Middle East Thread of Despair: More Broken Than Syria

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Middle East Thread of Despair: More Broken Than Syria

Ashmole: Oct 5, 2008; _{This wish was granted by Former DILF}

ياللا بينا يا الشام

I'm waiting for Syria to go nuts.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2011 01:28

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 19:53

Ashmole: Oct 5, 2008; _{This wish was granted by Former DILF}

quadratic posted:

Gorbachev thinks it may happen. http://on.wsj.com/gIKwhY

عقبا لسورية والأردن والسعودية واليمن وليبيا والمغرب والكويت وإيران والإمارات وعمان وقطر والبحرين

! بالطبع! ولكن أنا سوري إذا اريد أن اشهد الثورة السوري الآن
Man I need an Arabic keyboard.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2011 02:17

Ashmole: Oct 5, 2008; _{This wish was granted by Former DILF}

Shageletic posted:

I'm sure as hell not an expert, but Arab countries in the middle east have a long shared history, religious and lingual homogeneity, similarities involving societal pressures fueling the revolution, even strains of pan-Arabism reinforcing a sense of "if it could happen there, it should happen here." Russia seems to be pretty disconnected from all that.

It's definitely a new era of pan-Arabism, that's for certain. 1967 blew it away, but Tunisia and moreso Egypt brought it back.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2011 06:27

Ashmole: Oct 5, 2008; _{This wish was granted by Former DILF}

I'm kind of shocked at the lack of coverage of this whole Libya disaster. It's definitely 1,000 times worse than any of the other revolutions going on in the region, yet I'm not hearing as much about it as I did about Egypt - especially from the Facebook politico crowd.

This thread has done an excellent job informing me of what's going on. This is horrible. gently caress Qaddafi.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2011 04:03

Ashmole: Oct 5, 2008; _{This wish was granted by Former DILF}

I'm laughing so hard at this Qaddafi "speech". I love the splitscreen shot of him giving the speech while the protesters are rioting at the billboard that it's being broadcast on. Everyone's just like "just tune out the crazy"

# ¿ Feb 22, 2011 17:19

Ashmole: Oct 5, 2008; _{This wish was granted by Former DILF}

Brown Moses posted:

[edit] I was just reading that Libya apparently still has a stockpile of mustard gas, hopefully that won't be part of Gaddafi's exit plan.

I was just thinking about how long it was going to take him until he started using gas and other deplorable types of weapons.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2011 15:08

Ashmole: Oct 5, 2008; _{This wish was granted by Former DILF}

Al-Saqr posted:

Aljazeera reporting that anti-Qaddafi protesters are planning on trying to liberate Tripoli by force through Zawiya, it's not clear whether they will be using the weapons taken from the army.

Also, The air marshal of the Libyan air force has called on all pilots to land all aircraft at liberated Misurata as soon as possible.

Libyan Minister of justice on aljazeera calling Qaddafi on his bullshit and calling on all Libyans to march on Tripoli to save the country.

That sounds so epic. Everyone's getting ready for the final assault.

I'm quite worried who will end up taking over once this is all over...

Also, side note: we planned on having a "gay dictator party" last year where everyone would pick a dictator and dress up as a more flamboyant version of him. I was going to be Qaddafi since it seemed like it would have been easy. The party never materialized.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2011 20:18

Ashmole: Oct 5, 2008; _{This wish was granted by Former DILF}

Crazy Ted posted:

I just want to get this straight since I've been at work all day...

So Qaddafi claims that Al Qaeda is behind the revolt by spiking Libyan coffee with acid and that Osama Bin Laden is receiving help from the United States?

You forgot about Waco and Queen Elizabeth.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2011 00:48

Ashmole: Oct 5, 2008; _{This wish was granted by Former DILF}

That's interesting. I thought they had some kind of news blackout over there.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2011 03:27

Ashmole: Oct 5, 2008; _{This wish was granted by Former DILF}

Reading these Tweets...it sounds like the Battle of Berlin or something. You've got the crazy dictator and all of his cronies held up in a small city desperately trying to force a populace into sticking with them.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2011 16:41

Ashmole: Oct 5, 2008; _{This wish was granted by Former DILF}

DevNull posted:

http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/02/24/reflections_on_the_revolutions_in_tunisia_and_egypt

I saw this article posted on twitter and though I would share it. It is a pretty good overview of the events in Tunis and Egypt and some of the impact. It also address obstacles that must still be overcome. It is written by Palestinian-American Rashid Khalidi. He is the Edward Said professor of Arab studies at Columbia University. Edward Said was a Palestinian-American author and professor at Columbia. Both are incredible authors, and I suggest any of their books if you are interested in learning about the Middle East. Be warned though, Edward Said's book Orientalism is a fairly difficult read.

