Tsude
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Posts posted by Tsude
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Hello everybody
For the ones not knowing how the elections work in the USA, this is a SIMPLIFIED version. This was made using various audio-visual sources, written sources and my own knowledge of the American history and politics. I will be using the example of this election to explain this, so I will not consider that Trump is already president.
a. Introduction
b. Structure of the USA Congress + explanation of US president
c. House of representatives <-> House of commons
d. The Senate <-> House of the Lords
e. Electoral College + Presidential elections
f. Summarisation
g. More than 2 presidential candidates???
a. Introduction :
Election year, a very important year for the citizens and politicians of the US. They will get to decide who will become the next leader of the US. Now, this year it’s Hillary vs Trump or in other words, Corrupt vs Dumb. To explain how the elections work I can’t really just talk about the elections itself, I have to start with the US Congress.
b. Structure of the US Congress :
The US congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States consisting of two houses. – The US government has 3 branches. The executive branch, the judicial branch and the Legisative branch. To become a president you need to go from the legislative branch to the Executive branch - Now I’m pretty sure you already don’t understand 50% of the sentence. To explain what that means I have to explain 2 words. Bicameral and Legislature. Bicameral means in two chambers or houses whilst Legislature is an assembly with the authority to make and pass on laws. The US congress exists out of two houses. The House of representatives(US) wich is relatable to the house of commons(UK) and The Senate (US) wich is also relatable to the House of the lords (UK). To understand the way presidential candidates are picked I’ll be explaining the elections of the House of the representatives and the senate.
c. The House of Representatives :
The house of representatives like the house of commons was created to give the people of every local voting region of America a voice. The elections or re-elections happen every 2 years. How do members get a seat in the house of representatives though? Well, every state has a district and those districts are determined by the population and the population density. So that means if the state has a high population it’ll have a high amount of districts and the same thing applies if it has a low population. So it’s also quite logical that every district votes for 1 representative. To give an example : the state of Georgia has 14 districts thus, 14 elected representatives. Which means the state of Georgia has 14 seats from the 435 seats in “The house of Representatives”. The house has 6 non-voting seats because they belong to a US territory and not a state, but to keep it simple I won’t go into detail about US territories.
d. The Senate :
Now you know a bit more about the first house of the congress. Now I’ll explain the second house, The senate which looks a lot like the house of Lords. Each state has 2 senators In the Senate that represents that state. Those senators are chosen from a popular vote, which is basically a sate wide vote. So that means there are 100 senators in the Senate if you count them all up (50 states with 2 senators each). Now the elections within the Senate are a bit different than the one in the House of Representatives. The elections are called “a six year term staggered election”. What this means is that instead of having to vote for 100 senators every 6 six years they vote for 1/3 of the seats or senators every 2 years to ensure that one party doesn’t “take over” the Senate. For the ones that don’t know, the US has 2 parties. The democrats and the Republicans. To explain them both shortly the democrats are progressive whilst the Republicans are c conservative. The senators also have to qualify for a couple of things : 1) they must be 30+ 2) they must be a US citizen for over 9 years and 3) they must be inhabitants of the states they represent.
e. The electoral College and the Presidential Elections :
Now that you know about the two houses of the US congress I can finally explain how the US presidential elections work. The most logical thing would be to count up all the votes and the one with the most votes would be president, right? Well… In good ol’ ‘murica that ain’t the case.
The way this works in the US is that every state votes for a certain presidential candidate and for a state to be able to vote for a specific presidential candidate it needs to have over 50% of the votes for that state to be able to vote for that candidate. Though this system is flawed. For example : California has 34 million people and Georgia 9.9 million people. For Georgia with 9.9 mln citizens to have the same amount of influence in the elections as California with 34 mln citizens is unfair. That’s where the electoral representatives come in play. The amount of electoral representatives per state are decided by the amount of districts they have + the 2 senators representing that state. To go on with my example the state of California would have 55 electoral representatives whilst the state of Georgia would only have a meagre 16. That is why presidential candidates focus on states with a bigger population than the ones with a smaller one. Though in America there is this thing where the winner gets it all. For example let’s say Trump and Clinton are competing over California. Trump gets 33 electoral votes and Clinton 22. This means that Trump won that state and will also get all the votes Clinton has gotten from that state. Now instead of 33 votes he has 55 votes. Do you see what’s going on here? By winning bigger states by just 1 electoral vote can give you your opponent’s votes as well. In total there are 538 electoral representatives from the electoral college.
