What’s the result of Biden’s disastrous pullout?
‘We must continue’: In Kabul, Afghans adjust to a new and uncertain fate
“Why are you travelling without a mahram?” the Taliban guard asks a young Afghan woman about her missing male escort.
She sits on her own in the back of a beat-up Kabul yellow taxi as it pulls up to the checkpoint marked, like all the others, by the white Taliban flag with black script.
What is allowed now in Kabul, and what is not?
The turbaned Talib, rifle slung over shoulder, tells her to call her husband. When she explains she doesn’t have a phone, he instructs another taxi driver to take her home to get her husband and bring them back. Once completed, all is resolved. (snip)
Some things don’t need saying. As soon as the Taliban swept, with surprising speed, into Kabul last month, Afghans knew what to do during Taliban rule 2.0. Men stopped shaving to allow beards to grow; women switched bright scarves to black ones and checked the length of their dresses and cloaks.
The length would be from head to toe, now. The BBC is soft-peddling it.
No one is quite sure yet what Taliban leaders mean when they say women and girls will be given “all their rights within Islam”.
Many women, including Rajaee, were told in no uncertain terms, “don’t come back to the office”. Many fear they’ll never be allowed to return to the life they lived in a city they no longer feel is their own.
“It is my right to be educated, to have a good job, to participate in society at a high level,” Rajaee tells us as she sits next to a pile of textbooks for her university degree, and her work heading a unit on gender and human rights awareness.
Yeah, well, that is all over now, the Taliban won’t put up with it. Just like before.
- An Afghan woman in Kabul: ‘Now I have to burn everything I achieved’
- Taliban fighters set an Afghan woman on fire for ‘bad cooking,’ report says
- The Taliban knocked on her door 3 times. The fourth time, they killed her
- Afghanistan is a brutal reminder to American women: don’t take our freedoms for granted
By freedoms, they mean abortion on demand, because I’m told Texas is just like the Taliban
Republicans in six states rush to mimic Texas anti-abortion law
Republican leaders in as many as six US states are rushing to follow the lead of Texas in adopting an extreme abortion ban that critics, including Joe Biden, have slammed as unconstitutional and built to encourage vigilantism among the public.
Abortion rights advocates are bracing to resist a flurry of initiatives from Florida to North Dakota in the wake of the new Texas law, the most extreme in the US, which the conservative majority on the supreme court refused to block. (snip)
Within a day of the law going into effect, six other states – North Dakota, Mississippi, Indiana, Florida, South Dakota and Arkansas – have said they are looking to adopt a similar ban, according to numerous reports.
See? Just like the Taliban! Oh, sure, women can still go to school and work, can still get degrees, can drive and be out without their husbands, can wear just about anything they want. But, they can’t get abortions after 6 weeks after being irresponsible with sexual encounters (yes, men need to take responsibility and precautions, too), which is even worse than being set on fire for bad cooking.
BTW, this is a great explanation of why the Supreme Court declined to take up the case.
“Why are you travelling without a mahram?” the Taliban guard asks a young Afghan woman about her missing male escort.
Warming of the Arctic caused by climate change has increased the number of polar vortex outbreaks, when frigid air from the far north bathes the central and eastern United States in killer cold, a study finds.
One-fifth of voters who marked Joe Biden’s name on their ballot now want their vote back, according to a new poll.
If you look out at the water off the coast of Southern California long enough, you’re likely to spot some dolphins. Another easily spotted local sight, though much less scenic: the oil-producing and transporting facilities dotting the shoreline. In late June, near the coast of San Diego, Captain Domenic Biagini of Gone Whale Watching San Diego filmed a pod of dolphins 
Do vaccine mandates violate civil liberties? Some who have refused vaccination claim as much.
Political analyst Matthew Dowd predicted on Thursday the world will see more deaths due to climate change this year than “all of the World Wars in the last 100 years combined.”
New Zealand police have shot and killed an ISIS supporter who injured at least six people in a supermarket “terrorist attack” in the Auckland suburb of New Lynn on Friday, authorities say.
After 
Attorney General Ashley Moody on Wednesday injected her legal opinion into Florida’s ongoing court battle over school mask mandates, adding noise to an increasingly political fight.

