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Brown Moses posted:I read recently that one of the concerns for the regime about jets is someone might choose to defect and take a detour to the presidential palace on the way out of the country to drop off a few bombs, so it might reflect a shift in the psychology of the regime more than anything. Hasn't there been recent defections within the air forces?
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Jul 24, 2012 16:01
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Young Freud posted:Hasn't there been recent defections within the air forces? Yeah, I think they were on training flights, probably made the regime a bit nervous.
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Jul 24, 2012 16:03
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Now sure how accurate this is: http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002403.html The entry on the website is dated 7/23/12 quote:I am writing you to inform you that our nuclear program has once again been compromised and attacked by a new worm with exploits which have shut down our automation network at Natanz and another facility Fordo near Qom.
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Jul 24, 2012 16:11
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Slashdot has been talking about that. It seems more likely that this is a disinformation campaign, akin to the one where Iran paraded around a model duplicate of their captured American UAV. There's little reason that they would be targeted by independent hackers, and it's difficult to believe that government hackers would use the Metasploit exploit, much less use it to play music.
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Jul 24, 2012 16:17
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Kaal posted:Nope. I think that we liberals need to drop the phrase "war crime" from our lexicon entirely, as it's clear we don't know how to use it correctly. Non taken. I think you're right actually. The term tends to be used a bit too often, which can trivialize truly appalling crimes.
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Jul 24, 2012 16:20
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mitztronic posted:Now sure how accurate this is: GBS has a thread about it. I have to say though, making your virus inform the guy you hacked in song just how hacked he got is pretty hilarious. Good choice of song, too. Somehow this makes me wish it's true.
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Jul 24, 2012 17:08
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Zedsdeadbaby posted:Is that psychology one of desperation, or faith in its military? Perhaps faith in not being present in the presidential palace, or at least outside of what I can only imagine is the bunker below it.
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Jul 24, 2012 17:13
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Ian Pannell has reportedly said "Heard them, saw them, filmed them" over the jets he said he spotted.
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Jul 24, 2012 17:33
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Wow Hillary Clinton sounds confident: http://blogs.aljazeera.com/liveblog/topic/syria-153 quote:Rebel fighters battling Syrian President Bashar al Assad are making territorial gains that will eventually become "safe havens" and provide a base for further operations against government forces, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday.
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Jul 24, 2012 17:38
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http://www.yalibnan.com/2012/07/24/another-syrian-ambassador-defects-to-opposition-2/ quote:Syrian ambassador to Cyprus Lamya al Hariri has defected to the opposition and is now in Qatar, Al Arabiya TV reported on Tuesday . al-Jazeera and Alarabiya have reported on it, say she has arrived in Qatar az jan jananam fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Jul 24, 2012 |
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Jul 24, 2012 18:07
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Shadoer posted:Wow Hillary Clinton sounds confident: Pretty confident for someone whose intelligence agencies couldn't even get inside Syria.
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Jul 24, 2012 18:08
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Short summary of the state of the conflict by Col. Malik Kurdi, spokesman for the Free Syrian Army commandhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/syrian-rebels-still-hopeful-as-government-regains-initiative-in-damascus/2012/07/23/gJQA3JLg4W_story.html posted:We do not keep control of crossings and checkpoints. We controlled Bab al-Hawa, then we pulled out, then we controlled it again, and so it goes on. We cannot say the Free Syrian Army is in complete control, and we cannot say the regime army is in complete control, and this will stay the same until the Free Syrian Army gets heavy weapons and there are more defections.
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Jul 24, 2012 18:14
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Shadoer posted:Wow Hillary Clinton sounds confident: Yeah that sounds pretty promsi... something original posted:Short summary of the state of the conflict by Col. Malik Kurdi, spokesman for the Free Syrian Army command Nevermind. It appears that someone coming out and contradicting the spirit of her message within a few hours isn't just limited to negotiations with Russia. Edit: Just to add a few more thoughts, the Syrian regime now using jets and bombing even more indiscriminately just shows why the FSA can't and probably shouldn't capture and hold anywhere right now. It'll just become a giant target and until they find themselves in possession of anti-air capability that's way more capable than a few busted ZSUs (or we have defections from the air force in notable numbers) that's not going to change. J33uk fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Jul 24, 2012 |
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Jul 24, 2012 19:07
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J33uk posted:Yeah that sounds pretty promsi... I don't think those two statements are entirely contradictory. Control could simply be a matter of freedom of movement, of which the FSA appears to have quite a bit. But yeah, I would concur in the opinion that the US government doesn't appear to be well situated to fight a covert war in Syria; they just don't seem to really know or understand what is going on.
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Jul 24, 2012 20:10
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Torpor posted:I don't think those two statements are entirely contradictory. Control could simply be a matter of freedom of movement, of which the FSA appears to have quite a bit. I'm sure they have a better idea of what's going on than any of us. Doing anything in Syria is the equivalent of sticking your hand in a wasps nest during campaign season. What happens if the FSA gets support from the U.S. and then turns around and certain factions start committing genocide against the Alawite and/or Kurd people? In hindsight, we shouldn't have done that isn't going to resonate too well.
