Zoraptor

Nope. The vote is actually irrelevant, that it was made under duress with a third of the members missing and with Right Sector providing security is simply the cherry on the top that would make the vote invalid under any circumstance. What makes it invalid in the first place is that it was unconstitutional and did not follow the correct procedure by any definition. The constitution of Ukraine is the constitution of Ukraine, like it or loathe it. You need to show how the method used was constitutional. If you cannot, then it was not constitutional. I've shown you the relevant clauses for removing the president, you're free to rebut them. If you can. But wishing it said something different- maybe that the medical grounds was less specific and could be stretched to any absence whatever the cause- is not rebuttal. You won't see me arguing that the separation referenda are constitutional, because they clearly are not. Equally clearly neither was Yanukovich's removal. Fact is fact. You're just going to have to deal with it. People blame the rightists for Odessa for numerous reasons- they clearly drove people into the building, they clearly set it alight, they clearly used a modus operandi that is a signature of the UPA from WW2, and, clearly, the vast majority of those who died were pro Russian. There isn't any serious disputation about that at all, and most tellingly the rump government and its biggest supporters aren't saying diddly about it, and are instead trying to ignore it since they know it's a loser. That's straight propaganda 101, if you're in the wrong put out your spun version then don't talk about it and hope it goes away. It's the same for Mariupol, if they thought they were in the right they'd never shut up about it, as with them saying continually that the referenda are unconstitutional. If they're in the wrong they'll say as little as possible, and hope that the pictures on BBC/ ITV/ AlJ etc of clearly unarmed people getting shot won't do too much damage or get too many to question things.

Alt requires an older, original account being hidden behind a newer one. No actual evidence anyone is doing that. I'm mainly still here because I made predictions at the start as to what would happen and it is interesting seeing if I'm right or not- largely right to this point, though I'm rather less happy about it than I may seem- and I'm always fascinated by propaganda and (other) people's (of course, since I'm immune to such things) massive capacity for self deception when following narrative lines. Plus, for much of the last twenty years I've had this nagging feeling that some time in the future we'd wake up and find that we'd totally and unnecessarily asterisked up the end of the cold war and dealings with Russia with trying to grind them into the dirt. Much as Foch (?) said about WW1 what we had was a twenty year armistice, not a peace, and blaming the other side entirely for that is as moronic now as it was then. And yet again. Unconstitutionally- literally against the provisions of the constitution clauses 108-111- while the rada was protected by the same people who recently burned 40 of their compatriots alive in Odessa, and with a third of its members missing. It'd never be accepted as legal were it not done by 'our guys'.

Yeah, claiming that the government is an interim one dedicated only or even primarily to setting up new elections is one of the more bizarre claims I've seen, especially when the pro coup people are usually quite open about the 'government' doing a load of stuff that is in no way at all related to making new elections and for which they cannot claim any electoral mandate. Loans would usually be OK as you cannot expect an interim government to go bankrupt just because it's interim. In this case even that was dodgy though, because they reneged the agreement with Russia (without paying pack the first loan tranche of the loan, of course- after all, they had nothing to fear from further antagonising the Russians...) and have signed up to an onerous deal with the IMF/ WB that binds any- legitimate- successor government to its long term conditions. That's not the behaviour of an interim government, that's the sort of thing you get from coup governments in Africa- or from the Iraqi Transitional Authority in Iraq, let's disband the Berkut as disbanding the Iraqi army worked sooo well- and it's designed to remake the country quickly and without recourse (except violence) into your image, then slap a 'democratic' stamp on it with elections, post facto but before any of the consequences start showing. Well, in theory, Putin had something to say about the last part. What was required was conciliation, consultation and the other stuff you get when people deal in good faith, but then if we had that Yanukovich would still be caretaker president and any of the deals signed with him and broken by the Maidan types would have stuck. What was got was as about as far from that as it is possible to get. And I too am still somewhat baffled about how people can claim with a straight face that the current government has a mandate for what it is doing but those who supported the democratically elected government and oppose the interim one don't have any reason for unhappiness.

