Zoraptor
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Everything posted by Zoraptor
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It's not really about winning militarily though- the Viet Minh and NVA lost pretty much (obvious exception Dien Bien Phu) every single military engagement they fought, against both the french and US, and lost around 2 million combatants when fighting the US over ten years, plus an untold number of civilians. They won because it became politically untenable for the US to continue, not because they won militarily. The closest recent equivalent would be the invasion of Lebanon in 2006, in the end the Israeli political will broke rather than Hezbollah's and they went back to status quo ante with a few thousand dead Lebanese and a few hundred bead Israelis. The Israelis certainly could have continued militarily speaking though. They aren't directly equivalent situations, of course, but you certainly can break an enemy politically while losing militarily. Personally I don't think it will work here because it'd take significant international pressure to achieve the more realistic of Hamas's aims such as lifting the blockade, and I'm sceptical about the effect even ten times more dead Palestinian civilians will have in that regard, but then there were plenty of people who thought the US could not 'lose' in Vietnam either.
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No doubt people used the same argument about Ho Chi Minh as well- why doesn't he stop fighting the french, why doesn't he stop fighting the US, why did people keep fighting for him when he got millions of Vietnamese killed? Surely the french and US would stop bombing and killing, if only he just stopped? It's a National Liberation Struggle, unless you're really willing to go all in- either the 'good' way, or the 'bad'- then all killing does is make them stronger as the next generation has more dead friends and relatives, and more anger. Palestinians will not blame Hamas, they'll blame Israel because in the end it is Israel that is doing the killing and denying them the statehood they were promised 66 years ago.
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Couldn't agree more. I like PC gaming precisely because it's an open platform with no central control, if I wanted a monopoly provider then frankly I'd buy a PS4 and be done with it.
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Bro, potatoes are from the new world so you cannot have a Grand Potato in the 14th century. Besides, Hungary is glorious Magyar, not potato. These are important points to consider. Though it is kind of funny that not even CK2 can get anywhere near the sheer self destructive lunacy of actual Byzantine politics.
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Okay. Anyone else thinking this sounds like some obscure Irish political party...? My keyboard revolts at the mere thought of that paper, so much so that it won't even accept a parody naming.
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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. Actually the latest cricket game is Don Bradman Cricket 14, and it's the best cricket game ever made. But it is hard as hell, batting wise. I stand corrected. My experiences with cricket games on computer has been so universally bad that I don't really pay much attention to them at all any more.
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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.
