Far East Meets West?

SamuraiDave

SamuraiDave

Joined
Apr 6, 2001
Messages
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As I sit here waiting for my 5 loads of laundry to filter through the 1 working dryer in my apt. complex, I listen to the radio. Burma has established a dusk to dawn curfew due to the riseing tension, pardon, violence... towards the Muslum minority. The vast majority of the population is Buddist and yesterday destroyed some 40 shops owned by Muslums yesterday.

As I listen, for the first time in my 20 year existance, I fear. Not for myself, but for everyone. I can now look back and feel a little of what was felt during the Cuban Missile Crisis. A nation in fear, I find it enlightening, interesting, and worrysome.

Maybe after 50 years of what one could call peace history will rear it's head and breath its plague of repitition. The Jews of WWII will be replaced by another group.

Tens of millions have died without notice before.

But will our instant access of information...and that terrible yet awsome weapon called 'the media', enable us to actually 'share our wealth'? Will the pictures they bring us enable the lethargic minds of the masses to be convinced of a 'greater good'? For once will we do something good for mankind?

We have waited centuries for our 'technology to catch up with our humanity'.

How many of us would have never heard of HI without the use of the internet? And how many of us feel as if we are family? I feel as if I know you guys, and I feel even more conviction towards those I have met and hung out with at the convention.

So, I guess I am looking for a good sign about life. I guess I want to know all of your takes on the 'over all' situation?

Is the world getting better? Or will we never see the possibilties at the end of the tunnel?

(I think I have posted 60 posts tonight...I need to go work on a project of some sort...:o :D )
 
I find it especially sad that Buddhists were involved in needless violence. I suppose I would find that sad, even if I weren't a Buddhist...
 
What is in store for us over the next few years. The example you site is typical in some parts of the world - governments, not too stable to begin with, now faced with religious divisions sparked halfway around the world, and becoming excuses for avenging old hurts. The possibility that this thing could flash over and become world-wide seems ridiculous. Maybe.
 
There will be wars and rumors of wars......

I remember WWII and the fear that went with it. I guess I was too stupid or young to be afraid. I tried to enlist at age 8 and when the old grizzled recruiting Sgt. laughed and told me to come back in 10 years I went home and asked my Cherokee Grandmother if I could borrow the 1896 Winchester Carbine so I could fight when we were invaded.

I remember the Cuban Missile crisis. I was at Lambert field and out there on the tarmac were B-47s loaded for bear -- the Russian Bear. And, I went into the bar and had a couple of Jack Daniels' and water and said to myself, to hell with it.

I watched the WTC attack and could not distiguish the difference between what I was seeing and a disaster movie. It just wouldn't register. When it finally did my first impulse was great anger and then the second thought that came to me was if I were president the B-52s would be in the air to Afghanistan.

Where is this going? Sorry to say but I think it's going to be around for longer than I am and perhaps longer than any of us on this forum. It will not go away soon and may never go away --

UNLESS, everybody on the planet takes heed of the ancient spritial teachings of every major religion: Love is the answer, not hate.

Will that ever happen? There's the answer.
 
I fear that Howard is right when he said in another post, "We ain't seen nothing yet."

Bro's Uncle Bill and Walosi are just enough older than myself to have more memories of WW II than I do.
I remember standing in our front yard back when Peoria Ave was Hiway 11 and waving at all the soldiers going by in convoys of trucks.
I recall one time when I was downtown in Tulsa with my Mom and Aunt Violet and army trucks were going slowly around in the streets with loudspeakers calling out names of soldiers on leave and once seeing a man in uniform grab his wife or girlfriend and kiss her right there on the street and then jumping in the back of an army truck where he was handed a rifle.
And I remember seeing the newsreels in the movie theatres showing the atom bomb and its horrible mushroom cloud and feeling very afraid.
And I remember when we lived in Everrett Washington and I was in the 6th grade and we had atomic bomb drills where we were supposed to get under our desks and hoild our notebooks to the open side to protect us from flying glass and debris.
And I Pray today that this war doesn't come to that........
Not for me and Barb but for all the children in the world who may or may not be able to pick up the pieces........
 
I understand there's been a proposal for the resumption of underground nuclear testing. How little we have learned.
 
If you want something to ponder consider this: What happens if Saddam (or anybody else for that matter) is able to deliver a nuclear device to the US?
 
Uncle,
Does Lake Iraq ring a bell?
Just next door to that wonderful resort of Lake Afghanistan.
 
It's called Myanmar now, rather than Burma. It's a corrupt and repressive military dictatorship, and it's a good idea not to take at face value any "news" from there, including reports of religious or ethnic strife.

