IsthatyouJohnWayne

Well done to Italy, they really rose to the occassion (bad luck to the Germans, i was actually expecting them to win the world cup after Brazil went out). An exciting semi final (despite the lack of goals until the last few minutes) Commiserations Germany, France-Italy final i think.

I blame the swede.

Full marks to the USA for hanging in there even a man down, i only really saw the second half, which got pretty tense as i was cheering for the USA. The Italians were weak. What the hell happened in the first half? [goes off to read about it]

The traditional bell humping should be outlawed as a matter of urgency . Congratulations to Germany, for a minute i actually thought Costa Rica might pull something amazing off after they scored their second goal but Germany had done enough (despite flawed defending). Im sort of hoping for an England vs Germany final (devoid of hooliganism), it would certainly be tense and interesting 40 years after Englands last victory at home in the finals against Germany.

Bitch.

*B-ding* We have a winner. Sputnik Monroe- The confusion you are experiencing is due to the deliberately vague and fuzzy situation that the bush administration has allowed to exist (and furthermore created). They are not POWS (entailing adherence to Geneva convention etc) but IIRC 'Enemy Combatants'. In other words 'They're not prisoners of war! They're smizzoners of warr!" There are Uighurs imprisoned who arent guilty of anything, a US court has cleared them and branded their imprisonment unlawful and yet they have not been released. China views them as dangerous seperatists and would probably treat them even worse, but the US doesnt seem to want to grant them asylum as that would sour relations with China- So they're still chained up in Guantanamo, even though the US government accepts they were mistakenly detained! Thats just the most glaring example of what a total cock up Guantanamo is. --- Washington Post Uighur Human Rights Project Australian Broadcasting Corporation From the ABC article Some of them fled from bombing and were captured and sold by bounty hunters. One of them was a prisoner of the Taliban. POWS. Its absurd.

Heheh. That is one crazy patch.

'Free speech!' now 'shut up'! Interesting. Denoir- Hahah. Supah- Uh.. right. Well thank you for telling me what i want or need and thus encapsulating the idiocy (of some of the arguments) of this cartoon war. I suppose ill send those ME foodstuffs i just bought back. Wait i have some CDs of Middle eastern music too. Luckily i have learned i do not need these. Much better to be rid of that nasty foreign stuff. Let us build a wall made of 'mohammed bricks' to keep the nasty muslims, sorry, 'Islamists' out. Im so happy to see that everyone is coming to their senses. Buy ammunition. War is inevitable. Lets go for it!

Hah, no its more like because we have had decent governments for more than a hundred years that people are very complacent about civil liberty issues. Instead of saying 'My god, think where this could lead' or similar, people say 'My, my, technology today eh? Cup of tea anyone?' Like that. For 'decent' read 'not openly fascist, communist, genocidal or highly repressive of its own people'. Besides which id hardly call the late victorians more 'decent' (well ok, not the racist, white supremacist, war mongerers among them or those who allowed the poor to starve in the gutters anyhow).

I use my (now old) laptop for OFP probably more than my main computer. It works fine, except for the lack of buttons on the keyboard. Having only five buttons right of 'enter' is a pain for a game like this and in fact i find it impossible to zoom in and out on a map(not really a problem except in mission making, but i dont do that anymore..). Actually if anyone has any idea how to rebind the zoom in/out keys for the map/editor id appreciate it.

Thats a magic car that is. The numberplate even melted though Superficially it seems pretty odd that the windows, at least, arent broken (the small surface area involved maybe?), what is it, a Hyundai or something? They should use it for an advert. Although it does look like that building behind was made of pretty flimsy stuff.

Major Fubar- Yet surely, in any absolute (typa existential) sense, someone does have the freedom to do the things you have mentioned. A person can usually rape or kill a person. Its physically possible and therefore in a sense they possess the freedom, and even 'right' (i notice a substitution of these words) , in a sort of nietzschean way, to do it. Whether what a person does is considered morally right or wrong is a seperate, subjective value judgement. The 'rights' that a given society allow us to exercise with relative impunity are not in any way identical to the freedoms we are endowed with at birth. And with this said i personally prefer a world in which we are at least not forced to internalise the necessary constraints imposed on us by society. No thought police. For me it is enough that someone should know that something is considered wrong and they should under no circumstances do it. A world in which they believed they did not have the freedom to do it would appear slightly scary to me. [edit- bloody nietzsche]

Naturally, i would just like to point out here that although i was quoting Bordoy at the time, the comments quoted by the esteemed Major Fubar were directed at no member in particular and were simply a general statement of my revulsion towards racism as such. I would apologise if i thought the language used would create undue offence, but i take the view that we are all insightful and intelligent individuals here and so it seems apparent to me that no such apology will prove necessary. do i win a sucking up medal?

