I ate a peruvian torch cactus a couple weekends ago and tripped out for a long ass time

the problem with mescaline is that unless you increase the dosage, every time you do it, the experience is less interesting. that is unless of course mixed with other things, and then it can get mind bending really quick.

hawaii

still technically part of the global south cause except for oahu and maui most of it is just fruit plantations and jungles

man.. maybe I should get my hands on some adderall or strattera or somethin

cause right now when my attention wanes while studying I just smoke a bowl and while it works sometimes, most of the time its counter productive

No buddy I know they do it all the time but "fruit corporation ordered coup detat in honduras" is on the same level as jews did 911

you need to do a little readin about what the US government and American companies have been up to since 1870 in the global south lol

I had a really terrible respiratory infection right around the time that the swine flu hit osu but I dont think that was it heh

man there is not enough actual talkin about drugs in this thread

who has tripped balls recently

In some cases, yes.  But I always had a few really great teachers who really got us questioning things and dispelling ignorance among us.  My American Government teacher was a real nut, and his entire class consisted of him getting all fired up about how Bush is raping the U.S. and why marijuana should be legal.  He taught us the word Neocon and we learned how corporations are basically corrupt by definition.  He preached libertarianism all day, but it was a fresh perspective on things.  Of course, I had a few other good teachers that were much more well-rounded.

well yeah I had some really good teachers in high school as well, but for every english teacher who teaches mythology by using joseph campell and for every history teacher that uses howard zinn you've got 5-10 others who would prefer just to lecture out of their McGraw-Hill (tm) textbook and have the students do worksheets to make sure they gleaned all the pre-approved sanitized censored and brainwashing details from the book without any discussion or encouragement to analyze the information being presented

and on top of that the education system pays its educators such a low salary and has such low standards for its employees that even among those teachers who are free thinking, there is likely something flawed in their thinking anyways because if they really knew what they were talking about they would be academians, not high school teachers

the american primary and secondary education systems make you feel like you live in a fascist state

only one interpretation of everything is accepted and critical thinking is discouraged

I called it

the 40 day mark after the death of Neda has sparked protests and demonstrations as well as crackdowns and arrests

http://pakshha.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/breaking-news-protests-around-mosala-square-in-tehran/

http://niacblog.wordpress.com/

the government is well aware of the incredible importance of these large public mourning ceremonies and their role in bringing down the shah during the revolution so it should be interesting to see how they handle this, cause its going to keep happening for another couple of months given that people are still dying like every day in the prisons now

what the hell did you think it was in the first place

taking tax payer money to prop up failing corporations so they can continue spending everyone into oblivion that sounds like a responsible use of a couple trillion dollars

I think its too early to tell if our increase in troop levels will actually do any good, I think on the whole we need to move into a new phase of approach to Afghanistan and by that I mean we need to start nation building and as soon as possible. However, you cant build the apparatuses of states, nor roads, hospitals, schools or public works projects unless the country is stable and the situation under control. I mean I sound like some burgeouis technocrat in saying so, but afghanistan has seen nearly continual warfare since the 70s and the country was hardly modernized to begin with. Afghanistan has a long way to go before the situation improves, and I hope that between the US stepping up troop levels and the Pakistani army cracking down on the Taleban in the frontier provinces that security wont be as much of an issue, but the rivalry between Pashtun and non-Pashtun Afghans is probably never going away so its going to be interesting to see if a stable nation-state will ever actually come to fruition in the region.

in the end, afghanistan has a shitload of strikes against it, economically it has been ravaged, the country has very limited arable land, a huge internal refugee population, inter-ethnic strife, its not modernized, anywhere from 5-20% of its territory is covered in mines depending on who you ask, and its currently run by what amounts to a bunch of corrupt mafiosos with large standing militias and lots of weaponry so the whole thing is just like a big clusterfuck of an example of what happens when sphere of influence conflicts never get resolved.

how was getting into the university of chicago btw? cause the most marketable of my interests is in economics and given my persian skills, interest in linguistics and archaeology plus chicago = amazing potential resources for research and funding. only problem is I kinda stand against the chicago school on everything lol. I'm considering getting in contact with the agha khan culture initiative while I'm in tajikistan and seeing if I can work for them for a while and see if they'll pay for a grad degree for me but who knows, I have so many fucking options open to me. luckily for me, farsi speakers and specialists on central asia are in high demand and that need isnt going to be diminished any time soon. I've just gotta deal with next school year, an entire year abroad and then a quarter after that and I am done with my bachelors

but yeah right now for grad school I am considering chicago, u of michigan, uc berkeley and university of hawaii (this is if I decide to get really baked and be an ethnomusicologist lol). chicago sounds like a bitch to get into and hella expensive though, whats your experience been with it so far?

