Review of the decade 2000-2009 ... how was it for you ?

Just thought I'd start a thread to see how folks feel about the years 2000-2009, what it meant for ATS contributors, what events you think defined the decade & how you feel about the next decade to come.

I'd love to hear what your favourite ATS threads of this decade have been too, there's such a wealth of brilliant threads on ATS, many of which have passed the new members by.

For me the most amazing thing about this decade has been the internet itself, I remember viewing ATS for the first time on the slowest dial up connection known to man ... and I thought dial up was the greatest thing since sliced bread !! How times & expectations change ...

My favourite thread was the one Azchuck started about the stolen nuclear weapon from Barksdale Air Force Base ... that thread kept me riveted night after night !!

Barksdale Missile Number Six - The Stolen Nuclear Weapon

The "stolen" Presidential election of 2000 kept me glued to my tv set too ... couldn't understand how the US could have a system which let everything hang on some punched holes on a piece of card.

Anyhows ... how do you feel about the last ten years ??

Lets see, last ten years, hmmmm.......music went to hell, people are crazy, we give up more rights day after day, economy tanked, mass election fraud last election, same old same old race relations, more unsustainable spending, a President I am truely ashamed of, and a hint at the next 10 with more wars, more taxes, and even less freedoms.....yup, the last ten years sucked.

Originally posted by adifferentbreed
Lets see, last ten years, hmmmm.......music went to hell, people are crazy, we give up more rights day after day, economy tanked, mass election fraud last election, same old same old race relations, more unsustainable spending, a President I am truely ashamed of, and a hint at the next 10 with more wars, more taxes, and even less freedoms.....yup, the last ten years sucked.

Way to look on the bright side of things =)

2000-2009 was splendid

[edit on 12-12-2009 by '___'omino]

For the last 10 years i have lived under total surveillance. No move can i make or thought without my life being destroyed.

Life has absolutely sucked this decade, and i do not expect it to get any better.

reply to post by '___'omino
And the bright spots would be?

Was decent until about 06 when a shedevil nearly ruined my life and has definitely ruined my trust in people among other things. Since then, I've been buried under a mountain of debt and other problems. Not saying that's all her fault, but it was certainly a catalyst.

I'm confident 10 - 19 will be a much better decade for me, and hopefully the world.

Originally posted by adifferentbreed
reply to post by '___'omino

 

And the bright spots would be?

Do you ever have that thing called fun?
Or have enjoyable times with your family?
You obviously have no appreciation for the small things in life.
I don't know you but ATS may have gotten to you my friend.

Life is wonderful despite the people who try to make it awful.
Don't give up hope or be all depressed
Enjoy the ride

reply to post by '___'omino
Actually I live in paradise, sail quite often, lots of water sports, fish alot, and really enjoy living on this little island with my family.....the question was about ATS, not how my life is going.

reply to post by adifferentbreed


Oh boy did I misread -- don't mind me -backs away-

reply to post by Ulala

Review of the decade 2000-2009 ... how was it for you ?

In a few words, it sucked... and still does.

My world; the one I knew for a half a century, is being slowly but steadily replaced with one best described by George Orwell.

Privacy has been replaced with a 'concept' of privacy. Laws written to imitate protecting individual privacy, HIPPA as one example, did nothing but make your information hard to get for you, not the government or the corporate.

Economics have turned against the consumer, allowing private business to tag people like cattle via credit reports. Life is weighed by net value and not character. Even automobile insurance now openly rates drivers, not by driving record, but by credit ratings and then denies them an account which is now required by law in every state.

Privacy is also a joke if you come across a road-side check point where cops, presumably for your own good, will search you and your car without any reason but a tail light that was dim. You even are forced by law to wear seatbelts... though the danger is only to yourself... and the insurance industry, if you don't.

Voting is a joke as a new generation of electronic tallying machines are anything but secure but... even with this being proven to be so, government embraces them.

You can be arrested for questioning a police officer, asking for information on police records or speaking out in a public, city hall meeting.

