Zoraptor

He's leader of the Liberal Democrat Party (of Russia, he's not Nick Clegg's alter ego; rather a bizarre name considering they are whacked out detached from reality ultra nationalists). It's similar to how in the Westminster system you'll usually have speaker from the ruling party and deputy(-ies) from the smaller parties.

To illustrate that point, the troops that lost the APCs rather publicly a few days ago were paratroopers, about as close to elite soldiers as Ukraine has and they ought to be the most reliable too- that, presumably, is why they were sent into a difficult situation. It's the same problem Yanukovich had, despite all the 'anti terrorist' rhetoric the soldiers know they'd be fighting their own countrymen and in some cases their own comrades, and simply (and sensibly) don't want to. OTOH, the government probably could rely at least theoretically on some of the armed militias, though sending them in would be at very best a double edged sword since one of the big rallying points for the separatists is fear and dislike of the Right Sector types.

Yeah, and quantum mechanics has stuff with mass moving instantaneously/ faster than light as well. That's one of the reasons I dislike physics, they have all these theoretically immutable laws but if you look closer they tend to be more advisories than actual laws. Stuff cannot travel faster than light (and neither can we), except, of course, when it does. 'Blah' is a constant, except when it isn't. 'X' doesn't fit our models, so we'll just make something up to fix it. Physicists, truly the tarot readers and old gypsy ladies of science.

What always confuses me about light speed is how the observable universe can be 46 billion light years across but only 14 billion light years old. Where does the extra 18 billion ly diameter of the universe come from if light speed cannot be passed?

Yeah, could write a point by point but meh, it'd end in a pointless back and forwards, so I'll deal with only a couple of points only. Besides, what is or is not a great power is a peripheral issue anyway. While not directed at me this question illustrates perfectly why it isn't economy uber alles. The USSR did not collapse primarily due to economic factors, it collapsed because Gorbachev was a decent guy who took the lid off the pressure cooker and initially lacked the will and eventually lacked the power to deal with what came out. If it had not been Gorby but had been Stalin, or even Putin, then the USSR would not have collapsed because they would have had the will and ability to hold it together whatever the economy. Personally I'm glad it was Gorby, and he bears no responsibility for the execrable incompetence of his successor- the worst leader of any major country in the past fifty years with daylight in places 2-10, a drunken incompetent sot fondly remembered in the west precisely because he ran his country into the ground. We probably wouldn't even have the mess in Ukraine if Boris had been competent, Kravchuk was happy enough for Crimea to go to Russia prior to the USSR's dissolution and Yeltsin said no. Really bro, that is exactly what they have been doing the past 5+ years because that is exactly what 'quantitative easing'- printing money- is. The US can get away with that to a greater extent than others because it is the reserve currency, but that is what they are doing. Try telling anyone with savings that their money has not been inflated away when they've been getting zero percent interest for five years. Point is, the whole system on which western economics is based seized up when one bank went bust five years ago, and has not been fixed. It's a horrible, unbalanced system that currently favours lunatic bubble economics like buying properties in London with no intention of living in them or even renting them because other speculators push the price up 20% p/a, instead of the former lunatic economic bubbles of loaning money to people who have no hope of ever paying it back and relying on eternal property price increases to recoup the principal from a mortgagee sale- because both of those rely on mythical, eternal property price increases. Banks are still too big to fail, they just know now that they can take risks for profit, safe in the knowledge that Joe Taxpayer will bail them out. It's a classic pyramid scheme, and like all such things it will inevitably implode spectacularly at some point under its own weight.

Yeah, Russia knows the separatists are not going to trust the westerners/ coup government in any case, since they reneged on the deals made during the February crisis including those involving EU mediation- before the ink had dried, even. And Russia won't genuinely pressure them to, as the separatists ignoring their pleas plays right into their "we're not involved, honest!" hand. Massive diplomatic victory for Russia, as with Syria, and the US at least knows it by shouting about more sanctions from the rooftops to try and make tough prior to the mid terms. The only bright spot for the Kiev government is that they now have an excuse to avoid further embarrassment and abject failure from their 'anti terror' operations.

