Barothmuk

Those political objectives being liberation from a racist, colonialist power with a laundry list of war-crimes. I'm hardly a strong fan of Hamas but they are quite easily the lesser evil.

What's that famous quote attributed to Goebbles "If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself." Seriously, despite the fact that people keep repeating that there's no serious evidence to support it. The IDF on the other hand... That's a Palestinian child they're using btw. Actually Imperial Japan had already been negotiating a conditional surrender to the U.S.S.R (amusingly Stalin was the good cop to America's bad cop), unfortunately for the Japanese the Yanks wanted nothing less than an unconditional surrender to the U.S.A.

Analogies are srs bsns.

U.S media supports Israel. Who'd have thunk it.

Props to Bioware for actually having a non-twitchy gameplay trailer (as degenerate as said gameplay may be).

Monarchies are reactionary. Try and abolish that.

Has this been posted yet? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zThxP55Cqeo&feature=player_embedded It's hilarious.

This would make a pretty awesome movie.

I agree with the notion that Tony Abbot is basically a Captain Planet villain.

I doubt this will happen but this is what I'd like too. Something like Jade Empire minus the Bioware.

Seems pretty ****ing stupid not to have this unstable region as a no-fly zone. I assume it is now?

All the while shedding the occasional crocodile tear.

Don't really have much time to be making large posts so this will have to be brief. If anyone is genuinely interested in continuing this I'll make some larger posts in a couple of days. Is the implication here I'm a hippy dippy pacifist? Perhaps you should actively investigate it. I don't mean that in a mean way mind you. It's just that, going off your post, you really don't know the opposing side's claim. Very wrong. I'm not advocating the soviets get a "free pass" nor did I invite people compare the Soviet Union in the 30's through 50's to any modern western liberal democracy (as I said, that would be silly). What I was doing was pointing out the successes of the Soviet Union, despite their initial backwardness and horrendous conditions, especially in comparison to their contemporary peers. Although their standards of living were still lower than the major developed countries at the time rivals looked at the startling growth and productivity of the Soviet Union that dwarfed their own and estimated they'd have the 3rd highest standard of living by 1970 (and naturally this would continue to rapidly grow). The argument was not that their conditions at the time were 'better', (even they would not argue that as they were still developing (as well as recovering from a major war yadda yadda)), the argument was highlighting their successes in production/development prior to the reforms of the Khrushchev era. I hope I've made that clear.

Well that sure educated me. Again, I'm not denying movements 'existed', movements still exist today, what I'm saying is they were not nearly as big and lacked the level of mass support of previous 'movements'. I'm reminded of a quote from that 90's movie Bulworth: B: Do you know who Huey Newton was? …Why do think there are no more black leaders? Nina: Some people think it’s because they all got killed - but I think it has more to do with the decimation of the manufacturing base in the urban centers. Senator, an optimistic energized population throws up optimistic energized leaders and when you shift manufacturing to the Sunbelt and the third world you just destroy the blue collar core of the black activist population. Some people would say the problem is purely cultural, but the power of the media that’s continually controlled by fewer and fewer people, add to that the monopoly of the media and a consumer culture that’s based on self-gratification and you’re not likely to have a population that wants leadership that calls for self-sacrifice. But the fact is I’m just a materialist at heart. Look back at the economic base: High-domestic employment means jobs for the African-Americans. World War Two meant lots of jobs for black folks ­ that’s what energized the community for the Civil Rights Movement in the 50’s and the 60’s and energized hopeful community that not only produced leaders but more importantly it will produce leaders that respond too. Now what do you think Senator?

It would be incredibly intellectually dishonest to compare the Soviet Union in its supposed "glory days" to your standard modern Western liberal democracy. At its time of greatest successes it was attempting rapid industrialisation, undergoing and recovering from a famine, prepping for a war with a major fascist state, fighting a world war with a fascist state and then recovering and re-industrialising after said war (in which it bore most of the damage). It'd be tough to live through that no matter what the political system.

