Zoraptor

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.

The MiG29 deal is now... off again.

While most armament supplies aren't considered a legitimate reason for retaliation flying combat aircraft into a war zone makes their base a legitimate target, because the presumption is that they're ready for combat* and constitute an imminent threat launched from another country. There have been a few examples where that's been ignored- eg the Korean War where a lot of nominally 'Korean' fighters based out of China with soviet pilots. The calculation would be that hitting a US base, in Germany, would be far more of an escalation than hitting a Polish base in Poland so would not be done. *for a non aircraft example, if Poland armed Ukrainians and sent them into Kaliningrad they could be bombed in Poland legitimately as Poland is acting as a base. If they were already in Kaliningrad but just got delivered weapons then Poland couldn't be bombed. Yeah, the US embassy in Ukraine also confirmed they exist(ed). The only argument is what their purpose was. The stated reasons seem... questionable, on both sides. That's not an abrogation on the Russian side, they followed the treaty as negotiated. A treaty isn't broken just because it isn't considered advantageous to the US any more. And unless I'm very much mistaken the US chose to defend, uh, North Dakota with its system, not Washington. They were originally allowed to defend Washington as well but both sides agreed to forgo the second site. ... "Article IV The limitations provided for in Article III shall not apply to ABM systems or their components used for development or testing, and located within current or additionally agreed test ranges. Each Party may have no more than a total of fifteen ABM launchers at test ranges. " "Article VII Subject to the provisions of this Treaty, modernization and replacement of ABM systems or their components may be carried out. "

MiG-29 is pretty useless for ground attack. Syria massively preferred ancient Su22/24 and MiG21/23 to using their MiG29s for ground attack and they had complete air superiority. They very occasionally used them for precision drops though- decapitating Ahrar ash Sham and Jaish al Islam's leadership most prominently. Ukraine also already has Mig29s so there's no improvement in strike range. Transfered to Rammstein, heh. They really are worried about the lot of them copping a nuke and think nuking a US base in Germany is an escalation too far. The tussle was more Russia <--> Ukraine over Sevastopol/ basing/ division of the Black Sea Fleet. In the end there wasn't much tussle for Crimea, as Crimea had no troops. Ukraine sent in ~50,000 extra troops in 1995 when it looked like Crimea might action things and when they expelled Meshkov. They also had troops deployed in 1992 when the "part of Ukraine" got inserted post facto in the Crimean constitution. The legal argument about Crimea acknowledging Ukrainian sovereignty may have been... arguable in 1992- though not without hypocrisy, if Ukrainian troops being present doesn't invalidate 1992 then Russian troops being present in 2014...- but Ukraine tore up that constitution in favour of one dictated from Kiev where the practical autonomy they got was... being called an autonomous republic, and that after a pretty extensive period of direct rule. They also specifically changed the constitution of Ukraine to prevent secession under any realistic circumstance as they'd need the majority approval of every oblast to secede. ... Not even the US made any claims about Russia abrogating ABM.

Kaliningrad is a very long way away from the most prominent NATO member though, and the one with by far the most nukes. It's also only in the middle of NATO because of... NATO expansion. Do we really need another example of "___ aggressively placed their country near western military bases"? If you are going to go for a strategic nuclear strike you want to hit everything with as little warning as possible and nothing trumps being close for that. Realistic scenario? You'd hope not. But then the US has quit pretty much every treaty designed to prevent that scenario. ABM. INF. Open Skies. They're doing a very good job of looking suspicious.

The Japanese have claimed the lower Kurils since the end of WW2. So there's no change there. They would have conceded the bigger two of them in 1956 in return for the two smaller ones, but the US said it would annex Okinawa if they did. So they didn't, and the claim has stood since then. iirc officially the US doesn't actually recognise anyone's authority over the lower two Kurils.

Anyone named V(itali) Gerasimov is going to be a great target for some propaganda since the Army Chief of Staff is V(aleri) Gerasimov. Especially when he's a army Chief of Staff- guess which one shows up in a search. Ultimately all the sources resolve to intercepts, from the Ukraine MoD. Which I believe still has that DCS footage up, and claimed as genuine. Guess it depends on whether he turns up on a video laughing at the rumours of his death like that Chechen general killed a week ago did. Probably not, since we're getting next to nothing from Russia officially. There are also consistent rumours about the new Iran deal/ JCPOA being signed imminently. Believe it when it happens, but the rumours are that it would be weaker towards Iran than the original JCPOA- which already had a lot of people complaining about it being too soft.

