Zoraptor

Not really, you expanded the point Gorth was making to extinguish it- he didn't mention Iraq at all, just external parties to Syria and how they viewed the belligerents; you addressed Iraq in its own context not the Syrian one. I could have phrased it better though (and made it more clear that it was wrt Syria), certainly, but I didn't particularly want to deal with the Iraqi situation in detail. But since you kind of asked I'll answer in the broader context. The problem is much the same as with the assertion that Assad doesn't want to fight ISIS because he thinks that the international community will pick him over them. That might be true, but there are compelling military reasons for prioritising the other rebels which trump any 'philosophical' guff like fighting the greater evil. Overall your evidence leads back from the conclusion (basically, that the international community and its opinion is most significant) and not the other way around as it should be, you talk of international recognition etc as if that's the important factor rather than facts on the ground. The 'international community' has been bombing ISIS for more than a year now yet they still have the facts on the ground and have made actual gains to boot. That deals with the more theoretical objection. The practical/ political objection is that both the Syrian rebels and ISIS have a specified claim over Syria, with the rebels being better placed to enforce that claim since they're closer to the important parts of the country, hence ISIS is a secondary threat there; we agree there though the reasoning is different. ISIS also has a specified claim on Iraq. The Kurds however, do not- they claim only 'Kurdistan' with some disputation about what that entails, eg Kirkuk, and have not declared independence as ISIS have. Even if they did break away Iraq would still exist and they're not going to be marching on Tikrit or Baghdad or Basra or Baquba because they don't want to, and have no reason to. The critical questions to frame the reason why ISIS are Iraq's biggest threat is simple: (1) Would Iraq be fighting ISIS in Syria if they were able to? Yes, pretty much definitely. Maybe in similar style to Iran, but then they're using a lot of informals even for the fighting inside Iraq. (2) Would they be fighting Kurds in Syria if they were able to? No, they aren't even fighting their own Kurds. Kurdish independence is a theoretical situation at this point which may or may not happen eventually. ISIS is an entirely practical problem which is ongoing, whether looked at specifically in the Syrian context or specifically in the Iraqi context, or in the wider context.

Heh, I wonder how often Turkey's 'airspace' is going to be violated. They've got a self declared 5 mile exclusion zone inside Syria... And of course Antioch/ Alexandretta should be Syrian territory anyway under that most sacred of institutions, international law, since Turkey occupied it from Syria then held a 'referendum' to annex it. Which sounds familiar to something that happened recently and got some people Very Upset, it's on the tip of my tongue. Kosovo! Hmm, no, that's not right, it's somewhere else. Nevermind, I'm sure it will come to me at some point. Hmm, I think in your eagerness you've made a rather obvious omission there- Iraq. While Iraq ain't Syria ISIS has considerable holdings there and is a neighbour, same as Turkey and is certainly more involved than the US or Russia. Having said that, anyone with map reading skills can see why ISIS is not the primary threat to the Syrian Government, with the exception of a single suburb of Damascus they're further from all the important areas (Homs/ Hama/ Damascus/ Latakia/ Aleppo) than other rebels or JAN are, so they are the primary target in purely military logic. ISIS's main holdings are all either a long way away like Raqqa, 'behind' other rebel areas (Mandib/ Jarablus) or are simply not all that important from the government perspective (Deir ez Zor, one of the few areas where the government has consistently been gaining ground over the past year). Still, if nothing else this intervention has brought the hilarity of the west in general (exc France at least) complaining about someone bombing Al Qaeda.

If there's one KS type project that looks like it is inevitably going to crash and burn it's Star Citizen. No scope control and trying to be all things to all people- the whole thing from concept to funding is completely out of usual crowdsourcing scale. Having said that, this does rather look like what happened to Brad Wardell/ Stardock when a bunch of sjws decided to take the word of an ex employee who was later forced to apologise. Particular caution has to be taken when dealing with accusations from ex employees as they may have axes to grind, and Derek Smart is... unreliable, to say the least.

So, there's going to be a MacGyver remake, apparently. What could possibly go wrong?