And for anyone who read that article earlier they have now fixed a rather significant, but assuredly completely accidental 'translation error' where they originally had the Donetsk Republich leader admitting his group was behind it- when he actually said the exact opposite and it was distributed under his organisation's name but was not authored by them. Still, I'm sure it was an honest mistake. (To be fair, at least they did fix it, more than we'll get from certain other parties who leapt on it like a Pavlovian conditioned Kangaroo expecting a tasty morsel.)

I rather like the combat in the Stalker games, hits a sweet spot between the autism of OpFlash/ Arma and the pewpewplinkplink of most other shooters. Never had a problem quickly dropping mooks with headshots either. On the other hand I really didn't like aspects of CoP, not least that I ended up with a Vintorez and plenty of ammo very quickly whereas achieving decent kit was a long but ultimately rewarding experience in SoC it felt like the stuff was handed out like lollies in CoP. Plus, for some reason they stopped doing the extremely atmospheric and utterly awesome underground levels like the X labs after SoC, and that was very disappointing. grrrrrr Seriously bro, use a real names mod. I beg of you.

The essence of butthurt is taking something oh so very seriously, and oh so very personally. That's a bit harsh, I'm sure the argument would be that the EU wouldn't be foreign once they'd joined- though the domination part is pretty accurate... Meh, at least the easterners don't want to force the western parts into a union with Russia that they don't want and only want the right to do so themselves, which puts them a step above the westerners. Who don't have the same consideration when forcing their eastern brethren into an EU process that they don't want. No, at least on the illegal part. The ICJ judgement on Kosovo established that it is not illegal to outright secede under the complete military occupation of an external power. And while it would be nice if '(un)ethical' meant anything in politics, it doesn't.

Yep, just like in Crimea where they shot on sight. Sheesh, there was discussion here not just about how many simply Ukrainians defected without a shot fired, but how a lot of the armed men in Crimea didn't even have magazines deployed in their rifles. Contorting that into shoot on sight is... a bit of a stretch. I'd ask for you to show anyone who has said that, but it'd be pointless since we both know no one has said that and you're putting everyone who disagrees with you on ignore anyway. That'd be Ukrainian military grade weapons, gear, (ffs, someone even pointed out some were using Ukrainian manufactured AR-15 variants, though no doubt that's just a Cunning Plan) and they quite obviously have hesitated to fire given that there isn't a single confirmed death yet. Still, top notch imagination on show, truly Poland has a successor to Andrei Sapkowski in the making. Most of all, and not directed at the loony Russaphobic they-beat-me-up-and-stole-my-lunch-money-it's-a-fact fringe of the forum, I think people really need to have a look at themselves and at how much they've bought in to the propaganda. The facts- facts- are that Yanukovich was elected, primarily by the east, in a fair election and set aside, primarily by the west. The east is more prosperous but has been disenfranchised, the Maidan forces immediately tried some pretty moronic triumphalist crap like reverting the language law that could not have been better designed to annoy the east etc etc. It's absolutely obvious that some in the east will asterisking hate that- obvious, a significant proportion of any people would feel the same under the same circumstances and denying that dehumanises them and says that they cannot have valid complaints that run counter to your personal beliefs. And clearly, even shown on unfriendly state media like the BBC, you do have ordinary people going and standing in front of Ukrainian tanks. Yet, I suspect some will immediately believe that they must be brainwashed in not welcoming their new western overlords' armed forces with open arms. Yet, the same people who insist that the Maidan was some sort of completely spontaneous (disproven of course) and utterly peaceful home grown grass roots movement (during which a bunch of policeman committed suicide by molotov roostertail and gunfire to slander the protesters, yep, they're just that evil, so evil they too used tanks, planes etc they just painted them with invisible paint) and any other interpretation is tin foil hat conspiracy automatically accept the exact reverse here- it's a planned foreign influenced entirely armed and violent tiny minority who haven't killed anyone yet because they, uh, haven't had the chance to? Oh, and there aren't any defections, the people stopping the peaceful Ukrainian tanks/ flower dispensers and being buzzed by jet defenders and defence helicopters are clearly spetsnaz now that the recruitment has been relaxed to include old women, children, 60 year old men and any armed men must be russians not any of the Ukrainian defectors or- in a fantastic parallel with the stupidity of Bremer et al in Iraq- the Berkut they disbanded. (I particularly liked the Ukrainian 'proof' of Russian involvement that included an ID card with, I kid you not, Occupation: Spy printed on it)

