Svartvit posted:

I'm sorry, but you're just wrong. I see that poo poo in a lot of Christian places, especially in southern Europe, Africa, Eastern/Central Europe and the Americas including U.S.A. where a load of Christian fundamentalists are rallying for all kinds of backwards projects used by Republican candidates in order to avoid the things that really is wrong in America. Clearly, religion has a greater part in the Middle East than in the West, but you have to watch what you're saying.

Golbez posted:

re Hamza: it's stuff like this shows how truly in the dark ages many Muslim nations are. The last time you could hide domestic woes by distracting the people with religion in the Christian world was pretty much, what, pre-Renaissance? And now we have this? The people in Saudi Arabia, if we are to take this at face value, are far, far more angry about a few tweets than anything else wrong in their country? It's either a paradise or they're easily used by the government.

I edited my post to elaborate, but I'll run with this. This tactic would not work if the people didn't go along with it, and, at least at this time in world history, Islam seems to be the choice religion for this kind of insanity.

Of course, they're still in their own dark ages mainly because their governments want to keep them there. But change also starts at home.

Golbez posted:

I can only speak for the U.S. but while they may try they don't succeed. They certainly don't get people screaming for blood like we see in this situation. It's cliche to compare the religions in this fashion, but I don't recall anyone extraditing the guy who made Piss Christ, or any government seriously calling for his punishment or death.

But this isn't just about religion, as pointed out by the fact that Turkey seems ... not perfect but much better off than the rest of the region. It's when they combine Islam with the government that things get lovely. Of course that applies to Christianity and government as well, but as I said, Christianity has mostly outgrown that. Most former Christian nations are now either officially secular, or the people are so secular it doesn't matter anymore. It's not too much to expect the same of Islam.

Svartvit posted:

You are confusing the secular West with something you call "Christianity" in a major, major way. I don't think you know what's going on in Uganda, in Moldova, in Serbia, in Congo, in Malta, etc, yet you feel confident enough make some of the most sweeping generalisations that can be made. But let's not make this thread into that infected discussion.

quote:

Syria risks civil war, sanctions pointless -Turkey

President Bashar al-Assad still has support from Syria's middle class and the opposition is fragmented, raising the risk of a slide into full-scale civil war that inflames the region, Turkey's ambassador to the European Union has warned.

Turkey, Syria's largest neighbour, is also concerned that sanctions being imposed on Damascus by the European Union and the United States will not succeed in forcing Assad from power, while Iran and Russia provide him with steady support.

"What we are seeing is horrendous. The result will probably be bloody, and unfortunately the Russians are backing him," Selim Yenel told Reuters late on Wednesday, emphasising that Turkey was doing what it could to support Syria's opposition groups, short of giving them arms or other military assistance.

"Assad still has backing. The middle class is still supporting Assad. They are afraid of what comes after him."

Syrian forces bombarded opposition-held areas throughout the country on Thursday, with a focus on the city of Homs, where the uprising against Assad has been strongest.

"The regime is not just a person, or one family. It's a big group of people and ... they want to hold on to power," said Yenel, underlining that Syria was a distinctly different case to Libya and its late leader Muammar Gaddafi.

"That's why we are fearing it is going to turn into a civil war, and this civil war could turn into a regional conflict."

The EU began a campaign for tighter sanctions against Damascus this week, with the aim of freezing the assets of the central bank and banning trade in diamonds, gold and other precious metals. The measures could be agreed by Feb. 27.

There is also a renewed push in the United Nations to win backing for a Security Council resolution calling on Assad to go, after the last attempt was vetoed by China and Russia.

While the sanctions may have some impact in the short term, Yenel said they had little chance of toppling Assad's government and were more likely to strengthen his popular support.

"We don't believe in sanctions. They never work. That's why we are against them in Iran," he said.

"In Syria they will hurt people. Whether in the long term they will turn them into more vocal opposition, I don't know. We have never seen that happen before."

IRAN CHALLENGE

In Iran, Yenel said there was evidence of sanctions strengthening support for the government, rather than convincing the Iranian leadership to negotiate over its nuclear programme, as is the stated aim of the West's measures.

"Everyone in Iran is for the nuclear programme. So sanctions are not the answer," he said. "We have to convince the Iranians that they are not isolated. They fear everyone is against them, especially with sanctions ... So sanctions are not the answer."

Instead he counsels another diplomatic push, a move Ankara has long advocated even if it has failed in the past to bring Iran back to the negotiating table and keep it there.

Tehran maintains that its uranium enrichment programme is for peaceful energy and medical purposes, but the West and other states believe it is aimed at developing a nuclear weapon.

The ambassador, raised in the United States, said efforts to restart talks through Turkish mediation were not successful in part because of an insistence by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who represents global powers in Iranian diplomacy, on receiving direct signals from Tehran.

