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The US State Department and other US government organs believed their own propaganda. Remember this? The US government is filled with aging Baby Boomers who feel considerable nostalgia about the social uprisings that defined their generation. They also feel guilt about not having participated in them more vigorously, and wish to vicariously participate in such uprisings elsewhere. They became convinced that the entire Arab world was filled with hip, Western-educated young people who aspired to live in shiny, Western-style democracies instead of shabby, corrupt dictatorships. With a little help from their friends in Washington DC, they could make their dreams a reality! Yes we can! Also, once the revolution was complete there were going to be some shady oil deals and whatnot to sweeten the deal for some of the people involved. The first batch of diplomatic cable leaks have alluded to some of these. But this isn't to say that the US government started all this chaos to get their hands on oil. They're simply not that rational. The horrifying thing about US foreign policy is that the US is so overwhelmingly powerful, and so completely insulated from the consequences of its actions, that the primary goal of US foreign policy is to posture and to gain advantage in US domestic politics. If you live outside the US, you are just a puppet on a string, dancing to a solipsistic and insane tune played by the blind idiot god of America. Unless you live in Russia or China and to a lesser extent India. They have nukes and they're not afraid to tell the US government to shove it. Everywhere else? So, the Democratic Party and their extended network of allies in the State Department and elsewhere decided to prove their purity and support for Democracy by assisting in the overthrow of secular dictatorships throughout the Middle East. This was, in retrospect, and also a the time, obviously a bad idea. While these countries did have large numbers of hip, westernized youth who were tired of the corruption and economic stagnation of their homelands, these countries had even larger numbers of Islamists who were older, better-funded, better-organized, and far better at playing the game. The results were entirely predictable; the young, cool, hip protesters who basically wanted to turn the entire southern coast of the Mediterranean into LA were quickly displaced and cowed into silence by barbarians who want to dynamite the pyramids and conquer all of their neighbors so they can have them as rape-slaves. Also, I want to point out that that last sentence sounds like a breezy, poetic exaggeration but it's actually literally true. This happened pretty quickly; it was obvious that Islamist elements were wearing the pants only a few months into the Arab Spring movement. But the US government does not let mere facts stop it. Instead of quickly pulling support and walking away while pretending nothing happened at all, the US government decided that if Islamists had taken over pro-Democracy protests, Islamists must be the true face of Democracy in the Middle East. Seriously; that's how come you get retarded buzzfeed articles like this one lamenting the suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood. Very quickly, a number of governments that managed not to implode decided that if Uncle Sam was going to act all retarded and shit, they might as well do their best to make sure that it was directed at their enemies. These countries, chiefly Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Israel, formed a surprisingly effective alliance of strange bedfellows that aimed at exporting their domestic political problems and at sticking it to the Persians. Saudi Arabia has a long history of religious radicalism, and an almost equally long history of exporting those radicals so they can get killed by airstrikes from civilized countries. Qatar is a Salafist country that is looking very nervously at their own 20% Shia minority and what's going on in Yemen and Iraq. Turkey is run by a knuckle-dragger who stays on top because his opponents are completely retarded, and who needs displays of foreign military might to keep his base satisfied with his lack of internal success. Israel's Likud government has a precarious hold on power and opposes an Iranian ally and long-standing rival. So, by making sure that a bit of money got into the right pockets, this coalition has kept the mostly Islamist opposition in Syria fed and armed. Propaganda in the US, funded by the Saudis and powered by boomer egos, has mainly kept the public from realizing that this is exactly the sort of anthill that the US does not need to stick its dick into, although they have remained opposed to large-scale deployment of ground forces. The biggest losers are, of course, the mainly secular, hip, westernized youth for whose benefit this idiotic operation was started. And yes, I'm sure they would grit their teeth and side with Assad if any of them haven't been killed.

