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theculturedmarxist · 5 years

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By Kevin Reed

17 August 2019

Recently published news reports and legal studies have revealed that the US government has been violating basic democratic rights by using facial recognition to monitor and track the public. These reports have also shown that facial recognition is used widely as a preferred form of police biometrics, i.e., the science of identification and tracking through facial signatures and other kinds of unique individual measurements such as finger, palm and voice prints and dental and DNA profiles.

Every level of law enforcement—from city and state police departments to federal border patrol and military-intelligence—has been participating in the mass collection and analysis of facial images. This includes photos taken for government-issued ID cards and driver’s licenses and others captured from hidden surveillance cameras in public places such as border crossings, highways, parks, sporting events, sidewalks and airports as well as those scraped from social media accounts.

Georgetown Law published a study on May 19 called “America Under Watch” which documented the widespread use of facial recognition by the city governments and police departments of Detroit and Chicago. As part of its conclusion, the Georgetown report said, “real-time video surveillance threatens to create a world where, once you set foot outside, the government can track your every move. For the 3.3 million Americans residing in Detroit and Chicago, this may already be a reality.”

However, just as public outrage over these revelations had begun to emerge and several cities have been forced to ban the use of facial recognition—including San Francisco and Oakland, California as well as Somerville, Massachusetts—it became clear that the latest media exposures have a twofold political purpose.

On the one hand, the most conscious sections of the ruling establishment are concerned about the explosive reaction of millions of people to unfettered 24/7 state monitoring of their activities and whereabouts. Therefore, significant political pressure is being applied to force Congress to adopt as soon as possible a federal regulatory framework for the expanding biometric surveillance apparatus.

On the other hand, Democratic Party representatives and their supporters are using identity politics to conceal the serious implications of secret facial profiling and the trend toward a police state that it represents. By focusing exclusively on studies indicating race and gender bias in facial recognition tools, the Democrats are seeking to divert public anger away from a mass struggle by the working class in defense of democratic rights and into support for laws that will legalize the surveillance.

Among the most often referenced of the race and gender bias studies has been the MIT Media Lab Gender Shades project by Joy Buolamwini—a self-proclaimed “poet of code” and campaigner against “algorithmic bias”—who published her first results in 2017. The initial Gender Shades analysis of facial analysis technology from IBM, Microsoft and Face++ showed that “male subjects were more accurately classified than female subjects,” “lighter subjects were more accurately classified than darker individuals” and “all classifiers performed worst on darker female subjects.”

A follow-up study in 2018 by Buolamwini also showed that facial recognition tools from Amazon and Kairos exhibited the same trends performing “better on male faces than female faces” and “better on lighter faces than darker faces” and “have the current worst performance for the darker female sub-group.”

A similar—although far less scientific—test was performed by the ACLU on Amazon’s Rekognition facial analysis software in July 2018. A database of 25,000 mugshots was compared against public photos of every member of the US House and Senate. Amazon’s tool returned 28 false matches identifying them “as other people who have been arrested for a crime.”

The ACLU report then said, “The false matches were disproportionately of people of color … 40 percent of Rekognition’s false matches in our test were of people of color, even though they make up only 20 percent of Congress.” Since Amazon’s Rekognition is currently being used as the facial analysis tool of choice by city, county and state police departments across the country, false identification rates of minorities are of legitimate concern among workers and young people.

However, the political objective behind the Gender Shades and ACLU studies is not to prove that facial recognition should be stopped immediately, but to insist that the technology can be improved upon. The ACLU says that what is needed is “transparency and accountability in artificial intelligence” and a moratorium on law enforcement use of facial recognition until “all necessary steps are taken to prevent them from harming vulnerable communities.”

In other words, according to the ACLU, police surveillance with facial recognition of the working class is fine and can go forward with appropriate technical adjustments that reduce false identification of minorities and with the adoption of acceptable federal government guidelines for its use.

Essentially, the MIT and ACLU findings have been seized upon by the New York Times, the Democrats and organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America as a means of burying fundamental democratic questions beneath race and gender politics. What they are advocating is, in essence, a racialist ideology and politics that serve to divide the working class and prevent a unified struggle against the growing threat of a police state in America.

For example, in entirely predictable fashion, the Times published a snide article on February 8, 2018 with the headline “Facial recognition is accurate, if you’re a white guy,” which featured Joy Buolamwini and her Algorithmic Justice League.

What becomes clear in the course of the Times interview with Buolamwini is that she is on a mission for “inclusion” of minorities and women into the corrupt corporate world of government-sponsored artificial intelligence surveillance technology. Through the efforts of the Gender Shades study and others, organizations like IBM and the Ford Foundation—who talk to the Times about how they are “deeply committed” to “unbiased” and “transparent” spying on the public—get to pose as “progressive” companies.

On July 10 of this year, the Times also published a comment by its graphics editor Sahil Chinoy headlined, “The Racist History Behind Facial Recognition,” that mechanically and ahistorically sought to draw a direct line of causality between the reactionary eugenics and racialist pseudoscience of the 19th and early 20th centuries—that claimed head shape and facial morphology characteristics were predictive of behavior and mental capacities—with modern biometrics.

The purpose of the Times reporting is to show that, through the anti-bias efforts of Buolamwini and others who call for “fairness and inclusion” in facial recognition, the corporate partners of the FBI and the surveillance state itself can be convinced of the value of “standards for accountability and transparency.”

However, as was clearly shown in the second Gender Shades study, the result of this campaign against race and gender bias has been the improvement of software algorithms by the developers. Although this aspect of Buolamwini’s study has been given little attention, the 2018 results showed, “Within 7 months, all targeted corporations were able to significantly reduce error gaps … revealing that if prioritized, the disparities in performance between intersectional subgroups can be addressed and minimized in a reasonable amount of time.”

This was also echoed in a statement sent to Buolamwini by IBM which, according to the Times, said that within a month of her second study results, the company “will roll out an improved service with a nearly 10-fold increase in accuracy on darker-skinned women.”

The race and gender bias campaign has also fueled efforts by Democratic Party politicians across the country to cover up their own role in the creation and maintenance of the surveillance state apparatus by posturing as opponents of the false identification flaws of the software.

The racialist character of identity politics was on full display during a hearing of the House Oversight and Reform Committee on May 22, for example, when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Democrat of New York)—a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)—concluded her questioning of the panelists with a stage-managed exchange with Buolamwini who was a key witness. After being asked by Ocasio-Cortez what demographic facial recognition tools are “mostly effective on” and “who are the primary engineers and designers of these algorithms?” Buolamwini responded multiple times with “white men.”

Ultimately, the efforts of the Democrats, the DSA and identity politics advocates are aimed at diverting the anger of the working class against the mass surveillance into demands for congressional action that would make it legal to spy on the public with facial recognition tools as long as it is “fair and unbiased.”

The defense of democratic rights cannot be entrusted to these representatives of the affluent middle class who are employing methods of deception to conceal their own moneyed interests in getting on board with the private surveillance industry as well as the true meaning and historical implications of what is unfolding in society.

The growth of extreme economic inequality, the unending US wars in the Middle East and elsewhere and the evolution of the administration of President Donald Trump toward authoritarian rule—with the support of the Democratic Party—are all aspects of decaying democracy in advance of a massive confrontation between the working class and the ruling establishment in America and internationally.

