Zoraptor
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Everything posted by Zoraptor
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Public opinion isn't capable of addressing much at all unless it's Missy the Cat stuck in a tree won't someone rescue her? type triviality where a politician can get cheap and easy PR. Israel v Palestine is one of the longest running and most intractable conflicts and there is a lot of inertia behind Israel, in much the same way as there was a lot of inertia behind various South American Strongmen; they may be bastards but at least they're our bastards and hence better than [ideological enemy], and we don't want to give our enemies succour by looking divided or weak. That's the kind of thinking where public opinion is irrelevant unless it's incredibly strong and there's an election coming up where it will be an issue. British government policy is holding firm even when the Dail Fail is criticising Israel and complaining about too many muslims dying. The irony is that the same people who ignore public opinion will then turn around next day and publicly wonder why young muslim men from their country get radicalised and are going off to wage jihad when everyone knows that [countryname] loves muslims and has nothing at all against them, as if the pictures from Palestine and support for Israel have no bearing on that at all. You don't need to be muslim to see the inherent contradictions in "we love international law!" and "we'll intervene to save civilians!" etc.
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It wouldn't matter if you did know anything about cricket, there has never been a cricket computer game that bore the slightest resemblance to the Real Thing- much like any Rugby computer game. The latest cricket game was so bad even steam stopped selling it and genuinely pulled it, iirc, with forced refunds and library disappearance.
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72 hour truce forthcoming, it appears. With neither electricity or water supplies Israel would soon run the risk of stuff happening that even the US would have difficulty protecting them from, though to be fair the US has actually managed to give some criticism to Israel for being mean to John Kerry shelling a UN school, even if it didn't stop them rearming the IDF. Oh, and it appears Mr Firebrand 15 year old American Citizen Terrorist in Making from Florida has not been charged with brutally and repeatedly headbutting Israeli fists and boots and is indeed back in the US making plans to visit his family in East Jerusalem. Who'd a thunk it, I was reliably informed they had an iron clad case against him... Germany is a terrible example, it doesn't vote against Israel for what might be termed 'historical reasons'- and wouldn't under pretty much any circumstances.
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You tried that here as well. Lest we forget. Pretty much, though especially in Ukraine. Oddly enough you can have Armenians who are native to Turkey, land of the Turks (lot fewer now, of course) or Azerbaijan, land of Azeris, you can have Greek who are native to Turkey and Turks who are native to Bulgaria.
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"Sorry, it is. That's not enccessarily a bad thing but that's exactly what it is." No.
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Plus, if you're going to pull the 'Hamas militarises civilians so hitting them is OK' card you'd have to explain exactly how having Conscription doesn't militarise Israel's civilians. Israeli reservists 'hide amongst the population' etc etc. But yeah, I think anyone and everyone on the planet would prefer Hamas's terrorist barrage to being hit precisely and surgically by Israel. Funny in a way, someone actually leaked the Israeli PR bible (rather prosaically named the Global Language Dictionary) a few years back and it's patently obvious that it's genuine since they still hit every single talking point. It's also at least partly responsible for my immense scepticism towards anything advanced by western spokesmen, they all use the same basic methodology and I loathe people trying to treat me like an idiot. And while I can't really be bothered reposting the relevant Geneva Convention clauses again such action definitively is a war crime.
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The specific ongoing KOTOR comic from Dark Horse was very well received in general. I only read one TPB but I enjoyed it quite a lot, a fair few characters from the game(s; as cameos mainly though, main characters were almost entirely original) and hints relating to them. They will be going out of print fairly soon, once the comic licence reverts to Marvel. Apart from that... I recall something about there being more TOR novels apart from Revan, but from what I recall they made Revan look like Tolstoy.
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US (government) satellites would certainly have been taking pictures. Those pictures are specifically, per their copyright info- provided by a commercial satellite vendor, Digital Globe, rather than by a US intelligence satellite- that's how I know that there are colour versions available, you can look up their services on their website. At least in theory one could even buy the pictures oneself to check them, though I'd suspect they'd not sell such sensitive stuff to Joe Public. I didn't really think they were being posted here as outright 'proof' of anything anyway. (I've never actually used Digital Globe*, but have used images from their competitors (Ikonos, SPOT), some time ago when I was tutoring relevant courses at university.) *IIRC they provide a lot of imagery for Google Earth commercially, so I have kind of used them.
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I imagine the lack of licensing fees for Frostbite helps as well, at least so far as Mass Effect is concerned.
