SeanF

I agree. You can’t apply the human rights standards standards of places where the average standard of living is fifty times subsistence, regardless of the harvest, to a society where it’s about one and a half times subsistence in a year with a good harvest.

The closest to a crusade would be a campaign to take back Sarantium, or parts of the Sarantine Empire. Jaddism has many of the institutional features of Orthodox/Catholic Christianity, but it’s God is more like Apollo, and his son is like Prometheus.

Again, the comparison with Dany is apt. She feels much the same way about injustice as Arya does, and her way of dealing with injustice would be thought shockingly brutal, in a liberal democracy. But, for her time and place, she's enlightened. Which is true of any historical reforming leader in our world.

Women are familiar with death and violence, in this world, even if less so than the men.

Dany does things that would be appalling in a prosperous liberal democracy. So does Robb Stark." They do not stand out as awful in a violent, depraved world, such as the one that is portrayed .

You would not, and I would not, because we live comfortable lives in liberal democracies, where violent death is unusual. I've never killed anyone, and I'm sure I'd find it very hard. We take for granted, a state of peace that most people, in most time periods, would never have experienced. But, if I lived in Arya's world, I'm sure it would be a very different thing. Human life is cheap, and nobody questions capital punishment, or the use of torture.

Oh, I think that most of us would kill Raff, if we were in Arya's shoes.

I don’t find it useful to try and determine if a character suffers Anti-social Personality Disorder, because I have no training in that field. This is a 17th century world (in terms of army sizes and cruelty in war) inserted into a pseudo-medieval society. Leaders are mostly selfish and cruel, because that is what their world requires of them. One does not need to speculate about psychiatric disorders.

What’s bizarre is that there is stuff to legitimately criticise - like the treatment of some civilians by his soldiers. Instead, we get bloody Walder Frey!

Sigh … Walder is the vassal of both Robb (once he becomes king of the Trident) and Edmure Tully, his liege lord. He violated his obligation of fealty to both men, broke guest right, and spat in the face of the Gods by committing mass murder at a religious ceremony (which a wedding is). That is why the Sparrows preach against the Red Wedding. Over and above being a crime, it was an act of appalling blasphemy. Walder was offered an equivalent bridegroom for Roslin. His grandson would be Lord of the Riverlands, but he preferred to resort to treacherous murder. And he doomed his family.

I view Skahaz as being like one of those minor nobles who came to prominence in the wake of the French Revolution (which was very much the work of lesser nobles, and professional people, blocked from advancement under the ancien regime). He’s loyal to the new order of things, but also seeking his own advantage, and almost certainly looking to position himself as the man who’ll govern Meereen in Dany’s name, when she’s gone. However, he is quite right that Hizdahr had to be overthrown, and the slaver armies smashed, in the face of invasion from Volantis.

Like it or not, Israel faces the tough choice. Do they want to remain a democracy, and/or a majority-Jewish State, and/or retain the West Bank. They can have any two of those three, but not all of them.

Replaced by the most vile and inept emperor in the history of the Eastern Empire (okay, perhaps Isaac Angelos and Andronikos II were worse).

And, logistics is where the Romans really excelled.

Generally speaking, small (relative to the size of the overall population) professional armies have had the most success in terms of delivering lethal violence, throughout history. For a large part of the period from about about 500 BC to 1750, coalitions of steppe horsemen ran them close. Militias, irregular fighters, and knightly retinues all had their share of successes, but there's a good reason why states have gone for the model of the trained professional army, when they can afford it. As for dense formations of pikemen, they were broken up by archery in medieval battles, such as Halidon Hill, Neville's Cross, and Flodden. Armoured cavalry charges against infantry could prove devastatingly effective, or else go disastrously wrong. One can cite plenty of examples of either. A lot turns on the quality of leadership on either side. And, that will be the case in Westeros. But, the one matter that gets overlooked in discussions about armour, tactics, generalship, is the most important of all, namely logistics. The side that can feed, supply, equip and pay its soldiers in timely fashion, will almost always beat the side that is deficient in that respect.

At the time, I quite liked the scenes between Arya and Tywin, but now see it a big mistake to try and lighten Tywin (along with the other Lannisters). Once you change the nature of a character, you change the whole story. Whitewashing Tyrion and Jorah, for example, meant Dany had to be made much more callous than she is in the books. If we ever get Tyrion advocating starving the people of the capital, in the books, I’m sure it won’t be portrayed as “humanitarian”.

I don’t see the appeal of it.

For those who think that accounts of what Hamas actually did at Kfar Aza have been exaggerated, there is Jeremy Bowen's report on the BBC website. The BBC is pretty reliable, and honest, in its reporting of events.

NVM

Because they enjoy it? People who strip a young women naked, rape her, break her bones, shoot her in the head, then parade her body through the streets while shouting "Allahu Akbar", are getting off on it.

Hamas are simply Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger, in the modern era. There are people who like killing Jews, and for whom ideology is a just a flag of convenience for what really turns them on. Murder, torture, and rape.

I think that Jews have quite a good reason, in the light of history, to believe people who say that they want to kill them.

I think we'll get "it's just what you have to expect." The same way, the Scottish Greens' former Convernor, Margaret Chapman, wants us to place the rapes "in context."

That’s the point. The West - by which I mean the US and its allies - has plenty of faults, but consider the alternatives. Russia, China, IS, Hamas etc.

The news coming out of Kfar Azar is extraordinarily grim. Hamas are a modern version of Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger.