Crocefisso

All Hispanics originate in Europe. Therefore, they're Caucasian. Only Indigenous Americans do not come under this category. Mestizo comes under 'Mixed'. Feel free to put what you want, but just a heads up that you've sort of voted wrongly on an objective level. We can all trace ourselves back to more than just one point, some have more in common with one point than the other. If that is so then we can all trace ourselves to one race and all vote for that, no? I would put Caucasian if we had an Ethinicity branch to go along with it. Same thing with the Catholic vote I guess it goes in Christianity, no? True, we could all trace ourselves back to a single race if we go back hundreds of thousands of years. But race distinctions have since arisen and it'd be a bit pointless. Hispanics, on the other hand, went to the Americas from Europe only a few centuries ago. Catholicism is a denomination of Christianity, so yes, it comes under Christianity.

After three years - almost four - this skill idea still attracts support. Just because it's so awesome and recent skills so terrible. :thumbsup:

LBGT Pride (which ends later today in London). I've nothing against LGBT people, but such an event really belongs in a bygone age, when they had to fight for their rights in our country. Today, it's just an inconvenience (trying to get through the crowds of people taking pictures of a tranny) and a bit of a farce.

How do you justify the last two?? OT: YAY! I'm average!!! (white, atheist, straight) Some Christian - perhaps even most - denominations don't have a problem with homosexuality. It's just the Catholics and some of those American ones that get all fanatical about it.

All Hispanics originate in Europe. Therefore, they're Caucasian. Only Indigenous Americans do not come under this category. Mestizo comes under 'Mixed'. Feel free to put what you want, but just a heads up that you've sort of voted wrongly on an objective level. That's the main difference. In Latin America, colonists mixed with the indigenous populations before secluding the rest in small reserves, leading to quite different physical (shorter, darker hair, skin and eyes, etc.) and cultural differences that even lead to racism between the "purer" Caucasians and the new Hispanics. Or you could say all humans originate from Africa, therefore we are all Africans. :P Yup, because they are a mixed race, Mestizos come under 'Mixed'.

Oh right, that's the criteria for pinning. Fair enough then. Though I still don't see how posting pictures of your desktop is in any way important. Ah well, it takes all sorts to make a world. Going off topic slightly to something that's bugged me since I made this account in March: :idea: <-- how is this an idea? It looks like an inverted anus.

Then the definition of a leader is subjective, implying that an effective leader is subjective too, no? The objective fact is that Qaddafi was, up until the 1980s, an economically good leader. -104% of the USA's GDP per capita -still has Africa's highest human development index -all fuelled by a renegotiation of oil contracts You never said economically good. Also, being economically good to ones self does not classify one as an economically good leader. For example, Greece's leaders may be considered economically good leaders by German bankers but not by the by the Greek people. And they cant be leaders if they're opposed by those they lead. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/jan-june11/othernews_06-29.html Likewise, Bo Shafshoufa may have been an economically good person to Western oil companies and African dictators but not to the Libyan people. So because the West has supported, and continues to support, tyrants, amongst them Bo Shafshoufa, stopping this one now shouldn't be done? I agree that the ICC is an irrelevant and hypocritical institution; that doesn't mean you can go off spouting lies that Libyans support our tyrant. Saudi Arabia might blow money left and right, but its citizens benefit greatly from its oil wealth. I never said all Libyans support Qaddafi. But there are still people who do, and the rebels by no means have the vocal popular support of the people in the same way as the Egyptians had. These are just facts. As for the fact I never explicitly stated he was an "economically good" leader. True, I was lazy and should have been more detailed. But considering that I called him good on the back of a set of economic facts, the fact that he was good in this sense should be pretty self-explanatory; I didn't appraise his other acts and I assumed other people would have the common sense to realise that I don't condone genocide. Then again, this is the internet, and I suppose I should've realised that people need to be spoon-fed to stop them making outlandish, presumptuous diatribes. That's pretty common on this thread, Range. ;)

