Rostere

What is the most astounding to me is the stupidity of it all. During the Middle Ages people would confess they had flown on a broomstick with Satan while under torture, what made the CIA think their torture would give better results? This so insipid I don't even know where to start. Why would the US employ a policy which seems almost like it is made to be useless and then backfire? Some people think of the CIA as a serious agency with great know-how in their field. But the architects behind this are amateurs who could not arrange a proper conspiracy even if their own lives depended on it. That is, assuming the point of this entire policy was not from the very start to obtain false testimonies and further cement the role of the US as al Qaedas prime recruitment partner.

Well, it's extremely commercialized. It's all about spending money and consuming, buying stuff for people because you are supposed to, because it's a tradition. It has a "false" feel to it for me. And I don't like my family particularly much, they never stay off the booze when they are together. Listening to them rant about how the muslims are invading, getting welfare and stealing our jobs while talking about how to best cheat their way around taxes and such will get me in a furious mood that I will have to bottle up. Then come New Years Eve and if I go drinking... I'm also against religion and I don't like being reminded about it time and again. There are upsides though, Top Gear christmas specials are fun, some of the seasonal food is awesome; Glögg and vörtbröd for instance. Pretty much this... Although I don't mind alcohol, and don't have relatives of the same political persuasion as yours.

In BG new commands were usually needed every 6 seconds if you were a spell caster and any non-caster usually fought same enemy until that one dies which didn't happen for few rounds (6 second = 1 round) unless they were trash mobs where you didn't even need to pause at all. So you paused at worst about every 6 seconds and at best until anyone on enemy team died. Casual players didn't bother much with effective use of spellcasting and just paused to give troops new targets after current ones died so they paused even less often. In PoE everything is faster and deadlier and as such asks for pausing much much more often. Also from what I understand, PoE will not support AI scripts for your characters like IE games did. But isn't there a "slow mode"?

I really, really, really do not understand complaints about the game requiring too much pausing. I mean, in the BG and IWD games, I pretty much paused before giving every command in combat. How have you people been playing these games and how were you able to beat them without pausing? PE is not supposed to be about speed and reflexes.

Don't get too worked up about condemning resolutions. Between nuclear powers, they might as well mean nothing. If the US would ever go to war against Russia, it would be only under the most dire of circumstances. They good thing is that with all the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, et.c. we have forgotten that a real war between two nuclear nations is far more serious and not so easily initiated. It won't be enough with diplomatical threats to start one. People are simply not that stupid. A nuclear war would almost surely mean total annihilation for both involved parts. That matter of "winning" such a war is moot, the territory of former Russia would be split up and ruled by whomever did not participate in the war regardless of the damage done in the other direction. For every practical purpose, all participants in the war will be losers. And so I guess bad news is that with all these small so-called wars, people might also have forgotten the dire implications of a "real" nuclear war, which was constantly on everyone's mind as late as in the 1980s.

But what if the terrorists are also incompetent, and not expert marksmen? Maybe we are seeing the AK-47 version of a slap fight?

Well, I guess that says something about the Chechen police then. To be honest, the clip reminds me of another clip with the Malian army I think I saw on this forum.

Those are Chechen police, hardly the Russian SWAT...