No kidding. Massive wealth inequality, poverty, huge incarceration rates (especially for minorities), sexism, racism, slavery, child-labour, exploitation of the third world, imperialist wars... Its all still there. Such as? I'm not denying movements existed but these were primarily aiming for tiny concessions and reforms with hardly the level of mass support previous movements had. This is hardly a contentious claim; leftists complaining about the modern state of the left is basically a cliché. EDIT: And props to anyone who can tie this back into the thread topic.

I played a friend's copy and although it's fun it has still got that annoying "I have no idea what's road or what the hell is going on" problem when you first run through a track. Also no Diddy or Funky? dafuq!? Also, also, we've had 8 Mario Karts but only 3 F-Zeros. What the hell Nintendo?!

Sorry, just not fond of revealing personal info on the net. I'm in my early twenties. This shouldn't detract from my point.

By the late 80's the "mainstream left" had already been in disarray for decades. Throughout the Stalin era the Soviet Union represented a successful alternative model that was rapidly rising and showing signs of actually surpassing both the U.S and Britain however in 1956 with Khrushchev's "secret speech" he revealed the 'true horrors' of the so-called 'Stalinist system'. With the opening of the archives it has been more or less proven that most of these claims are outright fabrication but that need not matter, for the rest of the world this 'proved' that what the 'capitalists' had been saying was right all along; Stalin was an evil monster, socialism did rest on arbitrary mass slaughter and a river of blood and most importantly all the gains of socialism are thereby "tainted". From that point on the left fractured and tried all manner of alternative, some sort of successful most not. You had some chasing Mao who quickly fell to Deng Xioping, you had some trying to make "a return to Marxism" without any of the previous Leninist stuff, you had those trying change through reform, post-modernists, liberals, stupid hippies and so on. To make my point more clear I'm not denying that the fall of the Soviet Union was a massive culture shaping event; merely that its fall, in reality, didn't come about through competition with the superior side coming out on top, rather the 'losing side' barely existed in any form by the time it fell and that its 'fall' had been part of a longer gradual crumbling as a result of ****ty policies and petty party politics. I'd say the major problem with the "Social Justice" movement is its complete lack of direction and purpose. At the moment, in the West at least, all we have (at the very most) are well meaning teenagers through college grads with a very basic understanding of privilege theory sitting at their computers pointing out various inequalities in the world. It's still better than nothing but it's really quite petty in comparison to the civil rights groups of the 60's-70's and its barely a historical footnote in comparison to the leftist movements of the 30's-50's.

It's always strange when people regurgitate this. The Soviet Union's dissolution hardly represented some dramatic triumph of capitalism over communism. From the Khrushchev era onwards there had already been a right-ward shift in party policy with a gradual dismantling of collective ownership in the countryside, the abolition of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" in favour of "the state of the whole people" and so on. The Brezhnev era brought in the kosygin reforms which unashamedly embraced further privatization and Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost were an attempt to shift from a state capitalist model to a more explicitly market based model. The narrative of "the glorious triumph of capitalism" is entirely rhetoric that requires one to ignore that there still exist plenty of equally "communist" countries (i.e. communist in name alone) waving "the red flag". EDIT: It's certainly revealing that Monte views Bruce and the SJ campaign as part of some kind of communist plot.

I could go into a tirade about the economic circumstances such women frequently come from and the concept of male-gaze. But I think I've had enough of those types of discussions for one day.

The third season had a massive tonal shift (different writer or something) and lost most of the fanbase. The story continued properly through a line of comics however. So unbelievably wrong. There is already culturally enforced gender roles so the setting is already sexist.

You said my advocating of depicting sexist structures as sexist makes me sexist. Thus if we use this logic Obsidian's choice to depict their setting with racism, slavery, war and so on clearly means they themselves are supportive of these things. The fact that this is the second time I've explained this to you leads me to believe you are not actually reading my posts at all. Certainly would explain the frequent misinterpretations.

Me neither so fair enough. That is what it is about. Yes as you pointed out women within the peasant structure exhibited forms of power within their own social spheres however this does not mean they had total power or were somehow the dominant force in these spheres. EDIT: Not gonna lie Gronir. Too tired to try and dissect/translate one of your posts.