Chindie

It would be interesting to see a proposal that actually set about intending on doing something more than kicking the can down the road. You might be able to turn the massed ranks of IS into small mounds of glass with enough bombs, though you're not going to get them all even if high explosives can act like some kind of Daesh Dettol some will always slip away. But it won't solve the problem. You've got a particularly dangerous philosophy, and a stream of people happy to take up it's path. You need to solve that or you simply delay the next iteration. Bombs don't destroy thought, and they probably encourage a significant number of people to take up those thoughts. It's a more difficult problem to tackle though and has a less obvious metric of success than x tonnes of bombs dropped to kill x number of people. You can't sell it on telly. You can't easily have people understand how successful you're being. Same issue the Yanks had in Vietnam. They couldn't really define success so just started reeling off how many bombs had been dropped and how much territory they'd gained control of without those figures really meaning anything in the grand scheme of things. The bombs need to be a part of the means to a defined end as well. What's the plan? What's the long term goal? Is everyone involved agreed on that? Bombing IS to oblivion and giving ourselves a pat on the back as we leave a lawless crater behind just exacerbates the potential of the latest rabid Islamist fools to rise up. Equally if we start pissing about too much you'll piss off others and have them turn to the Islamist cause as well... It's all a little too difficult. I'm not against bombing at all. I think it's something we need to do. In truth I think we certainly need to do more than that, as you can't win a conflict from air alone. But combat needs to be part of a wider, smarter, more developed plan than what we seem to have currently, which appears to be 'fuel up the Tornadoes and **** the words removed up'.

Daesh is just the Arabic take on ISIS anyway, in essence.

The Registration Act has had to change in the film as there's not really secret identities in the movies, looks like they've switched to accountability as the trigger... In all honesty it was never going to be what the original plot was, it's not possible to do at the moment and it all gets so daft they'd never make a movie of it even if they could. It's more taking some of the themes, so its less Civil War and seemingly more Cap Goes Rogue (ooerr) and Iron Man is Working for The Man. Interesting they show very little of the additional cast. Once you shove everyone in, it looks a little over stuffed and makes Cap and Co taking on Stark and Co look ridiculous.

'So called Islamic State' is destined to be a feature on Charlie Brookers Wipe of the Year IMO.

As expected, this has nothing to do with the comic, but it looks alright. Not as strong a trailer as Winter Soldier maybe. Looks like they unsurprisingly didn't make Tony too villain-y...

This is the kind of thing that I and a few others were talking about with this whole situation being ludicrously complex. You've got too many cooks reading too many different recipes all using the same hob. Someone will get burned and you'll serve up a mess.

In at least some cases, I'd bet my final penny you're wrong, unfortunately.

Bombing the oilfields and oil infrastructure has been going on since September last year. I wanted to keep things fairly simple but yes the effect on 'friendly' nations and the innocent populace is also an issue, which may have prevented an outright obliteration of the oil infrastructure. But they have been targeted, with little effect.

It's not a case of knowing where they are, really. We know an awful lot about ISIS. The issue is the political will to do anything, and more over what that 'anything' is, what the situation will be after, what the long term plan is... It's an immensely complicated situation. There are numerous forces in Syria, all varying in who's side, and to what extent, they're on. The government in Syria is one that the West is opposed to, with reason. The Russians however like him. If you go in, you have to go on with a plan for what the end hand will be and if you can't agree with a major power like Russia what will happen your not going to walk away with the situation sorted out. And the forces in Syria have support from various sources that also cause us problems to act. There also the issue that this isn't a problem that bombs have improved to date. We've bombed vast swathes of the Middle East for years and nothing improved. We may have made it worse. Ultimately you're fighting an idea, and bombs don't kill ideas. That's why nothing is really happening and what is happening is the easy bombing campaign answer. The whole situation is so complex no-one wants to touch it and overly commit to it.

