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Rostere

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Everything posted by Rostere

  1. Absolutely amazing, perfect, wonderful. What I heard is some of the most fitting music I could imagine PE to have. Stylistically, it reminds me a lot of IWD/BG2 but also of the soundtrack to The Hobbit. If it's one other non-IE engine thing to be inspired by, it's probably the Hobbit/LotR movies (especially LotR in my mind), which also had great soundtracks. Keep up the good work! However, I feel a bit of a longing for the more "meaty" parts, like the pompous start of the BG2 main theme, and for more concrete melody in place of sublime fleeting ambience, although this is only very slight remark for other tracks, the song above is probably perfect for that particular village. In my opinion, the IWD soundtrack is usually on the same spot on the ambience/melody scale as this piece. The BG2 music however usually has a bit more pronounced melodic "hooks". Maybe you think it's somewhat unsubtle and in-your-face, but I know at least I enjoy those parts, like for example from 0:29 to 0:28 here, or like 2:16 to 2:27 here. Both this new piece and the Kickstarter music has been awesome examples of music that sounds straight from out of an unknown expansion pack to IWD ever so slightly more than belonging to the more "catchy" tracks from BG and BG2 composed by Hoenig. So I wonder, when do we get to hear the tracks which are more bombastic, in-your-face music parts like battle themes?
  2. Guys, can you please stop writing so much so fast. There's so much stuff and I haven't got the time to reply until possibly tomorrow...
  3. No, I would say that economic power is an even better indicator of total power today, because of a more fluid market in general. Economic power is more easily interchangeable for military power today than 100 years ago. As I've said, it's not very hard to build a nuke. In fact, much easier than building a proper safe nuclear power plant. It's true that nukes give you a lot of international power in some sense, but in other ways they hamper your progress as they undermine trust. Here's a list of countries who could reasonably build nuclear weapons but have obviously chosen not to: Japan, South Korea, Ukraine, Germany, Sweden, Taiwan and... well, I won't even bother to list them all, you get the point. You can conclude that you don't need to have nukes to be powerful (like Germany or Japan), you only need someone who is on your side with nuclear weapons. If by "great power" you mean "country with nuclear weapons", then yes, Russia is a great power. But it's a stupid definition because a lot of countries have then chosen not to be great powers, simply because they felt they didn't need to be one. But no one is saying the USSR was not a great power then, they absolutely were. I'm saying Russia is not a great power now, for economic reasons you state yourself. Now who is reducing power to Europe Universalis levels? Gotta build those workshops and get that extra 1 tax income per province, it'll be a cumulative gain while building pikemen and knights is a cumulative cost! If you want an alternative economic analysis we can always look at debt levels, in which Russia comes out far better with the western nations' debt still increasing, indeed somewhere like Japan which you have previously suggested as a potential replacement for Russia on the UNSC is, basically, insolvent with their 200%+ debt to GDP level, no meaningful economic growth in decades and demographics falling off a cliff (far more so than Russia, whose population is actually increasing again). You're right about Japan's awful demographics, but Russia's are also worse than Europe's, which really should say something. Let's look at the debt issue. Japan owes almost all of it's debt to it's own populace and banks. The US owes much of it's debt to US banks. US banks are the largest political donors in the US. Now if we think about this for just a second. Obviously it's in the US banks' interest (pun not intended) to loan a lot of money to the US, which they will do for a profit. But if the US would actually go bankrupt from taking too many loans, the banks would lose a metric ****load of money. So it's in their interest to not ever let that happen. This is one of the reasons I think too much importance is given to the high debts of the US. The presidents, like GWB, may be stupid to 11 and be given leeway with insane projects as long as it does not interfere with the grand scheme of things, the guys who pay to put them in their place are not stupid. US banks are on top of the food chain of international creditors. If **** ever got serious, they would go to any length to secure their long-time interest in the US not going bankrupt. It's the exact same situation as when an individual wants to loan from a bank. The bank obviously wants you to loan money, but not for you to go bankrupt. That's why you can't borrow any amount of money to buy new TVs if you don't have any income, and the same applies for the US. The problem arises when a country borrows too much money from powerful creditors outside the own nation. If a country only borrows money from less powerful nations and from own banks, they're not in that much of a danger. Foreign interests like