Saying that Obama is a Socialist and giving examples of people throwing around accusations of anti-Semitism for no real reason are not in any way similar. The latter group of people said this as fact, and so it means that they said this. It's really quite simple to understand. As for your comment about the Mavri Marmara: it is true that the IDF commandos were attacked when they descended to descend upon the flotilla. Big deal; these IDF commanders were armed with proper weapons. This is fact: evidence shows that the 9 civilians killed by the IDF commandos were killed with actual 9mm weapons. To say that they used paintball guns is a ridiculous lie. Similarly, forensic evidence has proven that 6 of these 9 people were killed via "summary execution", aka being executed whilst injured. This sort of action on civilians is utterly despicable. One of the civilians was shot five times, in various places in his body. In case you ask for a source, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_flotilla_raid#Deaths . Furthermore, I abhor the fact that you brush it off as in, 'Oh God, they're mentioning the raid again'. It's equivalent to me going, 'Oh, so what, Hamas only killed one Israeli civilian in that rocket strike the other day'. Utterly abhorrent that you seem to view human life and murder as so pedestrian. My comments on AIPAC are an opinion based on the regular "news" bulletins they post on their website. I'll give an example: "PA President Abbas is determined to avoid direct talks and go straight to the U.N.", said the AIPAC site. It doesn't take a genius to realise that this is totally untrue. Mahmoud Abbas has sat through many, many, many talks in the past, the first I rememeber being with Ariel Sharon in the Red Sea in 2003, and they have achieved absolutely nothing. After the most recent talks in September 2010, Netanyahu has already gone back on what they were trying to agree with regards to settlement building and commissioned more of the same in January 2011. Talks with Israel achieve something once every few decades, so why would Abbas want to engage in yet more? It's not like going to the UN is a crime. I think it's very valid; Israel are always moaning that they don't get recognised by the the Palestinian Authority as a Jewish state, yet they refuse to recognise Palestine as a state in any sense of the word. The idea that breaking international law can always be justified is ridiculous. There is a difference between defending yourself and defending yourself with illegal cluster bombs that cause far more civilian death and have long lasting effects. There is no justification for Israel opting to arm itself with cluster bombs. Furthermore, if we look back to may, what happened to people who marched near Israeli borders? They were fired at with live ammunition first, then warning shots and tear gas were used afterwards. Is that really a cohesive defensive policy against largely peaceful protesters, some of whom are armed with such terrifying objects as stones. The video does not change the fact that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are, in today's world, considered part of the Palestinian territories, by a majority of nations across the world. Again, the Arabs were not forced out in 1948 in the sense that people with guns ushered them out, but that would be giving a very one-sided account. Admittedly, some went because they didn't want to live under Jewish control, but equally many others left because the Jewish military was advancing and they feared they would be massacred, which I think is pretty much the same as being forced out. The Gazans have terrorists as their leaders, true, but I think that the blockade has gone far, far beyond their "basic needs". Living conditions in the most densely populated piece of land on the planet (1.6 million people in 360 sq km) are far worse than lacking "basic needs". If everyone had just done as Israel had said and given no aid, God knows what the situation there would be today. Even with all the aid, the conditions are still awful.

Just wondering if it would be a good idea to get this and that 'where in the world' thread pinned at some point. Maybe it's just me and excuse me if this seems judgemental, but they seem more important/relevant to more people than advertising and relationship advice.

