trapical

You only hear about the failures. Here's a short list of US interventions since WW2. World War II Korean Berlin Blockade, 1948 (not a shooting war, but it was the US military intervening with another country) Albania 1952 Korean War 1950 Vietnam 1960 Dominican Civil War 1965 Trinidadian Rebellion 1970 Mayaguez Incident: Cambodia 1975 Peace Village Incident 1976 Dominican Electoral Intervention 1978 Jonestown, Guyana 1978 US Ambassador: Afghanistan 1979 Strait of Hormuz Incident 1988 Libyan Fighters Incident 1989 US Invasion of Panama 1989 Persian Gulf War 1990-91 U.S. Occupation of Haiti 1994 Kosovo 1999 Afganistan 2001 Iraq 2003 Vietnam was a failure, but Korea was pretty much a success in a sense. North Korea was invading South Korea with the attempt to take it over by force, the US intervened and the final result was the South Korea remained free. Iraq on the other hand, we don't know if it is a success yet. A lot of people give the US crap like "the US military can't even beat a small country, they suck." or "Why are they still there anyway, they want to take it over". *sigh* People, it would have been hella easy for the US to go in, destroy Saddam's regime and leave. Thats whats 99.9% of countries do when they declare war. Hitler, Genghis Kahn, the Spartans, etc all take over the government and move on. Its quick, its easy, its the way war works. The United States however chooses to spend trillions of dollars and thousands of lives of its servicemen to build schools, train the police, repair the roads, build hospitals, and ensure the safety of the population. I really don't get all the hate on the US for "still being in Iraq". Would the world really prefer if we just left the place in chaos? Should we have been there in the first place, No. But now that we're there the US is doing the right thing, and at great expense. We have hundreds of thousands of troops fighting wars in the two countries... on either side of Iran. The current regime in Iran is the sole supplier of IEDs, RPG-7s, and other gear for the insurgencies in both counties. The current regime in Iran has been funding and supplying our only enemies in this war. If the Iran regime falls, yes that would be absurdly fantastic for the Iranians, but it would also be a HUGE victory for the United States and its War on Terror. Are the new protesters and their political figures pro-Western? Not exactly but they have been chanting "Obama give us our freedom" and "down with the dictador, we want democracy". This would be a nice change from the current regime which states "We will wipe Israel off the map" and "Iran should be a nuclear power". Lastly, this is a group of people trying to revolt against an oppressive and corrupt dictatorship, they want democracy. The United States consider's itself the "world's oldest (continuous) democracy" and thus its patriots and leaders are greatly interested in hearing about the spread of democracy by others. We have fought wars near and far, and if a democratic country gets invaded by a dictatorship, the United States will defend the democracy. We don't want to interfere in another people's revolution (Obama intelligently agrees with this thought) but we will stand on the sidelines and give them moral support and cross our fingers.

If anyone is interested here is a collection of direct twitter feeds from the remaining trusted sources. If anything happens, this is how the world will find out: http://tweetgrid.com/grid?l=9&q1=from:m ... ction&an=n Also, here is a 1st person account of what happens to protesters that are taken away. PG-13

It's fact, not theory. No, it's a theory. Just like the theory of evolution and the theory of gravity. Thats the beautiful thing about science, people are always free to challenge things. Theory of gravity...? Are you kidding? No, I'm not. Is the school system really this lax these days? Read about the scientific method someday. It is a law of gravity that if you drop an object here, it will fall to the ground, but it is Gravitational Theory that explains how and why this occurs. Math can express laws, religion has facts, and science is composed of theories. Global warming is a theory. It has some facts and research that support it, but it's a theory.

No, the people of 4chan are just getting their info from the same place I am, Fark.com, a site that is usually sort of like Reddit or digg, but with a little more of a loyal community. Fark.com's everyday business is to link to news articles from credible sources and discuss them. Well, with no major news sites covering this, the roles have been reversed. Over thirty thousand members of Fark have devoted extraordinary time and effort into sorting through the thousands of rumors and twitters and youtube videos and everything they find of info they post in the threads. CNN, NPR, NBC, and CBC correspondants then report the news on live TV... often quoting directly from Fark. This is quite insane, Fark is a site that links news articles and talks about them... not the other way around #-o Its truly outstanding, they match 4chan in terms of impact on this world event, but fark is 1/100th the size of 4chan. Latest Fark thread on this issue: Don't bother reading it all, every time you refresh the page another 40 posts appear. Once the thread hits 1500 posts they make a new thread. They are on thread number 15 right now...