Bordoy- Lazy regarding matters of race and stereotyping/ taking the easy way out. If it comes to that, i used to have a 'racist friend' until he joined the USMC and we lost contact. He was quite intelligent, until it came to matters of ethnicity when a noticable fuzziness and jokey immaturity became apparent. A racist is a fucking dick. Even if theyre an otherwise nice person, theyre a fucking dick. If you cant see this you're a fucking dick and you need to listen to more world music, or have sex with an immigrant girl or something. I mean we're all human, life is too short. Grow up. Any children reading will be sure to excuse my dirty foreign germanic profanities due my naturally likeable character. shinRaiden Objection your honour, i totally object to this absurd allamagation. Plus im listening to 'Suzanne' by Leonard Cohen which is one of the 17 coolest songs in the human world. Maybe. Oh god, why do we act so inhumanly towards each other. The humanity, the humanity! (+the Chelsea Hotel too)

Damn. It might have given a few kids asthma, but i was hoping to see it before it went out, it looked so impressive. Oh well, you cant have everything. It was truly a miracle noone was killed though, we usually seem to blessed with a lack of majorly fatal natural or accidental deaths, so we get a chance to kill, riot, and rob (and suicide bomb) each other to our hearts content in this country. Yes, im in that cheery christmas mood

Thats ok, i threatened to nuke Margaret Thatcher once.

America? When Japan conquers north america and assumes benign dictatorship of the world i would like it recorded that i for one would welcome our new asiatic overlords and their superior stick based methods of conveying food to the mouth. I think this is broadly An Ok Thing, possibly even A Good Thing. As long as the taking on of military commitments is in no way linked to the kind of hyper nationalism exhibited by a few of the nutjobs who still cling to the idea of an imperial Japan then it seems like a sensible development in the normalisation of postwar japan. I can see how it might make Chinese people feel a little wary but its not exactly like they're going to go invading Manchuria or something . But if they do and the end result is an extinction level nuclear holocaust then i admit ill feel silly.

Bernadotte- No, you did explain it and i totally get what youre saying. "It's a pity that the guy who got shot was not a black non-Christian" Its no big issue, lets just say i consider it an inelegant choice of words (finding it a pity it happened at all seems most sensible to me). .. Yes there have been attacks on asians A neo-nazi shooting in a train station would be a definate step up though.

BBC- You can relax Bernadotte, the dead mans name appears reassuringly Christian  . BBC- The guy who was shot was not a bomber. However it appears there may have been another bomb (and fifth bomber presumably?), it seems strange that it was dumped in the park unless it was part of an aborted bombing attempt. The aftermath of the shooting- Shot man not connected to bombing

Bordoy- He wasnt. It seems pretty clear that he was not a suicide bomber and posed no immediate danger to the public when he was shot. Bernadotte- Um. Dont you mean 'its a pity the guy was shot'? Anyway theres been some speculation that he was south american but at least as far as i know it has not been confirmed that he was muslim. Do you have a link for that? Bernadotte- As i understand it he walked into the train station after which he started running, possibly after being challenged and jumped over the ticket gate and into a train. I dont know Stockwell but there are usually transport workers around the ticket machines, transport police and such people who he probably ran straight past, though if he saw a gun that would change the situation. BTW whatever the 'mood in London' it certainly doesnt include allowing Asian people to be beaten up in public. There were reports that there was a mixture of plainclothes/undercover police and uniformed police. If there were uniformed police in the vicinity that would tend to eliminate the scenario from my perspective. -Just saw this man shot dead not connected to bombing So he wasnt a British Asian , he was Brazilian. I guess that will upset Al-Quaidas plans? Who knows for sure what was going through his mind. Pointless to speculate at this point. But what the hey, maybe he was a drug dealer. Maybe he was running away from drug dealers in brazil. Maybe he was an illegal animal importer, maybe he was a common thief. Maybe his parents were killed by a Brazilian death squad and he thought it was happening to him. Maybe he just got scared because a bunch of people were following him and ran onto a train to get away. Who the heck knows.

Me- Now we have it. Id already heard the guy didnt have explosives so i was wondering what statement we would hear and now we know that someone fucked up. It is still not clear if the person who pulled the trigger had reasonable cause to think the guy was a suicide bomber(clearly this person was suspected having been followed to the station). As i see it the shooter was either working with faulty intelligence, made a bad judgement or totally overreacted and fucked up. Whatever the case the police certainly failed to 'serve' the guy they shot (although it still seems strange to me that he ran onto the train). Obviously, and this was a fuck up. Sometimes behaving professionally does mean pulling the trigger though. Its certainly a hard decision to make when the police have 8 examples of people getting through (50 % mass murder rate). Meanwhile, 88 people are confirmed dead -so far- in the Sharm al Sheihk bombs  Toll climbs in Egyptian attacks

