Must read on the Afghanistan war. A village was terrorized by a warlord and militias. The Taliban brought peace, and the US brought them back. When there was no more Taliban in the area, the US paid the militia to round up random people. newyorker.com/magazine/2021/…
The 93rd division, US allies, would accuse people in the Karzai government of being Taliban. The US would then send them to Gitmo, along with a random gov official who showed up without a translator. Dado, the warlord, killed US soldiers and then blamed "Taliban."
Afghan gov tried to disband the 93rd division, and replace them with police. The division in response became a subsidiary of a Texas defense contractor, and went and killed 15 Afghan police to get their contract back. Members of the militia who had a conscience joined the Taliban
Things did not work out well for Mr. Dado, the warlord, parliamentarian, and friend of US special forces. The Taliban slaughtered 32 of his friends and family, and then killed him in a roadside attack.
After NATO was forced out of Sangin in 2014, it bragged that it left nothing but "rubble and dirt," having razed government buildings and destroyed the central market.
The Afghan government decided to slaughter civilians as it retreated. The general responsible had been CEO of a company that profited off of the war, similar to McChrystal and other American generals. He gave a sympathetic interview to CNN, and then fled to the UK.
Sami Sadat, the profiteering Afghan general who reportedly slaughtered civilians before fleeing to the UK, was in the NYT a few weeks ago expressing deep disappointment in Biden and his "tone," which stopped the Afghans from fighting. nytimes.com/2021/08/25/opi…
The US adopted a "hearts and minds" strategy, which involved breaking into people's houses and then getting into shootouts from there
British forces were negotiating with members of the Taliban to surrender. When Taliban met to plan this, the US bombed them, killing their leader
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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.
Fascinating analysis of the trendiness of baby names.
Since the 1960s, the endings of names rise and fall together, especially for boys. The fates of Mason, Jackson, Grayson, etc are all linked.
What names sound good to parents depends on subtle signals they’re not aware of.
This is associated with the decline of traditional names. The lesson here is people really feel the need to conform on a very deep subconscious level! If they don’t conform to tradition, they’ll look for arbitrary signs of trendiness.
But you don’t want to conform too much. So names that are too common get scratched off the list, while you need to pick a name for a boy or girl that sounds right in the current year.
Why not beginnings of names then? Makes the choice too conscious?
Time Magazine in 1958: Blacks are 10% of the population in 1,551 cities but commit 60% of violent crime. Northern mayors consider this their biggest problem and are afraid to talk about it. Black leaders blame racist law enforcement.
Black problems didn’t start with LBJ.
Time in 1958: NAACP tries to get people not to talk about black crime. Many whites are uncomfortable about the subject, and newspapers go out of their way not to mention a crime suspect’s race.
Time: Many blame poverty, but poor immigrants don’t commit crime like blacks do.
Change a few words around and this whole thing could’ve been written today. The media wouldn’t publish it of course but nothing has changed in 66 years!
Since October 7, many of us have been asking how we can be better allies to Israel.
I explain that what Israel needs is not better PR, or "hasbara," but pushback on narratives that are hostile to civilization itself, which Israel represents. richardhanania.com/p/article-in-t…
Israel doesn't have an "optics" problem because the rest of the world hated Israel before this war, and one can see this in the obsessive focus on its flaws compared to everything else in global politics. The problem is with Israel's existence.
There are three pillars of anti-Israel hate
1) Anti-western sentiment 2) Third worldism 3) Classic antisemitism
Unfortunately for Israel, it's the one place where all these ideological orientations converge.