Many will regard it as bad because it is counter to one of the critical factors in a game being an RPG. In an RPG there should be a primacy of the development of the avatar's skill over the player's skill (/having quick reactions), and twitch gameplay is very much about player reaction time. So combat in a typical twitch shooter is all about the skill of the player, a hybrid like Deus Ex or System Shock 2 has it depending a bit on both, and a 'pure' RPG like Fallout or even Baldur's Gate has it be wholly dependant on the avatar's skills- or at least, as much as it can be wholly dependant, the player still has to make the decisions about who to attack for example, but it is entirely the avatars' skills and equipment that determine probability of hitting or being hit. But yeah, it's only subjectively bad, not objectively so.

Their conduct in Iraq was pretty amateurish, to say the least; blundering into the middle of Fallujah and getting themselves killed was utter incompetence as was shooting up a Baghdad round-a-bout and killing a bunch of completely innocent people. That is basically why they aren't called Blackwater any more but are called Greystone/ Xe/ Academi as their reputation was, er, shot by their conduct. But I certainly wouldn't think they'd be doing direct combat in Ukraine for the same reason I don't think there are Russian soldiers there, it'd be a PR disaster for them to be caught and there are enough available fighters to do the fighting without them. I'd suspect they'd mainly be instructor types.

Bro, it's as proven as any 'fact' from the US State Department/ British Foreign Office or Ukrainian government based on intelligence. In this case it's the 'friendly' German intelligence doing the leaking as well as the 'enemy' Russian one, so it's a lot more credible and is not something the BND would make up randomly to make their favoured side look bad. Yeah, if it's the Russians and only the Russians saying so it may well be straight propaganda, if it's the Russians and Germans saying so they could still be wrong, but it doesn't seem likely and it isn't propaganda.

Vandal under the hospital in Santa Monica certainly has some.

Heh, you should have mentioned the Jewish moderator as well... (For those who don't know, all three of them are also members here. They're just a lot less active.)

What's wrong, Infinitron? You've still got that 'Duraframe' guy to get Obsidian news from, after all. It's probably a matter of not having a dedicated PR unit (hence, Paradox for PoE) and having multiple other projects done for publishers and hence also under their PR control. Fargo's two projects are both his own, he can say whatever he likes about them. And in terms of what can broadly be called self promotion comparison to Fargo is like comparing a boxer to Muhammad Ali- he's just very good at it.

Blackwater would certainly explain a penchant for randomly shooting places up, even if they're just instructors. Funny in a way, I thought the accusations from the Russians about Blackwater involvement seemed pretty unlikely (FUD, basically) when they made them last month. I guess the ultimate source was probably the same there as well, intelligence sources. Still, nice to see that Ukraine have found something constructive to spend their 3 billion IMF loan on.

"Twitcher sucks. Plain and simple." No. (They've also sold 7 million+ copies now)

You know where you don't see them? Mariupol and Odessa. You know where the massacres have taken place? Mariupol and Odessa. You know where the massacres haven't taken place- yet at least? Where there actually are effective, if still relatively lightly armed militia with AKs and balaklavas as in Slovyansk/ Donetsk/ Lugansk protecting people from crowd control via BMP. You have to congratulate the Ukrainians on telling the people that disagree with them that they're going to get shot up and burned alive unless they become a heavily armed mob with enough armament to deter incursions. That's sure to de-escalate things, as is the unconditional support for using BMPs as crowd control from the same westerners who threw a monumental wobbly- big enough for a Richter Moment Magnitude reading- when Yanukovich used asterisking water cannon and tear gas. The BBC- the BBC- had footage of a completely unarmed man getting gunned down by the Ukrainian military in the street, ITV had footage of another. Neither was balaklava wearing or armed. The Ukrainian narrative of the issue is utterly muddled, they still cannot decide what exactly they were doing at the police station, whether they were liberating it or defending it from being liberated. As they insist that they lost only one man and there were at least three dead police shown one can only assume that they were firing on the police themselves, and all the eye witnesses who said the police refused to fire on the crowd and were then shot up by the army for not doing have the correct interpretation. It really is rather depressing to see those cretins in Kiev doing every stupid thing I said they would. I would far rather be wrong about them than right. Again, there have been zero helicopters downed in Mariupol or Odessa. Not a one. And there's been a massacre in each. The only place they've been shot down is where there's an effective deterrence against aggression, ie not where the massacres are taking place. Plus, of course, the only independently verified helicopter shoot down was via small arms, despite the insistence of some that they had to be shot down with rockets. Indeed, the rump government has already changed their story on the first one to be 'shot down' (which was actually almost certainly a spontaneous fuel fire due to bad maintenance) from being hit by a rocket to being hit by a sniper's bullet. Now, we can wait to see what the junta will do to disrupt the referendum. Tanks? Artillery? Chopers? Bombers? Sky's the limit. Most effective tactic would probably be to just laugh at the sidelines, but that's far too smart for the clowns in Kiev.