Everyone who has intervened has used that tactic- the US bombs 'Khorasan' as well as ISIS too. That's Al Qaeda/ Al Nusra but as with Qatar banning Al Jazeera from mentioning the connection it's all about wanting to be able to complain about Russia bombing Al Nusra with a straight face. Specifically with the Rastan (N Homs) bombing that area is held by Al Nusra/ Al Qaeda at least partly, as is the al Ghab plain area (NW Hama) where JAN is an integrated part of Jaish e Fatah. Some of the non AlQ aligned islamist rebels- Islamic Front/ Jaish e Islami, iirc- were also stupid enough to 'declare war' on Russia prior to strikes even starting and try to hit the airfield at Latakia. There certainly were moderate opposition at the beginning, that's true. As always though the problem with moderate opposition is precisely that they are moderate. Moderate opposition failed in Egypt with less violence and failed in Libya with western intervention; the money and arms flow in to the radicals or the reactionaries, the only thing moderates ever get is some self serving political service. And you have to deal with the political reality that sees Obama explicitly saying 'sunni opposition' and which has maybe one moderate rebel group in the largest five rebel groups.

I agree that Russian intervention won't be an instant panacea. He needs better military leadership at all levels, better strategic thinking and better training for the troops he has; he does have enough troops to do the job as it stands but he lacks the ability to use them effectively with coordination and to avoid unnecessary losses. Out of those the Russians can provide better top level leadership and better intelligence resulting in fewer unnecessary gaffes and wastage, as well as having better air craft and crews for a proper combined arms approach and in the longer term they can provide better training. While Syria has a theoretically decent air force it's woefully unsuited for fighting an armed insurgency as their strike aircraft are ancient and were almost entirely unmodernised and using unguided munitions and their helicopters susceptible to AAA; the Russians should be far better able to monitor troop movements, interdict and strike precisely and where tactically and strategically important. It does seem likely that Assad is going to get (is already getting, by some reports) an influx of Iranian 'volunteers' to stiffen up his forces in any case, and debadged Hezbollah types are likely to hang around as well. Basically though, the government forces have made a series of utterly catastrophic strategic blunders in the past year that the Russians should be able to help prevent- trying to defend long salients, not maintaining objectives and splitting effective units up into small ineffective units trying to do too much with too little all at once and frittering away resources needlessly. And perhaps most importantly they've let the rebels get huge stockpiles of weapons and ammunition from their blunders as well.

To be fair, I'll give the west credit for helping out the Yazidis even if it was primarily PR- but I'd bet every cent in my bank account that they wouldn't have lifted a finger for Fuah/ Kefraya, and they certainly didn't for Qaryatayn. But, that is primarily why the west is even as involved as it is, PR. Ironically that is probably better than any realistic alternative, especially considering what some in their 'coalition' really want. If Saudi really tries direct military intervention against Assad as threatened things will get... interesting, very quickly.

It's bad because the west has consistently made a mess of things, has had a year to degrade ISIS with little progress shown and apart from having made a mess of things looks likely to make a further mess of things with no consistent strategy from the past, present or future. Russian intervention can scarcely be worse than that. Plus, if you happen to loathe retrograde extremists you can pretty much guarantee that Russia will go after the lot, not just selective ones based on not offending certain 'allies'. There's ISIS in Homs Governate- eg the Christian town of Al-Qaryatayn. Indeed, ISIS holds more of Homs Governate than the government does. That's one of the reasons why I don't take western media seriously, they conflate the city of Homs which has no ISIS- and most definitively was not bombed- with Homs Governate which most certainly does have ISIS, no responsible or informed entity should be making that mistake. The particular area that has supposedly been bombed in Homs Governate is about 20 miles Homs city and is partly held by Jabhat Al Nusra/ Al Qaeda, not just by the beatnik lentil eating progressive opposition. The sole difference is that when the US decides to bomb JAN they decide to call them 'Khorasan' because they don't want to actually mention JAN. They're inconveniently big buddies with direct Saudi/ Turkish proxies like Ahrar ash Sham- who are themselves basically JAN, just without the overt AlQ link- so much so that they have an integrated leadership in Jaish al Fatah ('Army of Conquest'). While I'm pretty surprised at direct Russian intervention they will definitely go for the high strategic value targets and from the government pov ISIS doesn't have many of them, ISIS territory is mostly distal from key areas like Damascus and Latakia. Maybe Palmyra for the gas fields and PR, maybe Kuweires and Qaryatayn also for the PR but key ISIS territory like Raqqa is a long, long way from government territory plus it's sparsely populated.

I knew what gamergate is years ago :smug: Who knew that studying entomolygy would come in useful in an internet spat years later?

