As of yesterday, China had no new cases of Coronavirus, and today they shut down the last of the emergency hospitals that they had constructed. I also have heard that all of Apple's stores in China have reopened and that the country as a whole is on the up-and-up.

This is good news not only for the world in a time of great uncertainty, but also for Armada players, as it likely means that factories that make FFG's products will be up and running shortly, which may ensure that Clone Wars does arrive Q4 for Armada.

Positivity is extremely important in these uncertain times, and while most of us are cooped up, there's no time like the present to dust off an old game or revisit a favorite book. I hope you all are safe and well.

GIVE ME PLASTIC SPACE SHIPS NOW!!!!!

18 minutes ago, Battlefleet 01 Studios said:

As of yesterday, China had no new cases of Coronavirus, and today they shut down the last of the emergency hospitals that they had constructed. I also have heard that all of Apple's stores in China have reopened and that the country as a whole is on the up-and-up.

This is good news not only for the world in a time of great uncertainty, but also for Armada players, as it likely means that factories that make FFG's products will be up and running shortly, which may ensure that Clone Wars does arrive Q4 for Armada.

Positivity is extremely important in these uncertain times, and while most of us are cooped up, there's no time like the present to dust off an old game or revisit a favorite book. I hope you all are safe and well.

Would be interested to have a link to your news source. Can’t find anything on this.

2 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

Would be interested to have a link to your news source. Can’t find anything on this.

2 sec search found this, havent looked anywhere else yet.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/19/asia/coronavirus-covid-19-update-china-intl-hnk/index.html

Ares Games (maker of War of the ring, Sails of Glory, etc.) Made an announcement talking about the restarting of factories they use in China also. Great news!

Just keep in mind that opening the borders also bears the risk of letting the virus back into the country.

Personally, I think the world currently has bigger issues than a Clone Wars Armada release in Q4.

Well surely we can trust China’s numbers. They would never lie.

16 minutes ago, scipio83 said:

Well surely we can trust China’s numbers. They would never lie.

Well quite. The number of people who uncritically parrot the press releases from the Chinese State Media and then turn around and say "You can't trust anything our politicians say" is mind boggling. Everything about the communist system is built on a lie. The system lies, the media lies, and people lie to each other and themselves every day.

6 hours ago, flatpackhamster said:

The system lies, the media lies, and people lie to each other and themselves every day.

Sounds like pretty much every nation-sized governance system since the beginning of time!

7 hours ago, flatpackhamster said:

Well quite. The number of people who uncritically parrot the press releases from the Chinese State Media and then turn around and say "You can't trust anything our politicians say" is mind boggling. Everything about the communist system is built on a lie. The system lies, the media lies, and people lie to each other and themselves every day.

You just described the trump administration.

Unfortunately this is going to play bouncy around the globe until we hit herd immunity in most nations via either exposure or a vaccine.

it will be back in China as it will be every nation that manages to reduce down the rates of doubling for a time.

the bright side is that we are looking like a vaccine is going to be doable and it’s not going to a stone cold impossible ***** of virus like HIV ( our biggest global killer of a virus). Not to lessen it scary as **** nature if we don’t do extraordinary measures for the next year or two ( unless the bugger does like seasonal flu and change it surface protein structures swiftly, viral generations are fast moving).

stay safe stay at home, walk in the countryside and care for your neighbours.....ohhh yes stop the **** buying a years supply of bog roll every time you hit a shop 😂😂😂😂😂

5 minutes ago, player3691565 said:

stay safe stay at home, walk in the countryside and care for your neighbours.....ohhh yes stop the **** buying a years supply of bog roll every time you hit a shop

Sounds like good advice... if I had any idea what “bog roll” was!

1 hour ago, Cpt ObVus said:

Sounds like good advice... if I had any idea what “bog roll” was!

Toilet paper...it seems that many people in the western world feel the only way to deal with a pandemic is to ensure you have a 6 month supply of paper to wipe your derrière.

13 hours ago, scipio83 said:

Well surely we can trust China’s numbers. They would never lie.

I agree: Any info from the Chinese government or state media has to be taken with a bucket of salt. This is the same government that denied the existence of COVID-19 since November and punished the doctor-whistleblower who got the word out about COVID-19 -- and that doctor died in hospital, despite the fact he was only 33 years-old. The Western media has been reporting on the desperate need for ventilators to help keep the people who have contracted COVID-19 alive; how does a doctor not get put on a ventilator, unless the Chinese government denied him medical care?

Therefore, I wouldn't count on the COVID-19 crisis being over in China. One day of no new cases being reported isn't cause to celebrate. Wait and see if China goes 7 days without any new cases reported. Even then, they should wait 14 days until lifting the lock down and allowing people to return to work.

