blueworld

As a journalist in Afghanistan, Abdul says he helped promote American values like democracy and freedom. That work, he said, resulted in him being tortured by the Taliban after the US withdrew from the country in 2021.

Now he’s in California applying for political asylum, amid the looming threat of deportation.

“We trusted those values,” he said. “We came here for safety, and we don’t have it, unfortunately.”

But when Abdul walked into a San Diego court to plead his case, he wasn’t alone.

Ten veterans showed up for his hearing – unarmed, but dressed in hats and shirts to signify their military credentials as a “show of force”, said Shawn VanDiver, a US Navy vet who founded ‘Battle Buddies’ to support Afghan refugees facing deportation.

“Masked agents of the federal government are snatching up our friends, people who took life in our name and have done nothing wrong,” he said.

Approximately 200,000 Afghans relocated to the US after Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021, as the US left the country in chaos after two decades fighting the war on terror.

Many say they quickly felt embraced by Americans, who recognised the sacrifices they had made to help the US military and fight for human rights.

But since the Trump administration has terminated many of the programmes which protected them from deportation, Afghans now fear they will be deported and returned to their home country, which is now controlled by the Taliban.

…

I think this is the program https://afghanevac.org/battle-buddies

Could happen to a more obnoxious company… Support the farmers and give them a right to repair, maybe farmers across the world will pay the expense.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_data_recorder#NHTSA_ruling

Since there was already an overwhelming trend for voluntary EDR installation, the ruling did not require manufacturers to install EDRs in vehicles produced for North America. Based on its analysis, NHTSA estimated that by 2010, over 85% of vehicles would already have EDRs installed in them, but warned that if the trend did not continue, the agency would revisit their decision and possibly make installation a requirement.

The mandate did, however, provide a minimum standard for the type of data that EDRs would be required to record, consisting of at least 15 types of crash data, including pre-crash speed, engine throttle, brake use, measured changes in forward velocity (Delta-V), driver safety belt use, airbag warning lamp status and airbag deployment times.

In addition to the required data, NHTSA also set standards for 30 other types of data to be recorded if EDRs were voluntarily configured. For example, if a manufacturer configured an EDR to record engine RPMs or ABS activity, then the EDR would have to record 5 seconds of those pre-crash data in half-second increments.

…

Agreed, but let’s not be naïve. Pay them a food wage, give them healthcare, and good incentives to be ethnical government workers. If you don’t, then the corruption gets worse under the table.

This is his blog article. https://mikekaganski.wordpress.com/2025/07/25/microsoft-anybody-home/

Looking at this, it looks more like Microsoft just screwed it’s auth system in some way for him then intentionally banned him in particular.

I as an IT guy have seen this before SOHO office accounts as well and entirely agree that MS has entirely lost the ability to do IT infrastructure in any useful way. Even at an enterprise level, Exchange and outlook used to be convoluted to learn and administer before they became cloud based, as regedit was your friend and they always buried the settings. Now, it doesn’t require a degree in IT, but rather a pointy hat and a reading of spell books to make things work… Sometimes. Sacrifices of interns might be necessary at the alter of Support, before they’ll answer the phone and you realize they have no more knowledge then you to.

Especially a utility of all things.