Now you know this, we can carry on. To know how a president gets chosen you don’t just look atthe election day but to the whole election year. To start of with you have “The primaries” which spans from January to June to decide which candidate from each party will represent that party, like we’ve been seeing now. Clinton will be representing the democrats and Trump the Republicans. This has been made clear at the RNC (Republic National Convention) and DNC (Democratic National Convention) Now that the primaries are over the election campaigns begin. Each candidate will have a running mate or a vice-president with him which has a different set of skills to aid him in his/her campaign. After a long time campaigning election day has arrived. The people vote for electors or electoral representatives who then vote for the presidential candidates. If a candidate has over 270 votes, he wins the elections and then becomes the next president of the USA.
f. More than 2 presidential candidates???
There are 5 presidential candidates! Indeed. In the US the two leading parties are the Democrats and Republicans, then you have the independent parties. The reason you don’t hear more about these great parties that have better policies than the Democrats and Republicans is because they don’t own media chains and don’t have a lot of money.
The competing candidates and their running mates:
-Democrats:
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (New York) - Presidential Nominee
US Senator Tim Kaine (Virginia) - Vice Presidential Nominee
-Republicans:
Businessman Donald J. Trump (New York) - Presidential Nominee
Governor Mike Pence (Indiana) - Vice Presidential Nominee
- Constitution Party of the US:
Darrell Castle (Tennessee) - Presidential Nominee
Scott Bradley (Utah) - Vice Presidential Nominee
-Green Party:
Dr. Jill Stein (Massachusetts) - Presidential Nominee
Ajamu Baraka (Virginia) - Vice Presidential Nominee
-Liberterian Party:
Former Governor Gary Johnson (New Mexico) - Presidential Nominee
Former Governor Bill Weld (Massachusetts) - Vice Presidential Nominee
And more presidential nominees but I can’t bother with the smeg people: http://www.politics1.com/p2016.htm
g. Summarisation
1) US congress = 2 houses, 535 representatives combined.
2) House of representatives : 435 members
3) The senate : 100 Members
4) Electoral college : to make sure the influences of states are equitable (wich means that it’s fair)
5) Primaries are held to decide the Party’s candidates
6) Candidates pick their running mate and go campaigning
7) Election day comes, candidate with over 270 electoral votes becomes president.
Sources :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRu_JcarCDY : basic – house – senate – electoral – president
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nts3a6pp6jU : tie between presidents
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-4Sfn_ti-U : Very thorough explanation of us elections
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt5K4ZK0ILY : handy stuff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok_VQ8I7g6I : Electoral system explained
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdyCz6QpbOk : extra info
http://www.politics1.com/p2016.htm : The presidential candidates -
Hello everybody
It has come to my attention that most people don't know a coup happened in Turkey or they believe Erdogan planned the coup himself. Now, I will be quoting a post written by my brother (Former member of the MUN, not a fan of Erdogan and an advanced IT guy). He experienced the COUP himself first hand and so did I. He was in Istanbul, whilst I was in the largest military base based in Turkey, Eskisehir. I want to state that I am very happy my Uncle did not go to jail as he is a commander and would have partaken in the COUP, but he did not as he forgot his phone as he was driving up to his home village and couldn't answer to the calls he got from the military.
"Friends,
Having observed a lot of BS all over the news this week about the failed coup attempt here in Turkey and as a person who was in Istanbul last Friday I couldn't resist the urge anymore to write something about it.