Watched Ghost in the Shell: We run out of ideas edition. In short - it is slightly above average, like 6 or 7 out of 10. Movie is strange amalgamation of original movie and Stand alone complex series, and not in a good way. And they don't mix actual ideas from movies, as much as parts of plotlines and just scenes. Scarlett as Motoko was distracting, and looks like for almost whole movie her face was not working properly, giving that stupid "i am acting a robot" impression the whole time. She reminded me much more of Lucy than Major (probably because every fucking characters was telling to her how important she is). "I AM ACTING" [ACTING INTENSIFIES] NEVER ACTED SO HARD. AND YES RED LIPSTICK IS A MUST FOR CYBER CRIMES SOLVING WOW SOMEBODY TURN OFF HER "DEFAULT EMOTION" FACE FOR A MOMENT GONA WIN AN OSCAR. RED LIPSTICK WILL ALSO BE COVERED BY OPTICAL CAMO, YOU SILLY Scarlett acting was inspired by this scene where Motoko's body is highly damaged and malfunctioning. And why on Earth she was casted as Motoko? Her acting in Lucy and in Marvel films shows different types of character that she can do (and in case of Lucy - that she can't). And Major was a bit more... athletic (yes, @Collimatrix, i know what you are going to say. And @T___A would like some screenshots from original, lol). Motoko in a original had this... thoughtful, melancholic hopelessness that i really like, while in the live action adaptation she looks just dead or/and dumb. Anyway, i will go through this movie. 1) Don't expect any new ideas from this movie if you ever watched any of previous movies and series. In fact, as i said earlier, this movie takes some parts of plots from them and make them much more stupider by never exploring them deeper, they never reach even TV series level in this aspect. Main character is suffereng from amnesia with a past to be discovered (how original) and "Am i just a machine? -> I AM NOT A MACHINE!" drama from standart sci-fi script number 2701, and of course doctor that made her body is a "mother" figure that helps her to go trough standart sci-fi emotinal arc number 5632 of "I AM NOT A MACHINE!" of standart sci-fi script number 2701. Main bad guys are evil Hanka Corporation that wants to make everybody to be just a machine (standart sci-fi script number 2701!!!!) because reasons. Bad boss guy is yet another evil CEO that i forgot how name even sounds like. Qattar? Whatever. And yes, he is shady white rich male that will kill mother figure (personally, of course!) to motivate Scarlett to not like him. Secondary bad guy is actually slightly more interesting, Kuze (which is yet another stolen character from TV series and amalgamation of several characters) have motivation outside of just being bad. Although because this movie is too much ideas randomly stolen scenes put into 100 minute movie with too much footage of Scarlett's dead face, he never get enough time to be developed in any smart way, only hinting possible incredible scenes and twists that could have been made out of him. It's funny how a characters with clearly visible artificial-made face was acted better than Moko's (or Miko's... i forgot a name of main character, hahaha, in this film her name was changed from Motoko to something shorter). Main hero's side character, friend and fellow officer Batou was pretty good, maybe because he was writen as human and acted by one. All other members of Section 9 had almost 0 time on the screen, which is shame as several of thouse could have been used to make this live action adaptation more interesting and alive. Like Saito (sniper, in one of recent series was used as sort of "comedic" character) or Ishikawa (old experienced member of unit), or Togusa (police detective that was transfered to unit, almost completely a human unlike rest of members. Several great scenes from anime TV series and movie made me care about this fictional character). High-caliber sniper "rifles" are usual toys for Saito. Togusa not very happy with his very short screentime Ishikawa in live action film (you can count seconds of how much he was on the screen) and in 1995 animated movie. Diologues were boring for the most part, i don't remember any of them outside of re-used ones from original (like scene on a boat) and several lines said by Aramaki during assassination attempt. I really don't like how they turned Motoko, a woman who was making job done and trying to understand the end game of events into some emotional teenager that tries to understand how world works by having personal identity crisis. He was great as an old "fox" The whole plot, the way it go through events and how it gets to end is not really interesting. The "politics-humans relationships-society in a cyber world" part of GiTS, that adds flavor to main story, is gone. No smart ideas, no smart twists, no provoking or mind-capturing concepts, this whole movie felt like on rails and empty at times (especially in the middle). Somebody took a bad quality photo of good art piece and decided to mass produce it to unwashed peasants on top of some packages for candies THAT ARE NOT THAT TASTY ANYWAY. 2) Visuals They are pretty good at times. Scene with geishas was done well, outside of several small things that bothered me (hitmans scenes did not had clear sense of place/location and GAINT MUZZLE FLASHES), color, lighting, composition made thins scene just visually pleasing to watch. Spider tank look almost real at times. And yes, it is controlled by evil CEO personally. Also they, using computer stuff, made Scralett's body a bit more athletic at times... which is confusing as at some parts of film she was normal-looking woman. Scenes in city, where all strange CGI-effects and big ass shiny ads were happening was on a background a lot of the times, which i liked as it was way more subtle that almost everything in this movie. But some effects (like in a gif with a tank above where shells hits feels like stock SFX library "pufs") looks pretty cheap or not convincing. Cars in the movie looked also cheaply made studio-use only props that would be forgoten and disassembled a week after scene was done. Yes, this is a car that was used in the sci-fi movie. Bladerunner prop? And there is plenty of this "good-average-bad-good-average-good-bad" kind of deal with cinematogrophy. Some times cuts were too fast for a scene, not giving you time to take it in you. Prime example - trash truck crew chase. In a original there was a section where hacked worker was running trough the city, and movie was showing you this city, both shiny and trash-filled parts of it, how layered it was with old and new, efficient and neglected parts. In this movie this scenes have just several seconds of this (again, completely taken from original). Optical camo is also strange on Scarlett - when not active it still have this "electicity is blue" waves going all over suit, making it look more as a magical artifact than actual piece of equipment. At least in the original creators had a little fun with optical camo. So visuals are jumping all over the place at times, but mostly they are good. 3) Sound and music They suffer from Marvel's syndrom of "we will take what scene is trying to show and will make a music version, and in a forgetable way". All sounds are pretty standart sci-fi type of soundwork, and i don't remember any of the music. Compared to just opening of the original, the musical part of new movie as average at best. In short - bland and boring. 4) Action Not bad, but after John Wick 2 action looks... not really stimulating. In the first scene they used obvious CGI model of Scarlett to... kick one of hitmans in the back... yeah. Fighting is average, i would even call it standart. The big action scene in the end with spider tank is way worse than in original, as in original she aknowledged a incredible danger from a tank, and acted like somebody in very risky situation. In a new film Scarlett don't even take cover when evil-CEO-controlled robot was shooting at her... A fight with hacked man in live action and in 1995 movie. There was not much of action, for original it was ok as it had more to keep attention of viewers, while in new movie we have Scarlett staring at a prostitute for a minute or laying in a bed with her "no facial expression" facial expression. 5) Conclusion. If you saw anything from GiTS and liked it - continue with original movie, movies after and TV series and don't see Holywood attempt to make a GiTS film. If you saw all of them - current one have no value. If you have no idea what GiTS is - don't start your journey with this Lucy 2.0. "That is some junk over there that i beat up completely".

