BruceVC

I actually don't get the point of that Chomsky article, what is he trying to say? Are we now going to look at the last 15 years and analyze every instance of collateral damage or mistake made by the West during its various military campaigns and say " the West is like these terrorists ....why are we not protesting against the West because of what happened 15 years ago in Serbia" or other example? And if we are talking about that specific example that Chomsky mentioned, yes journalists were indeed killed when that broadcasting agency was bombed. NATO didn't know that they were in the building but the broadcaster was a legitimate target of the NATO airstrike campaign. This is absolutely not the same thing as the Charlie Hebdo intentional slaughter of people who worked at the magazine Not sure why people think " this is such an insightful article "

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-20/the-sun-strips-page-three-of-topless-girls/6028872 Another possible dark day for freedom of choice boys, the Sun newspaper has decided to remove topless pictures of glamour models from page 3 . Various feminist campaigns have raised their concern around how these models were portrayed saying it was sexist and objectified women Personally I'm not sure if I support this move as I have just watched several interviews on Sky with various models and they all say they were paid good money to pose in pictures and they considered the pictures tasteful and also that they weren't feeling objectified in anyway So the question is " do these models have right to decide if they want to go topless " ....or do we let members of civil society tell them what they should be doing ? You could argue the models don't know what there pictures represent symbolically ...so maybe its not up to them to decide. But its not like its full nudity so I think the models should be able to decide for themselves?

I tried to explain this when Anita was in that ABC documentary. The biggest problem facing GG is the public perception that faces it, you guys just aren't getting your message across in the right way. You are seen as misogynistic and bigoted by many . http://imgur.com/18tAMJ2 That's couple days old. GamerGate has shown that simply because you control the Narrative, it doesn't mean you control the public perception. Thats is interesting, has there been a " right to respond " officially given to GG by ABC to explain their side of the debate? Has ABC apologized, because to be honest 25 K people voting down the video on Youtube doesn't mean much for the millions of people who follow ABC, don't care about Youtube and believe what ABC talk about ?

I tried to explain this when Anita was in that ABC documentary. The biggest problem facing GG is the public perception that faces it, you guys just aren't getting your message across in the right way. You are seen as misogynistic and bigoted by many . I don't know how you will resolve this because "anti-GG" has the ear of mainstream media And its understandable because SJW have for years been building campaigns and cementing relationships with certain media houses because the message from them in its basic form is a good message that most people agree with, " we want equality in society" ....what person with a semblance of a moral conscience is going to be opposed to this? So GG is trying to take on an established social giant that has real resources. The bad things that "anti-GG" do is generally ignored by civil society because of all the good the movement does and what people believe is the right thing. Is support for "anti-GG" sometimes misplaced and unfair. Yes it is but it doesn't change the reality of the support they receive from people outside of gaming

This is priceless - Bruce did you seen it? Its your utopia right here, man you would love to live in that xD This was very funny imagine a world that controlled....it would not be worth living Of course we need some laws around certain social behavior but not that extreme

I doubt that the air is that bad in your cities, I'd have an easy time believing you if you were talking about one of the cities wich has notoriously bad air quality, but to me it sounds psychosomatic or similar really. Unless you're talking about standing next to an motorway in rushhour. Yeah I tend to agree, its highly unlikely that the air pollution is anywhere near that bad in Austria. As you said its probably psychosomatic because Woldan is use to the outdoor lifestyle and openness of the mountains I remember a good quote from a movie I saw recently that aptly describes how I feel about living in a big city " the only thing better than leaving the city for a weekend getaway is the return trip coming back "

You say he is anti- American yet you can't deny his films raise some real issues around the events in the USA in the last 15 years, like Fahrenheit 9/11 ?

I agree, Russians expected an economic nirvana when Communism collapsed. But instead under Yeltsin things got worse on many levels. Then Putin came along who successfully negated the power of the Oligarchs and gave Russia nationalistic pride in itself again But he has gone too far in his efforts to achieve Russian hegemony, his impressive use of propaganda still ensures his popularity ratings are very high but there are always consequences for this type of blind ambition. Just the fact that the average Russian thinks that the illegal annexation of Crimea is not only a Russian right but perfectly legal tells me how misinformed Russian people are about what is acceptable around there global ambitions and what the international community will accept I see this is South Africa, because not everyone has been economically uplifted since the end of Apartheid and there are now established political movements that talk about " nationalisation and ending white control of the economy "....they think that you can sustain wealth by taking from people who have created it through hard work and diligence. They think that the government are best people to own all resources and manage economic growth. Despite the fact our government is failing to maintain almost every single parastatal in a profitable way and on a regular yearly basis most South African parastatals need taxpayers bailouts just to keep going. And then we have the history of the African continent and the calamitous result of where many African governments decided to implement nationalism, after Colonialism, to grow there economies...and the result was bankrupcy. Yet people seem to just ignore history and think that economic policies that have generally failed in the African context will suddenly work in modern South Africa

