Zoraptor

UN sanctions aren't unilateral since- at least in theory- the sanctioned party is obligated to obey them as well. Sigh. Haven't we done this exact same thing before? (0) it's not a treaty and no one has treated it as if it were (1) even if it were a treaty the EU is not a signatory and (2) the US (and UK, ie the actual western signatories) abrogated the memorandum as well, to whit parties should "Refrain from using economic pressure on Belarus, Kazakhstan or Ukraine to influence their politics" Just say it's against the UN Charter, using the Budapest Memorandum as if it means anything is reddit tier. And really, I'm going to have to start charging people for reading international agreements and correcting them. Nice easy way to tell if you're being fed propaganda: if you replaced 'unnamed US official' with 'unnamed Russian official' how much weight would be given to it? If you're not even willing to put your name to something it's 90% chance it's bollocks. Especially when they're mutually contradictory at least half the time: (1) US officials insist Russia is running out of precision munitions like cruise missiles, since week 1 (2) Russia is also using cruise missiles to indiscriminately but specifically target non military targets just to cause civilian casualties. You can believe one, or the other, or neither; but not both. Though there's a kind of amusement watching the sort of people who think all Russians are braindead and lack critical reasoning proceeding to believe and repeat without question everything they're told by their governmental officials.

I've never seen that picture either, and my skepticism of it is... high. The latter rumours were all of Iraqi misconduct though, not US, as the Iraqis were the ones that hanged him. The decapitation was definitely real- and absolutely deliberate- though possibly more humane than the alternative 'mistake' 'accidentally' used when hanging someone you don't like. I'll spoiler it for safety:

Not that funny really, 'international justice' being a joke isn't really funny. And sadly, it isn't very surprising either. The number of things the international justice system has already managed to legalise in defence of western geopolitical aims is pretty staggering- and all done without thinking about the consequences more than two minutes ahead. Want to take action over, say, ethnic cleansing in Ethiopia Western Backed System of Rules? Sorry, you can't any more as your verdict on Operation Storm legalised it- well, if it actually were a system of rules instead of a system of patronage. And as it is patronage those type of names who held those sorts of positions being involved in defending a western client is simply inevitable.

Ah ok, apologies for the snark then.

Yes, I too managed to find the wikipedia article for the Moscow Times, though it was certainly a struggle. Doesn't really dispute anything I said though, does it? To whit: "Chinese military bases are purely defensive, and only built with the permission of the countries' governments. Why is the US so concerned? After all, the US says nato bases 800km from Moscow are nothing for Russia to worry about and purely defensive, and their deployments are entirely between them and their partners, so what's the issue with a Chinese base 3000km away from Canberra approved by its partners? The US has 700+ overseas bases, including multiple in countries that don't want them there." Thankfully here in NZ we have the Auckland Bugle, a genuine Kiwi journalistic institution since 1992 (OK, it's never been owned by actual New Zealanders- but it's had english translations from Chinese for the past two years! That makes it kiwi as pavlova and buzzy bees!) which has the bravery to publish this truth instead of what the NZ Government wants them to... Yeah, nah.

Of course they would. The Russians think that Ukraine and Romania are going to invade Transnistria, not the other way around. If they were going to invade from Transnistria they would have back in February when it may have made a difference. Yep, this is Day 0 stuff/ military logic 101 type stuff That's why I thought they were there too. Basically just throw in all the talking points even if being a pro gay anarchist fascist neo nazi makes no logical sense at all. Haha no. BBC Russian is as genuinely Russian as the 'Moscow' Times, and that isn't Russian either. The Moscow Times is, and always has been, a publication aimed at people with english as their first language, ie not Russians. Anyone care to guess when it got an online edition, in Russian, as a paper called the Moscow Times? It was... 2020, and they had 4 years where there was literally no Russian language version of the paper at all. It's target audience is, was, and always has been foreigners, not Russians, despite its name.

Said it before, but I seriously do blame von der Leyen. Non stop virtue signalling on every issue; and everyone knows she's German. If- god forbid- she were Chancellor she'd be doing the exact same things as Scholz for the exact same reasons though, same as Merkel. Funny really, after years I still don't know who the EU 'foreign minister' is* because he's been such a non entity; last time around it was the von der Leyen's predecessor who I had no idea about for ages (Jean Claude Juncker, so I did eventually manage to remember, though it may have actually been after he left office) while Mogherini was far more visible. von der Leyen seems to insert herself into literally everything though. *I do, but pretty much literally the only thing about him I can remember is the infamous incident in Turkey where they only provided one chair between him and von der Leyen**. **... ok, that was actually Charles Michel, apparently. So I can't remember anything Borrell's done, and I like to think I pay at least passing attention to foreign affair type stuff.

