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Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:Can someone help me understand what the US is doing about ISIS. Anytime I search, all I get are Breitbart and Fox News sparatuvs posted:Bombing them? GreyjoyBastard posted:Bombing the heck out of them, largely in support of Kurdish offensives but occasionally just for giggles. If you'd like to know what kind of on-the-ground difference all this bombing has made, you remember Kobani right? That long yellow corridor in northern Syria stretching from the Euphrates to Kobani to Tal Abyad to Ras al Ayn to the Syrian/Iraqi border is under the joint control of the YPG/YPJ/FSA, (under the awesome as hell name "Euphrates Volcano") and the Euphrates Volcano forces are able to maintain control of this area thanks in large part to coalition airstrikes allowing them to continually beat back ISIL. More recently, here's how airstrikes helped to take Tal Abyad: quote:The Kurdish-led force, backed by U.S. airstrikes, closed in from the south, east and west on Saturday on the Syrian-Turkish border town of Tel Abyad, a key Islamic State stronghold on which the militants rely for trade with the outside world and also the flow of foreign fighters who sustain their strength on the battlefield. fade5 fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Jul 5, 2015 |
# ? Jul 5, 2015 02:16 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 10:54 |
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fade5 posted:
Your cheerleading is so creepy.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 02:25 |
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THE BOMBINATRIX posted:Your cheerleading is so creepy. I did fix my post to be more straight-forward informative, and a bit less bomb-happy. I may be slightly mad at ISIL doing yet another loving round of publicly executing multiple innocent (or mostly innocent) people, in addition to blowing up even more irreplaceable historic artifacts at Palmyra: quote:“IS members on Saturday destroyed the Lion of al-Lat, which is a unique piece that is three meters (10 feet) tall and weight 15 tons,” Abdelkarim told AFP. “It’s the most serious crime they have committed against Palmyra’s heritage,” he said. quote:The lion's left paw had a partially damaged Palmyrene inscription which read: tbrk ʾ[it] (Al-lāt will bless) mn dy lʾyšd (whoever will not shed) dm ʿl ḥgbʾ (blood in the sanctuary). fade5 fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Jul 5, 2015 |
# ? Jul 5, 2015 02:40 |
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THE BOMBINATRIX posted:Your cheerleading is so creepy. Your posts are poo poo. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 02:46 |
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Charliegrs posted:When youre a young hipster and you want to sound like you know a thing or two about international politics the go-to argument is always "The US created the Taliban/Al Quaeda/ISIS etc". Its very edgy. And while we obviously had a hand in creating some of these groups in a very indirect way (like creating power vaccums in various countries) its really not that simple. The United States didn't create the Taliban, they merely participated in the process of giving literally billions of dollars worth of equipment to the most religious fundamentalist groups in the region in an attempt to stop the country from leaving it's feudalist rural condition and did all they could to destroy the attempted secular state and drive its allies off the country. It is by mere coincidence and tragedy that this billion dollar fundamentalist group then reached power by force. There were disgruntled military officers and criminals in Chile and Nicaragua, the fact that we supplied them with the equipment and funds to overthrow (or attempt to) the government with extreme brutality doesn't mean we created them. As such, since we didn't plant the first seed of discontent in said country, we are not responsible for what happened next, even if in pratical terms we did everything we could to make them the biggest power in the nation.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 02:51 |
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Charliegrs posted:When youre a young hipster and you want to sound like you know a thing or two about international politics the go-to argument is always "The US created the Taliban/Al Quaeda/ISIS etc". Its very edgy. And while we obviously had a hand in creating some of these groups in a very indirect way (like creating power vaccums in various countries) its really not that simple. Helps that some in the US saw this coming, and encouraged the Soviets to stick their dick in a bad situation that the US would then be making way worse.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 03:25 |
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Besides Russia's support of Assad, what other Cold War after-effects linger in the region?
