Zoraptor

There's no chance. This whole thing has been an utter disaster for western credibility including the US. Every single country that actually cares about Ukraine has watched Israel crap all over their talking points and had people outright laughing at them for the hypocrisy about war crimes and aggressive war. They've proved every single accusation about their inconsistency and bias to be correct. They've even managed to invalidate the old canard "at least our side didn't invade its neighbours". Trump may feel he has to jump on board now to preserve his credibility, but only because this has been an unqualified embarrassment for him- the deal maker who pledged to stop all the wars. You could build an ANFO bomb. Anyone can. It takes no specialist training or education at all. You had illiterate Afghans who'd barely seen electricity in their lives building them. Leave out the FO and people can and regularly have made one accidentally so much so there's a wikipedia page dedicated to listing them. But you need very, very specific ingredients to build a nuke. Without those ingredients it simply won't work, as a matter of basic physical reality. Dirty bomb, sure. That however would be extraordinarily disingenuous since New Zealand could build one of those, and we don't even have a reactor. So could Fiji. We've been told by Netanyahu for 27 years that Iran was going to imminently have the capability to build them, and that they would. Thing is, it doesn't even matter when debunking that if they've been a year away since then. For very, very obvious reasons. Which, I suspect, I will have to state anyway: if they've actually been a year away for a decade but not got there then the only logical conclusion is that they don't actually want to have nukes, which makes the second part of Bibi's accusation untrue. Unless, maybe, they feel forced to by an existential threat. Either way, Netanyahu has been wrong for at least 26 years. He may be right, now, and if he wants someone to blame he can always look in the mirror.

We've had months of the US and various Israelis saying the plan is to depopulate Gaza, months of a completely illegal blockade of essential goods and more than year of indiscriminate large scale bombing, shootings and artillery. We've had systematic targeting of journalists, the specific and targeted murder and torture of medical workers, those counting the dead and aid workers, imposition of concentration camps ("islands of peace" or whatever bollocks Hagani came up with) those seeking food aid and the deaths of women/ children/ men are in near perfect ratio to the population's. It's pretty bloody obvious what is happening and the endgame is unless you really, really, really want to ignore the truth. Or to put it another way, just imagine the reaction and terms that would be used if it were China or Russia* doing it, instead of Israel. We've had Israel break the truce in Gaza, we've had Israel invade Syria, we've had Israel continue bombing its neighbours and all the rest. We've had Israel launch an attack on Iran with no proximal** reason. Definition of a rogue state and everything is perfectly well explained by the pattern of sociopathic narcissism that has so very clearly been exhibited by its leadership, and enabled by the unrestricted support of a bunch of gross hypocrites and moral cowards in western leadership. *Strangely, the same people who burble on about 377 Ukrainian children being 'kidnapped' as a clear cut case of 'genocide' suddenly develop blindness when it's 20k Palestinian children being killed by Israel and hundreds of thousands more being starved, and the same reporters reporting that outrage and describing Putin as an indicted war criminal decide the Palestinian children all just died, who knows what of? and still describe Netanyahu as just Israel's PM. **First occurrence I could find of "Iran imminently going to have nuclear bomb" from Bibi is from... 1998. The first estimate I could find from US intelligence was that they could have one by 2000. Iran nukes and cold fusion, perpetually just a little longer away.

It's largely a matter of US attitude. While not explicitly a peace treaty Obama negotiated the JCPOA with Iran fine ten years ago, and it largely worked; even after Trump pulled the US out of it Iran remained in compliance for most (all?) of the agreed restrictions. The subsequent two Presidents failed miserably whether it be with Iran or Palestine because they gave unqualified support to one side. That, fundamentally, is not really negotiating as the mediator isn't actually a mediator but a cheerleader, and it's no surprise that it doesn't work. It's no accident that Obama actually got an agreement against a backdrop of strident Israeli criticism. The original Camp David worked because Israel was willing to give something up and Carter was willing to negotiate in (broadly) good faith. Let's be honest, if they were being negotiated, now, the US would probably be demanding Israel get half the transit fees from the Suez Canal and keep the Sinai. The other half goes to... a US slush fund for investments in Egypt, maybe? Cue unbiased mediators and Hasbara saying how nice Israel is being for not demanding the Pyramids too since the Israelites built them. (To be fair to Trump, he too had a successful negotiation- with the Taleban. While the end result was somewhat embarrassing it was always coming, and was always going to be an embarrassment; it was just a question of how much more sunk cost was going to be added to the tally. Bush and Obama had 15 years of not talking to the Taleban to get Afghanistan in a fit state, an extra 8 years of Hillary was not likely to result in anything other what happened in 2021 happening in 2029 instead)

Would be ironic if Iran bought J-10s since they're (allegedly) a knock off of a design Israel shared with China based on the F-16. Though ascribing Pakistani success to them is a bit like saying how brilliant a Su-24 every time a Storm Shadow/ SCALP is fired by one. The missile deserves most of the credit not the delivery system, and that was the PL-15.

