All Afghanistan REALLY Wants Is…

While it may sound simplistic,

I have long maintained – and in the last 20 years often said – that what the United States needs to do with regard to Afghanistan, is…

Send select, expert teams from the USDA, about 40 or 50 John Deere tractors, combines, and various other farming & harvesting equipment (and give JD a tax break for donating them, they’ll appreciate that) — and truckloads of seed corn, wheat, soybeans, wheat, grain sorghum, and other foodstuffs, including silage/forage, and show the people how to use and care for the tractors, plant, tend, and harvest, the crops, care for/manage the soil, and their animals.

Why?

All those people REALLY want to do is:

1.) Feed themselves, and;

2.) Feed their livestock.

Help them solve those two problems, and we’ll have a friend for life.

And, for the faithful, there’s this matter to consider as well:

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a drink. If you do this, you will make him feel guilty and ashamed.”
— Romans 12:20 (GWT)

The Nation Suffers From Severe Localized Food Insecurity:

Due to civil conflict, population displacement, and economic slowdown – the food security situation worsened in recent months due to the impact of COVID‑19 as informal labor opportunities and remittances declined; between November 2020 and March 2021, about 13.15 million people were estimated to be in severe acute food insecurity and to require urgent humanitarian assistance, including 8.52 million people in “Crisis” and 4.3 million people in “Emergency”; the food security of the vulnerable populations, including IDPs (Internally Displaced People) and the urban poor, is likely to deteriorate as curfews and restrictions on movements to contain the COVID‑19 outbreak limit the employment opportunities for casual laborers (2021).

Yes, there are problems to be overcome – most notably low education levels perhaps being the most problematic – and the language barrier can be, and has been, relatively easily overcome. But education

Taliban Spokesman: Afghanistan To Have “No democratic system at all”

“There will be no democratic system at all because it does not have any base in our country. We will not discuss what type of political system should we apply in Afghanistan because it is clear. It is sharia law and that is it.”
— Waheedullah Hashimi, Taliban spokesman in an interview with Reuters, Wednesday, August 18, 2021

In a previous entry, I had written in part that,

Thoughts on America’s Afghan Experiment

Soprano Amalie Materna (1844-1918) as the character Brünnhilde in Richard Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen” at Bayreuth, Germany, 1876 – conjectural origin of the idiom “when the fat lady sings.”

What can anyone say about people that will cling to the body of a jet aircraft as it takes off, and then as it begins to reach altitude, fall to their deaths? Or stow away in a wheel well, where they are crushed by the mechanisms, or freeze to death at altitude?

Morons.

And desperate.

But still, morons.

They are utterly lacking common sense, stupid, and fundamentally absent the knowledge or intelligence to understand that such actions would be fool hardy at best, and – as it turned out – fatal at worst.

What would you say?

How would anyone describe it?

And yet, “it ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings.”

So goes a colloquial saying meaning “don’t count your chickens until the eggs are hatched.”

Speaking of eggs, they can’t be unscrambled.

And this matter may very well be exactly illustrative of that axiom.

But, I do hear her warming up.

The so-called “fat lady,” that is.

There’s also this to consider:

Sunday-to-Monday Roundup: Taliban Afghan Coup

GOPers are blaming POTUS Biden for the Taliban’s Afghan coup.

Morons.

Pope Calls for Peace in Afghanistan
https://thehill.com/policy/international/567919-pope-calls-for-peace-in-afghanistan
Sunday, August 15, 2021
Today, Pope Francis called for a peaceful end to conflict in Afghanistan as a Taliban-led government coup appears imminent.

Reuters reported that in his Sunday address from Saint Peter’s Square after his homily, the Pope said in part that, “I join in the unanimous concern for the situation in Afghanistan. I ask all of you to pray with me to the God of peace so that the clamour of weapons might cease and solutions can be found at the table of dialogue. Only thus can the battered population of that country – men, women, elderly and children – return to their own homes, and live in peace and security, in total mutual respect.”

