World is Falling Apart Thread (Locked forever)

Talk about just about anything else that is non-gaming here, but keep it clean
User avatar
Jmustang1968
Next-Gen
Posts: 6530
Joined: Fri Mar 11, 2011 6:51 pm
Location: Houston, TX

Re: So the whole world is kind of falling apart...

Post by Jmustang1968 »

Gunstar Green wrote:I like to think we live in the kind of enlightened society where making bad decisions doesn't automatically doom you to a life of poverty from which you can never recover.
Or prison? Bad decisions can send you there. It is choices, acts, and consequences of those...

But saying automatically dooming you to a life of poverty is a bit of hyperbole.
Pulsar_t
Next-Gen
Posts: 5935
Joined: Tue Jan 01, 2008 10:38 am

Re: So the whole world is kind of falling apart...

Post by Pulsar_t »

BoringSupreez wrote:
Gunstar Green wrote:I'd like to think we live in some sort of video game where our actions don't have any meaningful impact.
Sorry.
Let's take that view, which I certainly don't disagree with, and apply it to la federación, which is neck-high in debt. Start chopping off the fat, starting with military overspending.


Image

I guess I keep confusing some forum members with my posts. I'm not a liberal/conservative/nationalist/zealot/pacifist or any of the myriad of silly labels people like to use in their daily dialectic activities. :lol:

An example if you're still reading: I find the freemarket healthcare system in America to be barbaric, and Obamacare doesn't even begin to address it, so that rules me out of any conservative circle, but at the same time I think people must be responsible for their well-being, therefore those with illnesses that weren't caused by recklessness or bad choices ought to be prioritised over those dullards who risk their health by doing irresponsible habits.
Thy ban hammer shalt strike Image
User avatar
MrPopo
Moderator
Posts: 24194
Joined: Tue Aug 26, 2008 1:01 pm
Location: Orange County, CA

Re: So the whole world is kind of falling apart...

Post by MrPopo »

I've always assumed you were the type who always worries about The Man.
Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.
User avatar
jp1
Next-Gen
Posts: 4101
Joined: Sun Nov 23, 2008 6:04 pm

Re: So the whole world is kind of falling apart...

Post by jp1 »

BoringSupreez wrote:
Gunstar Green wrote:I'd like to think we live in some sort of video game where our actions don't have any meaningful impact.
Sorry.
I was twenty two once as well. I was an arrogant little shit that thought I knew everything about the world. I'm happy to see that the next generation isn't like that at all.
Pulsar_t
Next-Gen
Posts: 5935
Joined: Tue Jan 01, 2008 10:38 am

Re: So the whole world is kind of falling apart...

Post by Pulsar_t »

MrPopo wrote:I've always assumed you were the type who always worries about The Man.
I definitely should be crashing more parties. :lol:



5 Horrific Experiences I Lived As A Child Refugee
Image
Thy ban hammer shalt strike Image
Pulsar_t
Next-Gen
Posts: 5935
Joined: Tue Jan 01, 2008 10:38 am

Re: So the whole world is kind of falling apart...

Post by Pulsar_t »

Image

Humour can be an effective measure against extremists. :lol:

____________________________________________________________________

Image
http://bit.ly/1YROrMi

If you're a person of colour in the US, you're fair game to those 3rd-world-level coppers.
Thy ban hammer shalt strike Image
User avatar
BoringSupreez
Next-Gen
Posts: 9738
Joined: Wed Feb 11, 2009 10:09 pm
Location: Tokyo

Re: So the whole world is kind of falling apart...

Post by BoringSupreez »

Well it's been a month since San Bernadino was shot up by ISIS supporters, almost to the day, so of course there's already another major event in the news (although *somehow* not reported on until almost a week after the occurrence) supporting my views.

A group of 1,000 Arabic/Middle Eastern men carried out an organized - not random or unrelated to each other - organized series of sexual attacks in Cologne on New Years Eve, with 90 victims thus far. All in one night. BBC article on the topic.

