this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2026
597 points (97.8% liked)

World News

56328 readers
2604 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online 46 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

Women in Iraq have been treated like absolute dirt and their literacy rates have plumeted from 99% under Saddam to around 50% last time I checked.

The breakdown of law and order is a direct result of American and Israeli interference and overthrow of Saddam after a decade of sanctions in the 90s.

Israel has been trying to crush Iraq for much longer and wanted it to be a failed state since the 1970s. Prior to Saddam even. This is the fate they want for all Arab countries.

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 4 points 4 hours ago

Another disastrous Conservative outcome. They are always complaining about how incompetent government is, but it's not the government that's incompetent, it's THEM.

[–] Nautalax@lemmy.world 71 points 19 hours ago (3 children)

I was curious and looked up adult women literacy rates for women in Iraq and this shows 64% literacy rate for women with 15+ years age in 2000 and 78% in 2021 for the same category. For female youths aged 15-24 it rose from 80% to 91% over the same time period (though in the intervening period that did indeed drop to 72-73% in their stats during the chaos of the Iraq War).

[–] ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world 37 points 18 hours ago

It's great when people bring the receipts and take the time to source a comment. Seriously, thank you.

[–] ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online 0 points 6 hours ago

I needed to look them up.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 6 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (2 children)

and this shows 64% literacy rate for women with 15+ years age in 2000 and 78% in 2021 for the same category

It's a very thin data set. One entry for 2000. Nothing beforehand. Then nothing for 12 years that just happen to occur during the height of invasion and mass displacement of the population.

Wikipedia would suggest the literacy rate was high prior to 2000. After the invasion, there's very mixed data, with high enrollment rates conbined with high dropout and grade repeat rates. But it's an article plagued with dead links, so...

I don't think it's controversial to say the war and mass displacement resulted in declining standards for education.

[–] Nautalax@lemmy.world 9 points 14 hours ago

It’s a very thin data set. One entry for 2000. Nothing beforehand. Then nothing for 12 years that just happen to occur during the height of invasion and mass displacement of the population.

I’m happy to see any data you have, that’s why I looked because 99% seemed incredibly high and the drop to 50% horrible and I wanted to check out that data. I agree this is sparse though it does ultimately come from UNESCO. There is a point on the 15-24 year old female youth graph for 2006 which is in the middle of that and another on 2011, which were the 72-73% I acknowledged. A decline of 8% for the youth until it started recovering in 2012 onward is what this particular source gives.

Wikipedia would suggest the literacy rate was high prior to 2000. After the invasion, there’s very mixed data, with high enrollment rates conbined with high dropout and grade repeat rates. But it’s an article plagued with dead links, so…

Where that Wikipedia article says “literacy levels were high” you can see that it also links to links to World Bank Open Data - the same source I used - except unsuccessfully. I would disagree that it was high based on World Bank Open Data though. If you look up global 15+ year old women’s literacy rates, the global average in 2000 was 76% so 64% in Iraq looks kind of bad comparatively.

I don’t think it’s controversial to say the war and mass displacement resulted in declining standards for education

I agree and that matches up with the drop in literacy rates for young women (whose ongoing education you would expect to be more affected by war in eight years of their childhood than for the adults). I was commenting just with respect to the stats because I was surprised.

[–] ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online 0 points 6 hours ago

Either way the war fucked up Iraq in ways that will take generations to fix.

[–] ironycanal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 17 hours ago

No they only want Palestine bro. Just one more bro.