Smokers, society's new lepers, are paying huge sums in taxes for programs that are presumably aimed at government sponsored children's services but that to date, not a single penny has gone to.

In some cases and locations, people growing a family garden have been cited for violating laws meant to protect the big corporate food producers.

Locally, a woman and her daughter were clapped in irons for having a yard sale without displaying a tax decal. A young girl was arrested in front of her class for possessing Midol. A boy was arrested for bringing a small, brass ornamental cannon to school for a history class.

You log on to the internet and every other website is trying to download spyware and malware that forces you to buy expensive and intrusive anti-spyware software that doesn't work half the time.

People drive like idiots, tailgating and then displaying life-threatening road rages. Others act like morons in public, forcing their taste in music on everyone within shouting distance.

Banks cheat customers by stacking in-coming debits before in-coming credits and then, charge inordinate sums for overdraft fees. These are the same banks, by the way, public money was applied to saving.

Hollywood and RIAA go out and arrest and persecute the same people who keep them in business, often dragging grandparents into court for a few songs their grandchildren found on the web.

Hackers burglarize computers without fear of prosecution, though there is no difference between a hacker and a burglar.

Heck, I can't even talk about certain things here at ATS because they fear retribution.

People today are thin-skinned, intolerant extremists. Anything from science to religion to politics, there is no room except for their own narrow views.

(Deep breath)

I could go on... but in reply to the OP question? I really hate the 21st century and also, I am happy to report that, at my age, I will not be around to see it get much worse.

You are welcome to it.

Edit: typos
Edit: More corrections




[edit on 12-12-2009 by redoubt]

[edit on 12-12-2009 by redoubt]

Personally it was a rollercoaster.... I've had fun and laughed and cried and everything in between.



But Globally and the bigger picture, It's been terrible.

Wars, Tsunamis, 9/11, rights being eroded, BNP and other racist parties gaining support, racial and religious tensions at breaking point, Hurricane Katrina, Global financial collapse,... and much more.


I'd say this is one of the worst decades ever.


Edit to add.

In fact Time Magazine agrees with me

www.time.com...





[edit on 12/12/09 by blupblup]

It was a reasonable ride so far. No complains. Looking at a river of time, there would be only a few other spots i would rather swim in. (Woa, almost drowned in my own over-complex analogy). As far as ATS - it is the only decade (actually only a part of decade) i had the honor of lurking here. So can't say if it changed for better or much better.
Next decade worries me much more then last one did, but maybe because i was young and stupid 10 years ago. And now only the later remains.
Anyway - wish all the best for all of you in the next and following decades.

This Decade is the Decade of Corporatocracy since throughout the 2000s Decade Multinational Corporations rules over Everyone Else Including Any Head of States. In the Year 2000 Those Corporations are Responsible of George W Bush's Unexpected and Premature Victory at 2000's USA Presidential Election because those Corporations are Secretly and Deliberately Cheats at Florida Recount by Manipulating The Votes Carefully, just before This Decade the American Corporations are completely unregulated Because of the Mass Deregulation and to make the matter even worse They Used both Bush and Obama as Their Puppets.

[edit on 13-12-2009 by masonicon]

[edit on 13-12-2009 by masonicon]

[edit on 13-12-2009 by masonicon]

I'm trying to think of a consistent trend to define the decade.

In the 1990's we watched an endless series of disaster movies where the most catastrophically destructive events took place. And they were great, huh ? Independence Day, Deep Impact, Armageddon etc etc ... and the last decade was one when some of these dire scenarios came to pass in real life.

Well, OK, not quite on a planetary level. But big enough to take notice, Sept 11th & the tsunami tidal wave event being two obvious examples for us westerners, middle easterters might view the Iraq war and Afghanistan as their own disasters I guess.

I went into the year 2000 imagining that nuclear power stations would malfunction, airplanes would drop out of the sky and a flock of birds would trigger a nuclear war, all thanks to the Y2K bug. Yeah, I confess, I had the Y2K tinned foods, dried foods, bathtubs, plastic bottles etc filled with freshwater ... normally stock up every Winter anyway in case of heavy snow but hey "a little extra won't do any harm" haha.

