Vacation? How About Afganistan?

Gee if I anted to visit a place where fundamentalist zealots controlled the government and outsiders were looked at as either potential victims or as devils....I go back to Alabama. :D
 
However, Afghanistan is mountainous, and its people ignorant, drug-addicted, and poor. I don't see it becoming a fit place to visit in my lifetime.
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Have you ever been here? Part of the country is mountainous. Part is not. The topography is quite varied.

Where I'm situated tonight, it's not mountainous; it's quite flat. Other parts of the country are very mountainous. Nearby here we have farmland, and we also have expanses of rolling sand desert.

The people are not drug-addicted. Poverty is part of not only this country, but much of the world. Not really a reason to look down on the people or the country.
 
dsbrantjr said:
"The Indonesians Jew haters do not recognize the State of Israel, refuse to have diplomatic relations with us and, accordingly, will not issue visas to Israelis...." It is not necessary to be a "Jew hater", as you put it, to disagree with Israel's foreign policy.
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I have found it always better to just let issues of zealotry lie, it's not worth it, the arguments are not bounded by logic or reason so all argument is folly.
 
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DouglasBader said:
Have you ever been here? Part of the country is mountainous. Part is not. The topography is quite varied.

Where I'm situated tonight, it's not mountainous; it's quite flat. Other parts of the country are very mountainous. Nearby here we have farmland, and we also have expanses of rolling sand desert.
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I stand corrected, there was a time when it was one of the wealthiest nations on Earth. However, that was long ago, and it now ranks among the poorest.

DouglasBader said:
The people are not drug-addicted. Poverty is part of not only this country, but much of the world. Not really a reason to look down on the people or the country.
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The WHO estimates that greater than 80% of the population is addicted to opium, which they put in their tea. Sadly, it is the main cash crop of the nation. The one and only good thing I will ever say about the Taliban is they drastically limited opium cultivation, though I would not approve of the methods used to do so.
 
steingar said:
I stand corrected, there was a time when it was one of the wealthiest nations on Earth. However, that was long ago, and it now ranks among the poorest.



The WHO estimates that greater than 80% of the population is addicted to opium, which they put in their tea. Sadly, it is the main cash crop of the nation. The one and only good thing I will ever say about the Taliban is they drastically limited opium cultivation, though I would not approve of the methods used to do so.
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If opium makes them peaceful and hopeful let them have it! They have bloody nothing else! FMD, apple juice and opium, may it please.... This whole trying to restrain the drug cultures through threat of law is never going to work, you control it through regulated distribution same as alcohol, they all tax similar as well as age discriminate.
 
Latest studies estimate opiate addition in Afghanistan at approximately 1.5 million, with a populace of about 30 million. That's a high percentage, but not remotely close to 80 percent.

Modern medicine is sorely lacking in Afghanistan. Opium is used to treat various maladies, especially painful ones. Recreational opiate use is not the primary reason that opium gets used, but one should also remember that opiate use in Afghanistan does not have the stigma that it has in the west, and Afghanistan is not a nation of opium addicts.

The Taliban profits from opium trafficking, and derives the majority of their revenue and funding from opium.

Presently I'm sitting in the middle of the largest opiate district in the world. I fly over the poppy fields regularly. The Taliban once limited opium cultivation; that isn't the case today, and the Taliban gains a great deal from opiate traffic.

Yes, the nation is poor, and yes, it's one of the poorest on earth. It was never close to the wealthiest.
 
Afghanistan is incredibly wealthy in terms of mineral resources that have gone undiscovered until recently. Of course, getting access and building infrastructure is mostly a political issue that I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, but it does give me the feeling that Afghanistan will remain important to the U.S. for some time to come and we should not expect to leave them hanging like we did after the Soviets left (and leaving a power vacuum conveniently filled by the Taliban).
 
There wasn't a power vacuum. We built and effectively created the Taliban, and set them up to take over.

Afghanistan is very rich in minerals; the Afghanis have no infrastructure for exploiting that. Presently we're spending billions to prosecute the undeclared war, and the Chinese are in the country cleaning up in a big way by mining the minerals and making the profit. Essentially we're paying in dollars and blood, and the Chinese are collecting the money and then some.
 
DouglasBader said:
Yes, the nation is poor, and yes, it's one of the poorest on earth. It was never close to the wealthiest.
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Ancient Afghanistan was the crossroads of the silk route, and with rich valleys undergoing cultivation, was a fabulously wealthy nation. Sadly, centuries of war and invasion has destroyed most of what was wrought, most recently giant carved Buddas destroyed by the Taliban.
 
steingar said:
Ancient Afghanistan was the crossroads of the silk route, and with rich valleys undergoing cultivation, was a fabulously wealthy nation. Sadly, centuries of war and invasion has destroyed most of what was wrought, most recently giant carved Buddas destroyed by the Taliban.
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Under the Mongols Afghanistan did very well indeed, the world really needs another Kublai Khan.
 
