Zoraptor

The Whispered World: SE currently a giveaway.

Mr Bates vs the Post Office is excellent. I have been watching Day of the Jackal (up to e8, so two to go; doubt my views will change much though). In many ways it's very good, but it all rings a bit hollow. It has the trouble you always get when the script calls for writing a very intelligent/ competent person (well, two here really) of it being far more easy to describe someone as very intelligent and have people say he/ she is than to show it. The demands of the drama require him to do pretty stupid stuff in order for there to be a plausible set up for him potentially being caught; yet his chief pursuer still has to have extremely specific knowledge and make huge and implausible leaps to get close. Fortunately it isn't quite enough to be outright implausible, but it runs a very narrow line. It's also deeply unsubtle with its parallels between the lives of the Jackal and his chief pursuer and how they're same coin, different sides. OTOH, I've seen people flabbergasted when the comparison is pointed out, so it clearly wasn't too unsubtle for some. Eddie Redmayne is very good? in the role. The question mark is because you're always aware that it's Actor, Acting, whenever he's on screen; but that is how you'd broadly expect an assassin to act. The rest are functional, with Charles Dance being a bit wasted. None of the characters get much beyond archetypes and caricatures but this is, ultimately, higher brow 24 with pretensions so that works fine in context.

Ah, like Israel's. Not a surprise to anyone anyway, since the CIA were using Sednaya as a black site. Also cannot take any criticism of Assad seriously here since you didn't lead by condemning the Burger ISIS and Menorah ISIS use of torture and extrajudicial killings. I also note that the most strident supporters of the Rules Based Order and opponents of invasions and seizing land haven't lead with their strident condemnation of Israel's invasion of Syria and seizure of its land, so I can safely ignore anything else they have to say, twice over. (Yeah, really not a fan of that style, as I find it kind of pathetic. Still good for goose, good for gander; and I'd be a lot lot better at it) The Seal of the Prophets isn't exclusive to ISIS. Though it does tend to be used by the more head choppy and ISIS adjacent. Best I've ever said about Assad was that he was the least bad option of those practically available which, sadly, we're about to have proved correct. Some refugees will go home, and a whole lot more will leave when the squabbling inevitably starts. At which point we'll get a whole lot of "who could have predicted this" "oh those arabs, typical, shame they can't learn from their betters" and "not our fault" from the usual suspects who will, as always, forget that they were cheerleading and supporting it the whole way through. Then cue another round of how anyone saying anything different has to be a sockpuppet rather than just someone blessed with the most basic of critical faculties. Making up a mythic genuinely moderate opposition which has zero chance of winning because it doesn't exist happens every single time.

Please feel free to find where I've ever had anything positive to say about the Taleban. Again, I'll wait, but not while holding my breath*. On the other hand I don't have to look far for you saying positive things about rebranded al Qaeda, now do I? I am 100% of the opinion that something can both be bad for someone 'I' don't like, and bad for 'me' as well. *about the closest I've said is that they were militarily effective. Which was of course only half the story- the most relevant part to this situation being that while they hung on in there they only won because 20 years of western reconstruction abjectly failed.

Maybe, this time, Al Qaeda will be OK? the thread. I mean, they never have in the past, but with the west giving them money for reconstruction* maybe this time they'll be OK?? since we know the one thing radical islamists care about is money. Just look at bin Laden, traded a life shut in a dingy compound and caves for a lifestyle fit for a multi hundred millionaire... oh wait, that was the other way around, wasn't it? Won't start fighting people who aren't quite wahhabi enough for them or look at them the wrong way or people Turkey doesn't like. Won't blow up shia shrines, won't force convert people, won't export their revolution are won't end up making the US and Europe regret being dumb and self destructive enough to help them. Again. Why even try thinking like that. It's one thing to start believing you can fly when you've already fallen off the cliff, it's quite another to believe that gravity doesn't exist before that. Name one radical islamic government that hasn't tried to export itself everywhere. I'll wait, but won't be holding my breath. Best case scenario is Libya; and Syria was starting from a far lower base than Libya had. *couldn't even type that with a straight face. They make Ukraine jump through hoops for loans, but they're going to just give Al Qaeda a load of money for them to build apartment blocks or something... the level of credulity required to believe that is far higher than believing al Jolani is a Nigerian Prince whose assets have been unfairly frozen.