the IMF might want you to borrow money for them to get political leverage, but US banks would never want to significantly weaken the US. That's a very fuzzy and too vague definition of what a great power is. And as I've said earlier, just because you try to block other people's efforts (which makes you look important) you are not automatically important. If France or Britain had been as obstinate as Russia, they could also have averted the Syria intervention. Just because the UK and France are allies of the US, they don't get to demonstrate their "power" as often. This is not to be interpreted as a weakness. In fact, the more friends you've got, the stronger you are. Which Russia does not seem to realize when they are committing blunder after blunder alienating Ukraine which is the only large country which could potentially be their ally. Just think for one second about what you just wrote. "If he let Ukraine go and let it eventually join the EU/NATO". Well, damn it, that's exactly just what he did. After he took clumsily Crimea by force, cancelled the "brotherly" price on gas, and instigated protests in Eastern Ukraine. He's ruined any hope of regaining personal trust among many Ukrainians, despite the historical closeness of the Russian and the Ukrainian people and the great potential for an alliance. Grabbing Crimea and this recent bellicose posturing cemented the picture of Russia as a hostile and dangerous imperialist nation to many Ukrainians and perhaps more importantly to other Eastern Europeans and Central Asians. Russian standing among former Soviet nations has probably never been so low. The people who wanted the Ukraine to join the EU must have jumped with glee every second of Putin's extremely clumsy, heavy-handed, naïve and idiotic handling of the conflict in Ukraine. He has in effect not created a buffer, but given away Ukraine to the EU for free to move his own borders forward only slightly. It's the desperate politics of a mind full with Soviet Russian imperialist nostalgia, not the work of a calculating, rational, long-term player. After Yanukovich's ouster, Russia should have condemned him harshly for his corruption, offered magnanimous bailout deals with no strings attached, and in every way extended a helping hand, even directly to those who are rightfully condemned as fascists and (pseudo-) neo-nazis. That would have stopped that movement in their tracks. Ukraine would have realized there is no need to fear Russia or Russians, or to allow their country to be divided by petty sectarian politics, but no. Instead Putin came out only very vaguely against Yanukovich and offered him refuge, he retracted his bailout deals, he steeply increased the gas prices (which will directly affect many ordinary Ukrainians who will resent him for it), all the while drumming up crazy amounts of hate against Ukrainians in general and in particular a small group of Ukrainian right-wing extremists. I say, if it was the EU's plan to sow division between Ukrainians and Russians and alienate Russia to former Soviet countries with a Russian population, Putin has unknowingly perfectly played into their hands all along.
  4. Yeah, I know I've said it before, but if you can get the raw materials it's not very hard to build a nuclear bomb. I think it would be far harder to build a reliable and accurate means of delivery (I'm referring to ICBMs of various kinds). There are probably 15 or so countries in the world today which could easily build a nuclear bomb within a few months. Likewise with military power, it's just a question of how much you're willing to pay at the moment. If everybody paid as much as Russia they would drop again to 8th place or something like that. There is no true temporal cumulativeness in military expenses, the fact that you bought cannons and war zeppelins years ago does not necessarily add up to an advantage today - money you spend right now is always more valuable than the money you spent yesterday. The inverse is true about research and infrastructure. The money you spent yesterday will accumulate additional money and resources for you to spend tomorrow. So if you're smart you will want to limit your defence spending to the least feasible nuclear deterrence plus a rapid response task force until you think war comes. Alternatively, you can think of peace as simply an economic war of competitiveness - then you realize education, free trade treaties and infrastructure will give you competitiveness, and building more tanks and isolating yourself will not. It is therefore very naïve to say that the one who currently are being most bellicose and flamboyant in waving around his new war toys is the most "powerful" when the serious actors are busy building their economies in order that they can afford bigger war toys later. Then again, roughly half of the Russian state budget comes from income due to sales of oil-related resources to the EU, so in the event of any escalation of conflict the Russian economy would be pummeled to rubble before the first shot was even fired. That is the downside if your country's long-term economic strategy is to be a big gas station. Comparing this and this we can see that Russia's exports sector is actually less diversified than that of the UAE. That's a very, very damning indictment of Russia's high-tech companies.