DouglasBader said:
There wasn't a power vacuum. We built and effectively created the Taliban, and set them up to take over.
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Further discussion on this would, by definition, need to take place in the spin zone, but the United States was very concerned about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism after the Russians departed (and even before). The Taliban was grown and supported almost exclusively by Pakistani ISI, which was, of course, funded in part by the U.S., but the U.S. did not purposefully and knowingly support the Taliban or the rise of Mulsm "extremists" in Afghanistan, and, in fact, was something the U.S. government was trying to prevent (obviously didn't do a great job on that).
 
darrell said:
Further discussion on this would, by definition, need to take place in the spin zone, but the United States was very concerned about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism after the Russians departed (and even before). The Taliban was grown and supported almost exclusively by Pakistani ISI, which was, of course, funded in part by the U.S., but the U.S. did not purposefully and knowingly support the Taliban or the rise of Mulsm "extremists" in Afghanistan, and, in fact, was something the U.S. government was trying to prevent (obviously didn't do a great job on that).
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By that are you segregating the Mujahedin forces we armed and trained during the Soviet-Afghan war?
 
dsbrantjr said:
"The Indonesians Jew haters do not recognize the State of Israel, refuse to have diplomatic relations with us and, accordingly, will not issue visas to Israelis...." It is not necessary to be a "Jew hater", as you put it, to disagree with Israel's foreign policy.
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Stop kidding yourself...

Anti-Sionism is the modern, politically correct form of anti-semitism...

Indonesia has no problem providing visas to the citizens of totalitarian, genocidal countries such as Sudan, Syria, North Korea, etc....but will not issue visas to Israeli citizens ?

It's like the useless, corrupt UN... it seems that their only concern is the systematic condemnation of the "evil" State of Israel...They couldn't care less about genocides and violations of human rights....hell, the majority of the countries in the UN General Assembly are not even democratic states...

Without Israel, the UN would have no reason to exist....
 
Armageddon Aviator said:
Stop kidding yourself...

Anti-Sionism is the modern, politically correct form of anti-semitism...

Indonesia has no problem providing visas to the citizens of totalitarian, genocidal countries such as Sudan, Syria, North Korea, etc....but will not issue visas to Israeli citizens ?

It's like the useless, corrupt UN... it seems that their only concern is the systematic condemnation of the "evil" State of Israel...They couldn't care less about genocides and violations of human rights....hell, the majority of the countries in the UN General Assembly are not even democratic states...

Without Israel, the UN would have no reason to exist....
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Waaaa, so oppressed, let me find a bit of sympathy.... sorry, ran out. The very sentiments you express here are as much of the problem as the opposing sentiments you face. Get over yourselves, you are not innocents in this and have never been. The reason people don't like y'all is you're a bunch of whiners. As long as you all allow yourselves to be governed by your conflicting dogmas of the same God while backing leadership that wants only victory for their dogma, you all can just keep on suffering as you deserve. This is all the same stuff that God cast Moses and the Israelites into the desert for, you just couldn't follow the bloody Ten Commandments and you still don't to this day.
 
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Henning said:
Waaaa, so oppressed, let me find a bit of sympathy.... sorry, ran out. The very sentiments you express here are as much of the problem as the opposing sentiments you face. Get over yourselves, you are not innocents in this and have never been. The reason people don't like y'all is you're a bunch of whiners. As long as you all allow yourselves to be governed by your conflicting dogmas of the same God while backing leadership that wants only victory for their dogma, you all can just keep on suffering as you deserve. This is all the same stuff that God cast Moses and the Israelites into the desert for, you just couldn't follow the bloody Ten Commandments and you still don't to this day.
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I suspect that the vast majority of Israel's problems derives from the fact that it is reviled by the nations surrounding it for being what it is, a secular democracy full of white people.

There was one attack from a foreign criminal conspiracy a decade ago that blew up two buildings and caused us to invade two countries, kill hundreds of thousands, and initiate a draconian police state within our own borders that is expanding as I write this. Israelis are attacked every day, have had to fight off several armed incursions from their neighbors, and put up with criminal conspiracies sponsored by neighboring governments. Personally, I think that compared to us, they're a model of restraint.
 
steingar said:
I suspect that the vast majority of Israel's problems derives from the fact that it is reviled by the nations surrounding it for being what it is, a secular democracy full of white people.