I think it's contained for now, but if China rushes people back to work for the sake of getting Chinese manufacturing up and running again, it's possible another outbreak could happen, and the Chinese government will probably deny that's happening all over again.

Regardless, I'm not eager to get anything manufactured in China for the remainder of 2020. If FFG somehow manages to release Clones Wars Armada in Q4 2020, as planned, I sincerely hope they tell us those CWA core sets and expansions were manufactured back in 2019 and have been sitting in their warehouse in Minnesota this whole time.

8 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

Sounds like pretty much every nation-sized governance system since the beginning of time!

To a greater or lesser degree. It's degrees of corruption and some systems are more corrupt than others. The systems we live under in the West are probably the least corrupt any human has ever lived under. A system which persecutes a doctor and 'disappears' a journalist for trying to warn people about a killer virus - THAT'S a corrupt system.

7 hours ago, ninclouse2000 said:

You just described the trump administration.

Do you have to lie to your wife and kids that you read a book so that you can be sure that one of them won't denounce you to the secret police, who'll send you off to the gulag? No, it's nothing like the Trump administration. Is your every utterance monitored by the state for incorrect thought? Are your words online policed by the state and will you lose your job and be sent for re-education if you criticise the government?

I was reading a book a few months ago and a true story in it stuck in my mind. A man, who had relatives behind the Iron Curtain, was relating a visit that his father made to him in London towards the end of the Cold War. He welcomed his father at the airport and for a treat, took him to tea at Harrods. His father had never seen such splendour and wealth and asked his son if the shop was only for Party Workers. (Under the Soviet system there were special shops for members of the Communist Party, and special roads for the most important people to drive on). His son told him it wasn't. They had a fine meal and went back to the son's flat, and the next day, which was Sunday, the son asked his father what he wanted to do.

The father says "I want to go back to that shop today". They went back, and the father said "But it's still here." He had believed that the entire shop was an elaborate facade, created by the state, to convince tourists like him of the wealth of London. Because that's what the state in Russia did. And he couldn't believe that in Britain such shops could exist, and that anyone could go in them, and that they weren't reserved for a powerful elite.

None of us live under a system like that, for which we should be profoundly grateful.

1 hour ago, flatpackhamster said:

None of us live under a system like that...

... yet.

Let’s see what it’s like in five or ten more years. I wish I were more optimistic, but I’m increasingly worried that this great democratic experiment is in the process of failing.

15 hours ago, flatpackhamster said:

To a greater or lesser degree. It's degrees of corruption and some systems are more corrupt than others. The systems we live under in the West are probably the least corrupt any human has ever lived under. A system which persecutes a doctor and 'disappears' a journalist for trying to warn people about a killer virus - THAT'S a corrupt system.

Do you have to lie to your wife and kids that you read a book so that you can be sure that one of them won't denounce you to the secret police, who'll send you off to the gulag? No, it's nothing like the Trump administration. Is your every utterance monitored by the state for incorrect thought? Are your words online policed by the state and will you lose your job and be sent for re-education if you criticise the government?

I was reading a book a few months ago and a true story in it stuck in my mind. A man, who had relatives behind the Iron Curtain, was relating a visit that his father made to him in London towards the end of the Cold War. He welcomed his father at the airport and for a treat, took him to tea at Harrods. His father had never seen such splendour and wealth and asked his son if the shop was only for Party Workers. (Under the Soviet system there were special shops for members of the Communist Party, and special roads for the most important people to drive on). His son told him it wasn't. They had a fine meal and went back to the son's flat, and the next day, which was Sunday, the son asked his father what he wanted to do.

The father says "I want to go back to that shop today". They went back, and the father said "But it's still here." He had believed that the entire shop was an elaborate facade, created by the state, to convince tourists like him of the wealth of London. Because that's what the state in Russia did. And he couldn't believe that in Britain such shops could exist, and that anyone could go in them, and that they weren't reserved for a powerful elite.

None of us live under a system like that, for which we should be profoundly grateful.

Thank you@flatpackhampster. FFS, @ninclouse2000; you're entitled to that opinion but that's some seriously shameful clutching of the old pearls by any sane person's measure. Just ridiculous, and almost too hard to take seriously except that I have family members that feel the same as you. Effing shame, too, because they're otherwise quite intelligent.

Read Solzhenitsyn or Sakharov some time, nin. Especially read Avraham Shifrin's works if you can find them.

Expand those horizons to reduce the excessive hyperbole. There is categorically no comparison between what Trump does and what the historical record shows. None. To say otherwise is...well, adjectives fail me.

Good lord.

Well said, our politicians can seem ( and sometimes are) more focused on interest groups that pay them. But our systems in the west have more checks on power and hold those with power to account than any other system of government ever in history. Universal sufferage and the ability of the population to remove leaders as part of a normal check and balance is truly a wonderful thing.

