SteveThaiBinh

I feel uncomfortable at times, but I don't let it spoil the game. I've paid for the game, so why not enjoy it to the full?

I'm Carth, probably because I chose the word 'trust', a thing which I consider important but actually find quite easy to do. I can't be Carth - those two hairs on my fringe would get on my nerves, I'd just snip them off.

I think you've responded to a collection of ideas that have been put forward by several people, some rather more actively than myself. Still, I'm happy to contribute. How 'well-informed' do people need to be before their opposition to US policy is considered legitimate? How well informed are US citizens about foreign affairs? Ordinary people across the world are angry with the US for a great many reasons. As a group, they are too diverse and too numerous just to be dismissed out of hand, and mostly they are not uneducated dupes of 'local chiefs' or journalists. Criticism of US policy has come just as strongly from democratic countries with a free press, such as India, Argentina and Spain. China will become extremely economically powerful in the coming years, as will India, Brazil and others. I can live with that. I certainly don't want to be forced into a new cold war so that the US can safeguard its position as global number one. Many US policy-makers are too influenced by Huntington's Clash of Civilizations ideas - it's not just US policy in Iraq that people oppose, it's a whole way of looking at the world in oversimplistic terms. There are groups and actions which are clearly terrorist, other which are clearly 'guerilla', but many that occupy a blurred ground in the middle. What if you have 'local logistical support', but only of a proportion of the population? How large does that proportion need to be? Do they need to wear uniforms? Why should they? What constitutes a uniform and what doesn't? And who has the right to judge that? Is kidnapping a form of warfare, of terrorism, or of criminality? And so on. I don't think there are easy answers here. In the absense of clarity, people who need a certain kind of false clarity, such as Mr. Bush, bring in a simple answer - a terrorist is anyone who I say is a terrorist; anyone who opposes US interests. Not very helpful if you're looking to understand the situation better.

My understanding is that the quote is disputed, as there's no official record of the meeting. Still, you're right, perhaps that's the more likely version.

Close. "You will win, but you will not convince". It's a quote from Miguel de Unamuno, a Spanish conservative writer and intellectual.

Venceras, pero no convenceras.

The UN has come under sustained attack by US and other conservative politicians, and so it is not highly regarded in the West. In much of the rest of the world, it is still considered a very important body, as it is the only hope for a restraint on US 'aggression'. Plus most people have more contact with UN bodies such as UNICEF and UNDP than with the Security Council. The respect for the UN worldwide is not going to go away, however much the current US administration mutters and snipes from the sides. The evidence that France was 'bribed' is, I think, largely the product of the efforts of the Iraq Survey Group and a US senate committee. The Iraq Survey Group was tasked with legitimising the war by finding weapons of mass destruction (which it failed to do). It is not an impartial organisation, and its accusations are just that - accusations. As for the US senate committee, that's just laughable. Is there anyone outside the US who would believe a word they say? This was an illegal war. If the UN had rubber-stamped it with a second resolution, its authority would have been even more undermined. As it is, it came out weakened, but its moral authority largely intact, unlike the US whose moral authority is now gone.

I have to ask - I think I get the first eight letters, but what does the rest mean? Though George Lucas is undoubtedly the originator and driving creative force behind the Star Wars universe, the movies would have been better if he had brought in more collaborators to help him with the script, and hired a better director.

The 20% figure comes if you include people who didn't vote (the turnout was about 60%). So only one in five Britons actually voted for Labour. On the other hand, people obviously didn't feel strongly enough to vote him out, so I guess he can stay on. For the moment.

It's a fascinating question, isn't it? He did have nothing to hide, so why did he behave the way he did?

It might not have been Iraq or Afghanistan, but it would have been somewhere. When you have a military as large as that of the US, you'll always find somewhere to use it. It sort of offers itself as a solution to a problem. If Iraq had been peaceful and US troops were already pulling out, they would already be preparing for an attack on Iran or Syria. Hans Blix and the other inspectors stated that they were able to do their job, but needed more time. The US should have respected that.

Jediburgers were banned by the Republic because of their high midichlorian content, a chemical compound linked to Chronic Fall-To-The-Dark-Side-And-Slaughter-All-Your-Friends Syndrome.

In order for Saddam to back down, he had to produce and destroy his weapons of mass destruction - the ones that didn't exist. A few more months of weapons inspections would have shown this - so why did the US force the weapons inspectors out and launch a war? The US attack on Iraq was a pre-emptive war, not a reaction to September 11. The Bush administration was considering an attack on Iraq as soon as it came to power - the attack on the World Trade Centre was just a pretext, a way of muddying the issue.

