Zoraptor

Yep, though that includes 'suicide'. Both the David Kelly ('committed suicide' in such an obscure way that many doctors aren't sure it's even technically possible to have done so) and Gareth Williams (committed suicide by locking himself inside a duffle bag, according to his employers the SIS, who didn't notice (!) he had disappeared for a week or more) 'suicides' almost certainly would have been labelled as political murder if they'd been in Russia- and of course there are those seven 'suicides' in six weeks that have happened in Ukraine, which their interior ministry have labelled as a good thing. Though that is also what nobody can quite explain about Nemtsov, why Putin would kill him when he has other means of control such as imprisonment, and why he'd bother assassinating someone whose only significance is that westerners liked him. Politically he was irrelevant and had been for 15 years, not really due to Putin either, western support is very much a poisoned chalice. Even the 2011 protests had very little support for 'liberals' despite what was said, unless said 'liberals' liked waving Russian Imperial Flags and Soviet Flags rather a lot. Still, it's rather a good example of how Putin is exactly as competent/ incompetent as needed to fit the narrative. Some days ago it was how the murderers would never be found and they should have been captured within hours, proof of Putin's involvement, now he apparently can't even find a proper patsy to take the blame, which is also proof of his involvement.

Yeah, he was looking pretty good for a dead deposed alien abductee when meeting the Kygryz President. Putin can troll without even trying.

Guess it's appropriate that on St Paddy's day we get mention of mythical creatures that guard pots of gold.

Or alternatively, you'd have Qatar, UAE, and worst of all by far, Saudi Arabia all with nuclear weapons a few years at most later. They'll all want the bomb if Iran has it, nothing surer. Yeah, other countries without nuclear weapons aspirations make 20% U235 as well. Pretty sure Brazil's annual production of it is a fair bit higher than Iran's entire accumulated stockpile was, too.

According to the IAEA Iran has converted its 20% stockpile and haven't made more. So they aren't enriching to 20%. So either Bibi or the IAEA (/CIA / Mossad) are spouting crap, most people's money will be on Bibi for that honour rather than the people who have been on the ground and who are experts in the matter. Not taking Al Jazeera as a reliable source in this case is pretty odd too, they have a very strong editorial dislike of Iran (due to being run and financed by the Qatari royal family; see their coverage of Syria, Yemen where they are stridently anti anyone friendly to Iran and- especially if you read/ watch their arabic output- pro some of the more dingbat sunni alternatives; though not quite as much dingbat fringe as Saudi), they aren't going to be saying anything positive about Iran just because.

Only one I haven't read is the last one. I'll probably read it at some stage, but at the moment I rather appreciate the feeling that there is something to come.

I tend to agree, hence why I stopped responding to all attempts to move the goal posts further some time ago. You can lead a horse to water, but sometimes you're better off leading it to the glue factory. Anyway, let's get back to the real topic: mysterious deaths of political figures. Apparently there has been an outbreak of 'suiciditis' in Ukraine, opposition figures appear to be particularly prone with six (or seven, since a prosecutor in Odessa 'jumped from window' today) succumbing to this unfortunate disease in the past six weeks. (Rather puts into perspective those Putin lists of a similar number over a 17 year period)

Well, it ain't every day your own intelligence/ security service basically calls you a liar, and I suspect that has done bibi a whole lot of damage. It'd be like MI6 or the CIA telling people that Iraq had no WMD in early 2003. Not sure Lieberman's comments about chopping arab israeli's heads off have helped either given ISIS is a thing, even given that he isn't actually Likud.

I rather suspect the German people generally didn't care much about politics at the end of WW2 as they had bigger things on their minds, and were far more glad that the war was over. In any case it would be difficult to prove their attitude as it would be unlikely they could freely express any lingering sympathy/ admiration for it under occupation even if they were given the opportunity of an opinion poll or similar. I cannot imagine there would be very much lingering sympathy for those who swore blind that Berlin would never be bombed and there would be 1000 years of glory after what that lead to in reality, the deaths of millions of germans and the levelling of much of the country in an incontrovertable and absolute defeat. It does also bear remembering that Churchill got voted out of office despite winning the war. People were sick of war and wanted a change, and there was far less war weariness in Britain than Germany.

No, actually you did, you just don't realise it because you plain aren't very good at maths. The percentage whether it be 25-30 or 40% [sic, misquoted] is a proportion of total devaluation. My figure is absolutely equivalent to that because it is the mathematical resolution of that proportion applied to the total devaluation it is a proportion of. It doesn't matter whether it's expressed as 25-40% of total or as 12.5-20% (absolute) in that case, because they're the same thing.