As far as the bigger picture goes, sure, the more you learn the scarier the situation looks. We're all in the process of learning to live with a new level of uncertainty and lack of control. But if we get paralyzed by germphobia, etc., then "they" have scored again.

I do think there's probably a great story waiting to be told about the work the FBI has done since 9/11. I wonder if we'll ever learn details of the attacks thwarted by the feds' quick roundup of hundreds of suspects, getting many off the streets and causing others to go on the run rather than take aim at us.
 
Dave, if one goes how many will follow? It may be Lake World!!!

Another consideration: How did the terrorists get here in the first place? This tells me very poor screening by US Embassies abroad and further poor work by the INS. And a lack of coordination between CIA, FBI, and other intelligence groups with both embassies and INS. If all these groups had done their job correctly the WTC would be standing today. I think we got too fat and lazy.
 
Bro I have to agree that we have become way too complacent.
And I still think it all goes back to the pursuit of the Almighty Dollar.
I heard just a tidbit in passing on the news a few days ago where the INS, FBI or maybe another federal agency had asked the airlines to send passenger lists ahead so the people coming in could be checked out or whatever they had in mind.
It wouldn't help find anyone that was known as wanted if that person was flying under an alias though.
Anyway I didn't catch the name of the one airline that refused to send the info on ahead.
I thought then, "If the bastards won't send the list then stop their rights to fly over American Airspace and that will stop the refusal!!!"
But if the federal agency that had the power to do such a thing would actually do it then the money wouldn't be coming in as usual.:barf: :rolleyes: :(

It was funny(strange)that was the only time I heard anything about the subject.
 
What I said last post was wrong...I know.
The 'pursuit of the Almighty Dollar' is right, lack of education leads to weak minds that are easily controlled and perversed into the sort of religious fanaticism which we have recently seen. But education takes money and phisiological needs. I think it comes back to what Uncle said...'the UN needs to get the right stuff to the right people'. You can't educate a starving child.
 
How can you educate those poor little girls when it's against the law and a sin in the eyes of the clergy to do so?
 
I'm going to give an answer that may or may not be at odds with my sworn philosophy of nonviolence if possible- but it sounds true.

You kill the clergy...

then you go right the hell ahead. Ignorance is the enemy. Hate is the enemy. Fear is the enemy. Jealousy- not aspiration!- is the enemy.

"How shall they know, who have not heard?" And, how can they hear, if they are held under by a brutal regime that hides behind its religion, and murders while proclaiming God's name? :mad:
 
Uncle,
for that I do not know. I guess they will have to adapt and survive. Hopefully logic will overcome fanaticism and starvation will not claim the culture.
 
"Another consideration: How did the terrorists get here in the first place? This tells me very poor screening by US Embassies abroad and further poor work by the INS."

Uncle, the unfortunate thing is that the current immigration policies IMO seen to be motivated by political correctness, not screening at all. The terrorists weren't white, (as bad as that sounds) so they probably weren't given the kind of trouble white foreigners are. I know from my Russian/Ukrainian friends, as well as from people in the State Dept, that ethnic groups with Political Action groups already in the US get preferential treatment.

The INS has a quota for people allowed into the country per year, and they don't want to cause trouble by not allowing ethnic minorities into the US. It's sad, but may have some input on the reasons why these people got into this country.
 
Spectre, i agree. As bad as it sounds to say that, in Afghanistan it is true. I relate it to the rape of Africa, made possible by the "spread" (maybe epidemic of forced) christianity. When i think about what happened to those people, how the white missionaries with their heads full of damn misinterpretations it makes me sick. The funny thing is, im an atheist, so most people would assume that i dont care about how religion is interepreted, but i cannot stand to see something that is at its core a good thing perverted to the point where it becomes a spearhead for evil. It makes me sick to think that these so called deeply religious Muslims have perverted the Quran and the religion of Islam to such a point, and i honestly believe that the true solution is their "dissapearance." just a teenagers view on the situation...

Quad
 
Spectre, i agree. As bad as it sounds to say that, in Afghanistan it is true. I relate it to the rape of Africa, made possible by the "spread" (maybe epidemic of forced) christianity. When i think about what happened to those people, how the white missionaries with their heads full of damn misinterpretations it makes me sick. The funny thing is, im an atheist, so most people would assume that i dont care about how religion is interepreted, but i cannot stand to see something that is at its core a good thing perverted to the point where it becomes a spearhead for evil. It makes me sick to think that these so called deeply religious Muslims have perverted the Quran and the religion of Islam to such a point, and i honestly believe that the true solution is their "dissapearance." just a teenagers view on the situation...

Quad
 
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