Firstly, there is no national identity card in the UK (although the government would like to change that *gnashing of teeth*), so the 'illegal immigrant' idea is largely out of the window, because as such he would have no reason to run from the police (unlike in Germany i might add where a certain amount of racial profiling by police seems to go on in requesting official ID, at least according to what ive heard). I agree to an extent with Balschoiws first post on the matter of this shooting. Until more of the facts are known it is absurd to make definitive statements. People do not know whether explosives were present on the man or not or what intelligence or orders the police had, yet they are willing to say 'the police did the right thing', or 'the police had no reason to shoot him, they could have arrested him'. Its bullshit. You dont know. Ozanzac- If someone appears to be posing an imminent threat to public safety then police dont wait for a violent crime to be committed. The question is whether they had evidence or good reason to think the guy was an immediate threat to the public, and on that we dont know for sure yet. There will be an inquiry though, there always is. Denoir- Im not sure that being scared has so much to do with it. If there are suicide bombers willing to attack the transport system in the UK then having a quiet word with them is unlikely to provide a deterrent, a solution, or prevent them detonating bombs. I dont live in London, i have no real reason to be scared at all, but i can see that a shoot to kill policy may be the only immediate way to prevent an incoming suicide bomber from endangering the public (whom the police are dutybound to protect from said danger). Having said that we dont know what either the man or the police were doing exactly or what they knew (or thought they knew). Jesus Denoir, 2 days have passed without them being caught and you're willing to cite that as a reason Britons should feel disloyal to the police (i presume you accept they cant arrest the already exploded bombers)? Im not really sure what the police could have done so far that they havent in this investigation. Maybe publicly condemn Islam as irrational? Personally I dont feel particularly 'loyal' nor 'disloyal' to the police. As far as im concerned they are there to serve us and where they succeed they can praised and where they fail they can be condemned. So far i cant see what they could have done overall that they havent. (Im sure they would appreciate any helpful hints people on this board have to give them ).

One eyewitness said he was shot 5 times, another said he heard three shots, another 4 , another 6. Eyewitnesses can be very unreliable about this kind of thing. Basically the guy was shot anywhere between 3-6 times by plainclothes 'officers' at close range. There is some talk that the guy may have been identified (perhaps from CCTV from yesterdays quasi-attacks), but according to witnesses he certainly ran past people and jumped over the ticket gates at the entrance of the platform, was -presumably- told to stop and had people chasing him at which point he entered the train, may have tripped, been bundled down or otherwise ended up on the floor at which point he was shot multiple times in the body/chest. He was of asian appearance (for what thats worth) and had 'bulky' clothing. Thats what i can gather from the eyewitnesses ive heard, (i am only presuming he was as some point ordered to stop, i dont recall anyone mentioning it). The police have confirmed shooting a man at Stockwell station. There was a police cordon put around a mosque after the shooting but that has since been lifted. This should really be in WOT thread.

kikill- Thats not true. Which part specifically points to insanity? I think these are Denoirs real views, hes become less liberal these days (though perhaps not to the extent of Ann Coulter  ). I disagree with the sentence on 'silencing', imprisonment or killing of 'ideological leaders' at the least without some clarification of what is meant by that(perhaps Denoir is after all a supporter of Blairs illiberal bill on detention without trial amongst others). Denoir- How do you define 'mainstream islam'? I see examples of 'mainstream islam' coexisting tolerantly in this country with other faiths, and in other parts of europe and north america, though possibly in the heartlands of Islam what you say may be true in some areas. I think the problem is not 'religion' but extremists willing to use religion for their own ends. You might as well say that science was to blame for the Swedish eugenics and forced sterilisation policy. Easy to say huh? Just because Germans or French managed to do something in the past, doesnt mean its possible today with the 24 hour media (including arab channels) immediately speculating on any newsworthy event. But you have previously made the argument that religious belief (and much more crucually the extremity of such) tends to decline with education and, i think, wealth. Financial aid could provide a great boost to education systems in the poorer regions of the world, and i dont see how financial aid has to be, has been, or is, linked to a repect for peoples religious views (you can have fundamental respect for a person without agreeing with their ideas). Anyway im not sure that mere financial aid will play a pivotal part in the fight against terrorist attacks. Poor people too are capable of holding a fundamental respect for human life, though education systems are more relevant. Scorpio- Yes, agreed. Well dont forget that Al quaida (assuming it is they) have carried out deadly attacks in Saudi Arabia and others predominantly Muslim nations as well.

Akira- Damn , ill have to check on my friends. Its the biggest terrorist attack in the UK (the Omagh bombing killed 29 and wounded about 200). London can deal with it. A picture of Christopher Wrens monument to the Great Fire of London in 1666 which destroyed a great swathe of the city, taken a few weeks ago on my way home.