[Gossamer's Scrapbook] The Ethereal Canyon I

[Verilian]

Thankyou, Jen. You say what we should all be thinking.

[Cailet]

I never thought about it that way. But you totally have a point. I wrote a scrap last night about 9/11. Hopefully it didn't piss you off as it was simply my growth of knowledge on the event.

I specifically remember last night during my hours of watching the stuff on tv, asking how many people died. Ian told me 3000. I said, in shock, "only 3000?" and the whole family looked like I just told them I was going to kill and eat them all.

So I am on the same page as you, though I'm not going to pretend that I know more than I do. I am sadly innocent to most of the goings on around the world.

-Jules

[Bolden Denusk]

All I can say is -thank you- Jen. I purposely ignore and didn't mention it or acknowledge it in any way shape or form. When it was mentioned briefly in chat, I simply left because I didn't want to hear it. Ignored the news online and tv and stayed in my house most of the day just to avoid the crap.
So again Jen, thank you from the bottom of my heart. That was even more than I ever want to say about the whole thing. Let's all just drop it.

[Tessa Poe]

I've always had to be careful about how I approach conversations about that day, mostly because there's a little bit of hypocrisy to the reaction. Don't misunderstand me, it was a horrendous act of terrorism and I have every sympathy with the victims of it, but at the same time...

Here in the UK we went through the 'Troubles' (such a very British way to term the violence) in Northern Ireland and in England for years and the IRA were funded by wealthy US citizens and even charity collections. I guess the fact that these attacks were going on while I was growing up, to the point where the IRA had the wherewithall to launch a mortar attack on 10 Downing Street, the seat of power in this country, sort of meant that I didn't scream and shout when the attacks happened and the towers came down. It's true it's unprecendented in terms of scale, but when you hear on the news that another bomb's gone off and killed x number of people at least once a month, or a bomb's been found and disarmed that could have killed x number of people, then you do get a little desensitised to it all.

Beyond that though, if we go further back there's the lovely links between the US government and the Taliban and even Al-Quaeda themselves, at least in the early days of them, where the US government was directly funding/training/supplying them to oppose the Russians. Hell if we go back as recently as 2007 there were allegations of the US government funding terrorists in Iran to destablise the regime there.

Now the UK's government isn't much better, we've been supplying arms to Libya and Gaddafi for years, as well as using facilities in Libya to side-step human rights and interrogation legislation designed to stop cruel and inhumane treatment, we were dealing with Saddam until the first Gulf War just like the US goverment of the time too...

I swear I had a point to all this somewhere.

I guess the point is simply that while what happened was a horrendous act of murder, just as you correctly termed it Goss, there has to be some understanding of the role that the Western Nations have played in all of this, and are possibly still playing. One of the wierdest conversations I had was with someone (who I won't name) who we met while we lived out in Saudi Arabia. She worked for the US embassy, we never found out what her official job title was, all I know is if she gave a US Marine an order he'd follow it. Anyway she came to visit here just when the Libya situation was just starting out and started telling us about a conversation she had with some colleagues. Said conversation was about where the oil was located within Libya, how close it was to where the rebels had started out and how easy it would have been to see to it that the rebels against Gadaffi were supplied with everything they'd have needed to take and hold the regions that were important i.e. that had the oil supply. It's true that this attitude didn't set the policy for the Libyan conflict this time around, but at the same time the people she was talking to apparently didn't disagree with her. There's always the potential that the next time something like this happens that's exactly what one government or another will do. When it comes down to it It's something that I've always got in mind while watching the mourning at the loss of life and celebrating the heroism of those who tried to minimise it, the roles our own governments have played in bringing us to this point.

[Cachet]

