BruceVC

https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/developing-dispatches-from-ukraine-news24-joins-ramaphosa-peace-delegation-on-the-ground-20230615#:~:text=WARSAW The SA plane carrying our president and lots of security staff and journalists is stuck at Warsaw airport for some sort of legal\arms infringement. This is part of the peace mission to go to Ukraine and Russia....its off to a great start

I have some exciting news , I am playing Daggerfall Unity for the first time properly (I tried it 18 months ago but I didnt do proper DFU or mod research and I stopped after 8 hours or so) This time I was motivated by the numerous discussions on Codex about DFU and I spent about 12 hours watching DFU mod videos and reading up on mods on DF workshop forums. I am using DREAM with all the relevant presets and I have about 100 mods installed and so far, 6 hours in, Im having a great time and all my mods are working as expected. I am using Vortex mod manager and I did have to confirm files were moved into the correct locations but that wasnt for all my mods I watched videos like this around suggested mods And then the mod community is incredibly helpful and people go so far as to create this link with is an excel spreadsheet with different mod builds that are suggested and what may conflict with what mod (use tabs at the bottom to see the different builds suggested ) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...ToVGliR7oesLEaSlWrT23JS3I/edit#gid=1397230399

As long as you and @Gorthdont forget one of the worlds most irrefutable axioms " better dead than Red" Remember we lived through the Cold War and those lessons of the historical failures of both Communism and authoritarian systems often get forgotten or ignored by the younger generation I guarantee you if you ask the younger members on this forum like @sarex, @Bartimaeus or KP what was the Cold War they will say " thats the war on climate change ..right "

The Ruskies have been building a defense line for months and its expected in this type of offensive there will definitely be loss of military resources. Ukrainians also dont have air supremacy so yes its a very different war and offensive to the Gulf Wars

What do you pay for an average pizza in Greece, maybe a hawaiian? I have had lamb on pizza and its delicious

You know what I always do when I ask " is this game too expensive ", I wonder how many hours I will spend playing it and then I think what the companies I work for charge customers per hour for consultancy work and its always worth it. I will spend at least 200 hours on Starfield so $70 is a small price for mudcrabs and cliff racers in space !!!

that has got to be one of the funniest and most cringe exchanges in any game

https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-barr-trump-toast-damning-classified-docs-case-2023-6 Former AG Barr has been very critical of Trump around the classified documents charges and he raised this is on FOX news I have always liked Barr and I found him to be articulate, knowledgeable and convincing with his legal explanations and many of his decisions. I remember @Gromnir never liked him and use to say he was guilty of various infringements around the Constitution especially around the BLM protests in Portland and the Federal government intervention to end the months of violent protests and criminality that the Democrat mayor allowed Anyway the point being Barr is consistent with the interpretation of the law and is not a Trump yes-man To quote from the link " Former Attorney General Bill Barr said his ex-boss, former President Donald Trump, is "toast" if even some of the allegations that he illegally took classified documents on his way out of the White House are true. Barr told Shannon Bream on Fox News Sunday that it was "ridiculous" to portray Trump as a victim of a witch hunt in the federal case. "I was shocked by the degree of sensitivity of these documents and how many there were, frankly," Barr said in the interview Sunday. "So, the government's agenda was to get those, protect those documents, and get them out, and I think it was perfectly appropriate to do that."

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/09/americas/colombia-children-amazon-found-intl-latam/index.html Here is a good news story, a group of children survived for 40 days in the Colombian jungle before being rescued What a survival story

We can only hope, think of the mod suggestions he could provide

https://www.ign.com/articles/todd-howard-elder-scrolls-6 I hate to be the bearer of bad news but Todd Howard is hinting that ES6 could be his last game at Bethesda What a legend he is and what a contribution he has made towards Bethesda's success

I agree with your first paragraph But I have watched lots of Jordan Peterson videos and I agree with much of what he says but not everything. He has dozens and dozens of podcasts and he has had many interviews and debates but I cant recall him ever debating or ignoring Trumps grandstanding and theater. Do you have the specific video or interview because I would like to understand what he said or didnt say?

