https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/02/13/rory-stewart-turquoise-mountain-and-the-fall-of-woke-colonialism/
Oh no, how will the women of Afghanistan cope without lectures about Marcel Duchamp’s urinal? They’ll have to find a way. For it’s been revealed that Turquoise Mountain, a batty British charity that has lectured Afghan women about the wonders of conceptual art, has had its USAID funding slashed. I hope you’re happy now, Donald Trump and Elon Musk – no more will the tyrannised women of Afghanistan enjoy the sweet relief of a plummy Brit telling them about the time Duchamp put a porcelain piss station in an art gallery.
This is the heartbreaking news that the NGO founded by King Charles and run by Rory Stewart’s wife, Shoshana, has had its USAID handout of a million dollars slashed. It was Rory who broke the story. Looking even soppier than normal in his weekly conflab with Alastair Campbell on their surreally successful podcast, The Rest Is Politics, he said USAID funding for Turquoise Mountain ‘just stopped’. It had a contract with USAID, and it ‘had another million dollars to go’, and yet mad, bad Trump pulled the plug, Rory almost sobbed.
And what urgent work does Turquoise Mountain do? It promotes craft-making in Afghanistan. You can buy its ‘hand-knotted rugs’ made by ‘talented weavers’ – a must-have for every virtuous home in the West’s turbo-smug boroughs.