The Middle East Explodes...

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Tue Feb 15, 2011 4:19 pm

sabs wrote:Given our history in Iran, the US has to walk a seriously thin line when dealing with supporting Revolution in Iran.

I can't imagine a better way to discredit it.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Tue Feb 15, 2011 4:32 pm

Yes, that's the problem.
If you want an Iranian Revolution to stop dead in it's tracks. Have the US offer it's full support. People will flee from it like rats on a sinking ship.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Mon Feb 21, 2011 4:30 am

Libya, Kuwait, Algeria, and Morocco have been added to the pile. Libya is especially terrible, but I actually have high hopes for it. If the Libyans can still oust Gaddafi given the violence and clamp down on communications, then it cements the power of the protesters.

Also, the Egyptian Army is now on Facebook. Unfortunately, my Arabic is so unused that it would take me forever to translate. Still, I think it's pretty cool.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Feb 21, 2011 4:36 am

"Giving out payraise to the entire military! Look out for that big check next week!"

209,771 people liked this!

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Mon Feb 21, 2011 5:04 am

Oh, I forgot China. Which isn't Middle Eastern, but is calling for its own Jasmine Revolution.

Zinegata · Post by **Zinegata** » Mon Feb 21, 2011 5:08 am

I kinda doubt the China one will get much traction. China's pretty prosperous right now.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Mon Feb 21, 2011 5:36 am

Yeah, but the government is dickish. I don't know how well China would do. The government has some really amazing control over info - they even blocked searches for "Egypt."

Vnonymous · Post by **Vnonymous** » Mon Feb 21, 2011 5:47 am

The reason Mubarak took a while before getting out of power was because he was using the time to move roughly 80 billion worth of gold out of the country and into his various bank accounts and safehouses. He knew that his time was up, he just wanted to be able to get away with all of his money.

As for the US supporting the revolution, they already are. They've opened a bunch of twitter accounts that send messages in Farsi talking about how the people should rise up and make another Egypt. I don't know what that will do, but I don't think the governments are going to like it.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Feb 21, 2011 6:08 am

Maj wrote:Yeah, but the government is dickish. I don't know how well China would do. The government has some really amazing control over info - they even blocked searches for "Egypt."

They have -nothing- on North Korea, though. Try this--and this was written back in 1995.

Edit: http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/c ... lankov.htm

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Mon Feb 21, 2011 6:28 am

Mubarak's Swiss money isn't going anywhere but back to Egypt. The Swiss have already seized it.

Zinegata · Post by **Zinegata** » Tue Feb 22, 2011 5:32 am

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/02/21/li ... ts/?hpt=T1

Gadhafi seems to still want to fight. If Libya pops though, well, expect Iran to start panicking.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Feb 22, 2011 5:46 am

I, uh, I feel 'special' at the moment. I forgot the link for my earlier post. I'll just repeat it here:

http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/c ... lankov.htm

Count Arioch the 28th · Thu Feb 24, 2011 5:18 pm

I was told by someone on my friend's list that I should be angry about these events, and if I wasn't I should "read my bible".

I... decided to defriend him rather than ask him to elaborate.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Thu Feb 24, 2011 5:23 pm

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I was told by someone on my friend's list that I should be angry about these events, and if I wasn't I should "read my bible".

Perhaps he thought you reading the bible would just make you angry?

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Thu Feb 24, 2011 5:52 pm

Why anger of all things?

Gnosticism Is A Hoot · Thu Feb 24, 2011 6:03 pm

Maj wrote:Why anger of all things?

Two possibilities. Either it's just more Left Behind-style Rapture conspiracy crazy, or he read this interview, where a prominent Evangelical pastor declares that defiance of authority is anti-Christian - even when the authority is Qaddafi.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Thu Feb 24, 2011 7:12 pm

Remember, Pat Robertson said that the Haiti Earthquake was because the people of Haiti made a deal with the Devil to overthrow their just overlords (the french). And this was their reward.

Right Wing Christian nutbags.. are pretty seriously nutbaggy.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Thu Feb 24, 2011 7:21 pm

I know that there are a number of people (and there always are) who are trying to make connections between the current events in the middle east and the end times as written in the acroptlytic texts of the bible. (You do know there are two such texts, one in the old testament and one in the new.) They throw in lost of things as the odd fact that apparently beheadings are the common tool of the anit-Christ (that's a fancy term for one who insists Jesus wasn't the son of God) and muslims often use beheading as a punishment (so did the French revolutionaries) and cry against the divinity of Jesus (so too did those French revolutionaries who enthroned the goddess reason).

But why would that make anyone angry? That's the part I can't understand.

Now there is the other side of the coin. There is looking at the problem from the other side of the religious divide. Islam has it's own version of end times tales that basically involve the last immam (legend says the young boy hid in a well trying to avoid being killed; was never seen again; and will reappear in the end times to lead everyone to good times). Since the end times comes as a result of the extreme of chaos and war, a certain group apparently wants to create the good times by deliberately causing the chaos and war.