Please everyone, stop deflecting from the important issue of Mr Ostrovsky being deprived of his iphone for three days. That's far more important than using tanks (OK, BMPs) on civilians- and apparently police who won't "do their duty" and shoot civilians- and triumphantly announcing you've killed twenty of them. Or herding people into buildings and setting them alight, for that matter. It's kind of hilarious though, the rump government can't even get it straight whether the police station was occupied by pro freedom activists or not, and when even the state media outlet of the 51st state is showing video of clearly unarmed people being shot dead in the street by the military you know there's some serious asterisks going down. I'm sure Bashar al-Banderayuk will still be welcomed with open arms though in all the capitals of Europe though. Crowd control by machine gun is only bad if you're an enemy of the west, not a friend. Oh, and Putin going to Crimea to celebrate liberation from German hegemony* is far worse than machine gunning or flambeeing your own population as well, since that gets condemnation from the west while the latter is a 'measured' and 'restrained' response. *and of course to celebrate beating the germans in 1945 as well :smug:

It isn't irrelevant, because citing such examples as Mr Vice is meant to establish moral clarity on the issue- look how these guys treat the free press with disdain! But if others, supposedly more free, are doing much the same then there is no moral clarity, and people should be as outraged or more so than if a bunch of random armed blokes detain someone for three days. You can make anything look bad (or good, for that matter) by tailoring the terms of reference to exclude stuff you don't like and which contradicts your views, indeed it is a particular favourite technique of politicians looking to get the result they want from 'independent' panels. Seeking to redefine everything to a particularly narrow interpretation where (in some cases) even things happening inside Ukraine within the past few months or years are labelled 'irrelevant' or 'deflection' is utterly feeble and no substitute for a proper response. To illustrate why this is utterly feeble argumentation I will declare that everything that is not about Right Sector burning 40 people alive in Odessa as 'deflection' from the True Issue. After all, 40 people dying is far more important than some poor baby being locked up without his iphone for a few days. Ah, I can feel the warm glow of victory on the internet washing over me...

It is most certainly interesting that the 'Codex, den of villainy and casual bigotry that it is has active women, gay and trans members.

I dunno, that's probably a fundamental problem with jedi as a concept- they aren't meant to show or have (most) emotions so are, fundamentally, pretty wooden and boring. And that really is George's problem as well, since he had so much control over the setting that things like saying casual sex was ok for jedi (so long as they didn't love the person, of course. Which is one weird Conservative stereotype of Lieberals that, apparently, exists for real) automatically became canon. He was far more of a broad concept guy and should have left the fine detail to others. I'd agree with whoever it was that said that Palpatine was best acted, but then he had the big advantage of being a pantomine villain ("Where's Sidious" "He's behind you!") and mugging/ winking at the camera in every scene, something none of the others could do.

One of the big problems is that anaesthetics are designed to be used on someone who is lying down, not sitting. When sitting people tend to slump forward, which compresses their lungs (easy to show, sit then lean forward and you'll be able to breathe nowhere near as deeply as if sitting up, standing or lying down) and that makes them far more prone to suffocation from overdoses or even adverse reactions to standard doses. So, you have to pump in the gas, make sure people are unconscious/ kill anyone in non effected areas, disarm external booby traps, make sure bombers won't wake up inconveniently then carry unresponsive people out- and that all takes a lot of time. The problem was not so much with the response, but, as with Beslan, with the chechens getting into the theatre in the first place. As soon as that happened people were inevitably going to die and there was nothing anyone could have done about it. Show me on the dolly where Putin touched you... 850 hostages taken, 133 died. Even the worst alternative is 'only' 200 deaths, and that is nowhere near 'all'.