Yes we must always be vigilant, because universal sufferage is still a young concept so we must ensure those in power are held to account and we don’t loss what we have.

But and this is huge........I may not agree with the politics of those like Boris Johnson ( or trump) but I know if they **** up to much and irritate the majority they will be removed from power by the choice of the people as part of due process, that’s priceless.

4 minutes ago, player3691565 said:

But our systems in the west have more checks on power and hold those with power to account than any other system of government ever in history. Universal sufferage and the ability of the population to remove leaders as part of a normal check and balance is truly a wonderful thing.

This isn't quite true. Ancient Athens had it first, and the people there had tighter control then than we do now.

7 hours ago, GhostofNobodyInParticular said:

This isn't quite true. Ancient Athens had it first, and the people there had tighter control then than we do now.

Well - half the people, at least.

On 3/21/2020 at 6:54 AM, Cpt ObVus said:

... yet.

Let’s see what it’s like in five or ten more years. I wish I were more optimistic, but I’m increasingly worried that this great democratic experiment is in the process of failing.

It's certainly the case that systems can fail very quickly. Look at Germany in 1925 and then in 1933.

What bothers me most is the appetite for censorship amongst the young.

1 hour ago, flatpackhamster said:

Well - half the people, at least.

Well, half the men, at most.

The answer to democracy’s ills is mandatory voting. And ranked preference voting.

I voted in my local government election this week - councillors and mayor. When asked who I voted for (by my wife) I replied - “all of them. In order of preference.”

Whoever wins will have been the preferred choice of 50% +1 of the population - the entire adult population - not just those who could be bothered to turn up. That gives government actual mandates for representation.

5 hours ago, LTD said:

Well, half the men, at most.

6 hours ago, flatpackhamster said:

Well - half the people, at least.

True (actually much less, when you account for slaves, women, and the underaged). But that doesn't reflect a failing of the system of self-government, just a difference in cultural and social thinking. The system worked the same regardless of who was voting and who was free. My point was simply that, for those who could vote, their control of the running of the country had the capacity to far surpass any other form of government I know of.

The Romans were for a 'brief' (~200 years?) period the runners up, but only because the people could (and did, twice) literally walk out if the city and fortify a hill if they didn't get their way, against just the 500-odd politicians.

5 hours ago, LTD said:

The answer to democracy’s ills is mandatory voting. And ranked preference voting.

I voted in my local government election this week - councillors and mayor. When asked who I voted for (by my wife) I replied - “all of them. In order of preference.”

Whoever wins will have been the preferred choice of 50% +1 of the population - the entire adult population - not just those who could be bothered to turn up. That gives government actual mandates for representation.

But what if you don't like any of them? Then the person who wins is the person who is tolerated slightly more than everybody else.

I prefer to be able to vote for nobody if none of the candidates are acceptable.

36 minutes ago, GhostofNobodyInParticular said:

But what if you don't like any of them? Then the person who wins is the person who is tolerated slightly more than everybody else.

I prefer to be able to vote for nobody if none of the candidates are acceptable.

You are allowed to spoil your ballot

1 hour ago, GhostofNobodyInParticular said:

I prefer to be able to vote for nobody if none of the candidates are acceptable.

44 minutes ago, Ginkapo said:

You are allowed to spoil your ballot

Absolutely.

Australia Requires you to *Turn up to Vote*, take the Voting Slip, and attend a Booth.

Nothing is said about actually filling out a slip in any way.

And because its Mandatory, quite often its a Public Holiday ,or at least a Half Day, and even when I worked in Emergency Services, on the days of voting I got an Hour off and a Shuttle Bus there... Everyone has to Vote, so the system is built to make sure everyone can.

The Difference Made? Essentially you don't see the Rabid Left/Right Partisanism you see elsewhere. Because Everyone is Voting, those who sit on those extreme wings still have to court the centrist voters to win, rather than just playing to their base and hoping they can discourage enough of everyone else from doing anything.

Which means the Political Field is inherently more centrified - although outliers do occur.

America would also be in a significantly better place if our politics were based more on a parliamentary system, with more than two political parties. The two party system leads to an endless us-v-them partisanship which at best makes it difficult to get anything done, and at worst leads to half the country almost literally hating the other because their fundamental values are systematically violated by the other side. If we were broken up into numerous smaller political factions that actually were forced to build coalitions and cooperate in order to get anything done, the democracy would be far healthier.

There also needs to be a more direct democratic system installed here, where the votes of the populace aren’t filtered through party committees and delegates and electoral colleges. The DNC is developing a pattern of suppressing progressive candidates in favor of establishment moderates, and Republicans haven’t actually won a popular presidential vote in decades, yet somehow they “win” about half the elections.

Honestly, I’m pretty sure the whole thing ought to be leveled and overhauled and rebooted, with some lessons learned.