New report from the US gov on gender equality in Afghanistan. What are we still doing in Afghanistan, you ask? US has spent $787 million on gender programs, not including gender included in other programs. Hope to challenge stereotypes and patriarchy 1/n usip.org/sites/default/…
Report begins with a map, gives you lay of the land, so you know all the provinces you have to control in order to overthrow the patriarchy. 2/n
"There is no Dari or Pashto word for the terms 'gender' and 'gender equality.'...Afghans often simply use the English word without any translation."
Obviously, the US will need to help change the language, maybe introduce new pronouns to accomplish its mission. 3/n
US working to "bring about changes in attitudes, behaviors, roles and responsibilities at home, in the workplace, and in the community." Are Pashto men doing enough housework? How could American forces leave without knowing for sure? 4/n
US places itself in a long historical tradition of fighting for feminism in Afghanistan. The Soviets tried it, which led to rebellions and violent resistance. US hopes to take Afghanistan back to the good old days of Soviet occupation. 5/n
US in Afghanistan has adopted a policy of "gender mainstreaming, in which the design and implementation of development programs are required to be sensitive to gender norms and disparities." Imagine this in previous wars, FDR thinking about the disparate impact of D-Day. 6/n
US created quotas for women in parliament. Now, they find "pervasive sexual harassment against female candidates, where male election staff and other stakeholders ask female candidates for sexual favors in return for support." 7/n
"Women parliamentarians have limited connection with their constituencies, and some have never even been to the provinces they represent." US worried that women parliamentarians vote on ethnic or tribal basis, American soldiers must build female solidarity to win war. 8/n
US interviews Afghan parliamentarians on gender relations. Hears complaints that women are not given as much time to speak in meetings. Ministers stand up to greet men, but not women. Again, this is a report by the American government on a war it's been fighting for 20 years. 9/n
Number of women voters has been going down across the course of the war, both in total and as a percentage of the vote. 10/n
US forces rural Afghans to have gender balanced councils to get money for infrastructure projects. Still, "men regularly interfere in women’s meaningful participation by blocking information, controlling project funds, and ignoring their input." 11/n
Some US programs involve enlisting Afghan men in the the cause. They gave "trainings to 1,105 Afghan men in which they could discuss their own gender roles and examine male attitudes that are harmful to women." One initiative is called the "National Masculinity Alliance." 12/n
To integrate women into the Afghan army, the US sent "gender advisers," built :women’s training centers and schools, housing, child care centers, gyms, dining facilities, and bathrooms." 13/n
US mission to integrate women into the Afghan military hindered by lack of sexual harassment policy in the ministry of defense or ministry of interior.
US set goal of 10% women in army, only reached 1%. 14/n
US report mentions that the Taliban has never sent a woman to the peace negotiations. When a woman from the Afghan gov delegation recommended the Taliban send a woman to one of the negotiations, "they laughed immediately." 15/n
A leader of a feminist organization gushes about how when she met the Taliban she was teasing them and they "behaved so nicely." 16/n
The issue of women has become the fundamental disagreement to ending the war. So much so that “Whenever you talk about women’s rights, you get tagged as a person who is against the peace process." Report warns this is a troubling narrative that must not take hold. 17/n
Flashback to the Afghan papers. USAID official talks about how US made gender central to their policy and it caused the people to revolt. 18/n
NYT on one of the first things Kamala Harris did after becoming vice president:
Paging through intelligence reports just weeks after she was sworn in as vice president, Kamala Harris was struck by the way two female foreign leaders were described. The reports used adjectives that, in her view, were rarely used to describe male leaders.
Ms. Harris, the first woman to hold her office, ordered up a review that scrutinized multiple years of briefing reports from various intelligence agencies, looking for possible gender bias.
The study found some questionable word choices but no widespread pattern, according to a senior intelligence official, one of five who requested anonymity to discuss the review. (None would disclose the words flagged by Ms. Harris because the reports were classified.)
Still, the exercise had an impact: Intelligence officials added a new training class for analysts on how to judge and assess female foreign leaders, according to another official.
