Zoraptor

2 British Iranian prisoners freed today. Quite possibly another sign that the nuJCPOA is moving closer. Though by the purest of pure coincidences, Britain also recently paid back the 400 million quid they stole from Iran for tanks Britain never delivered. These were parallel events though, and completely unrelated. Much like that Iranian tanker seized off Gibraltar being coincidentally released when the Iranians nabbed a british tanker in the Straits of Hormuz.

Nah. Biggest miscalculation was cosying up to NATO in the early 2000s- if he wanted to stop NATO expansion he should have invaded the Baltics when they moved to join instead of waiting until now with Ukraine. Of course if he had done that that would be seen as his biggest mistake by westerners instead, but all the problems with Ukraine and Georgia go away if the line in the sand was drawn earlier. lol moment, India won't be sanctioned for buying Russian oil. Hot on the heels of Saudi moving to accept Yuan, it also won't be paid via dollars. Guess they've finally worked out that the Oprah Gift approach to sanctions is, well, monumentally stupid.

5800x3d looks more of a proof of concept/ for early adopters than anything else. AMD is certainly all in on the big caches for everything given the design of the RDNA2+ cards. The benchmarks may be interesting, the last big jump in cache forced one of them to be redesigned as it gave unrealistic impressions due to actually fitting inside the cache.

Why certainly Bruce, just for you a nice, big, png.

Slightly better documented Ukrainian strike on Kherson Airport today. Certainly started a nice big fire.

Great news everyone! The insurmountable technical difficulties that prevented 5000 series on b350/x370 (but somehow not super budget a320) motherboards have been surmounted! Well done AMD, I'm sure it has nothing to do with Intel finally being competitive again and it was just your top engineers working tirelessly on finding a solution! (dunno wtf has happened to processor prices here but I can actually buy a 5800x for not much more than I got my 1700 all those long years ago instead of +50% too. Even a 5600x was more expensive last time I checked. Maybe it's that competition thing?)

Meh, Bayraktards would claim Russian soldiers stubbing their toes was caused by drones. It's as always plain old artillery, mostly, though almost all those deaths are still unconfirmed. As for why Wali might have been at Yavoriv, it is a training facility. If he can't speak Ukrainian or at a pinch Russian well or at all he may be of more use training people who he can communicate with. Same reason I'd be very skeptical of those reports of Syrians being recruited as snipers and the like, the more complex the orders they have to receive the more difficult it is to use them and the greater the scope for mistakes. Hence they'll be used in bodies on the ground roles where minimal instruction is needed.

'Wali' was supposedly blown up at Yavoriv, the training facility close to Poland that got hit by cruise missiles yesterday. Large grain of salt to be taken on him specifically since he's famous and was in a load of media stories when he volunteered, and his death makes a good PR story for Russia*. Though the statement that literally no foreigners died there from Ukraine's PR also seems... unlikely given the number of CMs used. There has also been at least a bit of a media push even among pro Ukrainian sources to moderate expectations for volunteers post Yavoriv. *For that reason I suspect if he is alive we'll get confirmation fairly quickly.

They've also demonstrably funded so called 'islamofascists' whenever it was convenient, then been surprised at the consequences. Most of the School of the Americas militias get described as 'right wing' instead of nazis, but that's mostly because the west doesn't want to associate with the term nazis, not because their ideology was different. I am always amused when people read diplomat speak. It's specifically designed so that people can interpret it to support whatever view they have. Chinese FM: "We told the US that it's a big doody head, they dress funny and their mother told me they have a very small winky when I was over last night. Please, bring on the sanctions you pathetic bag of suet" is something that will never be said, even if it were thought. Me. "Fight militarily to the last Ukrainian, fight economically to the last Euro". But then Sergei Lavrov stole it, the plagiarist. Who would have thought he read these forums? The whole situation in Mariupol is way worse than the Ukrainians claim. It's the one place where there's a lot of pro Russian footage due to the DPR troops, and their videos have been getting geolocated closer and closer to the city centre from the east. That hospital is also well behind the 'official' Ukrainian front lines on the western side. The defenders have also attempted a break out two days ago where they claimed to have retaken Volnovakha (though that claim wasn't even accepted by pro Ukrainians)

