Zoraptor

You can't. Those with a few smarts will actually agree and say that Saudi is reprehensible as well, but that should not detract from Russia's flaws which is perfectly true. Otherwise, call it 'whataboutism' (lazy, pathetic, abject term that it is), since we're talking about how horrible Russia is and nothing else, or accuse someone bringing it up of being paid by Russia in lieu of an actual argument. I'd say that gay rights is well down the list of things that don't make the US and Russia friends though (since they are friends with Saudi etc; being active geopolitical rivals is enough for dislike pretty much by definition), that's primarily used as part of a 'smorgasbord' approach where you lay out all the bad things about [entity] and people can choose which bits they individually are outraged about. That's actually how 'fake news' works too except there the smorgasbord has lots of 'fake' dishes to pick from and the aim may also be to confuse and obfuscate. Practically, both have some true/ false stuff mixed in with them- eg 'fake news' from WaPo of Russians hacking the power grid or CNN that Russia was going to deprive US children in Russia of an education by shutting their school down. While corrections are issued there's still an effect and the selective reporting has lead to 50% of Clinton voters believing that Russia literally hacked and altered votes in the election despite Obama and everyone else actively shutting that idea down.

Sounds awfully Orwellian to me. What's next? Dunno, probably a lot of talk about 'fake news', a lot of talk about the provocations and warmongering of the Old Enemy, and a lot of talk about how there are too many internal divisions due to the warmongering and lying of the enemy and we need increased internal harmony- and the commensurate need to establish entities to correct the enemies' lies, ensure that war does not start and promote internal harmony. Now, if only someone could come up with catchy names for those entities, "Centre Against Terrorism and Hybrid Threats" is just plain unwieldy. (though yeah, 'lack of extra privileges' is a... unusual way to put being thrown in jail for 'promoting' homosexuality. Stupid and oppressive law mostly done to pander to conservatives in the Russian Orthodox Church. Though it doesn't help that most gay rights' groups in Russia have external funders who are not exactly friendly to Russia or Putin)

Yeah, they weren't exactly subtle. That's one of those things that is technically true, but... Russia's Purchasing Power Parity per capita GDP is around 50% higher than Mexico's in WB, IMF and CIA estimates. Nominal GDP is a pretty useless- actively misleading, often- measure as it doesn't take varying cost of living into account. PPP measures the practical worth of economic output rather than the theoretical value, in other words.

The Russian response is in and it's... no expulsions and US diplomats have been invited to the Kremlin's New Year's Celebrations. Probably the best gauged response possible in the circumstances as it's both a pointed insult to Obama and allows Trump some room to remove or end run the sanctions should he wish to. Putin is the issue. The way he rose to power, his methods, his lack of ethics and manipulation. But I happen to think cuddling up to Islam and soft marxism like the far left does is more dangerous. I don't know where the democrats find moral high ground here while they take money from Saudi despots and actively defend a destructive religious ideology. Putin rose to power from basically nowhere by being appointed as VP by Yeltsin, supposedly as he guaranteed Yeltsin's family would not be done for their massive embezzlement. That's about it, really- Yeltsin did a great job utterly ruining the prospects of a western style (meh, authoritarian 'market economy' driven kleptocracy, decide for yourself whether that's 'western style') 'liberal' party winning for decades by being utterly incompetent, bankrupting the country and dropping the most people into poverty of anyone in the 20th century. There's no need for suppression as nobody will vote for the 'liberal' parties, suppression comes about because most of the 'liberal' parties are- definitively- supported in massive scale by outside states and individuals in the same style as the various Colour revolutions were. And that leaves Zyuganov's ossified Commies and Zhirinovsky's comical fascists as alternatives. Yeltsin's incompetence, and the gleeful high fiving of the west while it happened set the scene for the current revanchism. It's also telling that for all the negatives Putin has fewer journalists and political opponents have died under suspicious or criminal circumstances in his 16 years than in Yeltsin's 8 (and more died in a 3 month period (!) in Ukraine last year than either with barely a murmur), and Yeltsin's 1996 victory was both internally dodgy- estimates are that Yeltsin outspent the legal limit by a minimum 15000, yes, 15000% minimum and there was statistically improbably results where districts suddenly voted Yeltsin that didn't in the 1st round- and influenced overtly by the US government to favour Yeltsin. Everyone else may have ignored or forgotten that, or choose to interpret it as the west 'helping' Russia or whatever, but you can guarantee Putin hasn't, and has a more... realistic interpretation of where that western 'help' was leading. Putin's the issue because he's competent, not subject to influence in the same way Yeltsin was and thus is frequently an opponent. That's about it, really. In terms of brutal suppression and the like he's miles behind multiple western allies who McCain and like would never dream of criticising (Saudi especially).