This is nice to read, a Iranian on twitter: I've learned something today. Americans DO care about the world outside America.Their media just doesn't. Even if this revolution fails a lot of good has come out of it, we know Iran isn't all terrorists and a lot of them know we arent all bad either.

The army thing was a rumor, it seems the military has remained neutral, which is good. A lot of us are "used to" violence due to video games and movies, but the real thing is... jesus i have to words. The sound of the guns shooting down protesters, and knowing its not just special effects in some movie but its the real deal... Graphic content here, viwer discretion advised: video Night has fallen on Iran, and the Basij (Islamic police) are roaming, attacking passerbys at random. They have also surrounded dorms and waiting to storm them once again. The crackdown on telecommunications is starting to suffocate all of Iran. As of now: * GTalk and Skype are shut down * Gmail is shut down * Yahoo is shut down * AIM is shut down * Phone lines are down * Cellphones and SMS (texting) are shut down * HTTPS and other such protocols are down * Iranian ISPs have been shut down The only thing still open, and its only open due to a extremely dedicated effort by thousands of people on the Internet offering proxies and bypasses... is Twitter. The Iranian government is trying very hard to close down the Iranian connections to twitter and block all the proxies... but 4chan (yes that 4chan)has mounted an incredibly organized digital offensive against the internal communications departments in Iran and are for the most part, holding them off. It's truly amazing really, I can barely believe what I'm typing. Through twitter we hear scattered reports here and there, mostly from a half dozen incredibly brave students twittering by the names of PersianKiwi, IranRiggedElect, and others. These students go out in the streets, get information, confirm reports (often getting beaten on the way) and make it back to report on twitter through proxies. Then Fark.com, CNN, BBC, etc read the Twitter news and reports it in their broadcasts to millions. Its truly amazing what these kids are doing, and terrifying to read things like "I see government cars approaching my apartment, I'm cutting the power and hiding, we be back soon" ...and thats the last twitter they ever make :| They're aren't many twitters left still reporting, but the world owes a lot to the ones that are still there. EDIT* my prayers go out to PersianKewi, reports are filtering in that she was targeted by the secret police and is currently on the run... we lost another one...

It's fact, not theory. No, it's a theory. Just like the theory of evolution and the theory of gravity. Thats the beautiful thing about science, people are always free to challenge things.

4chan is a very unique entity, /b/ especially. /b/ is a force to be reconned with. Sure 90% of the stuff there is random crap and porn and such... but there the sheer amount of people there make /b/ pretty powerful. You do not want to get on their bad side. In the past year 4chan members have tracked down a pedophile, brought police to the door of a serial animal torturer, and changed the recording you hear when you call the chuch of Scientology to the theme song from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air \ They even had a hand in the recent events relating to the protests in Iran. As you may know, since all international press was expelled from the country, the entire world is getting its news from... Twitter of all places :? since all the Iranian students are updating their status to say whats going on. Places like CNN and the Pentagon literally have people just sitting in desks and reading these twitter posts all day long. Anyway, back on topic, some anarchists went to 4chan and suggested that a whole bunch of 4chan users should make twitter accounts and post false news updates to confuse the heck out of everyone and help the iranian goverment :wall: But 4chan, having some sense of dignity instead did the opposite. They quickly and effectively DDoS'ed Iranian government website's like the ones of the secret police =D>

Thats why this protest is important. Its the first time in 30 years that the people are trying to change Iran. Not just a "few" like you mention, yesterday there was a mass of rioters five miles long. So yes, Iran has been a global migrane, thats why this is important, the people of Iran are trying to change this. Unfortunatly scattered reports are coming in saying that the military HAS been mobilized by the goverment. If this rumor is true the "revolution" is over. Period. -.-

I love how you assume all of America is cold. I live in Wisconsin and its really freakan hot for this time of year. Weather fronts and high pressure systems are ever changing, its a pretty simple concept.