I agree wholly with you Jen. People need perspective, I have a unique one because of my fathers background. He was a special operations C-130 pilot for 10 years in the Air Force; his closest friends are still Delta Force and SEAL team operators or in “The Unit” as they call it. Now there are definitely things I know that I can’t even begin to explain why they make me tremendously mad. But I will first post a little something here. Tessa: I agree it is unfortunate that governments make senseless decisions that seem good then turn horribly wrong later. Half the reason the Afghanistan conflict even happened was because we promised them once they threw out Russia we would help them rebuild. And as Cold War politics continued well….the US government in all it’s wonderful foresight thought it would be a waste of money and time. That there would be no long term reward for it…and you wonder why the rest of the world laughs at our threats and promises. Only now can we look back and wonder what if we had helped them like we said we would? We need to remember what got us where we are, learn from the past and let it make us stronger. As the human race we can’t afford to continue making the same mistakes again and again and expect that everything will turn out ok. Governments need to learn from history. Another note People here in the US have NO CLUE what goes on in the rest of the world. Rawanda, Sierra Leone, RUF, IRA these words and places get lost or mistaken for the alphabet soup of government agencies when they are in fact much more than that. A good example of this is that a Christian group on my college campus came up with what they thought was a clever acronym for themselves. The RUF. Now if they had done just the smallest amount of research they may have discovered that the RUF is a wonderful out of control genocide group that only recently got disbanded in 2007. But they still committed atrocities that I can’t even mention here. I know only because I know someone who lived through it and evacuated Sierra Leone. The stories he tells belong in a twisted horror story. I have never been more depressed then when he told me the story of his wife and child. I won’t mention it here however; I don’t literally think I could bear to type it. Could you imagine the insensitivity if I created a Christian on campus group and called it the Kool Kristian Klub? Yeah that would be pretty insensitive wouldn't it? Jen: Again I agree with you. People need to educate themselves and no longer be mindless parrots. Labels should fit, you wouldn’t call the Holocaust a simple ‘tragedy’ would you? No it was a genocide. I believe that mis-labeling of things can sometimes be intentional; this worries me. But I believe another issue is that it can be from miss-education. Again labels may be harsh but they HAVE to be fitting. Otherwise they get skewed and lost in the shuffle of history. There are again many other outrageous events going on all around the world. You mentioned a good amount of them yourself Jen. And it’s almost laughable if it wasn’t tragic that many don’t even know a single name on that list except The Holocaust. Again this makes me livid because in perspective yes 9-11 was horrible. But it was a ONE DAY event. Can you imagine if happenings like that were going on daily…Like in I dunno…maybe Israel, or Rawanda? Can you IMAGINE if every day you had to be afraid for your life not knowing when or where your enemy would strike? Yes the US gets threatened, but we don’t have to worry about our enemy literally living right at our border with weapons of war ready to go, and a rhetoric that they want to wipe us off the face of the planet. Maybe I’m completely off topic or something there. But I know too many people that have seen or been in events that 9-11 only surprised me. But in a way it finally brought the US to the realization that stuff like this happens ALL OVER and every day for people all around the world.

[Gossamer]

. Its All In Context Chat... yes, another blog about chat. I often tune out chat even though I'm loitering. There's a lot of loiterers in chat, as it turns out, because as soon as something dumb happens I get an AIM and someone tells me to pay attention to it. I see the problem, and just shake my head and deal with it. But truthfully, that's not what this blog is about. I want to talk about links in chat and the people that randomly throw them up. I'm seriously starting to think its for attention because they somehow think that they aren't interesting enough or clever enough to pick a topic without flashing an image and then starting a conversation on it. Shouldn't it be enough to log in, say hi, see what the conversation is (if anything) and then say 'hey, have you guys heard about..." as an opener to a segway on something you actually want to talk about? Guess not, or at least that hasn't been the trend lately. Generally speaking, just talking to folks is interesting to me without having someone log on, flash an image, and then want everyone to talk about it. Guess what? Most people aren't link clicking anymore. Why? Because often we get a flood of disturbing images that just makes the person who flashed it look well... bad. My first thought is generally... "What the hell was this sick/weird/perv person goggling when they came across this image?" Yea. Now most of you don't care what I think, and I'm fine with that, but if I'm thinking odds are most everyone else is too to some extent. So you get a login, a pensive few minutes for the person involved to decide what to try to shock chat with, a link is then flashed, awkward silence ensues, then the perp logs off in retreat because it seems they weren't as funny, clever, or interestingly strange as they tried to make themselves out to be. It's gotten to the point where most people won't be bothered to even do a scrollover on a link to see what it is about because so many people feel the need to just log in and disrupt chat (even if its quiet) with random non-Miza related things. Grats. You've just made yourself look like an ass. Some of us have no trouble doing that all on our own without links involved. And yet, some people STILL don't get the fact that chatters, while accepting, are not pervasively weird or strange. In fact, I'm starting to suspect this is a bastardization of Dusk's move to break up any and all arguments in chat with cute pictures of puppies and kittes - which while horribly off topic was a brilliant move on her part designed to defuse anger and invoke the 'awwwwwwww' factor. Sorry guys. Its just hard to be as cool as Dusk, no matter how hard you try. So... Stop doing this. Seriously. .

[Phoenix]

Smile and Drool!

But on a more serious note, over your various chat blogs you have listed all the reasons as to why I barely every go in chat anymore. It is, frankly, too much work. There is too much to wade through, stupidity wise, and not enough topic that actually interests me.

So I agree 100% with that sentiment. I have always hated the linking of link's in chat. Not only is it annoying (Even though I have participated with my video above at times) but you also feel like you're half missing out on the conversation if you don't click the link. Not only do I not want to click on it 75% of the time, but I also don't want to talk about it.

[Verilian]

Seriously.. I love your blogs, Jen.

[Gossamer]

. Stop. Just Stop. Yes. I'm talking about you. Stop posting such interesting scraps that horribly distract me from getting anything seriously serious done on Mizahar. Its just unusually cruel and thoughtless to those that are actually waiting for posts, help desk tickets, pms etc from me. How can you be so thoughtless? I'm super cereal here folks! Secret : .

[Aidara]

I don't know if you're a South Park fan:

Secret :

If you're not....

Secret :

<33333333333333 Jules