Even closer images of the NK OICW, judging from some of the design features it's clearly AK-74 based. (Type 85 or 88 in NK) Credits Akula_941. This likely rules out the Chinese QTS-11 (the True name of the ZH-05) as the "parent" of the NK OICW as the rifle portion of the QTS-11 is based on a cut down QBZ-03 memory serve me. It's also using a magazine fed launcher design which the QTS-11 program ditched pretty early in development because it proved to be too heavy and bulky.

Argghhh what sucks really really bad is that M73 M219 & M85 machine gun development saga actually justified the killing of US Army Ordnance pretty thoroughly since the abortions that those 3 guns turned out to be was entirely the result of the original designer of the root gun refusing a job offer at one of the Arsenal's after selling the working and thoroughly debugged design to Army ordnance, he took an offer to work at colt instead, and in a fit of irrational stupidity said arsenal hired TRW to "evaluate" (read evaluate as fix the fucker until it's irretrievably broken) the design they just purchased. The guy that was in charge of the redesign supposedly needed to fix all the "flaws" TRW "found" was pretty much known as a consummate douche canoe already and never once owned up to taking a production ready gun and turning it into irredeemable shit either! The designer of the gun was Russell S. Robinson, and in the decade or so British ordnance or whatever messed with it but never managed to buy the very good gun that stayed a very good gun over something like a decade of playing with the gun ... You'd think they would have noticed all these serious flaws and safety issues TRW "found"! Robinson was understandably irritated by this turn of events, but GE was flat fucking pissed off since they wound up running the arsenal and having the now thoroughly fucked formerly working gun dropped in their laps after Army Ordnance got killed for one too many such incidents where bureaucrats who acted more like bitchy teenage girls actively sabotaged a design because their feelings were more important than defending the free world from dirty commies. And the tool bag project manager, you guessed it! He told anyone and everyone who would listen that the gun worked great after his team fixed the fatally flawed design and GE chose not to keep him on when they wound up in charge of the arsenal, therefore GE must have changed something! Yes folks, he is the original SHIT LORD in whose image all other lesser shit lords since him have failed to measure up to his standards of consummate and uncompromising cradle to the grave shit lording! Dude has to be like 90 now, but I swear to God.... He's the one old man I'd beat like a red headed step child if I ever met him face to face! Really really hate that guy... For those wondering, I'm pretty sure that the gun in question was the Robinson model 33 but I can't find the damn PDF of both fighting firearms articles for some reason. P.S: Australia, England, and JSSAP you guys suck too for, you know, not adopting any of the guns he developed for you guys... Especially England and Australia Here's why: Australia aka the original sin... So the Australian government put out this completely insane set of requirements for a new machine gun. It was a very long list but here's the really fun one's (from memory here and I'm not certain if the fire rate piece got tacked on later to their already "totally reasonable and easy to meet" list of initial requirements) 1. Must be in .50 caliber BMG 2. Must fit in aircraft wing and other gun stations which currently have .303 Browning anm2 guns installed. 3. Must not exceed the peak trunnion force generated by the .303 anm2 guns installed. 4. Must match the fire rate of .50 BMG aircraft machine guns (were the .50 BMG versions anm2 also or anm3?) Completely sane and reasonable list... Which is why Robinson's design was the only one submitted & or the only one that even came close to meeting the requirements. And yes, over a remarkably short development period he met all 4 of the requirements above. (anyone who tells you his design was rejected because of low fire rate just assumed that GD was at least as competent & or with the 50 years of technological advancements couldn't possibly fail so miserably to even reach the bar Robinson set so long ago with XM307/XM312... They underestimated GD grievously) He actually achieved comparable fire rates to the browning aircraft specific .50's and apparently wound up with pretty comparable receiver life which statistically speaking was perfectly acceptable because the planes tended to be destroyed before the guns wore out. Australia and if I recall right did the only logical thing when someone managed to actually meet the requirements... They didn't put the gun in production. Onto England now! We cannot let ourselves be outdone by a prison continent: Robinson is now in England, the war is still ongoing. Robinson develops about the simplest possible ring mount that you can for a simplified ring mount competition (I believe this is pre D day, and people realize that a majority of, if not every truck they send over to supply the march towards Berlin needs a ring mount and some sort of machine gun.) Robinson designs a universal ring mount that will fit any machine gun a trucker can "liberate". Being an overachiever he designs a full auto only .50 BMG gun that feeds from top fed 20 round detachable box magazines. Seeing their requirements met and exceeded even, England does the only sensible thing and doesn't buy the gun or the ring mount. Then there's the model 11 machine pistol which Robinson figures out how to make a single hand friendly machine pistol which any idiot can kill the shit out of you with where even the magazine auto ejects once empty, and the Stock is essentially a piece of steel tube that screws into the bottom rear of the pistol grip. Seeing that someone somehow actually succeeded, whichever Commonwealth nation decides that the requirements were too easy and decides that it should function and have an accuracy in semiautomatic like a hi power... Robinson was from all evidence on his way to figuring it out, but something happened and no one produced this either. (It was the only sensible thing to do) JSSAP epilogue: the model 11 nee 14 is now the model 16 idk wtf happened here but I'd sure love to find out. If anybody has anything about this of any sort please let me know. The moral to this story: If you want to design machine guns that are really truly good, especially if they're lightweight... Be born Russian

