Not sure the west is doing anything for Afghan women while simultaneously using them as (increasingly ineffectively) as nothing more than a discursive tool. The gender apartheid isn’t likely to fall if we just forget about Afghanistan in general women in particular as an international community.

I am also skeptical in general of non-engagement as a strategy. Arguably it’s one of the reasons Taliban 2.0 happened since the western occupation froze out one of the most important political entities in the country as a non-factor. Don’t see why we should follow the western lead on this.

From a strategic point of view Afghanistan represents one of the few bright spots in India’s massively reduced sphere of influence under Modi. This isn’t Modi’s doing per se: Even as the US occupation swelled the ranks of the Talibs India invested $3 billion in humanitarian and development projects.

It is better to be a woman in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, or Sri Lanka than India. This is not a state that gives enough of a crap about women not to deal strategically with the Taliban.

Even the slight recovery in women’s employment in 2022-2023 (women’s labor force participation is 37%, far lower than the global average and lower than places like Saudi Arabia) is now thought by economists to be coming from distress employment. Modi has trashed progress for women.

As I have said, we are literally Russia now. This is what Russia did to Ukraine. Amassing this much killing machinery and bodies has an inertia of its own. Even if they were cowards, all it now takes is one misfire, one bad command, one accidental encounter.

Since 2014 crimes against women have increased dramatically, the state repeatedly protects rapists and promotes a culture of impunity, communal misogyny is worse than ever, and it has slipped nearly 50 spots since 2016 on the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap to rank 129 out of 146 countries.

Have you seen India’s record on women?! Just look up anything from female labor participation to the vicious misogyny promoted from the top down. The chaddipanthis hate women too because the whole thing is about caste and caste requires patriarchy to maintain endogamy and hierarchy.

My cherished fantasy of dying of frostbite in the Pamirs returns with a vengeance

Reading for this year has been dominated by obsessive rereading of a few works for the purpose of writing

Mood of the British Online Right currently at "we are invincible" due to Trump's spat with the BBC. Wonder what causes everyone to crash out this time.

Above all imo it's a generational conflict. Ironically many of older right-wing anti-Beeb crowd are fairly open in admitting this, they just want to see the older top execs and managers as somehow the weak victims of all-powerful young entry-level staffers.

can't believe they're bringing james bond back to life as the resurrected frazerian pagan ur-christ after he was burnt in the wicker man by christopher lee to assure good harvests

In a great deal of emotional pain that by its nature, and by the effects its discussion has had in past, must be kept to the self

The broad vibe shift against an organization like AIPAC is good overall and indicates something serious in the underlying direction of the Democratic base but I think, and have for a long time now thought, it was always a bit too simplistic to chalk up the pro-Israel consensus *to* AIPAC et al.

With amoral complicit cowards like this in charge of the alleged opposition in the US, the Democrats make me actually consider that the Indian National Congress (sigh) might even pretend more of an opposition than this. Never thought I’d see the day.

It seems clear to me now that the play here with the shutdown was to put on a big show of being fighters before the election in order to get the benefit from that at the polls. Having gotten the benefit that they were looking for, they shut the whole thing down.

bring back Armistice Day tbh. I'm not necessarily against a day for veterans as such but it is extremely perverse to replace public commemoration of the Armistice with this

Serious "Battle of Chile" vibes

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH

Wow: Per Hamdi's legal team, his only charge was a visa overstay — after Trump revoked his visa. Despite DHS tweeting that Hamdi supported terrorism, they never charged him with any criminality. In other words: Trump revoked a journalist's visa, so agents could arrest him for overstaying his visa.

Sheesh zeteo.com/p/senate-dem...

This thread by Whitehouse has convinced me that they were a united caucus on this. They just hate their voters so much and think we’re stupid. A real okey-doke.

Really do feel that I must end certain fruitless approaches and outmoded attachments, lock in, and then decamp elsewhere, become my work.

Hopkirk's 'The Great Game' makes excellent flight reading

Back in New York

Heads up 😅 Sex Matters have launched their own MP letter-writing campaign insisting on trans segregation, an exclusionary Code etc etc 📝Let’s make sure our letters outnumber theirs+++ Template here! If you’ve already written, grab a mate & get them to write too 🤗 actionnetwork.org/letters/scra...

Flying back to New York

Solar’s price drop is astonishing: panels are now 98% cheaper than when I first analyzed them in 2004. Today, building a fence with solar can be cheaper than using wood.

All I can really add to this is that I wasn't really thinking of media when I wrote "incompetence is a form of bias" but if the BBC wasn't in the training set, it has worked very well in the validation set. open.substack.com/pub/backofmi...

On the blog: In approving Trump's transphobic policy of listing sex assigned at birth on passports, SCOTUS said govt was "merely attesting to a historical fact," thus echoing the obtuseness of Plessy v Ferguson's statement that Black folks were only choosing to see segregation as white supremacy. 👇

The rewards are pouring in

The fact that rich people are buying up the media and politicians, and using up the remaining carbon budget is very bad for everyone.

Stephen really does have the best take on this. It’s not clear that the BBC Board or indeed the rest of the News team really understood the message of the previous reviews, which were about getting detail right. Instead they wanted to know what was ‘biased’ or not like they were blotting out stains.

So the Telegraph’s “BBC bias dossier” - supposedly written by ex-BBC adviser Michael Prescott - is being used to claim there’s a rogue LGBT+ unit “censoring” gender-critical voices inside the BBC. Let’s look at what’s actually in it. Spoiler: it’s nothing but recycled transphobic talking points! 🧵

They caved in March so they could get a better deal now. They’re caving now so they can get a better deal in some indeterminate future. The better deal is always just beyond their reach, but continuing to cave will get them there. And if you don’t agree with that, you don’t understand Politics,

It's one thing to lose by being out voted (e.g. Rs nuke the filibuster and vote through whatever they want). It's another thing entirely to collaborate with and provide votes for the party you're ostensibly opposing...

all they’ve done is proven yet again that you should *never* listen to some chin-stroking wise elder who lectures you about how *your* priorities are foolish and counterproductive while *their* priorities are strategic and wise. because in the end, *they* won’t even fight for *their own* priorities

democratic voters wanted their party to shut down the government for myriad reasons — troops in american cities, masked thugs ripping families apart — but dem leaders insisted the wise thing to do politically was to stay hyper-fxated on this one thing, ACA tax credits. and then they just… gave up

now trump gets to be like “we don’t know what the shutdown was about, democrats just held the country hostage for 2 months for no reason” and he would be sort of correct

Going to get one last book before I fly out

God I feel so scared about the world and the increasingly omni-fascistic outlook of "big tech". It's hard to escape it even in academia.

there's exactly one way it doesn't happen again and it involves a number of involuntary retirements

So just to be clear, the arc of this evening went: - it’s not happening, you’re stupid to believe this is happening - okay so they’re talking about it, but it’s not actually going to happen - okay so it’s happening and here’s why that’s good, actually

Still havent forgotten about the time they had a bill to grant trans people full legal protection and failed to pass it while holding the majority of both houses and the presidency 🤦🏾‍♀️

He’s still got it folks! —— the it being tertiary syphilis

I think im going to experience an aneurism if chuck (or his unmanageable caucus of vichy collaborators) strike a deal. I think this will be the real one. With God’s infinite love, it will finally happen.