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Jul 24, 2012 20:16
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Here's an interesting roundtable discussion over Syria that I think brought up some interesting points: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3189/the-call-for-july-22-2012-russian-ambitions-in Some of the things mentioned:
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Jul 24, 2012 21:15
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quote:Assad is likely to survive, possibly by creating an Alawite enclave surrounded by a chaotic tribal region in which various Sunni factions contend for power; Russia would back this.  Even Landis thinks this is unlikely. Also the weirdly pejorative use of tribal here bothers me. edit: to elaborate, the various tribal leaders are one of the more stabilizing forces. They've been careful not to put their lot against Assad until their hands were forced and have often acted as a mediating element. Hassan Hassan talks about the role of tribal forces in Syria a lot in his columns in The National. http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/a-damascus-loyalist-defects-as-violence-affects-the-tribes http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/tribal-bonds-strengthen-the-gulfs-hand-in-a-new-syria To describe the heavily Sunni areas of Syria as a "chaotic tribal region" is problematic in many ways. Xandu fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Jul 24, 2012 |
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Jul 24, 2012 21:19
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Xandu posted:
As far as I'm aware, the Gatestone Institute is a crazy right wing "media" outlet a la MEMRI that usually focuses on churning out articles about how muslim extremists are planning to personally assassinate every christian in the world. their most viewed stories: quote:Most Viewed including the now-debunked 'sodomy for islam' story where idiot rightwingers ran with a story that was originally essentially a chain letter joke on arabic language forums: http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/benjamin-doherty/israel-intel-linked-memri-perpetuates-sodomy-jihad-hoax
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Jul 24, 2012 21:31
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Valley Troll posted:As far as I'm aware, the Gatestone Institute is a crazy right wing "media" outlet a la MEMRI that usually focuses on churning out articles about how muslim extremists are planning to personally assassinate every christian in the world. Interesting. Pepe Escobar is pretty left wing as far as I'm aware, but they also have recently had events with Geert Wilders and Daniel Pipes. So ugh. I don't know how reliable this story is, but it claims Russia stopped Assad from using Sarin gas. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/24/us-syria-crisis-chemicals-idUSBRE86N11Z20120724 http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/24/us-syria-crisis-chemicals-idUSBRE86N11Z20120724 quote:There has been a barrage of warnings about Syria's chemical arsenal this month, especially strident from the United States and Israel, but accompanied by firm but private advice from Russia, Assad's main international ally, to put an end to speculation he might use it.
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Jul 24, 2012 21:35
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Xandu posted:
Of course that is a big 'if' for Assad as it would mean losing control over large swaths of territory and most of the population while still having to maintain a military that poses a credible threat, the rebels would probably have to seize and hold Damascus and Aleppo for Assad to become that desperate. Valley Troll posted:As far as I'm aware, the Gatestone Institute is a crazy right wing "media" outlet a la MEMRI that usually focuses on churning out articles about how muslim extremists are planning to personally assassinate every christian in the world.  This is extremely embarrassing. I'd made a cursory review of the front page and saw a lot of things contributed by writers I at least view as credible discussing sane topics. For the record I was linked there from one of Escobar's articles.
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Jul 24, 2012 21:48
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Don't apologize, no one knows what is going on, and in this subject any information is useful, it's just good to acknowledge bias and how it affects speculation (which is a good 50% of the media). To be fair to MEMRI their translations are accurate (like that notorious Muslim Brotherhood speech), but they also made no effort to control it burning across the internet as a video of Morsi giving his acceptance speech or whatever.
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Jul 24, 2012 22:00
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McDowell posted:To be fair to MEMRI their translations are accurate The funniest tidbit about MEMRI translations is that Iranian state media came up with the "wipe Israel off the map" translation and MEMRI of all places had the more accurate "the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the pages of time".
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Jul 24, 2012 22:06
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eSports Chaebol posted:The funniest tidbit about MEMRI translations is that Iranian state media came up with the "wipe Israel off the map" translation and MEMRI of all places had the more accurate "the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the pages of time". MEMRI was founded by a former MOSSAD agent. As with all intelligence agencies, any time you run into a former intelligence agent, you just have to remember that they're not really out of the business, they've just moved what they do above ground.
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Jul 24, 2012 22:10
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Young Freud posted:MEMRI was founded by a former MOSSAD agent. As with all intelligence agencies, any time you run into a former intelligence agent, you just have to remember that they're not really out of the business, they've just moved what they do above ground. Because I was curious and pedantic: Mossad is not an acronym, but maybe you were yelling.