This is games though, and so far as I am aware there is no Twilight video game. And if there is a Twilight game, please do not make me aware of it as I am more than happy to live in ignorance in this one case. We should make a list of games with romance in them for Bruce to sample. I'll start with FEAR2. (Or Fahrenheit, for cringe inducing QTE 'action')

That still isn't proof or even evidence really, since what he's actually quoting is a post election survey and not the election results. The figures don't even match the ones he used earlier. I'm holding out for a certain virile Russian politician. Surely with my posts on an obscure video games board it's only a matter of time until he notices me?

No PC version announced, therefore minimal PC coverage is probably why nobody has heard of it. Plus it's still a fair way off. I'm not actually sure now if that rumoured amount is more or less than some of the more outlandish claims about how much TOR or ESO cost.

There is no 'solution for dealing with Boko Haram'. Magic bullet solutions to complex problems are just that, magic. They don't exist. Sure, if I could wave my hands and remove Nigeria's corruption it would go some way to ameliorating things, if I could wave my hands and replace all their weapons with guava and mangoes that would help and if I could teleport any hostages home I would. But I can't do any of that, you can't either, and neither can the US/ France/ Britain or anyone else.

Shrug. I've got no particular fandom for Russian competence or incompetence, though I think Putin has played a weak hand well overall- but the west could only get their guys into power by 'cheating', and being antidemocratic, Putin's man was duly and fairly elected four years ago and pro Russians won the rada elections as well. Can't say the same of Turchenov and Yatsenyuk, who owe their positions entirely to, well, "uprising" and "revolution" per Tyanybok, rather than democratic process. You can't judge competence based on people breaking rules, else the most competent football team in the world would be the one that brought AKs to the game and shot the opposition team and referees during their 2134-0 victory and the most competent politician in the world is King Jong Un, with his 100% approval in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. But I'll concede the point, yes, the west is far more competent than Russia at getting their way undemocratically, and Putin/ Russia was naive thinking they'd honour results their own monitoring organ described as fair, rather than plot to overturn them. Their charming naivete and willingness to believe the best in the west despite the repeated betrayals is, most certainly, one of Russia's most endearing attributes.

I suspect Outcast will go back to kickstarter down the line, with a rather better pitch from the get go. There's a lot more they could or should have done- get an agreement with GOG to offer the original at a discount of free for a while, for example, and some of their stretch goals were a bit off from what most would expect from KS (eg fund our console version!) as they were more of direct benefit to them than to backers. (I don't actually have a problem with the console stretch goal personally since Outcast would be perfectly portable to a controller without losing PC functionality, but stretch goals should really be about encouraging backers to give more, not about doing things the dev wants to do. Plus, there was some ill feeling about the cancelled Outcast 2 being console only)

The guy is basically a blogger, much as Erik Kain is on the gaming side (though Kain is far, far better). He doesn't have any inherent authority gained from being associated with Forbes and it similar to citing Alex Jones or similar non ironically. His source is a garbled Ukrainian news report, which misrepresents a post poll survey as being the poll itself. Not exactly a new thing, there's a great sideline in the media about quoting opinion polls to show support for Ukrainian unity which all conveniently ignore that supporting separation is actually criminal. You have to be brave or stupid to tell some random voice over the phone- who knows your name, address and phone number- that you're committing thought crime. Which is why surveys on any illegal activity have to be done very carefully and not as a part of some random opinion poll. And in shocking news, Eurovision will count votes from Crimea as being from Ukraine. The irony? You can't vote for your own country, but Crimeans will be able to vote for Russia.

And in that case the Tigers lost largely because they weren't an insurgent force any more. When they were an insurgent army they were extremely successful, perhaps too successful since that success led to them formalising all their structures and basically setting up a mini Tamil statelet complete with all the trimmings and a regular army during the truce- an army which then got steamrollered when the conflict resumed because, as a regular army, it was no match for the Lankan one.