I have not had the opportunity to meet professor pourshariati unfortunately, as she has been on sabbatical since I started at ohio state, but since she is basically one of 3 senior faculty in the persian department at osu I will certainly be meeting her this year, as I am the only person at osu actually majoring in persian so yeah haha. I believe I will be taking 'History of Iran' with her winter quarter though. howd you meet her?

while I agree with you teron, I think one thing that is currently uniting a lot of the qom clerics is their opposition to khameni/ahmadinejad. I dont know what they stand to gain by throwing their lot in with the likes of rafsanjani, but maybe they are more pragmatic than I ever gave them credit for lol

haha yeah.. I just have access to the internet and my persian professor is very well connected in iran and through him and a friend of mine who translates the news for a special wire service translating company I get access to first hand sources and the news as its happening

I mean half the sites I go to would be worthless to you guys cause they're in persian so yeah, but you will hear about these sometimes on CNN or whatever when they're like 'according to Ghalam/Tabenak/Ilnah/Gooya/IRIB/Mehr/Sarmayeh/Amir Kabir/Radio Farda/Kayhan/whatever' all these are newspapers/websites/wire services coming out of iran and I just read them in my spare time (which cause I'm only working part time is a lot of time)

good sites to use to see what the fucks up in english:

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/latest-updates-on-iran-election-protests/
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-protest10-2009jul10,0,622206.story
http://niacblog.wordpress.com/
http://tehranbureau.com/

tehran bureau especially is excellent, because not only do they present the news but they also have high quality analysis and discussion of events, wheras the others are more liveblog kind of style, but on days like today they are so much better because you get up to the minute reports of whats going on straight from the horses mouth a lot of the time

speaking of today, today was crazy. thousands of demonstrators, shitload of allaho akbars and ya hossein mir hossein and marg bar khameni and marg bar diktator (but no marg bar amrika lol) bunch of people gettin the shit beat out of them by basijis and plainclothes cops, some deaths probably, but most of the dead arent making it to hospitals, they are just disappearing (militiamen and police carrying them off the streets to locations unknown) so its really difficult to get an accurate count of the dead, but more than likely todays count was less than 10. bunch of cars got lit on fire though and all of tehran was an absolute clusterfuck from noon till sunset

but yeah one interesting thing going down that they may or may not have reported in the western media, but the city of qom is practically under martial law. there are police patrolling the streets 24/7 and all the higher level clerics are being 'guarded' by police and the army (they're more than likely being watched rather than guarded).

as far as looking at the big picture of all this goes, some people say all this action over the last 5 years amounts to a takeover of the islamic republic by militant factions within the establishment, but these people are dumb and dont know their history because the islamic republic was taken over by military elements when the iran-iraq war started in the 80s. but what you are seeing is a huuuuuge rift in the clerical establishment and what I think is going on is that rafsanjani is just trying to get the entire assembly of experts on his side so he can depose khameni.

While this would be a step in a positive direction in my opinion, dont forget that while rafsanjani is certainly more liberal and would probably give the people of iran the liberties that they are crying out for, he is also the richest man in iran and very much in favor of free trade and a neoliberal trade regimen (do not forget... what do you think the Iran-CONTRA scandal was all about (it was rafsanjani buyin a bunch of illegal shit)) so while he is better than khameni, he is no hero. neither is mousavi but thats a different story.

obviously I am simplifying here but yeah baked posting

yeah, they're better than uh lets see every major news source produced in america anyway

yeah check out those links I posted above and read al-jazeera

lol I'm already on enough fbi and cia lists as it is for taking farsi in the first place

but yeah, for those of you looking to get better coverage of iran than what is given in the western media, here are two websites in english you can check out to get translations of statements and speeches by mousavi, karroubi, ahmadinejad, khameni etc as well as all kinds of news and commentary as well

http://tehranbureau.com/
http://niacblog.wordpress.com/

things are getting interesting again

today huge numbers of people poured into the streets after the guardian council issued its final ruling on the election, they claim ahmadinejad won obviously and the demonstrations and protests are starting up in earnest again

yeah, one thing I find rather disconcerting actually is that ahmadinejad has been criticizing obama, telling him not to meddle in irans affairs and saying that if he continues making statements like those that he has been making, the people in iran will see him no differently than bush. I get a couple things out of this: 1) ahmadinejad is off his rocker,  2) he knows something I dont, 3) the cia is more involved than anyone is letting on

of those, the most likely is the first lol because obama has actually handled the situation very well in my opinion other than the comment that mousavi and ahmadinejad aren't too dissimilar but yeah, minor shit. I think Ahmadinejad is reacting to obama's comments on the violent supression of protests that happened last week, but honestly I like Obamas approach so far, the distance he is keeping is appropriate

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 معمولا من ایرانی نیستم اما برای سالی در دانشگاه ایالت اوهایو فارسی را خوانده ام

ah

فارسی بلد هستید؟

also russia has cut off its support of irans nuclear power plant saying that 'the security situation and amount of civil political unrest in iran is not favourable to the construction/establishment of a nuclear power program and we are withdrawing our support until the situation stabilizes'