Recent content by Skallagrim

The very existence of Hamas -- indeed, of muslims in the Levant (or anywhere outside the Arabian peninsula) at all -- has its roots in the landgrab and ethnic cleansing that began immediately in the wake of Muhammed's time and led to islamic oppression and terror in counless regions where...

Any restriction of the freedom to express oneself - insofar as the life, liberty and property of others are not infringed upon - is fundamentally wrong. For this reason, all right-thinking people should oppose it. This, incidentally, does not stop you from still being a bastard later, and using...

I'd certainly like to see what you're thinking of. What you say reminds me rather a bit of Poul Anderson (esp. his stories about Nicholas van Rijn), and that's always a good thing. ETA: note that if you are serious about the 'IP' bit-- posting anything in the public section of a forum can...

Of course, it's fairly important to always remember that macro-history is comparative history, so we're looking at relative positions. When we take the long view, we see why the "younger" Roman culture could eclipse the more "elderly" Greek culture, but to some extent, that's the luck of the...

It's certainly true that the emergence of the "winner" of the tumultuous period is almost always a marcher state, or (in smaller contexts), a leader with some real "rough" experience. We might refer here to the vitality of youth, of which a certain dynamism is a key aspect. Stagnation, after...

Very pleasant scenario, and yes, ties in well with that other "evergreen": earlier Austro-Russian war against the Turks in the 1780s. Note that in the OTL war of '87, the Austrians were plagued by terrible luck, and vast numbers died of disease, while the Ottomans lucked out and barely suffered...

That's pretty much what I'd have in mind for a hypothetical SW Animated Universe, but that approach has the advantage that the film saga is done now (and in practice, has been since 2005). Back in 1989 (when the co-ordinated EU was thought up), they were living with the fact that three more...

Odds are that any triumphant Nationalist movement (the OTL one or an ATL counterpart) would have been reliant on considerable foreign (meaning: Euro-American) support to achieve that triumph. It's not at all implausible that Britain would be in a position to force post-war China into signing an...

These are two different points. On the first-- that's a matter of preference, and my own feeling is that the way they did it was better than that "Star Trek approach", which is pretty much what you describe. On the second point: nobody could anticipate the whole setting being purchased by...

The pre-1999 EU actually had it baked in that they wouldn't elaborate on the prequel era, and that worked fine. Except Lucas, you know... changed his mind on some key things. He literally told Zahn that the Clone Wars happened 35 years before ANH (and presumably agreed, at least implicitly --...

Note that before the Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1937, Germany tended more towards sympathy for China. If Japan decides to go for the Dutch East Indies in 1936, this turns a lot of Europeans against Japan. Particularly in the Netherlands (which Hitler wants to absorb, under the guise of...

Ten years, my friends. Ten years today, since Disney cast aside the Expanded Universe. Ten years since they re-branded it as "Legends", and then basically stopped adding anything to it. Ten years, and still they have never managed to move beyond it. They threw it away, but they didn't have...

Please take this dumb, off-topic fight elsewhere. Start your own thread for that nonsense.

Well. There you unmask yourself. And what you show ain't pretty. You accuse others of being on the side of the KKK, but your own statements could come straight from one of their virulently anti-Catholic pamphlets. Not a good look. Anyway, I ask that you both take this off-topic hate-fest...

My argument: "Reform would have been better than schism (for the reasons which I detailed)." Your response: "But what if reform didn't happen, huh?" That's a complete non sequitur, which doesn't interact with my argument at all. Your question has obviously been answered, because it's what...