On Tuesday, April 12, 2022 at 1:22:20 AM UTC+8, David P. wrote:
> Taliban Crack Down on Social Freedoms With Even Stricter Policing
> By Rasmussen and Stancati, Apr. 5, 2022, WSJ
>
> From a white pickup truck crawling through a busy street in west
> Kabul, members of the Taliban’s religious police, dressed in white
> tunics and black turbans, admonished fellow Afghans through a
> loudspeaker mounted on the roof of the car.
>
> “Dear Muslim brothers and sisters, hijab and implementation of
> Shariah law is the duty of every Muslim,” they shouted, referring
> to Muslim clothing for women.
>
> “You, girl, fix your head scarf. Your hair is showing,” another
> religious policeman scolded a woman during another patrol. “Who
> are you showing off to?”
>
> The Taliban have in recent weeks introduced draconian social
> restrictions, which in particular curb the freedoms of women,
> even as the group seeks international recognition after toppling
> the Western-backed republic in August.
>
> Most notably, the Taliban last week decided to uphold a ban on
> secondary and schools for girls. They also banned live music at
> weddings and barred international media outlets such as the BBC
> and Voice of America from broadcasting in local languages.
>
> Women must be accompanied by a male relative when traveling beyond
> 48 miles. In parts of Afghanistan, women are required to be accompanied
> by a male guardian to receive medical treatment.
>
> When the Taliban took over in August, they sought to project a
> softer image than during their first time in power, for instance
> promising to respect the rights of women within the framework of
> Islam. Since then, the Taliban have hardened their position on a
> range of issues, a reflection that the group’s ultraconservative
> members are prevailing over moderates, at least on social policies.
> While the Taliban collectively adhere to a hard-line interpretation
> of Sunni Islam, there are disagreements within the group about how
> harshly to enforce rules such as gender segregation.
>
> The more pragmatic members of the Taliban are worried that allowing
> religious policemen to aggressively enforce social rules could
> alienate the population and prolong their international isolation.
> Ideologues within the Taliban—including Haibatullah Akhundzada, the
> movement’s supreme leader—appear less concerned about a possible backlash.
>
> In recent weeks, uniformed members of the Taliban’s religious morality
> police deployed by the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and the
> Promotion of Virtue—a much-feared institution during the group’s rule
> in the 1990s—have become more visible in the streets of the capital.
>
> Efforts to police the population intensified ahead of Ramadan, which
> began Saturday. On a recent day in Kabul, religious police instructed
> taxi drivers not to play music inside the vehicle or to pick up
> intoxicated passengers or women who they deemed improperly covered.
>
> On Friday, Taliban members hung banners in central Kabul reading:
> “My sister! Your hijab speaks louder than my blood.”
>
> “Women should have better hijab for Ramadan,” said Abdullah Omari,
> a morality police chief overseeing seven central provinces.
>
> “Hijab” is a catchall term that for many Muslims refers to a head
> scarf, which all Afghan women already wear in public. But the word
> can also refer more broadly to female clothing that covers parts or
> all of the body in accordance with Shariah law. The Taliban, Omari
> said, will enforce this broader view, saying the hijab is a religious
> code that mandates women cover their entire body in a loosefitting
> garment that ideally obscures the face as well, as burqas do.
>
> For some women who still have active roles in society, the pressure
> of having to abide by the Taliban’s restrictive rules is unbearable.
> At Indira Gandhi’s Children’s Hospital in Kabul, a government letter
> pinned to the notice board instructed female staff to wear Islamic
> clothing, without elaborating. Some female health workers there said
> they found the order humiliating.
>
> “If we don’t wear a proper hijab, we may be fired,” said one female
> doctor who is her extended family’s sole breadwinner. She was wearing
> a tightly wrapped head scarf, a long dress over a pair of pants and a
> lab coat. “But I don’t know what that means. What kind of hijab do
> they want? We can't work in a burqa,” she added, tears streaming
> down her face.
>
> Last week the Taliban said that men and women must use Kabul’s parks,
> popular sites for family picnics, on alternate days. From the first day
> of Ramadan, the Taliban imposed similar segregation on amusement parks,
> making this past Friday the last day that parents could jointly take
> their children to ride carousels.
>
> “I feel like, from tomorrow, I'll be in prison,” said Sedarah Afzali,
> a 20-year-old high-school graduate wearing a tooth gem and a nose stud,
> nail polish and a bright orange head scarf. She has barely seen her
> girlfriends since the Taliban takeover because her family kept her
> from moving around the city alone for her safety.
>
> “I begged my brothers today to take us here,” she said, gesturing at
> her two sisters, Neda, 23, and Nazi, 17, who were with her at the park.
> The Taliban takeover ended 20 years of war, Ms. Afzali said, but she
> preferred life under the former republic: “Back then, security wasn’t
> good but we could enjoy life. We had freedom.”
>
> The Taliban say they are merely advising Afghans on how to behave
> and have yet to reinstate the widespread corporal punishment they
> used to rule the country in the 1990s. But fear of the group’s past
> leads many Afghans to self-censor and drives parents to do what they
> can to keep their children safe.
>
> In a coffee shop in central Kabul, where she and two girlfriends
> were drinking energy drinks and smoking cigarettes, 25-year-old
> Fatima Hashemi said her family tried to keep her from going around town.
>
> “This is the only place we can have a little bit of freedom,” Hashemi,
> a former journalist, said of the coffee shop. Her friend stubbed a
> cigarette on the floor, out of sight. “But we are too afraid to even
> enjoy this moment together.”
>
> Until recently, men and women were allowed to mix in the cafe. Now,
> women have been relegated to a corner behind bamboo screens. Music
> has been turned off, the only soundtrack supplied by a customer’s
> iPhone playing a pop song. When Taliban morality enforcers enter the
> coffee shop, the usher sounds an alarm on the upper floors to give
> female patrons a chance to fix their headscarves or put out cigarettes.
>
> Men feel the restrictions, too. Male govt workers say the Taliban bar
> them from the office if they don’t grow long beards, while female
> staff have been told not to wear makeup.
>
> Basset Zewari, a 23-year-old bitcoin trader wearing bluejeans and
> a red polo T-shirt, said the Taliban want men to wear traditional
> Afghan clothes—a long tunic and baggy trousers. “My father told me t
> oday, ‘Be careful when you go outside in those jeans,’” Zewari said.
>
> While women are allowed to study at university, male and female
> students must be taught in separate shifts or separated by partitions,
> according to the Ministry of Higher Education’s official guidelines
> viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Female students must take a seat
> in classrooms 5 minutes before male students and leave 5 minutes later,
> to ensure they don’t cross paths.
>
> The restrictions also deal a blow to local businesses already suffering
> under a crushing economic crisis. Following the Taliban takeover,
> foreign countries including the U.S. imposed economic sanctions,
> halted foreign trade, suspended aid to the Afghan government and
> froze its foreign reserves.
>
> “These parks depend on families and children. The new restrictions
> will stop most of our customers from coming here,” said the manager
> of an amusement park in Kabul.
>
> “All other Islamic countries have amusement parks,” he added.
> “Islam tells you to laugh and have fun. We have never allowed
> anyone to behave in an un-Islamic way here.”
>
> Saeed Jelani, a member of the Taliban’s police force visiting the
> amusement park on his day off, said it wasn’t forbidden in Islam to
> have fun, as long as women wore clothing that only revealed their eyes.
>
> “This is our Islamic rules and tradition: Women must stay inside
> the house,” Jelani said, as families milled around him eating ice
> cream, an hour before the park closed for the last time before
> genders would be segregated.
>
> “When men and women are close together, it leads to adultery and
> prostitution,” he said.
>
> https://www.wsj.com/articles/taliban-crack-down-on-social-freedoms-with-even-stricter-policing-11649156657