I don't think you could say that democracy produces the most effective or efficient government possible - unelected technocrats might do better, at least in the short term. Democracy is more about legitmacy - if I'm not allowed to vote, why should I respect the government and obey the laws it makes. If I don't agree with government policy, why should I accept it, if not because a majority of my fellow citizens have chosen it and I was out-voted. Perhaps it's not about getting a 'good government', but about getting a government that everyone can put up with (which is more of an achievement than it sounds).

Yes, with all my heart. Democracy takes many forms, of course, none of them perfect - there was a famous article that found hundreds of adjectives that have been applied to democracy: liberal democracy, popular democracy, semidemocracy, transitional democracy, parliamentary democracy, post-authoritarian democracy, protodemocracy and so on and so on... But at the heart is the idea that government should be chosen by the people and accountable to them, and it's a good one. Democracy is not itself a solution to any problem. It is merely a way for tensions to be released without violent conflict, and for compromises to be reached.

Not so much questionable, more illegal, I think. The copyright is still held by someone, most likely the publisher, or another company that bought it. You probably wouldn't get permission from them even if you asked, though you could try. On the other hand, unless you try to sell your game and make money from it, they probably won't set the lawyers on you either.

Personally, I liked Radioland Murders. It may well be that Lucas will never let another director have a free hand with a new Star Wars movie. That's a shame, because a lot of good directors wouldn't be willing to accept that. Most people are nice about him in public because you can't argue with money, but he's a creative consultant, not a director. If he tries to make another movie, without the pulling power of the big names (Yoda, Obi-Wan, Darth Vader), I don't think it will be the big money-making success the others were - or at least, it will be more of a gamble.

Arcanum is probably number one - it's a refreshing surprise to find a string quartet in a computer game. http://www.benhouge.com/Arcanum.mp3 Morrowind was great, but repetitive. I hope Oblivion invests in a few more tunes. Even people who thought the graphics were outdated and the gameplay weak acknowledge that the music for Quest for Glory V: Dragon Fire was excellent. A special mention for the opera at the end of Gabriel Knight 2. This for me set the standard for how gripping the ending of a game should be.

I like Lee Smolin's 'fecund universes' idea, that our universe is contained within a black hole in another universe, and every black hole in our universe also contains a separate universe which we can never reach. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecund_universes It combines ideas of the big bang with evolution theory, for double the annoyance to creationists! Of course, it still doesn't answer the question of how the first universe got started.

But it wasn't a threat. It didn't have weapons of mass destruction, as a few more months of weapons inspections by Hans Blix would have revealed. It wasn't co-operating with Al-Qaeda - there had been tentative contacts years before, but nothing came of them, and the US knew this. Many other countries give a higher proportion of their GDP in development aid. If the US (and Europe) really want to help poor countries, why don't they get rid of their agricultural subsidies? (that's a rhetorical question, I'm not trying to take us too far from the topic ). I don't think it's fair to say that other countries don't care, though most could certainly do more. And I don't think many people are looking to the US to take the initiative now. Relax, you're not the leader of the free world any more.

As I recall, there was never any intention of continuing to liberate/occupy Iraq, because the purpose of the war was to liberate Kuwait, and getting rid of Saddam wasn't necessary for that. This was back in the days when everyone was very optimistic that the UN, so long restrained by cold war rivalry, could actually work as the guardian of international law. The accusation levelled against Bush Sr. and others is that they encouraged the rebels in Iraq by falsely implying that they would receive US support. The rebels probably wouldn't have risen up otherwise, as they knew very well what Saddam was capable of. But they may simply have misinterpreted Bush's intentions, being unable to believe that with such a huge military advantage he wouldn't continue to Baghdad.

If they're intelligent, as your source indicates, then they can be reasoned with and are capable of choosing not to be 'evil', or at least to stop harming others. The Jedi should try to communicate and negotiate with them. If they keep on threatening lives , then in effect you have a state of war, a war of self defense. This can be conducted according to the normal rules of war, and again, attempts to negotiate a peaceful solution should continue if possible. Yes, a 'Great Hunt' looks like pre-emptive war - there's no imminent threat. So probably racist, certainly illegal and immoral. Those rotten Jedi - who'd have thought it?

Is George Lucas even aware that Knights of the Old Republic exists? I think I read somewhere that he'd never read any of the EU books. I'm sure there are enough movie directors who love Star Wars that Lucas could get a really good director for a new movie, if he were prepared not to intefere.