No they didn't! That's Russian propaganda! No government would allow people to occupy their buildings, its a known fact per Obama PR mouthpiece (sheesh, at least I could remember Ari Fleischer et al's names, Obama's press secretaries are just so very bland and unmemorable), so obviously the Maidan types didn't occupy buildings. Good thing I never got around to replacing my irony meter after Bruce broke it last time.

I need it to be preorderable so I can cancel the preorder and make a "Preorder Cancelled!" post to emphasise how much I dislike [something] about the game and its publicity. That is the main purpose of preordering, after all. (Actually I need a new computer before preordering anything)

Meh, Yanukovich tried that as well, and the army refused. Since this is the 3rd (?) 'deadline' that has passed the new boss may be having the same troubles as the old boss in that regard- similarly the western narrative is a strait jacket for them, if they go in and kill a bunch of people it's another new boss same as the old boss, just with the 'terrorist' label switched over. Besides, if the reports that many of the activists are actually deserted Ukrainian police and troops are true they will not want to end up with a Syria/ Lebanon situation where the army ends up fighting itself, especially if things get mildly unpleasant, and then things will really get unpleasant fast. I'm always slightly amused when some report implies that the well trained first wave protester dudes are spetsnaz or similar when there are plenty of perfectly well trained ex Berkut and deserted Ukrainian military around who can be simply paid to do it, and if things go south you still have deniability- indeed, the protesters in Kharkov who did get rounded up were, in fact, all Ukrainian. Certainly the pictures of a lot of the militia types shown are definitively not spetsnaz, unless their recruitment standards have really slipped.

Sounds like a fairly straight CiV reskin to me, right down to 1UPT*, and CiV was a pretty poor game overall and significantly worse than its predecessor. Also, CivRev is apparently a favourite of the developers... *Let's fix the one end of the extreme spectrum Stacks of Doom by going completely to the other way on the extreme spectrum, that's sure to work without problems!

They're camellids, so it would be like eating camel. Their larger cousins tend to get eaten more than alpacas though, especially given the price of alpaca fibre. In any case Llama are where it's at for even toed Andean ungulates, and always will be. They had religious figures named after them, were intricately involved in the development of the good SimCitys and can spit comically in Captain Haddocks' face at inopportune moments. They even have the best scientific name of anything, anywhere, Lama glama.

The Chinese were ahead of the west for pretty much 2000 years. Meh, I pretty much agree with Tigranes. Never really understood the urge to point at other people and insist that because I'm better than them it means that everything is fine and I don't need to improve, and that's really what it amounts to. Also never understood the need for validation from being part of a society that I'm part of by virtue of the accident of being born into New Zealand rather than Afghanistan or Eritrea or the CAR. Yay me, such an achievement to be born here, no need to look critically at anything since I can point at survey X and metric Y to reinforce my innate superiority over people from inferior countries. Same with media, Russian media is biased and designed to present their narrative and news that their populace likes, but so are western media. People like stories and media which reinforce their pre-existing views because they make them feel that they are right, and everyone likes being right. People tend to dislike stuff which challenge their views as you then have to entertain the possibility that you are actually wrong. Even if CNN wanted to they would find it difficult to provide balanced news, a significant proportion of their viewership would regard anything even slightly pro Russian (or practically, not anti Russian) as being akin to active treason and literally turn off. Anyway, looks like things are going down in Ukraine in a pretty predictable manner. Most interesting thing was that the AlJ reporter actually said in the video bulletin that apart from the ex Berkut and local police mentioned in that article some of those manning the separatist checkpoints were definitely Ukrainian army, which rather contrasts with the rent-a-mob accusations which are usually heard. And, of course, it's always somewhat amusing hearing yet another Nyoo Zillund uksunt on AlJ.