It is in preparation for this conflict that the surveillance state is being erected and perfected. Workers, students and young people must unify across all national, racial, gender and language differences—independently of the government, the corporations and the middle-class pseudo-left—to make their own preparations for the major class battles now on the horizon.

#racism #identity politics #democratic socialists of america #democratic party #facial recognition technology #racialism #racial identity

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crimethinc · 5 years

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Yellow Vests for May Day Can Macron Pacify France Before May Day 2019? Probably Not.

Last week, concluding a national initiative aimed at drawing the general population into “dialogue” with the authorities, French President Emmanuel Macron announced a handful of minor reforms intended to placate participants in the yellow vest movement. It’s far from certain that this strategy will succeed.

The situation in France is the culmination of years of strife between protest movements and the state. At the height of the so-called “refugee crisis” in 2015, the French government used the opportunity provided by the November 13 terror attacks to declare a state of emergency intended to suppress all protest activity. Instead, a massive student revolt against the Loi Travail erupted in 2016, defying the state of emergency, and simmering unrest continued through the 2017 elections and the 2018 eviction of the ZAD. The clashes of May Day 2018 showed that the movement had reached an impasse: thousands of people were prepared to fight the police and engage in property destruction, but the authorities were still able to keep the contagion of rebellion quarantined inside a particular space.

Starting in November 2018, the Yellow Vest movement upended this precarious balance, drawing a much wider swathe of the population into the streets. In response, Macron organized a “National Debate” in a classic attempt at appeasement and pacification. The outcome of the National Debate and the May Day demonstrations will tell us a lot about the prospects of social movements elsewhere around the world: what forms of pressure mass movements can bring to bear on the authorities, what kind of demands neoliberal governments are (and are not) able to grant today, and what sort of longterm gains movements for revolutionary liberation can hope to make in the course of such waves of unrest.

Accordingly, in the following update, we explore the concessions Macron offered and conclude with the prospects for May Day 2019 in France.

Paris, April 20, inside the kettle at Place de la République.

Macron’s Intervention

Having postponed his announcement due to the fire that destroyed part of Notre-Dame cathedral on the evening of April 15, President Emmanuel Macron finally presented the results of the National Debate on Thursday, April 25, in a press conference broadcast live on French television.

The government launched this “democratic” political tool three months earlier, on January 15, 2019, to answer the thirst for a more “direct democracy” verbalized by a large part of yellow vest movement—especially through calls for a Citizens’ Initiative Referendum (RIC). Macron’s goal, of course, was to reestablish political stability in France while making as few changes as possible.

President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Edouard Philippe in front of Notre-Dame. This has not been a particularly easy time to head the French government.

In the days preceding the press conference, several elements of his plan were leaked to the press, which diminished the surprise effect that the government aimed to create with this event. But unlike members of the current government, Macron’s supporters, and some corporate journalists, none of us were waiting impatiently for the president’s intervention, nor expecting that anything positive or surprising would come out of this political spectacle.

For more than five months now, yellow vesters have learned the hard way that dialogue with the government is meaningless—the state is prepared to take ever more authoritarian measures in order to maintain its hegemony and preserve the status quo. In the outcome of the “National Debate,” we see again why democracy has not served as a bulwark against fascism, but rather as a means to legitimize state power. Those who control the state are always careful to make sure that while elections, referendums, and discussions can serve to create the impression that the government has a mandate to represent the general population, they never actually threaten the institutions of state power.

The Government Responds to the Yellow Vests

Those interested who wish to see two and half hours of political doublespeak can watch Macron’s press conference in full here. Our goal here is simply to analyze some of the major decisions taken by the French government.

In the opening statement, Macron explained that he had learned a lot from the National Debate and emerged “transformed.” According to him, this three-month political experience highlighted that there is a deeply rooted feeling of fiscal, territorial, and social injustice among the population, alongside a perceived lack of consideration on the part of the elite. Therefore, the government has decided to present “a more human and fair” political project.

However, after these conventional words intended to create the illusion of empathy from the government towards yellow vesters and everyone else struggling on a daily basis as a consequence of the policies implemented by successive governments, Macron lifted the veil, adding:

“Does this mean that everything that has been done in the past two years should be stopped? I believe quite the opposite. We must continue the transformations. The orientations taken have been good and fair. The fundamentals of the first two years must be preserved, pursued, and intensified. The economic growth is greater than that of our neighboring countries.”

President Macron at the official press conference to present the results of the National Debate.

If some people still hesitated to believe that the National Debate was just a political farce, here is the ultimate proof. For months, people expressed their frustrations in the streets and traffic circles. Facing this unprecedented and uncontrollable situation, the authorities answered by saying that in a democracy, dialogue must not be established through “violence,” therefore offering the National Debate as an alternative in order to pacify the situation—while increasing police repression against demonstrators in the meantime.

After three months of National Debate—which fortunately failed to stop the movement—those who trusted the good intentions of the government saw their efforts and demands dismissed. In effect, Macron was telling everyone, “Thanks a lot for taking part of this debate, we heard you, but in the end, we decided to pursue our political agenda and continue the liberalization of the capitalist economy.”

So the long-awaited conclusion of the National Debate was simply a mix of old promises, a few adjustments to show the goodwill of the government, and new reforms to accelerate the transformation and liberalization of society.

Over five months later, yellow vest protesters are still in the streets.

First, Macron rejected some of the biggest demands of the yellow vest movement. The government will not officially recognize “blank votes” as a form of opposition during elections (so far, those votes are counted but they are not taken into account in the final results and in the total number of vote cast). Then, he refused to reverse the decision to reduce taxes on the income of the super-rich—one of the issues that had provoked the emergence of the yellow vest movement in the first place.

Furthermore, the government also opposed the idea of creating the Citizens’ Initiative Referendum (RIC). Instead, they want to develop an already existing alternative¬—the Referendum of Shared Initiative—by simplifying its rules. From now on, instead of requiring 4.7 million signatures to be discussed at the Assemblée Nationale, a petition will only need one million signatures and the approval of at least a fifth of the total number of deputies. If the National Assembly refuses to discuss the issue, a referendum can be held. Macron also mentioned his desire to reinforce the right to petition at a local scale.

A yellow vest protester holding a sign calling for the Citizens’ Initiative Referendum, one of the most popular demands among the movement. From our perspective, efforts to make the French government more “directly democratic” will be ineffectual at best and at worst will legitimize reactionary and repressive state policies as “representing the will of the people.”

Even with the proposal to simplify this participatory political platform, it is easy to see that the government is taking very few risks with this alternative. The idea is to give people the impression that they have more leverage within the democratic system, as they can address petitions to their representatives. But in the end, who will have the final word on these issues? Politicians motivated by self-interest, power, and careerism. There is very little probability that the deputies will validate any petition that could threaten the status quo. As in any other political system, this democratic game is obviously rigged: even if you play by the rules, you always lose!

Then, Macron repeated and clarified some reforms that were already present in his electoral program of 2017: limiting the number of terms for politicians (though he did not specify how many would be allowed); reducing the number of parliamentarians by 25% or 30%; increasing the degree of proportional representation in legislative elections (which will likely give more power to the National Front in French political institutions).1

Members of the Anti-Criminality Brigade in action during Act 22 in Toulouse.

