Meshugger

I said "Banzai!", not "Seppuku", my dear Nippon.

Alright Glolius Nippon, Banzai desu ne?

I do hope that the new character is not all what he appears to be. Maybe he's DA:I's own version of Ziggy Stardust. Stealing the ladies of the main character's party, all while spellbinding everyone else with his incredible musicianship as the star bard of the kingdoms. Bah, who am i kidding

People like you are the worst. Silently approving the truimph of evil. Apathy is death!

Compared to that horrible Vuvuzela-crap in the last championship, the Puto-chanting is the choir of angels dawning from mount Celestia. The Vuvuzela is the equivalent to death of any cultural expression. Kill it with fire and erase its existence from human history all together.

... roflcopters. Yes, the people who bundled various brown chappies into arbitrary constructions without any care for those 'ancient [ethno]religious schisms' have nothing to do with the latter disintegration of said countries along those ancient ethnoreligious lines! Nothing at all! It's coincidence, a Russo Iranian conspiracy, anything but our fault! Aliens! Orcs! Illuminati! Conjunction of the Spheres! Mars in the quarter of Pleiades! Anything! You know what the problem with Sykes Picot was? It didn't take into account any of those ancient ethno religious schisms. You know what the problem with the colonial administrations were? They weren't concerned with an 'approach to civil society', they were concerned with colonial convenience. You know what the problem with post colonial policy was? Support for convenient 'reliable' strongmen favouring one ethnoreligious group over 'civil society'. You know what the current problem is, at least in part? Support for the 'toxic philosophies' when convenient. That's not to say that those are the only reasons for the current mess, but trying to airbrush them as factors is at very best naive. The west does not understand the middle east. Never has, and all indications are it never will. As soon as the rest of the world achieves total energy independence from oil and can create non-carbon based plastics, it will leave them alone. Until then, just enjoy the show.

That's quite the assumption you have there about what i said about human nature. Human nature is that we are social animals that band together into groups, not for a inherent desire for a greater organizational structure, but due to competition, ruled by pure will alone. It's start from the simple desire to get a mate to control territories. As soon as there is no external strife to fight against, societies collapse or more often absolve into smaller territories. Look at Europe at the moment, former Yugoslavia is desintegrating more and more, Czechoslovakia is no more, Scotland is ready for a national referendum of independence, same with Catalonia. Belgium is breaking into two, and so on. Unless Russia invades the whole eastern europe or a new horde of ottoman warriors are crossing the Bosphorus, there is little to no interest in banding together for any other reason than economical co-dependency, which is the best way (IMO) to curb the more destructive parts of our nature: namely free trade. The same aspect is also manifested in this desire for competition, picking teams, preferably the winning team. Currently, and more previously after the fall of the Soviet Union, EU was a collective of states that where rich, and law and order and great way of life. Now, if the other team is Neo-Russia, the decision was not that hard at all. For some reason, this has been interpreted by the intelligentia that nations wish to give up their self-determination to someone else completely without any reason at all. And the reaction to that was reflected in the current election. That's why i said that i agree on a base level, as in we should see ourselves as one and explore the stars. But it is our nature to join into different groups for many different reasons to that hinder it. So unless we evolve beyond that, i do not see any scenario that you describe without any external force or threat, real or imaginary. So again, please answer questions a page or two back. How is your scenario possible without turning into despotic measures?

Goddamn Suarez

Non-statist thinking is always stoner-thinking for a statist. Pity.

^That didn't really answer my questions. Look, i agree on a base level that we are all one human species and it is our goal to explore the stars. But you cannot deny human nature the same time and ignore history.

To sum it all up for Spain:

Credit to Chile, their *troll-tactic seems to be working excellently against Spain. *troll-tactic as in bothering each spanish player that has the ball with atleast 3 of their own players, without any direct plan on what to do after getting the ball itself.

Hey, it actually looks good now. Why was the graphics-engine degraded in the PC version to begin with?

I see these DLCs, GOTY-versions and whatnot as unnecessary complexity, derived from business intelligence groups trying to find monetizing opportunities in everything that they can. All those growing business departments have to make themselves important in some way, i guess. Gotta fill in those work hours as billable in anyway they can. God forbid creating one complete product and selling it at one price. But that would render the whole business department as useless, and we can't have all those people with nice degrees go unemployed now, can we?

I have also heard all sorts of rumors about some of their children born out of wedlock, broken promises and failed commitments. Better not talk about it.

Boooo

Italy and Germany look really, really strong now.

Jesus

Oh come now, don't be ridiculous, the EU taken as a whole is less far-right than the UK, as the latest elections have shown. Personally I believe a strengthened European Union is an absolute necessity. First, we have the aspect of foreign policy - the EU must work as a single actor to have any relevance on the world scene. It's very telling how Putin is BFF with all the anti-EU parties. Why do you think that is? An EU military force and an EU-wide "FBI" police force (whose foremost missions would regard investigating terrorism, organized crime, large-scale corruption, tax evasion and other transnational crimes) are also needed. Then we have the single market. True, you might not need the whole EU apparatus for a rudimentary implementation of this, but nevertheless the bureaucracy behind it is more complicated than many people know. All the EU-wide regulations on animal rights, subsidies, et.c. are made in order to be able to keep this in place. The next step here is negotiating a free trade agreement with the US, which would be the most important thing to happen this century. Then we have the reallocation of funds from richer countries to the development of poorer ones. This is essentially a huge "Marshall Aid"-like project for all former SU nations. This is strategically absolutely necessary for EU peace and by extension the peace in regions which the EU is expanding into. The Euro is a complete and utter failure, and the reasons why should be apparent to anybody who has even the slightest idea about economy. For the Euro to be viable, we would firstly need to give the EU the ability to reject or approve the budget of any member country, and secondly an EU police which can investigate corruption and tax evasion, to ensure all taxes are really paid in the member countries. Personally I like the idea of a single currency, but at this stage, with the current checks and balances, it is simply not viable at all. That is why the EU needs countries like the UK whose leaders generally are not complete barefoot economists. But I don't think the EU doing one stupid thing is reason enough to leave it, it's just all the more reason to stay in it if you are one of the nations which can help to set things right. Isolationism will solve nothing here. The CAP is also one idiotic policy which should be reformed or scrapped, but I still don't think it makes it worth leaving the EU, when there is reasonable support for reform. How is this supposed to happen? On whose authority? Through solidarity or "solidarity"? The EU-election has already been established as a protest vote on how things are run in Brussels, so the solution is to remove more power of the citizens to a centralized sovereign that is not directly accountable to its constituents? It will simply not work from a top-down process. Just look at the Ottoman or the Austrian-Hungarian Empires.

"...where they don't have sports for men..." uh?

I'm gonna bet that England - Italy will end 0-0 or 1-1. By following the results of the championship so far, i will be pleasantly dissappointed.

Uruguay played incredibly bad, all while Costa Rica fought like lions. Watch for that Campbell fella in the next following games.

Greece - Columbia was the first snooze-game on the tournament, and i had already reserved that for Italy - England :-/

True, but most of the time in the western world, certain cultural expressions seems to universal to a certain degree. Like music, style and such. But like Elerond said, it does not matter. As long as you treat it as a demographic consumer-issue, and not a social justice one, i do not mind.