What do Taliban & Evangelicals have in common?

Q: What do Evangelical Christians and the Taliban have in common?

A: Aside from the fact that they’re both far-right-wing politico-religious movements of an Abrahamic religion… they’re also anti-science anti-vaxxers.

Ghost Viruses And The Taliban Stand In The Way Of Wiping Out Polio
October 24, 2019 – 5:11 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
Jason Beaubien

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/10/24/773134840/ghost-viruses-and-the-taliban-stand-in-the-way-of-wiping-out-polio

A health worker gives the oral polio vaccine to a child in Karachi, Pakistan.
Fareed Khan/AP

Texas evangelicals helped sink an HPV vaccine mandate, now the state is inundated with cervical cancer
By Sky Palma
Posted on August 13, 2019
https://deadstate.org/texas-evangelicals-helped-sink-an-hpv-vaccine-mandate-now-the-state-is-inundated-with-cervical-cancer/

Religious Objections to the Measles Vaccine? Get the Shots, Faith Leaders Say
Devout parents who are worried about vaccines often object to ingredients from pigs or fetuses. But the leaders of major faiths have examined these fears and still vigorously endorse vaccination.
By Donald G. McNeil Jr. – April 26, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/26/health/measles-vaccination-jews-muslims-catholics.html

Afghanistan polio: First case in Kabul since 2001
By David Loyn BBC News, Kabul
11 February 2014
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26121732

Who are the anti-vaxxers?
by Paige Winfield Cunningham
March 02, 2015 05:00 AM
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/who-are-the-anti-vaxxers

The 5 Most Common Anti-Vaccine Arguments
With responses from a family doctor.
Matthew Loftus, MDMay 5, 2015
https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2015/may/5-most-common-anti-vaccine-arguments.html

Texas megachurch run by vaccine-denying preacher battles measles outbreak which has contaminated 21 congregation members
• TV evangelist Kenneth Copeland is an advocate of faith healing and has talked of his belief in the vaccine-autism link
• The Eagle Mountain International Church in Texas has been infected by an outbreak of measles
• Those infected range in age from 4-months to 44-years-old
• The majority of those who were infected had never been vaccinated

Solving America’s Opioid Crisis

In a recent Press Conference, USAG Jeff Sessions said POS45 “asked her [Kellyanne Conway] to coordinate and lead the [opioid crisis response] effort from the White House,” saying she was “exceedingly talented,” noting a minor DEA Field Office reorganization was underway.
ref: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-sessions-and-acting-dea-administrator-patterson-announce-new-tools-address-0

As a licensed Healthcare Professional with immense interest in Public Health and related Public Policy, I have followed the aggressive increase in this epidemic for many years. And, I remain highly negatively critical of the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and Obama administrations for chronic, abject failure to stop it, and of the Trump administration’s ongoing failure to effectively utilize American diplomacy to stop it.

Here’s why.

To be clear, full understanding of this matter requires understanding the complex nature of ALL interrelated & intersecting measures, including history & background. This matter also directly includes International Terrorism.

For many years, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC) has tracked the world’s predominant grower of opium poppy, which is used to make illicit narcotics – NOT prescription medications. (I specifically differentiate between the words “drugs” to describe illicit substances, and “medicine” to describe prescription treatments.)

Afghanistan remains the world’s greatest

#ALpolitics Remains FULL of… #Irony. Yeah… that’s it – irony. And #Hypocrisy.

Brinson and attorney Jerome Teel of Jackson, TN, wrote “Redeem the Vote, A Political Revolution,” which contains firsthand stories of Brinson’s behind-the-scenes work in Washington and Montgomery politics. He and wife Pam worked with contemporary Christian entertainers to motivate young evangelicals to register to vote and turn out for the 2004 presidential election. He says their work contributed to Republican George Bush’s re-election and prompted Democrats nationally and in Alabama to start seeking his advice. He helped defeat former Christian Coalition powerhouse Ralph Reed in Georgia’s 2006 Republican primary for Lieutenant Governor by portraying Reed as a pariah who “was using the evangelical community to further his own personal ambitions and fortune.”

