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Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 128
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, April 13, 2004 - 04:50 pm: | 
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There is unreality in the air--events in the Middle East seem headed for the flashpoint (not to mention the Far East) yet very few people I meet during the day talk about it.
In years to come one thing I will say is, "People went about their lives as though nothing special was happening. . ." |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 256
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, April 13, 2004 - 05:16 pm: |
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Maybe because people here are starting to realize that what you see in the news are the sensationalized exceptions to the rules, events that do not impact greatly on every day life - except where gas prices are concerned. I keep telling you, that you panic easily, Chris. |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 178
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, April 13, 2004 - 05:33 pm: |
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yes, Chrishayden, US imperialism, wealth and geographical distance from the middle east, asia, and europe promotes nationalistic arrogance; in fact this distance(until recently) has allowed its citizens to dwell in the mundanity of their everyday lives. Even though it may not impact them daily, what US citizens don't understand is that their wealth contributes to the exploitation of many countries. The ignorance of this country is historical.... |
Pierced
Newbie Poster
Username: Pierced
Post Number: 3
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, April 13, 2004 - 09:12 pm: |
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I agree with Chrishayden! A lot is happening and most people don't even talk about what's going on all around us.
Could be that folks just feel helpless to do or change anything - so why talk about it. This is the only rational conclusion I can come up with.
Surely, if people don't read a newspaper, watch the news on television or listen to it on radio, they have to know that: the Middle East situation is beginning to look more and more like Vietnam every day; jobs are being outsourced to "third world" countries; the word is that unemployment is down, but job creation is definitely not up, etc., etc., etc.
I mean, the atmosphere is so thick these days, you can almost know it by osmosis. I mean, the words to Marvin Gaye's song, "What's Going On", is front page news - TODAY!
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 258
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 - 12:44 am: |
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I repeat that the reason people are passively going about their day-to-day lives is because they apparently aren't being greatly affected by what's going on at home or abroad. Think about the cold war. It went on for over 20 years and never really intruded greatly on American life. The Vietnam war eventually generated protests, but it was not because it inconvenienced or deprived the average person. It was because people realized what an exercise in futility it was. Isolated shit happens but to millions and millions of Americans, there is no upheaval in their daily lives and probably won't be. Terrorism will never devastate this big country. |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 183
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 - 01:09 am: |
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cynique...y repeat so emphatically when folk already agree with you and have affirmed your points, my friend. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 261
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 - 01:21 am: |
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Hi, Yukio, I wasn't directing that post to you, babe. And it is so easy for people to come across in a way they don't intend to on this board. |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 184
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 - 03:30 am: |
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ok, bigsis! |
Akaivyleaf
Regular Poster
Username: Akaivyleaf
Post Number: 43
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 - 09:38 am: |
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Talk is cheap. What is my talking about it with people going to do to affect a change? I'm a doer more than a talker and right now I feel as if my hands are tied, I'm just a pawn in this international game of chess and sadly the pawns are getting aniliated daily.
I might be one of a rare few people who doesn't have a loved one serving in this ego power trip of our president and I'm thankful everyday for that. I feel for those who aren't as fortunate as I, because it hurts every time I hear on the news the human carnage that is building. I personally have lost site of the goal of this whole fiasco anyway and if Iraq is under a different "rule" what are we still doing there?
Enough already! But who is listening to those of us who cry the same plea? Talk is cheap-actions count unless and until I can talk personally with the person who is controlling the actions around here, I prefer to remain quiet. |
Abm
Veteran Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 64
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 - 10:47 am: |
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I probably shouldn’t go here...but, of course I will.
Oh, My Brother Chris, you compelled to consider the following:
* Americans read fewer than ONE BOOK PER YEAR...
* ...Which is largely why we are being being lead into oblivion by a megalomania presidential administration.
* There are TONS of weapon’s grade Soviet Union Uranium that has’t been accounted for.
* Any decent 3rd year MIT or CalTech Physics major with the right tools/materials can design/construct a nuclear bomb.
* We have incited +1 Billion Arab/Muslims throughout the World to fear/hate Americans.