Yeah, personally I'd add that the Direction for them seems to be awful, too. The ones who did well with what they were given tended to be the more senior pros of the crew- Captain Malfoy, Pike, Georgiou, Saru. Most of the younger ones... I doubt they're all bad actors, but they consistently have a weird uncanny valley effect about them, like they've been CGIed in and their expressions animated by pre Gollum tech. It's so consistent that I don't think it's their fault, but the only younger actor who (mostly) escaped it was Tilly's. Unfortunately there really isn't much point speculating on answers to the spoiler questions- I very much suspect you've already given far more thought to those characters than the writers did. And sadly, that's a literal statement, the whole thing was set up for the future skip (and potential spin offs) and who they as writers wanted on the crew.

It's kind of funny, they managed to keep most of the issues with continuity and consistency that the more standalone episode Trek series had despite moving to a strongly serial format and having fewer episodes per season. It's understandable having some issues when you have to write 26(for TNG?) episodes over a year with lots of different writers and a very tight filming schedule; not so much when it's half that number. Makes it very obvious they had no proper planning going on*. Case in point from S2: if you're going to have a tragic storyline about a bridge crew member it helps- a lot- if they've been, well, developed above more than a cardboard cutout or glorified extra outside that episode. Otherwise you end up with what we got, being told how important she was and how you should feel about it and how much the crew loved her rather seeing having seen it yourself. Sad thing is that much like a lot of Discovery it didn't need that much change to make it work a lot better. As it was the whole thing came across as nothing more than an excuse to up the angst scale to 11. *or perhaps more accurately but more critically: deciding to write all the 'cool' scenes, and not knowing/ caring how to connect/ set them up properly and whether they made sense in context.

At least this time only 8.5% of people bothered to turn up just to spoil their ballot, that's 1 in 12 instead of 1 in 8 last time. I'm still quite impressed that that many people would turn up to make a paper airplane from or draw smiley faces on the ballot paper instead of just... not turning up. Though of course the number who didn't bother voting went up by 2.5% in absolute terms, so you had almost exactly the same historic high level of disengagement in total.

hmm, maybe the slightest scintilla/ smidge/ soupçon of sarcasm, after all one doesn't like to bludgeon the reader over the head with it. (I always thought the Oceania Football Confederation was a great example- when Australia was in it all the other members consistently voted to do things specifically designed to piss them off because the Ockers weren't shy about thinking it should all be run for their benefit and that everyone else was irrelevant; yet consistently failed to make the finals. Fast forward to after Australia goes into the Asian Confed, and suddenly all the other countries are doing their best to annoy the new big dog that thinks everything should be run for their benefit, New Zealand. Hold qualifiers outside of the international window? Don't mind if I do says everyone; except us...)

Of course not, don't be silly. We wouldn't invade, we'd "regretfully deploy peacekeepers from responsible regional powers to protect the legitimate grievances of the people of Malaita who are being brutally oppressed by the Sogavare regime, and restore the democracy and freedom they deserve to the people of the Solomons". Of course, that's having spent the last decades, uh, sending peacekeepers to protect the legitimacy/ primacy of Guadalcanal and maintain the suppression of Malaita; including under the previous Prime Ministerial reign of, um hmm uh, Sogavare. But let's not mention that, since hopefully everyone won't know about it, and it makes us look bad. Let's also not mention every other time we've asterisked up a small country for our own benefit, like Nauru. On an unrelated matter I've always wondered why Australia and (to a far lesser extent) New Zealand have a reputation for throwing their weight around and being massive hypocrites in the Pacific. It's really weird. (If there's a lesson from Ukraine here- apart from how selective the concept of freedom to choose allies is- it's that the Solomons would be very wise to get those Chinese troops in as fast as possible, because we sure as sith are exactly as capable of invading a neighbour as Russia is, so long as we dress it up right)

To be fair, it's probably got as much journalistic vigour as "Putin has Parkinsons and will retire in January [2021], intelligence sources say" which was made up by The Sun then reported by everyone else. Mostly, that meeting was just staged weirdly/ awkwardly- possibly to make Putin look tall compared to Shoigu; but Tom Cruise Complex isn't a medical condition. For whatever reason they've used chairs which aren't the right height for the table they're sitting at (easily visible in one of the stills the Kremlin released, and no I'm not game enough to hotlink from The Kremlin's website). Pretty much everything is explained by... Putin leaning back in his chair. It's not like Shoigu looks better either, he's just leaning forward instead of sitting back. Then again, guess he looks pretty good for someone who has suffered two fatal heart attacks in the last month... My completely non medical opinion on the desk gripping- Putin has carpal tunnel. Because I do exactly the same thing when I have to sit at an awkwardly set up desk/ chair combo where I can't rest my arm properly and doing my usual stretches isn't appropriate. (Lord knows what the press would make of my behaviour at a desk/ table, I spend at least half my time doing stretches) If you think the worst then every surprise is a positive one...

