Zoraptor

It should also be explicitly noted that the British promised Palestine to the Arabs as well, and previous, to promising it to the Jews, in order to incite the arabs to rise up against the Ottomans- the McMahon Hussein correspondence mentioned in the wiki article. The only bit that wasn't promised to them is modern Lebanon. Though the thought of France deciding to have Lebanon be a Jewish Homeland is possibly the only thing that would be more potentially combustible than what we have now, given Lebanon's religious mix. So everything about it being promised to the Jews is also applicable to the Arabs as well, and previous. The wikipedia entry for Mandate Palestine is also pretty decent for giving background to Israel's creation, and has some useful tables about half way through that summarise land ownership/ demographics etc.

Don't think I've seen anyone say that Hamas is strong at this point. 18 months ago, maybe- potentially- when they had the MB in power in Egypt, but not now. There's even semi serious discussion about whether Israel should not escalate further because Hamas is so shaky, and what may replace them may be worse. As for the situation in Syria, Hamas was pretty influential among the palestinian population there, indeed one of the major battlegrounds has been the Yarmouk refugee camp- where Meshaal, the Hamas head used to be based. Yes, actually it is. Journalists quoting an interested party's spin doesn't convert that propaganda to truth, it remains propaganda- indeed propaganda is almost impossible without repetition from the media since it requires dissemination of the information to its receptive and acritical targets. I'm a generous guy, so I'll help you out as to why*. By default Khdeir is innocent, so him claiming to have been a bystander must be disproven. The beating accusation has close to incontrovertible video and physical evidence. In contrast, while the Israeli Police say he had a slingshot on him and was wearing a mask and was part of a group etc etc there's no evidence of that being true and he has not been charged where actual evidence as opposed to unsubstantiated accusations actually counts, ie in a court of law, despite, supposedly, being caught bang to rights. Until such time as he is charged it is propaganda- spreading of rumours to discredit another party- because the police got caught doing what is deeply embarrassing (but widely rumoured to be standard practice, indeed, relatively mild compared to some responses, Israel stated that those two were part of an active riot and that they had not used live fire prior to the video's release, so also have a recent history of using outright lies as a protective screen to brutality) and they want to blame the victim for being beaten senseless. Which is perfectly sensible from a PR point of view and happens all the time, but it is most definitively propaganda. And really, 'X is too stupid to live' justifications are just so... ridiculous, because you can hammer that into any rhetorical tool you want. The three Israeli teenagers were too stupid to live, hitch hiking on the West Bank and getting into a vehicle with a stranger, knowing that a lot of palestinians on the WB hate them! 1080p rolleyes x100. She was asking for it, wearing that short skirt in that part of town. 1080p rolleyes x100. It's a fundamentally assinine and intrinsically cretinous construct designed to protect the argument's maker from having to defend their own preconceptions when they are challenged, nothing more. *Aye, 'tis ever a thankless task.

Oh Bruce you're too modest, nobody could claim your crown! So as well as an amateur earthquake expert who doesn't know the difference between Mercalli and magnitude moment, you're a lawyer who doesn't know presumption of innocence? (Un)Fortunately it's actually irrelevant, quite apart from said presumption of innocence which tellingly you give to the settlers but not the youth, the US kid not only strenuously denies any involvement but is yet to be charged with any crime and that despite supposedly, per the Israeli propaganda, throwing molotovs and being armed with knives. OTOH, some of the Jewish Nationalists have confessed, and even re-enacted beating the kid and setting him on fire while still alive. Only open question is whether some of those who confessed were my relatives. Hamas and Iran are actively fighting each other in Syria, one of the reasons why Hamas had to make their deal with the PLO was due to them losing all their friends- except, of course, the ones no one talks about in polite circles, those in Riyadh, Manama, Dubai and Qatar. They're fighting Assad and Iran in Syria and the new army gauleiter in Egypt hates Hamas more than the old air force gauleiter ever did, as they're too similar to the Muslim Brotherhood people he's busy getting his appointed judiciary to liquidate en masse and apparently were running Egypt from Gaza to boot.