Now that doesn't really make me "angry" but it does make me "annoyed" because I'm pretty sure that trying to manipulate prophecy to firce God to do something is as un-Islamic as it is un-Christian, because God is the big cheese, and shouldn't be anyone's puppet.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Thu Feb 24, 2011 8:38 pm

And the last time God got Angry he went all Flood and Genocide on us

It's like the Jehova's witnesses who think that there's something like 130,000 'spots' in heaven. And that somehow, they're all gonna be 1 of the chosen, even though there's more than 130,000 jehova's witnesses already.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 12:47 am

sabs wrote:And the last time God got Angry he went all Flood and Genocide on us

It's like the Jehova's witnesses who think that there's something like 130,000 'spots' in heaven. And that somehow, they're all gonna be 1 of the chosen, even though there's more than 130,000 jehova's witnesses already.

I think it's something like 144,000, but still.

I've never understood how someone can get behind that and call their god loving. To think that he would create billions of people, and then let less than a percent of a percent into paradise, while leaving the others to suffer forever... I don't know. I guess they get behind it out of fear. Questioning it probably leaves you in the bottom 99.99%. Seems pretty fucking bleak.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 1:17 am

I honestly dont' listen to the JVWs enough to figure out how many exact spots it is. I just remember it being some 6 digit number. I don't get the whole thing either, it seems bleak. But then, people seem to need to think they're special and unique and part of some special club, just like everyone else.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 2:23 am

They actually have some level of support from Revelations, where each tribe of Israel gets 12,000 people into heaven. I think the more common christian view is that the number is just the guys who get told GET TO THE CHOPPER during the Apocalypse and people can get into heaven before that just fine.

Blasted · Post by **Blasted** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 3:09 am

name_here wrote:They actually have some level of support from Revelations, where each tribe of Israel gets 12,000 people into heaven. I think the more common christian view is that the number is just the guys who get told GET TO THE CHOPPER during the Apocalypse and people can get into heaven before that just fine.

There are several views on that number.
It mainly depends on what the underlying belief is. If you're a "My church is extra-special and so am I" then it's literal. If you're a "The bible is all 100% literal, including the bits that say Solomon's lover had sheep for teeth." then it's literal.

Most pre and post millenialists see it as literal and supporting their particular view.
The remainder view it as a symbolic number in a book full of symbolic numbers.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 11:01 am

Wow. I didn't see the anger thing coming. That's ridiculous.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Fri Feb 25, 2011 4:37 pm

name_here wrote:They actually have some level of support from Revelations, where each tribe of Israel gets 12,000 people into heaven.

Revelations is one of two apocalyptic books in the bible. This is important because a lot of people tend to forget the symbolism that is in the book and numbers are important symbols. (In addition all numbers used letters until the Arabic numbering system, so you can translate some numbers differently depending on whether you were dealing with latin, hebrew, greek, or aramaic.)

I did a quick google and here is what I came up with. You might even call this, if not a revelation, a epiphany, because it makes all these numbers seem damn logical.

The first nine letters of the alphabet correspond to the Hebrew numbers 1-9. The next nine letters to the tens units (10-90), and the last 4 letters of the Hebrew alphabet to the first four hundreds (100-400).

Numbers over 10 are formed by combining letters, whose numerical equivalents are added together, rather than used symbolically. For example, the Roman numeral 11 is formed by combining 1 and 1 who together form a symbol for 11. In Hebrew, however, 11 is indicated by the combination of the letters א, whose value is 1, and י , whose value is 10. Together they add up to 11 – י"א . In this vein, 12 = י"ב = 13 , י"ג and so forth.
Two notable exceptions are the numbers 15 and 16, which instead of being formed by adding 10+5 and 10+6, are written as 9+6 and 9+7. This convention is because the 10+5 and 10+6 combination of Hebrew letters would result in spelling G-d's name, something Jews traditionally avoid. Thus, 15 = ט"ו and 16 = ט"ז

This system of adding numbers/letters to show a number larger than 10 requires 27 letters. The Hebrew alphabet has only 22. What do we do?

We use the last letter of the alphabet – ת which stands for 400 – in combination with the other letters whose values are in the 100s, to make up the numbers from 500 to 900.

To show that the letter combinations are in fact used as numbers, you insert gershayim – similar to a quotation mark - before the last letter in the combination.
A single geresh is used after a single letter when it is being used as a number.

Thousands are often indicated by a single letter, followed by an apostrophe (a geresh). Some examples:

1985 would be א'תשפ"ה:

א' = 1000 + תש = 900 + פ = 80 + ה = 5

The Hebrew year 5770 (2009-2010 in the Gregorian calendar) is written like this: ה'תש"ע

The 'ה with the geresh indicates 5000, followed by 400 (tav) + 300 (shin) and then 70 (ayin). The 5000 is often dropped when writing the year, so you’ll frequently see dates written simply as תש"ע.

So you can see how easy is was to think between a number and thousands (it literally is one additional character). It's almost like adding a K to numbers as we do today. So the number is literally 12 * 12K, where 12 is this really important number (the number of tribes of Isreal) so the number is really (this really important number) * (this really important number)K which makes the number really really important plus special. י"ג TIMES יג"ה