Iran doesn't have any S-400s unfortunately. Their S-300s are old export models too.

Not your best work.

Australia is in the same boat as Canada. They'll always (well, 'always') be loyal to the US, Trump, not so much. Trump's conduct and being seen as Trumpists doomed both countries' conservative opposition parties to electoral losses that they previously looked like they would win. Not following Trump's directions is electorally popular. (Particularly funny is the US threatening to pull out of AUKUS. Which would result in the Australians having paid the french a billion dollar break fee to switch to US subs for nothing. While that was a Morrison vanity project- and the threat is likely just trying to leverage additional purchases*- he tied Australia's defence strategy to it for future governments. Cancellation would be a massive prestige loss for Australia and the UK, and Australia would end up... going back to the French? Guess they could always keep the Collins class even longer**... *coincidentally, we've spent/ allocated $4bn for 4 planes and 4-6 US helicopters. To put that in perspective, we could have bought 28 F-16s for an eighth of that amount 15 years ago, and that's including the prior lease fees. Pretty much total extortion **allegedly so loud initially that RNZN sonar operators thought they had to be decoys during a wargame, because no one would deliberately design them that way)

For this, probably not. A no confidence motion failed a couple of days ago so he has six months (iirc) before another can be called. It may well have been designed to fail so he has some time in case things don't go his way wrt Iran immediately. This is just the natural conclusion of continually telling a sociopathic narcissist that he has your backing no matter what. The logical conclusion is and always will be an attempt to reshape the world as he wants it. That's just who sociopathic narcissists are. Yeah, nah. Though they were clearly informed they also effectively warned Iran publicly about the attack by making sure everyone knew they were withdrawing embassy staff. That's not the act of someone endorsing it, arguably it's the act of someone trying to prevent it. "This was always part of the plan" has been Trump's stock response to nearly every diplomatic set back.

Well, there was very little chance of an actual deal this weekend anyway so it likely wasn't preempting that. Though Trump kind of needs something to claim as a W after all the Ls he's accumulated. But really this is a massive slap in the face for Trump internationally. While he and Netanyahu have not been getting on well not even waiting for the negotiations to wrap up is a pretty calculated insult. Yep. Zero chance of the weekend meeting even taking place, now. Ultimately this is the problem with allowing Israel carte blanche and unrestricted support- you don't preserve your influence, you tell them that whatever they want to do they can do since your support is unconditional. Same goes for the other spineless blancmanges making up the Rules Based Order. If you're ok with genocide- and for all the virtue signalling they are- you're saying that you're fine with anything. (Got to lol at Bruce's reading list. Ynet and INN, just needs to add Memri for the balance of an 'iranian' pov...)

The NZ government wouldn't even do this much, if they thought there was any chance of action from the US in response.

"There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people."

If you want to avoid a migration crisis you should do what we do: be islands 2000km away from other significant land masses. Simple and efficient. (Does result in rather a lot of modern slavery from people importing skilled labourers like waiters, restaurant managers and liquor store workers for a substantial commission and paying less than minimum wage because no locals apply for the jobs (which are advertised in Hindi on the Times of India website). The irony being that the people mostly doing that are themselves immigrants. It is, of course, illegal but the result for a complainant is that they get sent back to India with their visa cancelled and minus the 'voluntary' commission, so there aren't many complaints. They should do things the traditional kiwi way of paying $500 p/w to your indentured fruit pickers/ farm workers and charging them $400 p/w in rent for a bunk in a shared container; food additional. Overall lesson: immigrants will always be exploited because they're easy to exploit and people are crappy even if you don't have an immigration crisis)

NWN2 remaster has been known about for a while unofficially eg it was found via steamdb back in February.

What did Delacroix do to deserve that desecration?

Owlcat does Mass Effect in The Expanse universe? OK.

Dunno about that; the potential effects are rather more than for Elon v Zuck posturing and for shareholders in Musk's companies. Elon might well be able to swing a few R votes against Trump's Big Beautiful Bill for example, and it probably only needs a few votes swung against it. It's hard to separate the narcissism from the actualities for things like Musk's effect/ influence on Trump's reelection but he certainly contributed a lot monetarily at least and there will always be those currying favour for reelection funding and influence.

It's a mystery to the media how all those women and children keep getting killed dying spontaneously (is it because they hate Israel so much they want them to look bad? hmm, worth considering); it'll also be a mystery how ISIS got weapons in an area with the most regulated border in the world. Insert Drake Greta Thunberg no thanks*, ISIS jihadi yes please meme. Maybe Hamas gave them to them? (For anyone not paying attention: Israel gave Hamas support including weapons to fight Fatah a few decades ago) *well, she is a bit old for him now.

Donald Trump now has the opportunity to do the funniest thing: deport Musk back to South Africa.

Yep. Then the remains were killed off in the finale... You don't really need the NCR for a sequel though, even if the talk isn't just using 'FONV2' as shorthand. A strict FONV sequel in the same way as, say, tWitcher 2/3 were sequels to the first game was never likely. You'd expect something similar to the first two Fallout games at most.

