[Cronos]

Sorry if I veered on the personal at times. I lived in Bahrain for years in the 80s and, while many Arabs are nice people -- just like anywhere else -- the ones outside Saudi Arabia all say the same "the Saudis cause these problems". It's important to understand why they say this and why you see pictures like this in the 70s in Afghanistan and Pakistan and they are such a contrast to today:

Afghanistan

or Pakistan

I knew a Moslem family whose mother and her mother had never worn a veil ever. Then when I met them again in the 2000s, the 60 year old mother was wearing a full burqa, covering her face. What happened here? The only thing was Saudi education. And I saw more and more of it -- in the gulf, in Pakistani and Indian peoples, in Indonesia, in France and England

The saud-wahabbi aim is to make Sunni Islam Wahabbi and then to slaughter everyone else -- that is their logic etc.

This is not rational, this is not like the US-Soviet impasse where one would not use nukes against the other for fear of retaliation. Pakistan happily says it does not agree with the no-first-use clause and will use nukes against India even if it is then wiped out. Why? Because it is the will of Allah.

Logical thinking does not work with this ilk

[DoughtyOne]

I get worked up. You get worked up. I have no problem with that. I appreciate your vantage point here. I leaned a lot from you. I’m glad to learn more about the region.

Keep sending notes.

[odds]

It’s a good reminder how things have so significantly changed in Pakistan and particularly Afghanistan, since the 1970s.

What happened in Lebanon before Mullahs took over in Iran, before there was any called hezbollah?

Who were the Taliban and how did they come to power, only to be bombed almost a decade later...

Why have the M.E. and N. Africa been transformed in just over 2 decades into pitholes??

Why has there been an exponential increase in refugees from the M.E. and N. Africa to the West in the last 13 yrs?

So many more questions unanswered.

Cronos, on a lighter nose.. um, note.. I remember some yrs ago we were talking about “arab bedouin nose” ... here is a demo of not-arab-bedouin-nose.. ehem Schnauze .. besides being “Sultans of Swing” :P

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0ffIJ7ZO4U