Zoraptor

I honestly cannot think of a single instance in which a colonised populace genuinely looked up to their coloniser. In most cases I'd suggest dull indifference would fit better. In most of the other some degree of antipathy. Here for example while whitey probably has some degree of affection for dear old blighty still there's a lot more antipathy from Maori- except the elites- plus a lot of indifference. There was plenty of arab resistance in Palestine to the British. The British being biased against the Zionists is... well, if you got a rabid Morsi supporter and a rabid al-Sisi supporter and asked them who the US was supporting each would say the other in absolute sureness that they were right.

Two things I'd note, firstly, you can find many, many arabs who thought that British policy strongly favoured Zionists. That is usually the way in such conflicts, both sides are absolutely convinced that they're the injured party. Secondly, there's a difference between having good relations with elites and good relations with arabs in general- having good relations with elites was practised throughout the Empire, eg in India. Britain had good relations with those countries, but up until WW2- and for some well after- it was more of a suzerain/ vassal relationship rather than anything else.

I was pretty down on the idea of a 'Skyrim' type game, but it really depends on whether it's being used as shorthand for open world (something like Gothic or Fallout could be considered similar to Skyrim in some ways) and as clickbait/ PR speak or not. The big problem with name dropping Skyrim is that while that is great for pitching it to publishers Skyrim has a rather more... polarised view amongst people who kickstart, who usually do so because they want something other than what mainstream publishers produce. I could certainly see an open world style system working quite well where you had something like the overland map from Storm of Zehir. That could also work for some of the other ideas mentioned in the RPS interview, have episodic content where new dungeons/ dlc/ expansions can be plugged into the overland map etc. Wouldn't have to be standard Tolkienesque Fantasy either, do a sort of Faster Than Light hybridised with XCOM thing with an open universe for all I care, or something with a Syndicate vibe. Do wonder what the licensed property they might KS would be though. D&D seems too similar to PoE, Star Wars seems unlikely for numerous reasons, it isn't Alpha Protocol*, I doubt Wheel of Time would be a realistic prospect. Nothing else I can come up with seems likely either- System Shock, Gothic while PB is busy with Risen etc are all pie in the sky and I struggle to think of any TV/ film stuff that would be suitable/ realistic (The Wire The RPG seems... unlikely, unfortunately) *Hey, I'd kickstart Omega Methodology.

Hmm. Not sure about 'friends' at all. The Brits (and French) had after all promised the arabs independence in WW1 then reneged spectacularly and betrayed their main arab ally after WW1 to boot. And a lot of the ethno religious and other conflicts happening now is because of those lines-drawn-on-maps countries much as it is in Africa. Whether a pan arab state would definitely have been better is unknowable, of course. Once the hodge-podge approach had been decided upon Israel's creation certainly did not help matters.

There is the possibility that the licensed IP Feargus was talking about in his RPS interview is a WoT game, though I'm rather doubtful of that personally. The only real positive to it is that Red Eagle are themselves familiar with kickstarter.

Well yeah, they should. It's far more efficient to produce the power where it's actually used, and inconveniences the people using the power rather than people somewhere else. NIMBY works both ways after all, you have cities saying Not In My Back Yard to power plants near them, then shouting about how rural areas should be converted to produce their power then complaining about hippies blocking them. Sometimes it gets particularly stupid. They wanted to build a wind farm on the Crown Range here- basically in the middle of the South Island, miles away from anywhere. And it's utterly pointless. The South Island already produces far, far more energy than it uses which is then pumped up to us in the North Island without giving them any advantage whatsoever despite all the crap like having large areas stuck deluged by hydro dams. It'll produce energy that has significant losses before it reaches anywhere, it's in a glut area, and was pushed on the extremely rare occasion of the SI not being in energy surplus (due to running the hydro at 100% capacity through out a drought, hydro energy being extremely cheap) when the only reason the lakes were drained was to send the power to Auckland and Wellington. But it isn't near a big population area, so you won't get entitled morons whinging about their house values being impacted and politicians won't lose votes, so let's go for it!

No controversy, too polite, too little difference in opinions; so all that is left is the equivalent of me tooing and giving impressions. And there's no absolute drawcard, an official forum can often get away with being a bit bland because it's an official forum. Every good forum needs a small dollop (or in the codex's case, a torrential deluge) of controversy, of argument, of hate to get to a critical level of actual discussion. There'll usually be more utter guff along with the good stuff as well, but I don't mind sifting the good stuff from chaff. Their articles are usually pretty good though they suffer a bit from being 'too nice' as well.

Yeah, the FIS won the election and the military stepped in, net result was tens of thousands dead. I wouldn't really use Algeria as an example except in the very narrow sense of being a 'good' western ally, you have to disregard rather a lot otherwise.