I asked myself this right after I woke up, I figured I was so-so, didn't have any makeup on or anything and still looked decent. In the dream I payed zero attention to this or any idea of "checking myself out". Dreams are weird like that, you forgot to do/think about the most obvious things.

I'v had some very, very weird ones. I remember a few years ago I had a dream that I was a 16 year old girl... in France. It was really realistic too. In the dream I "woke up" in a room I have never seen before and started freaking out. I looked around to see that I had "fallen asleep" in my clothes, and that they were girly cloths matching the fact that I was, apparently a girl. I ran downstairs and saw what was must have been this girl's parents, a middle aged French couple. They spoke to me in French, but I don't speak French so I didn't know what to say. That didn't stop me though, I replied to them in French, no idea what I said but it sounded like perfect French to me. I really started freaking out since the whole thing felt awkwardly real. I sat down at this breakfast table, fully aware of the fact that I was in fact, a French girl. I sat there for a good five minutes trying to think of what to do as I ate some toast with fresh jam. I went back to my room to get a look of myself in my mirror, I saw a girl I have never even remotely seen before in my life. I saw a purse on my desk so I went over to see if I could find an ID when suddenly and unexpectedly I was wide awake in my own bed, it was about 2am. I was shaken up by the whole thing for some reason, I could swear I could still feel the bra straps on my shoulders. I also couldn't shake the weird thought that it was 2:15am, which is 9:15am in France. In the dream when I was eating toast I saw the time 9:14 on a clock in the kitchen.

Destroy what? You mean declare war on a country of 65 million people? We don't want to kill/displace 65 million innocent civilians. We are just in awe watching the people of a country rise up and try to create democracy through protest as they try to overthrow their radical, terrorist-supporting dictators. So sorry, but I don't understand your question Jard_Y_Dooku

No, much broader than that. Iran is a theocracy, it is led by a Supreme Leader (dictator) who follows Islamic law. To keep the citizens happy and peaceful, Iran has elections for a "President" much like we do. The only thing is the President has no power, he is just a face for the nation to follow and elect, but all the power lies with the dictator. Iran's president for the past 4 years is a pretty violent guy who supports terrorists. Iran just had an election for a new president, a more friendly guy diplomatic guy was going to win the election... but the Supreme Leader stated that the current, terrorist supporting president won the election by a landslide. The president doesn't have much power anyway, but for the Supreme Leader to deny to people the right to even have a fair election for this minor position made a lot of people angry. Now they don't just want the president out of power, they are challenging the Supreme Leader himself. If the riots succeed and the Supreme Leader is removed from power it would make a huge positive impact for Iranians and for the world. That probably won't happen though... its all in the hands of the protesters now...

Some powerful pictures in there indy500, a lot of people i have been talking to say this one will win the Pulitzer. The determination and strength in the eyes of the protester (in green) and the wounded animal look on the face of the riot officer, now being taken care of by the same people he was fighting. As for a news update on the situation, things are heating up as you can probably guess. The Supreme Leader stated that it was prohibited for people to protesting in the city square at noon today... so of course people protested in the city square just to defy him. The crowd/riot took up the entire street and was five miles long. Picture the massive crowd that came to see Obama's inauguration... only angry :ohnoes: The army declared neutrality and much of the police disbanded, the violence is between the protesters and the Basij The Basij are the armed hand of the clerics. The Basij are a legal group, officially a student union, and are legally under direct orders of the Revolutionary Guard. Their main raison to quell dissent. They are the ones who go and crack skulls, force people to participate in pro-regime demonstrations, and generally try to stop any demonstrations from even starting. They are basically located throughout the country, in every mosque, every university, every social club you can think of. They function in a way very similar to the brown shirts. There are thousands of them. An interesting note is that the protesters are mostly peaceful but are beginning to fight back. They burned down the headquarters of the secret police in a Tehran square and killed a local commander of the Basij.