Yes, but it's bad for Russia, so time to celebrate. Who even cares if it's also bad for us too* as well as the Syrian civilians we purport to care about. Which, again, sums up the international attitude to Team Blue. They'll even cheer on al Qaeda. *what's the old Polish joke? A polish guy finds a lamp and gets three wishes. First wish, for Poland to get invaded by the Mongols. Second wish, for Poland to get invaded by the Mongols. Third wish, you guessed it. Genie asks him why he hates his country so much. The Pole replies replies "I don't, but if they come here they come and go back through Russia"

This is an absolute disaster for the Kurds, even more so than for the Christians, Alawites, Shia etc. As soon as Trump gets in the US troops- also illegally occupying Syria- will go from the Turkish border and that will be that; more peaceful western backed ethnic cleansing that people will contort themselves into knots convincing themselves is... well actually, since it's Trump a lot will probably decide it is ethnic cleansing this time. For anyone wondering, Erdogan's plan is Misak-i-Milli. That is, essentially, the Turkish claims on Syria and Iraq down to Aleppo and Mosul, southern Georgia, eastern Greece and the Aegean Islands, Armenia, Cyprus. They already got Iskanderiya in one of the most dodgy referendums every held, expect more in similar circumstances. They had a cadet branch of ISIS (Jaish Khalid ibn al Walid) on their border up until 2018, and gave that active support. Israel loves radical Islamists killing whoever they like as it gives their radical Judaists cover for killing whoever they want. Peas in a pod. Also see Israel's role in founding and fostering Hamas. As for the people... well, they keep on voting for the Ben-Gvir's, Bezazel Smotrich's and Netanyahu's of the world. If people blame Palestinians for Hamas when their last election was 17 years ago you have to blame Israel for constantly electing the same crappy people and that is on the Israeli voters and public. You're either misremembering or the author is writing fiction*. The Russian intervention started in Sept 2015. The siege of Homs ended more than a year earlier. Marie Colvin died in, well, 2012. *may well be, Marie Colvin got killed by a 'targeted' strike according to western accusations. Which would mean Syria used precision attacks precisely three times in the war. Once to kill 28 Ahrar ash Sham commanders, once to kill Zahran Alloush, head of Jaish al Islam and Saudi Arabia's proxy in Damascus. And third, to, uh, kill two French/ American journalists besieged in Homs.

If the government fails Macron gets to put it a technocratic one by fiat and essentially rule by decree for a year before new elections. That's every 'moderate' centrist who only has their country's interest at heart's wet dream.

I'd replace that 'after' with an 'if', at least for the rebuilding. If there were a Marshall Plan type approach of rebuilding economies for (more or less) mutual benefit, sure, but that approach hasn't been in evidence since the Marshall Plan. ( 1) much of the financial 'aid' isn't aid, it's loans. They will inevitably get one of those lovely IMF management plans designed to benefit the lenders 2) much of the 'genuine' financial aid goes straight back to the donor country 3) none of the fundamental issues Ukraine had have been dealt with and the war has made them worse without exception(?) Ultimately the problem with aid is the same it's been since the 50s. It's very easy to make promises to be fulfilled in the future and frame them in generous language, very hard to pay the costs demanded by them when they come due. So you get 'aid' instead, which is designed to benefit the person giving it as much as possible. For example Ukraine would take up basically the entire EU development fund and add a lot to the CAP costs if it joined outright- and that's ~50% of the EU annual budget. We've already seen how some EU farmers responded to Ukrainian imports undercutting them; not at all well and that during active warfare. Political considerations will mean that Ukraine gets loans, they'll be for work done by western companies and paid for by selling off every Ukrainian asset possible to foreigners. People won't come back, can't be forced back since they're EU citizens now, and the demographics will get even worse as every young person leaves to- stereotypically- clean toilets in London Berlin/Warsaw. Most of the money 'given' will, inevitably, not end up going to Ukraine beyond some depressed wages. Realistically of course some sort of weaksauce association agreement with a roadmap is about the best they can hope for. Which will still have just about every drawback above for Ukraine, but be a lot more palatable to the average EU voter. Worse, some of the suggestions being made now by western politicians are outright suicidal for Ukraine as a country. Having an army with an average age of 45 isn't a great situation, but at least those getting killed had a chance to have children. Demanding that 18-25 year olds and women get drafted for combat duty is demographic suicide given Ukraine's population age pyramid is the sort of shape Picasso might design rather than Imhotep. You kind of hope that they aren't expressing actual positions but ones for negotiations instead ("you think Ukraine is running out of soldiers? Well think again! They're now prepared to draft both the 18 year olds in the country!) but they are what is being stated)

