Helvetin Pastori/Pastor of Hell

Translations of a Finnish blog post. Link here Well, i's happening. At the moment of writing this, the extremist group Taliban is besieging Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan and based on the most recent information is negotiating about transfer of power with the Afghani government. The whole situation feels absurd. The war in Afghanistan started in 2001, when I was only four years old. In other words, the war has been ongoing for most of my life. And when the US decides to withdraw it's troops from the country, it only takes few weeks for the Taliban to take over. I have to ask, what exactly did we achieve here?  The situation in Afghanistan is a perfect example of US foreign policy failures. The Taliban is a self created enemy: the fear of Communism during the Cold War drove the US to support local jihadists in their fight against the pro-Soviet government. But when the common enemy was defeated, the weapons were turned against the US. And once again, it's the average Afgh...

This is a translations of a blog post from my Finnish blog. Link here . A diplomatic dispute between China and Lithuania seems to be brewing. Lithuania recently announced plans to open a representative office in Taiwan, while Taiwan is opening it's own office in Lithuania. For those who don't know, these offices act as de facto embassies due to Taiwan's interesting place in international politics. On it's own this is nothing special. After all, Finland and Taiwan have a similar arrangement between them. It's the name of this representative office that is the problem: while Taiwan's representative office in Finland uses the name ”Taipei Representative Office”, the name for the office that is about to be opened in Lithuania uses the name "Taiwan". And since China considers Taiwan as it's own territory, even the name "Taiwan" in any official capacity is treated as a threat.  Now China has actually recalled their ambassador to Lithuania and ...