Honestly, our politicians aim for Winston Churchill, world statesman, and only ever manage to achieve Winston Churchill*, incompetent authoritarian racist. Then wonder why Maori feel disconnected from the political process and want their own parliament. It's a complete mystary as to why. Best thing that could happen is being laughed at internationally since that hits the one intangible they care very much about, their inflated and totally unjustified pride in themselves. *to be charitable. Eric Cartman riding a trike demanding people respect his authority is far more accurate.

Not that much of a joke, it's certainly one of the rumours. Though given the current trend FONV remasterised seems more likely. It has, after all, been 9 years since Fallout IV. If left only to Bethesda it'd be the best part of two decades between games. Would also potentially tie into the TV series.

Our parliament just suspended a bunch of its Maori MPs for three weeks for having a haka. To put that in perspective the longest previous was three days and literally punching an MP netted zero days- OK, it was Tau Henare getting the punch so that was probably justifiable. The puncher also became Speaker, to add extra hilarity. Driving a tractor up the steps of parliament netted zero days. Driving a ute up the steps having been told twice not to then lying about it repeatedly also netted zero days. Opposition MPs, voted out by the government narrowly along party lines, with Whip applied. Proud day for National, so proud only one of them had the guts to actually make a speech. Ironically, Chris Bishop. Who has been in the news for drunkenly telling a bunch of Maori to sit down and shut up at our local music awards and being told to eff off by one of his favourite musicians as a result. The chair of Privileges Committee that recommended the sanctions? Judith Collins, who was previously sacked after persistent allegations of corruption (currently a requirement for a Cabinet position and my local MP, both sadly). Going to be a great deal of fun watching this being repeatedly abused in the future with great gnashing of teeth from the freedom of speech brigade- who all, of course, voted for the suspensions because nothing says freedom of speech like a party line vote to deny people representation. Oh yeah, the guy who drove the ute up parliament steps and lied repeatedly about being told not to? One of the freedom of speech brigade and our current deputy PM who was just expressing himself freely as is his right. Absolute embarrassment to the country and everyone involved ought to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. But they most definitely won't be. [oh yeah, the free speech party's member of the Privilege's Committee- who is a politician specifically, and this is not made up it's literally her stated reason for it, so her relatives can get liquor licenses with fewer problems- took legal advice as to whether they could get the MPs jailed for the haka. Seems like a bit of a snowflake, eh]

Honestly man, youtube experts... Yes, they'd want to be salvaging the radar domes off derelict/ mothballed A-50s for sure. Indeed, the one thing all operational A-50s have is a 1991 era radar. Makes perfect sense, there have been no tech improvements since then and everyone else is using 90s era radar. Well no, the one thing all operational A-50s don't have is a 1991 radar. Radar emitters are cheap, it's the electronics that make them functional and which is expensive. The electronics in A-50Us is new since it's a full analogue/ digital switch and, well, as an illustration the top of the line consumer processor in 1991 was a 486SX. The spyware chip on AMD processors has more processing power than that. Even if it wasn't, electronics from a plane which still has the soviet star on its tail are, well, as likely to be usable 34 years later as that 486SX is today. The one thing you can guarantee is any 'new' A-50 is going to have is new electronics/ radar not something stripped out of another one. The radar itself might be useful for a decoy if it can still output radiation, but it isn't usable for its original purpose. Or EW. That would probably be cheaper overall, and certainly faster to implement. Allegedly the main reason the attack failed on several bases too. Wouldn't be the least bit surprising if it was meant to be on all of them but the money had gone missing between order and supply. Tires are and always have been a weird idea. If you want to try and obfuscate the shape there are far better options and they're only going to confuse very basic systems.

Kerch Bridge has some unique design features that ought to protect it. 50+ meter pilings, and they aren't traditional pilings but multiple small diameter ones designed specifically to transit applied energy. Mostly from earthquakes, but the principle for explosives is the same; and you'd suspect it was designed with the thought that Ukraine might try to blow it up at some point. 41 initially? Pro UA sources have managed to find 12 on satellite, and they certainly have been trying. Also rather a lot of- frankly pretty obvious- AI videos being laundered at the moment. One in particular the 'bomber' hit has the fascinating design innovation of having two cabins, there's another one where the 'bomber' has 2 engines on one wing and one on the other and all 'shot' at a resolution that would embarrass a cheap late 90s nokia. DCS/ WarThunder etc are not under threat yet when it comes to fake footage.

Probably won't do much of anything new, no. There's always some new stuff that can be done but it's mostly militarily irrelevant like blowing up the Rada building or Mother Ukraine or more difficult in practice than theory like blowing the Dniepr bridges. Depends a lot on what their losses actually were, but the delegation turning up in Turkey suggests they don't see them as being gamechanging. Targeting civilian trains is far more likely to have a tangible long term effect since it will increase Russian recruitment. Always kind of funny how civilian casualties against the bad guys will result in the population rising up, while civilian losses for the good guys just harden resolve.