  5. This is exactly what I'm talking about. You don't get powerful by putting everything you've got against everyone else. Russia is absolutely not comparable to "Europe" (I presume you mean the EU) by itself, not even in the same league. The EU has an economy over 8 times the size of Russia. It's an order of magnitude larger economically, like comparing Luxembourg and Belgium (almost the same size ratio between their economies). You are way overestimating Russia. With the economy as a measure of power, the EU should be less afraid of Russia than Germany should be afraid of Sweden. You don't get powerful by behaving like a rebellious child. You only get attention. Only idiots - and children perhaps - believe that this gives them any real power. Yet Russia is doing just this, flailing about like an unruly zebra. If countries like Germany or Japan were doing the same thing, there would be a lot more to worry about, since they are way more powerful and important than Russia. I'll tell you what: there are a hell of a lot of countries who could prevent an intervention in Syria if they bet everything on it. There are a hell of a lot of countries who could seize territory which is rightfully theirs (like Crimea) without the US willing to do a thing about it. But it's only one leader, Putin, who is stupid enough to do so, expending valuable international trust for what he thinks is prestige, so that fools like you will say "Wow, he's powerful". But we're talking in circles if we don't give definitions of the term "world power"/"great power". Here, I'd say that the five top countries on this list are great powers. What is your definition? What the heck are you referring to? No, the world has not looked to Russia any more than to the real "major powers". If Russia has gotten any attention it is due to the irrational leadership of the country, not due to it's importance. If Khadaffi had had nuclear arms which could reach Europe, you would also hear about his opinion every day. Not because he could actually win a war, but because people believe he's enough of a crackpot to start one. There's also a thing you don't understand about military expenditures: any country could potentially buy any amount of arms they could afford. Russia spends a larger amount of money on this than many other countries, money they can spend on education and infrastructure instead. If you spend a lot on arms, you will be a winner if there is a war. But if it's not a war, then your big toys will just slowly rust into obsoletion. If the EU started to spend as much on defense as Russia, they would spend eight times as much. Imagine Russia surrounded by eight other Russias, that would be the size of the EU military. But - crucially - the EU does not spend those amounts on buying big toys which will be obsolete the next year, the EU spends that money on education, research and infrastructure instead. They play the long game. Russia might look like a world power, but Saudi Arabia would also be a great power if we look at absolute numbers of military spending. If I bought a gun and started running around threatening people, I would be "powerful" in the same sense as Russia. I bet I would find a place in the newspapers too, as you claim Russia do. Naïve children (naïve like you are politically) who saw the scene might say the man with the gun was "powerful" and "threatening". Meanwhile, the billionaires who are the actual powerful individuals in society would go by completely unnoticed. Now compare that to today's geopolitics. Gorbachev was good, because he wanted to approach the West and realized that true prosperity comes only through friendship. Yeltsin was bad, because his rule signaled incompetence, corruption and instability. Putin's initial rule was good, because he brought stability (and by extension, economic prosperity). But I'm increasingly thinking he is a liability to the Russian economy if he's going to increase his bellicose posturing. Trade and investments will likely plummet. You are completely right that countries like Russia, China, India and so on are gaining power (relatively). But since they were way poorer and less powerful to begin with, that is natural. But do you even realize how much smaller Russia is than the US, if we look at population? If the Russians would be as prosperous as the Americans, they would still have more than half as small an economy. And then you would have to take into account the very low population growth in Russia. You are extremely naïve to think that people's fears have anything at all to do with real power. Through the last ten years or so, Americans have feared Al- Qaeda, Iraq and then Iran. Countries and organizations which are very insignificant and harmless in a global perspective. Military might is only a good short-term indicator. The military might of the UK and the US was rather laughable at the outbreak of WW2, yet in 1944 they were bombing the **** out of Germany, and not the other way around. I'm not saying that any of the great powers is going to fight an all-out war against any other, in fact, I hold that as an impossibility barring massive collective mental illness of any country's leadership. It's ridiculous to talk about it, since there wouldn't be anything left to fight for, or maybe not even anything left to invade, if such a war were to occur. If you think that "boss of your own back yard" is the criterion for being a great power, then you have very low standards. But let's hear a concrete definition of what a "great power" really is so that we can have a real discussion. Yes! His first years were great. Russia could be moving as swiftly forward now as then, they have only Putin's own isolationism and aggressive posturing to blame. That part wasn't so pronounced during his first years. Now the investors are withdrawing their moneybags. Of course he is "scoring big points". Just like GWB did with his "Mission Accomplished" speech. Right? Get real. Look at the economical facts. Meaningless jingoistic posturing will always appeal to stupid nationalistic knuckleheads, and nostalgic populations who wish for the days when the USSR was #2 and fail to see today's economic reality where Russia is competing with India and Brazil not to fall out of the top ten and not for the #1 spot. It would be easy peasy for Japan, Germany or China to freak out and start carving out their own South Ossetias and Abkhazias, countering the US at the UN (well, at least for China), getting much more attention than Russia. But they don't, they focus on tomorrow, and on building their economies. Meanwhile, Putin is looking for cheap sympathy with nationalists showing that "Russia is still a force to be reckoned with". Yeah. Who's playing the long game here, do you think?
