Walsingham

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6936533.stm I rest my case.

They're not much more furry than Aram's avatar.

A totally disinterested foreign policy would result most likely in teh country piling everything it had into the Cote D'Ivoire and the other bits of the former Belgian Congo. Or Myanmar. The effort would cripple and economically destroy the donor nation in a couple of years and teh eventual benefit to the receiver would be nil. no-one criticises doctors for taking payment for their services. They're seen as lovely.

Colrom has a point. Robot armies would greatly enhance the risk of a combatant using bio-weapons, since the attacking army wouldn't have to worry about friendly fire. I hate to say it but I think we need to look seriously at this issue worldwide. I know from informal contacts that the British Army is fundamentally opposed to the use of independent robots, but the MoD may have other ideas based on cost. As one officer told me. "it's terribly tempting. I can send a squad of soldiers over a hill, or a squad of robots. If I send the robots I know I won't have to visit any parents and wives when I get home."

Quickly, Colrom, I don't see your point, and invite you to try again. My friend and I are opposed to the US Government. One of us shoots and kills the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the other shoots and kills a mom on her way back from soccer practice. Equivalent? St Jimmy, I'm going to try and keep it short, because one problem with these threads is that as they get deeper they get unweildy and people stop reading. Apologies in advance if I over-simplify. 1. We certainly do have a responsibility as civilised people to try and escape violence as far as possible. But it will never be totally removed or can be forgotten. I see it rather like bacteria. As civilised people we should try not to live in filth. But equally we should not try to remove them entirely. After a certain point are efforts are hopeless and may even harm us. My point here is that violence cannot be acceptable in the hands of the individual and the criminal by any standards. It inevitably tends towards the worst excesses. 2. I apologise if I gave the impression I thought you were directly condoning terrorism. But I stand by the principle that any intellectual justification provides covering fire for terrorist activity. This is not to say that we shouldn't understand terrorist motivation. But there is a difference between understanding and sympathising. 3. Robert Mugabe bulldozes whole neighbourhoods opposed to him, and his security forces routinely pick up, beat, and abuse reporters and politicians who oppose him. I want to be sure you are genuinely arguing his corner before I go to the trouble of pulling together articles to support my contention that he is an a-hole, and his side-stepping of democracy has ruined a once successful country. 4. While I accept and have seen the farcical output of some developing democratic countries I do not think they prove democracy is not for everyone. Who precisely are you saying cannot handle democracy? Coloured gentlemen? Muslims? Luton? The benefits of having a say in the laws which govern us are universal in both the avoidance of abuse, and the elevation of the human spirit.

I just realised that a far more important question is "Do they have the funk"?

This thread is even better if you replace the concept of 'game' with 'secret military mind control lasers'.

*still laughing after ages* Good idea. If anyone from **** Obsidian is reading this then May I suggest a name change? Why not use it in all game names. This alone would surely guarantee commercial success! I too find radical feminism mental. HOw could one not? But at the same time I don't find it as daft as, say, animal extremism. Women really HAVE been denied the same rights and freedoms as men in human history. More importantly there is a lot of persecution and violence against women all over the developing world. In parts of Africa and Asia rape is not even seen as rape by many men. But these salon radicals don't do anything about that, oh no. They think they've got cojones if they swagger about Brighton beach and be terse at ice-cream salesmen. I also draw the line at ANY doctrine that tells me someone is better than I am by an accident of birth.

It says it mostly in the thread header. Afghan grain harvest this year expected to be 4.6 million tonnes, resulting in a shortfall of half what it was under the Taliban. Afghans have been given new and more reliable seed strains, plus they now have access to foreign markets and *gasp* machinery. Other crops also on the rise as export material. I find this tremendously heartening, as Afghanistan was once regarded as a fruitful country. Indeed it used to grow the best wines in the world, even if now the grapes are only used for raisins.

Quite. Let's erase all trace of the music of Giuseppe Verdi, the poetry of kipling, the cooking of the American deep south. Let's remove all trace of the understanding of our surroundings ...on the offchance that rocahes are better than we are.

I believe there is a conspiracy, and the govt dispatches loonies into the general populace to discredit the theory.

Pfah. Venus Bluegenes any day. A real (genetically engineered) woman. If any of my girlfriends can't breathe chlorine gas and know how to operate a satchel charge it's going to be a real short date.

Set point to Azarkon. I still prefer the American system to the current British fashion of simply working out acronyms. Take FRES, for example, the new family of armoured vehicles. In the old days we'd have called them 'Comets', 'Centurions', 'Devastators', or 'Black Princes'. Now it's Future Rapid Effects System. *Looks disgusted on an atomic level.* Bloody war by paste-brained civil servants.