Apparently, Randy Brinson, a Montgomery Gastroenterologist who also chairs the Christian Coalition of Alabama, will be another contender for evangelical votes for the U.S. Senate seat now occupied by corrupt Bentley appointee and former state Attorney General Luther Strange.

Which ironically also goes to show that Alabama politics is not only strange, but that the equally corrupt evangelical religious folks – much like the Taliban – still want to be all up in yo’ shit.

If they had their way, men and women would be

Is God an Abortionist?

The Bible never mentions abortion.

It doesn’t suggest it, nor does it even hint at it.

The Bible doesn’t forbid prostitution.

In fact, there are many things the Bible doesn’t even mention.

But it does forbid eating pork, shrimp, oysters, mussels, clams, cheeseburgers, wearing clothing made with cotton/polyester blended  fabric, that a man should marry his brother’s wife if the brother dies before impregnating her, and several hundred other nonsensical rules, regulations and laws – almost all of which were religiously based upon ignorance.

At the time the Bible was written (approximately 4000 BC/BCE), there was no understanding of Germ Theory (1864). No one understood Bernoulli’s Principle (1783). In fact Bernoulli wasn’t even born then. No one understood the physics and principles of lift, low pressure, high pressure, or how weather systems occurred. Even the beer and wine that was made then was thought to have been made magically – as if it were some kind of mystical gift from the gods, a god, or the God. They had no idea – were literally clueless – that it was through fermentation, because

Afghanistan Opium Poppy Production Increases 3d Consecutive Year

In their Utopian Ivory-Towered existence, the “Libertarian” response is to legalize it all, ensure purity standards, and tax it.

But then again, Libertarians oppose taxes.

They also oppose governmental regulation ensuring purity standards, along with uniform weights & measures, too.

How messed up could one political ideology be?

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April 15, 2013

Production of Opium by Afghans Is Up Again

By ROD NORDLAND

KABUL, Afghanistan — For the third year in a row, opium cultivation has increased across Afghanistan, erasing earlier drops stemming from a decade-long international and Afghan government effort to combat the drug trade, according to a United Nations report released on Monday.

The report’s findings raised concerns among international law enforcement officials that if the trend continued, opium would be the country’s major economic activity after foreign military forces depart in 2014, leading to the specter of what one official referred to as “the world’s first true narco-state.”

Afghanistan is already the world’s largest producer of opium, and last year

Suicide, Libertarianism, and Religion -or- Why “No man is an island.”

FACT:
Las Vegas has the highest metropolitan suicide rate in the U.S.

“I’ll add that there’s one more feature here, of Las Vegas, which I think bears mentioning. And that is what I kinda’ think of as a sort of “frontier culture” mentality among residents, and I think, even among visitors.

“That Las Vegas is this sort of place of place of total license. You know… its the ‘Wild West,’ it’s an open frontier for all kinds of immorality and exploration of vice, and… the entire self-branding of Las Vegas as this place where that is not only tolerated, but actually sanctioned.

“You know, the “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” kind of mentality – produces, I think, a kind of… sort of libertarian ethos of ‘go it alone, do it yourself.’ And help seeking in this sort of framework is perhaps not accepted or valorized the way it is other parts of the country.

“These kind of cultural arguments are always very hard to make. They always sound deeply unscientific. But, in a lot ways, I think that’s exactly where a lot of the explanatory power comes from… is in this understanding the culture and values underlying people’s behavioral sense.”

– Matt Wray, sociologist, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, and co-author of a 2008 paper entitled “Leaving Las Vegas: Exposure to Las Vegas and Risk of Suicide” / excerpted from Freakonomics Radio, episode #92 “Gambling With Your Life,” released April 27, 2011

Of late, attention has been increasingly given to the suicide rate of veterans returning home from the horrors of war in the Middle East, specifically, from their numerous extended tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While in retrospect, many acknowledge that