  6. Sorry, but no. Russia has great potential considering it's strategic resources but that's pretty much it. If anything I'd personally say Russia is currently a second-rate world power (but that of course depends on how you classify a "world power"). That analysis is based solely on the size of their economy, which is the basis for every kind of power, whether economic or military. During the Cold War, Russia was the leader of an important political movement, which made it the second most powerful country on earth. Today, Russia is the leader of pretty much nothing at all. And if you consider Russia by itself it's not very big (except geographically), or very important in any sense. It's just you being ignorant when you see the size of Russia on a map or reminisce about the Cold War days. Secondly, it's certainly not important due to it's leadership, I'd rather say despite it. Saying otherwise is completely and utterly ridiculous. Putin has shown us time and time again that he is more keen on keeping hopeless dictators in place, or adding more unimportant places on the world map to Russia. He's like a newbie kid playing Europa Universalis, only interested in these banal issues and not in more important but more difficult questions such as developing the economy. Idiots reading the news will think that "Ooo, Putin stopped Obama's plans in Syria, that must mean Russia is very powerful". They don't take into consideration at all what would have happened if China, or Japan, or Germany, or even France, the UK or Brazil would have spazzed out instead of Russia. The big problem with Russia is that despite their current post-Cold War relative obscurity, they still retain their seat on the UNSC. So it's free for them to turn the UNSC into their own kindergarten which is kind of why countries such as Syria came under their wing in the first place. Now, the more political capital Putin expends on idiotic foreign policy adventures, the less stability and long term growth there will be for the Russian economy. Meanwhile, stupid commentators will continue to talk about how "powerful" he is. Just look at PNAC in the US. They had pretty much the same jingoist goals for the US as the current Russian leadership has for Russia. But they still ended up shooting themselves in the foot - because long-term power does not follow from bellicose politics, posturing and buffoonery. Buffoonery and jingoism gives the impression of power at the expense of building trust and stability, which is so much more important in economy and foreign politics. (As I said before, I believe Crimea should be independent or a part of Russia rather than the Ukraine, but I think that Putin's current politics of confrontation is deeply harmful to Russia)
  7. Just a quick clarification: Comintern as such was disbanded by Uncle Joe in 1943. By the 70's there was no international forum or umbrella organization for commies to rally to—it was either straight up pro-Soviet, or pro-Chinese. Sorry. I was looking for use a word for "Communist countries aligned with the SU during the 1970s and 1960s" and just typed it in as I'm used to referring to that bloc of countries as Comintern while playing HoI 2 . Maybe, if we stick to talking about actual de facto alliances, I should have used "Warsaw Pact" or perhaps "Comecon" instead. Obviously terminology of 20th-century Communist international relations is not my stronger side.
  8. I would pay anything for a JA-style tactical RPG set in the 40K universe made by Obsidian.
  9. You're reading too much into it. All it expresses is that Israel has unilaterally annexed land (without any of the excuses/ justifications that Russia had for Crimea) and does not want to go on record against that process as it would inevitably be used against them. I very much doubt that the US expected them to vote for the condemnation. Well, at first it was just a remark, but now it's escalated into a much more general discussion. To be honest, I wouldn't have noticed it or thought it was interesting if it wasn't for the consistent efforts of certain factions in Israeli politics to warm up to Russia, an effort which has been going on for years and is led by the current foreign minister. I don't think you assess the situation correctly here. To a lot of Israeli right-wing extremists like some of the ones who are currently in power, even this charade of a peace process constitutes the US putting too much pressure on Israel, and it's deeply humiliating for them to be forced to play along in this. There are tons upon tons of articles on this matter, you can start with googling what Israel's defence minister has said about the peace process and Obama. And that is an elected official, this is the type of stuff which goes on in civil life. There is in Israel a steadily growing and dangerous ultra-nationalist group with radical settlers at it's core. If you would ask them, they would say that Israel does not need the US for anything and would do better on it's own, and that any amount of UN condemnations would be meaningless. These statements would seem political idiocy to us, but is not a surprising conclusion from a religious and nationalistic crackpot's perspective. Israel trying to foster ties with Russia is a natural effect of this that has been going on for many years now (again, tons of news on this), also in part due to the significant amount of Israelis which are immigrants from Russia. That said, I really don't know how Russia is going to respond to these efforts in the end, if they will be successful.