All of these questions are quite easily answered. ISIS has formed in a power vacuum. Vast areas of Iraq and Syria even when these countries were stable were not controlled and governed the way we would expect in the UK. Once these countries fell to civil war these areas were basically there for the taking. So ISIS is formed by a variety of jihadi elements that have been knocking about the area for years (the group has ties to all Qaeda in it's earliest days). They are in a part of the world were arms are not hard to come by, and they also have support from some Middle Eastern nations who support their beliefs. The form of Islam they support declares any and all that do not follow their particular brand of Islam to not be Muslims and therefore should be killed. Hence why they kill a lot of Muslims as well as other faiths. Oil is sold to neighbouring countries via black market routes, which makes cutting it off difficult. Bombing has been targeted at the oil fields but didn't make much difference, they quickly has them repaired and the group has other revenue sources anyway. Targeting the public is a basic tenant of terrorism. You attack the public to instill fear that in turn is used to pressure governments to act in the groups interest. The terrorist methodology lets a weak actor attack a strong one with great efficiency, because it doesn't play by the rules and has exponentially greater psychological effect.

EA Access offered 10 hours of this for free for any subscribers, I think it might day a lot about the game that a lot of people seem to have taken up the offer, enjoyed their 10 hours, and then happily said that that was enough of the game for them. Having watched a bit of it, it seems line there's a fun game in there but it's very lightweight. I'd like to see a true Battlefield title with a heavy Star Wars skin, that had the potential to be incredible.

That's the analogy I've tended to use. As you say it's not perfect but I think it helps to parse the ideas a little easier. I've become a little tired of the implication that the loss in Paris should be diminished because there's been tragedies elsewhere, which seems to underpin the argument every time I see this discussion. Until the world becomes entirely globalized, which may never happen, it's not a bad thing to be more effected by things on your doorstep that break the norm than by things thousands of miles away where tragedy fits the narrative. And of course the media exploits that to sell papers and adverts.

The release schedule is starting to wind down again so a good time to look back on the years releases. I think it's been a pretty good year and we've had a handful of genuinely top level releases, probably putting last year to shame. Witcher 3, Batman, Metal Gear, Fallout, Bloodbourne...

It's had almost universal acclaim. I've seen very few reactions from people that don't like it. Marvel's Netflix stuff is considerably darker and more low scale than it's movies, with first Daredevil being violent and gritty and now Jessica Jones dealing with abuse. It's nothing like Agents of Shield.

This. Tennant is also fantastically creepy as a character that is just deeply unpleasant rather than the usual megalomaniac comic book villain. I'm 6 episodes in and there's very little focus on powers the characters have, bar the villain it's all pretty incidental to the plot and in many cases you could completely cut any reference to powers and not have to change anything. There's a running theme of abuse that underpins the whole thing and that's the focus of the show.

One guy was yesterday identified as having traveled through Greece as a refugee in October, along with around 3 other men that they are now obviously interested in talking to.

Right, time to do the washing up.

That's a sobering thought. Isn't happening.

Yeah Jessica Jones is pretty damn good. A couple of episodes in they're nailing everything. And Tennant, despite being only a fleeting ominous presence in the opening episodes, is genuinely unsettling in how creepy his character is. I never thought I'd see the day that Luke Cage would be a character in a live action production, and that the character would actually be good.

I don't think Buffet Island has actually had that written over the door in years. It's usually BUFF LAND.

I rewatched Daredevil over the last couple of weeks and D'Onfrio is great so it's definitely high praise. Even in some of the dafter parts of the series D'Onfrio manages to pull off a convincingly threatening Fisk that is clearly also the emotionally broken bully playing a part that belies his actual nature.

Jessica Jones is apparently a Bit Good. David Tennant is getting a lot of praise for playing a suitably creepy and menacing villain, might be better than D'Onfrio as Wilson Fisk it seems.

The moment when they reach the top of the wave literally caused belly laughs in the cinema when we saw it.

Mossad gave them the money and then gave them a crash course in militant Islam... More seriously I've not seen the story but it wouldn't be that shocking. A lot of the guys that have joined IS and the like are actually from lapsed or straight up largely irreligious Muslim backgrounds. They are disillusioned and the extremist discourse basically says 'Heres a cause, makes something of your life, make a difference' and suddenly they're fundamentalists. Then owning a bar wouldn't be completely out of the question.

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