My point still stands, what was expected was Syrian women and children, not Iraqi men able to fight in their home country. Anyone looking at the refugee stream sees a disproportionate number of young men though, so anyone who expected anything else was deluding themself. Or letting themself be deluded by politicians. Or being facetious about people who let themselves be deluded by politicians. Really though, the most egregious bits of ISIS* genocidal nastiness was against the Yazidis, almost exclusively in Iraq not Syria and they've taken more population by far in Iraq than Syria in the past year or so, Mosul alone would have more population than all their Syrian territories combined. There's a perfectly good reason for more young men making the trip, it's a dangerous journey and more so for women, children and the old; it's safer for them to stay in a regional refugee camp and come later. *The last S in ISIS is for al-Sham, not quite the same thing as Syria since it's the old Caliphate province that included Lebanon as well.

His sentence construction may be the problem, but he's definitely saying that journalism is either one of serving the public good or pushing a political agenda the way it is written.

*grin* Sure. What's that supposed to mean? If Boo was referring to Orthodox Christianity in general as not having a history of colonialism then a certain amount of eye rolling is certainly in order- Russia was a major colonial power, just not a New World colonial power (Alaska excluded). They conquered and colonised the Kazan, Sibiryan and Crimean Khanates* and more those they were the most colonised ones plus most of unclaimed (except by the natives, of course) Siberia proper. Excluding some of Ivan Grozny's actions in Kazan they were probably 'nicer' colonisers than most because the areas were huge and sparsely populated even when colonised, but that is still only nicer compared to the countries that worked millions to death or starved them while exporting drugs to China. *Who had nicked it off the previous Cuman/ Volga Bulgarian/ Uralic/ Sibiryak inhabitants via the Mongols anyway

Not really. Some of the most complex speculative fiction stories are Good vs. Evil; it's the execution that matters. I don't disagree, actually, it is very much in the execution- but a more nuanced view helps with that execution and extends the setting by allowing more than a small subsets of plot lines. You didn't give an example so I'll provide one which is similar(ish) to Star Wars: LOTR. It's got a great setting, at least in theory, highly detailed, well regarded and is a basis for a lot of the subsequent fantasy. The actual plots that take place in that setting are well executed as well, but the stories themselves are pretty generic good v evil and temptation tropes which while not as overtly based on religion as CS Lewis's stuff is still pretty derivative thereof. Ultimately, the LOTR setting has only 5 core books, SW's EU had 50ish plus hundreds of comics and dozens of games which were very seldom even half as well written or well executed as Tolkien's stuff. If there were that many LOTR products I'd be 100% confident it would have exactly the same problems that SW has. Not familiar with Volourn, are you? A veritable world of wonder awaits. (He's been using the 'nazi sjw' insult in about every post for the past two weeks- don't take it seriously, no one else does or will) I only agree with her on an out of universe meta level, in universe she's wrong in much the same way she'd be if she claimed gravity doesn't exist or was trying to kill gravity; and the game makes that absolutely clear at every step. That's why I used the Sword of Truth example albeit it's more obscure than SW or LOTR; in universe whatshisname and whatshername are undoubtedly heroes because the author regards them as such- out of universe though they are, essentially, psychotic mass murderers because their author is an extreme objectivist whose moral absolutism is so extreme it loops all the way around to moral relativism in practice and the main justification for the stuff the heroes do is that they are the heroes.

"NWN was successful in every way that mattered." Only nazi sjws think that. "Everything you wrote about Kreia is nonsense." No. But, hey keep crying. Well yeah, there is no dilemma there because whatever you choose Kreia criticises you for it and the result is the same for the guy you give money to (or not). That is literally a rhetorical exercise illustrating the rather ridiculously simplistic LS/ DS dichotomy where either picking the goody two shows LS option or the nasty DS option ends with not only the same result but criticism of whichever extreme you pick. It's also, of course, deconstruction of the rather silly way RPGs deal with good and evil dialogue, though the deconstruction is far less prevalent than it was in PST. Personally I like that, the vast majority of games are pretty dumb and assume youa re moran too, a bit of depth and introspection is rare. And it's seldom appreciated as such.

Reactionaries aren't really the same as conservatives, since they do want change just in the opposite direction from those wanted by progressives/ liberals. Conservative/ reactionary/ liberal/ progressive have always been both moving goal posts over time and relative to each other within a particular area (country, usually). Much of the problem with discussion of such issues is that the various terms are pretty indistinct and relative, so a liberal in KSA is likely to be far more conservative than a conservative in Sweden but a conservative from Sweden in the early 19th century would be majorly different from the 21st century Swedish conservative; and you have a distinction between the 'old' liberalism which was largely related to economics and 'social' liberalism which is more related to what we'd now call social justice and the like. So you end up with confusing things like the Australian Liberal Party and British Conservative Party actually being very similar despite their names with both being (broadly) socially conservative but economically liberal. It really needs better nomenclature, much like the rather silly left wing/ right wing stuff which is most often used both terribly and inconsistently and has shifted pretty randomly from its roots in 18thC France.