Best Korean Quad Stack (Stolen from Max P.)

I was going to post a video of parachute-retarded bombs being used on the Hama front, but of course LoooSeR already posted it. Four years ago there were many stories complaining of the Assad government indiscriminately bombing civilian residence in areas around Hama. Not anymore. A lot of the smaller towns look abandoned. I had to laugh when I heard a report on the radio describing the exchange of civilians from the besieged towns as sectarian cleansing. They're worried about the demography of the country changing when about half of the population is already displaced? I think that ship has sailed. Except for Libya, Yemen and Syria the whole area has largely returned to business as usual as a bunch of corrupt, but essentially stable dictatorships. In some places (e.g. Egypt) the name of the dictator has changed. Iraq is obviously convulsing with sectarian violence, but it was convulsing with sectarian violence before 2011 anyway, so that doesn't really count. On the whole, Arab Spring made the whole region worse, but except for Syria, Libya or Yemen, it isn't really much worse than it was before. At the moment Egypt is clamping down on free-speech groups, Islamist groups, and is seeking closer military ties with Russia. I expect that at least a few other countries will follow this course. I would also predict that Middle Eastern governments would lobby as hard as possible for emigration of their citizens to Europe or Turkey or anywhere really. Saudi Arabia has proven that home-grown radicals are not a problem so long as they cause trouble somewhere else. I would further expect most countries to be aware that this is exactly what they are doing, and they won't take many immigrants as a result. Egypt will probably never get rid of the Muslim Brotherhood. That group has been around since the 1920s and it is very, very good at surviving. I can't say it's good at anything else at all, but it is good at surviving.

@Sturgeon may like this because of Witcher 3.

A stadiametric rangefinder and a front sight in one cheap stamping? Very clever! They seem to be relying on a humvee-sized standard piece of architecture for the rangefinding

Kerbal hell cannons.

Short barrel version

Better photo of Best Korean OICW. As Khort from otvaga forum pointed out, this thing looks a lot like Worst Korean Daewoo K11. I completely forgot about it...

Journalists are retarded, inbred magpies. They are attracted to things that are shiny, new, controversial, and that are easily misapprehended by their vestigial brains. If the US Army chromed all the artillery shells used in the Mosul offensive and wrote "DICKS FUCK PUSSIES" on them the journalists wouldn't be able to shut up about it for a week. It would have no practical significance whatsoever, but the Bloviating class would fellate each other for their chattering and award themselves Pultizers galore for their hard-hitting war coverage and Speaking the Truth to Power. Not that any of this is news. Everyone worth speaking to has known that journalists are sub-human for several decades. What is novel and interesting is that the Age of Trump has shown that in addition to being useless idiots, journalists are also very predictable useless idiots.