First of all, I want to say that everyone here in Turkey whether pro- or anti-Erdoğan is massively against a coup. Turks see this mainly as an attack to their homeland and their free will and not only to Erdoğan. Also, I only laugh at people who say that this was all orchestrated by Erdoğan himself only to get rid of his opponents and get executive presidency powers. One, he does not have to bomb his own parliament and kill hundreds of people to realize this. He can just use the state bureaucracy to achieve this goal. Two, for executive presidency he could have organised a snap election because the recent polls were showing that AKP would have enough seats in the parliament to change the constitution or at least to bring it for a referendum.
First of all, I want to highlight some examples of Western hypocrisy which bothered me this week very much:
- In the very beginning of the coup attempt, when everything was unclear, the Western media started to praise the coup attempt by saying that this coup is the only chance of Turkey to escape out of "Islamisation" and even tried to spread the disinformation that Erdoğan fled the country and asked asylum in Germany in order to crackdown the resistance of the Turkish people on the streets.
https://www.stratfor.com/…/turkey-president-reportedly-seek…
- Two days ago, the government announced three months of 'state of emergency' all over Turkey. Which is pretty normal in my opinion when your own parliament is bombed by your own fighter jets and helicopters (and many other horrible things). Again, this has received critics from the Western world, by saying that this is purely rolling back on democratic freedoms.
http://edition.cnn.com/…/07/21/europe/turkey-coup-emergency/
- Temporary derogation of some rights of European Convention on Human Rights received a huge amount of criticism in the Western world, while France was never criticised on invoking exactly the same article after Paris attacks last November.
http://www.coe.int/…/france-informs-secretary-general-of-ar…
- "I hope there will be ‘stability, peace, continuity' within Turkey" was the initial comment of John Kerry when nothing was clear. Whereafter he "emphasised US's support for the elected government" when it was clear that the putschists lost the day after.
http://www.politico.com/…/…/07/john-kerry-turkey-coup-225632
https://twitter.com/JohnKerry/status/754141724193284096
- John Kerry warned that Turkey should respect the rule of law **cough Guantanamo cough** when conducting crackdown operations on Gülenists and insinuated that Turkey's NATO membership could be in jeopardy.
http://www.independent.co.uk/…/turkey-coup-could-threaten-c…
- I am not saying that Turkey is perfect but hey, it isn't Sudan either. The thing that irritates me the most is that people that don't know the Turkish culture, never visited Turkey, don't know the facts on the ground, nor understand the history of Turkey and the Turks, are acting like they're experts based on the biased information they get.
Secondly, I will list some reasons why the Turks keep voting for Erdoğan every election since 2002.
--- IMPORTANT NOTE ---
I never voted for Erdoğan and probably will never vote for him. Here I will only explain what the train of thought is of a typical AKP voter.
--- IMPORTANT NOTE ---
- The main reason why people voted in 2002 for him was because to get rid of serious economic crisis in Turkey and political instability. This economic crisis was so serious that several banks were bankrupt in one night, so that many people lost their savings. There was also hyperinflation, here we speak of interest rates above 100%+. People had enough of old faces and unstable coalitions hence elected in 2002 AKP as the only governing party. After a while things started normalise in Turkey. The inflation fell quickly (now it's around 8-9%), government dept to GDP fell from ±70% to ±30% in 2015, industrial exports skyrocketed, etc... To wrap things up, the main reason why the majority of people still vote for AKP is because of economy and not because of religion.
- People that think AKP voters are definitely Islamists and most of them want some sort of Islam to govern Turkey are wrong. There is a big portion in AKP voters that are just central right voters and not islamists. Their main argument to vote for AKP is "stronk leadership", "stronk Turkey", "economic growth", "building bridges", "building roads", "improved healthcare system" etc... Not because AKP is a conservative party. I know people that are dedicated AKP voters, but drink a lot and are very secular. Also, the secular lifestyle is too deep rooted now in the Turkish society. Even the conservative people don't favour sharia rule in Turkey. Here is a research on it: http://www.pewforum.org/…/the-worlds-muslims-religion-poli…/
- Some things that improved dramatically during Tayyip's period:
- Health care
- Improvement of infrastructure
- Roads
- High speed trains
- Airports popping up everywhere in the country
- Privatization of Industry
- Economy in general
- ...
