Valsuelm

Often when people try to, they are murdered. The powers that be generally want the African continent subjugated under a friendly to them tyrant or in turmoil if a friendly tyrant can't be found. Robbing it of it's resources is much easier that way. And there are numerous players on the African chessboard. Many of them heartless and ruthless. Not to mention there's a lot of racism still out there. Ugly as it is, to many, black lives don't matter.

He's not making sense there. That's not how the attacks are happening. However, it looks like he's a PvPer. Maybe I'll run into him in DoTA like I did Kim, and perhaps he'll make more sense there. Edit: He looks and sounds like a weird art dealer that might try and slip me some roofies at an afterhours party in Manhattan. I bet he's got a pet monkey. Then how are they happening? We know these guys were trained overseas. And why do you think he has a monkey? Magic. Seriously. Wizards! We do? Well then who trained them overseas? Couldn't be the U.S. or one of the NATO allies training them could it? I mean, I know someone over there right now expressly for the purpose of training military folks of all types, and the U.S. is sending more later this month. Wonder where the guns came from.... hmmmm.... Why I think he has a monkey is because he reminds me of someone I met once. A freaky art dealer (or that's what he said he was anyways) that tried to slip me something (probably roofies) at an after hours party in Manhattan, who had a monkey. Looks and sounds a lot like him. Maybe it is him. Politicians are often seriously messed up folks. Why do you feel the need to try confuse every single issue when it comes to these types of developments ? Can you not just accept something for what it is? Two disenfranchised French Algerians ( plus the other guy )who have explained why they did what they did. Its not hard to understand, its not hard to see what happened. Its not hard just to say " yes I can see this was an attack from a small group of Islamic extremists" And despite the fact the entire worlds security services have the same view of this attack, including Muslims groups, you somehow have a different story and expect people to actually take this seriously? Is that what it is? Evidence Sir Bruce! Present it! Oh, and again, evidence, not the words of someone on TV. Pretend we're in a courtroom, and you've got to convince a jury. Lay out your evidence that has so convinced you and should convince everyone. As for the entire world's security services..... did they all do an investigation? That's amazingly quick and comprehensive police work if they did. Also amazing team work. I'd have thought they'd get in each others way. Where's their report? Did you know one of the lead investigators on the French team is reported to have committed suicide before filing his report? I will accept something for what it is when it is clear what it is. You on the other hand just accept on faith what the media, government agency X, or politician Y throws at you as if they never lie. Tip: They're notorious for lying. See, there's a saying that I've found to be true: 'Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.' You seem to enjoy being fooled all the time. Now, as I've said, I'm not sure yet. It might turn out that what's being reported in the media is largely true. But they've been shown to have lied and pushed propaganda on this story, so it would be wise to question things. And even if the reported suspects are 100% guilty of what they are said to have done, there are still things worth questioning. I realize that's hard for you to understand, as you want the things the media and your favorite government agency tells you to be nice, neat, and true. But the world is much different and more complex than advertised. You'd realize that if you ever stepped outside your box. How many times do you need to be lied to before you actually stop trusting someone or something? How many times do you need to be lied to before you question what those who have lied in the past say?

He's not making sense there. That's not how the attacks are happening. However, it looks like he's a PvPer. Maybe I'll run into him in DoTA like I did Kim, and perhaps he'll make more sense there. Edit: He looks and sounds like a weird art dealer that might try and slip me some roofies at an afterhours party in Manhattan. I bet he's got a pet monkey. Then how are they happening? We know these guys were trained overseas. And why do you think he has a monkey? Magic. Seriously. Wizards! We do? Well then who trained them overseas? Couldn't be the U.S. or one of the NATO allies training them could it? I mean, I know someone over there right now expressly for the purpose of training military folks of all types, and the U.S. is sending more later this month. Wonder where the guns came from.... hmmmm.... Why I think he has a monkey is because he reminds me of someone I met once. A freaky art dealer (or that's what he said he was anyways) that tried to slip me something (probably roofies) at an after hours party in Manhattan, who had a monkey. Looks and sounds a lot like him. Maybe it is him. Politicians are often seriously messed up folks.

Birdman Great performances. Good movie. I'm still trying to figure out how good.

He's not making sense there. That's not how the attacks are happening. However, it looks like he's a PvPer. Maybe I'll run into him in DoTA like I did Kim, and perhaps he'll make more sense there. Edit: He looks and sounds like a weird art dealer that might try and slip me some roofies at an afterhours party in Manhattan. I bet he's got a pet monkey.

