Bush Critics Aid Terrorism

Nah, I know little about Afghanistan! I kinda know how you feel though, I think ... I once worked for a year or two for a volunteers network that worked for Kosovar refugees in Albania, Macedonia, then in Kosovo itself too ... BUT ... what I did was, I created, then expanded the website.

Interesting stuff, getting everyone to post reports, replying to questions of aspiring volunteers, all the design stuff ... but they all got to be there, and I was at home in Holland. :-(

In the end I went down there twice, since as one of the first ones to get involved in the org I automatically ended up in the, eh - Steering Group? - and thus got to go to the half-yearly meetings. One was in Tirana, the other in Peja, Kosovo. :-)

Neat! Unfortunately Seattle to Karachi to Peshwar, then trek into Kabul ilegally was a bit more difficult than Netherlands to Kosovo.

Well ... I did end up in jail ;-)

(Story is somewhere down here - many other interesting stories from various A2K'ers on that thread as well.)

au 1929- Hobitbob doesn't share your idea that Western Civilization is superior because it is "politically incorrect" and, perhaps, even morally incorrect to think that our Western Civilization is Superior.

You see, au1929, People like Margaret Mead, a fuzzy brain, if there ever was one, went to Samoa and was tricked by smart Samoan girls to believe that the Samoans relished a type of "free love"

Only when further research was done was it discovered that the Samoan girls had pulled the wool over Margaret's head.

Hobobit would not tell you, au1929, that the Arabic Culture was, in its presentation of Arabic numerals, superior to Roman writing. That would be a "politically incorrect" judgement.

Hobobit probably never tried to write l.578, 697 using Roman Numerals.

Some cultures are superior to others. That's why the Japanese culture( quite technologically inferior in the eighteen century) borrowed quickly and liberally from the West.

Italgato
Knowing where Hobitbob's loyalties lay I fully expected his response. This is a free country and everyone is entitled to express their opinion. Right or wrong.

"au 1929- Hobitbob doesn't share your idea that Western Civilization is superior because it is "politically incorrect" and, perhaps, even morally incorrect to think that our Western Civilization is Superior."

I find this kind of comment neither helpful nor accurate. The attitude behind it encourages intellectual dishonesty. No educated person falls into the trap of judging one major culture "superior" to another. Those who value Western Civilization (in caps, yet!) so highly are some of its worst products: narrow-minded, politically motivated nationalists. It's fair to single out particular facets of a civilization -- oh, let's take condoning slavery or drowning female babies for economic reasons -- and conclude that there are moral failings in an individual "civilization." But for Ms. Italgato (above) on Main Street to conclude, smugly, that Ms. Italgato's Main Street home is the best and finest remains Ms. Italgato's fantasy!

Tartarin
What has Eastern {Moslem] society contributed to the betterment and knowledge of the world in the last, and I am being kind, 700 years. Western society with all it's faults is and has been far superior. It may be politically incorrect to state the obvious but that does not obscure the truth.