Zoraptor

I would say though that if you reworded 'violent warlord' to use more favourable or neutral language most muslims would agree with that being a significant element of Muhammed because he was a (righteous, to their view) conqueror both historically and in the Koran. I'd make the distinction between those who see that violence and conquest as being, essentially, the end point and intrinsic to being a muslim and the vast majority who see it as being a means to an end under specific circumstances and not intrinsic except in those specific circumstances. The latter is, of course, both the majority view and also indistinguishable from the vast majority of those following even theoretically pacifist religions like buddhism or christianity or any other philosophy for that matter; everyone is perfectly willing to use violence for their ends under the right circumstances whether they be muslim or whatever.

I think it's the black uniform that makes them look big while lighter colours tend to make players look smaller, the ABs always look bigger than England but it's usually the reverse that is true. As for the game itself, we played pretty poorly a lot of the time with some silly mistakes and McCaw in particular was an utter moron. At least we played poorly and won, unlike South Africa and the first match against Australia earlier this year but they'll have to do better in the knock out stages.

"Gaiety is the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union"- Iosif Dugashvili

Nah, Ninjas. Fair few non Japanese sounding names in that team too, though getting beaten by Japan + NZ/Aus/RSA D team castoffs still isn't a good look.

The US can reimplement the UN sanctions very easily, as there has to be universal agreement to keep them lifted if a complaint is made rather than to reimplement them- effectively there's a veto on keeping the sanctions lifted where if anyone objects they automatically reoccur. Of course, Iran then wouldn't consider themselves to be subject to the agreement either, but the option is there. There was never any prospect at all of getting any military action formally approved in the agreement- or at the UN itself- and the only option there was simply not to have an agreement at all or act unilaterally, which always remains an option. Choosing something that according to the experts gives 15 years of security over yet another bout of middle eastern anthill kicking is definitely preferable.

It very likely wouldn't be a WW2 like event though; at best a WW1 type event is far more likely where it 'ends' with a 20 year truce while the loser builds up strength again, or a 30 Years War event with modern weaponry. A full scale war between sunni (well, theoretically the salafi/ wahhabi/ takfiri fringe, but inevitably more moderates would get drawn in and become less moderate) and everyone else in the ME would make what is going on now look like a picnic. And chances are that the radicals would win because by and large people are far more willing to die or uproot themselves to fight for a radical cause than for moderation, people who see their friends getting killed tend to radicalise not moderate and moderates tend to get disheartened as the radicals gain power. I'm deeply sceptical of the west's motives especially and their ability to deliver practically on positives but they do have a passive buffering effect from having some level of engagement even if their more active phases are almost uniformly ill thought out.

It should help, it just won't be a perfect solution- but assuming that salafis are seen as being a part of the problem excluding them from any accepted refugees would make it harder for existing/ present salafis to influence the more moderate refugees. Or they could accept only druze/ christian/ yazidi refugees; that would remove the threat of muslim extremism from refugees almost entirely albeit that approach has its own obvious problems. Iran is pretty definitively shia, though I'd assume sunni was meant there. Practically I tend to agree that no intervention at all, ever, is as dumb as constant intervention in everything, and the basic realities of the situation as it is now won't be changed positively by complete non intervention. I do however have considerable sympathy for those who throw their hands up either at the fact that for all the money spent and lives lost over the past decade or so things only seem to have gotten worse/ not improved significantly or those who feel that the west's history of intervention has been so consistently wrong headed that they are either so incompetent that anything done is likely to blow up late or so malign that they are deliberately setting things up to blow up later. Looking back at the mess of naive ideology and cynical realpolitik does not raise any hopes that the west will suddenly find a successful path to stability and success in the ME, as such it's very easy to just say they should stay the asterisks out of the whole region as it could scarcely get worse than it is now. Of course in reality it could get a whole lot worse than it is now.

