Katrina1211

ahaha, you are so full of s***. Ok, let me tell you how Israel occupied half of Lebanon. They went up to Beirut, which is in the central part of Lebanon and occupied half the city. Therefore, they occupied half of Lebanon. Bombing refugee camps in the outskirts of Zahle (which is a city in the central/eastern part of the country) is not bombing a bunch of PLO retards launching guerilla attacks against Israelis. how do I know this? well, I've stood on the ex-occupation line IN BEIRUT, and I've also seen the once refugee camp, which thanks to good old Israeli bombs (courtesy of our faithful American government) is now destroyed. Sabra and Shatila WERE in the thousands. Israeli sources will say it's in the 200 range (of course, dramatically reducing the number) and Palestinian sources will say it's 10,000 (of course, dramatically increasing the number). Most international organizations agree on about 3,000. You can't just say "s*** happens" about a massacre. Israeli troops GUARDED and SEARCHED the camp routinely, so you can't say they didn't keep arms out. The fact that Israeli soldiers stood by with their backs turned while Israelis massacred 3,000 INNOCENT civilians would piss me off. and don't give me any "they smuggled arms" bulls*** because the Israeli guards knew damn well those people were UNARMED. and what the hell are you talking about with conspiracy theories and Nasser? It's called the Suez Canal Crisis, and it's documented in every single damn source about the Middle East. stop trying to pass off anything I say as a "conspiracy theory" just because your precious fox news doesn't have the audacity to air something that's pro-arab. Nasser nationalized the Suez, the UK/French/Israelis (tripartite declaration, anyone?) invaded to take it back, and Nasser built up arms because he knew they were coming. no source about the middle east disputes this. it is not stupid to fight against a militarily superior enemy. simple as that. you're calling all the revolutions for independence stupid, then. not coming from Palestine/Israel in this situation isn't going to make you know "right from wrong," but it WILL let you see both sides of the story AS IT HAPPENS. Arabs don't deliver the palestinian side oh smart one, they present a highly perverted and wrong side because they have state controlled medias that want to distract their citizenry from domestic problems. Oh, ok. you're right. arab media doesn't deliver the palestinian view point. so please then, quote me an arabic media source (in arabic, of course) and tell me what view point they do say. oh wait...you can't? Shut up. I'm bashing your sources because they're full of s*** and obviously succeeded in brainwashing someone as ignorant and gullible as you into believing they were true. you spew out everything your precious fox news tells you.

