Varana

Not wanting to defend Harmke's actions in any way, but no, it is not called genocide. Genocide is the (attempted) destruction of an ethnic group or culture, usually by murdering them in some way. Killing women and children in one village of your own culture is bad, but it's not genocide. The term has been watered down considerably already, we don't need to continue that. P.S. Killed him.

The number of hours in a day is, in itself, completely arbitrary. Whether we divide a day into 24 hours or 43 hours or 5 hours, is just a convention. Also, historically, hours didn't need to be of equal length. It was fairly common to just divide the time between sunrise and sunset into 12 parts - which means that in summer, hours were longer than in winter. Measuring time during the night had additional difficulties, as the most accessible device for measuring time was a sundial. As human activity during nighttime was much lower than today, most people didn't need to know night hours anyway. Irocco's calendar was the work of one man. It's entirely possible that he chose 27 hours for reasons like numerology ("3 is a perfect number, 9 is perfect squared, 3 times 9 even more so, and 81 is, well, impractical" or things like this). We don't know whether there are astronomical reasons for the 27 hours. Cycles of the moon or important stars which give a neat number because they repeat every 3 days (see, 81!), or stuff like that. Dividing the day into two parts (daytime and nighttime) is fine, but we could add twilight to this and get three phases - 10 hours of daytime, 10 hours of nighttime, 3.5 hours each of dawn and dusk, or things like that, depending on where Irocco lived and what he fancied.

For considering the implications of revealing that the gods are created by kith, the beliefs held on Eora are important. AFAIK, the gods are not usually credited with creating the world, they just watch over it and keep it in balance. OTOH, it the revelation does have huge ramifications: if there was a time without the gods, they are obviously not necessary for the world to continue. And they have no innate authority over morality and how you should lead your life. Sure, they exist and are powerful. But they basically change their nature: From supernatural beings watching over the world to large heaps of soul-stuff who rule by power alone. They lose their authority as gods and become mere tyrants. And gods, as all tyrants, can be killed. That's what the Godhammer teaches. Also, god-like beings can be created - not now, maybe not without another mass-suicide. But maybe lesser gods can be achieved - ones that don't have the power to influence the Wheel in all of Eora, but beings who can do so on a lesser scale or in a specific area. There will be changes.

If someone in China wanted, they could probably whip up some claims about "Outer Manchuria" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amur_Acquisition). The actual border disputes (some minor river islands, which even escalated into an armed conflict in 1969) appear to have been settled, though, and currently there seem to be no official Chinese claims. Which doesn't exclude that someone said something, at some point, though, providing material for a bit of nationalistic posturing when needed.

Let's assume that the US created al-Qaeda (it's a bit more complicated than that, but for the sake of the argument) - how is that in any way relevant to the appearance of ISIS? The Americans supported the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan (the people who would form al-Qaeda being amongst them) against the Soviets. When the Soviets left, their puppet state fell, and the Soviet Union collapsed anyway, the Americans lost interest. After that, al-Qaeda turned to fighting the Americans themselves. Obviously, at that point at the latest, they weren't supported by the US any more. That's in the early Nineties. More than two decades later, after - let's say - lots of stuff happening, ISIS is formed in Iraq as a split from the Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda, and several former members of Saddam Hussein's party and military. How that is in any way similar to what happened in Afghanistan in the Eighties, is beyond me. Unless it's "the Americans supported group X, so they must have founded group Y, too", which is obvious nonsense. As for Turkey, I think you vastly overestimate US control over other nations. Yes, Turkey is a NATO member - which didn't prevent them from almost going to war with fellow NATO member Greece several times (and vice versa). Turkey is a NATO member, but it could prevent the US-led coalition from using Turkish air bases for the fight against ISIS. Turkey is a NATO member, but it has no qualms about bombing the Kurds, basically the only effective ground forces in the fight against ISIS, and is getting away with it. Sure, the Americans know that ISIS smuggles oil through Turkey - even we know that, it's in the papers. That doesn't imply compliance in any way, much less causation. Edit: Similarly with the Saudis. Sure, they're an American ally. That doesn't prevent them from playing their own game in the region. And as the Saudis have the oil, they can do a lot of things that run against American policy and interests. Saudi Arabia has been sponsoring radical Islamic groups quite prominently (and if not the government, then individuals) and is actively promoting a radical and very troubling Islamic sect - but that doesn't mean that they did it because the US told them so.