After presenting what the government is planning to do to include more elements of participatory democracy in the French political system, Macron expressed his desire to undertake a “profound reform of the French administration” and of its public service. To do so, the government intends to put an end to the National School of Administration (ENA)—symbol of republican elitism and opportunism—in order to create a new institution that “works better.” Moreover, in May, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe has been mandated to officially present a government plan to put more civil servants in the field so they can help the authorities find solutions to people’s problems at a local scale. Therefore, the government has abandoned its previous objective of abolishing 120,000 posts of civil servants—but this doesn’t mean that the government has abandoned the idea of cutting jobs.

To fight against the steady reduction of public services in the countryside and in some provinces—such as post offices and deliveries, health insurance, and unemployment agencies—the government aims to establish buildings that would concentrate all these rudimentary public services in one location. Such initiative already exists, in fact, but is suffering from critical underfunding.

Then, Macron stated that no further hospital or school will close until 2022—the end of his presidential term—without the agreement of the Mayor of the Commune they are located in. For years, successive governments have underfunded hospitals and schools, increasing the precarious aspect of working conditions. The main question is—what will happen after 2022? Regarding the education issue, Macron agreed to limit the number of students per class to 24 from kindergarten to second grade and to duplicate classes if necessary, as is already stipulated in some priority education areas—read poor districts. This is an interesting focus for Macron when in the meantime, government policies are worsening the educational system as a whole, especially via reforms targeting high schools and universities.

Concerning economic policies, Macron explained that he wants to “significantly reduce” the amount of income tax demanded from the middle class. However, to do so while balancing the loss of tax revenue, Macron is asking everyone to “work more.” The meaning behind this statement remains quite obscure, as Macron offered no further explanation. So far, we know that the government doesn’t want to change the legal age of retirement nor to cancel holidays. However, Macron is not opposed to the idea of increasing the number of working hours per week. The government also aims to reach its objective of “full employment” by 2025, without explaining how this might take place. In order to compensate for the tax cuts for the middle class, the government also aims to suppress some specific fiscal niches used by large companies, but Macron said nothing about the various strategies of tax evasion utilized by the super-rich.

Macron also explained his wish to increase the minimum amount of retirement pensions from today’s approximately €650 per month up to €1000. Moreover, Macron also reconsidered his previous policy regarding retirement and confirmed that pensions under €2000 would be re-indexed to account for inflation starting January 2020. Finally, the government wants to create some sort of mechanism to guarantee the payment of child support to families in need.

Starting in June, Macron wants to create a “citizen’s convention composed of one hundred and fifty people with the mission to work on significant measures for the planet.” In addition, he wants to establish a Council of Ecological Defense to address climate change. This council would involve the Prime Minister as well as the main Ministers in charge of this transition in order to take “strategic choices and to put this climate change at the very core of our policies.” This is not a measure to address the ecological crisis so much as yet another step in the development of the same French bureaucracy that sparked the yellow vest movement in the first place. Our governments and the systems that put them in power in the first place continue to lead us towards darker futures.

Riot police charging demonstrators at Place de la République on Saturday, April 20.

Finally, and most ominously, Macron presented his plan to “rebuild the immigration policy” of France. “Europe needs to rethink its cooperation with Africa in order to limit the endured immigration and has to reinforce its borders, even if this means having a Schengen area with less countries,” he proclaimed. “I deeply believe in asylum, but we must strengthen the fight against those who abuse it.” This will likely be the premise of a new step in the development of fortress Europe. And, of course, whatever authoritarian measures are developed to target migrants will also be used to target poor people and rebellious elements within France itself. In this regard, we can see that it has been self-destructive as well as racist and xenophobic that some yellow vesters have demanded more immigration controls.

As May Day Approaches

Following this press conference, the government hoped that its official announcements would finally take the life out of the yellow vest movement, defusing the social tension that has built up. However, in the hours following Macron’s speech, several well-known yellow vest figures expressed their dissatisfaction with his proposals, calling for further demonstrations. In the end, even if some yellow vesters were sidetracked by Macron’s announcement, it was difficult to predict whether people would massively take the streets for the 24th act of the yellow vest movement.

For Act 24 of the movement, yellow vest protesters made an international call to gather in the streets of Strasbourg. The banner reads “Coordination of the Yellow Vesters from the East.”

On Saturday, April 27, about 23,600 yellow vesters demonstrated in France. For this new day of action, the epicenter of the movement was the city of Strasbourg. As the European elections will occur in a month, an “international call” was made to gather and march towards the European Parliament. Some Belgians, Germans, Italians, Swiss, and Luxembourgers participated as well. About 3000 demonstrators walked through the streets of Strasbourg, confronting police and engaging in property destruction. In the end, 42 people were arrested and at least 7 injured—three police officers, three demonstrators, and one passerby.

At the same time, two demonstrations took place in Paris. The first, organized by trade unions, drew about 5500 demonstrators, among them 2000 in yellow vests, while the other, mostly composed of several hundreds of yellow vesters, did a tour of all the major corporate media headquarters to ask for “impartial media coverage.” Other gatherings also took place in Lyons, Toulouse, Cambrai, and elsewhere in France. (All of the figures provided here are from the French authorities.)

Street confrontations in Strasbourg on Saturday, April 27.

If we compare the total number of participants in this 24th act to the other national days of action, it is undeniable that it attracted fewer participants. Does that mean that the government has finally gained the upper hand over the movement? It’s unclear. It is possible that some yellow vesters stayed home from the 24th act in order to prepare for May Day.

Last year, the intensity of property destruction and confrontations with police during the May Day mobilization of anarchists and other autonomous rebels compelled the government to cancel the entire traditional trade union march. In view of the tense social and political situation in France today, who knows what May Day 2019 could bring?

If the government attempts to cancel or repress demonstrations in Paris this May Day, the situation could become explosive. Not only because the police have adopted aggressive new law enforcement strategies over the past few weeks, but also because several calls have been made for yellow vesters to join autonomous rebels at the front of the traditional Parisian afternoon procession for the “ultimate act.” The objective is set: Paris is to become the capital city of rioting.

The world on fire, Paris in the middle.

Here is an English adaptation of one of the calls, entitled Pour un 1er mai jaune et noir:

For a yellow and black May Day!

“When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is for the people and for each portion of the people the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties.”

-Article 35 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1793)

Macron’s government has decided to crush the current social protest by force, reaching a level of repression never seen before: prohibitions of demonstrations, deployment of soldiers, the use of armored vehicles, the use of chemical markers and weapons of war against protesters, jail sentences in spades, hands torn off, blinded protesters…

During the demonstration of May Day 2018, the Prefecture of Police counted 14,500 demonstrators “on the sidelines of the trade union procession” (almost as much as in the traditional procession) including 1200 “radical individuals.” On March 16, at the time of act 18, it was 1500 “ultra violent” ones who were present among the 7000 demonstrators, according to the figures of this same police.

Today, what frightens the state is not the rioters themselves, but the adhesion and understanding they arouse among the rest of the population. And this despite the calls, week after week, for everyone to dissociate themselves from the “breakers.”