Thing is, there have always been two sides to GG- or any identifiable group, really- and the Nyberg stuff and other things which are going on epitomises that. There's always one part which loves the outrage and believes that anything is fine so long as it is directed at the right people, their enemies, and the others who don't agree with that approach. The first group is simultaneously the most committed and least committed to the 'cause' because they're deep believers, but only in their particular vision and approach so if the movement as a whole shifts away from their vision they're also the ones who start the internecine attacks. Milo/ Breitbart writing about Nyberg is- and I could not agree more with Keyrock- basically just click and outrage bait with the promise that there can be follow up articles about all their political enemies who are defending the 'pedophile' but it is ambrosia to the people who love drama and 'getting' the opposition. Nyberg is at best an utter moron but as much as 'joking' about being a pedophile is gross stupidity using alleged pedophilia as clickbait and a gotcha! for opponents is hardly the height of integrity either. Especially since she is innocent until proven guilty and I very strongly suspect some will see anyone saying that as being a 'defender' of her. I utterly loathe that sort of approach whoever it comes from, it's used so often with emotive topics to gain cheap and easy points and to label anyone disagreeing as being pro pedophilia/ terrorism/ drugs/ crime/ domestic violence/ misogyny or whatever; and it is exactly what they would accuse sjws of doing. There is a peripherally relevant point in illustrating that some people (and some journalists) will absolve Nyberg of anything, even the 'crime' of being stupid but really, anybody who is surprised by that must spend all their time on the internet reattaching their bottom jaw after it drops off for the twentieth time that day. Some of it is pretty funny though. Seeing some people in GG start labelling others as being 'sjws' or 'sjw lite' because they don't perfectly agree with them/ don't like Breitbart/ aren't outraged enough/ actually do believe that more minorities or women in gaming would be a good thing is almost directly equivalent to a lot of what they accuse aGG of doing with labelling closet gators/ backing unethical journalists that spout stuff they like/ not blanket hating everything the other side says just because it is them saying it. It's all inevitable, but I still find it acutely ironic and amusing that in any group it is always the radicals who believe in their own ideological purity but are always- always- utter hypocrites in practice.

The key sentence being: "The minister conceded that he had no firm information on terrorist infiltration of refugees, but said his "gut feeling" told him it was happening." Colour me unimpressed. If ISIS terrorists wanted to get into Europe, they'd simply come by plane, and not in a 9/11 way. There's a enough of them with valid European passports. ISIS themselves claim about 4000 warriors. But no one can truly know since refugees tend to tear their passports at the Serbian/Hungarian border. A lot don't do that any more- one of the consequences of Merkel's stupidity is that as well as paying people smugglers to smuggle them they're now also paying forgers to make fake Syrian identity papers. There have been more than a few reports of Urdu or Pashtu speaking refugees carrying Syrian ID papers, quite apart from all those who are just claiming to be Syrians with no papers. The German (shorthand, since there have been equally dumb responses from elsewhere) reaction has been just about the single worst reaction possible as it actively exacerbates the problem by encouraging more people to arrive; and I can only conclude that it has been deliberately so or that Merkel et al have not even the most basic grip on reality and how people's minds work. That they are now seeking to strongarm others into accepting their approach and bailing them out of their stupidity only compounds it. It's particularly ironic given their response to Greece, Germany seeking a no harm no foul refugee bail out from their culpable stupidity from everyone else. One rule for the vassals, another for the liege...

Most of the 'slavery' scams here are pretty typical ones with a new veneer- hold the immigrant to ransom against losing their job and being deported if they complain about being paid $2 at the local Indian restaurant being the most recent. Happens rather a lot and ironically there's a disproportionate number of former immigrants doing the exploiting of the new immigrants. The other one is a payment scam, set up a job that no New Zealander can or would do but which is tailored towards a particular immigrant who wants to move here- fluent mandarin architect willing to work for minimum wage, or similar- when a suitable candidate cannot be found through Work & Income NZ (the government unemployment/ job agency) they can import someone who usually pays a decent 5-6 figure sum to the person with the job for the work visa. And then we vote ourselves least corrupt country in the world for the xth year in succession.

CDP/R is also one of the bigger localisers/ distributors in eastern europe, so it could be EA looking to get some games localised/ distributed instead of CDPR looking for a publishing deal. I'd doubt it would be a game development deal though, that is what EA have Bioware for. It's certainly a rather small rumour to hang any serious talk of a buy out on.

The honor part can be slightly debated. That Garrett has people he 'truly cares about' is very debatable, imo- he certainly has some sense of honour as he targets people who 'deserve' it and avoids the poor and killing servants and the like especially*, though clearly he cares mostly about his own sense of honour rather than any accountability to others. Part of that is a sense of professionalism/ professional pride and there being little point targeting those who have little to take, but only a part of it; he's also a narcissist. The only person he's shown genuine concern for is himself and his driving motives are profit and self preservation for self. That doesn't stop him from saving the world of course, but it's the balance of amorality and narcissism leavened with a bit of honour then combined with saving the world which makes him a rare antihero rather than the far more common protagonist villain or flawed hero. The only way that Garrett has people he truly cares about is if you define Garrett as being those people. *gameplay experience may vary, but the game clearly regards civilian deaths as being sloppy at very best.

