[thechat] Syed Zeeshan Haider

[Luther, Ron]

Hi Tony,


Nice post!

I had also written and discarded a number of responses to Syed ... not out of any fear of retribution ... but mostly out of a concern for being misinterpreted.

{... and after all, it'd be bad for my rep if you read my response and said "God! What an flaming asshole!"}

[Yeah, yeah ... I know .... *Again!*]

;-)

Also, it's kinda tough to accurately explain how vendettas festering over 700 years conflict with and rankle our Western 'worship the moment' cultural perspective, or how our geographic isolation induces emotional distance from his all too real and all too _local_ problems ... in a few sentence post.

To try would be to sound overly callous ...

<self-censure>
[several amusing lines deleted here for sounding overly callous upon rereading]
</censure>

In a way, I kinda feel for the guy.  My guess is he's pretty young and lives in or close enough to the 'hood' that this stuff has an immediacy for him that maybe we can't directly relate to.  I can almost hear the frustration that things that are so upsetting and powerful for his experience elicit little or no reaction from his 'friend in the West'.  Nice friends, eh?

So how do you explain *nicely* that unless the regional geopolitical status quo is upset and we end up going to war or the region suddenly becomes "entertaining" that the vast unwashed western masses don't really give a damn about violence contained to the middle east?

Which has kept me kinda quiet on this front as well,


RonL.


-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Crockford [mailto:tony at boldfish.co.uk]

> How restrictive are we going to be about how and what people post
> to thechat?
>
> ...just wondering.


For me, thechat is about the lighter things in life.

I get pretty uncomfortable when the talk turns to nationalistic issues.

I have nothing to say, each line I type is erased in fear of retribution.

My deepest wish is that warring parties could resolve their differences on
an email list and settle back to humanitarian peace.

Yeah right.....