Zoraptor

There was a bit more unusual stuff as well, the number of leaks from the case were absolutely unprecedented (four separate ones iirc, none traced) and included things like leaking the alleged victims' statements- utterly unconscionable, and the defence did not have them to leak it must have been a police/ prosecutor side leak- as well as Assange's identity and statements. Assange was also allowed to leave Sweden then retroactively made subject to extradition when the prosecutor changed. Meh, Assange is old news anyway, and has generated no real interest in the past two years. Selfish it may be but I'm far more interested in Kim Dotcom and whether he'll succeed in bringing our government down at this point.

Nah, I just pointed out a particular document to Orogun. I actually doubt the style I did it in matters in the slightest. Unfortunately, you leap to conclusions; then inevitably start tilting at the windmills your conclusion leaping has created. It's that conclusion leaping thing that has caused you the problems, in both cases.

Must try harder Bruce, that's far too obvious. Nah, the general public is mainly just apathetic when it comes to such things.

Once only. Yatsenyuk did resign over budgetary issues, but his resignation was not accepted and the measures were eventually passed.

The comparison to Ferguson is fine. Same thought processes going on both places, many of the same actual processes too. Scarves/ shirts etc don't stop tear gas in Ferguson either, but there's plenty of people trying to use them as such etc. As for Khdeir, well at least you've now stopped saying he was carrying a sling like it was anything other than an unsupported allegation- mission accomplished there- and gone all in on victim blaming without that added prop. Of course, there's no evidence that he was actively demonstrating either, but I think I'll let that go.

Finished watching House of Cards S2 (US). Honestly, it was a bit of a struggle. Liked the Brit version too much, found the US one too long, don't really care much about the US political system shenanigans and wasn't really convinced by Spacey to be, er, frank. To be fair Spacey was on a hiding to nothing considering how much I liked Ian Richardson's performance, so that criticism at least may well not be fair. Too much arch Old Etonian ingrained in the cultural memory, not enough Southern Gentleman. And I did enjoy Blacklist rather a lot. I suspect I would have loved HoCUS if Spader had been lead there. He'd be pretty much utterly unbelievable as President, but I doubt I'd care.

Right Sector apparently plan to march on Kiev in the next 48 hours if their demands are not met. Yes, that is written correct; pull out of Lugansk/ Donetsk and march on Kiev. Whether they'll actually do it or not it does rather reinforce that arming right wing nutters is most definitively a double edged sword.

Would sue in Britain :smug: the 'multiple media sources' all resolve to one, the Israeli Police who got nabbed beating the 15 yr old up and who when given the opportunity to back up their claims neither charged nor offered any evidence in the forum in which it would actually be tested. Thus their claim upon which your entire thesis is based, is valueless. Actually I am rather amused you took the whole defamation thing so dead seriously, right down to the legalism the 'ohno its libel cos its written' predicted. But it does make a good parallel though, how the people in Ferguson end up with scarves etc wrapped around their faces to minimise tear gas effects then get accused by the peanut gallery of being 'thugs' deserving of what they get. It's a very useful circular argument for the authoritarian types; use smoke and tear gas, people protect their faces, faces concealed == thug*, hit them with smoke and tear gas! Shame they don't have the introspection to go the reverse way though; dress and act like soldier in hostile environment, get treated like soldier in hostile environment, have to dress and act like soldier in hostile environment. 'Give everyone hammers and soon every problem looks like a nail' in action. And, of course, in these cases you always end up with people willing to vilify the original victim to defend their chosen side, whether it be Brown or Khdeir, other people arrested then released without charge who some believe must have done something wrong- not taking the sensible route and just kowtowing to their masters to save trouble, perhaps- people who take whatever authorities release as gospel etc etc. *Even those locals who stand around protecting local stores from the out of towners mainly responsible for the looting. Nope, you can take it any way you want. Want to believe Israel's training had a large effect, take it as sarcasm. Want to believe it had no effect, take it as literal. I- literally- don't have any opinion on the matter except in so far as expecting various police to share policing methods as a matter of course. You're just looking to pick a fight, basically. Whether Israeli training actually influenced the results is something only the Ferguson PD can answer. And I'd bet any money that they won't.

Well, it gets one thing unequivocally right, namely: "Again and again, Bush and Obama have assessed Russia through an American prism and come away disappointed that the view from the Kremlin looks different than they thought it ought to." Which, of course, betrays a near total lack of introspection as well as gross arrogance. But then there's never been a less introspective or more arrogant group than politicians.