Pretty sure that's even (essentially) what they did with Jar Jar all those years ago. Ahmed Best walked around holding a Jar Jar lollipop as well as delivering the lines, then Jar Jar was CGIed in over him. It's certainly how Gollum was done in LOTR with whole body replacement rather than just face. If there's a problem with the system it's that expectations have moved on from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and there's definitely an inherent difficulty in acting well in front of blue/ green screens where the surroundings and what is happening are being described to you rather than you seeing them.

Yep, wouldn't be overly surprised if there's only some 'we are outraged!!!' language and they don't even expel anyone to be honest. Any significant retaliation makes it a lot harder for Trump to reverse US actions later. "Obama is sure trying to start a war with Russia and then the Dems will try to blame Trump for it and he'll have to clean up their mess. L0L" He's just trying to make things difficult for Trump in general via Executive Orders and trying to set up a framework to protect his EO's from being rescinded. There's no way this would start even a metaphorical war (that's already ongoing) and has almost no practical effects unless people actually believe that the FSB and GRU are operating openly in the US. It doesn't even target the SVR- actual civilian rather than military Russian external intelligence so they can just redesignate everyone into that organisation and carry on as usual. Pure posturing and unless they can produce some actual evidence- not vials of white powder and schema of WMD mobile labs style- of hacking it's also primarily domestic politics. Heh, even Obama said that Wikileaks had the DNC stuff from another source so it's solely down to John 'p@ssw0rd' Podesta's email getting hacked as influence. Well, yeah. Would have been interesting watching the Rs try to filibuster Supreme Court nominations for 4 entire years.

US has expelled 35 Russian diplomats, closed two spy sites and sanctioned the FSB and GRU- but not the SVR, which is slightly odd- plus miscellaneous for election tampering and harassment of US diplomats in Russia (which supposedly includes closing, uh, 25 (!) CIA stations english language facilities inside Russia); via executive order.

That is wrong, plenty of states will still send you to jail for possession. It has been changing slowly, but right now only 20 states have decriminalized possession. http://www.drugpolicy.org/drug-war-statistics Decriminalisation is a different issue from what punishment there is if it's still, uh, criminal. Some driving offences work as examples, marijuana possession under a decriminalised system usually results in a small fine much like a mild driving offence- slight speeding, say- will get you a ticket rather than an appearance in court. Small scale possession under a criminalised system is more like a more serious driving offence where you will get arrested, go through court and get a conviction (here at least you can generally get a first offence waived on the formal conviction front so long as the offence isn't serious) but the punishment seldom involves jail time but more often a fine, remedial course, driving ban or similar. That link starts talking about strictly pot related issues but then starts conflating general prison stats and general drug stats which badly confuses the issue. That the US has 2 million+ in jail is largely irrelevant if only a few thousand are due to pot possession infractions; even the total number of those in prison for general drug possession (including coke/ crack/ heroin/ meth etc as well as pot) is irrelevant if very few people are imprisoned for pot possession. They don't say how many people are in jail specifically for pot possession, and they really need to in order to make a valid point.

Hey, we've still got Andrew Ridgeley. So at least it isn't Wham! Bam! yet. And that, I hope, is a rap for the bad puns. (George Michael seemed like a decent guy despite the substance abuse problems, he's one that I'm not in the least bit surprised was donating money all over the place. I always found speculation about his sexuality a bit odd though, I didn't have a clue what 'gay' was when Club Tropicana, er, came out, but those white budgie smugglers were not the most hetero look ever when I did)

I have not the slightest doubt that SAC etc wouldn't want to be reliant on Russian rocket engines even if they were 100% reliable and state of the art. The Pentagon in general has been quite so circumspect though.