"Boring to who? Our personal opinions are irrelevant." No. Or to be more verbose about it, I'll remember that next time you tell anyone that NWN is the best gmae of all time, Volo. The idea is that you can only do something simple like Good vs Evil for a set amount of time. So it's a fine premise for the movies, all of which I enjoyed to a greater or lesser extent, because a SW movie is what a SW movie is; SFX pr0n with a variable quality supporting story that is not Shakespeare or Tolstoy and isn't intended to be. You're not going to a movie to do much more than be entertained for an hour and a half, it's rare for any movie to do a good job of being thought provoking even when they aim to do that. Once you get into the Expanded Universe though that approach is severely limiting because you go from all six movies which add up to maybe 12 hours of entertainment, total, to a game like KOTOR/2 either of which is multiple times longer, by itself, than all the movies put together. There are, simply put, different requirements for different media, you can get away with a very simplistic approach in movies because it is a very compressed acute length with little time for reflection or analysis or nuance; in contrast a book or a video game takes a lot longer, is usually consumed over an extended period of days to weeks and requires more direct insight into the motivations and thoughts of those involved. Lucas wanted to have his cake and eat it too by both having an EU and remaining true to the very limited vision of his movies. There was thousands of hours worth of EU stuff and pretty much the only bits of it with intrinsic worth were the ones that went off reservation wrt Lucas's good/ evil dichotomy (not so far as to contradict it directly though) and those that wrote around it. Albeit it doesn't help that a lot of the EU is crap anyway. There's a reason why all the simplistic written stories tend to be fairy tales aimed at kids while most hit movies are about as simplistic as those fairy stories. The issue is with Lucas's stipulations that everything be as simplistic as the movies' approach.

Ah yes, we are so morally superior because we... subvert our supposed core beliefs to justify whatever temporal needs we may have at a given time. Hmm.

It's not really between SW fans and RPG fans, though most of the rest is right. The base argument at the heart of K2 and why some people dislike the story was one of the more divisive arguments in the EU- the old (Legends) EU- about whether the world of SW really was just black and white or whether there were shades of gray; between those with a mature, nuanced, view of the world and those rooted in a philosophy suitable for five year olds dictated by the whims of, well, George Lucas. It's a fairly divisive argument in real life too since it tends to mirror the moral absolutist vs moral relativist division. Fundamentally the problem is that Lucas mandated SW is boring. Good vs evil is unimaginative and limiting, and George being George you had some weird stuff being defined as wrong- Jedi could have as much sex as they liked, so long as they didn't care for the person they were boffing, for example, or it being OK to kill thousands of people so long as you didn't get emotional about it and they were bad; the sort of stuff people parody The Sword of Truth/ Terry Goodkind for (deservedly mind you) unremittingly. The canon vision of jedi actually has them as being outright psychopaths*. Some authors noticed that and ran with it, having characters point that out, and some fans hated that happening because George said Jedi were good therefore they were good and no questions could be asked. As it stands, most of the really quality writing present in the old EU ran with that idea. On Kreia and K2 in particular that influence is absolutely clear. Specifically, Kreia has large philosophical and practical similarities to Vergere and some of the questioning of the Jedi philosophy by those such as Hyphen Man (meh, Kai-zez-ell or whatever) was parallel to some of the questioning from other EU. And vice versa, the retconning of Vergere to be outright Sith seems to be mirroring Kreia rather than the other way around. The funny thing is, I can understand people not liking Kreia and what she says, but not thinking she's a crap character. You don't have to believe her, you don't have to agree and she isn't proved right, at any point. What she does do is challenge the status quo and beliefs, and some people just hate that especially if it's done well. *and don't get me started on The Force. The canonical vision of that has everyone being outright slaves to a supernatural force that doesn't give an asterisk, sticking a fork through its eye is a moral imperative

LolEnglandWinsLoses. I just knew Wales were going to score as soon as the commentator started talking about how they were so disorganised and lacked penetration, happens every time. And thanks to daylight savings I tuned in just in time to see most of the Welsh team being scraped off the pitch with a spatula. The two matches against Australia now look even more crucial than before, guess the tickets have been sold already but the hosts going out in pool play would still be a big deal for the tournament. They might have to do a cricket and make it impossible for India England to get knocked out early in future.

