Steve Schacher

quote:Everyone is so hot to say that selfishness is the default human setting so capitalism is most in tune with human nature. If the premise of geopolitical relations between countries is that countries will do what is in their own best interests, then why should it be any different for individuals?

The SuperPower forum is starting to degenerate. The developer is losing control. His game is very sophisticated, but was released early. I am downgrading my earlier comparison -- it's probably more like BC3K v1.05. If you want proof that this forum is what it is because of Derek's tight control, then look at the SuperPower forum to see what this place would have been like if Derek wasn't as tough as he has been.

Back on topic... Arafat lies about his birthplace, by Danny Rubenstein. Excerpt: quote:...It seems that during Arafat's early years as a PLO activist, he found it a great drawback to have been born in Egypt, in a foreign country, and not in the Palestinian homeland. His friends also found it strange. Many of the young Arabs who volunteered to serve the PLO immediately after the Six-Day War noted with astonishment that their leader, whom they were meeting for the first time, spoke Arabic with an Egyptian accent. Arabs from Middle Eastern countries can easily recognize the country of origin of any other Arab they meet by his accent - and here the man who claimed to be a warrior representing and leading the Palestinian people spoke with an Egyptian accent... ...Arafat was aware of all this. He understood that it would be better for whoever wanted to lead the Palestinian nationalistic struggle if his biography stated that he was born in Palestine, and there is no better birthplace than the Old City of Jerusalem, in a house adjacent to the Al Aqsa mosque.

Culture used to be synonymous with national identity. We thought of cultural exchanges as the Bolshoi Ballet, the Chinese pandas and acrobats, Italian opera, etc. Today, the meaning is different. Today, we mistake culture with ethnicity. Multi-culturism is a code word for letting people of other countries export their lifestyles here, merely escaping the harsh existence of their homeland for a freer society. It ignores the fact that the freer society is freer for reasons that their culture lacked. It really comes down to land. They want it. We have it. They are coming here to take it (and our politicians are letting them in for corrupted votes). When they bring their culture here, it is to usurp ours and replace it with theirs, not to assimilate ours into their lives.

The 'Jenin Massacre' hoax, by Charles Krauthammer Excerpt: quote:Take Jenin. What was the real story? That hand-to-hand, door-to-door combat, in an intensely built-up shantytown, among dozens of houses booby-trapped by Palestinian fighters, should have yielded somewhere between seven and 21 scattered civilian casualties is nothing less than astonishing. It testifies to the extraordinary scrupulousness of the Israeli army, which lost 23 soldiers in the battle, precisely because it did not want to cause the civilian casualties that come with aerial bombardment, as has happened everywhere from Grozny to Kabul. And yet Israel was investigated precisely for defending itself against massacres that warrant no investigation. Why TV News Loves A Liar , by John Podhoretz Excerpt: quote:ON April 17, when Israel completed its military action in Jenin, the Palestinian spokesman Saeb Erekat told CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "We have 1,600 missing men in this refugee camp. Mostly women and children, husbands and wives . . . How many people were massacred[?] We say the number will not be less than 500." Erekat just loves the number 500. A week earlier, he said on CNN: "I'm afraid to say that the number of Palestinian dead in the Israeli attacks have reached more than 500 now." This week a Palestinian review committee reported a death toll of 56 in Jenin, of whom 34 were combatants. There are no missing women and children, because the Palestinians would be saying so. And they have not disputed Israeli claims that in the entire month-long series of incursions into the West Bank, the overall Palestinian death toll is around 100. But let's focus on Jenin. The Palestinians themselves say that, in 13 days of vicious urban warfare, some 22 civilians were killed. So here's a question for you: Why are U.S. television networks booking Saeb Erekat to talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when he has repeatedly used their air waves to spread lies and deception? When sources lie, don't you cut them off? When sources lie, don't you refuse to give them any more of your precious air time?

