That was not my first post. My first post was the one signed by Ache (the one that started the "please do something" thread). As I've explained before, someone (Ache) posted an e-mail in this forum that I had sent to my American friends from my Yahoo address. Then someone from this forum e-mailed me telling me about it. When I came and saw Rwwff's horrendous response to Ache's post, I posted my "first" post.
I entered this forum with a firm belief that the most Americans were decent and compassionate and that the real problem was that they were not aware of what was really happening in Lebanon, due to media bias. After seeing the responses of many posters here, I'm hating the American government and those Americans with psychopatic tendencies (many of which loom in this forum) in ways that I never did before.

Do you know in how many posts you've said things like "oh, I was wrong..." or just decided not to respond because you had no valid response? Are you backing up your opinions in all those posts too?

It is certainly easier to negotiate with barbaric white-skinned fascists who are ruled by dumbasses who think war is the solution to all political issues, and who believe that God Himself asked them to fight wars

And while our oil runs low, your people are still the people that depend the most on oil in this world. I'm not an expert in the topic, but isn't that a main issue with Peak Oil? Not to mention that you guys are among the best producers of CO2 in the world. Maybe that's why your hurricanes are getting so wild lately.
It seems we won't be starving alone. In fact, our societies do not depend on oil as much as yours. The "uncivilized world" is much better prepared to face an oil crisis. Tons of people in the Third World live of their own crops, for instance. The majority of the Third World is used to living in poverty with very basic means and eating very small portions of food. You guys, on the other hand, are used to living all pampered, driving your cars even when you just need to go to the corner, and overeating to cope with stress. I wonder who will survive longer.

Excellent! Surrender to your hate -embrace it! -and know the power of the dark side.
You're coming along nicely, Miki. As is the Middle East.

The ME is the basis of your existence. You depend on their oil for everything you do, and you're doing very little to reduce your dependance. The ones coming along nicely are you.
Instead of fighting so many stupid wars to steal the resources of other nations, you should invest on educating your people about alternative sources of energy and begin transitioning to a more susteinable energy model. That would be the honourable and smart thing to do. But you prefer the dumb bully's way of doing things. And it is backfiring at you as the terrorists you created with your war crimes (many of which you trained and funded yourselves) are coming back to haunt you. You started with one problem: oil; now you have three problems: oil, war, and terrorism. But hey, you're the most democratic, righteous, modern, civilized, and progressive nation of the world.
As for hate, there's a big gap between belief and action. Unlike you, I do have a conscience and I do feel for others. If I was to see Specop or Oil4you or even you suffering, I'd help you without thinking twice. It would be an instinctual reaction. That's what any normal human being with a minimum of compassion would do.

The other day I saw a report on CNN where a Lebanese civilian was saying that he saw an IDF soldier badly injured, screaming, probably agonizing. And he pointed to the place where he saw him. One would think that after everything that happened, I'd feel nothing when seeing that, but the fact is that I felt very sad. I thought about the things that might have crossed his mind, dieing in another country away from his family, and being so young, his life being thrown to the garbage for nothing.
It hurts to feel and to have a conscience, but it is what makes us human and what keeps us alive. People that avoid feeling are like plants. They live but are not alive. They lack the passion without which life is empty and meaningless.

i dont have the time to enter 25 posts a day like you. if you havent noticed i post in the planning for the future threads when ever i can give some good advice. im the one actually trying to help people here.
not you. your just trying to sway an opinion
if i had the time and the will your arguments would be crushed as soon as they popped up. foturnately i have better things to do.

at least i can admit when im wrong which you have not done yet.

why dont you try telling me something i dont fuckin know miki. the fact stands the first post you personally typed her you came out swinging. your lies and insults have not stopped from day one.

you actually expext us to believe that after all the broad gerneralization you have made towards us. we are not fooled for a second.

fact: the united states is the bread basket of the world
fact: lebanon is in a desert
fact: the united states has a population density of 31 people per square kilometer
fact: lebanon has a population density of 344 people per square kilometer and is the 26 most densly populated country on the planet.

have fun watching your people starve to death. since meeting you i sure know i will.

if you actually studied instead of giving an ignorant (wow thats first time ive said that- how bout you miki - can you even count the times you have said that) response, you would realise its just not that fuckin easy.