Oh jesus, the craps going to hit the fan, and soon. I don't know if this is a best or worst case scenario but in any case here's the latest FLASH traffic from a BBC respondent: From: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8099884.stm ...situation in Tehran is becoming unpredictable and potentially explosive...Iranians came out on to their roofs to shout "down with the dictator". It has become a challenge not just of an election result, not just to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei himself. That means it is, in effect, a challenge to the whole basis of the Islamic Republic. For two years I have watched as young, ambitious Iranians go about their lives with growing frustration. They feel the system stifles their aspirations. Now they feel that their intelligence and their pride has been insulted by an election result many Iranians believe is blatantly fraudulent...many people will fear that the government will authorise the police to open fire, if the situation slides further out of control. Has anyone seen the ending for V for Vendetta? A government that escalates things and tries to use more force and more violence to quell a citizen uprising... Like I said, I don't know if this is a best or worst case scenario. I guess it depends on if you value human life or human rights. update: FLASH traffic again, holy crap Ahmadinejad was on his way somewhere only to walk into a ambush and get swarmed by protesters chanting LIAR LIAR LIAR. Ahmadinejad was forced to crawl onto the roof of his car and it sped away. :shock: Wow. 2nd update: Sixteen cities in Iran are now in full riot and the crowds on the streets are only growing. See this pictures of a skirmish that happened in the University of Tehran, collateral damage in the fighting: http://25khordad.wordpress.com/ Twitter reports coming from Iran state that Iranian military is refusing to intervene against the protesters. If this is true it could mean the Supreme Leader is loosing some footing. I mean wow, if all the cards lie right and there really is a revolution here... holy crap, I don't think any of us realize how beneficial that would be. Iran funds Hezbollah, Iran arms the militants in Iraq, Iran makes the IEDs used in Baghdad, Iran gives the rockets to the Palitinains to fire against Israel, and Iran trains jihadists. I mean, the potential of a new Iranian revolution that would rid Iran of these extremist leaders would actually, dare I say it, bring peace to the Middle East. Thats freaking insane. Sure there is only a 5%-10% chance there will be a revolution, but if it does happed it will be the most powerful and important event since the fall of the USSR.

Very powerful 1st video you posted magekillr. Can you imagine living in that city and feel the buildings shake with their chants? Not much we can do but hope for the best. Its funny actually, if Ahmadinejad would have lost not that much would have changed in Iran, the Supreme leaders would still be there and the national policies wouldn't change that much. But now that Ahmadinejad won and all the youth of Iran believe it was corruption and oppression... this has the potential to change Iran far more than what would have happened if they (the Supreme leaders) just let Ahmadinejad lose.

Can zombies swim? I live near a large lake that has an island in the center of it, about a 20 minute kayak ride. The lake is deep, about 50 feet. Anyway for years me and the neighbors have been kayaking out to this island twice a week. Its about 50 yards by 50 yards. Its 2/3 wooded and the rest is rocks and wild grass. Its an awesome island really, we have spent many a summer day camping out there and catching and cooking fish. We have numerous supplies stored out there included hundreds of waterproof matches and a some Zippos, fishing poles and lures, gallons of water, and other misc tools like hatchets and nails and hammers. There is also a full set of pots and pans. So... can zombies swim? Its about a mile offshore so I don't think they could smell us or anything, though if we had a fire going they would see it :| I remember last year I woke up at 3am at home and went to get a drink of water, I saw a distant light out on the lake coming from the island. Feeling curious and now fully awake I tossed on a robe and walked outside, then down to our dock and hopped in my kayak. A 15-20 minute kayak paddle later I approach the island and see one of my friends sitting on a rock near the fire just staring into it, he seems me coming and says "I couldn't sleep..." I pull up onto the makeshift dock and walk over and join him, we watch the fire in silence--a mile away from home at 3am in robes and PJs. That island really is a 2nd home for me, and I would flee there in an instant when the zombie apocalypse comes.

