About the pipelines: That story is older then the interests of Unocal and its shameless betrayal of Bridas in the presence of Henry Kissinger who was at the time also consultant by Unocal. That counts also for the great US friend Saudi Arabia with their Delta Oil Company
Ah yes, you have to invite the US and its puppets to become partners in order to receive their gratitute.
Of course this was only the opening act of the whole circus.
For those interested: There is an excellent explanation about this to be found in what is also an excellent work about the complex story of and behind the Taliban.
Ahmed Rashid
“Taliban”
For the English edition:
I.B. Tauris Publishers, London/New York.
(I don’t have the ISBN reference of this)
Sorry, some unattributed quotes from “experts” and (apparently) one of the losing warlords does not constitute backing the Taliban. The US did not recognize the regime, gave them no military or financial aid or support in the takeover, and never built the pipeline.
Nor did this have anything to do with Israel, or the nationalization of resources.
Shodan, the US was actively negotiating with the Taliban to have a pipeline constructed. This is de facto (albeit it not de jure) recognition.
If you reread my original post, the list of priorities I gave for our foreign policy in the Middle East (and really, peace for Israel for Israel’s sake is far down on the list of our priorities) and provided just two examples of regimes that, through primairly these reasons, we support. So no, I never said (and if I did, it was mistakenly) that our prior cozying up to the Taliban had anything at all to do with Israel (it certainly did not!).
The pipeline was never built, but if 9-11 hadn’t come about then we don’t know where we would have ended up. It’s my understanding that the talks didn’t turn sour until shortly before 9-11, however I could be wrong on this. We weren’t in talks to have the pipeline, which exploits a natural resource (geography) be a national Afghani pipeline. We were in talks with people who we thought we could get to secure a pipeline for the profits of multinationals.
When most of what we learn about Muslims happens after terrorist attacks, it’s bound to happen. However, we see very little in the way of Muslims as victims of an aggressor, Israel for example.
I watched a show on Free Speech TV (Ch. 9415 on Dish Network satellite programming) one day. It followed the lives of Palestinians who were under attack from Isreal. These people were gassed and suffered horribly, feeling like they would die, feeling like they wanted to die, but eventually pulling through. A number of them were just killed outright by Israeli forces. Kids were outside school as shots rang out. It was obviously a common occurrence. When not attacked, these people faced general harassment.
It appeared to be a meager life. I could see why some Muslims would decide to resort to terrorism in response. If Americans were attacked in a similar way, our response wouldn’t be called terrorism, but rather a war of self-defense. We’d be obligated to fight.
I know this is sort of a hijack, but so many people mentioned terrorism or something similar, I wanted to write about that.
I think the OP seeks truthfulness in our first impressions and then he follows up with more question to get at the source of these impressions. It’s worthwhile to explore.
I really don’t see any “disbalance” in my views. In fact, I think I call it as I see it, without trying to whitewash the unpleasant stuff. Islamic countries are in a sad state of affair with regards to tolerance, individual liberties, and general open-mindedness.
As far as proving there isn’t a god, well, it certainly is tough to prove a negative. Can you prove that I am not god? If you can’t, perhaps you should worship me!
In order for me to believe in an invisible man, who places a lot of restrictions on my life, and wants me to kill non-believers, I need a little more than I can’t prove he doesn’t exist.
Honestly - terrorism is the word that popped up in my mind when reading the thread title. I think there’s just been to many events, news and movies associating Islam to terrorism that this is inevitable.
After reading this thread, the first sentence that comes to mind when I see the word ‘Aldebaran’ is : “fundamentalist that likes to setup people to show that they are intolerant towards his religion to justify his own intolerance”.
And no, I’m not American, I did not support the war on Iraq, I find Guantanamo disgusting and I’m a godless liberal.
That is true. So that is why I opened this topic: to hear people’s first impressions and to see - together with them - where they come from.
Really? Now this is very interesting. Maybe you could elaborate a bit to let us see how you come to this? Thank you.
Well, Liberal is the political party that gets my vote whenever there are elections in the country of my late mother.
But the word Liberal in Europe has a different connotation then it has in the USA. Since I don’t know where you’re from, I also don’t know if we represent the same line of thinking with calling ourselves “liberal”.
Ah… Jihad. Of course, this is understandable.
But 9/11 wasn’t the first time this word - which has other connotations and a variety of implementations - was abused by some fanatics.
Jihad in its militant form is only permitted in a defensive way.
And terrorism … Isn’t exactly something that is endorsed by Islam.
It is also not exactly something “Muslim only”.
But people began to link it to Muslims and Islam in general because of the habit in the media to link it exclusively to those who claim to be Muslim and undertake terrorist actions.
It is in fashion and it sells.
I’ve seldom seen it appear in the media in relation to an other religion, although there are people of all religions who commit terrorist acts.
Of course lunatics shouting Allahu Akbar while killing themselves along with innocent people aren’t doing much good to the public relations of our religion.
Yet on the question who is in cases of what is called terrorism really a terrorist and who is only a desperate misled person used by political motivated organisations, one can debate endlessly.
Salaam. A
Well, I had many debates with the hadieth worshippers and not only on websites. The same with people who tend to forget - or even don’t realize - that the hadieth are human made and above that: That they aren’t meant to be historical sources about the life and deeds of the Prophet, or even about the events of his lifetime.
They are transmitted by people who admired him and his example in an attempt to preserve this example and legacy. Meant to form an example to follow and thus become as good a Muslim as possible = those stories are religiously inspired.
That we use the Hadieth as historical sources is because they form the only- and very direct painted - inside source when it comes to the history of early Islam. Yet every historian is aware of it that you must be really very naive to exclude the possibility that some coloured brush touched them here and there.
So you can imagine the firework when I bring this shocking news to those who only see black and white.
Actually, I’ve seen plenty of stories about Basque, Irish, Italian, German, and even French Canadian terrorists. If you’re not in America, how are you so sure what Americans read?
And I learned some basics about Islam in elementary school in the 70’s. We spent a couple of weeks covering world religions starting with Christianity since we had lots of Jews and a couple of Hindus in the class.
Wish the Prophet had written his own biography–would be fascinating.