"Hey, you can do this and make moar moniez" is not exactly "pushing cultural sensitivity on you". That is how it would be seen by those with an opposing view, though, no matter the intention. Don't get me wrong, I do think it is in principle a good idea- to an extent, and in principle. But then that is pretty much my attitude to political correctness and the like as well. Something like telling Paradox that having a procedurally generated face for Muhammed in CK2 would be seen as offensive would be a good example of where it would work as intended, they could still have him with a portrait if they wanted to but at least would know ahead of time about it. OTOH, Crusader Kings is an inherently offensive term for many muslims anyway, and there's very little chance they didn't know that before hand. Change it to the inoffensive 'Generic Ruler Simulator Period 1000-500 Years Before Present' and it probably doesn't sell as well despite using purely inoffensive terms with no western bias. But it is certainly prone to being manipulated and subverted to suit political agenda, which is what most of the people disagreeing with you think will happen. That is to a large extent what people object to in the social justice field, not the policies themselves, but that they are taken too far and manipulated to try and enforce, entrench and enhance particular political viewpoints. I can certainly see some people arguing that 'black man' should be replaced with 'person of colour' as a descriptor in text or even in dialogue, while making the argument that you're more likely to get people of colour buying if you do so. Well, that conclusion in itself would be questionable, and you'd end up with some pretty odd sounding dialogue or descriptions at the end.

No, it doesn't. No. That just plain isn't how it works, you cannot add them like that. To illustrate, let's take a theoretical country that has 90% depreciation. What happens if you just add that 12.5-15% to that, as you want? You get a currency with 102.5-105% depreciation. Which gives you a negatively valued currency. Which is, well, impossible. You cannot do it that way. Doesn't matter how much you'd like to. Best you can is try to apply the 25-30%, or made up 40%, to those other countries' depreciations then add that. Which is also untenable, but at least couldn't generate impossible results. Shrug. I haven't misquoted experts, used graphs with fudged timelines that don't cover a quarter of the time I'm supposedly interested in and haven't wanted to do economically impossible transformations to data. You've done all three, in your last half dozen posts.

I wouldn't worry about whether it is going to fund or not when deciding whether to put money down as the worst that can happen there is that funding fails and you don't get charged a cent, same as if there had never been a kickstarter. That happened to me with the Fresh3D/ Outcast KS. Some of the crowdfunding sites have flexible funding where partial funding will be accepted, but KS doesn't. If you think it looks good and want to put money down do so, if you don't don't. Don't worry about whether it funds, there really isn't much at all that any single person can do to influence that unless your last name is Persson.

The trouble there is the same as with all sort of 'cultural sensitivity' type stuff. Who is getting offended, what is the threshold of offence, whether practical benefits outweigh the costs of second guessing everything you do, selective application etc. People will object to it for much the same reasons people object to PC, because it is much the same concept dressed up in much the same 'perfectly reasonable' language.

... That would prove nothing except how significant the oil price drop was on Russia's currency, which is what I've always said. You have to deal with empirical figures- until the oil price dropped the rouble had barely flickered in value, 20-25% of that, heck even your made up 40% would be utterly insignificant. I was doing you a favour taking it as an absolute, it's actually the thing that makes your argument look least silly- take out the oil drop and you get 25-30 or 40% of even less, for far less absolute effect. And as below, I was already maximising your claimed effects, not minimising them. [chart] Oh dear, 2014, really? Not from when sanctions were first applied (March 2014, conveniently) to now? That's what I did, since I'm not relying on Weaseling by using a convenient timeframe. Here's a handy link, March to March of a USD vs RUB chart. If you change the 'RUB' in the URL to other currencies' abbreviations you can generate charts for each of the top ten traded currencies, or any you like. Do so and you'll find that your chart is out by, well, a significant and painful amount, shall we say? eg, AUD has dropped about 17%, March to March, not 10%, NZD has dropped ~15%, not 7%, the Euro has dropped ~30% instead of 12% etc. And that's straight March to March, not the yearly max to min I used to generate Russia's currency halving in value, to be charitable and maximise the amounts your claim would generate. Again, your use of figures is at best extremely ill-informed.

Not exactly a surprise. One of the reasons I far prefer 'Cultural Stalinism' to 'Cultural Marxism' is the tendency to turn on those who don't believe enough, or those who believe slightly differently, or those who are just perceived to believe slightly differently, every bit as much as those who are the theoretical 'real' enemies. They're always going to disagree somewhat on what the real goals should be, who the real targets are, what the real philosophy is etc, and with a 'no dissent' environment all of them will think right is on their side.

Very sad news, though not really unexpected. Dementia/ Alzheimer's is just the worst thing. The run he had through from about 'Small Gods' (one of the books I'd unequivocally recommend everyone reads) to 'Feet of Clay' was one of the best sequences I've ever had the privilege of reading.

And it isn't. It's less than 9/10 of the top traded countries had, without sanctions. Whatever things were effecting them effected them more severely than the sanctions effected Russia, and without the oil price drop Russia's currency would have appreciated relative to 9/10 of them (or 7/10, if we remove Canada and Mexico for the oil drop having a negative effect on their currency), even with the sanctions- indeed, the Euro has fallen in value by about twice the amount sanctions caused, even with your made up 40% figure and no reliance on oil exports. And, of course, we have the dial back and redef which happens every single time you get caught out with hyperbole: "we used words such as painful and significant" with 'painful' suddenly disappearing... Now sure, with the effects of the oil price drop added it becomes severe, that is what I've been saying all along- and you've now started defending my 18 month (to 2 yr figure) for just liquid assets as well. So we're now at the stage where you agree with me. Progress has been made.

