Zoraptor

Well, not since the 17th century at least.

That has always been the case though. On Feb 5 1840 New Zealand's population would have been around 80% Maori, and if the country fairy had waved her magical wand then all things being equal you would have had 'Aotearoa' instead of New Zealand. Now the Maori proportion is only around an eighth of that. Same for any new world country. I'm no fan of sovereign absolutism and borders being immutable and absolute, because they've never been immutable and absolute- and neither have ethnoreligious make ups either. You cannot turn back time to make Crimea majority Tartar/ Cuman/ Greek/ Scythian, or however far back you go. It's isn't like all the russian residents there have been bussed in by Moscow in the last two weeks, the vast majority will have been born and raised there, and most while there was no practical difference between the Russian and Ukrainian SSRs. In essence, most of the arguments against which don't involve sovereign absolutism involve talking of historic wrongs. Well, they're historic wrongs. You're not going to solve them by creating another, current, wrong.

So was Andrew Ryan in Bioshock, which I would never have picked since he sounds nothing like Quark/ Principal Snyder there.

I answered it already. I'm perfectly happy for eastern Ukraine to rejoin Russia- or become The Republic of Novorussia for that matter- if it represents the will of the majority of the people. Even pro western news outlets suggest that is so for Crimea, at very least, and quite possibly so for much of the rest of the south and east. That isn't be any means perfect of course, but then while the new government talked reconciliation their actions did not match the rhetoric, indeed they actively antagonised areas that were politically opposed to them by threatening to ban their political parties, plus the repealing of the language laws. If they wanted territorial integrity then compromise was needed, not triumphalism. These things do not happen in a vacuum. I don't mind if the Caucasus republics secede from Russia at all. I wouldn't object to the South Island seceding from New Zealand, indeed it would be eminently sensible for them to as they're largely treated as a place to generate electricity for the north. I'd just question whether that would represent the will of the majority of the people in either place.

I doubt there will be much violence, fortunately. Mainly because I doubt Ukraine feels it can rely on its own army to fight reliably enough, there are already a lot of rumours about defections. And I cannot see any of the western countries fighting Russia for Ukraine which is what it would take- unless they go for all of Ukraine, which seems very unlikely and would almost certainly be a momentous mistake. RT etc are running lots of video of pro Russia demos in Donetsk/ D'trovsk/ Kharkov/ Mariupol etc... Pretty surprised Putin has gone all in so soon. Would definitely have thought there'd be more stage managing before anything happened. At the moment the contrast with Obama could not be more stark, albeit Obama's wobble was over a far more peripheral and distant issue, and Putin is likely to get broad support from population and politicians. I don't know about that, but he does seem to be enjoying himself rather too much considering things could get very serious, very fast. And I have the knees of an emu, not a spaniel.