The Gabe; 2 individuals is more than enough to prove that some people do it. I would only need one to prove that it happens. With respect to Netanyahu, I've seen a great many of his speeches a great many times before. But rhetoric and action are very different things, and Netanyahu - like Obama - is a man incapable of translating his words into actions. The Gaza flotilla was attacked on Netanyahu's watch. Netanyahu has continued the Gaza blockade, and has made the situation in the West Bank worse, because under his stewardship the rate of settlement building has increased. Just because he didn't do things as outlandish as Olmert doesn't make him a leader who actually wants peace. This guy supports AIPAC - who are professional liars, as I've stated on numerous occasions - and as such I cannot take anything he says as even close to the truth. The idea that Netanyahu has done anything that has brought the two sides closer to peace is a joke imade in very poor taste. Sitting in a room with Mahmoud Abbas a few times does not mean his actions on the ground translate into a willingness for peace. Do you know what would happen if the blockade were removed? A million and a half people would be able to start improving their living conditions. Hamas' rockets, even before the blockade, never cause the sort of humanitarian crisis - and it is a crisis - that has been caused by this blockade. As for what you said about the public holidays in relation to 21st century values - very fatuous indeed. I'm pretty sure that the defining aspect of the values shared by most countries on earth is not how they choose to celebrate their public holidays. Instead, look at their institutions, societal values and actions. Israel has good democratic insitutions, make no mistake, but its actions on the global stage often break international laws (and not the sort that are laws that do not take into account non US/European culture, as I admit some of these international laws can be, but instead pretty basic ones like not using cluster bombs, killing civilians and so on), whilst their values assert the right to a certain area of land as predominantly Jewish because it was Jewish some two millennia ago, and therefore prevent many Palestinians access to what is also their home. Particularly saddening is the fact that the Arabs came to this area of land long after the Romans - ie, Europeans - had essentially created the Jewish diaspora across Europe and later the New World, and as such the Arabs that were driven from this land in 1948 were not even the same ethnic group that drove the Jews out of their original homeland. I find that fact bitterly ironic.

Then the definition of a leader is subjective, implying that an effective leader is subjective too, no? The objective fact is that Qaddafi was, up until the 1980s, an economically good leader. -104% of the USA's GDP per capita -still has Africa's highest human development index -all fuelled by a renegotiation of oil contracts It's very easy to just say 'oil', but the Saudis do not benefit from their far larger oil resources in the same way, and neither did the Libyans under King Idris. Again, Qaddafi has committed atrocities, but it's very easy to look at this in isolation. But let us not forget that our own governments have supported far, far worse autocrats in the past. Idi Amin had to kill 300,000 people before we stopped supporting him. In the Cold war era, the number of tyrants we supported across the world because they were anti-Communist is vast, and persecuting only Qaddafi goes to show just how twisted the entire concept, in theory and in practice, of international law is.

I'm referencing particular individuals because I don't feel I need to give 10 pieces of evidence to back up my point. Big deal. The Gabe, please go on to YouTube and look at Netanyahu's series of interviews he did around the end of March/beginning of April. You'll see what I mean when I say that he repeats empty stock phrases devoid of any substance or meaning. He is about as committeed to peace as G W Bush was to avoiding war with Iraq. The point I made in what was intended to be a sarcastic post is that many people, like Israel63, just throw around accusations of anti-Semitism with no ground in reason, fact, or rationality, as if that's somehow going to convince people that the blockade on Gaza - which Egypt's new government is making progress in ending - is somehow justified. As for Menachem Begin: he may well be one man with extreme views, but he was a man who managed to receive enough support from the people of Israel to be elected Prime Minister. In my mind, this is tantamount to Ayman al-Zawahiri being elected President of Egypt come September, and it does reflect badly on the Israeli electorate of the time that he was elected in the first place. The fact that the Likud is in office today again worries me. Both they and Hamas are so uncompromising that a true peace cannot be achieved with either, from what I've seen of the past two years. If anything, Netanyahu is making the situation worse. The biggest problem with Israel as I see it is that Zionism is truly untenable. I do not feel that the concept of a state for any religion or race is a concept that fits in very well with 21st century values of equality and freedom. There's no point gloating about how Arabs in Israel have the opportunities they do if most of them aren't allowed back to what is also their homeland. Of course there are anti-Semitic people on the one side, but there are also Islamophobic people on the other, and both factions have to be largely ignored.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13997322 Read it and weep, tml.

All Hispanics originate in Europe. Therefore, they're Caucasian. Only Indigenous Americans do not come under this category. Mestizo comes under 'Mixed'. Feel free to put what you want, but just a heads up that you've sort of voted wrongly on an objective level.

