Sunday Summary. Turkish-Russian Tensions. Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Review.

The breaking news of this week has been the Turkish attack upon a Russian fighter jet, I covered this topic in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vpAlvD9_bU). As five days has passed since I, and many with me, have been made aware of some of the ongoings of the Turkish state. Given deeper scrutiny it is obvious that Turkey is a rather corrupt nation, especially in regards to its friends. For anyone who has followed the geopolitical scene of the region for some time you will know that the Kurds have had a long conflict with the state of Turkey. The Kurds are now fighting the Islamic State. Following the reasoning of the enemy of my enemy is my friend it is easy to see why Turkey would take offence towards Russia destroying ISIS. Furthermore it is interesting to note how Turkey have been buying oil from the Islamic State; a partner in crime against the Kurds as well as a lucrative trading partner!

Now, onto the relationship between Turkey and Russia. Given the information above it is easy to understand why Turkey would be hostile towards Russian interference in the region. Moreover it is interesting to take into account the history between the two powerful nations. The featured picture of this article is one from the Crimean War, in which the Turkish side triumphed over the Russian side. The Ottoman Empire did not manage to defeat the Tzar by themselves however, but was supported by an alliance consisting of France, Great Britain and Sardinia. Now, almost 200 years later, Turkey is yet again in a military alliance with France and Great Britain. However the question remains how willing France is to co-operate with Turkey considering its ally (ISIS) committed a horrendous attack in Paris itself just a few weeks back. Should Turkey continue its aggression towards Russia, and continue to deal with ISIS, it will be interesting to see how NATO responds to that, especially France. A final note on ISIS, which may be the cause for some disagreement; even though ISIS was created by NATO as a means to topple Assad it is not the case that USA necessarily must support the terror organisation as it stands at the moment. Seeing it in the long-term, Donald Trump has voiced his support for what Putin is doing in the region, i.e., demolishing ISIS.

Now, onto something less dramatic! I just finished Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. And to summarise the game in one single word: Brilliant. Much better than the third (which I wrote about in last week’s summary). And when comparing the two I understand a bit better why AC3 got a bad reputation.
I really liked the scenery and environment in the game, one tend to miss the warmth of the sun and clear blue waters when in Northern Europe in November, so it was nice to get a dose of that via the game at least! Although perhaps not as satisfying for the lover of history and architecture (in comparison toward’s when you are in Italy and Constantinople), the overall feel of the game was one of the age of exploration, although set a bit later than the hey-day of the Conquistadors you still get to explore ancient Mayan temples etc. which I found very glorious!
A feature which is quite prominent in this title as opposed to previous ones is the many missions involving ship battles, which was a nice addition even though I prefer the regular game-play.
Now onto Assassin’s Creed: Rogue, which I’ve also heard a lot of positive things about!

Lastly I would like to encourage you to head over to RightOn.net for some quality reading by my friend Anton Stigermark. I assume that most of you reading this are also fans of Game of Thrones, if you for some reason have not seen the series I highly suggest that you do so, you are definitely in for a treat! In this highly interesting essay Anton discusses the political (leftist) radicalism of Daenerys Targaryen, the Mother of Dragons. https://www.righton.net/2015/11/29/enter-the-dragon/
Furthermore available on RightOn is my 5 Steps for a Glorious Physique, which proved to be quite popular: https://www.righton.net/2015/10/11/5-steps-for-a-glorious-physique/

Lastly, as per weekly basis, a beard update is due. Unfortunately the beard has not attained optimal glory yet so I will leave you with an epic screenshot of Edward Kenway (and his beard) above instead!