Yeah, the difference is that while Zuniga's challenge looked quite bad- albeit on repeated slow motion replays, which tend to make everything look bad- it was the sort of thing that does happen all the time in football and usually without significant adverse effect. It's the equivalent of a sprigs up challenge or flappy elbow aerial challenges, they happen multiple times a game but don't usually result in broken legs/ noses and are not necessarily a sign of an attempt to injure, but may be simply reckless- or even so far as purely accidental, I've certainly elbowed one of my team mates in the head when playing football and that certainly wasn't deliberate. I've also accidentally kneed someone in the back playing rugby under circumstances that would have probably looked quite deliberate if there had been replays. Biting someone though is an absolutely deliberate act that simply cannot be accidental under the circumstances Suarez committed it- and it was his third offence.

It's NWNOC that is a dsigarce and evil, and that's pure FACT! r00fles! Personally I couldn't care less about sexual orientation in games or real life, but it is frequently cited as a sign of Bioware's decline, along with increased emphasis on romances in general. Don't really care about romances of any type, except in that they're usually poorly executed.

Don't know about fun and entertaining, I'd probably describe it as an absorbing tactical battle or similar, but CRC most certainly weren't under any obligation to do anything other than play to their strengths and play to a plan that maximised their chances of winning, which is exactly what they did. Doing otherwise would be stupid. They played well, beat several far more fancied teams over the course of the tournament and did their best to beat the dutch as well, all by playing to their strengths. Good on them for doing so, it's one of if not the main reasons they did do better than England, Italy and Uruguay.

Yeah, EA forced Bioware to make KOTOR/ JE for consoles and do dlc for NWN and make NWNOC an utter disgrace and have bisexuals in Jade Empire (and tried to have Juhani as well), all before EA even bought them. If there's one accusation that is outright ludicrous it's that EA forced any of that stuff on Bioware. Greg and Ray were perfectly able to do all the usual cliché bad stuff perfectly fine with not a whit of input from EA. There never were the Good Doctors, bravely fighting for Incline against Decline. That's outright myth. Personally, I consider the NWN-KOTOR-JE era to be by far Bioware's worst, and that was pure Good Doctors. Or maybe EA are just so evil they travel back in time to retroactively afflict companies with teh suck?

Being one of the creators of the Pop Demand Mod (only found that because of a twitter response to one alanschu) for Victoria 2 means that Dave Gaider is and always will be Awesome in my book. Really though, there's some truly terrible writing in video games and while Bioware has some hiccups they're far, far, far from the worst- unless you're worried about being infected with the gay or general liberalism or something, and I'm reliably informed you can't catch either by osmosis.

There are plenty of pictures of current phase insurgents/ rebels with tanks in both Syria and Iraq- not many tanks, but that's what would be expected since they aren't buying them. They're most likely out and out prizes from captured bases rather than refurbs, but in both cases (and Ukraine for that matter) there have been significant defections from the formal armed forces so there will be people with repair and maintenance experience. ISIS in Iraq wasn't using tanks much because they were moving so fast and that is their main advantage, apart from the general incompetence of the Iraqi Army. For genuine insurgents knocking out tanks is more psychological than anything, they aren't looking to win in a conventional 'destroy the enemies army' sense, they're aiming to make the whole process too expensive in all senses for it to be maintained. Taking a tank or a plane out is saying that no one is safe despite any technological advantages, to both the enemy and to your own side. The 'Invulnerable Abrams' myth being dispelled on live TV was a great fillip for insurgent morale in Iraq, even if realists on both sides knew the Abrams was never invulnerable and militarily it meant little.

Vega's big problems are that he wasn't in the earlier games so didn't get any following there and is used largely as an intro/ info dump for new players as he doesn't know the rest of the team/ wasn't part of the action of the past games. As a consequence he was just kind of there, not good, not bad, slightly cliche but not offensively so. His voice acting was decent enough though.

Such scepticism and cynicism! CDPR is bringing their gamer friendly attitude to the MOBA genre, the game is not pay-to-win, they said so! Despite avoiding MOBAs like the plague I'm sure that's totally different from the usual attitude!

