Zoraptor

Yeah, Stalker was undoubtedly popular in the west and the series was multi million selling with very good name recognition. Cossacks also sold literally millions and has very good name recognition in eastern Europe, it's more or less unknown outside of there.

You can't really do that in a civil war though, it's simply too dangerous. Iraq in 2002-3 was stable enough for Blix to go wherever he wanted whenever he wanted, you cannot say the same about Syria in 2013-4.

GSC did release Cossacks 3 (to mixed reviews) recently, so they are back in business. Cossacks is a bit of an odd one in that most people in the west have never heard of it while it sold millions in eastern Europe. Stalker ought to be next, and I'll probably be telling myself that every month for the next five years.

I speak french adequately, that article is no problem to understand. Al Jazeera- even the far better English rather than the ludicrously sectarian Arabic version- is pretty pointless though in this context, HTS is itself a Qatari project to unite the rebels and make Al Qaeda acceptable; and they're always going to back stuff that makes the Syrian government look bad. Bellingcat is... amusing, since it's basically bizarro oby in its russophobia. Anyway, I'll go through both the Bellingcat reports (April 5, April 10), since they're most 'authoritative'. No mention of MSF saying there was also chlorine present. Fair enough in an early article, but there's also no mention in the later article either. Also cherry picks a 'typical summary'. Ah, yes, Dr Shajul Islam. TBDR, he was arrested under the Terrorism Act, accused of kidnapping John Cantlie- and escaped trial when Cantlie was subsequently rekidnapped and could not give evidence. Rekidnapped by ISIS, who at the time included Al Nusra, who became HTS who control Khan Shiekhoun and Binnish- and he was summarily struck off the medical register in the UK. Not exactly an unbiased medical practitioner. Though, of course, Bellingcat and nearly everyone who used him (credit to- cringe- the scum and the daily fail of all people, plus the Times who did) failed to mention any of that. Well that's right at least, and explains the cherry picked 'typical summary' saying rockets instead of the multiple others than say they saw bombs (and heard/ saw the jets immediately beforehand etc) since the debris is clearly part of a rocket, and very similar- what there is of it at least- to the grads used in Ghouta. It would have to be a S-13 though, and they haven't been seen on Syrian Su22, only the S-8 (far too small) and S-24 (far too large) have. For the sake of argument I'll accept that it's possible they have S-13s on their Su22s though, however there's also no evidence of anyone making a S-13 CW warhead, only ground based grads of the same calibre plus there's no rocket engine present only the warhead etc. There's also a significant unmentioned logical problem with using a rocket from an aircraft to deliver CW- simply put, why on earth would you? There's a good reason to have CW weapons in a ground based rockets, namely the laws of physics dictate you need significant velocity to get from A to B and to stop you hitting the ground on the way there whether you use standard artillery or rocket artillery. Neither of those are considerations for an air based rocket though since the plane is, well, flying and can just fly to the right point. Conventional air borne rockets have an advantage in some situations over conventional bombs of course, but none of those advantages apply significantly to CW rockets. For a rocket you have maybe 30% of its weight being CW agent taking casing, rocket engine, propellant and bursting charge into account, with a bomb you get 80%+. Anyway, later article Only one of those is an actual source, the witnesses. The observers have a plane taking off at the right time while the Pentagon's radar trace is not great. Yeah, it's a crap trace, but it is clear that the closest any point supplied comes to correct orientation for a strike on N Khan Sheikhoun is ~8km. That's basically impossible for a bomb, and highly unlikely even for a missile since their designated range is far less than that. If you looked at that trace without knowing where it was meant to show being attacked I think anyone would pick Souran, Kfar Zita, Kfar Nbul, Kernaz and Morek as being targets before KS. That claim was 100% fake, not unclear. Are hardly insurmountable. As with pretty much everything they do the fundamental problem with Bellingcat is that they start from a conclusion and work backwards instead of the reverse. That's fine for a mental exercise that nobody cares about, it's dreadful practice if you're trying to actually find the truth though. As above it's still required to prove that the Su22 was there at the claimed time and dropped the bombs/ fired the missiles containing CW, and witnesses vary very considerably in their descriptions of what hit and have differing recollections of other aspects. There are also significant issues in the 'official' narrative that they do not address at all- the radar trace appears to make the attack as stated unlikely and is basically just dismissed without further question despite supposedly being key evidence earlier, claims from MSF that two CW agents were present etc. Something like the Postol theory (either improvised or actual grad CW warhead detonated on ground; though personally I'd expect a basic cylinder + nebuliser system to actually deliver the CW if it were false flag) would also fit the evidence as would other ground based source. There are other unaddressed problems as well- KS is not a densely populated town and the area hit is clearly not dense residential yet more people were killed on a per rocket basis that in Ghouta, which is entirely low to mid rise buildings and apartments with several hundred thousand population. None of it is conclusive, but then nothing anyone has said has been conclusive.