Nailed it. People really need to learn to just leave other people alone and mind their own business. I'd say that it has to go beyond simple belief, there has also to be a desire to inflict the 'benefits' of those ideas on others whether they want it or not. Otherwise holding or expressing any belief about others would be wrong and so would any political party or political discourse; after all, every candidate will say that they know best what their country and everyone in it need even if they'd couch it in slightly different terms, and that's true whether you agree with the candidate or not. So long as you're reasonable about how you express your beliefs and don't seek to impose them on others (as opposed to express or hold them at all) then it's fine.

Yeah, other programs have had similar bugs with varying levels of blame on the user or producer, some users installed to bizarre locations- I remember someone installing stuff into C:\windows (not PoR2 though) because obviously that's where all the windows programs should go... The uninstall bug for PoR2 was tracked down to being the fault of the (3rd party) installer software of the english only version (?) iirc*, so could have effected anything and wasn't really their fault. After all half the point of using 3rd party utilities is that they're supposed to be safe and you don't have to write your own with potential bugs. Having said that, the quality of the game itself was their fault. While there was massive clamour for DD versions of all the IE games, NWN, Gold Box etc there has been nary a squeak about the travesty of not having PoR2 available. Which says all that needs to be said about its quality and how well it is remembered. *I actually thought the problem was basically the same as with the Sierra Tools one though (ie you had to change the default path in PoR2 to get the bug) so I may be conflating them, though I am pretty sure it took a fair while for the bug to be noticed which wouldn't be the case if it were all uninstalls were effected.

Syrians are mostly arab, there's just a lot of difference between different types of arab since there weren't wholesale population replacements during the arab conquests. So a magrebi arab may actually be a berber, a misr arab looks a lot like an ancient egyptian and a suryah arab looks a lot like an ancient syrian. Much the same way that everyone calls english an ethnicity when it's almost entirely the same as basic celtic stock and near indistinguishable from the welsh. As for whether the west destabilised Syria, there is no doubt they did after their 'success' in Libya and expected things to go much the same way. But the primary movers were the Gulf States and Turkey who have done most of the training and arming of the rebels, and allowed the extranationals that the rebels now rely on to move into Syria. Initially there were a lot of 'moderates'- sadly, naive idealistic fools is more accurate; as if you can just wave a wand and everything can be fine, the only people who believe that are 5 year olds and western strategic planners people who believe western PR- in Syria who bought into the rebellion-> victory-> ... -> democracy, wealth and freedom for all! narrative, but they're long gone. There isn't a secular or moderate faction in the rebel top ten and their biggest groups are all radical sunnis like Al Qaeda Nusra, ISIS, Jaish al Islam, Jaish al Fatah, Ahrar al Sham etc. The only moderation they have is in comparison to ISIS. Frankly, western 'support' for the rebels at this point is a fig leaf to their gulf allies and a complete inability to either face reality or accept the embarrassment of admitting that Putin was right or that they didn't have a clue what they were doing (again. And really, that's the crux, they just do not learn anything from their mistakes because they never admit them and try to pretend that everything is fine so as not to get punished electorally). End of the day it has to be admitted that if Assad is the answer the question is "who is the least worst option?" but there has at least been a notable shift on the edges towards accepting that reality instead of head burying- it will just take time for the centres to accept that. Though of course it has led to some darkly hilarious incidents like Israel acting as Al Qaeda's air force around Qunetra (lol, Syria is responsible for all firing from Syrian territory; starngely whenever Al Nusra get pushed back some rockets coincidentally hit Israel), 'Ibrahim' giving the Saudis conniptions for having the temerity to call himself Caliph and the spectacular 'red line' back down (albeit the only sensible action) after a Kerry off-the-cuff got picked up by Lavrov and run with. Even today? Syria has been ruled by muslims for 1300 years, Iraq for the same and up until recently they had more religious minorities than any western country, certainly including Serbia. Point is, it is the 'today' part that has changed, not the historical part. The good news about that is if it has changed one way it can change back. But, the today part has changed largely due to KSA sitting on a huge ocean of oil and having a backwards interpretation of islam which they are utterly evangelical- or pathological- about infecting every muslim country with. It doesn't help that due to their top down power structures most muslim countries can be infected easily by bribing those in charge and claiming to be helping the poor and downtrodden, eg Pakistan. Truth is, their brand of islam doesn't give a flying asterisk about anything that isn't their brand of islam, hence why they're perfectly happy to destroy sufi muslim tombs and the like in Timbuktu as well as the Temple of Bel. Which lasted twice as long under muslim rule as under pagan and christian rule combined, mind you. And I see that having complained about them vandalising Mecca part of the Grand Mosque has collapsed.