That isn't really accurate, the 'bad debts' in terms of sub prime were absolutely known and designed to be 'bad debts', and it was known that derivatives were based on them. The big issues were that banks- and more pertinently the ratings agencies that were supposed to monitor them that provided the independent label of them being safe- thought they had a golden goose to get money from a new market and turn a 3% roi into a 10% one, and that there were no real consequences for them when it turned out the goose had died. People still listen to Moodys, S&P etc as if they know anything when they blithely labelled derivatives as AAA and the banks- in general- got both a bail out and maintenance of their special status. The problem is not with fraud or criminal behaviour, the problem is that these people were morons. They believed they had developed the perfect system when in reality it was just another pyramid scheme, and have had no effective consequences for their actions. Not even a decade later and you already have people buying houses in places like London on credit- with no intention at all of anyone actually living in them- just to sell to some other person functioning on credit six months later. It's moronic, irresponsible and traps people like the perfectly innocent single house owner who ends up with negative equity when the bubble bursts, as well as all the people who cannot afford accommodation at all, and the taxpayer who ends up with their economy in recession when the bubble inevitably bursts. But it looks good in a narrow economic sense in the short term, so nobody wants to fix it. We've got a far bigger welfare state than the US, but our debt: gdp ratio is way lower and would be even more so if we hadn't had a city flattened by an earthquake. And it ain't just Norway with their oil cash, all the Scandics are in the same situation as we and Australia are, far lower debt levels despite more welfare. Welfare is not a large contributor to economic malaise because welfare gets spent, it goes into circulation in the wider economy. Indeed, cutting welfare usually intensifies recessions because it removes money that is being circulated which hits businesses leading to more layoffs, while people with excess cash tend to sit on it and cut spending in recessions those on low wages cannot cut spending unless forced. The problem with the high debt European countries and the US is the same as with the banks- they've been run by morons, whether left or right wing. Ideological morons, short term vision morons, political benefit before actual benefit morons; people who think that the good times will last forever so never make hard decisions to actually pay down debt when they can. And that is irrespective of left/ right divide; our left party reduced debt massively last time it as in power, our right wing one runs massive deficits, cut taxes for the rich and raised GST during a downturn which actually turned it into a depression etc. Our left wing party wants to raise the retirement age (which is essential in the medium term, along with a capital gains tax to stop looney tunes housing speculation that should have come in yesterday) but the right wing one wants to keep it where it is. And you have plenty of right wing US politicians handing out massive corporate welfare packages- overpriced military contracts, agricultural subsidies that favour massive conglomerates etc etc. I very much agree with the statement that most economic trouble stems from idiocy that is not inherent to either the right or the left side of politics. Just like left-wing politicians can end up spending too much on pointless schemes and projects which never bear fruit economically, right-wing politicians can sell off collective assets and lower taxes irresponsibly (I think it's called "Reaganomics" - running a massive deficit while still lowering taxes). The key is a balanced economy. I'll write a long post on left/right later, meanwhile, food for thought: So the economic crisis was half as taxing as WW2 to the US economy. Reagan and Obama are competing for worst economic performance, although said crisis might play a part in this (and how was the economy looking during the eighties?). In any case, the conclusion from this is that economic responsibility has nothing to do with left or right on the political spectrum.

Well it is true technically speaking, but you could of course argue that China doing so is only a minor factor globally.

Well China has certainly seized the American means of production, in any case. They must be wondering what to do next.

Okay, American test: Parties you side with... 88% Green Party on domestic policy, social, foreign policy, immigration, and healthcare issues. 83% Democrats on domestic policy, foreign policy, immigration, and healthcare issues. 74% Libertarians on economic, immigration, and social issues. 55% Constitution Party on domestic policy and economic issues. 52% Socialist on social and foreign policy issues. 37% Conservative Party on economic and environmental issues. 30% Republicans on environmental issues. So apparently I largely with the Green Party, except for issues of economy, where I am a Libertarian (I find that hard to believe), and issues of environmental issues, where I am with the Republicans (!). Well, I think all this test tells us is that if non-Americans were running the US, the two-party reality of Democrats and Republicans would be exchanged to one of Democrats and the Green Party.

And the hilt won't break on the double sided one? I'm sorry, not being a native English speaker I confused the words "hilt" and "cross-guard". I meant that the cross-guard will break if it ever serves its purpose. Does that make things clearer?

Because the "hilt" will break if it ever serves its purpose. Assuming it is really meant to be a hilt, and not some kind of bizarre small side-daggers. Who knows?

Well from what i understand about Sweden, the self-hatred of the politicans atleast, is that there are no "swedes" to begin with. Just some barbarians and the rest is imported from other cultures. Stuff like that is political suicide most other countries. Just like there are not any "Americans", right?