Errr... They launched that attack on 21 March. By the 23rd it had reached its maximum extent, and never got anywhere close to the Rastan pocket. They certainly posed a threat to the airport, on March 23 to maybe Mar 26, after that they were pushed back nearly to original positions. As of April 4, ~85% of the HTS gains had been reversed and their sole gain was Souran, which is a decent sized town but otherwise utterly unimportant. They had a far more effective attack last year which took important flanking positions such as Ma'an yet failed to prompt chemical weapons, and was also largely reversed later. There was still fighting after April 4 and still ongoing, but the situation on April 4 is ~the same situation as now and ~the same situation as two months ago. Frankly the senior defence official's analysis is a load of old bollocks. If it's a battlefield decision it's used on the battlefield where at least you force the people fighting you to do so in gas masks, at most you kill a lot of them and make good gains. There's no military benefit to dropping a cw bomb on KS- that won't change the battlefield situation one iota. ('Homa' is also the literally the worst transliteration possible, since it doesn't distinguish neighbouring Hama and Homs clearly and I have an automatic negative reaction to any article using it) My deep scepticism about 'unnamed officials' is for precisely that sort of reason- the unnamed official in this case is either deeply misinformed or outright lying about the facts. My deep scepticism about media is that they repeat such stuff with no critical thought whatsoever and this illustrates that perfectly. I'd put the chances of the deconfliction agreement being reinstated as 99%, and 100% if nothing else changes.

The OPCW definitely did inspections, and the list of sites was not only from Syria since they got a list from at least the US as well; which probably incorporated Israeli intelligence. There's just inherent difficulties in carrying out inspections in a war zone, the government doesn't control the whole country and there isn't actually a lot of explicitly CW equipment- except delivery systems such as missiles/ bombs- or chemicals, much of it can be of legitimate use. Think I posted a list of the Tabun's basic precursors a page or so back, none of them are explicit indicators for Tabun and all of them have multiple (almost all common as well) uses. There's very little doubt that the government either wanted to retain some of or be able to quickly rebuild some of its program though. There certainly isn't a convincing argument that Syria doesn't have, or could not have recently made, nerve agents. The only argument would be what quality they'd be, how they could be delivered and most importantly whether they actually used them.

anybody would come to likely conclusion that the navy simple did not update their public site regarding that specific weapon (updating the page don't mean the entry were accurate updated... obvious) lol. Good start. I'm betting there's going to be 100% grasping at straws and 100% flim flam in this reply and no evidence, and I'll bet everything on it... Stop deflecting and posting anything else, post evidence that Syria used CW in Khan Sheiktoun. Eh? The Russians didn't veto the Bolivian resolution, the west blocked it. Oh dear, you didn't know about the Bolivian resolution? Guess the NYT et al forgot to mention it. Bolivians were sufficiently pissed to vote with Russia though. Seems the west doesn't want an investigation either, they just want to be able to blame Russia for there not being one. Wonder why? Could it be the LACK OF EVIDENCE? The western resolution was pure veto trolling, it assumed guilt, required nothing of the western backed Al Qaeda and friends, required lists of personnel- last time that happened to Russia Al Qaeda looked up the personnel's names and targeted them- and invoked article VII which would never pass muster after Libya. And of course I await, with 'bated breath, the resolution about the unauthorised use of force by the US on Syria. I suspect that's Different, just Different though. So, not a thing on actual evidence? Nothing, zilch, zero, duck egg, blank. Come on, post some evidence that Syria used CW in Khan Sheiktoun, I dare you.