This isn't the first 'terrorist' event where the named official suspects reportedly came to be known to the authorities though a found ID under extremely unlikely circumstances. Very convenient for those authorities, and/or just super lucky. Twice now!

If anyone is shot in the head by a .762 round, yea.. their head is likely to pretty much explode, but explode or not there'd certainly be blood and bits all over. Anyone whose ever spent some time firing a .762 rifle and seen what it does to various targets can tell you that. Flesh and bone are annihilated. As for bodies and medical reports. The latter can be forged, misrepresented, gummed up by an incompetent, or even not done at all, and it's not unheard of for any of those things to happen. Here's a mainstream documentary about some of that in the USA. Here's another one. And in the unlikely event you get particularly interested in morbid incompetencies, fabrications, and cover ups after watching those (if you actually do; I do highly recommend them) look up the cases of Ken Tretadue or Kevin Ives and Don Henry for some enlightenment on how it happens as well as a great many other things.

That's not evidence. And it's pretty amazingly easy to fabricate what it is, as all you have to do is grossly misinterpret a situation (a common thing for authorities to do), or lie (a common thing for authorities to do).

You seriously think he was innocent to terrorism and hostage taking??? WHAT? Frankly, I don't know. But. why should I think he/she was guilty? Really, lay out the evidence. Evidence mind you, not just what talking heads on TV or someone with a badge says. Also, 'terrorism' is as ridiculous a crime as 'hate speech' as it is an abstract subjective term. A real crime, whatever it is, is concrete and not subjective. Murder is a real crime. Hostage taking is a crime. But are you that quick to sentence someone to death if guilty of hostage taking. Does a trial by jury mean nothing to you? Why were the police so gung ho to kill the guy? So gung ho that they set off explosions and fired shots that endangered the hostages themselves? But more importantly, evidence. Convince me they were guilty with evidence.

I never said I agreed with everything the guy said in the video, but the video itself is worth a watch. At the very least it dispels a very popular image put forth by the media the world over the last couple of days: that the masked man stood over the policeman pleading for his life and then blew him away disregarding his pleas. Mainstream media edited the video to support that narrative and give people that impression, and mainstream media lied. Video aside, one should ask why it matters more that two policemen died than a handful of people who happened to be in the building that didn't work at Charlie Hebdo. It doesn't, but the media certainly acts as if it does.

Food for thought:

Despicable. So the police/state/authorities say a person(s) does X, and then executes them in cold blood in a video and you cheer? You do realize that people are falsely accused by police/state/authorities of all sorts of things from the trivial to ubermajor all the time right? You do realize that people are acquitted all the time when actually prosecuted for whatever the police/state/authorities say they did right? It's not even uncommon that the police/state/authortiies' case is so flimsy that the case is outright dismissed before trial even happens. The guys killed may very well have been guilty of what the police/state/authorities say they are. However, we'll likely never really know for sure now as they aren't around to give their side of the story, and we certainly don't know for sure now. It's convenient for the state when the suspects are dead, and this one was all too predictable.

I know there are a few people on these forums who subscribe to conspiracy theories but I find them completely irritating and unhelpful. Its like they exist so people have an excuse to not realize the obvious truth and therefore don't have to worry about a solution Do you know there are people who think that ISIS is an American and CIA created and supported organisation, thats right the same ISIS that the Americans are currently fighting in Iraq You must be slacking on your regular dose of IronyGuard if you're finding 'conspiracy theories' irritating. This one wasn't even in English yet you knee jerk reaction to it, or do you actually read Russian? What did it say that was so wrong? I'll remind you again though that the official narrative is also a conspiracy theory in this case (as with so many others). It's not conspiracy theories you're actually averse to it's facts, thoughts, ideas, and narratives that don't jive with your world view as given to you by the main stream media that you're averse to. The main stream media pushes conspiracy theories all the time, they just don't call them that. As I've said before, if the phrase 'conspiracy theory' is a pejorative to you, you are brainwashed and conditioned not to think outside of the paradigm created for you and that you've bought into. None but yourself can free your mind. And yea actually. ISIS was indirectly created and funded in part by the CIA. Direct connections cannot be definitively made, but indirect ones can, and that's not exactly fringe thinking as even main stream media has reported on this. ISIS grew in large part out of the CIA supported Syrian rebels and in smaller part out various insurgent groups in Iraq, and that's if we accept the predominate theory. Does that mean the CIA created ISIS on purpose? Not necessarily, however, unlike many other government or semi governmental organizations in the US, the people at the top in the CIA are rarely idiots. One thing for sure is that ISIS is quite the nebulous organization, particularly for one that has an army and reportedly has control of so much land.