Good news, everybody! New Witcher game announced, and apparently due in 2014! At least I now actually know what MOBA stands for, I couldn't quite force "Inexplicably popular genre that I have zero interest in" into the acronym. I have to admit I do rather like the concept art banner though.

While Dragon Age lore is highly derivative (though honestly, what RPG isn't at this stage?) it isn't especially derivative of ASoIaF- which is itself derivative and based on various historical incidences, minus the supernatural stuff. There's a lot of Tolkien and other borrowing going on as well, so stuff like genlocks/ hurlocks being generated from different races is exactly the same as Melkor generating Trolls and Orcs from Ents and Elves. Sames true for TWitchers, lots of real world and standard fantasy tropes there, and TWitchers are thematically a whole lot more similar to ASoIaF/ GoT than Dragon Age is, if only for the decidedly non PG13 approach taken. Then again, I do tend to roll my eyes slightly at the fleurs-de-lys or Polish Crests in Twitchers, while most people simply wouldn't recognise their historical context. Oh, and zee uxcent fransays on the person from Beauclair, maker of fine wines...

Which doesn't really make much sense at all, since MP already works fine with the backer version, which GOG already had since yesterday (so long as you used their downloader, manual was borked) and they've insisted Galaxy will be 'optional'. Removing the "Kickstarter backer, you're awesome" decal can't be that much work. Why GOG presumes the majority of the clientele care even slightly about MP fripperies and auto patching is a bit of a mystery, most of the people there and who buy from there fundamentally don't want steam or they'd be buying from there in the first place. It's like they promoted the guy who decided on the shutdown stunt to head of PR over the past few months- or hired some idiot MBA as a consultant.

What, not the accent of Officer Crabtree from 'Allo 'Allo? Though I guess there'd be problems with the naughty filter every time he was 'passing by the door and heard two shots'. One of the actresses on the BBC drama Waking the Dead had an accent exactly the same as Leliana's, and also looked exactly like her. Always (well, it passed my mind on occasion once or twice) wondered if that was coincidence or not.

At this point many indies probably have more employees and clout than Interplay does, even if they technically still are a publisher. (And of course Interplay is still (?) trying to crowd fund ProjectV13/ the relaunched BIS, and has been for ages)

Nothing? I've been pretty consistent in saying that any bits of Ukraine that want to break off should be able to and splitting the country along the east west divide was probably the best solution, from the outset. Certainly they've done an excellent job in Kiev of making sure that if a majority of people in Donbass didn't hate them before they do now, and even the western journalists have made that clear, there's now massive resentment and outright loathing of Kiev throughout the region. There really isn't anything that the west can do to prevent Russia intervening, if they decide to (at this point I think direct intervention is unless there is a major shift in events, if they were going to it would have been in May), since the only way to definitively stop them is to intervene militarily themselves. Which they won't do. They won't get any further sanctions through in the current climate either whatever the posturing of Anders the Dane and John the Kerry, neither France nor Germany have any stomach for them if they have an excuse not to.

By way of comparison, Johan Le Roux got an 18 month ban from rugby, a full contact sport, for biting- and that was before the current PG13 rugby era of no rucking etc and was his first offence. At this point they really have to throw the book at Suarez, it isn't an isolated incident and he still does it because there haven't been enough consequences.

Lol. If Putin wants to invade he'll do it, just as he did in Crimea to an anaemic reponse. He has no need to invade 'Ukraine', now, he'd just recognise Donbass as independent and send 'peacekeepers' at their request. He may wait for the Kurds to declare independence and use western support of that as a precedent, he may not. Either way the approval for invasion of Ukraine is redundant at this point.

Meh, whether the companions just sound bad as opposed to actually are bad is an open question at this point. Write one sentence descriptions of the companions from MotB with a picture and they look like they'd be pretty bad as well, for example.

Britain declared war because ze Germans invaded Belgium, at least ostensibly*. They weren't allied with Russia- or even France- formally, and it was primarily a balance of power issue for Britain. France was allied with Russia though. *Uh, ostensible reason for war at least, I'm fairly sure the German invasion of Belgium was completely genuine.

