It’s strange, you know? All my life I’ve been taught the story of Moses. He held aloft his rod and parted the red sea. The Israelites passed through dry shod and the Egyptians, seeing the path, started through as well.
We see it from Moses’s side for that’s how the Torah was written.
But I think now I have a better understanding from Pharoah’s perspective.
Massive wall of water on the right, a massive wall of water on the left. Pharoah, high upon his chariot, can only stand and watch as the walls collapse and the water comes rushing inward.
Holding your hands up won’t help. Running for cover won’t help.
Those two tidal waves are headed straight towards you and you know there’s not a thing you can do to stop from getting sucked under.
Water will flow where water does flow.
STOP, STOP … You’re all ripping my heart out with these arguments. Saddam is so misunderstood. He’s not some sort of ruthless dictator, in short, he’s just some sort of dic
Princhester, your point would have some relevance if I had in fact quoted a US government press release with complete credulity in its accuracy. You’ll note that I did no such thing.
I was referring to (pay attention now) PHOTOGRAPHS released by Al Jazeera, a Qatar-based news service that, despite its location in a nation that is helping the US, is not at all friendly to the coalition forces and furthermore was quoting claims made by the Iraqis, NOT by the US.
AS I said before, are you suggesting that Al Jazeera faked the photos on behalf of the US? Are you suggesting that Al Jazeera falsified their provenance? Jiminy, who’s the gullible one here?
Saddam puts people through plastic shredding machines/ Baghdad has been hit with a nuclear bomb. (UK and Pakistani news reports respectively). Depending on where you are in the world, the media promotes the position of the government, and you need to take it all with a grain of salt.
Our national broadcaster tonight was discussing the double standard being exhibited by the US re the televising of the interviews with the US prisoners of war. It was awful, heartbreaking viewing, but then the American news broadcast of Iraqi POWs behind barbed wire with hands on heads was not pleasant viewing either. Both were in breach of the Geneva convention. War is a terrible thing.
The pictures I saw on TV here of the 4 dead Americans were so bad you could barely tell they were people lying there, let alone how they were killed or who they were. You had to rely on the voiceover to tell you what had happened.
The people kept in Guantanamo Bay without charge, without access to lawyers and without trial for what, nearly a year now, are not exactly doing much for the US’s ability to claim a squeaky clean reputation either.
Yeah, count me in for someone who is sick of war threads, or at least the amount of them. Relevant debate is still interesting, but limiting the number of new threads would be hugely appreciated.
Amen. ‘Small-minded propagandist’ my foot. Pay some fucking attention, people. If advocating critical thinking is propaganda, then mark me down as one of the brainwashed.
Terribly sorry to have troubled you, Enderw24, with all this talk about frivolous crap like war and mass deaths and conquest and such. Feel free to change the channel back to the Simpsons or MTV or whatever else any time you like.
Or you could simply not click on the threads you’d rather not read. Silly wanker.
See, I have the feeling this is the running sentiment among many posters in this thread, and I just don’t get it. Where did I say that talking about the war is bad? Where did I say reading about the war is bad?
The only mention I made to anything even related to that was in my second sentence when I refered to the quantity of threads on the war. I stand by that statement, however it was merely thrown out there as a “gee whiz, there sure are a lot of threads on this subject” and it was NOT the main focus of my rant.
I think most of you just didn’t get what I was trying to say. Some did, and I’m glad for that, but many of you have been trying to hijack this thread into the exact direction I was ranting against and it astonishes me that my words could be that easily misinterpreted.
Maybe it’s my fault for not being more clear. But I also think that the very fact that it was so misinterpreted only tends to support my contention, which is this: the war has got everyone on edge. We’re all freaking out about something, whether it be people dying or failed leadership or hippie protestors blocking traffic or the economy in wartime.
Something, anything, is going to set a large group of you off. Whatever that may be, I can guarantee you, you’ll find a news article about it.
With news channels going 24 hours a day blaring the war nonstop, I guarantee you you’ll find some anchor who will say something inappropriate to piss you off.
With the vast resources of the internet, I guarantee you you’ll find some news article to piss you off.
They’re out there. You can find them. My point here is that not everything is pit-worthy. Not everything needs to piss you all off so much.
My journalism teacher once told me about a paper he worked on that had a policy of making the lead story a banner headline. 52 point font splashed across the page about a pig farmer who had an accident on the highway because that was the lead for one of the slower news days. That was in 1969 where that very same summer they had the same size headline for “man walks on the moon.” Were they both of the same importance?
When everything and everyone involved in this war pisses someone off and we all start bitching about it all, the really crucial things get lost in the shuffle.
I think you were being clear enough. I’m pretty much a newbie, having been here only since Dec. 2002. Here’s what I want to know: Was it ever different? I wasn’t here long before I recognized that there were rabid factions, the people in the middle, and the people who didn’t care or didn’t discuss “political” convictions (inside or outside the topic of politics). I know that’s generalizing, but that’s how it looks on the face of it, you know? It seems like there is a lot of good stuff here, but maybe I’ve been spoiled by smaller boards, there just seems to be so much shit to wade through. I often find myself using my ostrich hole here. Anyway, I hear you.
Well, when you’ve got 20,000+ members on a board, there can and will be all types. The great part about these boards is that there are experts of all kinds roaming about. You ask a question about anything, ANYTHING, and someone here will have at least a passing knowledge of it (or will have spent 40+ years doing it). So ignorance can be eradicated.
Then there are the…well, others. And the two categories aren’t mutally exclusive. You take the good with the bad.
You want to see partisan politics, you should have been here around November and December of 2000. Just thinking of every other thread being about Bush and Gore makes me weep with joy.
My thoughts as well. Not exactly the moral high ground, is it?