One of the worst offenders is Hamish de Bretton Gordon, and he was an actual factual British officer- and a very senior one. OK, so he writes for the Torygraph so a certain amount of upper class twit is expected but you don't really expect distilled redditor level delusion despite that. "Challengers are about to sweep Putin's Conscripts Aside" indeed. Circle jerking your experience from thousands of hours in HoI or Battlefield is comparatively mild.

Trump's raw number isn't really very high comparatively though. Similar number to Clinton/ Reagan per term, and a fair bit less than Obama's number. There are some questions about, um, the quality of people pardoned* by Trump though of course but that isn't exactly new either. Plus the prime time to pardon is just before leaving office, so Biden's number will go up; Obama pardoned something like 600 in his last 3 days, about 80% of Trump's were in Dec20/Jan21. Don't really see how it's a precedent. From what I understand the powers of the President to pardon are just about limitless, by design, so the whole idea of precedent doesn't really apply. About the only limitation is that the crime has to have been (rather than being/ planned to be) committed. (Specifically, a lot of ex Confederates got pardoned for fighting a 4 year war as active 'traitors'. OK, as a more direct parallel to Jan7th they'd need to get pardoned by a victorious President Davis in 1868, but... People have been pardoned as quid pro quo before (Libby/ McDougall), people have been pardoned for cash/ influence before- or at least, that's the only logical explanation. Obviously close relatives have been pardoned before. And while it didn't happen there were certainly people advising Nixon to pardon himself, before resigning. That a deal was done for Ford to do it instead to avoid that spectacle has always been vehemently denied) *shorthand, inc commutations etc too for all

Joe Biden is not going to be standing again in 2028 and there's even less chance of Hunter doing so. The story was useful because Biden sr was (well, still is for a month+) President, not because Hunter is important.

Not exactly surprising. Probably the only thing less surprising is that he said he wouldn't; before the election. The only really interesting thing is the dates and specifically it being backdated to 2014- and Hunter's completely legal and above board directorship in Burisma. Though as embarrassing and as much of a bad look as it is pardoning your own son...well, it seems extremely likely that Trump will be worse. He already pardoned Jared Kushner's crook father- among other questionable choices- and may well pardon himself if he thinks the Supreme Courts immunity ruling isn't enough. And of course Bill Clinton also pardoned his brother.

So were the people of Aleppo- direct quote from you- "massacred" Bruce? No. We've seen over the last year what an actual massacre looks like. More strawman more than a Worzel Gummidge convention.

SAA is rubbish, indeed the only really competent unit the Syrian armed forces had (Tiger Forces/ Qalat al Nimr) was technically part of the airforce, not the army. And that seems to have gone to crap since it got put in the army. Every other competent unit was foreign (or Palestinian). The death toll of civilians and military in 4 years of fighting in rif Aleppo- ie the whole province with a population of more than 5 million - was 32,000. That's roughly 0.6% We've got an example of what wanton and deliberate slaughter of civilians, obliteration of civilian infrastructure and ethnic cleansing looks like and it sure ain't Aleppo. More women and children killed than total in Aleppo including combatants, and in a quarter of the time, and with Israel deliberately destroying the hospitals doing the count and killing the medical staff doing it to. And then of course there's Adnan al Bursh, the world famous orthopedic surgeon Israel tortured to death in its very own Sednaya. Which is AOK with Scholz, Biden/ Blinken, Starmer and the other Rules Based Order warriors. And big irony: Hamas is supporting the Syrian rebels. Really though, people wonder why the west has such an awful reputation outside its bubble? Every accusation is a projection.