If there is one group that currently strikes France with all its violence, it is not the “Black Bloc,” nor the yellow vests; it is rather the government itself.

We are calling on all revolutionaries in France and elsewhere, all those who want this to change, to come and form a determined and combative march. Because if repression falls on everyone, our response must be common and united. Against Macron and his world, let’s take the street together to revive the convergence of anger and hope. Let’s get ready, let’s equip ourselves, lets organize ourselves to overthrow him and drag him through a day in hell.

War has been declared!

Let’s see that flag burn too.

For those who attend to join the May Day festivities in Paris, here are some important links and information:

List of different May Day actions

Information and contacts courtesy of the Legal Team in French, English, and Italian.

Further Reading

We have been publishing updates and analysis on the Yellow Vest movement since it first got underway. You can view all our articles here.

“Proportional representation” would mean that if, for example, 30% of voters vote for the Green Party, then members of that party would receive 30% of the total number of seats. So far, legislative elections offer no proportional representation—even if a party receives a large percentage of votes, it might not gain many seats at the assembly. People have been complaining about this “unfair process,” so now the government is willing to increase proportional representation in elections. Unfortunately, for several years now, the National Front has usually received around 20-25% of votes but only currently holds 6 seats out of the 577 in the Assemblée Nationale. Increasing proportional representation will give them more power in the decision-making—although, of course, it’s not clear to what extent Macron will actually follow through on his promises.

Of course, there is no option for people who have grown disillusioned with government itself: that perspective will never be “proportionately represented.” This is why the government refused outright to recognized blank votes. ↩

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xtruss · 3 years

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How U.S.-Backed Army Became a 'Paper Tiger' That Let Taliban Take Afghanistan

— By Tom O'Connor | 8/17/21 | Newsweek

Comments: (Nope! That’s Not the Case. Afghan Army Simply Didn’t Fight Their “MUSLIM BROTHERS, THE TALIBAN.” They were sick and tired of Hypocrisy and Hegemony of the US, North Atlantic Terrorist Organization (NATO), their Puppet Allies and the Corrupt Government. Period.)

"The U.S. never adequately adjusted its preferred mode of building foreign security forces—buying and giving them stuff—to the human capital that was available in Afghanistan," Jonathan Schroden, director of the CNA think tank's Countering Threats and Challenges Program, told Newsweek. In this photo, soldiers from the Afghan Security Forces travel on an armed vehicle along a road in Panjshir province in Afghanistan on August 15. The fate of Afghan troops and police remain uncertain as the Taliban asserts control over the country. AHMAD SAHEL ARMAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The sudden, dramatic collapse of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in the wake of a U.S. military withdrawal immediately followed by rapid Taliban advances has captivated international audiences, eliciting fear and awe across the globe.

But a new report released Tuesday by the U.S. government's congressionally mandated watchdog on Afghanistan and obtained by Newsweek details two decades of failures that led up to the historic events still unfolding in the capital city of Kabul and across the country.

A devastating array of shortcomings are outlined in the latest report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), including attempts to establish mismatched Western institutions to shifting missions throughout successive administrations, and fueling Afghanistan's endemic corruption with corner-cutting projects that ultimately never came to fruition.

"After conducting more than 760 interviews and reviewing thousands of government documents, our lessons learned analysis has revealed a troubled reconstruction effort that has yielded some success but has also been marked by too many failures," the report said.

The report identified key areas in which the U.S. approach failed, including incoherent strategies, unrealistic timelines, unsustainable institutions, counterproductive personnel strategies, rampant insecurity and a fundamental lack of understanding of Afghanistan's social, economic and political context.

But even people who are painfully aware of the deep-rooted issues that had metastasized within the Afghan government and its security forces throughout the years expressed bewilderment at the speed at which Kabul's house of cards collapsed.

Jonathan Schroden of CNA, a nonprofit research and analysis organization, serves as director of its Countering Threats and Challenges Program, and has traveled to Afghanistan numerous times over the past two decades, including at the request of U.S. military leadership.

He highlighted three out of what he said were a "myriad" of reasons why the Afghan state never stood a chance from the outset of the U.S.-led intervention launched by former President George Bush 20 years ago, just weeks after 9/11.

"The U.S. approach to Afghanistan was incoherent from the day it captured Kabul from the Taliban," Schroden told Newsweek. "Bush felt he owed it to Afghanistan to leave it better than he found it, while [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld just wanted to get the hell out. That incoherence of purpose wasted a window of opportunity to get a viable security structure in place before the Taliban resurgence."

The first mistake begot the following two.

"Because we wasted that window, we were stuck playing catch-up—fighting a strong insurgency while also building the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces," he said. "That led to consistent prioritization of operational expedience over sustainability."

Schroden said the U.S. was stuck in old paradigm, which it tried to apply to Afghanistan.

"All of that left a military that was a paper tiger," Schroden added. "It seemed okay so long as you didn't look too closely at it and the U.S. was there to back it up."

Taliban fighters stand guard in a vehicle along the roadside in Kabul on August 16, after a stunningly swift end to Afghanistan's 20-year war, as thousands of people mobbed the city's airport trying to flee the group's feared hardline brand of Islamist rule. AFP

SIGAR, led by Special Inspector General John F. Sopko, was one of the few organizations to look too closely.

For 13 years, reports have painted an increasingly bleak picture of what was transpiring in Afghanistan. Compiling interviews with officials and media reports, SIGAR's stories of U.S. personnel watching television shows such as "Cops" for inspiration on training Afghan law enforcement and copy-and-pasting proposals on Iraq to in an attempt to nation-build in Afghanistan inspired little confidence about the state of the U.S. mission.

"We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan," Douglas Lute, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general who served as deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan from 2007 to 2013, told SIGAR in a 2019 quote once again featured in the latest report. "We didn't know what we were doing."

The lack of consistency and coherence permeated from administration to administration, with constant redirection, cancellation and mission creep over the course of two decades blurring any singular vision for Afghanistan's future from taking hold.

"The U.S. reconstruction effort in Afghanistan could be described as 20 one-year reconstruction efforts, rather than one 20-year effort," the SIGAR report found.

For policymakers, the pitfalls of a war that passed through the hands of four different U.S. presidents always appeared to be the fault of a predecessor or a successor, but never the incumbent.

While it was former President Donald Trump who struck the deal with the Taliban that ultimately led to the U.S. exit, it was President Joe Biden who took credit for breaking the cycle.

"I know my decision will be criticized, but I would rather take all that criticism than pass this decision on to another President of the United States, yet another one, a fifth one," Biden said in remarks Monday amid the chaos in Kabul.

"Because it's the right one," he added. "It's the right decision for our people. The right one for our brave service members who have risked their lives serving our nation. And it's the right one for America."

The palpably frustrated president also addressed the lack of resistance among Afghan security forces as the Taliban entered Kabul.

"There's some very brave and capable Afghan special forces units and soldiers, but if Afghanistan is unable to mount any real resistance to the Taliban now, there is no chance that one year, one more year, five more years, or 20 more years of U.S. military boots on the ground would've made any difference," he said.

At the Pentagon, Press Secretary John Kirby redirected a press question as to why the Afghan security forces, by and large, did not fight back.