There was one attack from a foreign criminal conspiracy a decade ago that blew up two buildings and caused us to invade two countries, kill hundreds of thousands, and initiate a draconian police state within our own borders that is expanding as I write this. Israelis are attacked every day, have had to fight off several armed incursions from their neighbors, and put up with criminal conspiracies sponsored by neighboring governments. Personally, I think that compared to us, they're a model of restraint.
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No, a model of restraint acts stoically, not as a whiny *****. Either blow em up or shut up. They are only semi secular as are we, even less so.
 
Henning said:
No, a model of restraint acts stoically, not as a whiny *****. Either blow em up or shut up.
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Why should they? We haven't. And I don't see any UN condemnation of all our atrocities, either. Probably because the US doesn't have many Jews, proportionally.
 
steingar said:
Why should they? We haven't. And I don't see any UN condemnation of all our atrocities, either. Probably because the US doesn't have many Jews, proportionally.
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I'm not saying we are any example am I? It's all a huge ego driven cluster flop world wide driven by tribal mentality, and that's really all Judaism is is the government of an extended tribe. Secularism makes no difference really as long as there is still an issue of decisiveness between the tribes.
 
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Henning said:
I'm not saying we are any example am I?
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Then compared to whom are they showing restraint? Most things don't make much sense out of context.

Henning said:
It's all a huge ego driven cluster flop world wide driven by tribal mentality, and that's really all Judaism is is the government of an extended tribe. Secularism makes no difference really as long as there is still an issue of decisiveness between the tribes.
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You make less sense than normal here. First, do you actually know any Jews? Do they respond to some sort of tribal government, or to the government of the country in which they live?

If a secular democratic government makes no sense to you, what does?
 
steingar said:
If a secular democratic government makes no sense to you, what does?
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A secular nominated government. A hybrid of democracy really with the only general election held at the local level and all 'upgrades' from there chosen from and by the ranks of those that will be led by them, each successively smaller group choosing from among them who will represent at the next level. You cannot "throw your hat in the ring", you must be nominated and when you accept nomination you will agree to be subject under "Public Trust Code", a separate code of law much as military members are subject to UCMJ. Violations of public trust will be punished on a scale of various corporal and capital punishments, i.e. caning to execution depending on severity. Get caught with your hand in the cookie jar, you get caned. Get caught subverting the cookie jar and you get killed for it.

Regardless the system, the punishments applied to corrupt leadership must indicate that they are the most severe crimes of all. Otherwise you will always have the corrupt and greedy for leaders in a democracy.

As far as the world scale goes, I have no hope for peace among humanity until either our alien overlords show up and we realize the we are really in all this together as a species, or we become extinct and/or replaced through evolution or God's will, whichever you care to believe in; the result will be the same.
 
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The Taliban was grown and supported almost exclusively by Pakistani ISI, which was, of course, funded in part by the U.S., but the U.S. did not purposefully and knowingly support the Taliban or the rise of Mulsm "extremists" in Afghanistan, and, in fact, was something the U.S. government was trying to prevent (obviously didn't do a great job on that).

We had a lot more to do with the Taliban than that; much of it was borne at the University of Nebraska. We were central to the development and growth of the Taliban . The texts we produced for them to bring up their young, upon which the current crop of Taliban fighters were raised, we created, printed, and delivered. We are largely responsible for them, including a great deal of training that didn't take place over there, but over here, on US soil. Most certainly we're responsible for the Taliban.

ISI was our own puppet.
 
denverpilot said:
Nobody in their right mind would accept a nomination.
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Exactly, only people who were altruistic enough to want to get the job done correctly would apply. Altruistic people are not considered "In their right mind" by our society, only the greedy and corruptable; they are the ones that need to be gone.
 
Henning said:
Exactly, only people who were altruistic enough to want to get the job done correctly would apply. Altruistic people are not considered "In their right mind" by our society, only the greedy and corruptable; they are the ones that need to be gone.
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It's impossible to run a country altruistically. These super-people you would supposedly find would have a mental breakdown inside of a month after they were briefed on everything that's really going on.
 
denverpilot said:
It's impossible to run a country altruistically. These super-people you would supposedly find would have a mental breakdown inside of a month after they were briefed on everything that's really going on.
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Nope, there are enough people who can see through the clutter who realize everything that's wrong is of our own doing. They just have to have the will to force us through the loss and out the other side.

The only thing that needs to change to fix the world is how we handle energy.
 
T
steingar said:
Then compared to whom are they showing restraint? Most things don't make much sense out of context.



You make less sense than normal here. First, do you actually know any Jews? Do they respond to some sort of tribal government, or to the government of the country in which they live?

If a secular democratic government makes no sense to you, what does?
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Interesting you ask that question. I was talking with an Israeli buddy and he brought up that <.1% of the population is Jewish; when I gave that a thought I realized that a full >30% of my friends are Jewish.