Of course he does. It reinforces what he already "knew". That guy may have had some insight into the inner workings of al-Qaeda, and it's kind of interesting what he has to say about its fall. Although even then, everything he says has to be taken with a truckload of salt. According to him, he was kind of the central figure of al-Qaeda and the only one who had any deeper knowledge about religion, and they don't kill him for being a defector because he's such a legend in their ranks. No comment necessary. It is also quite clear that while he might have been quite high-ranking when al-Qaeda was in Afghanistan, he has no insider knowledge about ISIS whatsoever. His insistence on ISIS being an American creation is based on vague allegations, lies, and hearsay. The presenter tries to get some information out of him but fails. His accusation that ISIS is American rests on two things - they didn't kill any Americans (obvious bull****), and they didn't attack Israel (had a look at a map recently? also, they're not stupid). Funnily enough, he gives a very good reason why ISIS doesn't, for instance, carry out lots of terror attacks against Israel, America, or others, from their religious own mind-set. Regarding al-Qaeda, you have to filter his responses heavily, but there's probably some genuine facts in there. As for ISIS, he's been clearly out of the loop for way too long.

Exactly. Now read my post again.

Worked for Stalin, kinda.

Blatter is from Switzerland which is pretty West-ish itself. Although these accusations back when the FIFA officials were arrested in Zürich were quite hilarious. "The evil USA wants to take the World Cup from Russia and host them themselves!" Yeah. As if Americans would give a **** about football (the real one, not the hand-egg variety ).

GOG has released updated patches. "let" is the Simple Past form of "to let"; "GOG let me know" is similar to "GOG told me". "to roll out" means "to release". An "updater" is a computer program that brings another program up to date. And "fixed" means that there were some errors in that "updater" and they have corrected them. :D

"Moderate rebels" are those who started the uprising and were the main force carrying it in the beginning. After they were left out in the cold instead of getting support from outside (like the West), they were crushed between Assad's forces and the Islamic groups (pre-ISIS mainly backed by the oil monarchies). There were "moderate rebels" who could be called that; it's just that they've been basically annihilated since. That all opposition was Islamic from the beginning is an outright lie that Assad's consistently been trying to sell in order to present himself as the only source of stability and secularism. Zoraptor: That map (as most maps of Eastern Syria) is quite misleading (not intentionally) at first glance. The majority of Homs Governorate may be coloured black for the IS but in terms of actually usable and settled land, it much less clear. And in terms of population, the government wins by a large margin. So yes, not the city of Homs. But Russian airstrikes have been aimed at rebel territory just north of Homs, and northwest of Hama. That has absolutely nothing to do with the IS. To be fair, that's not the first time someone has used that tactic. A few weeks back, as we remember, Erdogan started bombing the Kurds under the pretence of fighting against the IS.

Yep, now Russia is meddling in the Middle East. Wasn't that kind of bad a few pages ago when the U.S. and "the West" had been accused* of it? Also funny where they bomb. There's no IS at Homs. Just as in Ukraine, Russia declares some random faction standing in their way as "terrorist" or "fascist" and goes to shell them. No, they don't try to solve the crisis in Syria. They try to keep their lackey in power - the one that, despite all of IS' crimes, is still responsible for the large majority of deaths, destruction, and displaced persons in the country. Great move, Chechnya says Hi. As for Kosovars, the current percentage of people from Kosovo who are granted asylum in Germany is somewhere between 0.1 and 0.2 percent. (And there's also large groups of people from Macedonia, Albania, and yes, Serbia trying their luck, with similar acceptance rates.) Apart from that, I have a really hard time to be sympathetic to many actual and perceived grievances in former Yugoslavia. The hatred, blind nationalism, and continued enmity has nothing to do with Europe or NATO and everything with the complete refusal to acknowledge one's own faults and work towards any meaningful form of reconciliation. Polish is a Slavic language, but apparently, "przebaczamy i prosimy o przebaczenie" sounds like backwards Chinese in Yugoslavia. * I'm quite sure I butchered the tense. P.S. Yes, I'm probably very unfair to many people in former Yugoslavia. I'm also rather bitter as the haters seem to dominate the public image.

*sigh* Whatever the politics (and Pakistan has really serious problems): This is not Risk or Civilization. We're not moving token "armies" in neat stacks to get a continent bonus. Dropping a nuke doesn't just reduce a number from 22 to 9.