To be fair, though, it's not like that report's going to be debated in the Security Council anytime soon, or something like that. The UN has dozens of bureaus, agencies, commissions, and whatever else the thesaurus could come up with, that operate largely independently. It's not that the standards are higher there than in any other thing that is producing papers of that sort. Yep, it's basically the same as the 'congressional briefings' from earlier in the year, very little practical effect and interested parties do reports for the UN every day. Doesn't mean that there won't be attempts by countries to make that sort of crap law but there would be with or without the bleating at the UN.

Well, we pretty much are morally compromised. We live lives of quite genuine privilege and extraordinary wastage while most of the planet doesn't- and we also tend to pat ourselves on the back for doing so. The vast majority of 'our' achievements were made by others decades or centuries ago and are near completely removed from us. For all the talk of muslims and what they believe most of us had better hope that Jesus's "camel through eye of needle" quote was just an advisory. Practically of course you can't give everything away, anyway. But that does not stop there being a moral obligation. It's probably closest to the situation with benefits or healthcare where you don't want everyone to be having MRIs every time they get a cold or to have an unemployment benefit higher than the minimum wage but at the same time you don't want people dying of tuberculosis or cholera on the streets and unemployed people starving under bridges. Once the refugees are there you have an obligation to them and cannot just ship them off in cattle cars back to Syria. The really stupid thing about this crisis is not the direct response to it or the acceptance of refugees in principle, that response is both morally and legally necessary. The problem is that the peripheral response has been so terrible, either grossly incompetent or malign. Merkel actively exacerbated the problem by having encouraged refugees- and economic migrants- to use people smugglers and forged documents to get into Europe; a vicious circle where the smugglers have more money/ encouragement and refugees are encouraged to move in an uncontrolled and personally risky manner, it short circuits the 'proper' way of doing things so those who actually follow the rules and stay in their refugee camps in Turkey/ Lebanon/ Jordan are effectively punished for doing so as they see people who break the rules being 'rewarded' by getting their Euro refugee status for breaking those rules. That was utterly stupid and there ought to be real consequences for her for doing so because she's asterisked up other countries with her 'philanthropy' and has now taken it back to boot, collectivising the consequences. There really are two distinct issues though, direct dealing with refugees once they have arrived where options are very limited, and preventing the refugees from arriving in a uncontrolled manner and disadvantaging those who actually follow the rules.

Yeah, I certainly don't see how you could look at the Greece crises and have any sort of surprise about countries' sovereignty being trumped by the EU. Albeit that wasn't the full EU but then neither is this decision either. Really I don't see how you could look at the EU at all and be surprised that this is the end point. If it weren't other countries being forced to bear the consequences it would be pretty hilarious how quickly Merkel about faced from her idiotic open invitation; and it is always ironic to see Germany bailing themselves out of their own stupidity with not a hint of embarrassment but claims of moral superiority and claiming European Solidarity. It's privatise the profits/ nationalise the debts just with Germany instead of a bank. Congrats, euroweenies, your future is the German Chancellor stomping on your face- forever. Though perhaps an Animal Farm quote would be more appropriate, after all some countries are more equal in the EU than others, though ironically in that case not the PIGS.

And it actually looks like a potentially worthwhile purchase even if you own the CD version/ System Shock Portable since it isn't just base game + SS2Tool as the System Shock 2 release was but has improvements like persistent settings and a windows executable. Night Dive actually owns the System Shock IP now so there might even be sequels- potentially pretty cool if they can find the right devs. The SS2 re-release has sold well over 1.5 million copies (and more on GOG than Steam, despite the bundles it has been in being steam keys) so they've got a decent base to aim at even if a lot of those sales have been at a lower price point than even the $10 base.

So, who are the Kochs backing now? I've been stockpiling double entendres and don't want them to go to waste.

As has been pointed out several times, many of those looking back to the 'roots' of christianity decide that Jesus was a hippie and probably a commie too, and decide that looking right back to the OT is far more to their liking. If people want to find a reason to inflict their beliefs on others they will do so whatever the underlying philosophy, the ability to simultaneously get power over others in some way and to pat yourself on the back for doing so 'morally' has always been a massive temptation- and there are plenty of atheists and secularists who follow that without the need for religion. I'd also say that the root of christianity deradicalising was not the reformation itself but the 30 years war and other religious wars. It was only after those bloody internecine struggles where millions died that a quasi modern system of international states and proclamations of tolerance became the norm; and that was definitively after both sides had become very strongly radicalised for the century or so after the reformation.