My family has pretty much always been in support of Western military. My father’s father served in the end of WWII, my mother’s father was in the army. My father was absolutely fascinated with fighter jets, and regularly took me to airshows. I was dead-set on becoming a fighter pilot until age 14, when I discovered I needed glasses. My dream was, in essense, shot down (pun intended).

I was always told by my father and CNN that Israel always has to defend itself against people who just hated them for no reason. When 9/11 happened, I was pretty sure I was still going to join the Air Force. I got my glider pilot’s license the next summer, and my private pilot’s license the summer before 12th grade. I was not uncommon for my father to have a military themed wallpaper on his office desktop background.

This is a tomahawk cruise missile warhead delivery system being launched from a naval vessel. It can deliver over 1,000 lbs of explosive over 2,500 kilometers. I’d see things like this on Extreme Machines and love it. I can just picture the narrator saying something along the lines of “With technology like this, the bad guy doesn’t even have a chance to fire a single bullet.”.

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Nowaways, my perspective is a little different. I see Israel as a bully, I question our involvement in Afghanistan, supporting a false government, when only about 100 taliban are actually in the country (they’re all in Pakistan now). I can understand if we’re making money off of their drugs, which is what it seems. Funny they don’t tell you that Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, is the brother of a major drug lord. It’s also funny that the Allies only burn southern opium crops, not northern ones.

I see this senseless violence, and greed that is to a level no different than telecommunications companies screwing over the public, or ticketmaster charging you $25 in “convenience fees” per event ticket, and wonder where we’ve gone wrong. We’re all just greedy motherfuckers, it seems.

Now when I look at a photo of a tomahawk cruise missile, I see the real result:

This child was at a distance from the target. I think its safe to guess that whoever was in the blast radius could now only be poured into a vial. This shit happens nearly daily in Iraq. How about if one cruise missile were to hit a rural community in Pennsylvania?  It would be a massive tragedy. Hit a few brown people in the desert? Meh.

Let’s pretend that is a photo of a child in Canada who died at the hands of, say, the Chinese. Would they be winning our hearts & minds, or would we sign up to kill those invaders at any cost?

My point? I do not believe that our tactics are helping us at all in reducing the threat of terrorism.

Since my last rant about the Olympics, (that has Canadian police possibly fining and jailing Canadian citizens for protesting the disgusting treatment of the homeless, not to mention the mountain of debt), I had heard about other violations of free speech.

Amy Goodman is a well-known reporter in alternative news. A shit-disturber, so to speak. Regardless, she was going to Vancouver to give a talk about healthcare, and Canadian border guards clearly mistreated her on the grounds that she was possibly speaking against the olympics.

I don’t care if you’re pro or against the olympics; this is fucking disgusting.

Tell me you’ve heard something similar before:

Thousands of kilometers from here, a nation will be hosting an international gathering, where many important officials will attend. There will be protesters, supporters, riot police, the usual.

But here’s where it gets gross, if tentative laws pass, protesters will ultimately be denied free speech: If they have a sign protesting the even on their own property, they can be fined—even sent to jail.

Authorities are planning to forcibly remove the homeless. They have destroyed over 1000 low income homes. Laws are on the block to make leaflets in protest illegal.

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Sounds like yout typical protest in China, eh? A WTO meeting? Say what I wrote was completely true, and is about to happen, where the Hell would it be?

Take a guess and check below the fold.

Read on… »

Let’s talk about Afghanistan. You should easily find it in this map:

Between the 12th and 16th Centuries (1100’s and 1500’s), the Mongols, initially led by Ghengis Kahn, completely invaded, kicked ass and took names. Though they mostly hung out in Ghazni, a central city between Kandahar and Kabul; it was their base of operations for kicking India’s ass. For added timeline context: During most of this time, nobody knew North America existed.

In the early 1500’s, Afghanistan was divided. To the West you had the Persians (now known as Iran), To the north was the Uzbecks, to the East were the Mughals (Persianized/Indianized Mongol descendants. Hell of a gene pool).

In by the year 1700, you had all the occupying armies, but there were still a bunch of Pachtun Tribes (aka invaded Afghanis). Two such tribes were predominant: On one side are the Durranis – most of the settled population, farmers, traders, the professional middle class. On the other are the Ghilzai, traditionally nomadic, fiercely fundamentalist in religion, whose tribal homelands stretch across into Pakistan as far as Kashmir. They hated each other; Afghanistan was in a civil war while they were occupied! Great.

Kandahar was mostly Ghizlai at this time. In 1709, The Afghan people, sick of being occupied by the frickin’ Persian and Mongol armies, say “Fuck this, we have to kick out these Persian invaders from our land.” and decide to kick the Persians out. Led by Mir Wais Hotak (Ghizlai), they did; and took back Kandahar for their own. Hey, it’s a tiny kingdom but it’s a start. The Persians were too rich, fat and lazy to retake Kandahar (literally, actually).