Lol. There already is a vaccine for it. There has been one since the day it was discovered, it just takes time to make. Flu season starts in the Northern Hemisphere around October, and starting in March vaccines start getting made. They take about 5 months to mature and process, and can be made from any flu strain. H1N1, H3N5, H7N2, doesn't matter, its the same protocol. It just takes a few months to process them. As for the flu itself... should be interesting. All the serious "oh crap" global flu pandemics that killed hundreds of millions all started the same. One year they showed up pretty softly in off season, and then they turned super deadly when the following flu season began. For those of you following along at home, this means the swine flu will hit hardest this October. But knowing that, and having a college degree in Microbiology, I'm not worried...yet. This flu isn't any more deadly then the normal flu. The only reason it seems so is because the number of people that had/have swine flu is underrepresented. They only test the flu strain if you go to the hospital, and people assume thats all there is. People infected with regular flu in 08/09:500 million People killed from regular flu in 08/09: 600,000 or 0.12% People infected with swine flu in 2008-2009: Unknown, only ~12,000 are confirmed People killed from swine flu in 2008-2009: ~200 or 1.66% So does this mean the swine flu is 10x as deadly? No, because most of the people that get it and live never report that they had it, they just think its normal flu. Back to my point, I'm not worried yet. Sure a ton of people will get infected this fall and spring by swine flu, but a ton of people always get the flu every year. The only thing that has potential to be a problem is if this thing mutates more over the summer. Flu mutates all the time, it has a segmented genome and if you get infected by two strains of flu at the same time they will merge in your cell and make a new disease. The only thing different with swine flu is that it has some avian elements (which is why I refer to it as Man-Bird-Pig flu, which is more accurate and sounds really awesome to any other SouthPark fans) Since it has some avian genes it it harder for out bodies to fight it (our bodies still can, it just takes a few more days), and it can more readily exchange genes with avian strains... which tend to be quite fatal. The way I see it, this is how things stand. The following is the probability I will say this after the flu season ends : 40% - "Swine flu? What swine flu?" 40% - "Well that was a slightly worse flu season" 10% - "That was quite unfortunate" 6% - "Well... that sucked" 3% - "Oh fark" 0.9% - "Oh holy fark" 0.0001%- (Zombie noises)

World War 1 really screwed things up. Arabs had been living in Empires since the beginning of (written) time. Literally, like for the past 10,000 years the people there lived in empires ranging from the Babylonians to the Assyrians to the Phoenicians, to the Egyptians, to the Neo-Babylonians, to the Macedonians, to the Romans, Persians, Ottomans, et cetera, et cetera. These people live in tribes and regions of land, belonging to sprawling empires that they pay tax to for security. Everyone is Muslim, everyone is contempt. There are lots of types of "countries" that can exist. You can have city-states (like Sparta, a city that rules the surrounding area) or nation-states (like France, a set square of land that is under one rule) or empires (like Persia, vast land with a Emperor, but most of the people live a local life within small tribes and such. These tribes of people live in small and oblong regions of land with no real set borders.) World War one happens and the last empire, the Ottoman Empire, collapses. What do the European nations do? They figure the region should be turned into nation-states like Europe. Okay so we go from these sort of thing: into this They literally just sat down, took out a map and a pen, and started drawing boxes. Many borders followed rivers (like Iraq), others followed mountain ranges (Afgan-Pakistan border) and other borders were literally just drawn with a pen and a ruler willy-nilly. Problem, remember the definition of a empire? It has a leader but it mostly made of groups of people and tribes... and these nation-states didn't care about those tribes. So now you had country borders running right through the tribes, groups of 4 million people were now split in half and separated, told to follow the nation-state. There people didn't care about countries, they cared about their Muslim brothers and sects. A country needs something to unify the people (England has the Queen, the US has the Constitution, Russia has the Rodina (motherland)) Without a unifying aspect the country will not prosper and laws are hard to enforce. Militant tribal leaders have more say then the national government and violence is often the answer. This bears repeating, since the concept of a nation-state was just forced on these people recently, and since the countries are not made of unifying tribes or religious sects, the governments have little control over many of citizens. Many, many citizens follow religious leaders and the Qur'an instead of focusing on "Western Ideals" like nation building or working on "the american dream" of saving money and settling down with their family in a nice peaceful job. These are simply not values for many in the Arab world . Add in the details about how the "Jews came and took the land away from our Palestine brothers" and you have a hundred million Arabs who don't care about what the UN thinks or what the United States says (its another nation-state to their eyes). Now toss in the fact that Israel responds to protesters throwing rocks, with Israeli bombs and M-16s and things just get worse. Muslim nation-states declare war on Israel but Israel is armed with the full might of the United States behind it supplying hundreds of billions of dollars in the newest arms and training. Israel, this tiny country with no natural resources, wins the regional war in 1948. Now you have a bunch of really pissed off Arabs who want Israel gone but can't win a war with them, so terrorism spreads as a way to fight back. Since the US supports them the US gets its fair share of hate and attacks on embassies and eventually 9/11. And the rest is history.