  10. I can see that Israel would not want Russia (or China) to sell Iran AA. But they are already doing that, so nothing to do there. Other than that, there is little or nothing Russia could do which wouldn't backfire on themselves with catastrophic consequences. If Russia was caught arming terrorists "indirectly" (if that's what you're insinuating? Please elaborate!), there would be hell to pay. Actually, there are a lot of countries in Africa who voted "yes" who would be much more vulnerable than Israel if Russia decided to rock the boat. Are you insinuating that there are any countries in Africa who are more likely(not vulnerable) to be effected by such vote than Israel(Please elaborate which and why!). No. The point was that the argument of vulnerability was invalid. I believe that the likelihood of any "punishment" is low, and equally low for all countries who would be vulnerable. So if you concede my point about vulnerability, then you must believe that Putin would be extra keen to punish Israel for some reason if you are saying that they in particular should fear some kind of retribution? What the heck... No. Israel has not been a focus of US/Russia proxy wars for decades. You are entirely and completely ignorant to believe so. Think about it for just a minute. First, Israel has never intervened on the US behalf in any war, and there are many times as many US military bases in Arab countries compared to Israel. Israel was maybe somewhat a focus of US/USSR proxy war certainly at least from LBJ (I would say, although there is no exact date, just increasingly much from 1948 onwards) up until Jimmy Carter's peace treaty in 1978. But ever since this American military support (read: bribe) to Egypt, the region calmed down significantly, and in any case Israel, which is a tiny country lacking any significant resources of any kind would have been worth only minimal military aid from a geopolitical perspective. The "loss" of Israel either to Communist-aligned political factions or to Arab nations in war would have been small, certainly smaller compared to lots of other nations I bet you don't place such importance in, check for yourself... So in those days, yes, a piece, but not more than a pawn. But all that was during the Cold War which had an ideological component - nowadays that is gone and so firstly there is no rivalry as in those days because there is no need for exclusivity. Any country can trade with both the US and Russia as much as they want. Russia has no "foreign effort" in Israel which goes against US interests. Wake up, this is not 1970. Meanwhile, Syria and Iran are not intrinsically US adversaries, the only reason they buy arms from Russia is because they are afraid the US, Saudi Arabia or Israel will attack them or topple their governments and it is stupid to buy weapons from potential enemies. They have no ideology in common at all with Russia, the only thing they want Russia for is that it's not the US and not West-aligned. They absolutely aren't "allied" at all with Russia or Russian "proxies" in any true sense like Cuba, Mongolia or Poland were during the Cold War. Russia supports their regimes in the UN only because they are buying Russian weaponry, in order that they won't turn to China instead. They are buying Russian simply because Israel is getting American weaponry and support, and thus they need a different arms supplier in case of war. Now if Israel had been fully occupied during the 1973 war, it would likely had become a non-democratic country with close Comintern ties, because of the ideologies of the invading countries and the general pro-Comintern sentiments among the parties such as PFLP which were in vogue at the time. So I guess 1973 fits the bill for a proxy war. However if Israel today would give voting rights to Palestinians in the West Bank and allow the Christian and Muslim refugees who were driven out of the country in 1948 back, it is rather unlikely the resulting country would buy Russian arms or be Russian-aligned in the long term. Israel is not a US ally (if you do consider them that) which can somehow be replaced by a pro-Russian pawn through war. The resulting Palestinian-majority state would be much more likely to be aligned with the neighbouring Sunni countries (which all buy American arms... Egypt at least until recent events) against the Shia-dominated Russian customers Syria, Iran and Iraq. That would happen without a question taking into account Fatah and also Hamas (see their ambivalent stance towards the war in Syria...). Furthermore, the need for arms in the entire region would decrease, since all countries over there see Israel is it's most likely enemy - that would mean bad business for Russia as well. If in another hypothetical situation Iran would bomb the hell out of Israel, Russia would gain absolutely nothing. The US would certainly not have better ties with a Palestine than with Israel, but there are no customers to gain for Russia since Palestine would just be another nation aligned against their existing customers in the region. Don't get me wrong, they are an insignificant voice in this, as are all non-UN veto countries. Functionally, their voice alone on the Crimea debacle makes no difference in this. But the position of one country goes a long, long way to signal their allegiance. It is an affirmation of support or denunciation. It definitely tells something that Israel does not feel the need to voice their support for the US. You choose to interpret this as if you know that they are an ally of the US, even if they hardly ever give anything back. It beats me why you would want an ally like that - I interpret it as Israel feeling other countries are more important to appease at the moment, either because they feel the US is so deep in their proverbial pocket anyway, or that they feel that the peace process is getting out of hand and they might need a new veto sugar daddy in the UNSC. I get the feeling you haven't been reading the news lately at all. And possibly not adjusted your world view since the middle of the Cold War.