And it's really rather tiresome seeing Mor reflexively press the 'must be Russian' button whenever someone disagrees with him. Even asterisking oby ain't Russian. As for bias western media are as bad as RT, they're just (somewhat) better at hiding it and use more subtle techniques like false balance (interview Tartars on a 1:1 basis with others to provide 'balance', even if they're 1/8 of the population, cherry pick to get psychotic sounding interviewees with opposing views), acritical restating of governmentally supplied 'facts' (Iraq can hit London in 45 minutes; John Kerry says there's no real separatism in Crimea so there isn't whatever prior referendum and actions show), allowing the presentation of poorly researched facts (Tartars were a majority prior to Stalin's deportation, still occasionally stated as fact; transparent ballot boxes = travesty, despite them being used in France and India and shown on the same news sources without comment) and just plain selective reporting and weasel words (our side= activists; their side = separatists/ rioters; we intervene, Putin invades; we have governments, they have regimes etc etc). The last especially is straight from 1984, might as well actually be saying Putin regime doubleplusungood, our government doubleplusgood. Most westerners think our media is better due to simple confirmation bias- they say what people want to hear, confirm our obvious superiority and hence are, obviously, correct. But five minutes research shows what a load of slanted garbage we're actually being presented with. And if I can do that for free they, with all their resources, should be able to do it on a professional level, but they don't. They're capable of it, they just don't want to.

Tells me all I need to know. Anything even slightly referencing the novels is immediately downgraded to crap level, actually calling him charname would be better. Oh god, it's got Minsc as well. Chop him to sausage in BG, leave him to be squashed in BG2 and still that hapless cliche pursues me into media I voluntarily read and could have guessed he was in from the title pic.

That ship sailed with Miranda in ME2. Her visual design was entirely fanservice even if based on a real person. I like Yvonne Strahovski as much as any red blooded male with vaguely functioning eyes, but the cat suit and especially the ludicrous posing was just plain embarrassing.

That's a terrible example as direct result of that was the start of second world war which resulted in fall of the third reich. I think the prelude to WW2 comparisons are rubbish anyway since the circumstances are not even slightly comparable, if you can't tell, but if one side is going to make ludicrous comparisons it's certainly fair game for the other to take it to its logical conclusion- precisely because it shows it is just another emotive comparison designed to elicit a specific, visceral, response which fails and falls apart as soon as you move beyond the narrow strictures those using it want it limited to. It's a smokescreen designed specifically to make westerners feel good about their impotence in comparison to Chamberlain's monumental cupidity. Besides, the German invasion of Poland only led to WW2 because the Allies guaranteed their integrity up to and including use of force (even if Hitler didn't truly believe them), something that patently has not happened for Ukraine. The west may throw a wobbley to make an overtired 2 year old blush if Russia invades, but there will be no general war over it. If you want different comparisons they can be seen in the lead up to any number of interventions- the Gulf of Tonkin incident is an obvious example of how to stage a provocation to get a justification to do what you want.

The Ukrainian army is unreliable with those from the east being as unreliable as the police and army in the west were when it came to obeying Yanukovich 6 weeks ago, their hierarchy still has huge ties to Russia, they use Russian equipment and they've already lost a significant amount of hardware that was boxed up/ mothballed in Crimea because it was unmaintained. The 'resistance' in Crimea got bigged up by the media a lot, but to all practical purposes it consisted of a hundred or so personnel out of around 15,000 per wikipedia marching out and a couple of dozen of them actually singing the Ukrainian national anthem. That's dwarfed to nothing by the 12,000 (or more, given the source of the 80% figure, the Russians are claiming 90%) who defected. But in any case, if Putin wanted a provocative event he would have banned the media and staged one, whatever the attitude of the Ukrainians was. Some are immensely keen on the WW2 parallels- right up until the time they get inconvenient of course- so here's another one: it didn't matter at all what Poland's attitude was on Sept 1 1939, Germany staged a provocation and tanks rolled, full stop. All evidence, every single bit, points towards the Russians being genuine about wanting (1) defections and (2) a referendum in Crimea, there is precisely zero evidence that they wanted a provocation beyond "well of course they did, they're Russian, duh" because they could very easily have created one at any point in time. Besides, Russia already has experience with how even genuine aggression against them gets spun- you still get people who insist that Russia attacked Georgia in 2008, despite the OSCE report saying that it was definitively Georgia who was the aggressor and that there was zero Russian build up prior to the events there. If they really want to grab SE Ukraine they'll do it, same as they did it with Crimea itself.