Nope. I used the term 'not severe' and indeed it's the term you've actually managed to quote me as using, as opposed to when you use Weasel Debate Technique #1: deliberately overstate the other person's opinion by claiming I said no effect. Yeah, I do. Can't say I didn't warn myself that maths would give you problems, but sadly I have no patience to explain proportions, fractions and their reciprocals to you in depth. As always, it was you who started talking about 40% [sic, misquoted] of the currency devaluation being due to sanctions, then complained about not using Putin's 25-30%. Well, the rouble has had an overall devaluation of 50%, it has halved in value, the proportion of that which matches Putin's estimate is 12.5-15% devaluation (0.5*0.25*100 to 0.5*0.3*100 so you can follow on your calculator)- and from Kudrin's- maximised- estimate, 20% (0.5*0.4*100); about half what the Euro has had against the dollar in the same timeframe. It doesn't show what you thought? 1) Quelle surprise and 2) tough noogies; you, again, picked the figure and defended it same as the 6-12 month claim and that agricultural imports that had appreciated 100% would help decrease 30% greater food prices- if someone is to blame for you picking rubbish figures it's you. And that so many of the worlds major currencies have performed similarly to that without the effect of sanctions is exactly the point.

So, more or less Galaxy Quest's premise (minus, presumably at least, getting picked up by real life aliens at some point) as a webseries? Sounds good.

There isn't one in this context- Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, Assad in Syria, much of Iraq's population and the protesters in Bahrain are all (broadly speaking) pro Iranian yet are also arab. Ethnicity is a factor in the regional rivalries, but it's far less so than the sectarian divide because arabs are far more likely to be persecuted by their own ethnicity following a different sect than by Persians. Conversely, there are some Sunni 'Persians' (well, Baluchi, but they're about as similar to Persians as a Morrocan Maghreb arab is to a Syriac arab is to a Bedouin arab) who are supported by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

"Bruce, dear fellow, you agreeing with me is one of the things that would get me to question whether I was right." 'Irrelevant' verbiage that changes the meaning can not be irrelevant- as it changes the meaning. If you change the meaning from maximum to exact by omitting words it is not irrelevant, by definition, because exact and maximum do not mean the same thing. Unsurprisingly, he doesn't say that, that's just your interpretation. Indeed, he said Russia had plenty of reserves and would be back in growth inside two years- though he is, of course, biased every bit as much as you or wsj dude, just differently biased. In any case, and since you insist: 25-30% is still 'not severe'. Unfortunately I must use maths and statistics to illustrate how, so you may have difficulty following. The rouble has roughly halved (50%) in value against the USD (somewhat less than halved, but I'll round 'up'), proportionately 25-30% of that is a 12.5-15% total devaluation. Leaving the large majority, 70-75% proportion, or 35-37.5% total devaluation not related to sanctions. You know who have had the same or larger devaluations than 12.5-15%, of the top ten (exc US, for obvious reasons- it's had a 0% change relative to itself, after all) traded currencies? Nine of them, China being the only exception. So if that is severe then the effects on the Euro, Pound, non US anglophone dollars, peso, krone, Sfranc and Yen must also be 'severe', and nine of the top ten currencies must be approaching crisis. The extra 70-75% makes it 'severe', but that, by your own logic, isn't due to sanctions. Well, at least you tacitly admit to the other two. Though of course 'everyone disagrees with you' rather loses its impact when you're tacitly admitting to restating your opponents arguments using bizarre absolutes- after all, that is precisely why people restate arguments as bizarre absolutes; so they can say everyone disagrees with the bizarre absolute that was just made up.

If I didn't know anything about it I would have said Seven Dragon Saga sounds like a Japanese/ Chinese based game. Which wouldn't be bad at all. (Brave using Saga in the title, King might send them a sternly worded letter)

The number 1 terror sponsoring state is Saudi Arabia, and by a fair distance. Which is jolly inconvenient, so generally ignored.

"Up to" 40%; omitting the "up to" significantly changes the meaning because one says "this is the exact figure" and the other says "this is the maximum figure". If you can't recognise why that is dishonest then, well, you'll be forever doomed to be a Weasel*. You don't have to admit it publicly, that is expecting too much, but you should at least admit it to yourself. And again, hiding behind your entirely made up claim (again, PPOR) that I said sanctions had no impact when the best proof you've offered is that I said they did not have a severe impact. And the now staple rambling and random quotes claiming you didn't really start the talk about 6-12 months despite (1) being quoted saying it yourself and (2) admitting yourself that you did so; and how me making a quote that mirrored that claim with functional identity is misleading because I didn't also say that I called the article you got the figure from crap- context which is irrelevant since no one was going to think that I considered that article as Thucydides reborn writing a Pulitzer Prize worthy magnum opus. And all leavened by some of the most feeble insults man has had the misfortune to see. *to whit: use 'everyone agrees with me' argument- with or without optional misquoting of said experts Restate your opponent's ideas using bizarre absolutes (change "not severe" into "no" damage, make argument absolute) and then refute those For every respectable human quality there is an insulting word that means the same thing. For example, accuse open-minded people of being flakes. Accuse cautious people of being afraid of change etc.