A disgrace, another excellent example of Putins " Democratic and progressive " Russia that he is steering the country inexorably towards So basically Russia won't be tolerating any internal artistic criticism of their culture and society. I wonder how Michael Moore would do living in Russia

Yip you sound like a redneck ...if you think Austria is morose and melancholy then you need to avoid the tubes in London. Everytime I travel on them I notice how miserable everyone looks, but its probably just the fact people are going to work, I'm sure they aren't that unhappy if you had to talk to them

I had a good flight to Heathrow last night, I flew Virgin Airlines. Not a bad airline but I still think Emirates and Etihad offer better service I sat next to a really cool American lady from Massachusetts , she has been in South Africa the last 3 months and has been working for various NGO's on the continent but her Visa expired so she has to return to the USA and try to renew it from there. She also likes talking so we chatted a lot during the flight But as usual I didn't sleep much on the flight, 3 hours or so, so its an early night for me tonight before the seminar starts tomorrow

KFC is for n00bs. EDIT: Brice f KFC upsets your stomach, then why the hell do you eat there once a month? I eat takeaway nasties maybe every six months when I have no other choice than going hungry, and even then I've been systematically working to ensure I have tinned food available. I like the skin on the chicken And also I like to support my friend when he eats KFC ..and he has no choice because he works there

Go for it. If you are so massively misinterpreting what I write as vitriol, or actually find it annoying, what I write is likely lost on you anyways. Something I've found to be true that applies to pretty much everyone at various times: The mood in which you are when you read what someone else writes can very much influence how you interpret their words. There is zero vitriol in anything I've ever written on this forum. What I write might be blunt and a little rough for some to swallow as a result, but there's zero animosity or anger behind it. I agree, we may be on opposite sides of most discussions but I don't find you vitriolic or belligerent, yes you are opinionated but who isn't ? Also you have caused me to rethink my position on one or two topics so even though I may not necessarily agree with you often I do enjoy reading your input and appreciate the way you always explain your point in detail where applicable

Same as me, wow this is unusual..all four of us are excited about Dying Light. We should form a club of some sort?

Yeah I can believe anything when it comes to what people believe around conspiracy theories

So whats the lesson, you should have stayed at the party until at least 3-4am. Then you would have been guaranteed to sleep when you got home

I accept it as an explanation, but not as a justification. In effect I find that point to be at best parallel to the line of relevance rather than on it. Politicians are perfectly capable of refusing to follow public opinion when it's against their wishes, after all, so they ignore the 'rules' all the time and only obey them when it suits their purposes. Thus it isn't really a 'rule' at all- especially since the politicians are standing on the sidelines fanning the fear themselves. So fundamentally we will never agree because you believe politicians are intentionally embellishing the risk from Islamic extremism to control public opinion? For me the risk is real and needs increased attention on certain levels...we are at an impasse

From what I understand, a different dev team is making DI2. Techland is making Dying Light because they didn't like the direction that the publisher wanted them to take with their second game. Interesting. Dying Light does seem to have more life in it: Wow that looks great fun, I like the way you run on the roofs and avoid the Zombies Edit : Also I see you don't necessarily appear to be a "goodie" like where they ask you to get a copy of that scientists research ?

Funny you say that today but I'm packing for my UK training trip, I fly tonight I arrive in London tomorrow morning and the course starts on Tuesday till Thursday. Then I'll have 3 days off in London...yay....I'm excited

I'm horrified you went to a KFC TN, truly horrified. There food has very little nutritional value, let that belly ache be a lesson for next time !!! For the record I eat KFC about 1 month but I also never feel comfortable afterwards. One of my good friends is a financial manager at the HQ in South Africa so I sometimes support him as they have to eat KFC once a week as part of their mandatory feedback program

I see Charlie Hebdo is now printing 7 million copies of their magazine. So clearly the objective of the terrorists to silence the publisher has succeeded...business is really suffering http://kdvr.com/2015/01/17/charlie-hebdo-now-printing-7-million-copies/ Hey maybe thats the conspiracy theory, maybe Charlie Hedbo attacked themselves to increase business and readership numbers