Nobody cares about that, they care based on geopolitical goals. If they talk humanitarian or somesuch it's sugar coating for the public. Besides, it's by no means certain that you'd get a majority for secession even if you could hold a plebiscite on it, the autonomous Chechnya was an absolute disaster- for the Chechens. Deflection? Nah, it's pointing out that you can level the charges against everyone, you're just being selective on who is being accused. US supports separatists in Iranian Baluchistan, supported South Sudan, supported Kosovo. That's an enemy country, an enemy country (Sudan) and an ally of an enemy country (Serbia/ Russia). Countries will do whatever they want and can get away with to expand their influence or reduce a rival's whether they be Russia or the US. That's the answer. May not be the one you're looking for, but it's the one based in reality rather than, per John Kerry, Rocky IV. Sigh. You didn't read the link I posted, did you? And I see what numbersman says is, as it usually is, true- you're going to hide your opinion behind the bulwark of authority by, er, citing the first two things you find on google that support your view. Okey dokey, I'll run through Mr Hitchens' points, because he was a momentous goober with all the authority of stating a position, and stating it loudly and repeatedly. Still can't be bothered with the other one. 1) No Russia never had any interest in Abkhaz or Ossetia indepenence prior to the USSR breaking up. It'd be like Surrey county in England getting upset about bits of Cumberland County being given to Northumberland or Lancaster Counties. In the USSR they were part of the same country, the SSR divisions were administrative only. Classic non sequitur. 2)"Kosovo [..] was never manipulated as part of the partition or intervention plan of another country." Well yes, it was never manipulated by the Ottoman Empire. Oh wait, yes it was, for best part of 500 years. And yes, the partition was a plan, of the US/ NATO. They didn't wake up one day and find Kosovo was suddenly 'independent', they actively supported it with aid and political recognition. Ignorance, muppetry 2a) "Whatever may be said of Georgia's incautious policy toward secessionism within its own internationally recognized borders". There was extensive ethnic cleansing in Georgia, 100k + Ossetians ethnically cleansed- according to Human Rights Watch, not the Russians or any other interested party. To give the scale, SOssetia's current population is only around 50k ish. Of course, being Georgia this is "incautious secession policy". Specious, fatuous, selective/ ignorant, propaganda. 3) The Georgians deliberately killed Russian peacekeepers. You don't need a UN resolution to respond to that. OSCE itself agreed to that, indeed OSCE's main gripe was disproportionate response, not the fact there was one. Specious, muppetry, non sequitur. 4) Particularly amusing, since Russia has sponsored independence status for both Abkhazia and SOssetia. And, as comparison, EU members of NATO recognise NATO creation, news at 11. Incorrect, muppetry. 5) Oh those sainted westerners, always with the best of intentions! Oh those hideous eastern beasts, with their squinty eyes and inscrutable morals! Of course, those sainted westerners will never agree that Kosovo's oppressed Serbian minority should have the right to rejoin Serbia... 6) Long meditated is complete asterisks. Again, the OSCE report (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) found there was no evidence of a troop build up by Russia prior to Georgia's- deliberate, planned- invasion, indeed most of the heavy fighting for the first 2-3 days was carried out by the SOssetians themselves, in Tskinvali. Incorrect, also use of shall we say "deflection". Your articles are crap, rubbish. Penned by morons in ignorance or out of malice, unbalanced, specious, selective.

It isn't an example of what not to do. It's an example of how it's OK for us to do something, but not OK for the Russians to do the same thing. You either have an independent Kosovo because they were treated badly by the Serbs (rather a gross simplification of course, but nuance in that case would take hours and a Balkan history lesson) and independent South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Nagorno Karabakh, Transnistria etc because they were treated badly, or you don't have the lot. Going on about territorial integrity being sacrosanct is fine, if you honour it yourself. If it's only a rule for your enemies, not you, then you cannot hardly complain when they ignore it. After all, you've done exactly the same thing. My stance on what exactly? If it's on territorial integrity then it's meh, don't really care. I tend to think that Kosovo should be split with the north going to Serbia and the south to Albania, as that seems to be the best and fairest solution. For Ukraine, it's an artificial country made up on the basis of internal Soviet divisions that were never intended to have any practical consequence at all. Let the people who want to join Russia do so, let the people who want to be Ukrainian do so, let the people who may want to be Polish/ Romanian/ Hungarian be so. No, I don't really find it interesting, I'm afraid, I find it rather humdrum and par for the course. I lack the... belief needed to think that exactly the same thing doesn't and wouldn't happen to countries the West dislikes. After all, you didn't hear politicians and media saying the world would end when Lvov declared independence a couple of weeks ago, because at that stage Ukraine was still in Russia's sphere. Same as you didn't hear the same politicians and media saying that Ukraine should be left to make its own decisions a week or so ago- it's only once you can rely on them to make the 'right' decisions that they should be left alone to make them, whether you're Russia, or the EU/ US. You've got the timeline wrong way around. Both SOssetia and Abkhazia were de facto independent long before Kosovo. It's just that they had not sought formal recognition of that fact, indeed this was something Kosovo only did after years of de facto independence as well. Russia doesn't give a toss about setting a precedent, because nobody will do anything about Chechnya, or Ingushetia, or Dagestan apart from write the odd Strongly Worded Letter. Your articles are garbage by the way, riddled with obvious factual errors. I can go through them in detail, but meh, boring. Just a taster though: Russia didn't complain about Abkhazia or South Ossetia prior to Georgia becoming independent? No asterisks, Sherlock Hitchens. Could, just possibly, maybe a thought be because they were part of the same country before that event. And, of course, neither author has bothered to read anything about prior events because they paint the Georgians in an extremely dim light. They ethnically cleansed 2/3 of the Ossetian population from Georgia outright, albeit according to notoriously pro- Russian group Pravda Itar-Tass, uh, Human Rights Watch?