  11. Yep, I have bought a lot of their games, the first as early as 2000 - hm, although that can't have been the first they published themselves. They were the most conservative publisher I know of when it came to having big, neat physical manuals in your games (nowadays I don't buy that many games and not necessarily physical copies). The HoI2 Anthology and EU3 boxes both came with excellent packaging considering the year of their release, with the former even shipping with a nice medal inside ( ) and the latter with a big manual which did not fit into a DVD box. I don't know how much money Paradox have to spend on this, but I can tell for sure that they have a culture in their company up to CEO level which appreciates the typical "old school" nerdy stuff many of us here are longing for, not like certain other publishers which are more like a caricature of the greedy businessman. I honestly can't think of a publisher which would be a better match for Obsidian.
  12. Ooooooooooooooookay. It's good to have people around to remind you of that, so you won't have to worry. Maybe somebody should write to them and suggest they add a banner to their page saying "We believe F:NVs writing was vastly inferior to the writing in F3" or something like that so you know for sure you can disregard their opinions. Sigh. Really - seriously? What kind of deranged coprophage would prefer F3's writing? I actually find it very hard to believe that is somebody's honest opinion. It's like saying you prefer to have **** smeared in your face above having chocolate pudding.
  13. I can see that Israel would not want Russia (or China) to sell Iran AA. But they are already doing that, so nothing to do there. Other than that, there is little or nothing Russia could do which wouldn't backfire on themselves with catastrophic consequences. If Russia was caught arming terrorists "indirectly" (if that's what you're insinuating? Please elaborate!), there would be hell to pay. Actually, there are a lot of countries in Africa who voted "yes" who would be much more vulnerable than Israel if Russia decided to rock the boat. Nevertheless, it's not as if that would depend solely on one UN vote or even several UN votes. Russia won't make a "hell of a lot of trouble" for Finland or Turkey for voting "yes". To be honest, I think you're seeing a pre-Arab Spring or even a Cold War picture. Syria is the only country left in the region with significant ties to Russia which they could prop up (they can hardly sell anything to Iran/Iraq they aren't already selling), compare that to the situation in the sixties or seventies. Like every dictator Assad cares about the preservation of his own power and he knows that any attack on Israel in these days would be literally signing his own death warrant, with zero chance of achieving anything remotely similar to a military victory of any kind. It's just bizarre having an "ally", yet expecting them to follow other nations' whims when it matters. But I guess that's just in line with all the other bizarre and inexplicable elements of US foreign policy. Funneling billions of taxpayer money yearly in direct support to a piddling Middle Eastern statelet most famous for the systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing (or "Judaization") on illegally occupied territory, while pissing in the face of real allies like the UK on what should be no-brainer issues like the Falkland Islands. No wonder Putin felt he could annex Crimea. Personally I don't believe in relative standards, but usually it's expected of any leader to exercise some sort of moral leadership which sets a precedent for what is OK for others to do. When the current leadership is perceived as only caring about pragmatic economic interests and support of domestic single-issue groups and not moral standards, it's from a Machiavellian point of view a perfectly correct bet by Putin to annex Crimea. I bet he could even seize Donetsk and Luhansk without Obama doing anything much. People are completely wrong to say sanctions will hurt the US/EU more than Russia, but they are very right in that the US/EU leaders are unwilling to take even any hit to the bag of coins in support of their moral convictions. Unfortunately this is the same story as behind WW2: Putin has started with Crimea, but no one really minds because they were almost all Russian to begin with. Unless a credible opposition condemns the military methods used to get there, we might see it happen again. This time with a much less Russian area such as eastern or southern Ukraine. The core issue right now is the same as weeks before: not Crimea in itself, but the troops massing on the eastern border of Ukraine. Sadly, the US which would otherwise be a natural leader on issues like these has the global credibility of a used car salesman at best.