It pretty much cannot be one local commander alone. Even by the old US version CW were held in reserves, then distributed as needed which requires at least two local commanders to act in concert in their use. That scenario is not impossible, but still runs into the same obvious logical flaws as if Assad himself ordered it; why would they, and why in that manner. It also doesn't have to be a CW depot hit, organophosphate insecticides give the same symptoms since they're basically the same chemicals with the same mode of action, they just require higher doses- and they are used in large quantities. There are literally millions of OP poisonings a year, and literally 100ks of deaths from them. (Though I do agree that Assad has some chemical weapons still they're not for use in pointlessly bombing random towns, they're for what they've always been for- deterring Israel)

Three months in a row that the US has killed the most civilians in Syria as well. Maybe Obama deserved the Nobel Peace Prize after all at least in comparison to his predecessor/ successor.

Spicer really does illustrate why comparisons to Hitler in just about anything are asinine at best. While some of the reactions are certainly outrage trolling you're setting yourself up for it just by making the comparison, and its use in itself is a form of outrage trolling as well. Self inflicted injury well deserved for being an idiot.

What can I say? It's a tradition, and actually a genuine one as well- though Bill definitely did it to humanise himself since he's seen as a boring robot. In mitigation I can say that Watties Tinned Spaghetti is far nicer than you'd imagine, though it makes the pizza far too soggy for my tastes and I tend to make my pizzas more gourmet than that. ah, so the complaint is that the navy didn't update their website. They did, a day or so ago. I even listed the date. Syria doesn't have enough pilots for its existing planes, they definitely couldn't move everything. And the obvious thing to do is to just move them onto the berms anyway, the armoured hangars were well known to be insufficient. Shrug. The US has produced plenty of bollocks here, without doubt. 20% of a combat wing destroyed morphing to 20% of the entire air force destroyed? There wasn't even 20% of Syria's air force there. Shayrat also changed from Syria's biggest military airport to its second biggest- which is still inaccurate as T4, Sayqal, Hmeimem and Dumayr are larger and at least 3 of those definitely have more planes, albeit the ones at Hmeimem include Russia's. Retroactively removing claims of striking Shayrat's runways, only providing evidence for 16 targets being hit but claiming more without evidence, the radar trace that shows it was at best highly unlikely that a bomb was dropped by the claimed aircraft on Khan Sheiktoun, the airfield is out of use to all practical purposes etc etc. You simply believe it to be true because you want it to be true, not because there's evidence. They also have a known potential weakness flying over featureless surfaces like ocean and have never been tested against Russia. It would also be trivial to provide the evidence of the 'missing' hits, if they existed. As it is we have two sources parroting the same incomplete data as being complete. Equally as convincing as the US's low res satellite images showing 16 targets hit and no more. Fortunately there was plenty of video and pictures from on the ground as well, though for some reason you ignore them, continuously. Prove it. No no, don't post more yellowcake, mobile weapons labs, aluminium tubes etc, assertations and appeals to the authority of interested parties, PROVE IT. Indeed, feel free to provide any actual evidence. Not flim flam about poisonous chemicals being present, do it for something that is actually disputed; ie that a Su22 dropped a chemical bomb on Khan Sheiktoun. Any credible evidence at all, please. You're focussing on anything but proving that, the root issue, for some reason. I've actually provided evidence for the story according to the US being at very best unlikely, you've blithely ignored that to focus on other things while accusing me of deflection. Go on, have a crack at the root issue. If you can. If you don't I assume you can't. The US radar trace is laughable as proof, and barely even counts as credible evidence since it would require an outright bizarre and close to impossible attack pattern or for it to be a missile (which contradicts every witness account, and doesn't fit crater pattern either), and that is the only actual evidence provided except for said random crater. There isn't even a single picture of the remains of the supposed chemical bomb in existence, which would be a good start and for which there should have been multiple sources. If it were a chemical warhead. At least with Ghouta there were plenty of pictures of them; KS though, not a jpg, not a potato pic, nothing. It's still in use. There are pictures of Su22 with the same tail numbers taking off, landing, then taking off again, rearmed, as I said then you ignored. However many tomahawks hit if they were meant to stop the airfield being functional- and I'll go with Mattis here that that was the aim- it failed. You can argue that it failed deliberately and was meant near purely as a demonstration, but you can't argue that it has put the airfield out of action though, because it isn't. Anyway, I applaud your stated desire to focus on the core issues at hand. So I eagerly await some actual evidence that Syria used a CW bomb. I won't, er, hold my breath though nor will I expect anything other than appeals to authority and Al Qaeda sources. Feel free to surprise me.