The Orthodox most definitely respond to a form of tribal government, same as those who call themselves Christians or Muslims do. When you follow the "laws" of a religion, you are following a tribal government, that's all religions are is an extended tribe. It's all tribal warfare...
 
Henning said:
The Orthodox most definitely respond to a form of tribal government, same as those who call themselves Christians or Muslims do. When you follow the "laws" of a religion, you are following a tribal government, that's all religions are is an extended tribe. It's all tribal warfare...
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If you call a set group of rules tribal government, then I guess you're onto something. Actually, Christians have no rules at all, thus probably don't fit your rather broadly worded definition.
 
steingar said:
If you call a set group of rules tribal government, then I guess you're onto something. Actually, Christians have no rules at all, thus probably don't fit your rather broadly worded definition.
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Sure they do, the Ten Commandments apply to Christians as well and they can't even get those few right. Christ set a few more rules like "turn the other cheek", "render unto Cesar"... all those are ignored as well. When the preacher tells you what to do or think and you respond to it, especially under threat of punishment (Hell & Damnation) you are subjecting yourself to a theocratic form of government.
 
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Henning said:
Sure they do, the Ten Commandments apply to Christians as well and they can't even get those few right. When the preacher tells you what to do or think and you respond to it, especially under threat of punishment (Hell & Damnation) you are subjecting yourself to a theocratic form of government.
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Fail. The "Old Testament" can be disregarded by Christians according to their cannon.
 
steingar said:
Fail. The "Old Testament" can be disregarded by Christians according to their cannon.
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The Ten Commandments can't, just the historic record of Judaism, Christs point was you don't need to be a Jew to be with God. Jesus was breaking the exclusivity of Judaism. Jesus said "You don't need the temple and all the hypocrisy, you go into your closet and pray (create information) and God will get it from there just as well. Your relationship with God is private and requires no outside help to get through. Jews and Gentiles alike, God does not discriminate."

That the 'Cannons of Christianity" don't recognize this simple truth is not at all surprising as it messes up the profitability and leverage to get the masses being governed to go to war.

Everytime man mentions God to influence another outside of them calling to pray for guidance, they are committing Blasphemy. Blasphemy being the biggie no no in all three of the big monotheistic religions makes it quite clear that all organized religion as we have today is just a corruption of God's will.
 
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Henning said:
The Ten Commandments can't, just the historic record of Judaism, Christs point was you don't need to be a Jew to be with God. Jesus was breaking the exclusivity of Judaism. Jesus said "You don't need the temple and all the hypocrisy, you go into your closet and pray (create information) and God will get it from there just as well. Your relationship with God is private and requires no outside help to get through. Jews and Gentiles alike, God does not discriminate."

That the 'Cannons of Christianity" don't recognize this simple truth is not at all surprising as it messes up the profitability and leverage to get the masses being governed to go to war.

Everytime man mentions God to influence another outside of them calling to pray for guidance, they are committing Blasphemy. Blasphemy being the biggie no no in all three of the big monotheistic religions makes it quite clear that all organized religion as we have today is just a corruption of God's will.
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Again fail, unless you conclusively can reference it. Good luck with that.
 
steingar said:
Again fail, unless you conclusively can reference it. Good luck with that.
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Not a fail, the above is all referenced in the words of the document that is used by Christians to be the exemplar in their lives. The corruption part of it is obvious if that's what you were referring to, but I could dig up a million comparative statements from religious leaders put next to Christ's statements to show it; I have a feeling that wouldn't be necessary.
 
The "Old Testament" can be disregarded by Christians according to their cannon.
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Say again?

The old testament is a crucial centerpiece to Christianity.
 
Every one does realize that more people have died in the name of God than all other reasons put together.
 
Christ is the centerpiece of Christianity and the cannons of the religions in his name opt to ignore his direct words as well.
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Certainly; Christianity is about Christ.

The old testament is never the less crucial and integral to Christianity.
 
Tom-D said:
Every one does realize that more people have died in the name of God than all other reasons put together.
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Of course, religion is the oldest form of mass government therefor the oldest excuse to throw lives away to conquer their neighbor. Thousands of years worth rather than hundreds.
 
steingar said:
Baloney. You guys eat pork.
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So does all but one of my Jewish friends and he'll still eat crispy bacon on a sandwich.

Kosherite law is a great example of religion working as government, it reads like a modern health code.
 
Henning said:
So does all but one of my Jewish friends and he'll still eat crispy bacon on a sandwich.

Kosherite law is a great example of religion working as government, it reads like a modern health code.
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The difference is your Jewish friend is violating a rule of his or her cannon, while your Christian friends violate no religious mores while doing likewise.
 
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