Neither does the guy Tagaziel pictured on the previous page. Suppose they could be the same guy, but if so he's stopped to take off some equipment in between pictures.

And it's almost always more reliable as well, since it's had time to get the kinks worked out. There's nothing quite as bad as buying a computer and having it break multiple times, because even if it's under warrantee you still don't have the use of the thing or its data until it's fixed.

I'd still put money that the troops will at least nominally claim loyalty to Yanukovich or a continuation government- and you'd expect them to be using Russian kit in any case, the Ukrainian military itself is still using Russian kit. And the thought that everyone in the Ukrainian armed forces are happy with the current situation in rump Ukraine is probably naive. Plus, if Russia splits off Crimea they're basically writing off the rest of the country forever, as that shifts the 50/50 split decisively. They might go for it, if they could get all that 50%, but that's a very risky strategy to go for. Safer to wait for the inevitable economic collapse, corruption and austerity to bring down the revolution, with perhaps a few 'helpful' pushes. Still, a week late but I've now heard both AlJ and BBC mention the repealing of the minority language law. And if anyone wants some positive coverage... You mean like in other "breakaway" regions across the former Soviet Union, such as in Georgia's Abkhazia and South Ossetia and Moldova's Transnistria? Such intervention would be certainly labeled by russia as helping, defending or whatever bumper sticker that Putin daily slap on top. Surely nothing todo with establishing its dominance, arm wrestling the smaller player, maintaining economical monopoly over the EU and or political/military gains such as before. Although that strategically most important naval base in the Black Sea looks nice. Yes, but then you have to explain how Kosovo- or indeed the independence of the SSRs, most of which had never had an actual independent existence stretching back centuries if they ever did- were Different, and weren't the west "helping", "defending", weren't about establishing dominance, arm wrestling, maintaining (establishing) economic dominance or political and military gains. Which can't really be done, because territorial integrity is very much a do as I say not as I do phenomenon. The SSRs in general were simply not designed to be independent, and you had Stalin and Krushchev arbitrarily rewarding their own ones so creating the flashpoints. Always amusing to see Rice/ Bush et al defending Stalin's transferrals... And a reminder, since you brought up Ossetia in a previous post, OSCE explicitly blamed Georgia for starting that, plus Georgia explicitly targeted Russian peacekeepers causing multiple deaths. And, of course, the situation in Ossetia in the early 90s was equivalent to Kosovo, what with 100,000+ ethnic Ossetians ejected from Georgia, per HRW.

My dad spent that much on his laptop. Probably more, depending on what the exchange rate was. It is a nice bit of kit when it's working at least, has a battery life of several million years despite having desktop class processor and video card, SSD, weighs next to nothing, is barely thicker than a finger etc etc. It's not worth what he paid though, he'd have been far better off doing what I advised and getting a cheaper laptop, and a desktop if he really needed the power. Because 99% of the stuff he does is office productivity and a program that doesn't even use multiple cores properly yet. Plus, it's massively over engineered and has broken twice requiring specialist parts to be brought in from Japan or Taiwan or somewhere, taking weeks.

Ancient Athens? Well, it's an interesting counterpoint though I could give a list of how it compared very favourably with the alternatives of the time. Probably not here though since it's well off the SP/ game censorship topic, if you really an answer the OT forum is a far better fit.

I'd doubt it would be the Russians, personally. That's getting to point of no return, they'll want it identifiably Crimean at this point. There's already enough Beeb class correspondents overemphasising that x and y officials in Crimea are Russian citizens. Armed men or Russian troops at Perekop would be more significant anyway, since that's the natural choke point and has a lot of military defences, albeit mostly old ones. Useless, he's not even tough enough to beat a coked up russian gangsta with an 80s fetish. Putin should go himself. If he wants a job done well...

