Just now reading No Good Men Among the Living by Anand Gopal. You know about American incompetence in Afghanistan, but Gopal is unique in showing how the occupation looked on the ground, and destroys the narrative of a well-meaning America just being too ambitious. Thread.
In one Afghan district, there was a dispute over which side was the legitimate government. Both sides were accused of being Taliban by their enemies. What did the US do? It went and killed both sides, tortured the survivors, and then awarded medals to the troops involved.
A warlord built a business empire off the occupation, selling the US land he stole from locals, getting the US to take out his rivals by accusing them of being Taliban. The US military dropped fliers that said Afghans who cooperated could “Get Wealth and Power Beyond Your Dreams"
One elder went to the US and begged them to get their warlord to stop harassing him. They called the warlord, who them that he was of course Taliban. The US arrested the elder and put him in prison. After his release, he joined the insurgency.
When one local criticized the American-backed warlord, his home was raided. The State Department told the world that because the man had a model airplane, it was evidence he was involved in 9/11.
One local leader tried to cut down on corruption, was accused by a rival of being Taliban, sent to Gitmo.
Samoud Khan, who kept two "tea boys", rose in his place. Then a different warlord got the Americans to arrest Khan, who also sent one of his 12 year old tea boys to Gitmo.
Prisoners at Guantanamo would often be accused of supporting groups that were actually pro-American, or no longer existed.
They arrested people for being associated with Helmand governor Sher Muhammad Akhundzada, and others for resisting him.
A warlord explains how it works. Went to the Americans, got $5 million to get Bin Laden. Then he went to al-Qaida, who gave him $1 million not to give him to the Americans. Then he went to the ISI and asked for $500K, who put a gun to his head and told him to leave.
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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.