Don't know about creative. Much like Putin having Parkinsons you're not supposed to actually remember such rumours anyway, you're just meant to remember the endorphin rush from reading them. Like an intellectual (well, 'intellectual') candy bar. The China resupply rumour is probably more 'creative', but also far more counter productive if you actually want co-operation from China. The Iran deal is probably a large part of why MBS is grumpy and doesn't want to pump more oil, per below. Add a dollop of failure in Yemen and public distancing from that by the west and no doubt some feeling that they're only wanted when convenient and for their money/ oil plus pining for the glory days of a glowing palantir illuminating the saintly visage of Donald T... High prices are good for KSA anyway, but by some accounts (albeit skepticism level --> pretty high) the nuJCPOA would have been literally signed last week- with weaker provisions than the original- if Russia hadn't tied sanctions relief to it. Yeah OK the R side in the US has promised to ditch it again as soon as they can, but there'd still be ~3 years of it. And all that with hardliner Raisi at the helm rather than a nice(r) moderate President like Rouhani. And just imagine being Juan Guaido now. Not entirely blameless himself since he managed to completely mess up an attempted coup very publicly but he'd have gone from being fêted via standing ovation at a SotU speech and recognised by most of the western world to political liability and squashed possum on the road of expediency in... 2 years?

'Allah, Russiya, Putin w bas' chants and an 'Allah Russiya w Putin' remix incoming? Not even sure if Rami Kazour is alive for the 2nd... NDF isn't really Russian backed, if anything it's Iran backed. 5th corps is though, but is also mostly made up of ex-rebels used as assault troops (cynically, because who cared if unreliable ex rebels died?). Kind of irrelevant anyway, they wouldn't have much difficulty getting recruits since the average monthly wage in Syria is something like $5 (ie five dollars) and there's a lot of unemployment. They'd be in bodies on the ground roles, maybe some snipers but nothing else specialised. One of the things Syrians/ Libyans are notoriously bad at is, well, speaking Russian, so that means they'd be in roles that don't require much instruction and especially not much immediate instruction. They'd still free up other troops though. Hmm. Hmmm. Hmmmm. "Gandhi, what do you think about western civilisation?" "It would be a good idea" Gandhi was not exactly keen on Britain especially or the west in general. On the current situation, who would have thought that consistently backing Pakistan and sending a CSG to attack India in 1971 would have negative consequences for the US? Who would have thought that Russia vetoing everything on Kashmir/ Indian nukes and the soviets sending a fleet to shadow that CSG would have positive consequences? Not US diplomats, apparently. Repeat, with China, Iran, Venezuela etc. If you're going to pick fights pick them sequentially, not simultaneously. If you pick them simultaneously don't be surprised when they aren't put on hold according to your demands, schedule and needs.

OK, sorry about that. (A lot of people think UNIAN = United Nations.. due to the first two letters and is thus authoritative. Which is presumably why Kolomoisky picked the acronym in the first place)

Double post, but it definitely wasn't the US consulate that was hit (in blue below). It was some random* compound (purple) next to the Kurdistan24 channel (red) a few hundred metres away from the consulate. Didn't even rate a mention on the BBC news report this morning NZ time and barely made the front page of even Al Jazeera. *allegedly owned by Muhammed bin Salman, Saudi crown prince, so maybe not that random. And a supposed response to Israel assassinating two IRGC officers in Syria last week.

That was the Russians hitting the NATO base ('former') in Lvov, Bruce. It was where they were training Ukrainians to use NLAWs. Kind of surprising they hadn't hit it before, really. The journalist getting shot was half way across the country. Oh yeah, and Ukraine most definitely kills journalists and opposition politicians, at one point in 6 weeks of 2014 more opposition politicians and journalists died in Ukraine than had died under Putin's entire time in Russia. You just didn't hear about them because that was after the glorious democratic revolution. Nah, they killed themselves. It also has to be stated that the face of modern antivax- ie not new age 60s hippies- is British Doctor Andrew Wakefield. Who wanted to get rid of the MMR vaccine because he'd patented individual version of them and literally made up research that people still believe to try and get it banned. Who slagged off Astra Zeneca because it was (part) British and Biontech was German? von der Leyen, again, in one of the most short sighted moves ever. If Astra Zeneca is going to kill you because it's British badly made then why not other vaccines that had the same level of testing, ie all of them? Reason #7 why von der Leyen is an abject moron, in a set of at least 20 and climbing. And all done because Britain left the EU and she was throwing a wobbly over the divorce proceedings. If there's one thing I hate it's trying to blame everything on the alt right or russian trolls. Though sometimes it's hilarious such as our antivaxxers being labeled alt right and waving Maori Sovereignty flags (they're completely immiscible philosophies, the only way Maori sovereignty activists are alt right is if you're alt right yourself) 100% serious actually. You'll find a lot of people describe the US as an oligarchy. Your reaction is the same as, say, describing the US government as the 'Biden regime'. The only reason knees jerk through desks at the description is because that's a 'bad' word that should only be applied to 'bad' governments. Rupert Murdoch makes or breaks governments in the UK and Australia through his media empire- and states it himself. He's had media laws changed to benefit himself, frequently. He didn't get rid of his media wing when he got rid of the rest of Fox because he wanted to retain his influence. He's an oligarch, by any definition. The only way he isn't is if you believe he can't be, because he's a westerner. er, lol. UNIAN == RT in quality. It's really, really bad. More generally, I do have to admit that I am getting a great deal of amusement out of people posting racist tropes and then defending them as "everyone knows they're true and always have been". Once again, Enemy at the Gates is not a documentary.