Oh please. 80%, by the Ukrainians own figures, of their troops in the Crimea simply deserted to the Russians. If the Russians wanted a provocation they'd bloody well get one in exactly the same style that Adolf Hitler got one in 1939. But no, the Ukrainians played a magnificent hand with the vast majority of their troops deserting which, startlingly, was exactly what the Russians stated they wanted from the outset and exactly what actually happened. But we know better what they wanted because they're eeeevil Russians who want violence, it's in their blood :1080p roll eyes: Again this is an example of the Scooby Doo Villain Russian caricature. That Putin, evil enough to invade Crimea! But hahaha, he never thought to stage a provocation for a wider incident because he was outwitted by our plucky heroes in Kiev using the Gandhi mantra! And he never thought to expel foreign media either, even if they spent 90% of their time talking to 12% of the Crimean population and taking pictures of the half dozen or so Ukrainian military who didn't defect! But he was even smart enough to state what he wanted defections and actually have that happen as a huge- what I like to call smokescreen of reality- so don't worry peoples, he's still actually a massive threat to our way of lives despite having a pathetic military and non existent economy... Pretzel logic, ho hum, par for the course. Fortunately I'm as always immune to manipulation by people who push shadowy conspiracy theories :smug:

Well, that is one of the fuzziest definitions of a Great Power I've ever seen. By that measure dear little New Zealand is a Great Power, we're friends with everyone. But no, it's a great POWER, not a 'great friend'. It's never ever been a niceness competition, furthest thing from it. Of course, those in the Great Power itself or in their sphere usually think that their term as such is Different and they've got to their position using sweet reason, kindness and generosity. May happen some time in the future, but it's never happened any time in the past or present. Er, really? The same banks that almost to a man had to be bailed out massively or would have gone bankrupt en masse? All this actually does is illustrate exactly how fragile and recursive the west's economic 'might' really is- the US relies on banks for credit, the same banks that rely on the US for credit and free money to remain solvent. But I'm sure that ain't a house of cards- any more than Russia relying on the most crucial resource mankind currently has for most of her economy, at least.

Now who is reducing power to Europe Universalis levels? Gotta build those workshops and get that extra 1 tax income per province, it'll be a cumulative gain while building pikemen and knights is a cumulative cost! If you want an alternative economic analysis we can always look at debt levels, in which Russia comes out far better with the western nations' debt still increasing, indeed somewhere like Japan which you have previously suggested as a potential replacement for Russia on the UNSC is, basically, insolvent with their 200%+ debt to GDP level, no meaningful economic growth in decades and demographics falling off a cliff (far more so than Russia, whose population is actually increasing again). Simple fact is that being a Great Power primarily entails nothing other than being able to do (most of, or even the US wouldn't be one) what you want to do and be able to block (most of) what you don't want others to do, and that is it. You can achieve those aims diplomatically, militarily or economically- it doesn't matter, in terms of being a great power only the end result does. Russia has nukes, all that is required militarily, economic leverage in energy supply, a UNSC seat and unlike the genuine second tier powers like France and the UK it isn't a great power bloc's satellite statelet and has an independent foreign policy that doesn't consist of pleasing their masters. She's behind the US and China of course, by a fair margin in both cases, but her next closest competitor is Daylight.

I spent ages making my femshep look like a goth barbie, and it was totally worth it. Then ME3 refused to import her properly, grr.