tml, stop going on about Qaddafi's force, please. Everybody knows that Qaddafi has always kept a small armed force; he came to power by military coup and has been paranoid of the prospect of a recurrence ever since. Furthermore, what Qaddafi had was largely aging Soviet-era stuff. And most of that has since been destroyed by NATO. And yet the rebels still can't break the deadlock with any degree of decisiveness. Face it, there's not a chiasmic gap in terms of equipment any more. In February and March, there was. Today, in July, you're in denial if you believe there still is. The problem the rebels have is their poor organisation. You need to stop presenting these entirely one sided arguments, especially against other people who are glad to see the back of Qaddafi. You are the equivalent of Saif al-Islam in this respect. The main point of this thread, which has been lost, was simply to point out that though Qaddafi should be tried, too many people escape ICC jurisdiction and yet perpetrate far, far worse crimes, and as I westerner I find such a fact distasteful and quite disappointing because, at the end of the day, international law should apply to all people, and yet clearly the rules do not apply to the world; rather, they were devised by some nations to be imposed upon others. These laws brush over cultural and societal differences, and I think the general concept of international law is flawed.

omg why are you such a nazi? go back to germany you fascist racist :angry: :ohnoes: :mellow: Read an article by Melanie Phillips on Israel and you'll see what I mean. She basically says that the media lie to us and try to create a sense of sympathy for Arabs, whom she calls aggressors, because it has a deep rooted anti-Semitic bias and intends to spread hatred towards Israel. She says that all attacks on Israeli foreign policy are rooted in anti-Semitic sentiments. These are the sort of irrational people I am talking about. Then there are people like Menachem Begin, whose most famous quote is: "Our race (speaking of the Jews) is the Master Race. We are divine gods on this planet. We are as different from the inferior races as they are from insects. In fact, compared to our race, other races are beasts and animals, cattle at best. Other races are considered as human excrement. Our destiny is to rule over the inferior races. Our earthly kingdom will be ruled by our leader with a rod of iron. The masses will lick our feet and serve us as our slaves." On a less intelligent level, Israeli PM Netanyahu likes to throw the phrase around whenever he can, usually in press conferences when he's running out of his stock phrases (if you look at different interviews from the same period of time by Netanyahu, you'll see that he just seems to learn a few stock phrases for all interviews). Perhaps I worded it poorly, but can you honestly deny that accusations of anti-Semitism are bandied around by people in defence of Israel, in place of thought out answers, rather too often for comfort?

I really hope somebody misinterprets "Advertise your thing here". :twisted:

Oh, trying to be the better person? Hah. More like you're running out of information pulled out of your ass and I show no sign of running out of hard facts. Give the vitriol a break.

All religions are effectively synthetic. Any religion set up in today's world, irrespective of beliefs, is going to have to start the way Scientology did because of the capitalist society we live in. The world is so radically different to that of 2,000 years ago that comparisons for setting up religions can't really be drawn.

This, like the flotilla in 2009, is likely going to have some disastrous consequences for those involved. It does not surprise me that the Greeks are blocking the ships; after the 2009 flotilla incident, and Turkey's subsequent drift away from Israel at Davos and in the Turkish assembly, the Israeli government started to forge closer ties with Greece. To their credit, they are clever. Anyway, what's Greece doing sending aid in the first place, aren't they meant to be on the verge of a default? #-o

There is a group called the PLO not Palestine i am not ignoring it you are bring me some proof that there is a state of Palestine what is its borders it doesn't have meaning it doesn't exist Thank you for showing your antisemitic side now i now who i am arguing with Typical Israeli defence argument. THE WORLD: "Israel, can I ask you why you're blockading Gaza?" ISRAEL: "No, that would be anti-Semitic" THE WORLD: "Ok, then I'll shut up"

I too took pleasure in seeing the disdain of others once they realize that the potential "5M" they could have made turned out to be a bunch of assorted lower leveled useless seed, silly tribal masks and defunct ranged gear (javelins). I'm disappointed to see this feature not carry over post free trade and seeing as Jagex has their hands full with other projects on their priority list, it's probably going to a long while until we see newbs get teleported from random banks only to be disappointed :mrgreen: As did I