"I think it's a question better posed to the political and military leadership of our Afghan partners," Kirby said.

Like Biden, he appeared to acknowledge that the war effort was hopeless.

"You can resource, you can train, you can support, you can advise, and you can assist, but you cannot buy will," Kirby said. "You cannot purchase leadership, and leadership was missing. And we've been saying for weeks that when we look back at the outcome, whatever the outcome is and now we know, that we are going to be able to say that leadership was the deciding factor, and I think that that has proven to be true."

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country in the leadup to the Taliban advance on Kabul, a decision he explained by saying he hoped it would avoid more bloodshed.

But in Afghanistan, the sudden exit was viewed as yet another indication that Ghani's grip on power was tenuous, held together only by the presence of U.S. forces.

"Many people—especially those in the West—believed that Afghans must have been supportive of Ghani's government because the Taliban alternative was so awful in their eyes. But to many Afghans, it was a 'Sophie's choice,'" Schroden said, referencing the 1979 novel and 1982 film about a mother forced by Nazis to choose which of her two children should live during the Holocaust.

Schroden argued there were no easy answers in Afghanistan either.

"On one hand was the Taliban's heavy-handed, limited-freedom authoritarian security and religious justice. On the other hand was a predatory and selfish government that couldn't bring security and offered little in the way of inclusive services to those it governed," he said. "In hindsight, it's little wonder that many Afghans decided what they really wanted was simply to live, and not die fighting to make that choice."

But Ghani's unannounced exit has left an ominous void in place of the country's highest office, adding insult to injury for those who still felt he was the better choice.

"Common people and Ghani's cabinet members that I spoke with are all mad at Ghani's illogical decision to flee himself and his limited henchmen without appointing someone to take care of the Government affairs temporarily," Ahmad Shah Katawazai, a diplomat who served as a liaison to the Afghan Defense Department at the country's embassy in Washington, told Newsweek. "Leaving the country with a power vacuum was a bad decision and an insult to all Afghans."

While in power, Ghani's leadership sought to present itself as a more democratic, egalitarian choice for Afghanistan endorsed by the U.S. and international community at large, but it left the Afghan government in a particularly vulnerable position.

"Ghani's government, especially the security leadership, failed to manage the security forces," Katawazai said. "Lack of coordination and low morale of the ANDSF coupled with lack of attention to the needs of the ANDSF led to their desertion and surrender."

And while this may have accelerated the fall of the Kabul government, what ultimately turned the tables was the Taliban's ability to mount a formidable, comprehensive campaign both militarily to gain ground and diplomatically to help Kindle the U.S. realization that the war was no longer worth fighting.

"The Taliban had launched a robust and strategic psychological warfare that contributed a lot to their success," Katawazai argued, "while Ghani's establishment drowned in corruption and internal rifts had no proper strategy to counter that."

"Key success for the Taliban has been not harming those who surrendered," he added. "Internationally from the last few months, the ANDSF was deprived of the close air support, key leverage for the ANDSF in the battlefield. That inflicted huge damage to the security forces."

Now the only forward may be to find common ground with the victorious Taliban.

Al Jazeera reported Monday that Abdullah Abdullah, the head of the High Council for National Reconciliation, former President Hamad Karzai and Islamic Party chief Gulbuddin Hekmatyar are heading to the Qatari capital of Doha to negotiate the country's political future with the Taliban.

"Power-sharing government is the only way out of this mess," Katawazai said.

"Without a power-sharing government, the Taliban won't get international legitimacy and will turn into an isolated and pariah state that I believe the Taliban also don't want. Currently in Doha negotiations are going on to chart out the structure of the future government. Hopefully, there will be an agreement on that soon."