Laudable moderation, Azarkon. Things are less clear cut. Yet while the leaders may be less distinguishable* the systems have grown far more distinct. The USA of today has had the civil rights movement, and the rise of public education and welfare. Not to mention spending hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid. Similar thinsg could be said about Great Britain. While Russia is sliding back into the pit, which China never left. *Leaving aside Vladimir Putin, for my money. The ex-KGB secret policeman, architect of Russia's disastrous Chechen adventures, and ruthless abuser of the legal system to seize personal control of almost all crucial Russian industrial assets; not to mention probable instigator of the murder of political opponents.**

#1 There is a point there, but you cannot rightly justify violence at any time in my opinion. ~~~Violence does not need to be justified. It is axiomatic. As I will prove to all-comers at any time who present themselves to me with an ordinary pencil. There are, moreover, gradations of violence and making distinctions between types of violence is an essential part of mitigating the horrors of war. #2 & 3 Is democracy necessarily the best alternative to terrorism? As I said before, should we be so arrogant to believe that installing a democratic government in a foreign country will magically solve all of its problems? Did we escape despotism only to come to the realization that in 300 years, the basic principles haven't changed? The rich still rule, and frankly not every man in our country can grow up to be president. The days of Lincoln are gone, and we have been relegated to simply electing someone out of a pool of individuals. ~~~Absolutely, democracy is better than terrorism. Leaving aside your peculiar notions about the 'failures' you mention, they cannot compare with the inherent failures of any system based on pure force before reason. If you believe that life in the USA or another democracy is just as harsh as living in a dictatorship I would respectfully suggest you pull your head out of your ass and immediately emigrate to Zimbabwe or Myanmar. Democracy is about one thing pure and simple, and that is giving the common man some protection against being abused. #4 True, but do you consider Che and Mao to be terrorists? They were heads of state AND had a small military force which toppled a country's current regime. Do we begin to call the Iraqi insurgents revolutionaries if they topple our Iraqi puppet government? For example Che Guevara by any

The only bad thing I can recall about pre-school was that it lulled me into a false sense of goodwill regarding school. I was immensely privileged to attend a tiny village pre-school with a pair of kindhearted spinsters running it. Happy days.

You're right, it WAS a special mod, and the game was Planescape Torment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LMxhc8WwGU...ted&search= Not funny, but bloody terrifying. I practically catapulted backwards off my chair reaching for an imaginary flamethrower.

Speaking of asslesss chaps (and who'dve thought that would ever happen?) did anyone else find that outfit weird in vampire the Masquerade - Bloodlines?

Candy coated electric eels.

Um... easy point, but it needs to be made. Are you seriously claiming moral equivalence between Stalin's Russia and Roosevelt's USA?

St. Jimmy, It is only vague when you try to attach a moral judgement to it. It is the moral question which causes the ambiguity, not the mechanical characteristics. Mechanical Definition Terrorism is the deliberate attack by weak, irregular, and (by inference) usually clandestine forces against poorly defended targets, with the express purpose of creating chaos that weakens the target entity. Fear and apprehension are a part of the equation, in that they contribute to the psychological weakening of the target. However, it is the total system effect on the target that is the object of its application. Moral Component The moral reprehensibility of terrorism is tied to, but still distinct from the above mechanical description for four reasons: 1. "Poorly defended targets" tends to slide into 'civilians', and nothing else. I personally find deliberate targeting of civilians reprehensible. Civilians do get killed by the regular military, but there is a difference in my mind between an air tasking order that has been triple reviewed to avoid civilian casualties, and deliberately crashing bombs into packed nightclubs or office buildings. 2. Weakness in military force can arise due to minority rule, such as in apartheid South Africa. However, where democracy exists such an argument cannot be used as an excuse for using resorting to violence. 3. More often, worldwide, weakness in military force is associated with the party concerned being weak in terms of popular support. 4. Due to point 3, and also for reasons of maintaining security as a clandestine grouping, terrorist organisations almost invariably kill many of their own community who oppose them. Point 1 is almost universally true of all terrorist organisations. The only exception I can think of would be the Weather Underground Organisation (aka The Weathermen) - and they were essentially just bored middle class kids. Points 2 and 3 apply to groups acting against governments susceptible to democratic pressure. Failing to oppose such groups is tantamount to abandoning the principles of democracy itself, and subordinating ourselves to despotism. Something which I was always told we have had to work bloody hard to escape from, and protect against. Point 4, combined with the necessity of obtaining large sums of money and equipment, has a tendency to provoke the organisation into a lifestyle of petty warlordism. Rapidly they cease to be the executors and heroes of the people and become another set of oppressors. For all the above reasons I believe it is wrong to sympathise in the smallest part with any organisation that uses terrorist methods. They are questionable at the outset, and almost inevitably slide into worse and worse outrages. Our responsibility is to render the use of terrorism as defunct as the use of poison gas by totally rejecting it.

Swords don't run out of ammunition.

I don't think I'd ever go there unless I had kids. Kids I hated.

LMAO. Good point, man. I also think maybe it would be good to have the gay gamers do a _little_ ass-kicking in arena games.