In terms of the practicalities of them as weapons there are already multiple times more nukes in the hands of the US and Russia than are needed so having ten times instead of six times as many hardly matters. That does make it all kind of pointless in terms of value for money unless they're going to retire expensive older models which seems unlikely. Would be kind of lol if the US had to buy the rocket engines for any new ICBMs off of Russia though.

We had the traditional Christmas meal (Turkey roast, ham, potatoes etc; Christmas pud, fresh berries and creme caramel) on Boxing Day this year and a more NZ Christmas meal (salads, cold meats, pavlova etc) away on actual Christmas. Weather a pleasant 20 odd celsius- my sister is in Perth and it was something like 40 there which I imagine was an interesting experience. I get one day to relax then I have to get the house ready for an influx of visitors in January and get the stuff done I've been putting off for months.

Clinging to it is high energy, letting it go is low energy. We don't want to be low energy, now do we people? Check and mate.

It's general countermeasures against TOW, usually, rather than jamming per se. eg Shtora cannot jam standard TOW but it can (theoretically) automatically throw smoke to put off the operator's aim, if the launch is detected. You can also try things that are more akin to what is thought of as jamming, like spoof the guidance flare the operator uses to see the missile in flight to confuse them, but it's usually operator confusion/ suppression or a moving/ dodging target that causes a miss rather than a direct jamming effect on the guidance mechanism. You can attack the guidance wires as well, though not really in a jamming sense. In the Yom Kippur War Israeli fixed tank positions were sometimes protected with wire mesh or barbed wire so as to snag/ break/ disrupt the signal along Malyutka control wires, but that was a very limited counter for specific situations, and was more than 40 years ago as well.

The heart went out of Oby when Wals and Monte stopped being around so much. Not much point trolling westlings when nobody is responding. The Russians are training T90 crews which seems to make a huge difference compared to bog standard T55/62/72 usage but the captured and hit T90s were both manned by a militia (possibly either bought by or being tested for Iran) and the other ones in use seem to be by Tiger Force which are elite units, but Syrian elite units. I doubt Russians are crewing any of them outside of any guarding their bases. The Shtora jamming system is pretty old and shouldn't work against certain atgms including TOW- the T90 that was hit had Shtora but was hit full on by the TOW- it also has practical limitations as to how long it can operate continuously especially in a desert type situation. That T90 was likely saved by its Kontakt-5 ERA (theoretically effective against tandem warheads like TOW2) instead as well as being hit on the front turret rather than lower on the hull. There's a pic of it after recovery showing some of the damage. You can tell the Russians were pretty pleased with its performance since the video of the hit even got uploaded to RT.

Turkish losses are up to 16 from yesterday now, and they had 2 Leo2's (slight/ potential NSFW warning for link, I can't see any bodies present but could be missing one) captured too, though supposedly they were destroyed later by airstrikes. The additional knocked out Leo2 from yesterday is confirmed now as well, side hit from a Metis- probably- or maybe even a Malyutka. So that's likely seven, six confirmed, Leo2's lost out of 35 that are known to have been committed. They're not absolutely top of the line models, but then ISIS doesn't have much in the way of top line ATGMs either. Doesn't compare that well to the T90 experience from the government side where one has been captured in an unusable state and one probably damaged beyond repair- another survived a direct hit from a TOW to the front turret, gun was likely unusable after though.

I don't want to be too nitpicky; but I would certainly hope that when looking for an 'inevitable' collapse to compare the current situation to it would happen a little faster than the time between Caesar and Constantine- a mere 350 odd years. That's an awful long time for a gradual collapse, especially since that time frame includes mediocre leaders such as, er, Augustus, Hadrian, Trajan etc and the period when Rome was indisputably at its strongest. If anything the problem with later Rome was that it didn't even bother trying to assimilate the new settlers and treated them with utter contempt, thought themselves inherently superior, stole from them etc etc leading to such utterly pointless wasteful and unnecessary imbecilities as happened at Adrianople. A more rational and less born to the purple attitude and Rome could easily have survived. Would have helped if they didn't continually kill off all the half way competent leaders (Stilicho, Aetius, Majorian) as well. (I think Merkel's open door policy was moronic, but comparisons to Rome aren't so much not in the same ballpark as not in the same city)