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orbemnews · 3 years

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Powell to Testify as Focus on Economic Pain Persists: Live Updates Here’s what you need to know: Jerome Powell is returning to Capitol Hill as Democrats push for a new $1.9 trillion spending plan.Credit…Al Drago for The New York Times After it rocketed higher last year, the United States’ official unemployment rate has fallen to 6.3 percent. But top economic officials are increasingly citing a different figure, one that puts the jobless rate at a far higher 10 percent. The higher figure includes people who have stopped looking for work, and the disparity between the official rate and the expanded statistic underlines the unusual nature of the pandemic shock and reinforces the idea that the economy remains far from a full recovery. The reality that labor market weakness lingers, a year into the pandemic, could come up again as Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, testifies before Congress starting on Tuesday. Mr. Powell is set to speak before the Senate Banking Committee at 10 a.m. Tuesday, then before the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday. The Bureau of Labor Statistics tallies how many Americans are looking for work or are on temporary layoff midway through each month. That number, taken as a share of the civilian labor force, is reported as the official unemployment rate. But economists have long worried that by relying on the headline rate, they ignore people they shouldn’t, including would-be employees who are not actively applying for jobs because they are discouraged or because they are waiting for the right opportunity. Now, key policymakers are all but ditching the headline statistic, rather than just playing down its comprehensiveness. In an alternate unemployment figure, they’re adding back people who have left the job market since last February, along with those who are misclassified in the official report. “We have an unemployment rate that, if properly measured in some sense, is really close to 10 percent,” Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said on CNBC last week. And a week earlier, Mr. Powell cited a similar figure in a speech about lingering labor market damage. “Published unemployment rates during Covid have dramatically understated the deterioration in the labor market,” Mr. Powell said recently. People dropped out of jobs rapidly when the economy closed, and with many restaurants, bars and hotels shut, there is nowhere for many workers who are trained in service work to apply. Mr. Powell will be testifying as Democrats look to pass $1.9 trillion in new economic relief, an effort that has raised concerns in some quarters about the potential for higher inflation. Mr. Powell has said he and his colleagues do not expect inflation to move much higher persistently, and has typically pushed for additional government support to help the economy through the pandemic. Rates on longer-term government bonds — which serve as benchmarks for things as varied as mortgages and credit-card debt — have been grinding higher and investors will also be watching carefully for any hints at how the Fed is interpreting that increase. If confirmed, Wally Adeyemo will be a pivotal player in America’s economic diplomacy efforts.Credit…Leah Millis/Reuters Wally Adeyemo, President Biden’s nominee for deputy Treasury Secretary, plans to emphasize the importance of rebuilding the United States’ alliances to combat China’s unfair trade practices and halt foreign interference in the country’s democratic institutions at his confirmation hearing on Tuesday, according to a copy of his prepared remarks, which were reviewed by The New York Times. His remarks highlight the importance that the Biden administration is placing on multilateralism as it seeks to undo many of the economic policies put in place by former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Adeyemo will tell members of the Senate Finance Committee that Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen has asked him to focus on national security matters at the department. If confirmed, he will be a pivotal player in the country’s economic diplomacy efforts. “We must reclaim America’s credibility as a global leader, advocating for economic fairness and democratic values,” Mr. Adeyemo will say. Mr. Adeyemo is expected to be introduced at the hearing by Senator Elizabeth Warren, the progressive Democrat from Massachusetts. Ms. Warren, who established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau before joining the Senate, worked with Mr. Adeyemo, who served as her first chief of staff. Mr. Adeyemo will discuss the nexus between economic and national security, arguing that “Made in America” policies will make the country more competitive around the world. If confirmed, he is expected to conduct a broad review of Treasury’s sanctions program, which the Trump administration used aggressively, but often haphazardly, against Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and other countries. “Treasury’s tools must play a role in responding to authoritarian governments that seek to subvert our democratic institutions; combating unfair economic practices in China and elsewhere; and detecting and eliminating terrorist organizations that seek to do us harm,” Mr. Adeyemo, a former Obama administration official, will say. Born in Nigeria, Mr. Adeyemo emigrated with his parents to the United States when he was a baby and settled in Southern California outside Los Angeles. At the hearing, he will also talk about his working-class upbringing and the need to ensure that low-income communities and communities of color, which have been hit hardest by the pandemic, receive relief. Shelly Ross found herself in a bureaucratic nightmare after requesting a second loan via PayPal for Tales of the Kitty, her San Francisco cat-sitting business.Credit…Anastasiia Sapon for The New York Times Nearly a month into the second run of the Paycheck Protection Program, $126 billion in emergency aid has been distributed by banks, which make the government-backed loans, to nearly 1.7 million small businesses. But a thicket of errors and technology glitches has slowed the relief effort and vexed borrowers and lenders alike, Stacy Cowley reports for The New York Times. Some are run-of-the-mill challenges magnified by the immense demand for loans, which has overwhelmed customer service representatives. But many stem from new data checks added by the Small Business Administration to combat fraud and eliminate unqualified applicants. Instead of approving applications from banks immediately, the S.B.A. has held them for a day or two to verify some of the information. That has caused — or exposed — a cascade of problems. Formatting applications in ways that will pass the agency’s automated vetting has been a challenge for some lenders, and many have had to revise their technology systems almost daily to keep up with adjustments to the agency’s system. False red flags, which can require time-consuming human intervention to fix, remain a persistent problem. Numerated, a technology company that processes loans for more than 100 lenders, still has around 10 percent of its applications snarled in error codes, down from a peak of more than 25 percent, said Dan O’Malley, the company’s chief executive. Nearly 5 percent of the 5.2 million loans made last year had “anomalies,” the agency revealed last month, ranging from minor mistakes like typos to major ones like ineligibility. Even tiny mistakes can spiral into bureaucratic disasters. Ardagh’s can-making business has grown by working with several seltzer-based beverage companies, like White Claw and Truly Hard Seltzer.Credit…Richa Naidu/Reuters The company that makes the aluminum cans used by LaCroix, White Claw and other beverage giants is spinning off that business in a deal that values the new company at $8.5 billion, according to several people with knowledge of the plan. The deal by Ardagh Group, which is based in Luxembourg, would be in the form of a merger with a special-purpose acquisition vehicle, or SPAC, backed by an affiliate of the Gores Group, the California private equity firm. It could be announced as soon as Tuesday, said the people, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because the negotiations are confidential. It is a bet on the continued growth of the can business, as companies increasingly weigh the environmental consequences of their products. Nestlé announced the sale of its water business for $4.3 billion this month, in part a move to shift away from water packaged in plastic. Aluminum cans are far easier to recycle than plastic bottles. The Gores SPAC, named Gores Holdings V, is the seventh such deal the group has done. Ardagh will retain a roughly 80 percent stake in the company after the deal. Investors are contributing a $600 million private placement, while Gores is putting in $525 million in cash. The new company, Ardagh Metal Packaging, will issue $2.65 billion of new debt. Ardagh generates more half its roughly $7 billion in annual sales from making cans for beverage companies. This past year, sales by the unit grew 2 percent, fueled by beverage sales and environmental awareness, while earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortization grew 8 percent. Ardagh will keep its glass packaging business. For beverage companies, cans have become an increasingly important tool for branding, providing colorful and sleek packaging. When Ardagh acquired its canning operation in 2016 for $3 billion, it did most of its business with legacy brands like large soda and beer companies. It has since worked with younger and faster-growing seltzer-based brands like White Claw, LaCroix and Truly Hard Seltzer to help charge its growth. To prepare for further expected expansion in the United States, it bought a factory in Huron, Ohio. Globally, the company is eyeing growth in Europe and Brazil, where beer sales remain strong as consumers are increasingly shifting from tap to cans. When movie theaters reopen in New York City, masks will be mandatory, and theaters must assign seating to patrons to guarantee proper social distancing.Credit…Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Movie theaters in New York City will be permitted to open for the first time in nearly a year on March 5, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced at a news conference on Monday. The theaters will only be permitted to operate at 25 percent of their maximum capacity, with no more than 50 people per screening. Masks will be mandatory, and theaters must assign seating to patrons to guarantee proper social distancing. Tests for the virus will not be required. Movie theaters were permitted to open with similar limits in the rest of the state in late October, but New York City was excluded out of concern that the city’s density would hasten the spread of the virus there. The virus has battered the movie theater industry. In October, the owner of Regal Cinemas, the second-largest cinema chain in the United States, temporarily closed its theaters as Hollywood studios kept postponing releases and cautious audiences were hesitant to return to screenings. AMC Entertainment, the world’s largest movie theater chain, has increasingly edged toward bankruptcy. The economic effects of the pandemic have been particularly felt in New York City, one of the biggest movie markets in the United States. Theaters in the city closed in mid-March, as the region was becoming an epicenter of the pandemic in the country. While other indoor businesses, including restaurants, bowling alleys and museums, had been allowed to open in the city, Mr. Cuomo had kept movie theaters closed out of concern that people would be sitting indoors in poorly ventilated theaters for hours, risking the further spread of the virus. Theaters that open will be required to have enhanced air filtration systems. Public health experts say when considering indoor gatherings, the quality of ventilation is key because the virus is known to spread more easily indoors. Mr. Cuomo’s announcement was applauded by the National Association of Theater Owners. “New York City is a major market for moviegoing in the U.S.; reopening there gives confidence to film distributors in setting and holding their theatrical release dates, and is an important step in the recovery of the entire industry,” the association said in a statement. In a statement, AMC’s chief executive, Adam Aron, said the company would open all 13 of its New York City theaters on March 5. The move came just days after Mr. Cuomo said that indoor family entertainment centers and places of amusement could reopen statewide, at 25 percent maximum capacity, on March 26. Outdoor amusement parks will be allowed to open with a 33 percent capacity limit in April. The governor also said that the state was working on guidelines to allow pool and billiards halls to reopen after the state lost a lawsuit from pool hall operators. Those establishments will be allowed to reopen at 50 percent capacity with masks required, he said. Cases in New York remain high despite climbing down from their January peak. Over the last seven days, the state averaged 38 cases per 100,000 residents each day, as of Sunday. That is the second-highest rate per capita of new cases in the last week in the country, after South Carolina. The coronavirus pandemic dealt a big blow to WeWork’s business.Credit…Kate Munsch/Reuters Adam Neumann, the flamboyant co-founder of WeWork, and SoftBank, the Japanese conglomerate that rescued the co-working company in 2019, have in recent weeks made significant headway toward settling their drawn-out legal dispute, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. That battle has stalled SoftBank’s efforts to take WeWork public. As part of its multibillion-dollar bailout of WeWork, SoftBank offered to pay $3 billion for stock owned by Mr. Neumann and other shareholders. Several months later, after the coronavirus pandemic had emptied WeWork’s locations, SoftBank withdrew the offer. Mr. Neumann then sued SoftBank for breach of contract. SoftBank was already a big investor in WeWork when it withdrew plans for an initial public offering in 2019. Now, SoftBank has plans to combine WeWork with a publicly traded special-purpose acquisition company, a type of deal that has recently become a popular way of quickly bringing private companies public. The legal dispute between Mr. Neumann and SoftBank is a threat to such a deal because it leaves unresolved the question of how much control SoftBank has over WeWork. The settlement talks, which were reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, could still fall apart, the two people said. Under the terms being discussed, SoftBank would buy half the number of shares that it had originally agreed to, one of the people said. As a result, it would pay $1.5 billion, not $3 billion. Mr. Neumann would get nearly $500 million instead of almost $1 billion, but he would retain more of his shares. Under Mr. Neumann, WeWork grew at a breakneck pace and was using up so much cash that it was close to bankruptcy before SoftBank stepped in. Under the management team SoftBank installed, WeWork has tried to cut costs by slowing its growth and negotiating deals with the landlords it rents space from. Source link Orbem News #Economic #focus #Live #pain #Persists #Powell #testify #Updates