Remember all the race craziness during covid? Guess who was the driving force behind it in the administration:
During the pandemic, she repeatedly asked her vice-presidential staff for demographic breakdowns on Covid vaccination recipients and pressed the administration’s health officials to address gaps, according to two former administration officials.
She pushed the federal bureaucracy to incorporate concerns about equity into routine business — so much so that her advisers seldom briefed her on domestic policies without having prepared a ready answer about their impact on women, Black and Hispanic people and other racial minorities.
When Trump says that these are stupid, unserious people, stories like this are what make his charges sound credible.
She doesn’t talk about it during the campaign. But this is where her heart is at. nytimes.com/2024/10/25/us/…
Her staff knew that DEI was her obsession. This ended up influencing everything about how they did their jobs. They knew that Kamala would have DEI-related questions on every issue and prepared with that in mind.
She pushed the federal bureaucracy to incorporate concerns about equity into routine business — so much so that her advisers seldom briefed her on domestic policies without having prepared a ready answer about their impact on women, Black and Hispanic people and other racial minorities.
“She was always interested in race and gender,” said one former aide who requested anonymity because of lack of authorization to speak publicly. “We all knew it was really important to her, so we would proactively add that to her briefings. She didn’t have to ask for it.”
The human capital problem on the right is bad and getting worse. Eating pets and imaginary whistleblowers today. What's next? Diagnosing it is easy. Finding solutions is hard.
My theory of our politics would suggest it's hopeless. There are lots of stupid people out there, and they used to be kept out by gatekeepers and distributed across the parties. Now they're increasingly in one party, and have the internet. A simple story of supply and demand.
But the electoral college makes it much worse.
For most of US history, the electoral college hasn't mattered. But two things have changed since 2000 that have made the electoral college go from an afterthought to vitally important to presidential politics.
To celebrate, I've written an article on why you should not support labor unions.
They are anti-meritocratic cartels that achieve gains by harming the rest of society. If you are concerned with poverty, there are better ways to help. richardhanania.com/p/unions-are-n…
We can have reasonable debates about the size of government or how much it should distribute wealth. But the way to help the working class is not to favor one group of people and let them take from everyone else, lower economic efficiency, and harm consumers and other workers.
The story of American ports. They are the least efficient in the world because unions fight technological innovation. Labor bosses actively benefit from making everything function worse.
How to understand the RFK phenomenon? I explain Dale Gribble voters. The ultra paranoid have always been around, but before they were divided between the parties.
Top two podcasts in the country are Rogan and Tucker. They're considered on the opposite sides of the political spectrum, but both are RFK fans. Other alt media personalities like Alex Jones and Bret Weinstein are also part of this group. It's not right/left, but something diff.
What binds them isn't ideology as traditionally understood, but paranoia and a belief that the world is run by shadowy forces. A "they" who are keeping the truth from you. Gribbles love talking about UFOs, ancient technology, Atlantis, etc and believe they have hidden knowledge.
The selection of JD Vance can be seen as a triumph for the Tech Right. I explain where they came from and what makes them different from others in the GOP. They're socially liberal, anti-egalitarian, and ultimately for dynamism and progress. 🧵 richardhanania.com/p/understandin…
Ironically, there is a group of leftists who saw this coming. They came up with the acronym TESCREAL, which is so ugly that it's actually catchy. The leftists paying the most attention knew that tech elites were different from other elites in academia and journalism.
If you believe in technology and progress, it's going to put you in conflict with the ruling class if it doesn't believe in those things. In most societies that may be religious authorities. In the modern West, it is wokes, driven by an egalitarian vision that discounts progress
The time Israel sent a commando team into downtown Beirut that assassinated three high-ranking members of the PLO and got out. The team was led by Ehud Barak.
Westerners hate Israel because it fills them with a sense of inferiority by showing that heroism is still possible.
Stop and read about the Entebbe Raid, after a plane was hijacked and taken to Uganda. The Israelis secretly flew a team from Suez to Uganda, slaughtered the Palestinian terrorists, their German allies, and Idi Amin’s soldiers, bringing almost all of the hostages home alive.
What were the Palestinians doing during this time? They had their own version of heroism. They were blowing up synagogues, killing random Jews all over the world, massacring flight crews, and getting the Gulf Arabs to pay them ransom money.