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Jul 24, 2012 22:18
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McDowell posted:Don't apologize, no one knows what is going on, and in this subject any information is useful, it's just good to acknowledge bias and how it affects speculation (which is a good 50% of the media). I decided to do some research on the actual contributors to that article, and I was able to find this: The contributors for that particular article were Escobar and Goldman ('Spengler'), both columnists for the Asia Times with a liberal/left bent, Jim Davis who as far as I can tell is a guy who wrote fairly anodyne articles about Russia in 2005 and once donated $250 to the RNC, Tony Badran who is a fellow at a pro-Israel pro-West 'non-partisan' think tank with connections to such savory figures as Joe Lieberman, Bill Kristol and Newt Gingrich, and finaly David Samuels, Generic American Liberal. So, was this an actual roundtable, Zionist scaremongering (  ) or a mix? Can't say, really.
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Jul 24, 2012 22:22
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Golbez posted:Because I was curious and pedantic: Mossad is not an acronym, but maybe you were yelling. Sorry, I thought it was. Actually, I think it's an Hebrew abbreviation, but you're right, it ain't a acronym.
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Jul 24, 2012 23:24
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Looks like Morsi is moving towards slightly, symbolically easing the siege of Gaza, which turned 5 this month:quote:Political and security officials said today that Cairo is planning to facilitate and not to entirely remove the set of rules that regulate the entry of Palestinians in Gaza into Egypt.
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Jul 24, 2012 23:36
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quote:I decided to do some research on the actual contributors to that article, and I was able to find this: Goldman aka "Spengler" is as far from "liberal/left" as you can get. The guy regularly writes for absurdly conservative PajamasMedia and is super paranoid about Muslims and George Soros. And he goes by "Spengler", which should give you a huuuge clue about his leanings. He was also a longtime LaRouche movement propagandist, but later disassociated himself from it. zero alpha fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Jul 25, 2012 |
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Jul 25, 2012 00:04
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He's either a Ghostbuster or a Goldmember. Neither are very credible titles.
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Jul 25, 2012 00:09
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zero alpha posted:And he goes by "Spengler", which should give you a huuuge clue about his leanings. Maybe he just really likes Ghostbusters.
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Jul 25, 2012 00:09
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 Syrian tank taken out with RPG. http://www.flickr.com/photos/abtice/7640138486/sizes/c/in/photostream/
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Jul 25, 2012 00:13
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Brown Moses posted:I read recently that one of the concerns for the regime about jets is someone might choose to defect and take a detour to the presidential palace on the way out of the country to drop off a few bombs, so it might reflect a shift in the psychology of the regime more than anything. I had actually wondered why the pilot who defected to Turkey didn't take out some Assad weaponry at least, if not the presidential palace itself.
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Jul 25, 2012 00:26
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zero alpha posted:I had actually wondered why the pilot who defected to Turkey didn't take out some Assad weaponry at least, if not the presidential palace itself.
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Jul 25, 2012 00:29
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zero alpha posted:I had actually wondered why the pilot who defected to Turkey didn't take out some Assad weaponry at least, if not the presidential palace itself.
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Jul 25, 2012 00:29
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zero alpha posted:I had actually wondered why the pilot who defected to Turkey didn't take out some Assad weaponry at least, if not the presidential palace itself. If I were escaping (defecting doesn't quite seem like the right word) a regime via plane then I wouldn't do something that would have every AA site in the country gunning for me on my way out. A plausible explanation for what happened with that Turkish plane is that Syrian SAM batteries are on orders to shoot anything unidentified that looks like it's fleeing Syrian airspace.
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Jul 25, 2012 00:32
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Anything related to Syria in the Saudi Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper should be taken with a lot of salt, obviously, but here they publish an unsurprising denial by the FSA that the militants on video at the Bab al-Hawa border crossing are Al-Qaida fighters. Colonel Malak al-Kurdi basically says that there are no fighters from any other "Arab or Islamic states" and no Al-Qaida in the FSA, although they do have both "radical and secular" members as they represent all sections of Syrian society, but according to him the militants on video at the Bab al-Hawa crossing belong to the FSA. (arabic) http://aawsat.com/details.asp?section=4&article=687639&issueno=12291
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Jul 25, 2012 01:10
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i poo poo trains posted:Some of the things mentioned: Is there any reason Assad couldn't/wouldn't make like North Korea?
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Jul 25, 2012 01:58
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cgeq posted:Is there any reason Assad couldn't/wouldn't make like North Korea? I imagine it would be more of an Eritrea lite if it were actually to occur. He'd have more international partners, relations and legitimacy but dissent would probably be sharply curbed and conscription widespread. edit: And in Aleppo-related news, this video shows an FSA tour through liberated neighborhoods, featuring a cheering crowd around 4:30 and an FSA checkpoint (seemingly operated by a minor?) at around 5:45. Interesting footage. MothraAttack fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Jul 25, 2012 |
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Jul 25, 2012 02:17
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cgeq posted:Is there any reason Assad couldn't/wouldn't make like North Korea? They're certainly welcome to try, I'm sure when the Assadi territory is overrun by Syrian army it will rhyme well with the repeated invasions of Lebanon by Assadi troops.
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Jul 25, 2012 02:27
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Perhaps I shouldn't really be surprised by this, but it's been pretty telling to see coverage of the Syrian National Council just disappear from the media as of late.
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Jul 25, 2012 04:12
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