What do you think you get if you ask a bartender for a "Communist Cosmopolitan"?

Well, some time has to be the first time, I'm glad you came out

I am surprised by how many people who have taken this test ended up as left-of-centre on "Collectivism". Might there be some sort of bias in the test? Also, all Swedes who have taken the test this far have achieved -100% on "Tribalism". I guess that makes clear the point that the test was made with one culture in mind, other cultures might be off the charts on some of the scales.

There are a number of other questions to take into account as well. But yeah, we forumites probably could have written a better test if we only had the time...

How did a libertarian get a 0 on liberalism? As I wrote in the original post, "Liberalism" in this test pretty much equals cultural liberalism, as opposed to cultural conservatism. So if you have a low score on "Liberalism" but a lower score on "Authoritarianism" it pretty much means that you're personally more of a conservative, but nonetheless believe that people should have autonomy in choosing what they believe locally on these issues. But GD got 0%, so that's pretty much middle-of-the-road, at least according to the viewpoint of whoever made this test. Oh, and I forgot my label: "Centrist World-Federalist Bleeding-Heart Progressive"

Well, I think I answered "Maybe" to about half...

But you must post the numbers, you can't make sense out of just the label.

So I came across this neat little test on the Internet. It's only 30 questions and it places you on 5 different political axes. Having argued so much about politics with a lot of members on this forum, it would be interesting to see how our results on this little test compare to each other. Here is the link: http://www.abtirsi.com/quiz2.php And my results: Collectivism score: 0% Authoritarianism score: 0% Internationalism score: 100% Tribalism score: -100% Liberalism score: 67% "Authoritarianism" in this test means how much power you think the state should have over the individual, while "Liberalism" is how culturally liberal/progressive you are. "Tribalism" is essentially nationalism, while "Internationalism" is interventionism. I was surprised I got so high a score on that one. What does your say? Post your results! (Yeah, 30 questions is a bit on the small side for this type of test. The margin of error is pretty big. Especially the "collectivism" questions I think are very vague and dependent on context. I get a score between -17% and 50% when I vary my answers within what I think is reasonable)

I expect this to suck. Sorry, it had to be said.

Could you gimme a source? I just moved, I don't have TV or a newspaper yet (and I'm debating getting either) and I must have missed it on the internet. Most of the time politicians respond with strong condemnation, not like this mayor apparently did. Anyway, yeah for some reason some of the ethnic groups (moluccans and moroccans specifically) in the Netherlands are seemingly pro-segregation. When I was looking for a new apartment it wasn't that uncommon for me to find qualifiers like "This apartment is only available for those with strong ties to the local community". I don't know if that reflects upon the ethnic groups or on how they are treated by society. I think it reflects on those ethnic groups at the moment, because they also can't stand each other and they tend to have... altercations. Still, nothing compared to gang wars and ghettos. http://www.nltimes.nl/2014/11/28/family-threatened-move-moluccan-neighborhood/ http://nos.nl/artikel/2006094-onrust-over-toewijzing-huis-molukse-wijk.html Just to give you some background: the Moluccans are a very special case in the Netherlands. The Moluccans were the elite soldiers of the Netherlands during colonial times. After the Netherlands lost Indonesia as a colony, they were stuck with the question what to do with them. Indonesia insisted they either join the new Indonesian army, or return to their islands disarmed. The Moluccans themselves wanted to fight for independence of their islands. The Netherlands then completely screwed them over, by ordering them to board ships to the Netherlands. Once they were here, they were discharged from the army, and in many cases sent to live in exactly the same camps that during WW2 held jews(!). They stayed there for decades. When eventually the government accepted that they had to do something to house all the Moluccans, they were divided among Dutch towns, but under their own demand that they would have their own areas to live in since that is how they have always lived and their culture is based on this togetherness. That is interesting.