I cant fit extrasmall gloves on my hand, I tried. Seriously though: musicians. I don't get the whole "he plays a guitar, he's so cool/hot" thing. Every other guy and girl I know love musicians. I have never been to a concert and have zero desire to. I enjoy music, but I really don't care about the musicians themselves. I'm also not a fan of crossword puzzles.

Ha ha, got this off of Fark.com someone there analyzed the numbers a bit. The Iranian agency in charge of the votes began releasing the results "as they were counted". You know, so after 10% of the votes were counted they put out the numbers, then after 30%, etc... Tell me if this looks odd to you: How convenient, Ahmadinejad (the incumbent), was winning by the exact same percentage the entire time. Thats some fine realistic and honest vote counting there =D> ... #-o

This is an interesting note following Obama's speech in Cairo. Just a quick summary of the recent events, Obama has tried to re-establish relationships with Muslims and is trying to bring peace and cooperation between the Muslim world and the West. A daunting task for sure, but it is somewhat feasible. Most Muslim citizens are sick of being associated with terrorists and simply want to enjoy better economic prosperity. Problem is, their religious and political leaders are mostly against the U.S. But that's okay, many of those countries are democracies, so they can elect leaders that represent their ideals, leaders that are more friendly towards the US and Europe... right? Well, apparently not. I don't know how many of you are following this but Iran just had their presidential elections, the big competition was between the current extremist president (who states he wants Israel wiped off the map, US is the devil, death to Christians, etc) and his rival, a much more moderate, more pro-Western leader. State TV polls for the past few weeks showed the two leaders neck and neck in the race (and this was state sponsored polls so they probably showed the current president with better numbers then they really were). Elections just happened and not only did the pro-Western guy lose, he lost by about 70% -> 30%. A landslide, and most Iranians say they can think of anyone who actually voted for that other guy. I mean, this would be the equivalent of, in the United States, McCain not only winning the presidency but getting 300 electoral votes and winning California and New York by a 2/3 majority. It's just stupidly obvious foul play was involved. Well, needless to say people got pretty pissed. If you thought people didn't riot anymore, here are some unfiltered video feed from what was going on in the capital. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b36_1244900547 (i cant imagine being on that street trying to get to work or whatever) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8098896.stm (first 20 seconds are slow, it picks up) Thats a lot of pissed off people. I have a friend living in that city right now and I have been unable to contact him since these things started, I'm assuming he's a little pre-occupied by the 3 million rioters in the street. This whole event is interesting though, its a stretch but you could say that these people are essentially rioting in favor of the United States and Europe. They wanted their country to be less radical and more acceptable (by Western terms) and they were denied that right. :| Violent riots aren't exactly something that makes me happy, but in a way its a good sign that this is happening right now. It will be interesting to see this unfold.

0.999... is equal to one, its very simple. You just can't think of 0.999... as a "number" per se. People are used to numbers like 4, 2, 193.82, and so forth Then you have 'number' like 0.333... people think of this as the number 0.3 followed by a million 3's. This is misleading. The written expression 0.3333... isn't a number like that, 0.3333... is one third. Yes when you write it you use numbers, but its not really a integer, its the way of writing 1/3 using a decimal.

So am I actually... I studied abroad there a few years ago and I am returning for a few weeks to meet some old friends and relax. btw Phil, I highly recommend the nightclub/discotech called "The CatWalk" I mean, holy crap, that was the most epicly awesome nightclub I have ever been in. I'm so going back there the first night I'm in Barcelona