I saw him speak at Amherst College a couple years ago. Interesting guy, but the speech he gave was only surprising if you knew nothing about cold war era politics (it was basically about proxy wars).

# ¿ Feb 25, 2011 18:50

Ashmole: Oct 5, 2008; _{This wish was granted by Former DILF}

DevNull posted:

Obviously the best way to avoid this is simply spell it correctly. معمر القذافي‎

That's the safest way. It's a "qaaf" not an Egyptian "jeem"...unless Libyans use the "g" sound for "qaaf".

# ¿ Feb 25, 2011 20:49

Ashmole: Oct 5, 2008; _{This wish was granted by Former DILF}

Roark posted:

There was a short and interesting piece on the Economist's website about this whole issue with Gaddafi's name. It gets the shifts from Classical Arabic to modern Libyan Arabic without going to deep into linguistics terminology.

Fun fact: he's "Kezafi" to a lot of Farsi-speakers and Iranian Arabs.

Basically, if someone asks you if you speak Arabic, the follow up question is "what dialect?" North African Arabic is nigh unintelligible to someone who speaks Levantine Arabic.

From my experience, Levantine Arabic throws so many conventions out the window. For example, to say "I want coffee" in MSA it would be "oo-reed qa-huwa" while in Syria or Lebanon it would be "bid-dee ah-wee". They use reflexive pronouns and such...pretty confusing.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2011 21:53

Ashmole: Oct 5, 2008; _{This wish was granted by Former DILF}

A former arabic teacher of mine from Tunisia just posted that she's voting for the first time in her life. Pretty cool.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2011 21:00

Ashmole: Oct 5, 2008; _{This wish was granted by Former DILF}

McDowell posted:

Starting your video with 'Hitlery Klinton' classy.

Turned it off when I saw that.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2012 23:58

Ashmole: Oct 5, 2008; _{This wish was granted by Former DILF}

Xandu posted:

Bomb went off in Damascus's old city in Bab Touma.

Ah poo poo. I've got family in Damascus...they keep saying that they've been relatively safe though.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2012 15:14

Ashmole: Oct 5, 2008; _{This wish was granted by Former DILF}

ecureuilmatrix posted:

Unless I'm mistaken, it seemed like an effort at:

-spotters using cover
-hull-down firing
-shoot and scoot

That looked quite more professional than I expected from the rebels.

Also, any new info from Taftanaz? That looked like a big deal.

Yeah that was pretty good tanking. Good use of spotters in the battle position.

Slightly off topic: can anyone recommend a good Arabic vocabulary resource? I have a good grasp of the grammar and am familiar with some colloquial words, but I need to build up my vocabulary.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2012 00:53

Ashmole: Oct 5, 2008; _{This wish was granted by Former DILF}

Chemical weapons are the worst things ever. We've been doing a lot of chemical warfare prevention type stuff lately, and even wearing the MOPP gear suit is hell in itself.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2012 05:47

Ashmole: Oct 5, 2008; _{This wish was granted by Former DILF}

It was probably a Zeus. I doubt a pair of .50's took down a jet unless the pilot was extremely incompetent.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2013 18:08

Ashmole: Oct 5, 2008; _{This wish was granted by Former DILF}

Saint Celestine posted:

Not only that, the heavy hitters all have a hilariously large logistics footprint.

You'll have to constantly resupply them as well as move logistics assets with them, since I doubt the FSA has a bunch of people who know a lot about western weapon systems.

We have a hard enough time getting spare parts - I can't imagine what it'd be like there.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2013 23:00

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 19:53

Ashmole: Oct 5, 2008; _{This wish was granted by Former DILF}

Gen. Ripper posted:

U.N. has testimony that Syrian rebels used sarin gas: investigator

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/05/us-syria-crisis-un-idUSBRE94409Z20130505

The rebels? Oh man...

# ¿ May 6, 2013 01:06

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