Rant forums

[stew.t.]

As in all forums I am a member of people find it so easy to express opinions that they hold to be true, right and not see the other persons view.

We as humans are naturally judgemental and you see this also in the way we jump to conclusions or just plain insult others without having the full story on a situation.

I thought the time of men in their Ivory Towers died out in the time of the
Romantic poets however it seems our ivory text windows have replaced those towers and we judge form an even higher and sanctimonious position.

I am not saying it is wrong to have an opinion but to be blinded by heresay, rumour and pride gets us nowhere when it comes to serious debate and improving English.

No country or nationality that holds a mirror up to itself will not see faults.
History teaches us nothing more than the fact ever country has black spots in its history and the fools continue to make the same mistakes over and over again.

The intenet gives us immediacy but also creates division and difference.
As a tip maybe re-read and send your text later.

If you react straight away we will never be able to build the bridges that these forums destroy.
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Please meet Stewart Tunncilff

[Jamie (K)]

I personally don't mind when other people post rants that offend me. Some of them are based on hearsay, but often that hearsay comes from distorted news in their own countries, or from situations in which anti-American media from the US are translated and distributed but the media refuting them are not. If I feel like responding, I do. If the rant bothers me, I just ignore it or read it and don't respond to it.

Keep in mind also that what one person thinks is an out-of-control rant can sound like a very thoughtful opinion to another, and on some forums there's a tendency to accept comments on one side of an issue -- whether responsible or slanderous -- but to condemn people for giving a contrary opinion from the other side.

Some people just make the remarks they do because of lack of information. This was the case once when a participant in these forums kept seeing his postings disappear. I, and the rest of us, were reading everything he had to say -- they weren't disappearing from our screens -- but he couldn't see what he wrote. Somehow he decided his posts had been deleted because of press censorship by the US government or something like that. It was a crazy idea, and a little insulting to me, but I can't blame him, because he didn't know any better and was doing his best to make sense out of the situation with incomplete information.

You have also prejudged me at times, Stew. Specifically, you assumed that I could not have some of the opinions I do if I had had experience of other countries, so you gave me very paternalistic advice that I should go abroad, without ever bothering to find out ask if I had lived abroad or not. You didn't check to find out that I'm a polyglot who regularly reads the press of many countries, has many foreign friends, and has lived in a different culture.

[Jan]

Hi,
I agree of course.
My question is.
Are we not a bit in charge to protect this God's Gift to live
in more or less normal countries??

Internet has broken boundaries but for how long.

I have read in newspapers that some governments have ordered special editions
of Yahoo, Google, to keep their censorship in tact.
If these big companies with democracy roots decided to do this job or not I don't know.

But If it is possible it means they are going to have it sooner or later.

Best Regards

Jan

[prezbucky]

The only way to really check a story is to do primary research -- you go there and look at it yourself.

Aside from that, given such conflicting views as we can find today, we all have to decide what we're going to believe.
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Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.