oh wow sorianofan, your immense knowledge of world events that you've gained by watching msnbc one afternoon amazes me. and yes, Israel DID occupy half of Lebanon. They occupied Beirut for a number of years until the US finally forced them out. don't pretend like it never happened, because it did, and I can give you thousands of sources that back me up. And sure, if you wanna call Palestinian refugees "PLO members" then of course Israel was invading because of PLO raids. But flying your planes into central Lebanon and bombing entire refugee camps isn't senseless mass murder. I mean, I'm sure all the infants sleeping in their cribs were just "PLO members in the making." It sure is a good idea Israel took them out before they became potty trained and started launching attacks. Hey, ever heard of the Sabra and Shatila massacres? Israel guards in Lebanon guarded the exits and entrances to the camps one day while other guards went in and murdered almost every single person in the camp. that's over 3,000 people dead while Israeli guards just stood with their backs to the exits and pretended not to know what was going on. and oh yeah, those palestinians they killed didn't have any arms because the Israeli occupiers/guards to the refugee camps searched people and their homes constantly to make sure they were without weapons. but I mean, only 3,000 palestinians died. what in the world could those stupid palestinians be mad about? Egypt built up its arms because Nasser knew Israel was gonna invade him again and try to take back the Sinai and Suez. Israel (and the brits and french that backed it) were pissed that Nasser closed Port Eliat to them, so they conspired to take it back and oust Nasser. Egypt wouldn't have given two shits about building up arms unless a war against them was going to be started because the country was trying to focus on economic development, not provoking their neighbors. Curfews on cities are rarely lifted, and when they are, it's for a day, max. You can't just arrest "suspected" criminals. What evidence do you have against them? Nothing. You think 5 year old boys have bullets? HAHAHAHA. ok but seriously...they have slingshots and pebbles. Boy do I sure respect the 25 year old soldier who shoots the pre-K kid with a slingshot. how valiant. but hey, I mean, driving tanks throughout Palestinian settlements in the middle of the night and firing shots at anyone who just comes to their window isn't asking for trouble, is it? raping women at checkpoints and refusing passage to Palestinians isn't asking for trouble, is it? These people are treated like s*** in their homeland; I can see why they're mad. Arab nations want to wipe out every jew in the middle east? Yeah, that would explain why Jordan not only has a peace treaty and an Israeli embassy, but also a jewish population. yeah, those damn arabs just want to ethnic cleanse, ethnic cleanse, ethnic cleanse. Yeah, they have to because they HAVE to start a needless fight against a militarily superior enemy. That makes sense. wow, great point. you're effectively saying that anyone who is weaker than another force shouldn't even bother to fight them. Would Egypt be independent of British control had Nasser not kicked the Europeans out? Man, those unorganized colonial Americans were so stupid to fight against the "militarily superior" British. how stupid of them. and needless fight? what the hell are you on? these people feel like their country is being taken away from them and they're being kicked to the curb. but hey, i mean, i guess you're right. fighting for the existence of your country is needless. good call. I'm brainwashed? sure buddy. Seeing things FIRST HAND makes me brainwashed. whereas you the almighty master of world news who gets his info from fox news knows more about what the situation down there is. suuuure. deaths (like in nazi germany) are a reported number; events, situations, and rules aren't. you don't hear about half the s*** that really goes on. before you can claim to be "well-educated" about this situation, you have to be able to read Arabic newspapers to know BOTH sides of the story. No one else delivers the Palestinian side of the story. simple as that. you may have "rebutted" my points, but your responses sure as hell aren't historically accurate.

Ok, some of you have your heads up your asses. Let me first explain something to you about the whole Palestinian cause. They have nowhere to go. Arab countries claim to "support" them, but none of the countries are exactly thrilled about having Palestinian refugees living there. Israel (like it did in the Lebanese Civil War, Egypt, etc.) will invade, whining about Palestinian guerilla attacks and proceed to occupy it until someone kicks them out. Lebanon never invaded Israel. Israel invaded Lebanon claiming to go on "PLO raids" and then conveniently occupied half the country. Israel is the one that invaded Egypt first and tried to take the Suez and Sinai. Egypt responded. That aside, no one wants the Palestinians, and even in the places they do find refuge, they don't have many civil rights. They're treated like second class citizens everywhere. Israel has the right to defend itself? Of course it does. That said, Palestine has the right to defend itself, too. You see, when you look at a map that's not made in the U.S., you'll see a lot of maps actually recognize Palestine as a country. What right do Israelis have to go marching into people's homes, destroy them, and arrest or kill the family just because they think there might be Palestinian militants. How about imposing curfews for weeks on end? Confining people to their homes, arresting them or killing them if they leave the house? What right does Israel have to shoot at little boys with SLINGSHOTS? wow, how brave they must be to take down little boys with slingshots when they have tanks and AK-47s. You wanna know WHY the Palestinians have to bomb? Because the Americans give Israel so much military technology that the Palestinians can't do anything. What are you supposed to do when your enemy has an organized army, helicopters, etc.? Yeah, you make bombs out of scrap metal and throw rocks at their tanks. What else can you do? I don't support the killing of Israeli citizens (or any citizens, since it essentially does the same thing--slow down the peace process), but I can see WHY the Palestinians feel like they have to. To them, they're in war, and they don't have any other options. You think killing Hamas's spiritual leader is going to make things better? Yeah, great logic. That just infuriates people more and will make some turn and sacrifice themselves for the cause. way to go. One last thing: those of you who claim to "read Arab news sources" are full of bulls***. Al jazeera english or arabnews.com aren't considered real Arab news; they cut out most of the stuff they say on al-jazeera arabic. Reading an Arab news source in english is like reading a crummy english newspaper. You've gotta read the real Arabic to get the perspective. oh yeah, stop trying to pretend like you know the goddamn situation in the middle east? When was the last time you were in Israel or Palestine or Lebanon or any other Middle Eastern country? yeah, that's what I thought.