Mir Wais’s son, Mir Mahmud Hotaki, figures his dad was on the right track, and decides to kick more Persian ass…and does he ever. He took their frickin’ capital (Isfahan) within less than 2 years! Mir Mahmud Hotaki, being the sensible man, figures he deserves a go at ruling the people he just invaded. He becomes Shah of Persia. He pretty much abused the shit out of his Persian subjects. He was then murdered by a jealous cousin who wanted power too. Then the Persians said “Fuck this, we have to kick out these Afghan invaders from our land”. They retake Kandahar.

By 1747, Ahmed Shah Durrani kills the Persian ruler of Kandahar and becomes ruler.

The Durranis rule until, oh…about 1979. But don’t worry, the Ghizlai were still around, and still fecking hated the Durranis. The ruling Durranis had to move the capital from Ghizlai populated Kandahar to Kabul a couple of hundred years before. The Durranis were never shy to ask for help in calming down the Ghizlai. Either the Tajiks from the North, or later the British, were happy to help. The Brits, had every interest of protecting its crown jewel, India, from the Ghizlai.

In 1979, The Russians decide they want a piece of Afghanistan. They try to get the Ghizlai to help them overthrow the Durranis. Thing was, The Ghizlai hated the Russians’ socialist and secular agenda so much, they were easily influenced by the USA to attack the Russians. America gave tons of money, guns and training to a Ghizlai guy from Saudi Arabia (They’re everywhere) named Osama Bin Laden so he could fight the Russians (and the Durranis too, the USA didn’t really care, as long as the Russians lost). Heh—It worked.

The Ghizlai, now using God Mode + Infinite ammo cheats, take over Afghanistan, and impose a strict Islamic Sharia law. America leaves under the rule of what is now knows as Taleban, thanking them for their help.

In 2001, The Taleban attack the US. Americans give God Mode+Infinite ammo cheats to Hamid Karzai, a Durrani drug lord.

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I’ll leave final thoughts to Christopher Booker

As so often before, the Ghilzai have seen their country hijacked by a Durrani regime, supported by a largely Tajik army and by hated outsiders from the West. One reason why we find it so hard to win “hearts and minds” in Helmand is that we are up against a sullenly resentful population, fired by a timeless hatred and able to call on unlimited support, in men and materiel, from their Ghilzai brothers across the border in Pakistan.

Only in towns such as Sanguin and Garmsir are there islands of Durrani, willing to support the Durrani government in distant Kabul. No sooner have our forces “secured” a village from the Taleban, than their fighters re-emerge from the surrounding countryside to reclaim it for the Ghilzai cause. Without recognising this, and that what the Ghilzai really want is an independent “Pashtunistan” stretching across the border, we shall never properly understand why, like so many foreigners who have become embroiled in Afghanistan before, we have stumbled into a war we can never hope to win.

Just click on the image to go see it in its full size at www.informationisbeautiful.net:

I thought conservatives were riled up enough when they decided to rewrite the Bible to provide: a “Framework against Liberal Bias”, “Express Free Market Parables, and other such noble goals. I’m not making this up.

But now the shit’s really going to hit the fan: Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize. I don’t think it’s an appropriate time to give the award, but the commitee made no secret of the fact that they’re aware of his lack of time in office.

I hope hardline Republicans are shitting their pants. I’d love to see the froth on the side of their mouths, spewing in senseless anger. Someone should just remind them that God is responsible for everything, and that he works in mysterious ways, haha.

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Oklahoma passed a law forcing details of any abortion to be posted publicly, including age, race, marital status, county in which it was performed. I cannot think of a more disgusting law. I’d expect this from a crazy theocracy, not the US. Oh wait, some states are crazy theocracies. I pity what I would guess to be one of very few black women in Guymon, Oklahoma who needed an abortion. The whole town would know.

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We live in a time of great scientific advance, knowledge and understanding. (Here are three random articles I plucked out in less thanh a minute). But then you have lying, war-mongering, ignorant and very scared God-lovers that are just fucking ruining it for the whole godamned planet. Take these two Republican congressman who say the US should attack Iran first, not Israel. How about realizing that only 1.7% of Americans are Jewish? Nobody seems to care about the 15% that are non-religious…

Haven’t they learn that every single time they have meddled in the affairs of other countries, it has had negative consequences? Israel has nukes, and they’ve proven that they’re very willing to defy every Geneva Convention, every bit of morality, to wage war against Muslims. I understand Iran’s intentions of wanting to defend itself against Israel, although I don’t think anyone should have nukes. Have you noticed that the US is aiding a country that is lining up for a trial at the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity? May we consider, for a moment that US foreign policy has made it “The bad guy”?

Healthcare is but a blip amongst the problems in the US. The economy, and its wars are far more important. But there is such internal struggle between an emotional and ignorant portion of the country and the rest, that even something as blatantly obvious, needed and cost-effective public health care can’t even get through Congress. Fuck me, our Southern neighbours are in a heap of trouble when China comes collecting its debts.

I try to be optimistic when I meet new people like my couchsurfers, when I read about new scientific advance and how we’re discovering new ways of harnessing renewable energy. But it’s things like these that make me very pessimistic indeed.