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 03:31 |
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Radio Prune posted:Your posts are poo poo. Thanks forums poster RadioPrune for your opinion, great post you got there. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 03:32 |
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fade5 posted:I may be slightly mad at ISIL doing yet another loving round of publicly executing multiple innocent (or mostly innocent) people, in addition to blowing up even more irreplaceable historic artifacts at Palmyra: Since when are regime soldiers "mostly innocent people?" The video was interspersed with footage of people being tortured by the regime and shabiha, and they also showed themselves blowing up Tadmor Prison in the same clip. This video is generic sectarian warfare footage with a bigger budget for lighting.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 03:35 |
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Volkerball posted:Since when are regime soldiers "mostly innocent people?" The video was interspersed with footage of people being tortured by the regime and shabiha, and they also showed themselves blowing up Tadmor Prison in the same clip. This video is generic sectarian warfare footage with a bigger budget for lighting. Also, it's not just the people who were killed that saddens me: quote:Stills from the video showed the killers to be young males, possibly even as young as 13 or 14.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 03:59 |
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THE BOMBINATRIX posted:
Ah, for a second I thought his posts were some of the most informative in the thread! Anticipating your convincing counter-argument. What is your take on the future of Kurdish territorial integrity?
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 04:02 |
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Why does ISIS constantly insist on using children to do horrible things?
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 04:03 |
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So you know that at least the next generation is going to find this incomprehensible violence and religious extremism to be 'normal'
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 04:10 |
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fade5 posted:Some of them may have been regime soldiers who did horrible poo poo, but I can't say that for certain. Some of them could have just as easily been some poor conscripted dudes who didn't have a choice in joining the SAA That's still not comparable to something like the mass execution of civilians, which "innocent or mostly innocent people" is a hell of a lot more descriptive of then "active military prisoners of war." quote:hell, we're taking ISIL's word that all of them were regime soldiers in the first place. Forgive me if I don't trust ISIL to always tell the truth. The vast majority of ISIS' executions have been of military men, and I haven't seen anything that has ever countered that when they claimed it was the case.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 04:12 |
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GreyjoyBastard posted:Bombing the heck out of them, largely in support of Kurdish offensives but occasionally just for giggles. You know, it'd be far easier to bomb everything which moves into and out of Palmyra and to starve them out. Starving terrorists don't have the gas to desecrate antiquities.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 04:26 |
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Volkerball posted:Since when are regime soldiers "mostly innocent people?" The video was interspersed with footage of people being tortured by the regime and shabiha, and they also showed themselves blowing up Tadmor Prison in the same clip. This video is generic sectarian warfare footage with a bigger budget for lighting. Regime soldiers are the only legitimate fighters, militiamen are totally illegitimate, a la Iraq.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 04:42 |
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Panzeh posted:Regime soldiers are the only legitimate fighters, militiamen are totally illegitimate, a la Iraq. This is a civil war that has gone on for four years. The lines are wayyy more blurry than that. By your logic, the SAA-aligned militias that have fought alongside and supplemented Assad's forces for quite some time now aren't legitimate fighters because they're technically not regime soldiers.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 05:01 |
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 05:14 |
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goose fleet posted:Besides Russia's support of Assad, what other Cold War after-effects linger in the region? literally everything obama can just go get the namekian dragon balls. easy
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 05:21 |
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Volkerball posted:
What the gently caress point are you trying to make with this point of reasoning? Are you trying to imply that ISIS is some kind of quasi-legitimate resistance to the regime? And if not, then whant?