That bit of Syria has been muslim ruled since... probably Khalid ibn Walid as iirc neither the Crusaders nor the Byzants ever got to it/ got it back in the intervening time. Excluding a decade or so of Froggy rule that's 1300+ years of muslim rule where it was fine. ISIS are just a bunch of religious dingbats who are jealous that the Vandals got a term named after them. Ironically, the current muslim sect closest to what ISIS claims as their philosophy is the Ibadi sect of Oman, one of the most tolerant muslim countries anywhere, if not the most tolerant. Though there is some exquisite irony in Saudi Arabia- actual philosophical and religious antecedent sponsor of what became both Al Qaeda and ISIS- wanting to sponsor a bunch of loony toons extremist mosques in Germany to 'help' people running away from the consequences of their loony toons religious extremism in Syria. I doubt I'd be able to avoid laughing in their faces at that 'offer'. Plus of course, Saudi has vandalised Mecca pretty extensively themselves, with nary a squeak in the west.

I shall start lobbying for a 'remove romance from the game' stretch goal to be added. They did say they had a mystery donation in their latest update, maybe it was a mystery donation with romantic stipulation.

Well looking at the epitome of stealth in PC games, the Thief Garret, I neither see illusory, sensitive or self reflective qualities. Sleek mayhap as a pre-requisite for his occupation, but he is ideally not seen enough to be illusory, he is perhaps one of the most insensitive and straightforward of protagonists, and the only thing he usually reflects on is how much he can earn from a given endeavour, and how much recreation and rent that can afford him. He is an anti-hero with quite deliberate and exaggerated emphasis on the hero for all that, and does save the world three times. He probably does count as sensitive and self reflective if you use Duke Nukem or the marine from Doom as a comparison, just not if you use a normal well adjusted human being. Anti heroes are a woefully under utilised character type in pretty much all media, unfortunately.

I hate neoliberal stupidities as much as the next guy, but this is mostly just plain liberal stupidity leavened, er, liberally with a dose of incoming demographic reality. Yes, companies do like to have an unemployment pool which provides plenty of cheap labour when managed properly but a homegrown pool is less troublesome labour than someone who likely doesn't speak the language and isn't familiar with your country. Western economies are founded on constantly increasing resource utilisation and constantly increasing population. Falling birth rates mean a faltering economy and more reliance on fewer workers when it comes to superannuation and the like for an ageing, sickening population and you then have to make politically difficult decisions that are far more difficult to spin such as raising retirement ages and reducing entitlements- the stuff that should only be forced upon vassal nations like Greece, not on the ruling nations; why else do you rule other than to make your vassals subsidise you, after all. Taking large numbers of young workers allows the demographic can to be kicked down the road for a few more years. It is partly about growing the labour pool, but for the government the main factor there is that having something like 2 workers to 1 superannuitant cannot happen economically whether you're neoliberal, progressive, communist or anything short of all caps laissez-faire and willing to let old poor people die on the street; yet without action that is what will happen. It does rather assume that those you are accepting will broadly speaking assimilate and not be too expensive in the short term, and it is of course mutually incompatible with a lot of the environmental talk about reducing footprints, but political reality trumps all and reality is that old people vote, they don't like their entitlements being reduced and someone has to pay for that in the long to medium term. If you don't have enough natives to do it, you import exotics, and hope for the best. Or deal with a reality that will happen at some point, but better to leave that to some poor bastard down the road...

As far as I know its no theory - most of the migrants are coming from Turkey, which they have no real reason to leave. They are being spurred internally, but to be honest, it probably didn't take much as the land of multi-culti ignorance, aka Sweden and Germany did announce they would accept everyone. While the facts are known as where most of the refugees are coming from and that there has been an increase recently the reasons behind that are still speculation. Telling the difference between an increase because the Turks are encouraging them to leave- and there are alternative reasons apart from the safe zone for that, there's an election coming up there and reducing refugees/ shouting about a safe zone to appeal to nationalists and turning the area near Syria into a low grade conflict zone with the Kurds to try and get the pro Kurd party under 10% support are all alternative explanations- or because politicians are encouraging them (deliberately or not) to come, or Syrians just plain giving up on ever going home and looking for alternatives cannot be done. In reality it's probably a combination of all of those and a few more to greater or lesser extents since Turkey has internal and external politics in play, western politicians have encouraged movement and the civil war shows no signs of ending in the near future. End of the day Lebanon and Jordan have difficulty with the population they already have and finding the money for feeding/ clothing/ educating them, at some stage they have to say enough is enough- the only suspicious thing is that it's the relatively rich Turkey with its election campaign and external ambitions which seems to be losing its refugees rather than them. Wanting to go from some refugee camp to Germany is perfectly understandable, after all.

