Though I was born here my parents are from Afghanistan so this is pretty cool to hear an Afghan (Nikpai-bronze in taekwondo) win something. In a country thats one of the poorest and still decimated by war the likelihood of anything positive coming out of the country is pretty slim. Most kids dont know how to read, most families have 6+ kids its wild with the pathetic places they live in, and dads are working their asses off in an inflation driven country where 500,000 afghanis equals about 10 US dollars. education system is horrible as well so the future of many kids is destroyed after middle school basically..though it is improving....
What many perceive AFghanistan to be via the bigots of the American govt and media is so off. Occasionaly CNN has it right with the situation and reality of Afghanistan. Their hasnt been peace their since 1970 and my parents moved to the States in 1982 when the Russians invaded. One would expect I would have hatred towards Russia when they killed my parents brothers and sisters but thats now how I role or my fellow Afghans. Things happen for a reason which we dont have a control on. But most afghans blame themselves and put blame on America n Pakistan for giving them weapons which America has notably done in other parts of the world where civil war is present (lots of Africa nations) and in my case Afghanistan. At the end of the day my country has been destroyed and taking over by fundamentalists and a puppet government of the US (Karzai the puppet to Bush). Those two (fundy and a puppet gov't) just make the future of Afghanistan pretty hard to be successful.
But hope is never lost, especially when you have someone Like NikPai winning a medal in an environment thats comparable to garbage and sh**. If you can win a medal in an environment like NikPai did thats saying something about Afghans. All the nonsense and politics aside, Afghans are human beings like us and even if afghanistan doesnt produce 600 olympians like America, producing one in a country where stadiums used to be execution fields, land mines scattered all over the land its amazing to hear an afghan persevere...All people need is some hope, and hopefully Nikpai winning a medal will make hundreds of young Afghans want to participate in sports what not ..i really dont know the trickling effect it will have but maybe things could change, as i stated before all you can do is hope for the better....
with all the junk going on with the Taliban and AL Qaeda people seem to associate my country as terrorist country. Afghans like me would just laugh at that stupid stereotype. To those who dont know about what type of people AFghans are heres a short list of qualities majority have....
1) nice--yes we are
2) jokers--we make a joke out of everything, we could be playing golf , we would purposely hit the ball backwards or hit someone and make some stupid lie why it happened....
3) stubborn--one of the worst qualities, their could be instructions to fix something, we would do it our own way and majority of time F up and start cursing (I dont curse tho nor am I stubborn but I see it a lot, too funny)
4) love to sleep--after we eat we sleep, after we sleep we sleep....
5) like sex--we have so many kids its ludicrous--6.2 per family something like that--krazy indeed
6) simple people---materialism aint our motto but if we actually cared we are pretty fashionable
7) we are really peaceful--
8) we love sports---in loving sports we are also competitive and hate to lose...it could be scrabble, if we lose you'll see the letters all over the room and board split in half..(i know scrabble isnt a sport)
9) though lazy we are pretty smart...what holds us from being top notch is our laziness and we dont care mentality
-=-=-=-=-==-Poverty information via CBC news-==--=-=-=-=-==--=
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/08/20/f-afghan-analyze.html
Out of every 1,000 babies born in Afghanistan,--2 die before reaching their first birthday. A woman dies in pregnancy every 30 minutes. Overall life expectancy is estimated at just under 42.5 years.
Afghans scrape by on about $1,000 per year. That's an average. More than half of the population earns less than $2 a day.
Most of those statistics are an improvement from 2002, but there's a long way to go. The task of reconstruction isn't made any easier by the persistence of violence and insecurity.
While the per capita annual income of Afghans has gone up since 2002, nearly seven million people don't have enough food to meet minimum daily needs. That's about a quarter of the population.
The grim toll taken by malaria and tuberculosis has dropped considerably in the past six years, but Afghanistan is still beset by infectious and preventable diseases.
Perhaps most ominously of all, the opium trade has become far and away the most important economic activity in the country, worth more than $3 billion in 2007. That's about a third of the gross domestic product and a huge distortion of attempts to build a modern, legal, inclusive economy.
In all this misery, people long for peace and stability. It seems that it will be a future full of darkness, full of disappointment, full of tragedies and catastrophes. An entire generation has been sacrificed to war. The young innocent children know the word war before peace, the word weapon, before pen. Orphans are crying wanting their parents. Widows are crying wanting their husbands
%^%^%^%^&& FINAL THOUGHT $$$$$$@@@@@@
im just happy we are in the news for something good for a change...Imagine your country been in war for past 30 years, until you walk in someone elses shoe, keep it to yourself, what afghans have been dealing with is inhumane..all i can do is hope for the better and when i start making some dough i will definetley go there and spread some wealth ya dig.....if this is bias im sorry, im just used to the bias stories the American media puts out on Afghanistan....peace
Original Story:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con....