Maybe it just gets more coverage here. It's a lot rarer to overbook in most other places either because most flights aren't full or because the tolerances are lower. Regular overbooking here would fall subject to the Consumers Guarantee Act and contract law; offering a service for payment when you know there's a reasonable chance it cannot be fulfilled as described will get you a legal smack. It's happened once on a non US flight for me, KLM from Schiphol to NY but it was only one person effected- he was standing at the gate during boarding with the attendants to see if anyone checked in didn't board as they simply closed boarding/ check in once the flight was full. Since it's done sequentially they can also usually say that they deny carriage because those effected are too late (as if everyone turns up x hours early as supposedly required) instead of overbooking, and being late is your fault so a free rebooking and accommodation is a privilege in that case. This case wasn't classic overbooking anyway, since the passengers removed were already seated rather than denied seating; the airline decided that they needed those seats for themselves very late in the piece and after the flight was loaded.

ceb are still in use, at least according to... the US Navy. Think I'll go with them, thanks. To whit: "Block III TLAM-D - conventional submunitions dispenser with combined effect bomblets." Updated, April 10 2017, so it's not an abandoned page- cunningly titled 'US Navy Tomahawk fact file', so easy to miss- either. This is a forum for reasoned discussion and analysis of the facts, please don't post any more fake news/ alternative facts designed to muddy the waters with flim flam razzle dazzle, they're tiresome to correct. And in any case, frag bomblets take out parked aircraft absolutely fine. Those six MiG23s parked by the runway would have made a nice satellite image when destroyed, not so nice when they're just sitting there happy as Larry early next morning. Way more efficient too than 3 tomahawks per shelter or whatever the current claim is to get to58 tomahawks arriving. (Ironic really. If this were any other subject at all you and Agiel would be ridiculing Trump and his administration's penchant for fake news/ alternative facts, but because the failure is embarrassing to the image of the US military you're staunchly defending him)

TLAM-D can target a runway fine, since it's cluster based. Would also have the advantage of hitting the aircraft parked on berms as well like the MiG23s that were just sitting there, chillin', after the attack. Mostly though it's kind of embarrassing- and would obviously be so- having it back in action a few hours later. At least that way claims that the runway's existence is trivial anyway can be somewhat supported instead of having multiple videos of obviously armed sukhois taking off and landing. In any case original claims made were that it was hit and out of action, the story only changed later. Indeed, there's clearly been some... 'retconning', shall we say, going on from the press to clean up the mess, the claim that the runway was targeted has been edited out of some articles eg this one though you can find quotes from the article in original form elsewhere (sanity warning, neogaf).

A shot on goal that is saved by a goalkeeper is still accurate, even if it doesn't end up in goal. You seem not to know the definition of accurate. Not a surprise given your general ignorance on most issues. There's been no proof offered of 59 hits, the goalposts have been moved (runway targeting to no runway targeting), the base is still in use and has been since 6 hours after the strike for arming and refueling, and while metre resolution images of some damage has been released most of that claimed has not despite it being trivial to do so. He who asserts, proves, and the US has so far done lots of asserting, and almost no proving.