THANK YOU....to the 2 or so people in this thread who aren't making a big deal about the scream or whatever. Really, I don't see what everyone's making a fuss about. He was just trying to give a pep talk (although it failed horribly). I would hope that a speech like that doesn't turn voters away. Everyone just needs to relax a little bit and stop overanalyzing everything. I like Dean and Edwards the best. I despise Kerry more than you can imagine.

I'm pro-choice. What right does the gov't have to tell me what to do with my body? It's MY life that's going to be controlled for 9 (at the minimum...even if you were to give it up for adoption) months. Visits to the doctor and medical bills all add up. Plus, all the conservatives are saying "no" to abortion, but tell me, exactly, who's going to take care of all the babies that mothers don't want and couldn't abort? I don't see the gov't exactly jumping to their aid to help feed it. OR offer contraceptives to prevent it from occuring in the first place... In the cases we're talking about, an abortion is going to happen before the fetus fully develops. So it won't have a central nervous system, and it won't feel pain. People sometimes forget that an abortion is not a cakewalk. No woman is going to prance into an abortion clinic and then want to head for a night on the town afterwards. It's a painful, expensive (cash up front) procedure, and you've really got to NOT want a baby to abort it. Plus, if you make abortions illegal, I hope you're prepared to deal with all the "coathanger in the backstreets" procedures.

Considering I'll be flying to Lebanon the first week of January, this makes me pretty uneasy... I was thinking about this the other day. We haven't really had any "serious threats" recently, and it seems like we're "overdue" for one. Hope nothing happens...

Hair tests SUCK. they give way too many false positives, which for a private school which is testing EVERY student, is not fair. If a parent is doing a hair test, it can be retested, but when a school sees a positive, there's probably going to be no retest. I can see why they'd use hair tests since they can identify more types of drugs, but it's not a good plan. If you're going to test, do it urine-style. If you don't know how a hair test works: the drugs you use get on your hair follicles. Some drugs (opiates) lay down on the shaft and don't migrate. Others (cocaine, for one), move around on the follicle. So for people with long hair, the test can tell (with some drugs) when you used it and when you stopped, but since this is a boy's school, most people are going to have short hair. Thus, the part where they may have stopped using it will have been cut off, and the drug part will still be there. sucks for them. As for me, I don't really have an opinion on the whole thing. don't like it? go to a public school. or just stop the drugs. it'll save you a whole bunch of money.

Thanks for the advice, alkazoid! haha, I wish my dad felt the same way that you do (eg-thinking that medicine is the best field). I figure I'll probably end up in something not too surgical (eg-dermatology, etc.) or I'll be an OB/GYN (or maybe just a gyno....I'm not liking the whole "get called at 2 AM 5 times a week" thing). The malpractice insurance would be horrible for a GYN, but all the female gyns I know are always fully booked and making $130,000+. Women want female gynos, and it'd be a pretty easy ride for me. of course, the actual job itself isn't the grandest thing, but I'm sure it wouldn't be too bad. but, with all this HMO and insurance crap, who knows what the situation is going to be when I get to college? I think my dad is just wants what's "best" for me (he's a doctor), but all the other doctors I've talked to agree that medicine is a good choice. I figure, people are never going to stop getting sick and needing physicians, and the job is stable. I love English and literature, but I know there's no way I can make a good career out of that and still feel stable with my job. Plus, I've always done pretty well in science, anyways. meh.

argh, Pudgefan, you posted what I was going to say! Yeah, so ditto to Pudgefan. Tip: Remove the scrolling "GO [every single player on the team]". It's kinda annoying and distracting.

I know I want to go pre-med, but I don't know what school yet. Duke would be really exciting to go to. It'd be a reach for me, but I think I could get in if I keep up my grades. My GPA is a 3.7 right now, (but hopefully I'll pull it up), and I think my extracurriculars are OK (cross country, band, track). Duke is pretty expensive, though. I'm only a soph., so we'll see how my family's financial situation is then. Rice has a good program (automatic acceptance into Baylor Med.), but it's a little too close to home for me. My brother goes to Univ. Texas at Austin and loves it there. Those are my top 3 right now. To those of you who are still fresh./sophs: you've gotta keep up your grades. Banking on test scores is not going to work. A college is going to see that you're smart, but you're not motivated if your GPA doesn't match your amazing test scores.

