User blog comment:Zippertrain85/Why the Stormcloaks are right part 2/@comment-178.119.43.248-20130813104951

"You can get a bounty form Jorleif to kill a giant that is attacking travelers."

Except, giants are peaceful unless provoked. Giants don't attack travellers. It's even on the loading screens. Giants don't attack travellers. So why would someone want a giant assassinated?

Well, if we listen to (Stormcloak-sympathisant) Skarl the Elder, we notice he refers to them as 'monsters' and wants them killed because he doesn't want their kind in his Hold, an indubitbly racist view to hold of creatures that have been established to be peaceful and generally harmless. Considering in A Night to Remember a very inebriated Dragonborn actually manages to sell a Giant a goat, they can apparently even be approached close enough to barter with peacefully, even without access to your full mental faculties.

So why would Jornleif want to have a peaceful creature killed and why would he spread such lies? Simple. He's just making up an excuse to continue the ethnic cleansing Skarl is more overt about.

"That their are obviously more Nords in Skyrim then the other races. Meaning if a Nord village gets attacked a lot of innocent people will be hurt or die. While if a couple of Dunmer or Argonians are wondering around Skyrim less people would be hurt or killed."

There are more Nords than non-Nords over the whole of Skyrim. But that doesn't mean individual Elven or Argonian villages are smaller than individual Nord villages. However, given the choice of saving either one village of 20 Nords or a village of 20 Argonians, Ulfric will elect to help the 20 Nords.

Oblivion, if given the choice to do nothing whatsover or save a village of 20 Argonians, Ulfric will elect to do nothing. Imperial spy or not, the bandit leader Free-Winter sends you to help is still very much alive, which proves that Ulfric has not deigned to send someone to kill him. Unlike the Imperial Spy, he's not even willing to hire the Dragonborn to do so. After all, if his claim is that Ulfric hasn't dealt with the bandit raiding Dark Elves and said bandit is undealt with, well, empirical evidence is not on Ulfric's side.

"In the Merethic Era Ysgramor and some other Nedes came from Atmora to Skyrim to escape the civil war plaging the land. They were peaceful stellers, and had a good relationship with the native Snow Elves"

Precisely like the Dark Elves Ulfric now is coralling into a ghetto. And here's a funny thing. When the Nords are peaceful settlers and the natives attack them, they don't get to complain when they lose, but when the Nords are the ones oppressing the peaceful settlers, said peaceful settlers are also expected to lay their life on the line for those Nords.

This is a beautiful example of how Ulfric is a hypocrite. He's complaining about being oppressed -while- oppressing people. It also demonstrates his circular reasoning in relation to the Dark Elves:

The Dark Elves are immigrants, as are the Nords, in this land. Yet his regime claims Skyrim belongs to the Nords and refuses to treat Dark Elves equally on the basis that Skyrim belongs to the Nords until such time they not only admit, but risk their lives proving, that Skyrim belongs to the Nords.

I'm just going to group my remarks on the first post in the series here for convenience:

"Let's start with the Gray Quarter, most people think that Ulfric forces all of Windhelm's Dunmer to live in the slum known as the Gray Quarter. But with some research you would realize this to be quite untrue. The Dunmer are not forced to live anywhere. The live in nanny for the Cruel-Seas, and the owner of the Hlaalu farm do not."

It's not claimed they can't live anywhere else. However, one of the Dark Elves -in- Windhelm has said that they are prohibited from buying houses outside of the Gray Quarter. Now, as you've astutely noticed, they moved to Windhelm before Ulfric became Jarl, which means that some of them -specifically, those you mentioned- have been living there since before this ban came into effect. The only thing keeping them outside of the ghetto is that thanks to the war, Ulfric doesn't have the manpower to start deportations to the ghetto, or possibly just out of Skyrim.

Which moves us to the anonymous poster of yesterday. "the Dark Elves aren't helping in the Civil War," Well of course they're not. The only thing keeping them from being crushed entirely under Ulfric's boot is the fact said boot is occupied elsewhere by Imperial forces. So what incentive do they have to help their oppressor?

Next one:

"What people fail to realize is that it doesn't matter how Ulfric won the duel. It was supposed to show that if the High King couldn't protect himself, how was he supposed to protect Skyrim?"

What you fail to realise is that it doesn't matter the High King can't protect himself. If heavyweight champion Klitchko bursts into the US president's office and knocks him out, does that prove that Klitchko is more fit to be the president than whatever 40-to-60-year-old is in the Oval Office right now? If I manage to beat up the British Queen, does that mean the crown should revert to me until someone tougher than me comes along?

Of course not, the idea is ridiculous. But the thing with Ulfric, evidenced by the fact it's how he tries to become High King, is that he believes in "might makes right". He just doesn't get that single combat isn't what makes a good statesman, statesmanship is.