The reason Israel was balking at the UN commission was that the UN was seating people who were known to sit on contradictory findings during the NATO Kosovo fact-finding study. Israel felt that they were going to get "rail-roaded" by the same people. Here's an interesting link to a US network media watchdog group observation of the nightly news broadcasts from two nights ago: quote:As the Washington Times reported, even a Palestinian terrorist leader has given up the propaganda claim that Israel committed a massacre in Jenin, but in the last two nights ABC’s Peter Jennings and CBS’s Dan Rather have passed along the “massacre” charge as if it still has credibility. NBC’s Martin Fletcher undermined the allegation: “NBC News visited the camp five times and saw anguish, pain and plenty of digging for bodies, but no signs of a massacre.”Here's last night: quote:Now that the “massacre” charge against Israel has fallen apart ABC’s Peter Jennings moved on to the new line of attack: Israel committed “war crimes” in Jenin. [ 05-03-2002, 15:34: Message edited by: Steve Schacher ]

Excellent post, Soback.

In my opinion, the only reason the Palestinians called the action a Jenin a "massacre" was to get people to stop talking about the "Passover Massacre" that started the recent incursions. Furthermore, the reason the Palestinians were harping on a shell that killed a Palestinian child was to change the subject from the Palestinians who masqueraded as Israeli soldiers and killed the Israeli girl. See a pattern?

If you have the time, you should read this thread over at the SuperPower forum. They are going through exactly what Derek did, but theire fans don't realize it yet. I don't think they ever heard about BC3K. The lead programmer talks about his team and his fans in terms of a hippie commune. His "business model" is to get his dream out and let his fans suggest ideas that make the game better. He thinks that no developer has ever been that attentive to his fans before. His fans say how refreshing it is that a programmer cares enough about what the players want to let them suggests improvements. Poor guy. He's at the point that Derek was at about four or five years ago. He has a heart problem but pushes himself to work 16 hour days. He wants to take a short break, but the detractors are complaining about intending to buy a game but being tricked into supporting a research project. They are angry at publishers who release unfinished games and are demanding that the programmer fix it. The detractors are accusing everyone of lies and trickery. I don't know if he'll make his way through it the way that Derek did. [ 04-30-2002, 22:46: Message edited by: Steve Schacher ]

My initial take is that it is an updated Balance Of Power, taking advantage of the latest technology. Like I said before, everything that was abstracted in BOP into the annual "challenge" is now turned into weekly actions that have to play out. However, I've been reading the forums over there and am suffering a case of deja vu. The game is highly complex internally -- there are over 140 countries that act independently based on a neural net AI with a self-learning capability. The AI doesn't know which country is the player-controlled one. From what I gather from reading, the publisher released the game early. The v1.0 didn't work. The programmers released a 1.01 patch and just released a 1.1 patch that makes the game playable. They still have a lot to do before their vision is reached. For them, it's a passion (their "baby"), so they plan to release more patches that fix some bugs and add new functionality. The game is open-ended -- it's a simulator more than a game. The hardest goal is to take over the world (you are given unlimited time to do this). The game does not like war as a solution. It prefers peaceful, diplomatic alternatives. Their current problem is how to prevent the AI from starting WWIII. They liken it to WOPR from the movie "Wargames." Once war starts, it plays to win it -- it doesn't understand that sometimes the best move is to not play at all. I've been dabbling with it. I wasn't sure if I was doing something wrong because I would only make a few actions per turn while my available funds pile up. I'm definitely not spending to my capacity yet. It seems like I do something and then keep pressing "next turn, next turn, next turn..." to see what happens. I guess this is an artifact of the turns being weekly. I did read some references to others doing this too, so it may just be the way the game plays in the early stages until the world powers emerge and the little guys fall to the wayside. Bottom line: THEY say that it is playable, but not perfect. I think that it is roughly at the stage of BC3K v1.07 in terms of the designers' vision. It would be funny if BOP 1990 proves to be a better experience because of what they left to the imagination instead of playing out in tedious detail.

There is a new game that just came out called SuperPower (I believe that its working title was DefCon 5). It is billed as a neural network with an expert system that learns by watching your moves. You play the leader of any country in the world. Your actions are very similar to those in Balance Of Power. The difference is that BOP abstracted events into eight turns representing an 8-year presidential term. This game breaks down the turns into weeks. Furthermore, when you deploy troops, you see the troops perform the battle in a real-time battle mode (you can stop the action and issue new orders to your troops). Other actions include: trade agreements (energy, ore, cereals, wealth, meat), treaties, secret services (espionage, sabotage, assassination), technology development, military unit design, newspapers, your actions accepted/rejected by other countries, other countries offering you treaties/trade agreements, and more. I just bought the game at CompUSA. Here's the developer's url: SuperPower.