And weren't we all just a little bit disappointed when nothing went wrong ? It was almost like we sought disorder and chaos rather than the humdrum monotony of our own lives. And as the internet and mobile communications expanded, these real life tragedies became a spectator event with the explosion of 24 hour news channels. I think on Sept 11th I received the most number of text messages and emails ever, each one more terrifying than the next.

And chain emails of an apocalyptic nature seemed to flourish too. Who else remembers the one about Al Qaeda taking possession of 7 (or 8,9,10 ?) atomic bombs and threatening to devastate the USA ? "Don't travel to the USA" as the subject header, boy did that one do the rounds over this side of the Atlantic. Who else got a buzz on learning that Flight 587 had crashed in New York in Nov 2001 ? Or that a bomb had exploded on a London bus in 2005 ? Or the next victim of the Washington sniper, anthrax parcels and all the rest ? And off we fired the messages, the emails, posted out points of view on bulletin boards and websites, kidding ourselves that our opinions matter a jot.

People just love scaremongering. And they love talking about disaster, real or merely remotely possible. It was the decade of that, we see it on ATS every day whether it be SARS, bird flu or now swine flu. Yep, killer diseases, terrorist attacks or economic meltdown ... we simply love being scared. And you can argue that "the powers that be" wanted us to be scared, it suited their political agenda. Maybe.

In a sense the years 2000-2009 were just the ultimate disaster movie, writ large in all our lives. And didn't we just love it ? In a sick, never to be admitted kinda way ?

well it seems the 1st decade of the 21st Centuary has been a time of global peace and justice, , a time where humans now drive solar powered hover cars and live in harmony with their environment. we continue to reach for the stars colonising the Moon and Mars.

reply to post by Ulala



Review of the decade 2000-2009 ... how was it for you ?

Personally for me it wasn't to bad even though my small business tanked; I was forced to tackle Plan B, that has turned out to be fantastic.

But my friends and neighbors that have had their kids killed and maimed in a stupid, senseless war won't look back on this decade with any memories other than grief and sorrow.

How was the last decade for me? Hell. What I've witnessed in the last decade is society going completely insane. I watched men become feminized, liberties being destroyed, and apathy running rampant. I think the first decade of the 21st century gives us a preview of what's to come. If apathy is the foundation of evil, we're all screwed!

2000-2009, i felt like the proverbial frog put into a pot of cold water that has been slowly heating up. i'm aware of a slow slide downward by the U.S., that will mimic the slow slide downward of great britian. the decline in real wages, the decline of the middle class, the decline of simple courtesy toward your fellow man. the fact that trusting anything anymore can come with a heavy cost. the rise of fear, the rise of hyperbolic language, and the rise of poverty. the decline in critical thinking, logic, and reason. dreaming of a naked body, a million dollars, or a place in heaven.
silence replaced by noise, journeys replaced by flat screens, warm conversations replaced with cold e-mails. not enough time to finish work, and not enough time to continue play. a country where greed is good replacing we the people. a smart sincere black president who overcame obstacles all through his life, replacing a mediocre frat-boy white president who got a pass all through his life. the ascension of arrogance replacing the acts of humility. loss of faith in science replaced by a growing faith in myth. accepted truths by repetition, not by verification.

[edit on 14-12-2009 by jimmyx]

Originally posted by woodwardjnr
well it seems the 1st decade of the 21st Centuary has been a time of global peace and justice, , a time where humans now drive solar powered hover cars and live in harmony with their environment. we continue to reach for the stars colonising the Moon and Mars.

Too bad! many Advanced technologies that supposed to be available in this decade are still kept Underground until Present Day!

Originally posted by woodwardjnr
well it seems the 1st decade of the 21st Centuary has been a time of global peace and justice, , a time where humans now drive solar powered hover cars and live in harmony with their environment. we continue to reach for the stars colonising the Moon and Mars.

The World Richest People are Secretly Colonizing Moon And Mars in Present Day!