Three main points. (1) As mentioned before INF has been defunct for 5 (five) years, after the US withdrew, (2) as mentioned before INF has been defunct for 5 (five) years, after the US withdrew and (3) as mentioned before INF has been defunct for 5 (five) years, after the US withdrew. Technically of course that's one point, but it seems it needs repeating. The US also test fired a ground launched tomahawk within a week of withdrawing which would incontrovertibly have been a violation and showed that Russia's objections over Aegis Ashore were 100% right; its mk41 launchers could be used for ground firing tomahawks with no alteration. Which was utterly unsurprising since they could be used for firing them everywhere else and were what they were designed to fire. Indeed, the now in use US Typhon system uses the self same mk41 launchers for ground firing tomahawks, though one suspects that wouldn't be a violation of INF even if it still existed. (The US objection to Rubezh was laughable anyway. Sure, overload something and its range will drop. Fire a SRBM without its warhead and guess what, it'll fly more than 500km and break the treaty too. Pretty pointless though, since the whole point is the warhead. An ICBM is designed to carry MTs of TNT equivalent. Sure, you could pack a conventional warhead on it to make it heavier and put it into IRBM territory, you'd just end up with ~one millionth the TNT equivalent on impact. In this case that didn't even happen, it was just a MIRV which is the standard fitting for nuclear launches minus the nuclear bit, fired as a f you)

HTS (Hayat Tahrir al Sham) is the main rebel group in Idlib, and is Jabhat al Nusra (Support Front- of Al Qaeda in Iraq) with a rebranding to cater for tender western sensibilities. Still led by the same guy, Al Jolani, and with the same leadership though of course. There are a bunch of vestige US facade groups involved too but none of them operate without HTS approval and at least in theory* they haven't had US support for around 7 years. HTS doesn't operate without Turkish approval though the Turk's main backing is for the moderate ethnic cleansers in the 'Syrian' National Army fighting the kurds further east. Qatar is the primary unequivocal backer of HTS. The war in Ukraine has had zero effect on Russia in Syria for anyone wondering. Still got the S-400s around Hmeimem, still got the same number of aircraft, still got the same (small) number of troops. Even Hezbollah wasn't anywhere near as significant as people said since they contributed maybe 1-2% of troop numbers. The Afghan/ Pakistani (Liwa al Fatima/ Zeinab) and Palestinian formations were larger and contributed as much. Ironically, most of them are now facing the US backed troops by the Euphrates as they are worried about them trying to cut the supply line from Iraq- with the US still overtly (and illegally) occupying al Tanf to block the other one. *of course a lot of them never had overt US support due to being just a tad head choppery and pretty much the exact same people they were fighting in Gaza, Afghanistan, and uh, Syria, etc, but did have it clandestinely through Timber Sycamore. Bit of a laugh watching Pentagon supported moderate rebels (note lack of air quotes, since they were generally discerning) fighting CIA supported 'moderate' rebels as regularly happened.

The contents of unresponsive spoiler boxes are still there, they just don't display, so you can select the unresponsive box then copy and paste into a new spoiler tag to edit them. Which is still annoying of course.

They also didn't break a treaty if it was an ICBM. Using an ICBM with a conventional warhead or as an impactor isn't banned and never has been, and the US says they got advance notice. Both the US and Russia say it was an IRBM though, and with a launch site near Astrakhan it seems more than likely it was. ICBM was the initial claim from Ukraine.

Dunno about that: Rick had a lot of fans himself, and generally having a good ensemble cast/ characters is a plus that indicates overall good writing (cf Discovery vs The Next Generation). That's partly because Andrew Lincoln is a good actor who was clearly doing his best with often limited material and partly because the writing of TWD may not always have been good, but for most of the early seasons was functional and overall/ specifically memorable/ memeorable, which in many ways is the most important factor (cf prequel trilogy Star Wars vs sequel trilogy). There's also a bit of an expectation difference between a post zombie apocalypse comic book adaptation TV series and Star Trek, character wise. (As a TWD watcher I'd say that the problem with Rick and with most of the long term characters was that the show simply went on too long rather than bad writing. They ran out of character development and they ended up either flanderised or stuck in a repeating loop. They also got stuck only introducing new characters whose purpose was to die after a certain point, because they had a big backlash to two established ones being killed off. A lot of the backlash was actually due to the writing rather than the deaths themselves. The overall writing took a massive dive too since they took too long to get anywhere and started having the other bane of modern writing: working the plot to include 'cool' scenes they wanted to do whether they made sense or not. Like driving up to a fortress, having the enemy leadership all come out for some chit chat, pull out your guns and... shoot all the windows in the fortress, since you couldn't end the plot early by just, y'know, shooting the bad guys)

