Zoraptor

I'm mostly interested in how does all of this apply to uses in real situations portrayed in fiction - so red crosses are on medical tents in Battlefield 1. That'd be an accurate historical portrayal, right? And how about ambulances in games, like Prison Architect? Does Red Cross belong on an ambulance? As others have said it's probably not enforceable in the sense that they'd have a slam dunk win in court, it justs costs money to defend against and would potentially be very bad PR ('violent game maker drags honourable humanitarians through court!!!') as well. On the two examples given I'd say they'd have no chance vs BF1 since it is an accurate historical depiction, but they might have a case against PA since the Red Cross is licensed for use on ambulances via countries' services, ie there's a US Red Cross organisation, a New Zealand Red Cross, an Egyptian Red Crescent etc so they could claim that licensing would be required for non historical usage. PA may also have some issues specifically because the RC tends to have problems with executions.

Oddly enough I don't particularly 'respect' Assange and never have at least in the 'being honourable' aspects of respect despite being a fairly strong defender of him. Respect/ honour is a fine concept but at those sort of consequence levels I'd expect anyone to do just about anything as avoidance, and Assange has already done some morally questionable stuff for such reasons- at very least he's stiffed the guarantors of his UK bail; albeit I'd be surprised if they didn't at minimum half expect him to do so and they were not short of cash. But as such I never expected him to uphold that or any other pledge relating to his continued freedom/ 'freedom' as I wouldn't expect anyone (nearly) to. OTOH I do respect Snowden as his conduct has been about as honourable as it's possible to get in the circumstances. If he pledged to do the same exchange I'd actually believe it- though I'd think he was very ill advised to carry it out without at minimum absolutely cast iron guarantees. I didn't say it, I just paraphrased what a pundit said. I understood from 'the rationale [you] heard' that you were paraphrasing what others had said, as such my comment was aimed at the rationale rather than you in a personal sense. Indeed, I'm pretty sure that was basically Obama's rationale (yep, Der Spiegel interview, Nov last year) for why he couldn't pardon Snowden- though there's plenty of precedent against that reasoning, most famously Ford pardoning Nixon.

The international treaty may be a Trademark treaty rather than the GC, since the ICRC is head quartered in Geneva they'd use international agreements of trademarks if TM protection was their aim outside Switzerland. The Geneva Convention provisions tend to have specific applications such as big P Perfidy, they're about as non trivial as it's possible to get and their infraction is a literal war crime. They won't be used to target videogames which are completely at the other end of the triviality scale. Targeting unauthorised use of trademarks or copyright material is very common though, similar to how you have 'Vintar' rather than Vintorez rifles in Stalker or Infernus rather than Diablo (double jeopardy there) cars in GTA because if you didn't you'd get a removal or licensing demand Solution is easy enough anyway, just use the Rod of Asclepius/ Caduceus instead.

Meh, he's better than the Swedish prosecution that leaked literally everything from interviews to victim statements to Assange's name in the first place- of course, no charges or sackings for those leaks. The US and Sweden have been so utterly dishonest he shouldn't hand himself over to either under any circumstances. He didn't flee to Russia, the US cancelled his passport while he was in the Russian transit lounge- en route to Bolivia, hence Evo Morales' plane being forced down for a Vienna Convention breaking search a little later. That's the same technically not quite slanderous tactic used against Assange to claim he fled Sweden when the prosecutor said he had no case to answer then another prosecutor just happened to reinstate charges after he'd left.

Meh, I hate those sort of articles, they're a once over lightly approach manifesting as actual analysis. The struggle between good occidentalism and recidivist barbaric oreintalism is as always primarily framing the author's western exceptionalism rather than saying much of anything about Russia itself. Some of it makes literally no sense at all, eg "The more Western leaders, and especially American presidents, talk about resetting relations with Moscow, the more the Dostoevskian president distrusts them"- like Trump, presumably? Nah, stupid quote rooted in the old canard of the Inscrutable Oriental which assumes bad faith from one party simply because he's the 'bad guy' and that's what he does (commensurately we are the good guys, so we do good, don't you feel warm and special? Nah, cheap positive feelz for, well, moronz). You can easily see the point at which Putin started actively distrusting Obama and that point was Libya- when the west blatantly lied about their intentions and functionally rewrote a passed UNSC resolution to mean regime change instead of civilian protection. As soon as that happened Russia and China have vetoed everything involving military adventurism with a UN stamp. That decision also informs Putin's decision to protect Assad more than anything else, as well as Ukraine. Most of Obama's FP wounds have not really been inflicted by Putin, they're self inflicted and Putin's just taken advantage of them. The ironic thing is that if the Russian goal was really to delegitimise the electoral process as a whole- ignoring that it's already fairly deligitimised by low turn out, gerrymandering, lack of term limits, corps as people and superPACs, other funding issues, voter suppression, crusty erratic voting machines etc- about the best way to deligitimise it is to have a weeks, months long campaign designed to say that Vladimir Putin got Donald Trump elected. For that it doesn't even matter whether he did it or not, if his goal is to reduce faith in the electoral process then he's won, automatically, with the enthusiastic help of his supposedly most strident opponents.

Had a barbeque at my sisters, didn't have to drive so I drank a fair bit (mostly homebrew, and haven't gone blind or had a hangover so bonus there) which I don't get much opportunity to do nowadays, and generally had a good night.

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.