New MBs and them working consistently at the RAM's rated frequency are what I want most- we also have a dearth of mid range boards available here as they're almost all less than $200 or more than $350. I might be able to hold off for Vega to see what they offer, but most estimates have that a month away still (and expensive due to HBM) and at some point I have to stop waiting and actually buy. Since I'm currently on a 1920x1200 monitor a 580 type ought to be more than enough as well.

P R O J E C T I O N. And FTR, nobody is saying that the Tomahawks are inaccurate in the usual sense, nobody. The ones that arrived seem to have hit the targets they were aimed at, though some may have been aimed at targets that were moved. Once they get off the ocean and can use terrain scanning, inertia and GPS they were clearly accurate. The question at hand is how many got the chance to be accurate. Pretty easy to prove damage conclusively and it was done for 16 targets, but not for 44. Provide evidence of those extra 28 targets at the same resolution/ scale as the others and it'd all have been fine, don't, and you will face questions why you haven't.

you keep misrepresenting. That's called projection. I'm saying they got the attribution wrong in one specific case. You have to show that the system used is consistently enough correct for an misattribution to be impossible, or for it not to have happened in that case. You can say that the system is perfect and has been since the 80s, but if it shoots down friendly planes it is not perfect and makes mistakes. End of Story. At this point it's got more holes than a nice bit of gruyere. (1) The radar track of the Su22 the DoD released is completely inconclusive. It doesn't actually show the Su22 over Khan Sheikoun at any point despite its caption, and at its closest point to the target it's flying in the wrong direction to hit KS with a dumb bomb. If it was dropping bombs from low altitude it is literally impossible for that aircraft to have hit the area specified. At 5000m to be above Manpads they'd have to be travelling at very least supersonic when dropping their bombs on any other vector shown as it requires ~8km momentum travel. There's no point flying supersonic at that altitude though, since you're above the AA ceiling anyway and might as well fly slower, be more accurate and save fuel and wear and tear. To be fair, the trace released by the DoD is utter crap and lacks basics such as a scale so I had to approximate distances on wikimapia, so there is some wiggle room. But not much. (2) Witness statements include there being bleach/ chlorine (independently verified), ammonia (many), rotten eggs, almonds and spoiled food smells. Only one of those is consistent with Sarin; spoiled food, since organic amines are often used to stabilise it. The others are consistent with other chemicals and while there are some potential explanations such as people confusing bleach cleaner smell with ammonia cleaner smell since they have the same general purpose you'd be hard pressed to explain the others rationally. It's consistent with a chemical store being hit though; but you literally cannot bung all of those into a chemical warhead, you'd destroy the nerve agent. And eventually the warhead, you certainly wouldn't want to handle it or have it stuck to your plane. (3) Nerve gas is not particularly hard to make, it's just hard to make so it lasts for years. If a country, or company, has the capability to make organophosphate insecticides- fly spray, commercial agricultural sprays etc- it can make nerve gas since they're the same thing with different specificities. You'll also get similar symptoms to Sarin if you gas yourself with chlorpyrifos and similar; they're less toxic, not non toxic. Should also be noted than the almond smell, cyanide, is a precursor for Tabun, as is notoriously 'rotten food smelling' dimethylamine. You will also, inevitably, get a bleach smell from chlorine or other bleach contributors (HCl) from synthesis, or precursors, of the other direct Tabun precursor, phosphonyl chloride. Hydrogen sulphide (rotten eggs) and most of those others can also be used in insecticide synthesis. It's plausible that they did hit a chemical store and had a mini Bhopal as a result. (4) The focus of proof has been on proving that the CW weren't a hoax, not their source- that's been assertional and when not, at very best equivocal such as the radar trace. That's perhaps the oldest PR trick in the book, focus on something nobody actually disagrees with to discredit the stuff people do disagree with. The Syrian/ Russian story is not that there were no CW, only that they didn't use them and they came from a ground store. (5) Yellowcake, aluminium tubes, mobile WMD labs, 45 minutes to bombs over London etc etc. Not a specific objection, more an example from history.