Take note that these people aren't thought to be affiliated with any extremist groups; they're just "refugees." So they're not "radicalized," as some would like to use as a shield for Muslims as a whole.

Here's the top comment in the Reddit thread for the same article, very relevant in my opinion although I disagree with his assertion that integrating the migrants ever had any potential to succeed:
They keep downplaying the refugee connection yet every paragraph describes witnesses, police, suspect's documentation all very bloody strongly implying a connection.

The bigger picture (refugee influx into EU) is going to go bad very quickly, public sentiment is what was going to make this work and the powers that be have been handling that pretty poorly tbh.

Sexual crime is regarded as among the most heinous offences in western society and those who commit sexual crimes are utterly reviled.

So all of this mixes up with public sentiment to produce a very bad atmosphere for these refugees. The rapid, clean and neat social intergration Frau Merkel et al were praying for has failed.

Of course it fucking has! It doesn't matter if it is irrational or bigoted to tar all these refugees with the same brush, it's still going to happen. When people are frightexned (and what european with a family would not be terrified reading the accounts in this article?) they do irrational things.

A mass sexual attack (police suspect it to be organised in fact, like wtf is going on here?) by an ethnically non native group... jesus christ put down the identity politics textbook and read some anthropology. This crime cuts to the very core of human civilisation's most ancient primal nightmares. Fear of rape and pillage by an invading foreign force you fools, it's carved into our very beings as tribal animals.

People are going to be understandably and predictably reactionary as a group towards another group.

So then what? Mass internment to "protect" the refugees? Like say... camps? Uh oh...

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, the EU has to take the world as it is, not as they would like it to be and the world is a harsh place.

Is it worth it to take in every single person you can but have to treat them all like hazardous animals?

There were thousands of perpetrators, witnesses and police desribe them as being primarily middle eastern and north african in ethnicity, this crime is new to law enforcement in these areas, a group of detained suspects were all carrying refugee papers.

Do the math, this is directly linked to the refugee situation, it is not "improper" to suggest this, it is blindingly obvious and the public backlash will be en masse across europe.

The next election in every eu nation is going to be a right wing dream come true.
Large-scale attacks by Muslims didn't used to be a semi-annual occurrence in Western Europe. This is what so-called "progressive," leftist, feminist, tolerant, etc. policies have wrought. "Progress," meaning, advancing to the rear. The same thing will happen to the US if we continue to import these people.

We can't solve the Muslim problem in their countries, the last 69 years prove that. Letting them into ours is disaster in progress. The best remaining option is to let them fight among themselves, in their native lands, and let us keep to our own countries. That academia ideal of every nation, culture, and religion co-existing in wondrous multi-cultural societies just doesn't work in the real world.

Call me ignorant, a bigot, hateful, nazi, racist, islamaphobe, extremist, whatever pejorative de jour fits your fancy. I'm going to voice my opinions regardless, and I'll more likely than not be back with another piece like this before spring starts.
prfsnl_gmr wrote:There is nothing feigned about it. What I wrote is a display of actual moral superiority.
dsheinem
Next-Gen
Posts: 23184
Joined: Wed Dec 12, 2007 12:56 pm
Contact:

Re: So the whole world is kind of falling apart...

Post by dsheinem »

BoringSupreez wrote:
Call me ignorant, a bigot, hateful, nazi, racist, islamaphobe, extremist, whatever pejorative de jour fits your fancy.
How about I just call you a poor arguer?

I'm going to toss the Reddit comment aside for now as I don't really care what some asshat on there says about anything and the quote is full of a lot of right-wing hateful hogwash. Looking at the BBC article and this NYT article, though, it seems that there is still a lot of confusion about exactly what happened, the extent to which it was organized, etc.

Something about some of the statements ring a little hollow: How did an organized band of 1,000 islamic extremists only manage to commit ~100 assaults? How is it that no one has been arrested, more than a week later? Why are the only people hell-bent on making this a refugee-related issue are the same talking heads who always try to raise that specter?