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mostaforyou1 · 4 years

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The Major Leadership Theories

What is it that creates some people excel in leadership roles? Leadership theories seek to elucidate how and why certain people become leaders. Such theories often specialize in the characteristics of leaders, but some plan to identify the behaviors that folks can adopt to enhance their leadership abilities in several situations.

Early debates on the psychology of leadership often suggested that such skills were simply abilities that folks were born with. In other words,

these theories proposed that certain people were simply "born leaders." Some newer theories propose that possessing certain traits may help make people nature leaders, but that have and situational variables also play a critical role.

A Closer check out Leadership Theories As interest within the psychology of leadership has increased over the last 100 years, a variety of various leadership theories are introduced to elucidate exactly how and why certain people become great leaders.

What exactly makes an excellent leader? Do certain personality traits make people better suited to leadership roles, or do characteristics of things make it more likely that certain people will take charge? once we check out the leaders around us – be it our employer or the President – we'd find ourselves wondering exactly why these individuals excel in such positions.

People have long been curious about leadership throughout human history, but it's only been relatively recently that a variety of formal leadership theories have emerged. Interest in leadership increased during the first a part of the 20 th century. Early leadership theories focused on what qualities distinguished between leaders and followers, while subsequent theories checked out other variables like situational factors and skill levels.

Quiz: Find Your Leadership Style While many various leadership theories have emerged, most are often classified together of eight major types:

1. "Great Man" Theories Have you ever heard someone described as "born to lead?" consistent with now of view, great leaders are simply born with the required internal characteristics like charisma, confidence, intelligence, and social skills that make them natural-born leaders.

Great man theories assume that the capacity for leadership is inherent – that great leaders are born, not made. These theories often portray great leaders as heroic, mythic and destined to rise to leadership when needed. The term "Great Man" was used because, at the time, leadership was thought of primarily as a male quality, especially in terms of military leadership. Such theories suggest that folks cannot really find out how to become strong leaders. It's either something you're born with or born without. it's considerably a nature (as against nurture) approach to explaining leadership.

The Great Man Theory of Leadership 2. Trait Theories Similar in some ways to Great Man theories, trait theories assume that folks inherit certain qualities and traits that make them better suited to leadership. Trait theories often identify a specific personality or behavioral characteristics shared by leaders. for instance, traits like extroversion, self-confidence, and courage are all traits that would potentially be linked to great leaders.

If particular traits are key features of leadership, then how can we explain people that possess those qualities but aren't leaders? This question is one of the difficulties in using trait theories to elucidate leadership. Many people possess the personality traits related to leadership, yet many of those people never hunt down positions of leadership. There also are people that lack a number of the key traits often related to effective leadership yet still shine at leading groups.1

Trait Theories of Leadership 3. Contingency Theories Contingency theories of leadership specialize in particular variables associated with the environment which may determine which particular sort of leadership is best fitted to things. consistent with this theory, no leadership style is the best altogether situations.

Leadership researchers White and Hodgson suggest that effective leadership isn't almost the qualities of the leader, it's about striking the proper balance between behaviors, needs, and context.2 Good leaders are ready to assess the requirements of their followers, size up of things, then adjust their behaviors accordingly. Success depends on a variety of variables including the leadership style, qualities of the followers and aspects of things.

4. Situational Theories Situational theories propose that leaders choose the simplest course of action based upon situational variables. Different sorts of leadership could also be more appropriate surely sorts of decision-making. for instance, during a situation where the leader is that the most knowledgeable and experienced member of a gaggle, an authoritarian style could be most appropriate. In other instances where group members are skilled experts, a democratic style would be simpler.

5. Behavioral Theories Behavioral theories of leadership are based upon the assumption that great leaders are made, not born. Consider it the flip-side of the good Man theories. Rooted in behaviorism, this leadership theory focuses on the actions of leaders, not on mental qualities or internal states. consistent with this theory, people can learn to become leaders through teaching and observation.

6. Participative Theories Participative leadership theories suggest that the perfect leadership style is one that takes the input of others under consideration. These leaders encourage participation and contributions from group members and help group members feel more relevant and committed to the decision-making process. In participative theories, however, the lender retains the proper to permit the input of others.

7. Management Theories Management theories, also referred to as transactional theories, specialize in the role of supervision, organization and group performance. These theories base leadership on a system of rewards and punishments. Managerial theories are often utilized in business; when employees are successful, they're rewarded; once they fail, they're reprimanded or punished.

8. Relationship Theories Relationship theories also referred to as transformational theories, focus upon the connections formed between leaders and followers. Transformational leaders motivate and encourage people by helping group members see the importance and better good of the task. These leaders are focused on the performance of group members, but also want everyone to satisfy his or her potential. Leaders with this style often have high ethical and moral standards.

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janschreiner · 4 years

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Is TeleHealth Sex & Relationship Therapy Effective? 7 Ways it Might Be Better

I recently attended a Zoom meeting with 20+ other New York City sex and relationship therapists on the subject of how online counseling, or “TeleHealth,” has transformed their practices. Some of what I heard surprised me. Many said they missed seeing their clients in person, and that TeleHealth therapy was harder and took more energy. Those were things I’d expected to hear.

Surprisingly, though, many colleagues reported that they actually liked doing TeleHealth therapy. Some said they expected to hate it, but found it unexpectedly interesting and full of creative possibilities.

I’ve been doing TeleHealth somewhat longer than the average sex and relationship therapist. So I felt I understood both the negative feelings and the positive ones.

TeleHealth therapy is different from traditional in-office therapy. It’s also typically harder to do, at least for the therapist. But hey, that’s true of lots of innovations in health care. After all, it’s harder to do endoscopic surgery than the traditional kind. But way easier for the patient, and in the long run that’s what counts. I believe there are at least seven specific advantages to TeleHealth therapy for sex and relationship problems. Let’s start with the most obvious:

1. TeleHealth Sex and Relationship Therapy Can be More Private

Most obviously, there’s no physical waiting room. There’s no possibility of anyone else seeing you, or gawking at you, or sitting there wondering what your specific problems might be. Big improvement, privacy-wise. On the other hand, if you’re quarantining at home with others, you might not have as much privacy in the actual session. As my colleague Dr. Daniel Watter notes, “Patients are aware of family members walking around, concerned that they might be overheard, sometimes even not wanting family members to know they’re in therapy.”