As someone who doesn't have a cooler I'd be looking at the 1600, but I'm still pretty certain to go 1700. 1600 is same price as a 7600 non k ($350 in NZ to be specific) yet if it follows the pattern with the 1700 can be overclocked almost as high as the X model even on the 'free' stock cooler. Definitely not the obvious price performance win of the 1700 vs 1800x though, and at this point I think I'd prefer to spend the extra $150 for the future proofing of 8 cores. There are also meant to be a shed load of new motherboards being released over the next few weeks, and the 'new' video cards.

OPCW was, actually, since they're a theoretically neutral party unlike the US or Russia. They even got a Nobel Prize for it.

Well yeah, it is, by definition. That's what friendly fire is. (1) The patriot system friendly fire failure was specifically labelled as not being caused by (avoidable) operator error, but by a complicated system. (2) Many thousands of hours? The whole war lasted less than a thousand, and (3) that in a conflict in which the number of sorties actually flown by Iraq was... zero. There'd have been less losses if he operators had actually been incompetent and been asleep the entire time. So, if radar is capable, alone, of identifying aircraft reliably why not cut the complication and just use radar? Because it isn't capable of doing it, alone, it isn't capable of doing it with absolute reliability even when combined with IFF transponders and all other factors. Your and Agiel's entire argument is that it cannot have been a wrong attribution because such systems are accurate when it's asterisking obvious that it can be a wrong attribution.

For fighter aircraft perhaps it doesn't have the speed and acuity that is preferable, but as I've elaborated before with ground-based platforms processing power is not an issue and could easily have distinguished between aircraft types. Oh ffs, the friendly fire incidents in 2003 were from ground based Patriot missile batteries and very well publicised. So much for reliable radar only identification from the late 80s onwards. What, like DoD officials tweeting that their launch targets included the runway at Shayrat then claiming that was never the aim when it was shown undamaged the next day? Like Mattis claiming the runway is of trivial use when Syrian airplanes- clearly armed- have been using it since a few hours after the air strikes? Like him claiming that 20% of Syria's planes were destroyed? Flim flam razzle dazzle yes indeedy. Has been available from April 7, and is the source for 16 targets being hit because they only show 16 targets hit. The rest is 28 circles drawn at a kilometer level scale which could show literally anything and for which there isn't any purpose in not zooming in unless they're on a 1996 server that can only handle five MB level pngs. They're also claiming more targets hit in more areas than the fricking US DoD itself does.

That was a contributing factor (especially in Syria), but not at all in, say, Libya. The factors vary for different places. The broadest root cause is that arab countries tend to have a high population growth rate but low economic one. That means that large segments of the population are either under or unemployed with very little prospects except of getting poorer. Add to that the influence of endemic corruption and radical Islam telling them that things can be All Right in the next life and you have a recipe for radicalisation. Fair dos to Tunisia though, it was the least violent revolution and most successful; albeit in part because their radicals went off fighting elsewhere.

If you're talking deterrence factor and salami slicing then there has been no deterrence yet even with the US alone spending more than 10x what Russia does on the military. Few billion more won't make a difference- and there have never been salami slices against anyone already in NATO anyway. NATO is meant to be a defensive alliance for the North Atlantic, not an extension and projection of imperial power. It's also pretty apparent that the salami slices happen as a response to and in order to block further NATO expansion.

Those rumours have been around for ages. To be honest they're pretty likely to be true, especially if the new movies are off limits to EA and they aren't really doing that much with the licence otherwise apart from Battlefront. As for romances, I'd probably settle for Ithorians since they're in KOTOR already. Though I'd be thinking of Ishi Tib or Lepi (don't judge me, please) I should have picked a Rik Mayall as Lord Flashheart avatar instead of Alan B'Stard. Replacing Obi Wan with Flash would immensely improve the prequels. Though to be fair, replacing just about any character with Flash would improve anything. And make it far shorter.