One quote from Carter is so telling:
It astonished me to see a televangelist justifying all the deaths after the invasion of 2003. It was Dr. John Hagee as I recall. I watched this and thought to myself, how can he call himself a man of God, or a true follower of Jesus? In the very first days of the invasion, the bombing took likely ten civilians lives for every Baath supporter. I think I wll remember that period for the rest of my life as a gruesome display of power, blind, raging power. Remember Donald Rumsfeld talking about how humane and precise the bombing was? But, the pictures of children blown limb from limb proved otherwise.
It marked a sign of schizophrenia in America to me.

Miki, you're exagerating. We depend on the mideast to drive gigantic trucks, with four simultaneously running TV screens, and blasting A/C down to the mall to buy barbie dolls. We depend on the mid-east to spend hours burning gas, zipping around in circles on really fast, loud water born pests called jet skis.
Our domestic production is absolutely huge compared to what most countries can bring to bare.
That said, the powers that be, on both sides of the aisle, would rather blow up a bunch of people and infrastructure, rather than give up that jetski or huge, recreational truck.

It hurts more to visualize Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon with no more imported food. Combine yalls birthrates with termination of US and European grain exports so we can make ethanol and biodiesel.

While I really enjoyed reading posts from someone inside Lebanon over the course of the war, I don't know how anybody can spend so much time arguing with people who are turned on by "ordinance" and are convinced they are headed for a bright survialist future, surrounded by slaves.

If that's the future they are expecting, there's no way they are going to entertain notions such as war and violence not being the sole motivating factors in human civilization. Cooperation, innovation, adaptability and ingenuity don't parse. Those people have already given up and can't be convinced.

1-You'd have more time if the highway that you use to move anywhere is a huge traffic jam full of huge trucks. Or if you had spent the first 4 weeks in which you posted in the midst of a war zone and unable to sleep.
2-What a coincidence that every time you don't respond it is because I said something that ridiculed whatever you had said in your previous post. That suggests something other than lack of time to me.
3-Are all the bigot prejudiced posts also for help?

You just admitted the other day that it was your aim to sway opinion.

Bla, bla, bla. I still have to see you say something coherent and smart nwildman. Most of your posts are teenagerish, bigot, or chicken hawkish.
Some people that disagrree with me (eg, Rwwff) do have smart educated things to say, but you're not among them.

Oh, I sure have. But you have done it more often because you were wrong more often.

My first post was a response to Rwwff's cheering of Israel's slaughter of Lebanese children.

You can believe whatever you want. I don't care.

Lebanon is a Mediterranean country. We don't have 1 inch of desert.

Of course not: it is much easier to slaughter innocent civilians, isn't it?
You should follow the example of the Europeans: they have even less oil than you, but they focus on technological innovation and education; not on war and state-sponsored terrorism.

Right now you depend on the ME to maintain your pampered lifestyle, but in the long term it will be much more than that. Otherwise, why spend billions of dollars in resource wars? Just to stay pampered? I doubt it.

Agreed, but your side outweights the Arab states by far when it comes to resource wars and state-sponsored terrorism.


We don't just eat imported food. I don't know about Iran/Irak or even Syria, but Lebanon has some of the best fruit, veggies in the world, much tastier than American veggies/fruits. We don't import meat, eggs, or milk either.
We can do the Atkins diet for a while .