* By labeling Iran and N. Korea to a part of an alleged "Axis of Evil" (which proves how illiterate we are as the world ‘Axis’ means there is some formal alliance between those nations when there is NONE), the US has effectively declared war on those nations.
* N. Korean has boldly defied the US’s and has overtly threaten to train its weapons (which are reputed to be capable of reaching LA, San Fransisco, Portland and Seattle) on the US.
* Iran either already has nukes. Or, because it is only stones-throw from Pakistan - which already has a history of surreptiously supply others with nukes)- can easily acquire them.
* The US has >10,000 miles of scantly guarded land boarders and coast lines.
* And there are already 5 - 10 (or more) million undocumented foreigners in the US.
* (Read the book or see the movie "The Sum of All Fears" by Tom Clancy. If things continue to move in their current tragectory, I would be SHOCKED if something of this sort doesn’t occur within 20 years.)
* Est. 50 - 100 million people throughout the World are infected with the AIDS virus. Most of them don’t know they have it or using in method of halting the disease or protecting others from it.
* The disparity between this Nation’s and the World’s wealthy and its poor is FAR greater than it has ever been before.
* Our society is addicted to fossil fuels in spite of irrefutable evidence of the havoc petroleum-based releases yield upon the environment.
* And 10,000’s of square miles of forrests are being obliterated annually throughout the world. This is is not only obliterating the World’s wildlife and ecology, it is also depleting the World’s natural supply of Oxygen, which we, of course, need to BREATHE.
So, Chris, to address the sentiment of your post, I suppose a generation from now, I would do the following: GASP! Gleefully cry. Tightly hug ALL those around me. And then exclaim how amazed I am there we are all alive.
Sure I sound like ‘Chicken Little’. So I welcome your worthy rebuttals of my pessimism. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 131
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 - 10:58 am: |
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Cynique:
You don't remember the drills when we were ducking under our desks in school in the event of a nuclear bomb? You don't remember all the people who were building bomb shelters? You don't remember the Cuban Missle Crisis or the point during the Yom Kippur War when Nixon put us almost face to face with the Soviet Union?
Your comments may indicate that most people just do the ostrich number when they see it getting heavy. |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 186
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 - 12:00 pm: |
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abm: my sentiments exactly...except for the cry part... |
Abm
Veteran Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 66
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 - 12:08 pm: |
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Why no tears, Yukio, I thought that you are the kind of guy who is deeply in touch with his 'femine side'. (HAHAHA! Sorry. I couldn't resist) |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 263
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 - 01:17 pm: |
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The things you mention Chris were just minor precutions and never amounted to any change or great deviation from the prevailing lifestyle. The Cuban Missle crisis lasted how long? 2 or 3 days.Nuclear weapon are actually a deterrent and a bluff. The Russians back then and nobody today is going to risk using them because retaliation is annihilation. And the only spoils of war would be desolation and radiation. |
Abm
Veteran Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 70
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 - 01:23 pm: |
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Yeah, Cynique. But now there are apparently millions of people in the Arab world who are being bred to kill themselves, and even people with whom they share religion, to exact their warped view of the 'will of GOD'. If such people get their mits on a few nukes, all of the Cold War calculations to which you appear to allude are obselete. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 134
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 - 01:24 pm: |
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You call a minor precaution having children ducking under desks for fear of atomic annihilation? I remember we weren't laughing when we did it. You think it was a big joke? You don't think in those three days people didn't think they were going to die? Read again Steven King's Danse Macabre, wherein he speaks of how they interrupted a film in his home town to tell of the launch of sputnik and the panic that ensued among the kids and townspeople.
Hindsight is 20/20, I can remember when Nixon gave that alert in '73 folks running around in panic shouting, "Nixon's going to get us all killed!"
Everything was a big joke during the Cold War and we were all walking around laughing about "ain't no flies on me"?