The only person linking the perps specifically to asylum seeking immigrants is one un-named police officer. Others say that the perps are of Arabic or North African descent, but that in and of itself doesn't mean that these are refugees committing crimes. NYT: "It was not clear that any of the men involved were among those who arrived in Germany over the past year from conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere."

The BBC article suggests that this is a common occurrence this time of year: "at Christmas and New Year the area around Cologne Cathedral is a notorious danger zone when it comes to pickpockets and theft." Note that there is only one report of rape in all of the reports made so far in Cologne, and it seems that (unfortunately) the other assaults are par for the course this time of year, regardless of border politics.

Look, the whole thing is horrible, obviously. I don't mean to diminish it. But I think reactionary finger-pointing or policy-making based on speculation rooted in pre-existing fears is pretty fucking dumb. Although, in this country, we call that Donald Trump's platform. :evil:
User avatar
BoringSupreez
Next-Gen
Posts: 9738
Joined: Wed Feb 11, 2009 10:09 pm
Location: Tokyo

Re: So the whole world is kind of falling apart...

Post by BoringSupreez »

dsheinem wrote:The only person linking the perps specifically to asylum seeking immigrants is one un-named police officer. Others say that the perps are of Arabic or North African descent, but that in and of itself doesn't mean that these are refugees committing crimes. NYT: "It was not clear that any of the men involved were among those who arrived in Germany over the past year from conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere."

The BBC article suggests that this is a common occurrence this time of year: "at Christmas and New Year the area around Cologne Cathedral is a notorious danger zone when it comes to pickpockets and theft." Note that there is only one report of rape in all of the reports made so far in Cologne, and it seems that (unfortunately) the other assaults are par for the course this time of year, regardless of border politics.
Looking over other article posted in the news media, none of them report interviewing any witnesses who described them as anything but foreigners - and the Independent article quotes the Cologne police chief as saying the reports received pegged the men as being of "Arab or North African origin." And if they aren't refugees, that makes this even worse, as it suggests failure to integrate into Western society under even normal circumstances.

The fact that German officials, including the mayor of Cologne and Merkel, have had to make statements to the public on the event lends additional weight to the idea that it's not just the usual crime that happens every year. The police chief even stated "the incidents were "a completely new dimension of crime"" (also from the Independent).
prfsnl_gmr wrote:There is nothing feigned about it. What I wrote is a display of actual moral superiority.
User avatar
Erik_Twice
Next-Gen
Posts: 6251
Joined: Fri Mar 27, 2009 10:22 am
Location: Madrid, Spain

Re: So the whole world is kind of falling apart...

Post by Erik_Twice »

I think BoringSupreez is way off the mark when it comes to the facts of what happened but deep down I can't say he's completely wrong. There's more than a grain of truth to what he's saying and I can't, in good faith, deny that.

You may not know about it, but Cologne has had massive problems with muslim inmigrants, to the point where the city has been the nexus of several radical Islamist movements. Pickpoteter and begging networks are established in the city and these networks draw from the inmigrant base. The muslim community is not well-integrated and closed to outsiders.

That is, the crimes commited in Cologne and other German cities on New Year's Eve do not correspond to the current wave of refugees/inmigrants, but they do correspond to the previous one quite heavily. Pople report that many of the people involved were already well known to the police and I would be surprised if that were not the case, this has been going on for a very long time.

So yeah, this is about inmigration. Inmigration past, present and future.

And really, Dsh, I don't know why there being no arrests "rings hollow" to you. You know better than anyone here that most rape cases go absolutely nowhere, specially when there's no way to know the identity of the perpetrators, much less charge them.

Not that anyone wants to. The regional police has already said that "all was peaceful on New Year's Eve" and the mayor of Cologne, who was elected on a pro-refugee platform, has already said that "young girls and women" should follow a soon to be published "code of conduct" so that "such things don't happen to them".
Looking for a cool game? Find it in my blog!
Latest post: Often, games must be difficult
http://eriktwice.com/
Locked