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 06:08 |
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Mans posted:The United States didn't create the Taliban, they merely participated in the process of giving literally billions of dollars worth of equipment to the most religious fundamentalist groups in the region in an attempt to stop the country from leaving it's feudalist rural condition and did all they could to destroy the attempted secular state and drive its allies off the country. It is by mere coincidence and tragedy that this billion dollar fundamentalist group then reached power by force. Yeah thats basically what I'm saying. But theres a LOT of people who think the CIA literally got together in a room and decided to create all the various terror groups we are now fighting from thin air. Its pretty much tinfoil hat conspiracy type stuff. Usually with the justification that as long as we have a boogeyman to scare the public then the CIA and NSA etc can continue to spy on the American people. Thats the silly myth that I was railing against.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 06:12 |
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Apparently the coalition blew up the southern "Samra" bridge (only bridge?) out of Raqqa: https://twitter.com/Raqqa_sl1/status/617485006903083008
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 07:24 |
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fade5 posted:Some of these kids were probably forced to participate in the killings under threat of death/family reprisals if they didnt, and now some (if not all) of them are probably scarred from doing it. If only, ISIS has been running training camps for children for a long time. For example, this kid first appeared in a training camp video, then a video where he's executing two Russian soldiers. In this one another ISIS student shoots a guy in the face
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 07:34 |
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gently caress.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 07:35 |
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I'm kinda glad I'm more focused on Ukraine and MH17 now, it's light relief compared to Syria and Iraq. I'm off to Istanbul in a couple of week to train Arabic and Kurdish bloggers, activists, and journalists in open source and social media investigation techniques, so hopefully that'll mean more reporting based on that stuff in the future.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 07:40 |
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fade5 posted:Click the little ? mark under my posts for multiple pages worth of text and pictures about what the US is doing against ISIL. If you want the quick version, it basically boils down to: Some details of the air-strikes around Raqqa quote:Coalition Forces successfully engaged multiple targets throughout the ISIL stronghold of ar-Raqqah which have severely constricted terrorist freedom of movement. Sixteen airstrikes were conducted on July 4, destroying vital ISIL-controlled structures and transit routes in Syria.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 07:59 |
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quote:The operation focused on mobility corridors used by ISIL to project their fighters and military equipment, and to destabilize the region. That's an unfortunate use of a comma.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 08:21 |
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My Imaginary GF posted:You know, it'd be far easier to bomb everything which moves into and out of Palmyra and to starve them out. Starving terrorists don't have the gas to desecrate antiquities. It wouldn't take two days for ISIS to start loading buses full of widows and orphans and driving them back and forth. Then they release the video, and gain another 10,000 followers.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 08:46 |
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man skrillex had it rough
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 09:06 |
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Brown Moses posted:If only, ISIS has been running training camps for children for a long time. For example, this kid first appeared in a training camp video, then a video where he's executing two Russian soldiers. Wait, actual Russian soldiers? As in military advisors to the Assad regime or mercenaries/war tourists?
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 12:57 |
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Liberal_L33t posted:What the gently caress point are you trying to make with this point of reasoning? Are you trying to imply that ISIS is some kind of quasi-legitimate resistance to the regime? And if not, then whant? I'd say they're more legitimate as an opposition group than the regime is legitimate as a government for the Syrian people, which is really saying something. People don't follow ISIS proportionately to the crimes they commit, although they like to pretend they do. ISIS gets followed because they're sexy. They are a compelling horror story that is ten times more disturbing than Hollywood because their story is real. It's an inaccurate portrayal of Syria, and it's extremely dangerous when people make ISIS bigger than it really is to justify how much attention they give them. 30 military men executed in a stage production got more coverage than the al-Houla massacre, when 100 civilians, to include 40 children, all the way down to toddlers, were stabbed to death or had their heads beaten in with clubs. And that's just one of hundreds of massacres of civilians by the regime and regime-backed militias. But look! ISIS maybe scarred some kids . My point is that ISIS doesn't have a monopoly on horrible poo poo going on in Syria. In fact, their market share of horror is quite small, and it's important to understand that, or you're just going to get sucked into their propaganda cycle that western media is happy to share for them. If you're going to respond to this with some stupid rant about Islam, go quote this post in the other thread. Volkerball fucked around with this message at 13:16 on Jul 5, 2015 |
# ? Jul 5, 2015 13:08 |
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Banano posted:Wait, actual Russian soldiers? As in military advisors to the Assad regime or mercenaries/war tourists? If I remember, I believe ISIS claimed they were Russian fighters who 'admitted' to being sent to infiltrate.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 13:30 |
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Has there been any reactions from Russia regarding those executions? Or is it just being kept secret?