Sounds like a case of repressed memories to me! |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 264
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 - 01:32 pm: |
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These were panic attacks, Chris, isolated episodes that sporatically occurred over a period of 20+ years, Chris, and they did not drastically change the way people lived their day-to-day lives, which is what we are talking about. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 266
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 - 02:00 pm: |
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I question whether millions of people are being bred to kill themselves, ABM. Suicide squads are small militant cadres and are not made up of the citizenry at large. But if that is true, then they don't need any nuclear weapons. And I repeat it's not like a country can use nuclear weapons without horrible consequences. It is a self-defeating tactic. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 267
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 - 02:07 pm: |
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Incidentally, Chris, my recollections of the cold war "drills', were me and my school mates sitting cross-legged in a gynasium floor, singing songs. I also remember how all the people who were building bomb shelters were being made fun of. |
Abm
Veteran Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 71
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 - 02:19 pm: |
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Cynique,
No doubt you make some valid points. And the range of plausibility likely rest more on your side than not.
Yes, there probably aren't "millions" who would fling themselves into jaws of death for some trumpeted-up cause. But, when you think about it, all it takes is a few 100 or 1,000 to wreck worldwide havok.
And I agree suicide is by its very nature a "self-defeating tactic". But prior to 9/11, a lot of rational people might have theorize that it is "self-defeating" and, thus, implausible, for a rag-tag crew of zealots to fly planes into the WTC complex.
The entire global paradigm has changed. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 138
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 - 03:36 pm: |
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Cynique:
I forget that you grew up in Mayberry. Have they got talking motion pictures there yet? |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 269
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, April 14, 2004 - 04:25 pm: |
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If you think about it, Chris, you'll realize how silly the question you asked was. Wit I appreciate, inanity I dismiss. |
Troy
Veteran Poster
Username: Troy
Post Number: 61
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, April 15, 2004 - 07:35 pm: |
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Chris, "ignorance is bliss". Americans, in general, are arrogantly ignorant. People literally care far much more about who Trump will fire next on the Apprentice than any of the crap going on in the Middle East. |
Bookgirl
Veteran Poster
Username: Bookgirl
Post Number: 68
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, April 15, 2004 - 08:55 pm: |
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Sadly enough Troy; you're right.
Hey Cynique; I too remember sitting on the floor of the school gym singing songs. LOL And I grew up in North Philadelphia. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 273
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, April 15, 2004 - 11:36 pm: |
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Well, Troy, maybe Americans are just fatalistic. If things are as bad as Chris and others think they are, then there's really not a whole lot anybody can do but just go about their daily routines. Opting for calmness over panic is the sensible thing to do. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 274
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, April 15, 2004 - 11:39 pm: |
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I hear ya, Book girl. I live right outside of Chicago so I don't know what that "hood rat" Chris Hayden is talkin about. LOL |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 144
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, April 16, 2004 - 10:48 am: |
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Cynique:
Yes, I have lived in the hood
And as such have tasted the maggots of the Universe
But I was not corrupted
Because I knew I had to rise above it all
Or drown in my own mess |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 276
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, April 16, 2004 - 11:27 am: |
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Believe it or not, Chris, I used the "hood rat" label as a term of endearment rather one of derision. |
Abm
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 78
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, April 16, 2004 - 11:43 am: |
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Cynique,
I hate to appear sexist, but I 'think' only females from 'da hood' are called "hood rats". Or course, I hope I am wrong. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 281
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, April 16, 2004 - 01:15 pm: |
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I thought hood rat was an androgenous term. I dunno. Ask Chris. He's up on these things. |
Abm
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 81
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, April 16, 2004 - 01:38 pm: |
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I could be wrong, Cynique. It's just that the only people I have witnessed being referred to as "hood rats" were female. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 150
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, April 16, 2004 - 01:43 pm: |
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Cynique wins (and I know, to paraphrase Duke Ellington, that you love me madly, darling) ! It is a unisex term which can be applied to either male or female. Sometimes with regard to a female it connotes skanky behavior with gentlmen who are "ghetto", but it may carry derogatory implications, meanikng any person who exhibits "ghetto" tendencies, or it can be mildly positive, ie someone who is "down" with the hood, that is showing a firm, staunch and unswerving loyalty. I am so fresh fly and flava! Is Chris Hayden Hip-hop? |
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