On Thursday, April 14, 2022 at 3:18:46 PM UTC+8, David P. wrote:
> stoney wrote:
> > David P. wrote:
> > > Taliban Crack Down on Social Freedoms With Even Stricter Policing
> > > By Rasmussen and Stancati, Apr. 5, 2022, WSJ
> > > [ . . . ]
> > > https://www.wsj.com/articles/taliban-crack-down-on-social-freedoms-with-even-stricter-policing-11649156657
> > Actually the Afghan people have had those customs and traditions since years ago. But during the occupation of 22 years by American government, these traditions, customs, and cultures were removed by American supervised policy on the American-installed Afghan government now gone to dust. The Taliban wants to ensure the history of Afghanistan in customs, traditions, and cultures should be remained and be followed again.
> >
> > Hence, it is hard on the Taliban government to reintroduce them if no enforcement is done to enforce the people to comply and follow the laws of customs, traditions, and cultures. Seriously, customs, traditions, and cultures are key ingredients by the people to galvanize and integrate and unite with each other as a sole and single way of one ethnicity of Afghanistan people.
> >
> > The method of enforcing them is by the patrolling by loud-speaking way to reform the people back to where they were in the first place. The happiest people are the elderly in Afghanistan who want to see their children to grow up with traditions, customs, and cultures. The elders are happy to see that these cultures, traditions and customs will be central-folds to a disciplined people in Afghanistan and by wayward behaviors which they learned from Western ways of customs, traditions, and cultures.
> >
> > Seriously, the majority of people in Afghanistan are middle age and elderly people are happy to see restoration of some control disciplines of social media and their family disciplines and senses back onto their children ever since the Taliban came back to power in August last year 2021.
> -----------
> Your Drug of Choice is pushing people around and spending other people's money,
> and you can't get enough of it!
> --
> --

