Captain_Colossus

This thing that is going on in Syria right now is emblematic why the politics is so messed up, this is the lump sum of the West's involvement. Syria is a secular Arab state ruled by Muslim minority sects- Shiites as well as a select class of bourgeois Sunnis. The Syrian government's trustworthy allies in the region besides the Russians is Iran, not a secular state, and not an Arab state. They are Persians. Besides this alliance, Persians and Arabs have not gotten along so well. The rebellion against the Syrian government is a mixed bag but largely identified with Sunni Muslims, the largest Muslim sect in Syria, arch enemies of the Shiites. One of the state actors supporting these guys are the Saudis, who despise Iran. There is evidence that the Saudi government would sooner cooperate with the Israelis rather than the Iranians or Syrians. The West tends to be pro-Sunni at the state level (Iraq, Saudi Arabia) rather than pro-Shia. Of course, some of our worst terrorist enemies have been Sunni Muslims. This situation is almost the reverse case in Iraq. The West 'liberated' the Shiite minority groups from a secularist Sunni majority government, with the Iranians making power play moves in Iraq supporting Shiite groups which didn't want to support the post Saddam Western supported government. Of course, Iran and Iraq had a history of one of the most violent and bloody conflicts ever waged.

Well, that's your answer as to Sharia Law taking over right there, isn't it? Kind of a wash. Case law (court made law) and statutory laws (laws made by lawmakers- in your case, Parliament or local Councils). I am an American, but I studied International law at Edinburgh University, there was not a mention anywhere that I should know about Sharia laws. So basically, in a free society, anyone can do what they want free from criminal sanctions as long as it's legal. If I decide to do something according to my own moral code or my religious beliefs (for example, be opposed to abortion because my religion informs me as such), I'm free to do so. But if my religion says I can do something against the law, such as kill abortion providers, well then, I've committed murder and I've run afoul of the authorities. Believing as though there are two separate laws isn't so (really there would be more if that were the case- you'd have Catholic, Protestant, Jewish laws, among many others, there's no reason to believe it would only be between Sharia and English Law). I am not religious- I should have an issue with every person out there who goes and votes according to what they believe is true that I don't believe. After all, part of Amendment I of the US Constitution contains the Establishment Clause, that is, there can be no law which promotes or establishes a state religion. But people vote, they select representatives that way anyway.

Or anything that isn't remotely religious oriented. The law does not permit illegal subject matter in a contract dispute. Whether there is a religious background to the case has nothing to do with it. So, if A contracts with B to kill C over a cheating spouse, and B fails to perform in his part of the deal, A can't bring a lawsuit and name B as a defendant in court.

People have argued the same thing- that Sharia Law is replacing the Anglo-American legal traditions in America. This is not true, this is not a correct understanding of what is happening. There is no Sharia Law, unless lawmakers passed such laws- since there are no Muslim dominated legislatures, since there is none in US Congress, this is impossible. And if that were the case, there is a fail safe called the Courts which can overturn such laws if they contravene the US Constitution. What is possible is what's known as ADR- alternative dispute resolution. This means settlements that are out of court, in situations that are not criminal cases or civil cases which do not require the court's intervention, usually in family cases where the issues are too trivial or are better suited not to burden the courts with, the parties are permitted to work out their own solutions, such as through an arbiter that is respected by both parties or by the community. You do this all the time for example if you had a dispute with your brother, and your dad/mother or teachers or priest/pastor, or someone else mediated the dispute. If that didn't work, you go to courts and the civil laws and the civil rules of procedure are what matter. The moment however the subject matter of the arrangement were illegal- for example, an honor killing or a person given as a slave as payment, that arrangement is off, the courts will not enforce an illegal cure to the problem. And if you think the Muslims are unique in this regard, they have already done this with other ethnic groups and communities- Jewish, Asians, or other groups. I work in Silicon Valley just a walk away from eSim's US listed corporate address. I don't have a problem with the large Muslim populations I see at all, many of them are professionals- engineers, medical doctors, attorneys, scientists. Many others drive taxis, operate the decadent liquor and porn shops (that's ironic), smoke and tobacco shops and restaurants. They aren't doing any of this sort of bad business at all. Now of course, what has happened in France or other European countries, well, that's different, and they'll have to figure out why that is.