English!

'Controlling their children and limiting exposure to different ideas.' You have a very uninformed or ignorant view of why parents would not send their kids to public school. Perhaps this is just some more of your contempt for Average Joe citizen on display then? If all drivers are idiots and untrustworthy, then certainly they aren't capable of teaching their own children to at least the joke of a level that modern public schools require. That said, I'm really curious as to what different ideas you think a kid might and should be exposed to at a public school that they won't be exposed to elsewhere in life if they are home schooled or sent to a private school. While no doubt there are some parents out there that might fit the bill that you think most do, out of the dozen and a half or so people I personally know who are homeschooling their kids (I know a lot more who send their kids to private schools, including one of my sisters (who went to a public school herself) who actually doesn't live far from you) not one of them fits your bill and I guarantee all of them will be far better educated and score better on all the standardized tests ever thrown at them than even most above average public school kids. One thing common amongst most home schooled kids is that they learn far more and far quicker than their public school counterparts, as they aren't held back from learning like so many are in public schools (especially under 'common core') and benefit from parents actively interested in and participating in their kid's education. What one might learn in school aside, as I previously mentioned, many public schools are becoming very toxic places. It's not a matter of wrapping your kid up in a protective bubble, it's a matter of not subjecting your kid to what is BS in the best light. My own old high school, which I very much enjoyed being at when I was there, has become what I'd consider an Orwellian nightmare with all sorts of insanity from police tasing kids for telling them to bleep off, to kids who got in a fight but didn't start it suspended for an entire school year under zero tolerance policies, to kids being suspended for a week because they discussed having a food fight on facebook, to other insanities (that are increasingly common throughout the US). No way would I send my kids to it now. If it was like it was when I went to school I wouldn't hesitate, but back then police weren't staffed at the school let alone tasing kids, a fight might get your suspended for a couple of days if you were the one that started it, and actually participating in a food fight would get you a detention or three (I know.. I got em) as opposed to just talking about having one getting you suspended for a week. One of the major high schools the next city over is far worse, an honor student kid was beat to death and stabbed not to long ago as he was walking home from school by a group of other kids from his high school in a gang (and guess what, they weren't black) over some trivial argument. Schools all over are not like they were two decades ago and more now, and just about all of the changes are decidedly for the worse.

That's kinda and untrue at the same time. Black majority areas are more likely to have more problem students. There is a reason for that though; not to sound like a broken record, but this thanks to the damn drug war. The drug war targets blacks the most, and thus screws up their communities the most. This is a big part of why the socio-economic situation for many blacks isn't so good. Ending the drug war would do far more good for education than free community college; especially for poor black communities. 'Kinda and untrue'? Come again? What is untrue about what I stated? Are you defending and adding to Orogun01's blatant racism? And there are 'problem students' and drug abusers in nearly every if not every public school district out there, even those that are comprised by a very large majority of upper class wealthy white people. I speak from experience. Perhaps you just watch too much TV? Or really haven't thought about what you're saying? Or are you really just completely ignorant of the fact that there are oodles upon oodles of kids nationwide that are not black who are in or on their way to being in gangs, do drugs, and other not so good things. I gotta say here. To be clear I'm not offended. But I am a bit disgusted at just how many people on this forum are turning out to be bonified racists (the thread on the recent mass murder in France has a number them), and I'm beginning to question the merits of me actually reading this forum, let alone posting here.

Another gem on the horizon:

QFT

There is no polite way to ask this, are your wife's students black? Cause that would explain the gangs, drugs and ignorance. Yea.. because only blacks are involved in gangs, do drugs, or are ignorant. Retardo stereotype and Racist much? Yeah, go teach at an inner city school with a black majority. You'll see what i'm talking about, every teacher that I've met through my mother has similar horror stories about working on black schools which range from the comical to the tragic. Luckily the ones that are close to my family have been comical. I didn't take you for one of those people that get offended when one mentions race. I didn't get offended. In over 25 years of internet forum perusing I've yet to get offended by someone's post. However, there's been a heckuva lot of racism on this forum the last few days, and my tolerance for racist and uberignorant remarks is generally near nil normally. It's absolutely ignorant and racist to say that the because the kids are black that is the problem. I could show you predominately Caucasian, Hispanic, or Native American schools (I know of no other ethnicity that dominates a modern 'problem school' in the US, but I'm sure they are out there on planet earth somewhere) with similar problems to an 'inner city school with a black majority' that might be a nightmare to teach at. The problem isn't he color of someone's skin, or even necessarily the ethnic culture, the problem generally is the socio-economic background their parents hail from, but it isn't even just that, because there are plenty of good parents out there (of all ethnicities) that are poor for one reason or another. Why school X might be a nightmare to teach at or learn at always has a number of factors behind it, and those factors can and do vary from district to district. Skin color however, is never one of them. I didn't take you for a racist and thought you smart enough to realize what I stated above, but rarely does such a thing rear it's head right away with anyone.