I've just gone for the biggest world religions, with exceptions in places where I feel the religions overlap. Caodaiism, for example, is a big religion in Vietnam and Vietnamese communities abroad, which are especially large in the USA. The same applies to Rastafarianism and others on the list. Ommitting them because it's "unlikely" defeats the object of a census; if no one is a Caodai, then at least we know that nobody is, because it's still there as an option. This way the census is more inclusive and gives us a clearer idea of the demographics of the forum. Some people still believe in ridiculous things and it is classed as a religion. Virtually all Scientologists are American, so including it on a US/Eurocentric forum makes quite a lot of sense. Agnositicism, on the other hand, is not a religion, and so including it makes far less sense, as is stated in the FAQ. Some people still believe in ridiculous things and it is classed as a religion. It isn't in most of the world. I refuse to see it as a religion. It is a cult, full stop. I actually find it offensive to be recognised next to religions. But it has over 10,000 followers - estimates at number of Scientologists are never lower than 50,000 - and so it is a religion. Cults are only cults if they have under 10,000 followers, full stop. Just because you or I find it foolish doesn't mean that listing it as a religion - nothing more than an obective truth - is "offensive".

tml, I think you and I should simply agree to disagree on this issue. In effect we're supporting the same side (aka of the mind that Qaddafi should go), but we differ on how much support Qaddafi and the rebels have and exactly what has been perepetrated. I know you're never going to agree with me, and I know you're not going to change my mind, so let's just draw I line in the sand. I know how in danger our discussion is of descending into flames once you run out of videos and I run out of facts. :roll: Irrespective of our differences, I wish your country a swift recovery once the civil war is over. --- On a totally unrelated note, I think my stance on Israel has been misinterpreted owing to the concision of my opening post. Let my try and tell you where I stand on Israel: -The Jewish people have every right to live in their ancestral homeland in peace and security, BUT this does not mean that Palestinian Arabs are not allowed to live in the land which has been their homeland for well over a millennium. -The state of Israel is not an "apartheid" state, because Arabs have equal opportunity to Jews (though it is harder for them). It is, however, a supremacist state, because it does not allow many Palestinians back into their homeland, because their Zionist based ideology states that the state of Israel must remain a Jewish majority state. -The Holy City of Jerusalem/Al-Quds is not the property of Israel alone, but must be shared by both Jews and Muslims alike. Israeli refusal to recognise the city's status as holy in Islam as well as Judaism, by refusing to share it with a prospective Palestinian state, reflects only the Israeli government's bigotry and arrogance -AIPAC, the US pro-Israeli lobby group, frequently lies in order to coerce the USA into giving around 1/2 its foreign aid to Israel. For example, they enjoy claiming that Hizbullah run Lebanon; instead, Hizbullah are one of 14 political parties in the ruling bloc. This does not make them the leader of Lebanon -Israel has a right to defend itslef, but its actions go far beyond this. They have blockaded Gaza - the most densely populated area of land on the planet - under the pretext of stopping arms influx there, so as to stop rocket attacks by Hamas. The idea that Hamas' sporadic rocket attacks did that much damage to such a well defended state is farcical. Meanwhile, the living conditions and humanitarian crisis in Gaza worsens day by day. In 2009, when a Turkish aid flotilla approaches, the IDF killed I thin around 7 unarmed civilians. Every knows the claims that these aid flotillas were armed is a load of nonsense. Then there's the 2006 war with Hizbullah, in which Israel used so many cluster bombs (illegal by international law) that large parts of southern Lebanon still cannot be inhabited to this day. These are just two recent examples, but Israel's disgusting actions are so numerous I would need a very long post indeed to cover them. -I think that Turksih PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an ally of Israel before the 2009 event mentioned above, gives a brilliant summary of Israel in the video below.

Other than this one. This does not answer the question I am asking. I asked why Qaddafi still remains in control of most of the country today, following the destruction of massive amounts of his military hardware by NATO, rebels having been given massive amounts of arms by our governments, as well as strategic advice from them. If this were a truly popular uprising, then Qaddafi would not be in power following everything that's happened to his regime. No, most of them were gifts. Furthermore, my point is that in a truly popular urprising, a few hundred men cannot contain a city. The fact that they can in the case of Libya only shows that a majority of people, though they won't be for Qaddafi, do not support the rebels enough to rise up. Incorrect. Egypt's protests reached 5 million people at one point, or 6% of the populace on the streets protesting. Libya has 6 million people. 6% of the Libyan people is 360,000 people. Protests in Libya have yet to even exceed 10,000 in size, for either side.