But there are cases and allegations against Trump that turned out not to be true or were not what people assumed like the Mueller inquiry which was important but Trump didnt have any direct links to the Ruskies Thats where witch-hunt comes from and US culture wars just makes some people's views trenchant and automated even before evidence or inquiries are concluded. And thats from the left and right from the extremist\radical elements on many issues

I have been following this outrage on Codex from Trump supporters and the arguments are generally unconvincing. People tend to say things like " this is just another Mueller inquiry targeting Trump and its purely political " But we need to separate previous allegations from this, he definitely has charges to answer in this case. And I always wonder if Obama was being charged what the same people would be saying?

Pidesco what would you say to people who believe this is a witch-hunt to stop Trump winning in 2024?

I dont want to hijack this thread with an Iraq debate as @Gorth mentioned but I do think its related to Ukraine because its about the integrity of Russia and then its about the justification of an invasion, is it ever justified for example? And this is a debatable topic so I appreciate peoples opinions even if I already know what most peoples views on this are So going back to Iraq, I dont think anyone would argue the reasons for the invasion was valid, they werent and they were a combination of misinformation and lies. I did believe them at the time but from about 2004 onwards it was clear they werent true But I was talking more about the nature of the invasion and how the US conducted themselves within Iraq compared to the Russia invasion of Ukraine, they not the the same at all if you think of the military strategy and decisions the Ruskies have made and things they doing like the illegal annexations of parts of the Donbas My point being not all invasions are the same because a big part of how we reflect on invasions is how the invading army conducts themselves and what they do within the country they invaded Im sure we would all agree on that?

There are other real differences between the invasion of Iraq and Ukraine. The US and its allies spent months trying to motivate and justify the invasion in the UN, they never once said " we dont want to invade Iraq " Russia built up its troops on the border and claimed " its just a training exercise, EVERYONE knows you cant trust US\Western intelligence. " https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/19/russian-military-build-up-continues-despite-moscows-promises-of-a-drawdown-00010372 So like everything else in this war it was just more Russian lies and doublespeak because they were expecting a quick and decisive victory

Zora will tell you there is NO logical reason for the Russians to blow up the dam, the same as there NO logical reason to blow up the Nord pipe or invade Ukraine Russian and Vatnik cope never ceases to amaze

Yes I dont think anyone senior in government would be involved if its true I mentioned before that during Covid the SANDF ordered thousands of untested and unauthorized vaccines from Cuba using their own budget. So its definitely possible they acted unilaterally. But then they still need to make the inquiry public to settle this and ensure accountability and consequence for whoever is involved https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-01-26-back-to-cuba-sandf-returns-irregularly-procured-covid-drug-worth-r228m/

Im glad its amusing to you, at least someone finds these allegations funny. But a person working for the NSA and having a signed NDA is not the same as the allegations of selling weapons to a country that invaded another country especially when there has been denialism from the government about those weapons sales and the country is claiming to be neutral Nice try but really weak equivalence

Well thats exactly what most South Africans are going to think and also what most international observers would think. Domestically this has become a very contentious point and the simplest way to settle this would have been to be open about the inquiry

https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/da-to-challenge-ramaphosas-plans-to-classify-inquiry-findings-on-lady-r/ We our own worst enemy around our foreign policy decisions, the inquiry into the Russian ship outcome is now classified This is being challenged but its incredibly frustrating because after the US ambassadors allegation there was this huge denial and outrage and this inquiry was established. But now government wants to classify the findings. Why? Make the findings public and settle this thing once and for all

I agree and its not whataboutism because I agree that would be several hundred Western\NATO advisors on the ground helping the Ukrainians. I expect and support that But there is also an official Ukrainian foreign fighters regiment in Ukraine, I have immense respect for anyone prepared to fight and die for the freedom of another country. They number in the lows thousands but I doubt anyone cares about foreign fighters in Ukraine considering the point you made about the Donbas conflict and the reality of the Russian military involvement and then you have many examples of the Wagner group operating in Africa and how Wagner is closely associated with the Russian government https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/23/europe/ukraine-foreign-fighters-vuhledar-donbas-intl/index.html

Absolutely and I have raised this before. But thats part of the annoying inaccuracy of when people in SA say " Russia helped end Apartheid". It wasnt Russia, it was the USSR And it was during the Cold War, it wasnt because they were really our friends. It was ideological

But the Russians are in charge of the dam and I cant see why the Ukrainians would blow it up? Apparently 22k people in Russian's controlled areas will be affected by the flooding and 16k in Ukrainian controlled https://apnews.com/article/kakhovka-dam-ukraine-russia-war-whats-at-stake-a417dafefa79462bef5e4e63c0a94c8c