What is Drug of Choice? Please explain and elaborate.

On Thursday, April 14, 2022 at 3:18:46 AM UTC-4, David P. wrote:
> stoney wrote:
> > David P. wrote:
> > > Taliban Crack Down on Social Freedoms With Even Stricter Policing
> > > By Rasmussen and Stancati, Apr. 5, 2022, WSJ
> > > [ . . . ]
> > > https://www.wsj.com/articles/taliban-crack-down-on-social-freedoms-with-even-stricter-policing-11649156657
> > Actually the Afghan people have had those customs and traditions since years ago. But during the occupation of 22 years by American government, these traditions, customs, and cultures were removed by American supervised policy on the American-installed Afghan government now gone to dust. The Taliban wants to ensure the history of Afghanistan in customs, traditions, and cultures should be remained and be followed again.
> >
> > Hence, it is hard on the Taliban government to reintroduce them if no enforcement is done to enforce the people to comply and follow the laws of customs, traditions, and cultures. Seriously, customs, traditions, and cultures are key ingredients by the people to galvanize and integrate and unite with each other as a sole and single way of one ethnicity of Afghanistan people.
> >
> > The method of enforcing them is by the patrolling by loud-speaking way to reform the people back to where they were in the first place. The happiest people are the elderly in Afghanistan who want to see their children to grow up with traditions, customs, and cultures. The elders are happy to see that these cultures, traditions and customs will be central-folds to a disciplined people in Afghanistan and by wayward behaviors which they learned from Western ways of customs, traditions, and cultures.
> >
> > Seriously, the majority of people in Afghanistan are middle age and elderly people are happy to see restoration of some control disciplines of social media and their family disciplines and senses back onto their children ever since the Taliban came back to power in August last year 2021.
> -----------
> Your Drug of Choice is pushing people around and spending other people's money,
> and you can't get enough of it!

Nah. Many Afghans do not want their people over sexualized;
Actually, many Americans likewise don't want their people over sexualized, too early and/or deviantly.
Hence, U.S. government leaders pass the "don't say gay" law.
Pushing people around by spending other people's money. No?

"
> --
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