Haha, yes, the story that keeps giving when it comes to cognitive dissonance. Irony, thy name is, uh, pretty much any western politician espousing the absolute freedom of countries to associate with and chose mutual defence with whoever they like, so long as it's the west and no one else- then wondering confusedly why the rest of the world thinks you're a bunch of arrogant hypocrites... Though to be honest, I very much doubt we share the same red lines as either the Ockers or Yanks since we get on a lot better with the Chinese than either. Our position would be far closer to "no military bases in the region, full stop (we'll just ignore the US ones all over the place, including here despite ANZUS being defunct)". Also, the rules lawyer in me notes that Scotty specified no Chinese Naval bases, so he'll be fine with an airbase instead.

It isn't really a change for US strategy, per se, though it is an upping of scale. Just about every single thing done in Ukraine happened in Syria previous, it was just clandestine because Syrians are too brown and non european, so the war there isn't popular enough to do things overtly. But the US/ France/ Britain were training the moderate rebel head choppers, and supplying them with arms (eg the CIA program Timber Sycamore), and intelligence, and consistently ran diplomatic interference. They had a lot of ATGMs, they just didn't use them well (and they were mostly older models; but then even a well deployed Malyutka can take out Leopard 2s and at least export Abrams. Still, the handful of modern Kornets they had knocked out two Abrams). It would be a lot less fun for the US now, post Afghanistan and Syria. There are other implications though- Israel has remained pretty much neutral despite all exhortations because they want Russia to maintain its soft ban on advanced exports to Iran, for example, and it's a reason- apart from their dislike of Biden- why the Gulf Monarchies aren't being very supportive of the west either. I'm pretty sure the idea at least is to just steal Russian money to pay for it, and saddle them with 'war reparations' to permanently cripple their economy. Double benefit, get the Russians to pay for western companies rebuilding and that way they can also justify keeping reliance on Russian hydrocarbons too- after all it would be paying for Ukraine to be fixed! Case Study: Iraq. Saddled with massive debt to Gulf countries from fighting their proxy war with Iran for them, Kuwait stealing their oil (like a milkshake, they drink it up), and then massive reparations on top of that. Then get the Gauleiter Colonial Administrator Paul Bremmer to award lots of no tender contracts to US companies for reconstruction to be paid for by the Iraqi state.

"If you've ever looked at the mess that is Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 and thought to yourself, "I could do better than that," here's your big chance to prove it." Not sure if Paradox going open(ish) license on VtM really implies anything for VtMB2, but given the prior press and lack of news it's hard not to read it negatively.

Ah yes, Strelkov/ Girkin. The guy who thinks Putin is... far too soft. Highly unlikely he'd actually win this war in Ukraine either- as he would already have started WW3 years ago after bombing US troops in Syria. [Good luck though, if Putin actually goes in a coup he's exactly the type of person who'd follow, and he'd quite literally nuke Poland/ Slovakia/ Romania to stop arms supplies]

Can't wait for the media to spooj themselves over another 'landslide' Macron election win and how that means everything is right with the world; a win with... historically low voter turn out and a staggering 1 in 8 people actually bothering to turn up just to spoil their ballot. Shame it isn't Le Pen vs Melléncon, as I forgot to make my quadrennial Jean-Cougar Mellencamp's joke as that really would have had the global elites' heads exploding.

