Zoraptor

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.

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...