Those things are immediately tangible in the daily live of Mehmet. People don't care much if journalists are in prison as long as they are not suffering from economic crisis and keep getting services from the state.
- Moreover, there is this weakness in the opposition that should be addressed. There isn't any leader at this moment that can surpass Erdoğan's public speaking skills. Why is this important? Turkish people like a strong leader image, just like Russians like Putin. Whether I like him or not, I have to admit he is a master in addressing large crowds and manipulating them according his own interests.
Lastly, I salute the brave people who gave their lives Friday (15th of July). Hopefully, we can get rid of Erdoğan by ballots and not bullets."I hope you learned something new by reading this little topic about Turkey and it's failed coup.
Have a great day
Berkan/Tsude
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12 hours ago, JK_Ghosty said:
Yeah the Romans are great and all but the Greeks is where it's at
Greeks are interesting indeed. I will talk about the basis of democracy using the greeks as an example. How democracy fails in the brink of war and so on.
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You want to talk about ideologies in general I see, hm. I will open a debate about that in an upcoming topic. I am opposed to anarchism, but we will debate this in the upcoming topic I'll create in the near future!
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Hey everybody
As I am a person who deepens himself in geopolitics and history I thought I'd post crash course posts in the general discussion. Before I put the effort into this, are you guys interested? I was thinking on starting with Roman history (From Kingdom to Empire (in 3 parts), The cursus honorum (1 part), the evolution of the roman army (1 part), it's civilian life and economy (2 parts) and the fall of rome (2 parts)). In total this would be a crash course of 7 parts talking about Roman history.
I thought that Roman history would be a good basis as it is the basis of life as we know it. If you guys want other things, you can post it down below. For instance, 1750-2017 is a timeperiod I have knowledge about besides the 753-1452 Era. Or would you rather want to hear about the sengoku Jidai? The Korean wars? Japan's evolution to imperialism? The colonial wars? Political issues now? How Western berlin survived? The creation of the European Union? And many more subjects that you would suggest!
I hope this'll interest a few people
Berkan/Tsude
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10 hours ago, PurpleExod said:
If this is an introduction I want to see an admin application by this guy

Anyways welcome to GFL, enjoy your stay
Trust me, my application usually consists of over 2000 words. Used to have a template for my experience part of the application, but I lost all those names so I'll have to think back real hard if I do apply haha!
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Hahaha thanks, though I did check out 'The Purge' server for a bit. Seemed interesting, might switch over to 'The Purge' instead of JB. I had enough of JB after the SC3 server, went on GFL JB a little for fun yesterday.
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- Popular Post
- Popular Post
Hello everybody
So, the reason why I want to do an honest introduction is due to the fact that it has gotten my attention that every time I join a community, someone from my past remembers me. This is not always horrible, yet I used to prefer my past to be hidden. Why did I want it to be hidden? This introduction will not only introduce myself, but also my former self.
Intro
My real name is Berkan. I am of Turkish descend, but born and raised in Belgium. I am as atheist as it can get. I am a very social person. I used to be a big introvert back in the day (yet have a firm opinion), but now I am as extrovert as it can get. I am a powerlifter with some max weights of 200kg deadlift, 130kg benchpress, 320kg leg press, 150kg squat, 100kg ground to overhead and so on. Besides a steadfast gym fanatic I am a person who deepens himself into politics, history, economics and military doctrine and warfare. The reason I do this is due to the fact I will be applying for a MUN position in KU Leuven (in Belgium). My brother used to be in it and I want to step in to his footsteps. Besides the fact I love those things, I have a love of gaming that roots back to the old days when I started playing Runescape. I am a steady investor of Crypto currencies aswell.