... roflcopters. Yes, the people who bundled various brown chappies into arbitrary constructions without any care for those 'ancient [ethno]religious schisms' have nothing to do with the latter disintegration of said countries along those ancient ethnoreligious lines! Nothing at all! It's coincidence, a Russo Iranian conspiracy, anything but our fault! Aliens! Orcs! Illuminati! Conjunction of the Spheres! Mars in the quarter of Pleiades! Anything! You know what the problem with Sykes Picot was? It didn't take into account any of those ancient ethno religious schisms. You know what the problem with the colonial administrations were? They weren't concerned with an 'approach to civil society', they were concerned with colonial convenience. You know what the problem with post colonial policy was? Support for convenient 'reliable' strongmen favouring one ethnoreligious group over 'civil society'. You know what the current problem is, at least in part? Support for the 'toxic philosophies' when convenient. That's not to say that those are the only reasons for the current mess, but trying to airbrush them as factors is at very best naive. The west does not understand the middle east. Never has, and all indications are it never will.

I should find the over the top patriotism of the US annoying, but for some reason find it immensely endearing in football. Helps that they're playing Ronaldo, of course. I'd say it's as simple as too much money in the Premier League and it being too successful as a league are the main problems for the english national side. Sides have the money to buy in over the top of local talent, while english talent finds it hard to get into foreign leagues so it's the worst of both worlds. Even though those that do play in the top sides are exposed to many of the best players in the world regularly there simply isn't the critical mass of native english players there to really benefit from it, they're just too diffuse. Don't think that having only a handful of really competitive teams means much though- realistically, people could have accurately guessed the top 4 teams in the premier league for most of the last decade from the beginning of the season, apart from Liverpool/ ManU this year maybe.

The great British public should not be bothered. British interference is one of the factors which has left Iraq a mess, at some point you just have to stop and let them sort things out themselves. 1918 would have been good. They don't have any chance of achieving their Caliphatic dreams in any case, they can aim for the moon but it doesn't mean that the little green men should be worried. As soon as they try inflicting their vision on the gulf states- which they'd have to, can't have a caliphate without Mecca and Medina- their funding will dry up instantly; they lack sufficient support and have only achieved anything in areas where the existing public authorities are already massively compromised by other factors. Their narrative has a certain cachet in being similar to that of the actual Caliphate- bands of committed men fired by religious fervour sweeping out of the desert to supplant the decadent [Roman and Persian] Empires, against all odds. But it's not a good actual parallel in reality, it's just a recruiting tool. They don't have a Khalid ibn al Walid and they don't have two empires that have fought themselves to the brink of bankruptcy and implosion in the decades previous. They may be aiming for a Caliphate but the best they can achieve is a (localised) Timur. Anything concrete they achieve will fall apart at the first sign of weakness. Syria would crush ISIS, if they weren't also fighting a bunch of other groups. Iraq would crush ISIS, if they weren't also fighting tribals and ba'athists. And as Syria shows, ISIS are allies of convenience to other groups, they'll naturally end up fighting their allies as well at some point. The only thing which can convert ISIS into a long term threat is something like couping Saudi Arabia.

Trouble with RTD's run is that if I look at the episode list from those years practically every episode I like is written by... Stephen Moffat. RTD had some good ideas as well as Moffat did but... hmm. Best way I can put it is that while some of Moffat's ideas seem confusingly resolved/ not resolved/ just confusing in retrospect RTD's ideas went south in a rapid and utterly linear fashion. For example, Derek Jacobi as The Master is a brilliant idea, and that was brilliantly played even if the base premise of the episode was moronic (and largely cribbed from Blake's 7). John Simm being smug, ok, chewing scenery and being shouty, not so much. And the denouement, everybody thinking of The Doctor fixing everything was one hundred billionty percent worse than anything that has ever been on TV, ever. Just cringeworthy. Might be a slight exaggeration on the last sentence, but that whole arc just about sums up my feelings towards RTD's run perfectly, promise followed very rapidly by disappointment. Having said that, RTD's involvement did include Children of Earth which was very, very good.