If anyone wants a plausible conspiracy theory for why there are suddenly so many refugees look no further than Turkey being baulked at setting up their 'safe zone' in northern Syria. They've announced it every month for the past six months as if it has approval from the US and others, and been told to FOAD (diplomatic equivalent thereof) every time because no one wants to support Erdogan's neo-Ottomanism and everyone knows it would be an anti Kurd zone rather than an anti ISIS one- and many suspect that there would be a 'referendum' and Syria would never get the land back, per Antioch/ Hatay 1939. However, if Europe finds themselves drowning in refugees from Turkey they'll be looking for an alternative solution and Turkey has one on the table. Last I heard, Jordan has taken in 1.5 million refugees... Not too shabby for a country of 8 million or so. Lebanon has similar numbers... But as far as I know, those are the only two major examples. Others probably know more than me. Lebanon and Turkey have a million plus refugees, Jordan around a million, iirc. Even Iraq has a few hundred thousand. Saudi Arabia is a bit of an odd case, they have no official refugees but they do supposedly have a hundred thousand or so Syrian 'guests' who may or may not exist and may or may not be refugees by another name depending on who you ask. Considering the stipulations placed on Syrians wanting to go on the Hajj by KSA I'm deeply sceptical about them taking actual refugees, if they have anyone it's likely to be the next crop of 'religious students' all set to join whichever extremist group hasn't blotted their copybook yet.

Yes, surely there has to be a middle ground between Australia/ Tony Abbot strong arming tiny bankrupt islands into taking refugees for them under horrendous conditions and rolling out a blanket red carpet as Germany/ Merkel seem intent on doing. Having said that, europe should be far more able to cope than poor old Lebanon, where about a quarter of the population is a refugee (and that's excluding the large number of Palestinian refugees) and there's a huge risk of their extremely nasty civil war going live again as a consequence of what's happening in Syria.

The whole thing is utter madness. I never thought I would have sympathy with Tony Abbot of all people, he's a terrible human being, but the Euro response is an utterly unmitigated disaster waiting to happen and which will actively encourage massive migration not of refugees but of anyone who can half way plausibly claim to be Syrian and will actively exacerbate the problem rather than help. It isn't merely likely that there will be ISIS infiltrators there under these circumstances, it is completely inevitable and it isn't just likely that there will be a swarm of economic migrants rather than refugees in this situation it too is inevitable. For all the utterly stupid crap that Europe has pulled in the middle east they don't owe millions of people anything- except the Libyans whose country they so blithely crapped on with the worst combination of naivité/ political based stupidity since Iraq2003 at least, but they make up a tiny proportion of the refugees. The current approach is the complete opposite of the Australian approach, while that is devoid of humanity but highly effective this has only 'humanity' without even an iota of effectiveness. And anyone who does anything to mitigate things gets criticism. I loathe the Australian system with its extranational concentration camps and guards there who will, literally, be thrown in jail if they talk about said camps but if anything the Euro approach is actually worse.

Fundamentally, Breitbart is no friend of gamers and never has been. They've got a particular political slant which sees them dislike the sjw press on philosophical grounds, and as competitors. The main common ground with gamers is a common enemy, not common views in general.

Yes, very brave that a woman on her third marriage with children born out of wedlock while married to another man stands up for the sanctity of marriage because as she states she will be damned to hell if she doesn't. If there was such a thing, her seat would have been reserved a long time ago. If this is who you respect for taking a stand... I thought it was married #1, had baby with yet to be #2, divorced #1, married #2, divorced #2, married #3, divorced #3, remarried #2. In which case it at least wouldn't be an out of wedlock birth from (yet) another man but from one she actually married, albeit belatedly and not the man to whom she was married at the time. And who she then divorced and remarried with another bloke in between, but what's one more conjugal contortion to that list. Of course I may be misremembering as it's nowhere near as catchy and easy to remember as "divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived" even if it's technically less to remember. Still, she's about as appropriate a source as Henry VIII for lecturing others on the sanctity of marriage. Then again I've always disliked the combination/ conflation of secular and religious marriage, I'd far prefer every marriage as they're called now was a civil union and if you were religious you could combine it with a religious ceremony if you wanted.