During the recent Covid-19 pandemic, both Dr Watter and I spent a fair amount of time with clients phoning in from their cars—which was the only place they could find under the circumstances. If you don’t have access to a car or an office, air-pods can do a lot to reduce the sounds of therapy. And for ultra-private details, there’s always text-messaging, which is now included on some HIPAA-compliant TeleHealth platforms.

2. TeleHealth Sex and Relationship Therapy Can Eliminate Geographic Boundaries to Good Care

Most places simply don’t have enough fully-trained sex therapists, so seeing a good sex therapist can easily mean having to travel long distances—or its New York City equivalent, expensive parking or multiple subway line transfers. TeleHealth sex and relationship counseling eliminates all these problems with a click of the mouse.

As my colleague Dr. Bat-Sheva Marcus at Maze Women’s Sexual Health notes, “On-line therapy offers patients unprecedented access to a wide variety of therapists. You can find specialists in a very focused field and choose a therapist who’s a perfect fit rather than just someone convenient.”

There are downsides to everything, though. And one downside to the spread of TeleHealth is that there are now well-financed “therapy companies” investing large sums to advertise online. Like any business, these companies need to squeeze the most value from every dollar they spend. So they may rely on relatively inexperienced or less successful therapists to do the direct service. Buyer beware.

3. TeleHealth Sex and Relationship Therapy Takes Place in a More Natural Setting

Think of it as the 21st Century equivalent of the doctor’s house call. TeleHealth counseling means finally getting to see your clients in their natural environment. True, there’s lots of clinical information lost. As a practitioner, you lose access to many non-verbal cues when you only see clients as “talking heads” on a screen. But what you lose in access to body language, you occasionally make up for in greater awareness of the setting. As a sex and relationship therapist, I find it valuable to see how my clients’ homes are arranged—particularly their bedrooms—and to witness the distractions they have to contend with. Like children and pets. Children and pets are second only to TV and electronics as obstacles to lovemaking.

4. TeleHealth Sex and Relationship Therapy Can Give Clients More Power In sports this is known as “the home field advantage.” With TeleHealth, the client has the home field advantage. You’re granting me entrance to your space, rather than the other way around. The shift in power can be dramatic. When I’ve asked clients in traditional office-based therapy to describe what it felt like when they first arrived at my office, they often tell me that even before we met, when they were just sitting in my waiting room, they felt anxious and worried that I might judge or criticize them. TeleHealth doesn’t eliminate this kind of anxiety, but it mutes it. The client is more in control. This can be a very positive change, since worrying you’re going to be judged or criticized is as big an impediment to good communication in therapy as it is in real life.

5. TeleHealth Sex and Relationship Therapy Can Help Empower People in Relationships

One practical advantage of TeleHealth for couples is that the two of you don’t have to be in the same room together. One of you can be in their office in Midtown Manhattan, the other can be on a business trip out-of-town, and I can connect you together from my office on the Upper West Side via 3-way video. The first time I tried doing this, I was worried there wouldn’t be enough feeling of “togetherness” for it to work. But the session was unexpectedly productive. I struggled to understand why.

In the years that followed, I’ve noted this phenomenon over and over: A couple gets more productive work done in couples therapy when they’re physically separated than when they’re together in the same room. The answer, as I’ve written elsewhere, is that most couples suffer not from being too separate, but from being too merged together. When couples occupy the same space, they adjust to each other in tiny ways, each sacrificing a bit of their self-hood, and the relationship is diminished as a result.

Three-way TeleHealth sessions can sometimes help a couple “differentiate” more fully. Relieved of the need to adjust to each other, they can speak with greater authority as individuals. This can feel like opening a window to let in fresh air.

6. TeleHealth Sex and Relationship Therapy Can Be More Collaborative

TeleHealth, by reducing the power disparity between therapist and patient, can make therapy much more of a collaborative effort. This enhances motivation, reduces dependency, and empowers clients as partners in learning and exploration. I often encourage clients to audio-record sessions, since many clients have trouble remembering details of what we talked about. But recordings take time to listen to afterwards. If the matter is particularly complicated—as often occurs in sex and relationship therapy—I’ll often spend a few minutes at the end of the session typing out detailed notes, so we can all remember everything.

With TeleHealth, we can take this to the next level: I can create a document on Google Drive, share it with the individual or couple on my screen, and we can make notes together during the session. They can actually see me typing, rather than having to wait to get my notes later.

A few decades ago, so-called Cognitive Therapists would assign clients to fill out worksheets, noting their negative thoughts and critiquing them. On Google Drive, a therapist and client can now do this work on split-screen in real time, working collaboratively online while talking face to face.

7. TeleHealth Sex and Relationship Therapy Can Be More Creative

Take away the physical constraints of the office, the waiting room, and the need to physically transport yourself to a particular location, and therapy can get much more creative. With TeleHealth sessions, it’s not necessary to decide in advance whether you’re going to see a couple individually or separately. If I’m conducting a couple’s session and it feels like I need to confer separately with each individual for a few minutes, that’s easily done.

There’s more room in TeleHealth for medical creativity as well. As an MD sex therapist, I often do sexual medicine evaluations for men and women whose sex problems involve a combination of biological and psychological factors. With TeleHealth, I can put everything about a patient on my desktop at once, with their medication list in one window, my cumulative office notes in another, and our live video discussion in a third window. It’s much easier to be “present” when you’re seeing everything at once, and not wasting time rummaging around in your files for important data.

The Future of TeleHealth Sex and Relationship Therapy in the 21st Century

That being said, there’s something about the seclusion of the traditional office therapy setting, and the reassurance of having a trusted listener physically present in the room, that may be impossible to reproduce online. Only time will tell, though, how much this difference is real—and how much it’s simply the comfort of what’s familiar. To quote Dr Marcus again, “TeleHealth therapy may not be exactly as helpful or productive as an in-person consult, but with a sensitive and savvy clinician it can be pretty darn close.”

The way we communicate with our healthcare providers has changed dramatically since the advent of broadband and the smartphone. It’s now less authoritarian. More democratic. Sex and relationship therapy too is becoming more democratic, more collaborative, and less limited by conventional modes of practice. I have decades of experience in my field. But my patients have access to the entire internet, and they frequently find interesting things online that I didn’t know about.

TeleHealth is simply another way for people to take greater responsibility for their health care. These days, the so-called “internet of things” allows patients to take much more charge of the data they share. Blood pressure readings, electrocardiographic rhythms, photos of skin lesions and sore throats, and sleep recordings can now all be up-loaded to your primary care doctor.

As a sex and relationship therapist, I have high hopes for this powerful new technology. And I can’t wait to see what our field will do with it in the years ahead.

The post Is TeleHealth Sex & Relationship Therapy Effective? 7 Ways it Might Be Better appeared first on Treating Vaginismus, Low Sex Drive, Hormone Imbalances | Sexual Health Experts.

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marcdouffet · 4 years