It is my impression that some of the posters (and probably many of the readers) in this forum have been brainwashed into thinking that war is the only solution to terrorism/resource scarcity/self-defense AND/OR that Muslims are a nation of bloodthirsty backward people that hate the West because of cultural/religious reasons, whose aim is to establish a Muslim caliphate in the world.
I was trying to present the view and the feelings of the Arab people, along with the facts of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In doing so, I was exposing the reasons that legitimize the existence of resistance guerrillas, as well as explaining why the deep roots of Al Qaeda et al's terrorism are American foreign policies, and how Muslim extremists are a minority that would lose most of their followers if Americans stopped their interventionist policies and state-sponsored terrorism in the ME that has resulted in the slaughter of millions of innocent Muslim civcilians in the last 25 years only.

I think I've presented enough sources of information and logical arguments for anyone who has the intention of being rational and making informed judgements/decisions to assess. Those who have the required education, intelligence, ethics, and open-mindness will take this information into consideration and decide for themselves.
I do not condone terrorism and I don't have any vested interests in this. I'm just a concerned Lebanese citizen who has witnessed the effects of Israeli/American terrorism first-hand and who has been exposed to the opinions of very diverse Muslim groups. As such, I understand the feelings of the Arab people and their motivations to do what they are doing. I also understand that Arabs and Muslims are for the most part beautiful people, capable of degrees of generosity that I never saw in other cultures (and I've actively interacted with a few cultures in my life).

I'll go back to my first post: I believe that American people are mostly decent people, but they have been brainwashed to believe that Arabs are their enemies and to be blind to the effects that American foreign policies have had in the ME. I hope I've helped to make a little difference in helping some Americans in this forum realize that there is much more to reality than what the mainstream media feeds them everyday.
That said, you're absolutely right. I'm already repeating myself and arguing with people whose morals/intelligence are not worth a minute of my time. Thanks for pointing that out to me. Not that I don't know it, but sometimes indignation gets the best of me.

I really wish I could agree with your last sentiment. Honestly. However, I think what we both know is a very pampered existence, is thought of by many Americans as barely acceptable. These Americans do vote, and they do fire politicians that do something that messes up the gravy train. So yes, the government, as directed by the people, is entirely willing to spend billions of dollars on resource wars so that Billy Joe can have her weekend JetSki adventures.
Another mistake I think you're making... America's long term production levels are likely to be much flatter than many of this board suspect. It is certainly true that if the MidEast ran out of oil, your typical American family wouldn't get to burn two to three thousand gallons of gasoline a year; but sheesh, is that really a bad result? If price and supply restrictions were to reduce American consumption to a thousand gallons of gasoline a year per family, is that bad or good? To me, that sounds like an objectively good thing.

I mean really, what sense is it to use a truck designed to haul a five ton tractor between corn fields, for the purpose of driving to the mall to buy a plastic barbie doll? I see absolutely huge trucks around here, being driven by women, who have never placed a single moderately icky thing in the bed of their pickup. What the!!!

I don't think I've ever disagreed with that statement. I'm largely unimpressed by the supposed difference between terrorism, resistance, and mass warfare.

Does Lebanon import livestock feed?
Problem is, it won't be for a "while". Once the ethanol and biodiesel plants consume the last of the grain exports, they will never be replaced. Even if people like me put another 20 acres in grain cultivation, it still will get eaten by cars, not people.
When dealing with the concerns of starvation, you have to count calories, calories being good things. Count the people, count the calories at 1800 cal / day / person. Add'em up for the year. Find your annual grain production, figure in about 3 cal / gram. Its either enough, or its not. I don't have access to a source for the info, so I can't tell you definitvely how bad it is.
ps: If you've ever investigated how American tomatos are delivered to market, you'd likely understand why cardboard tastes better.

To most people here in the US, what you have there, and what Greece also has a lot of, is desert. It might not be miles and miles of flowing sand dunes; but it is desert by any reasonable American English definition of the word.

But we don't have a single area that is dry and the only places where there is sand are the narrow shores along some beaches. Rainfall here is much higher than in Texas or Arizona or NM.
You asked if we import livestock feed. I'm not familiar with the way farming is done around here. I'll try to find out. That said, the hills around here are pretty green and the sheep/cows seem to feed on them just fine. It is also healthier than feeding them hormones .