That's actually part of pretty much exactly what I am saying. The low hanging fruit has two major parts, the typical responses- "oh no, how terrible, I'll solve it by posting to the internet about it or maybe proposing a boycott that won't effect me in the slightest"- and people tending to get outraged at stuff that is fed to them by the media, ie easily available information, instead of worse stuff that is accessible with a little work. In a few weeks the media and most people will have forgotten about Uganda's laws, having never even known about or forgotten the Gulf's, or Malcador's example of Central African Republic. So in other words it has little work required to find out about it, at least in the general sense, and requires little effort in response. That is pretty much the definition of low hanging fruit. (I will freely acknowledge that that won't be true of everyone, of course; and that it is also a rather natural human response- which is self evident, since it wouldn't happen otherwise. Some people will do something practical about injustices, and remember over the long term, and do research. Most won't though, because those things are hard, and the next distraction will arrive.)

Conservative groups were censoring before liberalism and progressiveness were even accepted concepts. In part it's due to conservative groupings naturally being the ones in power and seeking to protect that, in part it's due to ideology. To argue the quote above you have to, for example, redefine the Roman Catholic Church, Inquisition era, as liberals and progressives. Which is somewhat difficult to do. Eppur si muove, fra'.

I know perfectly well why Uganda and Russia are being targeted now, I was pointing out that other places with worse, long standing laws, aren't. They're Low Hanging Fruit in terms of being something that is easy to get outraged about because it has zero practical impact on their life beyond the visceral thrill of moral outrage. The people calling for sanctions and boycotts over those two countries- and I can pull up recent threads on Russia very easily to prove the point- are going for an easy target because going after the hard and worse targets is, well, hard. Doing without vodka is a far, far different beast from doing without the oil you'd be missing if you went after the hard, worse, targets. Show me where hate is made legal in a constitution? Obvious conclusion is you were looking for an "I can't" answer, and indeed the question is written perfectly to get that answer- if you answer the question, as asked.

Well, it is selective criticism, and Low Hanging Fruit. The gulf states for example have far more repressive laws regarding homosexuals yet get barely a murmur. I certainly don't support the repressive laws- none of my or anyone else's business what consenting adults get up to, and it doesn't infringe the rights of 3rd parties since not being offended by what other people do isn't a right. But there's no doubt the outrage over them is applied selectively, and not universally. Because something like boycotting the Gulf would mean actual sacrifice on the part of the boycotters, whereas boycotting Uganda involves avoiding... basically nothing identifiable for most people, and boycotting Russia involves, rather bizarrely, buying then pouring luxury Latvian vodka down drains. The countries are as bad. They won't cut aid to Uganda unless they've already decided that it's going Chinese- because they know the Chinese will step up to the plate to replace it. And it has to be said that, by and large, the Chinese have been far better in their decade or so of pre-eminence in developing Africa economically than the west has been in a century plus.

Hate per se? No. Expression (vocal or written) of that hate against specific groups or individuals is prohibited by numerous countries. Trashman had already stated that in the post Bruce replied to, so Bruce was obviously referring to hate, the emotion, as opposed to hate speech. My point was obviously that you need specific laws to make things illegal (hence no law legalising having a nose or eating noodles) and he wouldn't find many if any making hate, the emotion, illegal. Basically Bruce's disingenuousness managed to elicit a response, though probably not the one he was aiming for.

All of the known regionally priced games are European based. Larian, for DivOS*, and they're in Belgium. And TWitcher 2/3 made by CDPR and distributed through Namco-Bandai Europe (ex Atari Europe, who distributed TW1). Clearly there's a limit to European fraternity when it comes to pricing video games. May be interesting when US based titles like WL2 or PoE goes on GOG to see if regional pricing is applied. WL2EA has marginal regional pricing on Steam, but PoE still has flat pricing via the portal. *I've got a kickstarter with them, which didn't have regional pricing so no effect there.

Not really, censorship is only a liberal value under the rather odd US definition of the term. Rest of the world (well, excluding Australian political parties) still uses the word properly. In any case much of the stuff censored in SP will offend 'conservative' types most as it regards abortion and the like, the 'liberal' offensive stuff is things like swastikas in Germany. It is kind of funny how the left and right can come together to decide (slightly different subsets of) what everyone else can view, but then paternalism has always been politically agnostic.

Can you show a single constitution that outlaws hate? Can you show a single constitution that allows noodle eating? Or having a nose? There's a reason why laws have to be made to make things illegal rather than having everything be illegal be default. As such, it is up to you to prove that generic hate is illegal, not on him to prove it's legal.