Supposedly Iran has launched a bunch of ballistic missiles at a US base (or consulate? sources differ) in Irbil Iraq. No confirmation from media yet, but if it's fake someone has gone to a lot of trouble with the footage. US consulate hit, no casualties (unsurprising, as it's under construction) per US ABC.

Yeah, that justification is absolutely awful. Not just because of the all the horrendous pro war propaganda you get from the west- which is of course aok because it's giving human rights* to brown people who live on the west's resources, those that survive at least- and the obvious selectiveness of who is effected but because it's a fundamentally stupid argument. If you want actual democracy, which is supposedly the cornerstone of western ideology (lol), then you need free access to information, including information that the government doesn't like. Perhaps the single most important human right of all beyond not being arbitrarily killed or imprisoned, because it's the one thing that gives you context to decide on your own situation and your country's. It's an absolutely fundamental component of free speech, what's the point if Ursula holds the mute button? Otherwise you're just a bunch of ignorant sheep voting for whichever wolf looks whitest and woolliest- or whichever wolf a western oligarch** says you should. von der Leyen has been looking for an excuse to ban RT for ages because it's stridently anti EU. And let's not get started on that moron Borrell shooting his mouth off about MiG29s because he thought it would make his awful tenure look better. Just bring back Mogherini, the guy's a dud and you've got 3 (?) more years of him. Under the Elerond Doctrine you can have a great argument for banning Ursula von der Leyen instead for violating the human right to free information. Remember this next time people think I'm anti EU, that suggestion would be the best thing to happen to the organisation since the CDU decided she wasn't a suitable successor to Merkel but knew too much to simply dump. It's just so typical of the EU, an organisation that lest we forget would not be able to join itself because it doesn't meet its own standards for democracy. *like, say, open air slave markets in Libya. The west breaks it, but they never buy it. It just goes into the collective unconsciousness via 'just uncivilised brown people things', nothing to do with us. **and what else are Rupert Murdoch, Jeff Bezos et al? One of the less edifying things about the war is the number of old racist (meh, bigoted really) tropes that have been trotted out against Russians. Enemy at the Gates isn't a documentary, guys. (Did you know Putin has Parkinson's and was to retire in January 2021? I love that one, because it was made up wholesale by the utterly unreliable 'The Sun' yet got repeated all over the place as if it was gospel)

lolwut US government official propaganda arms --> VoA and RFE/RL. PBS is if anything less official propaganda than ABC/NBC/CBS at the moment, though that's just relative. Yeah, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a Major General isn't "commander of the Eastern Military District". That would be like a US Brigadier General heading centcom.

Wow, I'd completely forgotten wotsit from The Newsroom and one of the 3 Musketeers were even in Picard- and literally cannot remember anything at all that they did in S1. The other three I'd at least have been able to recognise and vaguely remember after a bit of thought- android, drunk, Kai Leng impersonator.

Doesn't Duras leads you right to the Berserker base in Elex 1? And you pretty much have to actively avoid running into him. I blundered into some Mordocks before the Berserkers in 2, mostly because I saw #1 observation about Elex 2- it's really really easy for a PB game. That's even more evident than the character models missing bump maps? normal maps? and thus looking like they've had a pallet worth of semi gloss foundation applied to their faces.