Yeah I disagree, I think it's likely to change. You reckon? Here's the wikipedia summary of the leaked Trans Pacific Partnership Intellectual Property provisions, an agreement that is currently wending its way via totally secret negotiations towards inevitable utterly undemocratic ratification, and it's an Orwellian melange of every vile stricture and limitation designed deliberately and explicitly to further entrench the current trend to patenting and licensing everything in perpetuity- which would, of course, enshrine such luminously competent patent awards as Basmati Rice and Yellow Beans being unique US inventions (let alone asterisking rounded corners on electronic devices being a unique invention, ffs). On the copyright front it would enshrine a ban on parallel imports and make everyone adopt the Mickey Mouse copyright extensions, criminalise tools that can be used for circumventing copy protection and a host of other garbage that makes the DMCA look like an enlightened and balanced piece of legislation. Yeah, copyright and IP in general should be getting reformed as it's been perverted from a way to ensure that inventors get reward for invention to guaranteeing corporates cash and actively stifling invention; but that reform ain't going to happen. They'll just ratchet down the restrictions as much as they can get away with.

Bethesda the publisher is not there, but there is one Bethesda owned (via Arkane) title on GOG, Arx Fatalis.

Of course it's fake. Bethesda doesn't do casting calls for voice actors, they go pick random homeless people off the streets of Maryland at a dozen or so characters per bum, plus Wonder Woman and two acclaimed thesps for some gravitas and OMG Qui Gonn Gin and Captain Picard headlines even if neither can voice act/ the material they're working with is so stultifyingly dreadful. At least that's what I've always presumed they've done from the 'quality' of their previous efforts.

I'd have gone for Alcibiades rather than Demosthenes. Not the greatest general ever but one of the most interesting and colourful, certainly. Shame Thucydides died a bit too early to detail much of the stuff he was involved in excluding the Sicily debacle- which was going OK while he was there.

Technically India undecriminalised gay sex rather than banned it, since they ruled that the old colonial era law was still in force, and courts cannot make law. Now awaiting people pouring Indonesian curries (mmm Rendang) down the drain in protest in NYC instead of Latvian vodka.

Pretty sure I killed Firkragg first time with what the french might call le coup du fromage- lower resistance then chromatic orb until save failure or something similar. Didn't even go to his dungeon first play through though.

I don't think there's any practical prospect of an embargo being enforced, but if it were it would be devastating, I don't think there's any doubt. Not only can you not retask agriculture at the drop of a hat but you need to have an effective surplus if you're not going to be able to import to cover seasonal and similar effects- and if you're retasking to domestic production you have to move the extra newly produced stuff around from where it's being produced to where it's processed, to where the people actually live, plus any required for the increased agriculture itself. That requires more (domestic) oil to power the trains and trucks in a situation where you're trying to cope with less. At that point it's getting so that it hardly matters whether you can technically produce and distribute enough food, because there won't be anything left of the non agricultural economy anyway. We've got a massive agricultural surplus here, but if we had an oil embargo we'd struggle very hard to feed Auckland and that's only 1.5 million people. Trying to feed a Beijing sized city with a very limited oil supply would not be a fun prospect by any measure at all. [Practically, Russia should be able to provide a fair bit of food if needed and if China can pay, but then the same systems would also be needed to import as much oil as possible too.]

A classic gold fob watch, with the watch face replaced by an old Russian Imperial Flag would be my guess for Putin. I think Putin could totally pull off the top hat and monocle look to go with the fob watch, too. Wearing a lapel pin is basically the same as wearing a sports team's emblem. Bit silly, but ultimately harmless. In Obama's case it's no doubt because of his great humility (pride is, after all, a deadly sin in his muslim faith) and he does not want to presume that he's be recognised just because he has an important job. In Dave Cameron's case it's probably because he was worried that Mitt would forget which country he was in if he didn't have a constant reminder and make a series of totally avoidable faux pas.

It was 10 km from the NK coast, a country that they're technically at war with and with which there had been multiple previous (and subsequent) incidents. If they weren't at heightened alert they should have been, and I'd have difficulty believing they weren't. I wasn't talking about the effectiveness of any blockade, I worked from the premise that neither side really wanted to escalate due to the damage they'd do each other ("economic MAD") so no blockade, effective or not, was likely. But, if you have an effective blockade targeting food and oil then there really isn't much left to escalate to as you're already starving their people and destroying their economy, and have, presumably, the willingness to do so in the future as well. Under those circumstances anyone with nukes will at the least consider using them or else what is the point of having them at all? ... Just replace AEGIS with ASW in the original sentence, ie "DPRK sub apparently managed to sink a modern ASW vessel of the ROK". That's all you need to do. Makes a lot more sense if I'm saying that an ASW warship being sunk by a WW2+ tech sub is significant, yes?