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Doesn't even conclusively mean a missile either, let alone indicate a type of missile. The satellite photos aren't very good either, they're just... lazy for want of a better term. They really should have stumped up the cash for colour rather than just b/w images or provided something from their own spy satellites that everyone knows they have; b/w photos are easier to manipulate in just about every respect as they really need to be taken on the same azimuth and at the same time of day or you get problems, for example with different shadow lengths and alignments, and indeed you can see what might charitably be called 'exposure differences'* on some of the images. Mostly though I am amused that their maps would come close to failing a 5th form Geography map making question; no scale, inconsistent north alignment, insets without scale etc. But in any case it's not at all convincing unless you're already convinced, one of the two 'smoking gun' type pictures is even of firing that is clearly labelled as being wholly internal to Ukraine and not from Russia at all. *For example, look at the insets on the top map, note how light the trees are on the one in Ukraine, then how relatively dark the trees (mostly cropped) of the one showing the scorch marks- that image has clearly been darkened. That really should not be done if you know that one of the things that will be said is that they've been manipulated.
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The Human Right Watch report had an amusing effect. The Ukrainian spokesman, tried his usual spiel ("the rebels were shelling themselves to make us look bad!") and claimed there were no Ukrainian grads near Donetsk, Al Jazeera then showed footage of... Ukrainian grads near Donetsk, shot a few days ago. Also pretty stupid when you're trying to claim you couldn't possibly have shot down an airliner because you had no SAMs nearby to be caught in such an obvious lie about a different type of rocket. I rather like Al Jazeera's snideness on occasion as well. Mentioning that Yatsenyuk resigned partly because of a refusal to allow US companies to drill for gas, something no one else did, I'm sure Joe Biden will be disappointed. Or his son, at least.
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Lol, and again I am highly amused. Rote repetition of incorrect or sophist, self defining circular 'facts' is the height of obtuseness. There's a reason why no actual statistician anywhere will define areas merely on local majority but on other factors, and it is because it is literally self fulfilling- you're selecting specifically to prove your contention and excluding anything that doesn't. Want to prove bits of Latvia or Estonia or Ukraine should be Russian, use that method, want to prove that any country should be partitioned along ethnoreligious lines use that method, want to prove that the Armenian family down the road is a local majority, use that method. Yes, I know I've said that before, but it bears repeating. That you then try and add in other factors is actually irrelevant, but even more indicative. The Arabs still owned more of the Negev than the Jewish population did, that the British didn't accept native title (equivalent, at that time, except as related to British citizens in Britain) is also irrelevant since even you admit that the habitual owners and main population were Bedouin Arabs. You work back from your belief that partition was good and Jews were a majority, picking the factors and methods that support that, and that's all you've got. It's actually as bad as "I live in California, I know earthquakes" in terms of rigour and statistical validity.
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Well, I do have to admit I do find it highly amusing that you accuse others of being disingenuous or obtuse, seeing as you didn't link to your first post on the subject which contains a rather inconvenient line about many Jewish majority areas, with no equivocation at all about habitability.
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Ah, so it's now owned inhabitable land, I see. Your eback must get sore, what with all the shifting of goalposts you've been doing.
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And those fine democrats in Kiev, having overthrown the democratically elected President, have started on dissolving democratically elected rival political parties, too. But in totally democratic fashion, via the former caretaker President and current speaker's say so, for 'low membership'. The communists actually got more votes than Svoboda did in the PR segment... Plus, Yatsenyuk has quit. What an utter shambles. No need to buy a turkey for christmas, EU, you've got one on lay by. Actually, I'd be amazed if that wasn't happening. Young men, guns and little oversight are never a good recipe for civilised behaviour and even under the best circumstances you find some people willing to steal off the dead, and these are far from the best circumstances. I'd take issue with some of the criticism given to the rebels over body treatment since there were two contradictory requirements, but looting should not happen.
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Funny, the only 50% land nonsense I can remember is someone (now who was it, I know he had some sort of posting schtick and it deffo wasn't Bruce or Volo...) claiming many areas of Palestine had greater than 50% ownership by Jews. Which was nonsense and shown to be false even within proposed partition Israel, done with maps and stats that tend to make things believable and true but for some reason were unbelievable and false in this case, even the one he posted himself, thinking it proved his point.
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You can currently get the Sims 2 (Complete, or whatever the full edition is called) for free with the code I-LOVE-THE-SIMS For both the people who aren't already aware. Not particularly keen on the sims personally, but you really cannot beat free. And apparently Peggle is still free as well.
