Buddha Insanity While People Dyi

While the USA was busy bombing Afghanistan, president Bush Jr. was simultaneously assuring the American people that we were helping the Afghan people with humanitarian aid (dropping food and supplies from the air). Unfortunately, as soon as the Taliban was removed from power, the Afghan people were abandoned and left at the mercy of tyrants and rapists. The Northern Alliance has a history as bad as the Taliban. There was not enough food. Many are starving and children there suffer from diseases which are easily curable. One out of four children die before reaching age five. Though The White House puts up a front that it cares by trying to appeal to the American people to donate more money, why are the FEDs so intrigued with rebuilding Iraq but not Afghanistan? Why $87,000,000,000 for Iraq, but peanuts for Afghanistan? What's going on here?

It's bad enough that the US government is wasting unbelievable amounts of money on nonsense (like the $600,000 spent to study the sex-habits of squirrels). Now you've got idiots who want to spend $60,000,000 to erect two humongous Buddha statues in Afghanistan (174 and 125 feet tall). Here's the article below. Has the world gone nuts?

Tall order for Afghan Buddhas
Researchers hope to rebuild statues razed by Taliban

By Naomi Koppel
Associated Press
Published November 13, 2003

GENEVA -- Swiss-based scientists have created a model of a huge Buddha statue destroyed by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and said Wednesday that they hope it will be used to rebuild the ancient figure.

The team used 30-year-old photographs and special software to build the three-dimensional model, which represents the larger of two standing Buddhas blown up by the hard-line Islamic group in March 2001.

International outcry followed the destruction of the giant Buddhas, which were chiseled into the cliff more than 1,500 years ago in Bamiyan Valley on the ancient Silk Road linking Europe and Central Asia.

The fundamentalist Taliban considered them "idolatrous" and against the tenets of Islam.

The larger Buddha was 174 feet high. The team is working on mapping the other statue, which was about 125 feet tall and stood about a half-mile away, said professor Armin Gruen, a member of the team based at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

"This is a beautiful area, and it could develop into a major tourist attraction if the Buddhas could be put back in place," Gruen said.

Rebuilding the Buddhas at their original location would cost around $30 million each, he said. Most likely, the re-creation would be made of concrete covered with plaster.

Gruen emphasized that money for the project should be independent of aid for rebuilding infrastructure in Afghanistan.

"We believe there are enough private people in the world that have strong ties to Buddhism who would be prepared to donate the money if they had the approval of UNESCO," he said.

UNESCO, the UN cultural organization, has been discussing what to do about the Buddhas. Some experts support rebuilding; others say they should be left as they are, because destruction is part of a country's cultural heritage. Gruen argues that reconstruction is an accepted practice, citing his native Germany after World War II.

"If you go to German cities nowadays, it's all reconstructed," he said. "Reconstruction in the Western world is quite normal, is going on everywhere. Why should it not be going on in Afghanistan as well?"

To build the model, Gruen's team used details from three photographs and programmed a milling machine to create a polyurethane image 200 times smaller than the original -- and accurate to within a half-inch.

The team is now working on a replica one-tenth of the original, or 171/2 feet high. That model should be completed by next spring and will go on display at the Kabul Museum, which is being rebuilt.

"We have to wait until there is at least a roof on the museum before putting in the Buddha," Gruen said.

Millions of people today are following the religion of a man that had no idea where he was going! Do you know where you are going when you die? Click here to find out.