  14. In my mind BG1 is the perfect example of how voice acting can enhance a game. Lots of really colourful voice acting there. I wonder who they hired to do it? Reasonably they must have been in contact with some organization, I don't really see how you can recruit such a diverse cast on an individual basis. Local theatre actors must be the ideal candidates to contact for VO in a game. VO only became in indicator of **** when people decided they needed "celebrities" to do it, and that all dialogue should be voice acted. Meanwhile I'm sure excellent semi-famous voice actors such as David Warner (Irenicus in BG2) and Stephen Russell (Garrett in Thief) could still make excellent contributions to games with a budget slightly above PE.
  15. No need to apologize as it's not really an old thread but this one before it was interrupted. That threads are closed on this forum just for reaching an arbitrary # of posts is pretty retarded in my opinion. IIRC, this was originally done for stablility reasons—huge topics caused issues and posts would go missing or something; it's not arbitrary. The software has been updated numerous times however, so I'm not sure it's still necessary. Also, the old version of the forum software allowed you to go into "reply" mode even in locked threads, where you could then copy the whole post and paste it on the new thread, with proper quotations and link to the original post. Maybe the mod squad could check with Admin if it would be possible to have that option back or enable the "multiquote" button in locked topics? Yes, I kind of miss that functionality. The apology was in part directed to the moderator which mentioned discussion going OT in the closing post of the last thread, and at the annoyance people must feel when they see quoted sentences not corresponding with any post and not attributed to any writer. I really miss the old quoting system - I think it was in use all the time from when I joined this forum in 2007 up until last year or something and I never heard of anyone having any problems with it, so it's a mystery to me why it was changed.
  16. Oh come on Bruce, that's not what I said at all. The US is definitely acting against it's own reasonable interests in the I/P issue with regards to Israel, but that does not necessarily mean that one part "controls" the other. People have done a lot of stupid things through history, usually not because they were "controlled" by someone else in some nefarious fashion but out of ignorance or neglect. The pro-Israel lobby is essentially the only well-organized foreign policy lobby in the US worth mentioning. It does also have some overlap with parts of the defence industry lobby (if you look at members of certain think-tanks, for example). We have very affluent political donors like Sheldon Adelson who says he's sad he did military service in the US instead of in Israel, meeting four prospective Republican candidates in person on the upcoming Republican Jewish Coalition (an "Israel First" lobby group) meeting to see who supports his core issues (ban on online gaming and American taxpayer money to Israel) the most. It's not a conspiracy or illegal in any way and anyone could find out what these organizations have been up to by simply checking in on their websites. Through these means of political donations, "Israel first" groups certainly doesn't "control" the US any more than say, Goldman Sachs or Bank of America does with their sizeable political donations. The pro-Israel lobby is hardly the most influential one in US politics, but it does matter a lot that it doesn't really have any counterweight. There is no one really lobbying in the opposite direction, so it makes sense for a lot of politicians to just regurgitate the same old tired phrases of "unbreakable alliance", "we should totally bomb Iran/Iraq/the Arabs" and so on and so forth, receive their campaign money and move on to the domestic policy questions which the voters are far more aware of. But there's no conspiracy, there's not anyone doing anything illegal, it's just a question of a very dedicated special interest group running amok on tax-deductible (which opens up for another ****ed up story...) political donations. You surely have some similar groups where you live, although hopefully not a system of tax-deductible donations to political or pseudo-political groups. The reason it was so funny that Israel didn't vote with their "ally" the US was because firstly that Israel's entire creation hinges on illegal annexation, so they could impossibly vote for the resolution with a straight face. Secondly because of all the talk about an "unbreakable alliance" when Israel has not done anything the the US ever as far as I know - other than occasionally sinking US Navy ships. To compare, the US has - alone in the UNSC - vetoed numerous UN condemnations of Israeli ethnic cleansing and illegal occupation which is to the human rights credibility of the US (especially in the Muslim world and the ME) the equivalent of sacrificing an arm or a leg. You would have thought the Israelis owed them something in return, but apparently not. My apologies for replying to a post from the old thread, but I felt I couldn't just leave it unanswered.