Right. I think the point is that it is more convoluted than any single reason, and we should not necessarily do something or not do something at the wishes of Islamists, rather, if you want to understand why when and where Islamists select their targets, the reasons aren't simply because of contempt for the West's freedoms. Islamists are a threat to Russians and Chinese and Indians as well- so the freedom issue doesn't really carry over in that way. And there's a difference between home grown Islamists, who have failed for whatever reason to accept the Western countries they live in, and the foreign Islamists- they have different motivations even though they may end up cooperating or appearing as though their interests are aligned. Remember, many of those guys on 9/11 weren't poor Islamists, the ringleaders were either Western educated or from a middle class that enjoyed more freedoms than the poorer slobs at the bottom of the rung. On the other hand, the Taliban in Afghanistan aren't about bringing about the destruction of America, they aren't interested in America's freedoms, their interests are local, we come into conflict with them because we are there. When you watch angry people in the streets in these countries on news broadcasts, they explain what they're angry about. We don't take this at face value, rather, we inject our interpretation- their reason couldn't make sense, so we'll make sense of it for them. The tapes that OBL was issuing to the West in the 90s telegraphed exactly what he was about, and we dismissed them as the ravings of a lunatic man. They weren't so much that he intends to attack America because America is decadent, but rather decadent states such as America and their puppets were plotting to destroy Islam. He listed point by point what his issues were, when they made good on what they planned to do, the issue which everyone rallied behind just simply was wrapped up in the bullet point: freedom. My point is, they'll tell you what they want to do, there's no reason why we should never believe what they're saying and replace that with a different interpretation.

Neither Iran nor Pakistan are Arab states- I think the underlying connections that people are making is Islam. Of course this risks violating your forum's policy, but there have been few voices in the West other than on the political left or in academia which propounds objective views on why the Arabs or the Muslims hate us. Whenever the few policy makers or CIA analysts offer criticism as regarding US foreign policy, they are often made to be pariahs or discredited or made to sound disloyal- on the contrary, they are often quite concerned with keeping the West out of the crosshairs of Muslim or Arab anger. Usually these fall under the lines that we are wrong to believe the usual theory, that is to say, they simply hate us for our way of life or our freedom. Realistically, that's not usually the motivation for attacks on the West. Freedom was not the reason that Saudis, Kuwaitis and Egyptians hatched a scheme to destroy the Twin Towers or the Pentagon. Indeed, in some sense, Saudi Islamic militants have argued that they are fighting for their own freedoms against a very harsh, unelected government, the one that the West supports. These people usually try to objectively argue that: 1) In the equation, we ignore the heavy handed, yet convoluted approach in our foreign policy, that we have tended to support authoritarian governments and their methods to keep their citizens poor, underemployed, and under compliance. US policy-making through its influence and muscle shapes affairs in their countries more than the common people who actually live in these countries. 2) That our foreign policy with regards to Israel is unbalanced and simply would never be 'fair'. 3) The perception that we tend to look at Arab or Muslim lives has having less worth (rightly or wrongly) does exist. We simply do not approach the problem this way in order to asses the Muslim anger. This is not to say that anyone who points these issues out approve of backwards, militant Islam. What this is trying to do is objectively understand why these people would attack targets in the US or Great Britain rather than in Japan or in Denmark.

Cybersquatting relates to potential disputes over business or trademarks, i.e., someone other than eSim registers the domain www.steelbeasts.com in order to profit from the sale of the domain. eSim has a business interest in the domain steelbeasts.com to tie into its intellectual property. In reality, they could just rename the site to something else, like tankaddicts.com, and continue to have their forum like before, there's no business reason why anyone would want to use tanknet per se. There's no link between the name and a business interest, although the 'squatters' probably would sell the domain for cash, there's not a legal dispute over its use.

Politics enter into Soviet doctrine with no equivalent NATO counterpart at the time, that is to say, the Soviet invasion route is at least as much concerned with a political solution as military success- in reality, politics is the ultimate aim. The synergy of Soviet tactics, equipment and political theory is the underlying mechanism. The military is a tool used to achieve political success, politics is the ultimate aim. What makes the North German Plain attractive from the Soviet standpoint is the possibility of attacking at NATO's joint command structure- according to this assumption, you would attack the nexus where these commands overlap and meet, isolate and cut off weaker NATO partners, the momentum carries as one by one the government of each country may sue for their own separate treaty with the Soviets rather than see their home territories destroyed. The Soviets may view the democratic institutions of NATO as a weakness in wartime (while no direct analog, likewise would have put less trust into less capable WarPact members), contrary to its own more homogenized political and military structure organized under a Soviet Front commander. Since US forces have no direct interest to gain or lose fighting in Europe (in that the US homeland isn't at stake), the idea is that you could conceivably convince the Americans that there is no real point in staying in the war when the rest of NATO have been knocked over like dominoes and are no longer interested in it.