They conquered them by force (mostly), but they didn't assimilate them by force. The Empire had a few rules like 'no human sacrifice' but generally allowed conquered people to keep their own culture so long as they didn't fight Rome and paid their taxes etc. They'd (generally, again) lose their own culture fairly rapidly in any case, but such is the nature of assimilation. Their success was such that you had emperors from every corner of the Empire without anyone batting an eyelid- Hadrian was Spanish, Constantine was Thracian, Severus was African etc etc. And I'm not quite sure which Roman Empire you're thinking of which didn't rely on 'migrants' to do the stuff Romans wouldn't; foreign slaves- by definition, since Roman citizens could not be enslaved- were doing the jobs Romans wouldn't do for multiple, multiple centuries prior to the collapse of the WRE.

Bro, Rome successfully assimilated most of western and southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East from the time of the Social War (~90BC) and it was a successful model up until... 370ish AD? Probably not the example you're looking for, really.

14 Turkish soldiers were killed in Al Bab yesterday, doubling the total killed since they entered Syria- possibly including another Leopard 2 loss as well which would make 5 in total (3 confirmed). Since Al Bab is a moderate sized town small city (~50k) it puts the difficulties of taking Mosul into perspective and makes the SDF taking Manbij (~150k) and the Syrians recapturing East Aleppo (~1 million) in about the same time Turkey and allies have been trying to take Al Bab into perspective.

Russia bribed some Chechens to fight other Chechens who could not be bought- that is the secret of the 2nd Chechen War and the ongoing counter insurgency. It's also an ancient strategy used since earlier than the Roman Empire (eg a large proportion of the army Alexander fought at Granicus was actually Greek, not Persian, though it obviously wasn't a successful tactic there). Chechnya is not really a good example as that was a fully fledged war with identified leaders instead of a few radicals hiding in a general population. Plus, everyone has been trying to kill Baghdadi/ 'Ibrahim' for 2 years and most have been trying to kill Zawahiri for longer without success; and despite Russian success in the conventional part of the Chechen War it's still an ongoing problem so far as terrorism goes. People would take Germany's terrorism problem over Russia's every day of the week.

He's been released. There's been enough time that they probably did a DNA test and it didn't match any in the truck- and if so then he obviously didn't do it. It does leave the rather inescapable conclusion that whoever the driver was he's still out there.

"LMAO All this talk about 'faithkless electors' against Trump and it 'faithless el;ectors' who thumped Clinton. LMAO" If my options as an elector were The Hillary and The Donald I'd have voted for Colin Powell as well, and eaten any fine. Not many people who get hacked come out of it looking better than they did before- certainly not the DNC or Podesta. Might be something to learn there for the next election cycle.

"Nah. he is the ONLY president to allow a forgein government to hack an US election." Having watched his press conference I'm not sure what Obama's position actually is, since he says that Wikileaks had the DNC leaks before the Russians did the hacking, to whit: Which fits perfectly with Seth Rich leaking the docs as Assange claimed, but not with Russia 'hacking' the DNC to influence anything as pretty much everyone else is claiming. And at least like General Hayden admitting the US won the 1996 election for that inebriated cretin Boris Yeltsin he's passably honest, on that at least. That only leaves John 'p@ssw0rd' Podesta's emails being hacked as potentially the Russian's responsibility and there's literally nothing you can do to stop a private individual working for a private entity being that sort of abject moran. Seems there's been a deliberate policy to obfuscate from Hillary's supporters in the press with selective leaking to target and dicredit two of their favourites: Wikileaks and Russia. Indeed, Politifact [sic] went so far as claiming Podesta's emails were released to obfuscate Trump's "grab them by the [kitty cat]" video using a WL tweet on their release as reference. Unfortunately, Wikileaks actually released them hours before making the announcement tweet and thus before that video was released- so if there was obfuscation going on it had to be in the reverse direction. A such I rate Politifact's fact check as: complete bollocks.

I'm vaguely disappointed that 'Caligula' isn't about the roman emperor. The achievement list would have been, uh, unique if it were.