Posted on 02/21/2003 8:36:12 PM PST by Jeff Head
Stay Safe !
I had an experience, altho not as threatening as yours, that makes me always check for exits. Also, when in a hotel room, I always have the key, and pocket book, in one particular spot so I can grab it without thinking. I also have a lighter attached to my keys along with a whistle. It pays to be 'street smart' in all situations.
Couldn't the 'stiffness and stiltednes' be due to someone 'else' doing a 'proof-reading' translation?
I read ANOTHER first-hand account earlier, and it made very LITTLE sense on the first read. It took a while to 'figure out' where the sentences started and ended. Where one subject/one thought ended and ANOTHER started up.
.
It pays to be observant.
I saw that some were questioning the veracity of the account because the account is too well written.
I think that the author had a cool enough head to realise what was going on, get out, and then try to help others.
He probably also has the presence of mind to write down his story in a coherent fashion.
They are cheap and I have not had to change a battery on em yet. I have a red one for flying needs and a white one for general purpose needs. My pocket Surefire is an E-2 with the TID thingy and a lanyard bead on a piece of parachute 550 cord that hangs out of jeans pocket, I don't like the pocket clip on it.
The TID and the Photon LED button light is well worth the duckets !
.........Stay Safe !!
In life and materielly, it giives us the opportunity to rise to whatever level we aspire to and are willing to work hard and sacrifice for within the constraint of not violating the same right in others.
Spiritually, it allows us to choose freely to follow Him who gave the gift and thus find favor in His sight .. both now and in the hereafter.
This is the principle reason, in my estimation, why this nation ... this Republic, has been so blessed for so long.
I may be wrong about this individual's account (though I don;t think so) ... but I know I am not wrong about the lesson we can take from what happened there.
Very well said ... and very true. Those who are here illegally, particularly from those agressor regions of the globe, shjould be forthwith expelled in any case.
I pray we will do this sooner, rather than later.
Again, I am not attempting in any way to downplay the terrible tragedy, I just do not see that it is relevant to Free Republic nor 154 posts at the time of my post. If there is something I don't know, please enlighten me.
Our nation faces danger today that has increased dramatically. Some do not see it, others scoff at it, others think its part of the "show".
Like this tragedy, if we are not aware, observant, vigilant and willing to act wisely, resolutely and with dispatch to the rising danger, we may suffer terribly.
That's a straight forward as I can make it. The same analogy could be drawn in auto driving. If you are not alert to road and other driver conditions, and prepared to act accordingly ... you could easily be terribly injured or die.
Our nation needs those same qualities.
That's all.
Can't agree with you more!
Not a problem. Others have expressed similar thoughts as mine, i.e. What could have caused the people in the club to continue to stand around and watch as the place began to go up in flames??? I can't help but wonder what I would have done in the same situation; the lesson is well taken. If something looks amiss; do something! It's almost as if their fight or flight instinct wasn't in place. Alcohol???
I am rarely in a crowded environment, but the inferno in RI will force me to assess EVERY situation encountered EVERY day. Where are the doors/windows? How difficult will it be to get there in the event of a sudden event? Who is with me that may need my alertness to survive? I think of grandkids here and it makes me shudder. The term situational awareness is military in origin is it not? We would do well to remember, no?
Thanks for the post.
FGS
I posted the following on another thread recently, and I believe it (especially the bold type) applies here as well:
This nation was founded by decent, visionary men (yes men, and white men, to boot) whose goal was to establish a country whose people harbored a genuine, undying reverence for the God-given gifts of life and individual liberty. (Sometimes the simplest things are the most beautiful .... and the most difficult to retain. They are so easily taken for granted). In an effort to establish that vision, our Founders also drew up a blueprint for minimal government, whose role would be the same: to respect and defend life and individual liberty. Nothing more, and nothing less. Both within our borders and without.
Of course, over the past two-plus centuries, there have been many glaring exceptions to the life/liberty reverence (both in our government’s relation to us, and in its interference in other nations’ affairs .... the most recent being the inglorious period from 1992-2000). But, as a rule, America has continued to stand for those two noble concepts -- both here, and wherever else they have been threatened, and wherever we felt called to intervene in their defense. Greece under Truman, and Grenada under Reagan, are just two of dozens of examples that come to mind
There are (always have been, and always will be) people, and belief systems, in this world in which neither human life nor individual liberty are considered of significant worth. And it is with those people, and belief systems, that the fundamental vision of this nation has been at odds for more than two centuries. Communism and radical Islam are the two most provocative enemies that we have known in that regard in my lifetime. But there will always be forces at work which seek to destroy life and liberty for the sake of power/ideology/’religious doctrine’. Those forces go by different names, but under the façade lurks the same dark and devious heart that seeks to declare some men of less value than others.
Something that has troubled me for a long time now is the increasing movement in this country toward diminishing the value of both (life and liberty). And in continuing to allow that erosion of vision to happen, we are losing our once-unique and noble identity. (There are those who say the demeaning of life and liberty has always been a definitive part of this culture .... it was merely more covert in the past. I don’t agree.)
We need only look to events of last weekend to see the latest evidence of this erosion: In Washington DC, a man was gunned down in broad daylight at a gas station, while onlookers continued to passively pump their gas, pay for their purchase, and drive away. No one called 911 for many minutes, and the onlookers seemed completely disconnected from the violence that took place just a few feet away. They went on with their mundane activities as if an insect, rather than another human being, had been extinguished in front of their eyes.
In Chicago, twenty-one (or more) people were trampled to death by fellow party-ers when a large group of people were frightened by the existence of chemical mace in the room in which they were dancing/drinking. Human beings, believing that their own lives were more valuable than the lives of those unfortunate enough to be in front of them, stampeded over other human beings, crushing or suffocating them .... ending their lives in a heartbeat.
Yes, these are hideous exceptions to the rule, but they are becoming more prevalent exceptions with the passage of time .... and with the re-programming of our national conscience.
I live in an area of the country in which people, in large part, cling to the values and traditions of the nineteenth century. Some people ridicule this area as being ‘behind the times.’ Yet people in rural areas such as this are more closely aligned with the values and vision of our founders.
Take last Monday, for example. We experienced a 26”- 28” snowfall. My husband is under the weather just now, so I spent about four hours very early that morning attempting to shovel out our driveway and the road to the mailbox. When neighbors saw that I was alone in doing that, no less than five of them came over to help. Such behavior is not uncommon here. It is a way of life.
What concerns me is that we, as a nation, are falling away from serving as an example that other nations can emulate. Our people are becoming more and more like those in DC who continued pumping their gas, or those in Chicago who, in their self-serving panic, didn’t give a damn about the torturous death they were inflicting on others .... and less like my neighbors .... with each passing day.
There are many reasons for the decay (the gradual, but continual, removal of God from our public consciousness, parental permissiveness, the influence of television/entertainment, the welfare/entitlement state, the leftist curricula in public and higher education, etc.). But the most unfortunate outcome of that time when the less than noble finally outnumber the noble in this country will be that there will be no nation willing to stand as an example, or step in when stepping in to preserve life or liberty is necessary (and whether the stepping in is popular with the majority of mankind or not). Because the sad fact is that the majority of mankind, if given the choice, tends to choose the path of least resistance. It’s the nature of the beast. But, up until now (and with few exceptions), it has not been the nature of this republic.
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