Okay, Epacris, I'll clarify my point. The photos depict torture to me. The documentation points to even worse torture. You're welcome to believe that the pictures depict schoolboy pranks.
I stand by what I said before. If I saw someone near and dear to me in a picture like that, I would get a gun and shoot them. Not "feel like" it, do it.
I agree. The image of the man standing on the box with the wires and the hood haunts me, and has been with me since I first saw it on Friday night. If that were my husband, I would be killing people. I told him that and he said, "But you're a pacifist". It's true, I am. "But you are against the death penalty." It's true, I am. Even thinking that I would be capable of killing somebody revolts me--I'm disgusted with myself, and yet I know without a doubt that if that were my husband, there would be blood in the streets.
That's my biggest fear. I'm sure we all know people in Iraq right now. Every day I wake up, I'm terrified that I'm going to hear that people I know online, people I went to school with, people who are just my age, have been killed in retaliation. Killed for crimes they didn't commit...
This topic fascinates me because I'm from Utah and living in L.A. now, and I've always been very, very aware that I live in a desert. One of my professors has been working on a book for the past 8 years about the San Gabriel river and the history of water rights in southern California. At first it seems like a dry (heh) topic, but in reality, it's rife with politics, double crossing, murder (!), back door deals, and pretty dire predictions for the future unless something changes.
I haven't had a chance to read any of it yet--just had a few discussions with him and heard a few lectures--but I think that when he publishes it, it might actually make people sit up and take notice. Or you know, not, because in the end it's just a history professor with a passion for the area and the insane need to inform people who aren't interested in hearing what he has to say.
He showed us Cadillac Desert in class one day and it is one of the most frightening documentaries I have ever seen. The most alarming is that this problem is fixable, to some extent, if people would just take simple water-efficient measures. But they continue to resist.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 3 |
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