My GMod past
Now, this is the part where I'll be brutally honest about everything. I used to be a true believer of helping out servers by trying to become staff. Though I fell into a pattern where I became one and one by one eliminated every single person that could threaten my position as staff as far as going to convincing the Owners or Server managers to take my side by planting evidence. I know this might sound braggy or delusional, but trust me... It's not that difficult to persuade someone. I used to be staff on 15 different Gmod server of which I mostly forgotten the names of. I have 2 steam accounts (Gestione and Tsude). I play Gmod since 2008 (starting on my brother's account at first, since 2011 on my own account). I used to have a backup of all the servers I used to be on, but I had to wipe my hard drive and forgot to save it on an external hard drive. Now know this. I am as persuasive and manipulative as it can get. I have gone from helping servers to their height, but also making them fall as quickly.
A few examples:
-Werewolf Gaming; I didn't exactly help it to rise, but I used to be a member of the Purge server of WWG. I single handedly got 15 massive rule breakers perma banned by uploading evidence and was the only person to have ever been promoted to a staff function (T-Mod) by Harold himself with half of the hours that was required. I went by many names back then, I don't know what my name used to be back then but I'll check up on that. Soon I set my sights on 2 corrupt Staff members. I got them personally banned by Lou, the used to be Server manager back then. Now Lou is important in this story, remember her! Lou was more and more absent, so the Head-Admin slowly took over. Lou was not absent, because she didn't want to be online, no... She was making her own better version of a "THe Purge" Server. Back then WWG used to have a monopoly on The purge servers. In the meantime 'The Purge' Staff team was split up into 2 factions. The ones supporting me to take down the head-admin and the side trying to take me down. Now, you would think taking a T-Mod down would be easy, right? Well, due to the fact I knew Lou that well + the Server manager of the DarkRP server and Harold promoted me they had a difficult time. The reason I wanted to take down the Head-Admin is because he was corrupt aswell, but most importantly, threatened my position and held back my promotions (I would've made it to Admin without him). I got him demoted to Admin, but he still posed a serious threat to me. I got tired of the whole ordeal, but was still fighting them on. Suddenly I heard that LOU was making her own server and because I was loyal to her, not the new Head-Admin or Harold I joined her. Harold was furious that we were creating our own The Purge server. The moment it was created and had a decent player based Harold DDoSsed us. We got Perma banned from the WWG servers and the perfect server of "The Purge" we created vanished with all it's addons and bug fixes.
This is the story of me being able to take on a whole staff team with little help and picking the wrong side in the end, yet I remain happy as I stayed loyal to Lou the entirity of the struggle.
-I don't exactly remember the name of this server, though it used to be my best creation. I made my way up the same way as in WWG, once again beat the record of youngest Staff (least playtime). Took down a few corrupt mods to win over the Heads of the servers and proceeded my way up to Admin. At this point my power grew so big that I had the Super-Admin doing everything I ordered him to do and I changed the whole server by fixing it's economy and adjusting it's addons by talking to pazza, the owner (reggy, the other owner, his brother, wasn't online that often). It came to a point where even anyone opposing me didn't dare to say anything, because they knew that they couldn't touch me. In the end I got access to the server files and in one second I deleted the server and all the backups they had made.
This is the story of me making a server so good that it's playerbase trippled in size and also destroying it in the same way I built it up. Back then I thought of it as my creation and only I could decide what would happen with it. I decided on destroying it.
Conclusion
Now you know all of this you can asses my character. However the last time I used to staff was 1.5 year ago and much has changed since then. Although I am still very manipulative in ways when even I don't notice it, I try not to be. This introduction is a way to counter all of this from advance and incase this does happen, you can point back to this introduction.
Also I will most likely be running for a staff position as I always try in servers. Keep this post in consideration when you read my application, because my applications are mostly so detailed and well written that it's up to the things I did in-game, not my application.
Thank you for reading
Berkan/Tsude

The most heroic LAST STAND
in General Discussion
Posted · Edited by Tsude
Hello everybody
So you think the 300 spartans were heroic to hold off the 1 million persians In thermopylae? Well, you may be right, but there are 21 men even more heroic than those 300 Spartans (aided by 1000 Greek hoplites). The 21 Sihks protecting the signalling outpost between 2 fortresses in Pakistan. 21 men held off over 10.000 men, killing over a few hundred. I would write it down, but this video explains it much better than me, you'll hear the story of those 21 men in a short, but powerful 8 minute video.