You're talking about a food and oil embargo and you don't think you're going to get retaliation? From the Chinese Government's POV it's game over for them if they either back down in those circumstances or try to cope with them. From the Chinese people's perspective it'd be a return to the Opium Wars and Japanese Occupation style interaction with the west, whether they'd partly blame their government or not they would, at least, go for anything that would prevent that happening again. Really though, it's boggling that anyone would think the Chinese would just stand back and take it as you revert their economy back to the 70s and starve them, which is what you're talking about. The US wouldn't stand for that, nor would Russia or anyone else with the power to- they're not some piddling regional power like Iran. They'll do everything and anything in their power to asterisk you up in those circumstances because you'll be actively and deliberately asterisking them up. Practically, and fortunately, there's very little chance of such an embargo ever happening but by the tenets of your scenario that would already be happening, so we're already talking unlikely scenarios. Well yes, though I note you don't mention what its primary role actually was... Contextually it's pretty obvious I meant ASW since from previous (recent) posts I know perfectly well what AEGIS is used for and that it'd be useless against subs, on the other hand the 'fact'* that a specialist ASW warship was apparently sunk by a country that most people consider a joke militarily is significant to the argument. I blame acronym overload syndrome, personally. *I'm unconvinced personally and it may well be another case of the enemy being utterly hopeless/ preternaturally devious plus competent depending on circumstances that is so prevalent in the cold war and propaganda, but at least publicly the US/ ROK et al are certain it was NK wot dun it.

It's not a question of redistribution of wealth in the classic leftist sense though. If trickle down and other right wing theories or the mishmash approach they're using at the moment actually worked to improve the general lot of blacks it would be fine, the critical aim is to improve their lot not to check boxes on an ideological purity chart.

I'm not advocating a Mugabe style solution, but there does need to be a better 'peace dividend'. A large, disenfranchised, disillusioned and poor population is a recipe for radicalism and violence even if it lacks the unifying force that apartheid provided. I'd tend to say that the problem in Africa has had nothing to do with left/right ideology and more to do with a series of spectacularly bad leaders, and corruption. Plus a liberal smattering of bad colonial policy, east/west cold war posturing and other factors outside their control.

Not your best work. So the Chinese can take out only, say, 60 US cities/ military sites with ICBMs. If that's a Chicken Little scenario then I'd hate to see a genuine sky-is-falling one since it must involve one of two things: Russia going postal or an alien invasion. Frankly, they'd also tell the Russians to go asterisk themselves, if it's come to nukes it's too far gone to worry about them since Russia cannot actually stop them, just wave their finger and quietly annex some 'stans, Belarus and Ukraine while China and the US are happily exterminating each other. Then of course there's the small matter of China having nuclear submarines. Now I know, people will just giggle at them and say that the glorious infallible US navy will sweep them from shining sea with a wiggle of a single finger and a twinkle in their glittering eye; but then the same people also cannot explain how a barely above WW2 tech diesel electric DPRK sub apparently managed to sink a modern AEGIS vessel of the ROK not only without retaliation but without any detection at all. And they'd never in a million years expect to take out retaliatory capability. That involves sinking the US fleet and airforce; and if they can do that then there's no problem in the first place.

Sheesh, Wals, give it a break. Yeah, the (ultra) left are inhuman freaks, so are the (ultra) right and the various regimes the West supported as their right wing death squads wandered around liquidating their sets of inconvenient wrong headed intellectuals. I don't think we need to mention South Africa's apartheid era attitude to black intellectualism, nor good friend to Reagan and Thatcher Augusto Pinochet's, now do we? You don't have to reply to oby, you know. Besides, he's right in the general sense, while the black majority's wealth has improved (by about a third, if I remember the figures correctly) it was coming off a very low base so does not represent much absolute improvement, just relative improvement over apartheid conditions. And that is causing increasing friction.

British and other western jihadis are subject to different pressures than those in Yemen or Afghanistan, certainly, but most jihadis come from muslim countries and that is clearly what Rostere is addressing there- Britain is hardly the subject of colonialism, except in Daily Mail headlines. There may be a few hundred British jihadis but it's fewer than went off to the Spanish Civil War in the 30s as a comparison, and a tiny insignificant (except to fellow Brits) proportion of the jihadi movement as a whole. Western citizens become jihadis primarily for the same reasons people adopt any radical ideology would be my guess. A feeling of disconnection from their country and society.

We don't have any idea if he'd be banned for saying what he meant- it doesn't have to be a spiel about how he ruined the last perfect White Paradise on earth. Plenty of western leaders- Thatcher, Reagan, others- hated Mandela without being overt racists, usually for "at least apartheid RSA aren't commies!!! or terrorists!!! and Mandela is a commie!!! and a terrorist!!!" reasons. In any case it would be a completely pointless argument because it's clear that the majority of people like Mandela, and won't be swayed. Mandela certainly had flaws. Most people would probably put him in the freedom fighter camp instead of the terrorist one, but he was not Gandhi and anything that paints him as perfect has been subject to airbrushing. Of course some people blame Gandhi for all the deaths in the India/ Pakistan partition too...

Geoff Keighley is hosting, free carbonated beverages and compressed maize wafers for all! I'm not quite sure why I have antipathy towards the VGAs/ SpikeTV awards. They're basically harmless in much the same way that any music award show that gives Miley Cyrus song of the year is harmless, and I can just ignore those.