Please don't slander* Mr Khedeir, again, zero evidence was ever produced that he had a sling- including when the Israeli Police were given opportunity to at his court appearance when he was released without charge. There's this thing called 'presumption of innocence', I believe that concept exists in the US as well, and ignoring it was what initially made you look foolish. Continuing to do so just digs that hole deeper. You probably should apologise, but this being the internet breath shall not be held waiting for that. As for the letter... well, it's been covered already. Orogun said NYPD had trained with Israeli Police, I pointed out that the far more relevant St Louis PD had. Any further conclusions drawn from that are completely your, or anyone else's, own. *ohno its libel cos its written

Orogun said the NYPD were taking seminars with the Israeli police, I pointed out that the far more relevant St Louis police department had done the same. That the way I did it bunched your panties is more because you're still butthurt than anything else, and a completely unexpected bonus. I can only imagine that any mention of the Israeli Police, especially from me, is a bit of a touchstone issue due to Tariq Khdeir- you know, the guy you assured us was a hardened 15 year old thug who got filmed being beaten up by Israeli Police then quietly released without charge when they couldn't produce any evidence for him having done anything wrong; exactly as I said would happen. They were pretty butthurt, too.

I'm sure that's a coincidence.

At least Russians get paid to do it, as opposed to being so brainwashed they do it for free. That Ukrainian in the article is a moron for doing it gratis. Guess he's just a brave patriot doing his duty, and we all know that the only brave patriots in Russia are those heroes standing up to Putin. Plus of course the US already does it and has plans to automate the process as well.

May actually be able to play in release order now since I've been offered a princely 30GB/ month cap (two months ago it was 4 GB/ month) for basically the same price I'm paying now. Sure, that'll bring me up to the internet coverage the average Finnish hobo had a decade ago, but improvement is improvement. And playing anything new is still dependent on me being bothered to get a new computer.

Can't say that I liked Williams' work all that much, but he did always seem like a nice guy, which is more important. Unlike many others I can't say I was all that surprised at his suicide though, he always did come across as rather manic. He once compared computer games to being on cocaine in an interview, I believe. And according to that most reliable and prestigious of magazines, RPGCodex, he played that coolest of all cool games, Wizardry.

Meh, that's all people have, having picked a side. Most people do not (/can not) change their minds* once they've made them up, that is the core reason for propaganda and simply the way belief functions. So it isn't the Ukrainians bombing, using artillery and MLRS on cities, it's all self inflicted because it has to be since good guys/ bad guys. And anyway, PuHitler!!! because I'm sure Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk = Ukrainian Ghandis who achieved everything with passive resistance plus truth, justice and the Ukrainian Way, and if they're really indiscriminately shelling cities and recruiting neo nazis then there's a logical disjunction that makes my head hurt. Of course in reality there aren't good guys or bad guys in the traditional sense hardly ever; ISIS are bad guys, but then it's not like the Iraqis or Syrians or even Kurds are whiter than white either- and quite often there aren't even better and worse guys, just different ideas of what is right and people who do crappy stuff at different times and to different people as balances of power shift. But people have narrative brains that tell stories, precisely why people remember identical events, even completely trivial events, differently from each other in recollection. *Not necessarily exempting myself, either. I generally do try to be at least reasonably objective on matters of fact- so I don't really believe any story about MH17 as they've all got problems in terms of facts- but then I would believe that I'm objective, wouldn't I?

"Console DA > PC DA = FACT" No. (That that is far from the most whacky thing said in this thread really does say something.)

Zhirinovsky is a muppet, but he is almost directly equivalent to Svoboda/ Tyanybok- they got similar shares of voting etc- except in one important consideration, Mad Vlad isn't in power in any form, let alone the second largest party in a ruling coalition with multiple ministers. The only 'power' the LDP hold is having a deputy speaker who likes shooting his mouth off as well. They've also never got more than 15% of the vote. Still, I am amused (happens frequently at the moment) that the alternatives to Putin are Zhirinovsky or more realistically the perennial Communist Zhuganov rather than all the 'western liberals' the media likes to embiggen.

I find the talk of Russia shooting itself in the foot over sanctions rather amusing, frankly. As someone from a country that has been continually shafted by EU and US agricultural subsidies artificially lowering prices I find it highly amusing to see people who have benefited from the CAP and ag subsidies- 40+% of the total EU budget in 2010- alternatively wailing at the unfairness and shouting that Russia will never be able to replace those imports. Europe doesn't even have a real world agricultural surplus, it's entirely artificial and based on German and French farmers', Spanish and Portugese fishermen etc etc predilection for parking their slow moving vehicles in annoying places every time significant reform is mooted. On this I am 100% with Victoria Nuland- EU? Asterisk the EU. That they were dumb enough and had enough hubris to think there wouldn't be blowback is just the hilarity cherry on the top of the amusement cake. Now, ban airlines from Russian airspace and watch the hohoho meter rise further. It's not like Russia doesn't have alternatives anyway. They didn't sanction us (just to add to the hilarity our PM says we cannot sanction them even if we wanted to without the UN, er, sanctioning it; which is of course rubbish but it's one time I do support his economic pragmatism wholeheartedly) nor any other countries except NATO/ EU and our trans tasman cousins in the 51st state. Plus Japan probably, but I can't even be bothered checking that since they don't have any sort of agricultural surplus even a constructed one, besides whale meat. They'll buy dairy and beef from here, fruit and beef from South America, fish from various places and everything will continue more or less as normal. Won't cost the US much either as they'll just maintain the deals which are profitable to them as they always do, so Boeing will keep supplying civilian aircraft even if Airbus stops. Overall, nice work , EU, now aim the shotgun at the other foot, I hear Putin is hiding behind that one now.

