Happy New Year!

The destruction of the WTC and other attacks are known as “9/11”. Its not an official holiday and no one calls pearl harbor “12/7” day because its not catchy or resonant. If we call it independence day, that’s an american-dependent reference; people from other countries are not likely to know (or care) when our independence was declared or why that particular day was chosen to commemorate a 7 year long war or a 30+ year struggle, and are likely to have their own “Independence Day”, in some countries it might ironically mark independence from the rule of the US (like Phil).

It’s like Canada Day. I have no idea why July 1 is marked that way on my desk calendar, it just is. Canada never fought a war of independence and it was peacefully and gradually partitioned off from its parent nation and so unless I open the wikipedia article I have abs. no idea (nor do I care) why or what that is or how its celebrated.

Take Boxing Day. To an american, its WTH is that? But to a UK resident, they’re like–that’s when you open presents. And we say, you mean Christmas? And they say, well no–we don’t open presents Christmas morning thats a custom thats not universal. It might be better called “unboxing day” but there was a point not so long ago when regular people were too poor to afford to give gifts at regular intervals and so such a holiday might have been exceptional in the past but a common and universal event today. The timing of that “feast” or exchange is…entirely customary.

Or Guy Fawkes Day. They set off fireworks–that must be when the UK became independent? How does that relate to a catholic plot to blow up Parliament? Because…well…fireworks? Or perhaps we just liked your July 4th celebration idea and its alot like chinese new year but the chinese are able to provide fireworks all year round–can we just arbitrarily choose a certain holiday then decide how to celebrate it at some other point?

Well, yes.

Same halloween. In the UK they didn’t have a dress-up holiday, but they liked that idea when they saw it in the US and so now they do.

Because these are all cultural customs and without culture-specific knowledge, they’re all meaningless.

@amanntai:

@Young:

@amanntai:

This post is not meant to be political in any way.

ISIS & ALLIES
A Modern Take On A Classic Board Game!

Extremists threaten the globe!
Lead the coalition forces of Iraq, Syria, the Peshmerga, and Hezbollah into battle!
Or rally foreign fighters to join the cause of Islamic State!
As the coalition, order US airstrikes.
As ISIS, win the war on the internet to radicalize the West.

Change the course of history… as it’s being made!

What do think? It could happen, right?

Anything can translate into a board game, but sometimes you just gotta wait a few years while things blow over, and this idea might be one of those times.

Obviously, in real life this would have to be done way after the events, to avoid it being called pro-ISIS or offending ISIS or anything. It’s one thing to make board games featuring Nazis or Soviets, another to make one featuring terrorist groups. You’d have to do it carefully.

Will it be made? Probably not. Could it? Yes.

I’m not censoring anything for those douche bags…both Daesh or the PC crowd. F*ck em!

Don’t worry though, it won’t be long before US combat soldiers find their way back over there going “weapons free”. If that happens, the game wouldn’t be terribly interesting since it would be unbalanced and a seperate game dedicated to counter insurgency and wide area security probably wouldn’t sell too well either.

I consider all 3 old parties to be the same; they are all essentially under the thumb of a centre-left European commission.

Two more flag possibles;

simply drop the Scottish blue;

or add black and yellow for the St David’s flag.

New York ‘lone wolf’ was one hour away from finishing his bomb
She also praised the New York Police Department, saying, “I think they handled it well.”
Officials with the NYPD, which conducted the undercover investigation using a confidential informant and a bugged apartment, said the department had to move quickly because Pimentel was about to test a pipe bomb made out of match heads, nails and other ingredients bought at neighborhood hardware and discount stores.
Two law enforcement officials said Monday that the NYPD’s Intelligence Division had sought to get the FBI involved at least twice as the investigation unfolded. Both times, the FBI concluded that Pimentel lacked the mental capacity to act on his own, they said.
The FBI thought Pimentel “didn’t have the predisposition or the ability to do anything on his own,” one of the officials said.
The officials were not authorized to speak about the case and spoke on condition of anonymity. The FBI’s New York office and the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan both declined to comment on Monday.
Pimentel’s lawyer, Joseph Zablocki, said his client was never a true threat.
“If the goal here is to be stopping terror … I’m not sure that this is where we should be spending our resources,” he said.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly defended the handling of the case Monday, saying the NYPD kept federal authorities in the loop “all along” before circumstances forced investigators to take swift measures using state charges.
“No question in my mind that we had to take this case down,” Kelly said. “There was an imminent threat.”
Added Kelly: “This is a classic case of what we’ve been talking about �� the lone wolf, an individual, self-radicalized. This is the needle in the haystack problem we face as a country and as a city.”
Authorities described Pimentel as an unemployed U.S. citizen and “al-Qaida sympathizer” who was born in the Dominican Republic. He had lived most of his life in Manhattan, aside from about five years in the upstate city of Schenectady, where authorities say he had an arrested for credit card fraud.
His mother said he was raised Roman Catholic. But he converted to Islam in 2004 and went by the name Muhammad Yusuf, authorities said.
Using a tip from police in Albany, the NYPD had been watching Pimentel using a confidential informant for the past year. Investigators learned that he was energized and motivated to carry out his plan by the Sept. 30 killing of al-Qaida’s U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, police said.
Pimentel was under constant surveillance as he shopped for the pipe bombmaterials. He also was overheard talking about attacking police patrol cars and postal facilities, killing soldiers returning home from abroad andbombing a police station in Bayonne, N.J., authorizes said.