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I am enjoying the accents but I'm not sure how accurate the Australian accents are? Have you played Dead Island? If they sound anything like that, they are bad, very bad. Hmm, I'm getting flashbacks to Deus Ex (1) with its token Australian eksent that was perhaps the most awful attempt in the history of gaming. "Thanks for getting me in", sure lady, now shut up, please. It's like the VA listened to Kath and Kim as a baseline then took it up to 200% to make it more 'authentic'.
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Nah, it's a good game, and a useful illustration. It is an abstraction, but then so is anything except what actually happened. The approximate front lines and important place names would be useful though, for obvious reasons. But in any case I don't think there's much disputation that the rebels may- or even probably- shot the airliner down, nevertheless that accusation has to be actually proven and it hasn't been. The rebels need to have the relevant capability, skills to use it, it has to be functional and, most importantly they need to have actually fired it and hit MH17. First seems likely, next two are still unproven, the last and most important one has no actual proof at all, at this point. There are plenty of theories, plenty of assertions but as it stands there's less actual evidence than the Iraq WMD case from 2003. Any alternative has been dismissed out of hand, and most on the mere say so a directly involved party, Ukraine. For example, I find it literally incredible that they have no SAM coverage in the area. An S300 stationed near as far back as Dneprop' could theoretically have hit it, one anywhere near any part of the front line definitely could, let alone their own Buks, which contrary to their claims have been seen near the front lines (Slaviansk)- and, they have repeatedly said that there are Russian planes crossing the border including allegedly shooting down one sukhoi earlier on the day MH17 was shot down, so they do have (at least in theory) a good reason for having SAM coverage. On a side note, I do find it rather funny and completely indicative of press attitudes that the sukhoi being shot down today were initially being described as being the rebels violating the ceasefire zone around the crash, as if flying military jets through it wasn't also a violation, and a prior one.
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It's Volo, why bother arguing? I imagine that Obsidian would be ecstatic with a million sales and would be hoping for such a figure, but they need nothing like that to be successful, and that's fact.
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Some of the strikes certainly are legitimate military strikes, even if most/ many are simple collective punishment. A direct ground invasion would have had far more losses than Israel have suffered at present, and that is far more important to Israel than Palestinian losses. In the end Lebanon 2006 ended without Israel achieving their aims because they lost too many soldiers and equipment, not because they were killing lots of Lebanese civilians. Even as a rhetorical question that's... pretty leaky, whichever way you look at it. Ah, the answer is Israel! Of course! Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin, the first PMs from Likud, were both leaders of Lehi/ Stern Gang, Ariel Sharon was convicted of complicity in genocide in Lebanon and was widely rumoured to have bulldozed Egyptian prisoners in trenches in 1967 as well, various Likud coalition partners in government have or have had ludicrously policies like deporting the entire arab population (in cattle carts perhaps, for maximum irony). Complaints about electing terrorists are pot/ kettle/ black, at best. Plus there's actually dozens of other counters. Nelson Mandela, designated terrorist of the ANC; Gerry Adams et al from Sinn Fein, political arm of the IRA etc etc.
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Can't see any real reason to think that this particular delay means that the game will be crap/ in trouble any more than any other delay means any other game is crap or in trouble. All it means is that I might actually get around to buying myself a new computer to replace my eight year old faithful before its release. If I were forced at gunpoint to speculate I would say that it will have co-op as an MP component. But since I'm not being forced at gunpoint I won't.
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There isn't much point to doing it as he just stands around with one bark line, but it is possible.
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Sheesh Bruce, that has to be the shortest thread quitting in internet history, not even a day. People are spinning, but it sure ain't just RT. Link to the full story which does pretty much bears out the headline, they offered literally no new evidence of Russian involvement, no satellite or other stuff that people had speculated Obama et al were basing their accusations on, no smoking Buk, indeed there were significant admissions there like them believing that the rebels didn't have Buks at all. If they actually believed the Ukrainian intercepts and the like there'd be no equivocation there at all, since some involved them talking to actual, current Russian officers.
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And now, apparently, US intelligence has concluded there is actually no evidence of Russian involvement in the shoot down, though they do say it was probably rebels. They also admitted they did not think the rebels had any such rockets until after the crash happened. Seems (since there ain't a web source or much detail, it's just on broadcast at the moment) they don't have much faith in the SBU and their 'intercepted' phone calls as proof of anything either.