Fair enough, some of these countries do have oil But the USA is now the worlds biggest producer of oil and natural gas so this argument that the USA " only acts in the international arena when it suits its oil agenda " should become more and more irrelevant as time goes on if you look at the reality of global oil production http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-04/u-s-seen-as-biggest-oil-producer-after-overtaking-saudi.html There are much easier ways to control oil production in places like Liberia and Sierra Leone than to get involved in stopping Ebola. The USA could have stayed out of trying to stop the virus and when the spread eventually slowed down they could have just got the massive oil companies based in the USA to get involved in actually building oil refineries like we see in other African countries like Nigeria and Angola where Western oil companies are instrumental in oil production So once again the view that the USA sent troops to stop Ebola is about oil doesn't make logistical and business sense where there are other much easier ways to do this So Vals you need to accept this was a humanitarian mission and give the USA some credit

Nah. Not nah, as in it isn't the explanation for why, because it certainly is- at least if you have a charitable view of politicians- but nah as it's reasoning you can use to justify granting anything and everything, power wise, and as such I utterly reject it as a justification (as opposed to explanation) for anything. Mandatory DNA samples at birth, mandatory finger prints, 'thought chips' when they become feasible, a domestic informant network that would put the Stasi to shame, nerve stapling, purging the unbelievers, ethnic cleansing, eugenics- there is literally nothing you won't get if you accept "people are frightened of the boogie man and politicians bow to their stupidity" as an argument for stuff. From someone who knew intimately the process and how to manipulate it: Hasn't changed much since 1933, except for the labels, the enemies and the tools. And the PR spin. And the ease with which GCHQ/ NSA/ GCSB etc can listen at every keyhole; Goering, Beria, Himmler etc would wet themselves in ecstacy at the thought. So ultimately that does explain why in one sense, but the other reason why is because politicians are both hungry to accumulate as much power as people can be stampeded into (or kept ignorant of) granting or at best unprincipled and gutless enough to only defend free speech as a convenient PR check box. People are stupid, politicians take advantage of that. Statistically, I not only have far more chance of dying from lightning, drowning, flu, falling branches, suicide, earthquakes, car crashes, meningitis, anything; but if I had died of terrorism, here, then it would be 100% certain I'd been killed by... french spies. I agree that this really boils down to a perspective around " do you trust your politicians enough to believe that they won't they won't abuse the power that these types of initiatives give them" ...like Goering and Nazis did with their propaganda machinery in the last century. Personally I do, so thats not a concern for me The Internet is the greatest source of information and allows the spread of information more easily than ever before in the history of mankind. But that also comes with real risks and security challengers. We know that many extremist groups use the Internet, and its various components like Social Media, to recruit members and spread propaganda. So what do you do as a government? Do you just ignore it? Do you start just blocking certain websites and banning Social Media....we see this already in places like Iran and China But these solutions are not what Western countries fundamentally stand for, they generally don't believe in trying to control the Internet and what people have access to. So this just leaves increased monitoring of what people are saying and what information they access. And despite how people may think data is received using the Internet, countries and governments only have access to information within their own borders So for example if I send an email from NY to Houston this email doesn't leave the borders of the USA. And this applies to people sitting in the UK and referencing a website based in Syria, the Americans won't be aware of this under most circumstances. So this new Cyber initiative from the UK and USA will give those respective governments more visibility on the type of communication between these countries. And thats a reasonable objective considering the fact the risk is about local citizens becoming " homegrown terrorists " and coming home from conflicts in Syria and attacking the country they are a citizen of Now you may believe " but there is no risk from Islamic extremists, this whole thing is a creation of governments to move to a dictatorial system of control " but I think that most of us now accept there is a real danger from terrorist attacks from citizens of there own countries. So we should be supporting these ideas as they do add to better security for all its citizens

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/15/health/feat-ebola-epidemic-hopeful-study/index.html Here is a good news African story, the rate of spread of the virus seems to really slowing down. Well done to the international community for their efforts in coming to Africa and getting involved in fighting the virus. Especially the Chinese and the Americans. The Americans put the most effort and resources into the campaign And there is no oil in these countries and no real economic benefit so this was a humanitarian effort which should be recognised

And? Why do you think this is weird, its the absolutely necessary and expected thing that any government should do after preventing a terrorist attack and still being a target