no pattern of that at all.

Posted
1 minute ago, Brisketexan said:

Huh.

I guess we should hold off on raising the red flag on oppressive, theocratic regimes, until they are fully functioning death machines.  Until then, there's no comparison.

Because no brutally oppressive, violent, murderous regime ever started off as merely autocratic and erasing the rule of law.  Nope, no pattern of that at all.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT!!! THAT'S CR!!!!!!

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Posted

Ya know Rex, seeing how desperately you want to derail the thread and conversation to NOT be about these extrajudicial and illegal actions by ICE, one could easily support the conclusion that you're pleased with what's happening.

 

Posted
10 minutes ago, Js1 said:

I dunno why some of you don't just put Rex on ignore, he's a fucking moron.  But he's not MAGA!  He just doesn't like when you compare them to terrorists or Nazis.

He might legitimately be dumber than workswithseed.

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Posted
11 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Huh.

I guess we should hold off on raising the red flag on oppressive, theocratic regimes, until they are fully functioning death machines.  Until then, there's no comparison.

Because no brutally oppressive, violent, murderous regime ever started off as merely autocratic and erasing the rule of law.  Nope, no pattern of that at all.

Nah, I’d just hold off comparing them to Hamas or Taliban. It’s bad enough. Why in the fuck would you derail conversations with ridiculous comparisons that will catch you no flies, and turn people off?  

Posted
8 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Ya know Rex, seeing how desperately you want to derail the thread and conversation to NOT be about these extrajudicial and illegal actions by ICE, one could easily support the conclusion that you're pleased with what's happening.

 

Why?  I’m not. I’m just not into hyperbole. It ruins your otherwise good arguments. 

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