*grin* Sure. This is absolutely beautiful. Breathtakingly bold. And utterly hilarious. One of the more brutal civil wars of our times, led by an authoritarian regime, in Chechnya - Islam is to blame. A dictatorship deliberately turning a culture into a minority in their own land in order to suppress dissent in north-western China - it's because of Islam. That they're doing the same elsewhere in non-Muslim Tibet is of absolutely no importance, I assume. Pakistan and India aren't two regional powers with a difficult history with unresolved disputes locked in mutual enmity - India would have gloriously nuked 180 million people off the face of the earth because they're Muslim, if sinister forces hadn't supplied Pakistan with their own nuclear weapons. I suspect that whoever concocted that spin was quite disappointed that there are almost no Muslims in South Korea so he couldn't paint Kim Jong-Un as valiantly keeping Islam's influence in check.

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.

Because Obola is bringing the communism!!! And the Civil War only was about states' rights. Slavery had absolutely nothing to do with it, really!!!

Err, yes, thanks. I edited the sentence for clarity, and forgot about half of it. :D Oh, this so much. The Middle East is a sad, depressing and infinitely complicated story where all signs of hope seem to inevitably crumble or explode in your face sooner or later. The West's involvement has been quite on par with the rest of it all.

It says that Salafist groups from Germany are trying to establish contacts with refugees and building connections by offering help. Screening those who arrive won't help much against that, though. BTW, the article also says that despite following many leads, German intelligence could not find any proof of ISIS sending terrorists as refugees to Europe, as going to Europe as refugees would be too dangerous. (Really.) In our current world, "leave them to themselves" is not really an option. The Middle East is not an island off the coast of Antarctica. Who is "themselves", anyway? Iran is neither Arab nor Shi'ite - is it "themselves"? What about Turkey? Turkey is NATO, are we "themselves" now? Russia has a base in Syria and meddles in the conflict (or is going to, or something) - is Russia "themselves"? What about Israel? Leaving Afghanistan to themselves brought the Taliban into power. Leaving Iraq to themselves by removing the US forces there destroyed what little progress had been made. If we leave e.g. Libya to themselves, what about those who try to sail across the Mediterranean? Let them drown? Our world is more connected than ever, esp. in a region like the Middle East. Yes, the Arab Spring needs time and then another go at democracy. But in the meantime, there are some things we can't turn a blind eye to, as they're affecting us, if we like it or not. The West isn't even that involved into the process, any more. Libya is basically being left alone. In Egypt, evenryone is kind of glad that al-Sisi brought stability back. In Syria, they bomb ISIS, but that's about it. In Iraq, there was a frantic run at supporting the Kurds during ISIS' advance but that has died down a lot. The U.S. are supposed to be training the Iraqi military - not very successfully, one might say. The West currently is trying not to further its entanglement in Mess'o'potamia - simply ignoring the region is, in our time, not possible.

I teach history.

Ibrahim is only extant as citations in other works. As far as I could see, he uses "king of Rûm" (Roman king) for Otto, and refers to he various German lands as Saxony, Franconia, etc. I'm quite sure that Widukind of Corvey refers to Otto as king of the Franks and Saxons, king of the Eastern Franks, or Roman emperor. The Latin text is available online to check. He does use the term "Germania" - in a geographical sense, coming from the ancient Roman terms for geographical entities. The Western Franks (in modern France) are "the Franks living in Gallia", the Pope's envoy follows Otto "from Italia to Germania" (i.e. north of the Alps), and so on. The word "Germans" (Germani or similar) doesn't appear in his work. The various titles (esp. those with "Roman" in them) are often translated as "German" (kings, emperors) because to modern readers, calling medieval German emperors "Roman emperor" sounds odd. But in their time, and that's what's important here, they didn't see themselves as representing a national German entity. They were rulers of German "tribes" like Franks and Saxons, and later on they were monarchs of a realm that claimed to be universal (the "Holy Roman Empire"). That realm included Germany but was not, until the end of the Middle Ages, a German realm. This discussion started with the claim that until rather recently, there was not "a" Germany. In Otto's time (10th century), the various German tribes north of the Alps became part of a stabilised empire - but that Empire never claimed to be a national German one. The various German "tribes" like (eastern) Franks, Saxons, Thuringians, Bavarians, and so on, formed the core of that empire but didn't think of it as a "German" one. Italians in northern Italy, Czechs in Bohemia, Burgundians speaking Franco-Provençal in Burgundy/Arelat, etc. were equally part of that empire. Later on, the various tribal dukedoms of Otto's time developed into the patchwork of principalities that medieval and early modern Germany is renowned for. The "Holy Roman Empire", even in its early modern form, never had the intent of being an exclusively German one. During the Enlightenment and esp. after the French Revolution, as the concept of a "nation" came into prominence, overcoming German regionalism took quite a effort (and traces of that are still very much alive). That's what's meant with "not a Germany" - there were several peoples who spoke variations of the same language and who belonged to very many principalities that swore allegiance to an emperor (rater loosely, in fact). For the purpose of broad generalisation, people often use "Germany" or "German empire" to refer to these German states even during the Middle Ages. But that was not a national state in the modern sense, and not even in the sense that France or England have been much earlier.