The Jews took no one's land, editorial by Joseph Farah at WorldNetDaily.

quote:Isn't that.. corruption?It's more like payola.

I want to thank everyone for keeping this debate civil given how inflammatory the topic is and how uncertain the reality is. Good job!

quote:Oops, forgive me, I meant to type "Karl" Marx. In case you don't know (and you may have been asking due to my spelling error), Karl Marx was the Father of Communism.He knows.

quote:take the most furtile areas and force you into ghettos. Someone remind me, again. Israel didn't take the most fertile areas, they developed the area they got. They irrigated it, developed it, and turned it into what it is today. Now that it's an oasis in the region, the others want it.

Watch Lebanon by Charles Krauthammer.

I don't think that what the Israeli's are doing is terrorism. What makes it terrorism is the unexpected suddenness of it, not just the fact that it is targeting civilians. Everyone knows that the Israeli's are there. Everyone knows what they are trying to do. Sure, it must be terrifying to be amongst it, but that doesn't make it terrorism. When you can see the tanks coming; when you can hear the planes flying, when you're warned by the army that a facility is being targeted, then it's not terrorism. But when you see a child strolling down the street, and then suddenly the street is in shambles with dead all around you, then it's terrorism.

quote:When Germany invaded Poland, civilian areas (cities) were the targets of attacks. This was done to drive masses of people into the streets to clog the infrastructure and slow the response of the Polish military.Elaborate, please. Which side is Germany and which side is Poland? Whom do you think is using this as a precursor of invasion?

quote:It doesn't matter whether Israel is defending itself or not, it is still fighting terrorism with terrorism. I would call that a measured response. It is important to note that Israel didn't start out with the nukes, but rather, with border patrols. They didn't start out with incursions into Palestinian territory after the first or the second bombing. They started with tighter border checkpoints until the suicide bombers were getting caught and blowing up themselves and the guards at the checkpoints. Then, after the third or fourth bomber, did the Israelis move into Palestinian territory to cut off Arafat. Maybe others would have a stronger point if Israel "carpet bombed" Palestine, but they didn't. Sure, a few fighter jets destroyed bunkers and offices, but they stayed away from civilian centers. The tanks came in later.

There is one indisputable fact (I hope): since Israel moved into the Palestinian territory, the suicide bombings have stopped. quote:As things stand right now, the Israeli army has cut off any chance the Palestinian authori could ever have to resolve this crisis. The Israli intent is clear, and that is to wipe out the Palestinian State. The Israeli army is currently giving the Palestinians two options, either sit back and watch us destoy your state, or fight back. That is why people are upset.I think you have this backwards. It has always been the stated intent of the PLO to wipe out Israel. The PLO wants a Palestinian state without an Israeli state. The Israelis want their own state as well as a Palestinian state. You can't give the Palestinians a chance to resolve a conflict that they started and escalated in the first place. The Palestinians have been kicked out of all the Arab countries that took them in because, once there, they start the rabble-rousing, rock-throwing, and bombing. They're like a bad relative who won't leave once invited in. Ask Jordan. Ask Lebanon. Ask Israel.

quote:Terrorism is defined by the outcome of its action, not by the weapon that is used.I dispute this statement. Terrorism is defined by the intent of the action, not the outcome. Would you call what is commonly known as "collateral damage" terrorism because the outcome is that civilians were killed even though it was not the intent that civilians be killed? Would you try to make a moral equivalence between a suicide bomber who intentionally blows up a Jewish Passover Seder and kills 25 people, and an army retaliation that targets military command centers and bunkers? Would you make a moral equivalence between a person who repeatedly attacks another (unprovoked, unless the very existence of the other is provocation enough) and the other's attempt at defending or repelling the unwanted attack? Arafat's "game" is to keep goading Israel into retaliating through terror tactics, and then crying to the world at how Israel is using its overwhelming force of tanks and jets against his poor, rock-throwing rabble.

Here's more: Democrats vs. New Media. This one's more political, and it has lots of good imebedded links, as well.

Here's the latest on this one: Howling Mad Over Hollings' Bill

I just ordered a pair from www.edimensional.com. I'll give you my report when they arrive.