Posts by giovanni tiso
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Yes, obviously legalising the trade would go a long way. If only it was an idea as palatable politically as war.
-
Does he have any ideas on how all this might actually be achieved?
Well, we're spending trillions of dollars fighting a war, which is a pretty complicated business. Stopping the flow of arms and drugs in and out of a country is also complicated, but doesn't have to be any less feasible. At any rate I would hesitate to dismiss out of hand the idea that we should at least give it a crack given that he was there building hospitals before this latest war even started. Qualified opinions, and all that.
In fact excuse me for saying so but I find the way you caricature said opinion pretty galling.
-
Or that new Kiwi TV production of Mesure for Mesure?
I hear one of the Bard's best comedies is due to be played by a troupe of systems analysts in As You Like IT.
-
Somebody must have told them that the Bing image search was better. So they went ahead and copied it. Sigh.
-
Orly?
That's likely to be the "study" extensively discussed upthread, no? I still think it's ludicrous myself.
-
Funny you should say that - there's going to be a craft market along those very lines (well, smaller for one thing) at the Paraparaumu memorial hall next Saturday (August 14), from 10am to 2pm. Not that we're involved in it or anything.
-
Which is perfectly understandable, and I understand the fury of their rhetoric, but it's hard to see how it might be achieved.
Get the troops out, stop buying the heroin from the Taliban, stop selling arms to the Taliban, strenghten Emergency and use their model of intervention to build infrastructure, support all pro-democracy, pro-civil rights organisations inside and outside of Afghanistan. Which is not my idea - it's Gino Strada's.
-
They can shout as loud as they want, I applaud them - the issue remains that strategic decisions concerning the war in Afghanistan, which are public documents available to us without the need for Wikileaks to do a thing, tell us that the reason we are in Afghanistan, as of right now, is because we're afraid that if we leave it will destabilise Pakistan. It's got bugger all to do with the women.
-
No, but do you think the UNDP has no place in commenting on military strategies, or the role of reconstruction forces in Afghanistan? Whether anyone will listen, is another matter.
Well, no, it's exactly the matter. Anybody can comment, but if it doesn't make any difference then what's the relevance?
-
But I'm trying to "be real" about what happens to Afghan women if "we" now just ship out.
The problem is that it's not at all clear. RAWA for one would like us to fuck right off, and I think they've earned the right to say so, although no doubt they don't represent all Afghan women. Nonetheless, I think it's something we all struggle with. But that "now" remains very problematic, and the absolute pragmatists could use being reminded of that more often. "Now" nicely obfuscates all the shit we made happen, including arming the bloody Taliban in the first place. It also puts the entire focus on the security and safety of the moment, versus a longer time-frame. Are women going to be better off next year if the NATO forces are still there? Maybe. What about in five years, when we will be most assuredly gone. Ten? Twenty? But of course nobody says that "now" it's an easy decision. Nor that turning away is the answer.
(Although to be very clear, withdrawing combat troops and turning away are in fact two very different propositions.)