Bibi is a monomaniac who'd love to showcase his international support to the world, but that narcissism does also mean he won't take risks when it's his arse on the line. In theory, he could not fly through the airspace of any country honouring the ICC warrant (irrespective of him landing) either*. If Greece says they'd arrest him then the route to Germany or Hungary becomes extremely convoluted. Not like he can fly over Syria/ Iraq/ Iran to avoid Turkey/ Greece/ Italy/ France, after all. Indeed, you could theoretically get a situation where he couldn't get to the US due to being denied transit. Chances of that happening practically aren't high since you could almost certainly rely on someone turning a blind eye, especially if leant on by the US. The almost certainly part is likely to be enough for him to go to the US, since that's big stakes, but to hobnob with Orban? Not so much. *which is why Putin won't go to, say, Brazil. Whether Brazil would arrest him is only half the relevant threat.

Eh, the problem isn't the Whedonite dialogue really, it's the lack of talent from the writers trying to do it. It's worked ok for Bioware in previous games, though the most recent was probably ME2 when they still had a decent cadre of writers. And it's not like, say, Buffy/ Angel etc retroactively have bad writing just because they've been so often (badly) imitated. I don't think the problem is the 'woke stuff' in particular, as above it's the way characters in general are written nowadays by bad writers. The best example I've found as comparison is Omar from The Wire vs I Can't Even Remember His Name After 4 (OK 5, but I skipped S4) Seasons But He Was Played by Anthony Rapp, from Star Trek Discovery. You can describe the entire character of the STD character in about two words: gay engineer, and for probably 95% of his screen time that's all you need to know because that is, basically, his 'character', over the 5 seasons. The other 5% is him getting upset about Gay Doctor (again, all you really need to know 95% of the time) dying. If you tried describing Omar as an equivalent like gay hit man... it just doesn't work well at all, outside of the most simplistic situations and interpretations. That's because one is a well written engaging character with depth who happens to be gay, the other has gay as his defining characteristic. Of course the problem with STD is clearly the bad writing, since most of the, uh, non woke characters are basic caricatures as well. The unfortunate thing is that often bad writers with good intentions think that 'gay' or 'non binary' is enough to make an inherently well written character when it isn't any more than 'heterosexual' would make a good non woke character. The net effect is the feeling that you're being preached to, and worse, preached to very very badly. Ultimate problem is of course that writing good characters whatever their skin colour/ sexual orientation/ occupation/ etc is is hard, and few people can do it. There also don't seem to be any consequences for those who are bad writers, so it's self perpetuating.

To be fair to them, when the formal investigation was launched a decent number of 'rules based order' countries did say they'd enforce it against Bibi/ Gallant as a matter of course, if warrants were issued- the Dutch and Italians at least off the top of my head. That does rely on them being dumb enough to go to those countries though, so it's a fairly low risk statement in terms of having to follow through. UK and Germany, well, they seem so far to be hoping the issue will just disappear so they don't have to commit. And obviously the US was never going to be exactly pleased with the indictments let alone enforce them. There are certainly a few things which may get interesting as a result- eg those countries that have laws against weapons trade with war criminals, or if Netanyahu decides to turn up to the UNGA again next year. Not like the US would arrest him, but even with the ICC not being a UN body having a wanted war criminal address the UN General Assembly would be... interesting, if only to see how many walk out in protest vs the number doing it for Iran or similar.

ICC has now issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant (and Deif, who may be dead anyway).

Eh, which treaty did they break? (IRBM aren't banned any more. INF was 2 party, with the US withdrawing in 2019. It's defunct. Much like all the other agreements Trump or Bush broke Biden had 4 years to reinstate it or renegotiate it if he wanted, but didn't. The US had also systematically and provably abrogated it for years previous via Aegis Ashore, which uses ground based tomahawk launchers. Russia may have as well but that was never proven- indeed, the only accusations of them using weapons that would have been banned under it, in the Ukraine War, are within the last year. This would be the first Russian system used too, since the other accusation (not proven) was a DPRK system) Anyway, looks like it was definitely an IRBM ('Oreshnik') since Putin has announced it as such.