You can get a decent idea of the landscape from satellites, eg. They didn't really try to attack (in order to capture) azovstal proper, just isolate it and pin down the defenders. The other parts were always the greater focus as they were easier, and azovstal is in a naturally defensible position with the sea and river along 3 sides. Random people on the internet knew about the Azovstal fortifications, I think it's fair to say that the Russians knew as well. I'll explain how the water thing would work, though personally I suspect they'll just starve them out instead. I've just got a bit sick of people saying they're impregnable... You don't need specialist equipment to flood tunnels, if their altitude is below sea level, except maybe a pump to start things off. We're on tank water here instead of municipal/ reciprocated, and I've accidentally siphoned ~5 cubic meters out via a standard 10mm domestic hose- didn't even actually require priming, as even I'm not dumb enough to have primed the hose and left it in the tank. Took about a day, but even the most bog standard 200mm black pvc drainage pipe can do 400x that rate, and it will do it every hour non stop until the sea runs out or level equilibrium. You'd want to prime it, but you can locate the pump in a safe place and once it is primed gravity does everything else. (The other thing to consider is that because of the low altitude and sea proximity the water table is very high. Even if bunker busters aren't effective at destroying the tunnels they'll ruin the waterproofing

Well sure, but then there's plenty about the lead up to WW2 that everyone wants to forget. One of the reasons the western reaction to M-R was so extreme was because... their entire plan involved getting the soviets and nazis to fight each other, and they patently didn't have a back up when that went wrong. M-R completely reversed that in favour of the soviets, and got the nazis and west to fight each other instead. It only didn't work because the west was so inept. (well, and because Stalin gonna Stalin) When did the west ever do something precedent setting that they didn't expect themselves to be immune from the logical consequences of? Just look at the mess the 'non precedent setting' Kosovo caused and the howls about it being a unique case. The only thing unique about it was that it was a western project. I very much doubt the Russians have just realised this. I don't think there was ever any prospect of them 'storming' the tunnels. The only question was how they'd avoid storming them- siege, Grand Slam/ Bunker Buster type bombing, or whatever. The other thing about the tunnels though is that they are, well, right next to the sea, and below sea level. Pretty easy to siphon or divert water into, and then gravity does all the work for you. Even if they have defences for that they're subject to being overwhelmed by volume, and you can't get much more volume than the sea. Mariupol pretty much has to be taken for a land bridge to Crimea. M-14 motorway runs to/ from it and that joins the M-18 to Crimea at Melitopol. There are alternative routes around Mariupol, but none as important and they all take you closer to the front line.

I don't think it's near that stage yet anyway. The footage of the pows from Ilyich has them looking thin, but not literally starving. They were just psychologically spent. Something like Antarctic exploring may be a good parallel. Physically people could last ages, even doing hard physical labour, in a situation where- even on full rations- you literally can't process enough calories to keep up with energy requirements; so long as they didn't have any other options but to do so. If you do have those other options they become more and more attractive because even a potentially bad option is better than a definitely bad option.

It's not all that surprising. Syria's a lot drier and sieges there lasted literally years, yet getting 'starved out' seldom (never?) happened. You can last an awfully long time on a can of beans a day, if you have to. For water there's a river right next door to azovstal too (OK, you wouldn't want to drink from it and it would be brackish that close to the sea, but still). OTOH going by what CossackGundi (the Brit Ukrainian Marine who surrendered) was saying from azovmash/ Ilyich they'd been out of food and drinking from puddles for a while there. Technically you could supply ~1000 soldiers with a single Mi-8/17 helicopter load, assuming you could distribute it- Syria did that for months with the Deir Ez Zor Airfield pocket. But that's a lot easier against ISIS which has no airforce or much AA than against Russia. The route is technically still there, since azovstal has a coastline. The helicopter losses were just completely unsustainable. And when they lost the helicopter on the way in their defenders didn't get the supplies anyway.

Named after a bad Voyager episode and run by Brannon Braga. No thanks. Honestly though, I remember liking Threshold a fair bit, and far worse ideas/ series lasted a lot longer. About the only thing I can remember Spiner being in apart from TNG was that fairly recent Robert Kirkman series ?The Outsider? (actually 'Outcast', after checking). I even watched that Dreadful Penny Dreadful spin off series and only realised/ remembered he was in it when I was checking the name of Outcast.

Probably the best evidence you could get that they're close to imminent defeat in Mariupol. If they're going to lose imminently anyway holding negotiations even if you actually aren't going to concede anything gives you extra time for free. Also kind of telling that they've gone from an "evacuation via a 3rd party guarantor on the ground" baseline to "talks without conditions" in a day. I guess they have to be able to say that they tried to save them, given the propaganda interviews Russia has been holding with pows where the constant theme was how the government continually promised to help/ rescue them and nothing eventuated. Realistically they aren't even tying down that many troops any more, since the perimeter has reduced ~80% over the last ~week; and the Russians aren't going to accept anything other than unconditional surrender which could be ordered without any negotiations. Might not be obeyed, but they could order it.

Probing Uranus is top priority this decade. I'm guessing with that headline one journalist's life aims are now complete.