when i was a kid we had a kh with a basement and this guy joe winestien lived in it.
he has passed away i believe.
he was about 24 and used to hang around the young boys.
In one congregation I was with, their was a prominent pioneer “couple” - except both were female.
I would give them the benefit of the doubt as regards any sexual relationship, but in just about every other way, their relationship was openly lesbian. This was particularly noticeable when a young, good looking brother began paying court to the “female” partner of this pair (herself a very good looking young woman).
Did Butch chase him off in short order!
so picture this, you are suddenly withdrawing troops after 2 decades in a country and, well, its all gone to shit.. how do you ensure that your vulnerable citizens and allies can get out when the airport is surrounded and no one can get through?.
option 1: it's a trick question surely?
you don't get yourself into this mess in the first place - you withdraw the citizens first, not last, duh!.
While senior military figures were pocketing millions from ghost soldiers, real soldiers were going unpaid.
When will they ever learn!
in a scene reminiscent of the fall of saigon, the usa embassy staff have been evacuated by helicopter.. for a third time in asia ( a fourth, if you count usa supported chiang kai shek's defeat in mainland china) usa supported forces have been defeated.
more than 1 trillion dollars wasted and a huge deathtoll (both sides) afghanistan is back to where it started,.
will the taliban behave differently this time ?
At least by that stage in time, Britain had the sense not to attempt to occupy the country.
They had already learned the hard way to use more subtle methods to influence events in Afghanistan. Regrettably, those lessons were lost somewhere along the wayside, with the result being as Winston Churchill once noted: "Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
he seems to me to be the angriest and most ill-tempered of all the wt presidents, especially after his stint in prison and failed prophecies.. “regarding his misguided statements as to what we could expect in 1925, he [rutherford] once confessed to us at bethel, “i made an ass of myself.”” watchtower 1984 oct 1 p.24.
rutherford died at beth sarim on january 8, 1942, at the age of 72.
[220] cause of death was...carcinoma of the rectum..."[21] .
If living in luxury as a Christian with one's religion paying the money for such is wrong (and it might be wrong) then many of the teachings (ascribed to God) of the OT Bible are also wrong.
Given that the Old Testament is nothing more than a collection of Middle Eastern fairy tales (and that according to the people who wrote it, the Jews), this is hardly surprising!
in a scene reminiscent of the fall of saigon, the usa embassy staff have been evacuated by helicopter.. for a third time in asia ( a fourth, if you count usa supported chiang kai shek's defeat in mainland china) usa supported forces have been defeated.
more than 1 trillion dollars wasted and a huge deathtoll (both sides) afghanistan is back to where it started,.
will the taliban behave differently this time ?
"Losing face" is considered a very serious matter in Asia - including China.
in a scene reminiscent of the fall of saigon, the usa embassy staff have been evacuated by helicopter.. for a third time in asia ( a fourth, if you count usa supported chiang kai shek's defeat in mainland china) usa supported forces have been defeated.
more than 1 trillion dollars wasted and a huge deathtoll (both sides) afghanistan is back to where it started,.
will the taliban behave differently this time ?
then begin “relocating” the natives to concentration camps to harvest their organs…. Just like they have with the uyghurs
In which case, they too would join that long list of other powers who came a "gutser" by attempting to invade Afghanistan. That would be one way of diminishing the power and prestige of the People's Republic of China!
in a scene reminiscent of the fall of saigon, the usa embassy staff have been evacuated by helicopter.. for a third time in asia ( a fourth, if you count usa supported chiang kai shek's defeat in mainland china) usa supported forces have been defeated.
more than 1 trillion dollars wasted and a huge deathtoll (both sides) afghanistan is back to where it started,.
will the taliban behave differently this time ?
FTS,
I must indeed get hold of a copy of Barbara Tuchman's book.
In Prisoners of Hope, Michael Calvert made frequent mention of Joseph Stilwell. During the final phases of their 1944 campaign, the Chindits were actually placed under the command of Stilwell (or "Vinegar Joe", as he was commonly known as). It made for a rocky relationship - Stilwell as a renown Anglophobe, always concerned that the "Limeys" were going to "run away". However, Calvert's overall impression of Stilwell was that he was highly professional in his conduct, and that personal feelings did not influence in any way his judgement. (Stilwell also appreciated straight, honest language, which he certainly received from Calvert!).
The British 14th Army referred to themselves as "The Forgotten Army", and it would seem that the Burma - China theatre of operations is one of the lesser known stories of WWII.
in a scene reminiscent of the fall of saigon, the usa embassy staff have been evacuated by helicopter.. for a third time in asia ( a fourth, if you count usa supported chiang kai shek's defeat in mainland china) usa supported forces have been defeated.
more than 1 trillion dollars wasted and a huge deathtoll (both sides) afghanistan is back to where it started,.
will the taliban behave differently this time ?
FTS,
After WWII, one of Wingate's lieutenants, Michael Calvert, wrote a book (Prisoners of Hope), which described in detail the second (i.e. 1944) Chindit expedition into Burma. In this, he mentioned a captured Japanese document, containing an appreciation of the fighting qualities of their enemies.
In this, the Japanese listed as most effective the Chinese, second most effective the Australians, third most effective were the Americans, followed by the British, then the Gurkhas, and finally at last place the Indians. At least during the earlier phases of the war against Japan, it was Chinese forces who offered the most successful resistance against Japanese invasion.
Wingate arrived in Burma far too late to be able to influence events in 1941 - 42, and the British were bundled out of that colony with almost the same ease as they were defeated in Malaya and Singapore. A major - perhaps the major - achievement of his first (i.e. 1943) Chindit expedition was to demonstrate beyond any doubt that European soldiers could fight in the jungle just as well as anybody else could. (It also disrupted the Japanese plans for Burma for that year).
According to the Japanese themselves, the following year's Chindit expedition into Burma saved India from conquest. When debriefed after the war, the Japanese commander in chief for South East Asia admitted that he had had to commit one entire infantry division, plus a large part of another, just to pursue the Chindit forces who were harassing his rear areas. In his estimation, any one of those formations would have been sufficient to "swing the balance" at the two critical battles (Kohima and Imphal) then being fought at the gateway to India.
Wingate was a controversial character, variously described as "brilliant", "eccentric" and even straight out "mad". To a degree this is understandable - it was a time that called for thinking "outside of the box", and in the process, the army establishment was shown up as wanting.
Calvert's 1952 work Prisoners of Hope is an informative read about those times and events.
so, there's been a lot of talk on social media, blaming trump for the current crisis that began at the weekend.. it's a load of bullsh!t from deluded people who are desperate to blame anyone but joe biden, the idiot they voted for or at least wanted to win last november.. there is only one person, just one person, to blame: joe biden.. he has the heavy burden of making tough presidential decisions.. and after this debacle, it's reasonable to ask if he's up to making such decisions..
Whatever else may have happened, at a time like this, the following statement still does ring rather true:
However, as President John F. Kennedy ruefully noted after the Bay of Pigs failure in 1961, “victory has 100 fathers and defeat is an orphan”.
in a scene reminiscent of the fall of saigon, the usa embassy staff have been evacuated by helicopter.. for a third time in asia ( a fourth, if you count usa supported chiang kai shek's defeat in mainland china) usa supported forces have been defeated.
more than 1 trillion dollars wasted and a huge deathtoll (both sides) afghanistan is back to where it started,.
will the taliban behave differently this time ?
And back in the day, we all thought that their evacuation of Saigon was a complete b@ll$-Up!