Wow, this board has gotten so much...younger....since I was last here. I used to think everyone was 25-30, with a few 20 year olds. I'm 15.

Everyone always brings up how evil Saddam was and how we "freed the poor Iraqis" from him. Saddam and his sons had been torturing people for a long time...do you think the U.S. honestly cares about the innocent Kurds that he gassed? of course not. If they did, they would have stopped it a long time ago. Get real, people. There are plenty of murderous dictatorships in the world. Saddam was not the only one, and if you attack one to "free his people", then you put yourself in a position where you have to attack and "liberate" them all. Which the US (thankfully) has no intentions of doing. Where are these so-called "WMD" on which this war was waged on? If you'll remember way back, the primary goal (and selling point, if you will) of this war was that evil Iraq had WMD that they were aiming at the US. Freeing the people was never one of the main goals of this war until no WMD were found and the Bush administration found themselves scrambling for a reason to be in Iraq. Since when do we in the US have the right to draw the line and say "ok, it stops HERE."? We don't.

Well I'm in Texas now, but I'm probably going to the Middle East for a year this winter. So all of you have me beaten until then

Legalize it. Medicinally, at least. Having a mother who had a hell of a battle with cancer, marijuana was a blessing. Chemo would make her miserable, and pot would make it all better. of course, she had to be careful, as getting caught with it would be a disaster. As sick as she was, she was always afraid to use it because of what would happen if she got caught. 99% of the people just want to get high, but medicinal marijuana is very useful. Marijuana is also used to ease the symptoms of multiple sclerosis, glaucoma, epilepsy, and arthritis. Legalizing marijuana isn't going to do anything harmful. I'm not a smoker, but if I want to go out and smoke it, I'm going to. The fact that it's illegal isn't going to stop me. As a matter of fact, the idea that marijuana is illegal actually makes a lot of teens want to smoke it because they think they're being "cool" by being a rebel and breaking the law. Part of the thrill of it is doing something illegal. It's like alcohol, in a way. People like the feelings it gives them, but teen pot heads just like being "badasses" and doing illegal things. Legalizing it would take away the thrill, and maybe cut down on teen users. Like I said, adult users will do it regardless of whether or not it's legal.

I'm 15, and I work in an ice cream store. It's gross because I come home smelling like waffle cones.

from how it's phrased in the article, only those users who offer "substantial collections of MP3s for illegal sharing" will be targeted in the lawsuits, and then goes on to talk about how there's no "set number" of files you have to be sharing in order to be a potential target. with that said...are the users who don't share files (but still download) still targets? if everyone starts to change their settings to not share files, no one will have files available for download, and the whole p2p system crashes. am I right? couldn't you just change your options to not share files and still be OK?

yay for the hometown boys! ah, Das...my order is a bit switched from yours: -Biggio -Wagner -Dotel -Oswalt I guess I should put Bagwell on there, but something about him just...ugh...rubs me the wrong way. he's a jerk in real life...I hate his really low batting stance, too

don't stone me for saying this, but I seriously had no idea half the guys that play for us...played for us. it's not my fault! I haven't been able to watch a single Marlins game all season and a few clips from sportscenter is all I've seen recently. heh, no wasted effort, Durable Tear.

God bless those troops. I was in Jordan a few years ago, and it was complete hell. There were sandstorms all the time, and once the sun set, it was freezing cold. Of course, that's the least of their worries. May God keep them safe...this will be terrible.

Woo...it's been a long time since I've been here...anyway, that aside... I think that since we're basically at war, Bush will definitely be re-elected. I think a major point for Bush is to turn the economy around, and so far he's been unable to do it. One of the key factors in him getting re-elected is helping our hurting economy. Call my bluff here, but doesn't war help the economy? And, to my knowledge, this country has never voluntarily switched presidents during a war (heh, feel free to call me on that one if I'm wrong, too. I suck at history, but I'm pretty sure that's right.) I don't expect this time to be any different.