Walsingham

Gandalf got knackered after a few minutes of fighting. Vader's got stamina. And reach.

True, it works both ways. However the biggest threat to world peace is clearly NATO. It lives off civil wars and third-world warzones Russia is no global threat, get real. 1,800 operational nukes in the hands of a textbook sociopath say otherwise.

I seem to recall another somewhat confused youngster having a thing for Aribeth...

You just described a typical day of any clerk, seller, vendor. And they would loose a job if they acted even ONCE like the cop in question. They would be fired even if they acted in 10% like the cop. Shouldn't a cop be subjected to higher standards than an average clerk? You don't think it's weird that someone working a menial job should be terrified of offending some random yahoo?

i dont see why someone should hate democracy or any other form of government... they are all equally flawed. each is convenient for some and not so much for others, while the trully rich are simply above and beyond You're only saying that because you're jealous of my diamond underpants.

Places like this are far more significant than you think in the war of information and ideas. Taken by itself, pretty much any forum or bit of social media can be considered insignificant. Taken by itself nearly every conversation ever had in the history of the world can be considered insignificant. It's a mistake to look at things that way however. A hypothetical paid government troll wouldn't just be posting here, they'd be posting many places under all sorts of names. Oby puts maybe an hour or two a week into this forum, tops, he's got plenty of time to troll it up elsewhere. That said, I don't think Oby is a paid government troll, I just use him as an example. So near and yet so far. Because obviously oby isn't a paid troll. He's just doing precisely what the paid trolls are paid to do. It must be for all the positive social reinforcement we give him.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/76148-russians-also-farm-trolls/

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-inside-russian-troll-house Totally worth it.

Suckup.

The main reason I like democracy is the people who hate it.

I can't comment definitively, but a lot of educated Africans I've spoken to blame the whole Famine Industry for this. decades of portraying Africans as starving stray dogs hasn't helped. I just find it interesting, because 147 is history book level casualties. Maybe not headlines, but you'd find it written down. A battalion might lose that many in a single fight, and earn a mention. But these weren't soldiers in a war zone. These weren't flyblown kids in a parched land. These were students.

Just the usual anti-Islam, anti-Muslim stuff. You know... Where people pretend that Muslims are trying to take over the world, have a monopoly on killing people in droves, are actually a threat to any western nation's security, and just generally responsible for all the big evils in the world that Russia isn't. Wals is apparently back, bigoted and lazy as ever. Can't even post a bad link to the subject he wants people to talk about. LOL. One hundred and forty seven people are dead ...in a single incident... and this is evidence of... me doing something. Wow.

It's in most media, so no links. Just curious to know why it wasn't being discussed.

The thing about doing the unthinkable is that it is perfectly possible to do things without thinking. Anyone recall predicting the widespread employment of chemical weapons in Syria, a decade ago?

Don't even joke about that. Russia's entire culture is becoming one sordid mancrush.

Rain rain.

I am not sure which one Wals is referring to, to be honest. We seem to have an abundance at this time. Always gets his shorts in a knot over oby, so that must be it. Yeah it must be Oby, Wals always use to take him far too seriously and get annoyed. Community standards create communities. Mod policy has confused simply having a rule with the messy confrontational business of actually enforcing it. Great pubs let anyone in but they also throw some people out. Encouraging a fictional racist on the forums isn't just wrong, it's ****ing weird. And on balance I'd rather go into any number of pubs and talk to an actual racist who has the courage to at least be offensive in person.

Stopped by, saw the 'landlord' still hasn't barred the obvious arsehole, drank a half and left.

*coughcough* Ukraine

We do. Because ultimately that's who 'enforces' any law. I don't murder, assault or steal because it is immoral to do so, not because it is illegal. Indeed, if I were to try my hand at any of those I suspect I'd have exactly the same thought process as any criminal- I won't get caught anyway. We have words like 'sociopath' for people who only follow the rules when its to their advantage or when they think they will be caught, and by and large people and by extension countries should not be aiming for sociopathy and set a spectacularly low bar when "at least we're better than Al Qaeda" is used as a yardstick. As for "but they do it"; well so what? So now countries aren't just sociopaths, they're five year old school child sociopaths. I think we can at least try and aim for a bit better than that, unrealistically romantic rose tinted spectacle wearer that I am. But the point is it just isn't sustainable to expect people to play according to rules which punish them for being good.

The one area of foreign policy I agree with the Obama administration on is the notion that the nations with these jihadi problems have to be the ones to fix them. The only way to bury an idea is through the kind of confrontation and folk memory that only happens if you are the buggers doing the actual fighting.

You could always call in to work and say you are observing Martin Luther King Jr. day. If anyone argues with it you can call them a racist. I'd call them a 'shoobonky', then look scathing when they didn't know what it meant, and refuse to explain.

It was a big thing in the 70s and 80s. Look up Red Brigades, Cellules Communistes Combattantes, etc. It's not just the seventies and eighties, although obviously the fall of Communism in Russia had a cooling effect on enthusiasm for the farcical "It works in our heads, now let us kill you" dogma. Look up Shining Path, and the Maoist insurgency in Eastern India for current examples. Oh yeah, and sociopaths are still using communism as an excuse for murdering folks in Greece. I say this because Greece is clearly a country predestined for a strong statist solution to their problems.

You mean like The Satanic Verses ? EDIT: The Saudis are more than welcome to try and sue in the courts. Again, any legal process, occurring with the legal blessing of the French republic is fine by me (within France). I reserve my objections for murdering people because they cause offence to illiterate halfwits.

You could always call in to work and say you are observing Martin Luther King Jr. day. If anyone argues with it you can call them a racist. I'd skip racist, and just call them a pointless buffoon. If missing a day of work means you don't achieve your work objectives then frankly you're not very good at what you do.