So exactly where do you get the idea from that he was talking about specific countries? Certainly not from what has been cited from the interview. Schulz himself does not mention any of them (he doesn't talk about countries at all). And those articles do all the same thing: They translate or paraphrase exactly this part of the interview that's in the video, with special emphasis on the martial imagery, and then go on to assert that's about Poland or the Visegrad countries or whatever. The program where the interview is from did imply that he meant those countries but not he himself, and his words lead me to believe that the program itself ripped his statement out of context. (Referring to the governments of the Visegrad countries as "ultra-nationalists" is ridiculous in itself.) I'm not that much of a fan of Schulz, but this whole topic has been swamped with misinformation, hyperbole, hidden and open agendas, false reporting, and so on, and this looks like a prime example of that. "Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia Foreign Ministers that placed a formal protest against his claims" Source? (Not the articles you cited. That much Polish I know.) Otto and Mieszko: Could you name the chronicler and his work, please? Not doubting he existed, just wanting to check the actual text.

The automatic translation is surprisingly decent later on, although it has hiccoughs at the beginning. "The Europe of the Ultra-Nationalists - if they win, then we will get this* Europe not only in this aspect but in many other aspects, as well. It is the Europe of a common / collective spirit** that we now need, and that Europe has to assert itself with power, if need be. It cannot be***, that those - and I am one of those - who say that in the 21st century, in a globalised 21st century, we cannot solve global problems with nationalism, that they at some point say that we are going to fight, that we prevail in a fight over the others." * As the video is only a snippet and probably quite out of context - he refers to the "Europe of the Ultra-Nationalists" he obviously was talking about earlier. ** spirit of community, commonwealth, collaborative spirit - something like that. *** He continues the sentence as if he had said the opposite, i.e. the sentence structure is wrong. It seems clear (as far as Schulz can be clear :D) what he means, though.

Otto I was rex Francorum orientalium, King of the Eastern Franks. Later on, the ruler of the part of the Holy Roman Empire north of the Alps usually styled themselves rex Romanorum, i.e. King of the Romans (funnily enough). Rex in Germania (King in Germany) came into use in the 16th century. "Germany" or "German king" is often used today as a convenient shortcut but it was not actually official. And it's still valid what Bruce wrote - there was not a Germany but a conglomerate of many principalities in a vaguely defined area whose inhabitants mostly spoke some form of German (including Dutch) - mostly, as one of the more prominent "German" states was Bohemia, and the Czech are kind of not German. Even Otto I's realm was a bunch of powerful dukedoms held together by them recognising him as overlord (most of the time) - the wonders of feudalism. Schulz: He's not talking about Germany in particular but about those who support the idea of a European Union in general, as opposed to the "ultra-nationalists". And he's clearly not talking about the military.

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.

If you read the article, though, you could've realised that your factory example doesn't even come close to what's reported in the article and that it's about legal immigrants, not illegal ones. But sure, reading is completely unnecessary. Buzzfeed: Completely at odds with my expectations, this article is neither a list of 25 things nor does it consist mainly of pictures. It is proper journalism with all the fancy trappings like "couldn't be reached for comments" and "denies all allegations" and digging in court proceedings, and the length of text is quite decent. There should be more of this kind of "clickbait". Try it. @topic: Yeah, someone should do something about it, like inspections, prosecution, and stuff. But government is teh evulz, and the free market will fix it.