It's absolutely true that parents are the #1 factor in any kid's upbringing and education. However, they are not the only factor and you have to ignore quite a lot to pretend that they are. Especially when we start specifically talking about public schools. An intelligent and responsible parent has quite a challenge raising and educating a kid given the plethora of total BS their kid is subjected to in media, increasingly in many instances at schools themselves, and from other directions. In fact, while it varies from district to district the widespread effect of things like 'no child left behind', 'common core', 'zero tolerance policies', and 'security' in our schools creates such a negative atmosphere in regards to education in many places that more and more intelligent and responsible parents are taking their kids out of the public school system and sending them to private schools or homeschooling them if they can afford it. Unfortunately not everyone has the means to do this. And not only are many good parents yanking their kids out of schools if they can many of the better teachers out there are fleeing their profession for other careers for many of the same reasons. The modern public school has increasingly become a very toxic place over the last couple of decades, and there are many good parents out there that not only are not at fault for this, but that have been actively battling some of the reasons (like common core) as to why that is.

There is no polite way to ask this, are your wife's students black? Cause that would explain the gangs, drugs and ignorance. Yea.. because only blacks are involved in gangs, do drugs, or are ignorant. Retardo stereotype and Racist much?

Well, one strategy would be to ignore ignorant racist remarks that apply guilt by loose association to nearly 2 billion people for the actions of a relative few. And yea... it's been mentioned more than once in this thread already that one of the cops was a Muslim.

Common core is 'no chlid left behind' on steroids. My complaints on common core are innumerable. There's pretty much nothing good about it at all. Poop has more redeeming qualities. The 'real issues in education'? While I wouldn't say curriculum, teachers, or materials are the only issues in education, they certainly are some of the real issues. What do you think the real issues are? Common core is no more a smokescreen for something that the bubonic plague was for rats. Also, the very nature of it is political, and politics is the only way you're going to change it so being against politicizing it is like being against air being part of the wind.

Yay for the protecting students part, boo for the dig on Common Core. I'm not going to say Common Core is revolutionary, but it does move us away from the terrible standardized testing and puts the focus on developing critical thinking skills. Also, anytime you hear a politician talking about Common Core, right or left wing, ignore them because they have no idea what they are talking about. You are the only teacher I've ever had any personal contact with in any manner who says boo to a dig on common core. I don't know you personally obviously, but I do know and speak fairly regularly to dozens of friends and acquaintances that are teachers of all different qualities, intellect, and ability and not one of them doesn't loathe common core. Then again, I'm in New York, an early adopter of 'common core'. Perhaps you're just ignorant of what's coming your way. Here's a good presentation on some aspects of it:

False. There isn't a shred of evidence that Irenicus knows anything about Aluando's prophesy or that he even cares. He does not mention it to you, or Bodhi, or Elisime, Or Yoshimo, or Saemon Havarian, or the matron mother. It's not mentioned anywhere in his journals. And the PC's part in the prophesy has nothing to do with his motives and actions anyway. He Only knows that you have Bhaal's blood. And even that only matters to him because Bhaal is a god and God essense = immortality, according to his strange scientific theories. (which is, in itself proof that he's not familiar with Aluando's prophesy, since Bhaal DIED to start the whole thing) Not false. You misread what I wrote. "Irenicus was interested in the main character and Imoen in large part because of their import to Aluando's prophecy," Their import and significance in Aluando's prophecy is that they have Bhaal's blood. Perhaps I could have communicated it in a clearer manner, but then again you seem to like to argue for the sake of arguing and nitpick, so I doubt I'll make you happy. That Irenicus does or doesn't know about the prophecy is somewhat irrelevant, as the prophecy itself isn't the main focus of the story (the very nature of prophecy generally means it almost never is the focus of any story). What's relevant is what the characters do, and insofar as the overarching storyline of the spawn of Bhaal (that which makes the main character the main character) the fact that he is Bhaal's spawn is central to the plot of Baldur's Gate 2 even before The Throne of Bhaal chapter is reached. And all that said, the story of the original Baldur's Gate was about more than just Aluando's prophecy. If you want to focus on that, that's your perogative, but it's akin to reading The Godfather and thinking the story is only about Vito. There's quite a bit more to it than that.