The proliferation of cell phones and online sites like Youtube make this content available.

They're brave under the circumstances. Morale must be very low when you're essentially destroying your own country without any apparent end in sight.

There are lots of Muslims in Silicon Valley, Deerborn Michigan is known for its large Muslim population, and you don't have these problems from them. So there must be other dimensions- poverty and lack of education, since many recruits into radicalized groups tend to be associated with these factors.

The sky files are .bmp files stored in the Images folder in your main installation directory. You can either mod them or add new files. Easy. There is a more complicated procedure which makes the horizon blend at a different height (for example, high atmospheric clouds will appear lower on the horizon, the result is the horizon will usually look different- I actually prefer the effect); requires messing around with an additional file.

POV from T-72 gRfIEyBa4kc

The man likes variables. Who am I to say what's right.

It can be still rather tedious- if the detail you're looking for is small enough to slip between the numbers in the grid (such as a towing hook), you might have to scale the pattern down and apply it to small areas at a time instead of the entire skin at once. By that point, you might have already identified it visually. Good luck!

Not to imply that eSim isn't aware of the issues, but I hope the Hind remains different in that regard. Homer's video implies that the Hind was produced with the intent to act more like fixed wing CAS and a form of airborne artillery (in fact the Soviet organized independent helicopter regiments under control at higher echelons) rather than like a Tiger or Apache gunship.

Yes- firing all weapons while moving possible, even SOP. Engaging from a hover a different matter.

It looks as though the unguided rockets are the Hind's first choice- which is more accurate anyway. The Hind is not a gunship in the Western concept, and doctrinally, it's not meant to fire from a steady hover (which could get it shot down, its flight characteristics don't really lend itself to that anyway). It's better suited to saturate an area with rockets while constantly moving.

Export laws aren't the only reason, there are also policy reasons. It may very well be there's no legal restriction against doing business with customers in certain jurisdictions, but eSim does not necessarily want to go there anyway. Let's assume there is no legal restriction but eSim were bound by a restrictive covenant under a contract with a certain country not to sell copies to customers to China. As a private individual and not a party to such obligations, I on the other hand could conceivably sell my copy of Steel Beasts to fulfill a request for someone in China, or buy a new copy on their behalf. Under the scenario where it's not illegal, it's still possible that an agent of the Chinese government can still get a copy while posing as a consumer and buying my copy, but at the very least eSim is not directly implicated in the transaction. It's still possible though, which is why countries doing business with eSim supplying this information shouldn't expect that it's impossible that someone in Moscow or Beijing couldn't get a copy second hand, like through eBay or something. There's virtually no way to track and put the breaks on if I sold my copy to a customer in Hong Kong which eventually wound up passing hands to someone somewhere else. If the information supplied by these governments were so protected, it really doesn't do too much to have such terms in the contract from a practical standpoint. So strictly speaking from the point of view of not disclosing the content on the disc, there are easy ways if a certain party wanted it bad enough without going through direct channels. We've already seen a couple of Russian users turn up on this site, so without debating the wisdom of such a clause in a contract which may or may not even exist, it's probably just good policy and a good calculation from a business standpoint. At the very least, if there are no civil or criminal sanctions per se, from a policy standpoint, it probably wouldn't look so good if eSim were 'playing both sides' from the standpoint of its business model. Since most of its revenue does not come from the consumer market but existing government contracts, there's probably not a lot of incentive to go there anyway.

Aside from certain restricted dual use technologies, China is not a US embargoed country (actually they had MFN status for awhile), if you live on the US West Coast, you're smack in the prime portal of the staggering commercial traffic moving by water and air. For everyone else, look at the bottom of your computer keyboard and/or mouse to see where it was made. However, there's been a complete disregard by the Chinese government for intellectual property and little desire to crack down on piracy, which costs intellectual property holders big money in royalties. I don't speak for eSim, but there may be policy decisions that have more to do with ethics than it does strictly legal or monetary reasons. From a practical standpoint, even ethics is good business- think of a company which markets software used for military training to certain states which regard one another as military rivals if not economic competitors and the bad PR that would create.

Very well done.

Go for it if you want, but I would think the stock skin would be easier to work with.

Steel Beasts splash screen used as an advertisement for defense companies? Maybe something related to a possible partnership with eSim in the past, not really intended to be installed in the commercial version of Steel Beasts.

In what sense? There is a radio net connecting all units up to a battalion headquarters. Do you mean radios for receiving commercial/music broadcasts?