Let's be honest, 17 years disposing of biological weapons/ upgrading labs is just ridiculous as a statement. How long did it take to get rid of Syria's? About a year. It's a stupid justification. They're not making biological weapons there, but the US explanation is patently stupid- especially after so much effort had been made trying to make the Wuhan Institute of Virology Lab look suspicious. Just say that you have to pay them or some of them would bugger off to North Korea with their expertise. Very likely to be the real reason The White Helmets are the biggest example of western credulity in existence. They're not even Syrian, they were founded by a MI6 agent- and existed so that militants could be funded by western governments. The particularly amusing thing was how many White Helmets got evacuated by Israel when the southern front collapsed. Couldn't even trust Jordan to evacuate them. There isn't anything accurate. The problem with liveuamap isn't accuracy per se it's... well, the old adage about how Goebbels' glorious german victories kept getting closer to Berlin comes to mind. You've never seen a more winning war with more territory lost and if you went by them Ukraine has barely lost a soldier or any equipment while HoonDing's estimate of Russian losses is conservative. Their problem is that they want to show glorious victories in, say, Brovary, and only acknowledge the Russians get there when they can show those glorious victories. The problem with wikipedia map is that they require 'credible sources' for everything- and that means that you have Russian held areas that look completely isolated because no one 'credible' has said that the places behind them have been taken. You also require credible sources to do corrections. That results in mysterious teleporting armies and towns being disputed for weeks that almost certainly aren't; Russian forces are in Brovary on Kiev's outskirts but on that map they hold nothing behind it for ~100km and the closest town they hold on the east side of the Dniepr is ~80km away, and also ~100km away from any other Russian held areas. Takes credible sources to a risible extreme. The British MoD/ Intelligence map is always ~2 days behind, and that's ~2 days behind most pro Ukraine maps. Knowing the Brits it likely takes a day to prepare each time. The best map overall is probably the ISW one that the BBC (and Al Jazeera was) uses. The best Russian map/ detailed map is Dragon's one. He was pretty credible in the 2014 part of the war, but obviously Russian aligned maps clash significantly with Ukraine aligned ones. I also like the style a lot more than the others. Also helps if you know the cyrillic alphabet.

Did have a large western intervention though. But for some reason arming and training the, uh, genocidal Hutu Interhamwe militias that still plague the region is not something the French government likes talking about much though. And yes, they kept training them even after the genocide started. Ukraine will be bailed out*. That's the point of all the rebuilding funds etc. It's a country whose economy is ~60% behind Belarus economically and there's an awful lot to bail out, but anything else would be a Russian victory, so... Just don't expect anything except for virtue signalling when it comes to EU membership. The EU is willing to talk the talk, but Ukraine makes some of the poorer expansion countries look like Monaco so there will be no walking being walked any time soon. *Good news for the Russian people is that the politicians in the west will be returning the money seized from the oligarchs back to the Russian people who they care so very deeply about it being stolen from and haha I can't even write that with a straight face. liveuamap is so biased it's literally useless. Trump did have at least two SF raids/ operations that went bad (one in Niger pretty significantly, one in Yemen), though you didn't hear much about them in the press since they lacked the... visuals of Mogadishu. Hence Trump didn't really care about making the big gesture in response. Contrast with Trump wanting to start WW3 over Syria because it would one up Obama's 'red line', and having to be talked out of it by Mattis and pals. That was entirely about wanting to look the big man.

Iraq places 5th so they definitely make any list- they're probably 4th above Canada in actual production. Barzani smuggles a lot out via Turkey that doesn't appear in official figures.

The latest patch fixed Elex 2 on Vega cards, so I'm now playing that. Already getting the distinct impression that my post trailer observation about Jax getting Caja up the duff and being a deadbeat dad was not as much of a joke as I hoped.

Apart from the refugee issue you can also usually get a defence of 'Europe' by suggesting somewhere else is better, especially if they don't like/ are competitors with that place. You got an awful lot of people defending Europe- and not just the usual suspects either- over Brexit for example. That's pretty close to universal as a concept though; I'm not exactly satisfied with New Zealand but try suggesting Australia is better the right/ wrong way and the Lazar Kiwi would be unfurled, the fearsome martial strains of Pokarekare Ana sung and traditional garb of All Blacks jersey worn in response. Obviously if you can understand someone else's perspective you must also agree with it. How else could you understand it? At least there aren't any paid shill accusations. I always laughed when that was trotted out against oby, as if he was doing it for anything other than free to get a reaction such as, well, to be accused of being a paid shill.

Which article of the treaty is that stated in? Can't have it sea based, can't have it air based, can't have it space based, limited to 100 missiles, limited sites and distribution, no multiwarhead missiles, no speed loaders. Nothing about can't research or deploy new missiles that comply though, and testing and replacement and modernization are specifically allowed.