If we talk about military power - most powerfull armies in region is IDF, Iranian and Turkish military forces. ISIS holds no territory in any of those places, nor has it fought them (except some Iranian irregulars, maybe) so there's no way to compare. And of course ISIS refers to Iraq and al-Sham, which also includes none of those countries. I'll take the IS moniker seriously when they've shown they aren't a flash in the pan, then they can be compared to the greater regional powers. I've yet to see much evidence that ISIS aren't still essentially a light infantry force as well. They've captured some stuff and some supplies from Iraq and Syria, but I cannot imagine that they're stronger than, say, Saddam was in that regard, and the peshmerga held him off for a decade post GW1- and captured a lot of hardware as well, when Saddam went down. Having said that, I don't necessarily think that the peshmerga are poor, but I do think it's clear at this point that ISIS are very well lead- unfortunately, as I have no sympathy whatsoever for their goals or methods, but it gains nothing to deny it. A month ago there were a lot of people who were writing ISIS off as never having come up against a competent fighting force, like the peshmerga who would kick their arse when given the chance and would not have the morale and reliability problems the main Iraqi army so obviously had. Well, they did have problems, as it turned out.

It's questionable whether a property based system (or an employment based one) is not entirely immiscible with democracy though, let alone 'liberal' democracy. It's one of those situations where it's completely accurate to describe the system in the early US as a Representative Republic rather than a democracy, or the system in Britain as Parliamentary rather than democratic in the time of limited suffrage or Rotten Boroughs.

I'm not even clear what oby said that was even 'racist', unless something has gone bye bye. The retards referred to were ISIS, not kurds, and so far as I'm aware madcap muslim militiaman is not an ethnicity/ race. That certainly was the conventional wisdom, but the reason for the intervention now is that that has not proved to actually be the case. The whole reason for the Yazidis being on Mt Sinjar and ISIS having control of a major dam is because the peshmerga folded- maybe not as spectacularly as the main Iraqi army, but they lost badly enough that Irbil was within artillery range and they lost half a dozen decent sized towns/ cities within a few days. Both the Iraqi and Syrian armies have largely- but not in Syria's case entirely- stopped ISIS advancing further and in Syria's case they've even retaken quite significant areas. Plus, the Kurds had the somewhat odious approach of seizing Kirkuk where they did perform limited ethnically cleansing of minorities last time they held it (plus targeted abductions etc throughout the US occupation) under the guise of it being a historically Kurd city resettled by Saddam; and then announcing they'd declare independence. Which will be interesting, given the west's attitude to other independence movements, plus Turkey and the central Iraqi authorities' reaction. It's not that the Kurds have an easy job of course, they've got a massive front to defend, but the same is true- even more so- for the Iraqi and Syria armies. Truth is that ISIS is probably the best led armed force in the area, including peshmerga and the regular armies of both Syria and Iraq and has the advantage of choosing where to attack. They've gone from basically nothing to an area the size of a decent sized country in a few years, after all.

Yeah. Or just use the abbreviation, QED. Marvellous way to make yourself look smart. Or alternatively, a pretentious git. Basically just means "it's been proved" anyway, with a veneer of the science about it. When it comes to liberal democracy I can only quote Mohandas Ghandi on western civilisation: 'it would be a very good idea'.

I would add "general lack of imagination." One of the poins of space opera is that there are wild, exotic, and above all different planets and species to discover. Almost all of ME's locations looked frankly boring, and the visual style was entirely uniform across the whole galaxy. I can find a lot more variety in a five-minute walk around my neighborhood! I also thought most of the species--especially the council species--were not all that interesting. The cool and exotic ones--hanar, rachni--were on the sidelines. I liked what they did with the geth in ME2 and to a lesser extent in ME3 where they overdid the 'they're just misunderstood' pathos thing. I give them some allowance for the general imagination stuff, hardly any games are genuinely imaginative in that way. And on a practical level doing animations can be a huge amount of work if you cannot do mocap, so non human template stuff does have problems. The lack of variation in visual styles is a definite though, nothing quite like going to an exotic locale on another species' planet and it looking just about identical to all the other species' architecture.

There's still the option of getting a boxed copy of Pillars of Eternity through the website. At $50 plus shipping it's definitely no more expensive than DAI. Yeah, I know. It'd cost a lot more than DAI to get PoE that way though, since I'll get DAI via a British remailer with free mailing rather than the $20 for PoE shipping. If the twenty bucks went to Obsidian I'd do it, but it'd go to the courier or worse, Paradox. I'm not really that worried, I can usually scum downloads if I really need to, it's just mildly embarrassing to have to do so.