GyverMac fucked around with this message at 13:36 on Jul 5, 2015 |
# ? Jul 5, 2015 13:30 |
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Keep in mind Volkerball is against democracy if it gives non-Sunnis power. See his comments on Iraq.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 13:50 |
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GyverMac posted:Has there been any reactions from Russia regarding those executions? Or is it just being kept secret? Russia: "These soldiers were on vacation. End of story. BTW your 2 month travel visa expired yesterday, so you're being deported."
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 14:04 |
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Mans posted:The United States didn't create the Taliban, they merely participated in the process of giving literally billions of dollars worth of equipment to the most religious fundamentalist groups in the region in an attempt to stop the country from leaving it's feudalist rural condition and did all they could to destroy the attempted secular state and drive its allies off the country. It is by mere coincidence and tragedy that this billion dollar fundamentalist group then reached power by force. That's not really how it happened either. I'd say that the US did far more to create the Taliban by totally ignoring Afghanistan after the Soviets pulled out, than by funding the mujahadeen (who were not the same thing as the Taliban). Most of the blame should rest on Pakistan, a nation that has managed to make worse foreign policy decisions than the US.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 15:49 |
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El Disco posted:That's not really how it happened either. I'd say that the US did far more to create the Taliban by totally ignoring Afghanistan after the Soviets pulled out, than by funding the mujahadeen (who were not the same thing as the Taliban). Most of the blame should rest on Pakistan, a nation that has managed to make worse foreign policy decisions than the US. Yup. That brand of very strict Islam came from Saudis and other foreign jihadists coming to Afghanistan to fight, often at odds with Afghan mujahadeen.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 15:55 |
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Captain Bravo posted:It wouldn't take two days for ISIS to start loading buses full of widows and orphans and driving them back and forth. Then they release the video, and gain another 10,000 followers. You can't alter an appropriate policy implementation just because ISIL terrorists, like those of hamas, have a PR operation; folks on the ground need a motivation much more than America should give a poo poo about terrorist optics. If you're suggesting that we need to fund NASA to bring down the satellites which ISIL uses to broadcast its rhetoric of hate, then yes, I'd agree. What motivation? Motivated to realize that when their neighbor engages in terrorism, their only appropriate response is to kill their neighbor so that America doesn't have to kill the neighbor for them. El Disco posted:That's not really how it happened either. I'd say that the US did far more to create the Taliban by totally ignoring Afghanistan after the Soviets pulled out, than by funding the mujahadeen (who were not the same thing as the Taliban). Most of the blame should rest on Pakistan, a nation that has managed to make worse foreign policy decisions than the US. I'd say Afghans did far more to create the Taliban than America ever did. When you blame America, you remove agency from Afghans to engage in appropriate recourse to groups such as the taliban emerging, namely, to kill them.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 15:56 |
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quote:
It's racist to attribute agency to any of Our Little Fetish Peoples.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 16:07 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 10:54 |
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Is there any good articles on how the West is reporting on ISIS and acts associated with ISIS? It seems that anytime there is a "terrorist" attack around the globe, the media is able to throw out "an attack orchestrated by ISIS" and run with it because some random twitter account with an Arabic bio can say "Yep, that was ISIS I know I am in it". But what really worries me is the stories about the children converts coming from Britain or the US and the clear smell of Islamophobia that these articles smell of. ISIS seems just like a gift for western media because of the massive amounts of HQ footage and grainy CCTV screen caps they provide.
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# ? Jul 5, 2015 16:08 |