It most certainly is the people who speak Russian's business though, isn't it? And that's the point, not whether I personally care about it but whether they do, and whether the repeal of the law gives them legitimate grounds to be either upset or afraid of what else may come forth from the parliament. That is what the BBC should represent, if they were doing their jobs properly, because the why gives the context. If you don't provide the why then you are implying that there aren't any reasons- and they provide the context for the pro west protests every single time they're mentioned. Every. Single. Time. Repression of a people's language is usually taken as reasonable grounds for dissent, after all. And if you're really trying to do some sort of national unity thing instead of crude indulgent triumphalism then doing something that deliberately antagonises the people you're supposed to be uniting with is at very best counter productive. Funnily enough when it's joining Europe it's horribly, horribly undemocratic for that decision to be made- by the democratically elected President, on the basis of his winning an election- but when it's the other 50% making decisions- without a President and with a much reduced parliament- on things that effect the other lot then that is fine and dandy and won't even warrant a mention. My personal view? Maori is spoken by less than 10% of our population yet has official status, let alone being spoken by about half the population. And if a language is spoken by roughly half the population then why isn't it OK as an official language? In this case it's because the other roughly half want everyone else to speak their language, Ukrainian, plain and simple, and what those others want can go hang. And of course, it only became 'an issue for the Ukrainian people to decide' in US minds once the pro western people were in power, not before. The EU agreement wasn't such a matter, now was it, despite that effecting the Ukrainian people, that got a heap of outside interference from the west.

There's a jpg of the pre order page on the codex and it is under $20 for Russia. I do wonder if they'll end up losing money on this. Apart from the people who are peeved about the whole policy change (rather a lot, judging by the forums, and the worst thing you want is people who buy on principle telling you they're asterisking off as they probably mean it, unlike the boycott CoD crowd) there will be a subset rubbing their hands and temporarily taking a metaphorical trip to Yekaterinburg every time a game is released. TWitcher thing doesn't surprise me though, and won't effect me. I'd have to buy retail, probably via a UK remailer, as the download would be far too large.

Nah, seriously bro, it's the same price so buy it from the developers if anyone is interested (link also has info on the games, obviously). I mean, I rather like GOG despite their current shenanigans but not so much that I'd give them 6USD for the privilege of owning it there, especially since it's DRM free on the dev site as well. They have roguelike gameplay on pre set maps, lots of skills and the like, low graphics, storyline that does its job. Bit too much kiting would be my main gripe about it, and in 1 at least the time to walk places did get rather draining- and they do have fixed resolutions. Something like the Spiderweb games (Avadon etc) might be closest comparison.

Actually, from that Beeb article, comes some unsurprising news. Ah, an excellent opportunity to put "following the parliament's decision to repeal Russian language laws in favour of the Ukrainian language", or "following the ouster of the democratically elected President largely supported in the east", you know, some sort of reason for this movement, I'm sure they'll take it... Oh, they didn't. Still, unity government coming Real Soon Now, no doubt following implementation of more restrictive laws on people they don't like and won't vote for them, and including select Uncle Toms to give a veneer of legitimacy. Hmm, actually not reporting that isn't really surprising, is it. Can't make it look like their grievances might have some basis, can we, or that the old set of protesters and the new 'government' ain't doing legitimate stuff? Anyway, actual unsurprising news below... Ah, yes, those law enforcement agencies. Thank goodness he's making plans to send the Berkut (no doubt those nice western units though) into SE Ukraine to break up their protests. Still, at least there'll no doubt be more tolerance from the nice western Ukrainians. No doubt Oh, seems not. Just a nice, unthreatening comment about 'punishing' people who disagree with the new regime. I'm sure that will get some comment though... oh. Ah, that would be the parliament whose security is currently provided by Right Sector Svoboda militias, yes, with an artificial quorum/ the remaining government members voting under duress? Well, I'm sure you'll mention... no, not a word? Utterly asterisking useless, designed with a veneer of balance but sfa actual balance. (Of course I don't expect them to post half the stuff I do, in the way I do. I'm not a journalist, I can present the info any way I want with any slant I want, and my info is presented in this case to make the Beeb look stupid. But really, how on earth can you claim you're informing people when you- and it can only be deliberate- don't give any context to the complaints in the SE beyond a one line "Yanukovich had support in Kharkov".)