@450thMSAF:

YES! USA ARMY RANGERS beat KOREAN SPECIAL FORCES!

Havn’t watched the episode, the outcome seemed easy to predict.

For those of you who care . . .

WWI had a massive impact on the building of Canada’s Nationhood.  How does it go?  Good things take a long time, but great things happen in moments?  For us one of those moments was WWI. 
Three men who one the V.C. had lived on the SAME SMALL STREET in Winnipeg Manitoba (my hometown).  The following is their story:

WORLD WAR I was known as The Great War, a name that referred to its international scale, its massive mobilization of men, munitions and supplies, and its terrible toll on human life. Some say that the young country of Canada came of age in this war. Canadians won glory in the Royal Flying Corps, where Billy Bishop and Raymond Collishaw survived long enough to become aces of the air, and Roy Brown downed the Red Baron. However, it was also in the gruesome war of the trenches that Canadians demonstrated their endurance and courage.

Canadians fought and died in battles at Ypres, Mount Sorrel, Beaumont Hamel, Courcelette, Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, and Amiens. Sixty-nine Canadian soldiers earned the Victoria Cross in World War I, and by some strange coincidence, three of them lived on the same street – Pine Street in Winnipeg, which was later renamed Valour Road in their honour.

CORPORAL LEO CLARKE won his V.C. in the trenches during the battle of the Somme. Clarke had found himself alone, under attack by 20 enemy soldiers. Instead of surrendering, Clarke attacked, emptying his revolver twice and then firing a German rifle he picked up from the ground. In the struggle that followed, a German officer bayonetted him in the knee before Clarke could shoot him. Wounded and bleeding, Clarke kept up the attack, and as enemy soldiers fled Clarke followed, killing four more and taking a prisoner. Though he was ordered to hospital, Clarke returned to battle the next day. Leo Clarke died in action a month later.

SERGEANT-MAJOR FREDERICK WILLIAM HALL was awarded the V.C. for giving his life to save a comrade at the battle of Ypres. With his company pinned down in the trenches by fierce enemy fire, Hall had gone out twice under cover of night to rescue injured men. On the morning of February 21, 1915, men in the trench heard the groans of an injured soldier on the battlefield. Hall and two others volunteered to go after him, but as they went over the top they drew heavy fire. The two other men were injured, and all were forced back to their trench. After a few minutes, Hall went out alone in broad daylight, with enemy guns waiting for him. He crawled out and across the field under a hail of bullets. Reaching for the fallen soldier, Hall managed to squirm himself under the wounded man and begin moving him on his back toward his lines. However, when Hall raised his head to find his way back to the trench, he caught a bullet in the head and died instantly.

At the battle of Passchendaele, LIEUTENANT ROBERT SHANKLAND led his men to a forward position which they held during a fierce counter-attack. Knowing that an accurate description of his company’s position was critical to the Allied battle plan, Shankland made his way alone through the battlefield to Battalion Headquarters, delivered the necessary information, and returned the way he had come. Rejoining his men, Shankland carried on until the end of the battle. The citation of his Victoria Cross commends his personal courage, gallantry and skill, and emphasizes the example he set for the men under his command. Of the three Victoria Cross recipients from Valour Road, only Shankland survived the war.

The individual heroism of men like Clarke, Hall and Shankland is set against the background of the misery and horror of war. Canadians have rarely glorified their involvement in conflict; it is more characteristic of us to see the action of our soldiers in the Great War as the unavoidable and accepted duty of courageous men in the face of global tragedy. More than 50,000 young Canadians died in World War I. When it was over, the survivors returned home as older, sadder men, whose common hope was that there would never be another war like it again.

http://www.histori.ca/minutes/minute.do?id=13493 - cool site (for me) - specifically
http://www.histori.ca/minutes/minute.do?id=10192

@Wargaming_nut:

Or… maybe people could just stay away from the borderline stuff? Wouldn’t that make life so much easier, and count down so much on hard feelings, etc.? Maybe it’s just me, but seems to make sense… :P

. . . but less fun.

:oops: Oh, okay! I guess I lost something in the translation…
…from my eyes to my head.

Forget my first rejoinder. :oops:
Though I stand by my remainder. :P

A little poetic license…