Maybe you'll get really lucky and there will be another Beslan or Moscow Theatre siege from the real Chechens? Let's not forget what the western approved/ sanitised Chechens actually stood for in cheerleading anything that might hurt Russia, hmm. (My personal favourite Chechen moment was notorious ISIS' 'Minister of Defence' Omar al-Shishani constantly being described as a Russian Chechen in the press, when he was from... Georgia. And not even a refugee, born and bred Georgian Chechen with no Russian connection at all) "Pics or it didn't happen" see also Ghost of Kiev or Marco Rubio's 2 Russian paratroop transport planes being shot down. Russia has the 4th most immigrants in the world. It also hadn't had declining population for a decade up to covid (and only very slight decline for the 5 years prior to that). Their population has been stable for almost all the 2000s Ukraine's population has declined at a pretty steady -0.5% practically since the USSR broke up. The only thing about it arguably declining more was its relative GDP. Quite apart from the proximity to two of the most strategically important Russian cities in Smolensk and Rostov that was especially true after the US reneged on INF. Ukraine would make a great base for some nuclear capable cruise missiles. (Yes reflexive knee jerkers, I know the US doesn't have any nuke cruise missiles and the warheads that were sitting in storage a decade+ after the INF was signed may have actually been disposed of at some point. I'm sure they're as unprepared for arming tomahawks with nukes as they were for having land based tomahawks after not having the missiles or software- per Aegis Ashore not violating INF in the first place, which it most definitely did- for... a whole week after leaving the agreement?)

Farscape was streaming on Prime when I had the sub for WoT/ The Expanse a couple of months ago. Couldn't be sure if it's the same for Europe/ Serbia though. I got a water damaged DVD set for next to nothing years ago, one of the best deals I've had.

The funny thing about Afghanistan and Iraq is all the people suddenly complaining about maps showing controlled areas and how Russia doesn't control the countryside. If you did similar for Iraq/ Afghanistan you'd have ended up with the majority of both countries outside western control, and heaps of people complaining that those didn't show reality. I don't disagree with the initial point, but it would be nice if there was some consistency and map makers didn't show huge tracts of land controlled in Afghanistan just because some Brits in a Defender toodled through a month earlier. IIRC it was Barclay de Tolly's plan though it was largely implemented by Kutuzov, and Borodino- 'the bloodiest single day battle in Europe', though it depends on how accurate casualty estimates in some of the ancient battles like Cannae are- was supposedly Alexander's idea. But yeah, Napoleon made it to Moscow with a great deal of trouble, and with only about a quarter of the troops he started off with. A lot of them weren't dead or deserters but left as garrisons and guards for the supply lines; but most of them ended up dead anyway. If Napoleon had one issue it was not learning from mistakes. He had the same strategic issue in Egypt, but got out and left Kléber (and blamed Brueys earlier) to take the blame there. He tried fording a flooding Danube after taking Vienna didn't trigger a surrender (same as taking Moscow didn't in 1812) and got beaten by the Austrians of all people when his pontoon bridge broke and he got stuck with only half his army. If the Austrians had been less Austrian he might have lost that war too. And he messed up Borodino the same way he messed up Waterloo 3 years later. Tannenburg was the first big battle on the eastern front, it set the tone more than decided things. It was typically Russian though, appoint two commanders who weren't exactly brilliant and hated each other in Samsonov and Rennenkampf then be surprised when they don't coordinate or help each other with both getting smacked up in succession. OTOH the Brusilov offensive in 1916 came very close to knocking Austria-Hungary out of the war completely. As much as the Soviets did badly in 1941 against the Germans they still inflicted more casualties in the first 6 weeks of Barbarossa than Germany had suffered in the near two years of war prior to that.

That could just be lack of targets. No point having 200 aircraft in the air at one time if they've nothing to do, and not as much point using aircraft when you've got huge amounts of artillery. That leaves combat patrols, interdiction and bombing fixed structures well behind the lines (or where extra ordnance size is needed). It may also be the effect of continued talk of a no fly zone or concern of a NATO first strike, ie keeping a force in reserve. I wouldn't think either of those would be a realistic option personally, but then me being wrong about something has no consequences- Ukraine getting a bunch of MiG-29s and wanting to be able to respond to them immediately with a lot of fresh aircraft is more realistic though. If there's one thing the Russians definitely are lacking it's loitering options, though the Ukrainians don't seem to have any left either. Bayraktars are not quite as useful when they can be shot down by a helicopter pilot using a handgun or flipped by the rotor wash. Nah, they can just drop interest rates again and print more money. What could possibly go wrong? Slightly OT for here but our PM- who gets paid more than Joe Biden and owns a 2 million dollar house- insists there's no cost of living crisis when most of the rest of the country got effectively a 5% pay cut last year and many a whole lot more. Sadly, the other lot would be even worse.

Yep, of all the flaws in nuTrek imo the biggest is the complete lack of memorable characters, even worse than the awful inconsistent plotting. At least people remember Neelix or Harry Kim, though they may wish they didn't. To be honest there's a pretty big lack of memerable characters too. Number of novel Discovery names I can remember after 3 seasons: Michael, Lorca, Tilly, Saru. I could probably remember the names of the engineer and his boyfriend, if put to the coals. Number of novel Picard names I can remember after 1 season: none. Number of random Blake's 7/ Farscape/ BSG/ old Trek/ random SW EU I browsed at the library/ computer game characters I can remember after 10+ years... multiple times more for each.