  17. By the way, lol @Israel for not bothering to give their "ally" the US their support on this matter.
  18. Exactly, an "abstain" vote is not in practice a "no" vote, it's (in this case) a "yes" vote. If it looks like the "yes" side is winning and you vote "abstain" instead of "no", it means you're OK with the outcome anyway, certainly in the case of a "yes" win, maybe also in the case of a "no" win. If they wanted to, they could have voted "no" to protest.
  19. What makes you say that?
  20. Yes, I was also going to write about how this is a problem for Sweden as well. For those of you who don't know, Sweden has a rather large military industry compared to it's small size (as recently as 2010 the 7th largest arms exporter while only being 22nd in the list of highest GDP). Being a part of NATO will (I think) put obstacles to selling weapons to certain countries, and in general to the independence of the military industry. The military lobby is a very influential group in Sweden, you can compare it to the pro-Israel lobby in the US. Even if 99% of people don't really care or know anything about the matter, it's a matter of extreme importance to a few very influential people that Sweden has it's own next-generation fighter jet, it's own next-generation stealth submarines et.c.. I can tell for sure that NATO military suppliers such as Lockheed Martin will NOT be happy to have additional competition in their respective fields among NATO countries, and vice versa.
  21. So then the EU can be represented by 17 Mediterranean monk seals. (Hint: It doesn't make any difference for the argument) It is true however that the EU is composed of different countries which depend on Russian trade in different ways. Although my original point is roughly true, this does make things a bit more complicated. Using this as a starting point, you can identify the total value of trade, and divide it with the nation in question's GDP. That makes a rough ordering of how much complete sanctions would impact any nation trading with Russia. This suggests Finland would be hit very hard. But certainly it would also be devastating to some particular companies. In any case Russia would be hit the hardest. To put this into perspective: Russia is more dependent on oil- and gas-related exports than the UAE and slightly less dependent than Saudi Arabia. Putin would not be able to afford any of his military purchases if the trade stopped. As somebody wrote before, Russia is a "gas station"-country just like Venezuela. Shut the gas down, and there is no competitive economy underneath (unlike some of the oil states on the Arabian peninsula, which rank pretty high in competitiveness). NATO has been open to Swedish entry since about the end of the Cold War. Even before that though, there have been significant ties and (secret) military cooperation. I don't think that Sweden will enter NATO any time soon, though. It's honestly more likely that Finland joins NATO. What is likely though is a significant military rearmament in Eastern and Northern Europe. Additionally, I think we will see Central Asian nations drifting further away from Russia and closer to China and Turkey. Yeah but the UK's one of the last to be highlighting justifications. Maybe they should have had Blair read the statement as well for extra points. Oh well, I guess it's good it's just words still. LOL, Blair.
  22. From 22 Oct 2013 to 14 Mar 2014, the DJ Russia GDR index dropped by about 30%, the (slim) majority of that took place during the Crimea crisis. The last few days it has regained almost 7% percentage points compared to the situation in October though. The sharpest drop took place immediately before the US announced their "sanctions". I'd say the Russian economy looks to be on the way down regardless of the Crimea situation, which has probably at most contributed to 10-15% percentage points of the total drop from October last year. Once again however: Russia would be hit hardest by sanctions, by any simple model at least. If we assume no part gains more than the other from trade (i.e., no part is buying/selling at robbery rates) then both will be hit equally hard in absolute numbers. However, since the economy of the EU and the US is so much larger than Russia's - about 16 to 17 times - the relative damage done would be much smaller. I know comparisons like these can be hard to visualize for your intuition. One way of doing it is thinking that the EU/US economy is an adult African elephant, and the Russian economy is an adult Mediterranean monk seal (two animals which have roughly the same weight ratio as the GDP ratio between the EU+US and Russia). Now imagine that you take away the same absolute amount of mass from their food (both eat roughly 5% of their body weight in a day). Both would be hungry, but one might starve. You can also make a comparison with giving them the same volume of some poison (lethality is often roughly proportional to body mass)(if the PETA is not watching).
  23. I have zero interest in F2P MMOs. Still, I will check this out just because we know Obsidian are behind it.
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