What many perceive AFghanistan to be via the bigots of the American govt and media is so off. Occasionaly CNN has it right with the situation and reality of Afghanistan. Their hasnt been peace their since 1970 and my parents moved to the States in 1982 when the Russians invaded. One would expect I would have hatred towards Russia when they killed my parents brothers and sisters but thats now how I role or my fellow Afghans. Things happen for a reason which we dont have a control on. But most afghans blame themselves and put blame on America n Pakistan for giving them weapons which America has notably done in other parts of the world where civil war is present (lots of Africa nations) and in my case Afghanistan. At the end of the day my country has been destroyed and taking over by fundamentalists and a puppet government of the US (Karzai the puppet to Bush). Those two (fundy and a puppet gov't) just make the future of Afghanistan pretty hard to be successful.
But hope is never lost, especially when you have someone Like NikPai winning a medal in an environment thats comparable to garbage and sh**. If you can win a medal in an environment like NikPai did thats saying something about Afghans. All the nonsense and politics aside, Afghans are human beings like us and even if afghanistan doesnt produce 600 olympians like America, producing one in a country where stadiums used to be execution fields, land mines scattered all over the land its amazing to hear an afghan persevere...All people need is some hope, and hopefully Nikpai winning a medal will make hundreds of young Afghans want to participate in sports what not ..i really dont know the trickling effect it will have but maybe things could change, as i stated before all you can do is hope for the better....
with all the junk going on with the Taliban and AL Qaeda people seem to associate my country as terrorist country. Afghans like me would just laugh at that stupid stereotype. To those who dont know about what type of people AFghans are heres a short list of qualities majority have....
1) nice--yes we are
2) jokers--we make a joke out of everything, we could be playing golf , we would purposely hit the ball backwards or hit someone and make some stupid lie why it happened....
3) stubborn--one of the worst qualities, their could be instructions to fix something, we would do it our own way and majority of time F up and start cursing (I dont curse tho nor am I stubborn but I see it a lot, too funny)
4) love to sleep--after we eat we sleep, after we sleep we sleep....
5) like sex--we have so many kids its ludicrous--6.2 per family something like that--krazy indeed
6) simple people---materialism aint our motto but if we actually cared we are pretty fashionable
7) we are really peaceful--
8) we love sports---in loving sports we are also competitive and hate to lose...it could be scrabble, if we lose you'll see the letters all over the room and board split in half..(i know scrabble isnt a sport)
9) though lazy we are pretty smart...what holds us from being top notch is our laziness and we dont care mentality
-=-=-=-=-==-Poverty information via CBC news-==--=-=-=-=-==--=
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/08/20/f-afghan-analyze.html
Out of every 1,000 babies born in Afghanistan,--2 die before reaching their first birthday. A woman dies in pregnancy every 30 minutes. Overall life expectancy is estimated at just under 42.5 years.
Afghans scrape by on about $1,000 per year. That's an average. More than half of the population earns less than $2 a day.
Most of those statistics are an improvement from 2002, but there's a long way to go. The task of reconstruction isn't made any easier by the persistence of violence and insecurity.
While the per capita annual income of Afghans has gone up since 2002, nearly seven million people don't have enough food to meet minimum daily needs. That's about a quarter of the population.
The grim toll taken by malaria and tuberculosis has dropped considerably in the past six years, but Afghanistan is still beset by infectious and preventable diseases.
Perhaps most ominously of all, the opium trade has become far and away the most important economic activity in the country, worth more than $3 billion in 2007. That's about a third of the gross domestic product and a huge distortion of attempts to build a modern, legal, inclusive economy.
In all this misery, people long for peace and stability. It seems that it will be a future full of darkness, full of disappointment, full of tragedies and catastrophes. An entire generation has been sacrificed to war. The young innocent children know the word war before peace, the word weapon, before pen. Orphans are crying wanting their parents. Widows are crying wanting their husbands
%^%^%^%^&& FINAL THOUGHT $$$$$$@@@@@@
im just happy we are in the news for something good for a change...Imagine your country been in war for past 30 years, until you walk in someone elses shoe, keep it to yourself, what afghans have been dealing with is inhumane..all i can do is hope for the better and when i start making some dough i will definetley go there and spread some wealth ya dig.....if this is bias im sorry, im just used to the bias stories the American media puts out on Afghanistan....peace
Original Story:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con....