"It seems Lady Ashton is waiting for two things: a written letter or a message directly from the Iranians themselves, not through intermediaries," he said. "That's what we are hearing, and unless that happens, nothing will happen on the talks."

quote:

"We don't believe in sanctions. They never work. That's why we are against them in Iran," he said.

quote:

The Libyan Women’s Peace Platform was launched in October 2011 by a group of 35 women from different cities and backgrounds in Libya to ensure that women remain a vital part of post-Gaddafi Libya, particularly with a focus on women’s rights, advancement and security as related to women’s political participation, constitutional reform, media and education.

Golbez posted:

It's so nice to hear someone say this. Everything said in this article by Ambassador Yenel is very smart, and thus the other powers will probably ignore him. Those sabres aren't going to rattle themselves.

Golbez posted:

* He has every western nation saying he's too powerful to attack without going to total war. Which no western nation will do. Rendering him a form of invincible.

https://twitter.com/#!/RexBrynen posted:

RexBrynen Rex Brynen
How the Syrian opposition gets armed in the real world (non-DC edition): a multipart post

RexBrynen Rex Brynen
1. Initial arms are local and/or captured (already happening), grows with defections
1 hour ago

RexBrynen Rex Brynen
2. Sympathetic private citizens and movements start financing allies (already happening)
1 hour ago

RexBrynen Rex Brynen
3. Lebanese and Iraqi arms traders expand volume and range of weapons to meet demand, prices go up with demand (already happening)
1 hour ago

RexBrynen Rex Brynen
4. Major transfers start from unofficial Gulf sources (may be happening)
1 hour ago

RexBrynen Rex Brynen
5. Turks take decision on whether to facilitate or bloc transfers. Unless they facilitate, flows largely remain in form of cash not guns
1 hour ago

RexBrynen Rex Brynen
6. Gulf states decide on their old Lebanese civil war model, start making major financial transfers
1 hour ago

RexBrynen Rex Brynen
6b. (If the Saudis can manage hundreds of millions to support March 14, they could--if they want--generate same for Syrian opposition)
1 hour ago

RexBrynen Rex Brynen
7. Washington watches. Maybe CIA helps a little, but barring major shift in Turkish policy US remains secondary actor.
1 hour ago

quote:

Syria uprising is now a battle to the death

In the heartland of the uprising against Bashar al-Assad a grinding war of attrition has now become an unforgiving battle to the death.

The Free Syria Army has held this territory of orchards and farmland since September, during which time loyalist forces have never been closer, nor seemed more menacing. As rockets regularly thundered on Thursday into towns that residents could neither defend nor leave, the three months of freedom they had savoured now seemed illusory.

There is little left in the town in which the Guardian was based on Thursday, or in the equally deprived and forsaken villages that dot the hinterland near Homs. Electricity here was switched off two months ago, the phone lines were downed last week. And on Wednesday, contact by road was cut with Homs, Syria's besieged third city, whose fate is seen as a dire warning of what lies ahead for the rest of the area.

Homs was on Thursday a very difficult place from which to flee. Only three seriously wounded residents are known to have made it out of the devastated opposition held sectors of the city into the relative safety of nearby Lebanon. Two of the wounded are unlikely to survive.

The rest face a desperate plight, barricaded in concrete homes that are crumbling in the face of the relentless onslaught now spreading to nearby farmland and villages. Some residents of this town say a small number of families from the heaviest hit areas of Homs, Baba Amr and al-Khalidiyeh, have managed to hole up in other areas of the city. However they can no longer speak to those left behind, who they now fear face a gruesome fate.

"We'll be next," said a doctor at a makeshift medical centre in the heart of this town. The doctors and nurses on duty here had fled the state hospital, one kilometre away, and set up a triage centre and a surgical ward in a derelict house. All day they were tending to dead and seriously wounded men, many of them members of the badly outgunned rebel army.

The patterned plastic sheets the medics had placed on the floor were slick with blood and iodine as more and more war wounded were brought in by their colleagues.

One hulking man in military fatigue pants was carried in on a stretcher with a gaping wound in his navel. "He's a first lieutentant," said one of the clinic's nurses, Abdul Karem, who like everyone else in this overwrought hub, doubles as a revolutionary. The seriously wounded officer was taken to the improvised operating room, as nurses outside prepped themselves for surgery by washing their hands with kerosene and water.

Among those tending to him was an old French surgeon, a veteran of conflict zones dating back to the Vietnam war, who arrived in Syria on Thursday with a suitcase of medical supplies and a readiness to stay as long as he's needed.

The carnage of the rest of the day suggests he may be here awhile. Minutes after the lieutenant's treatment began, a truck screamed to a stop outside and Free Syria Army soldiers bellowed for a stretcher. The triage centre rapidly emptied, as the medics inside grabbed their flip flops – one also reached for his Kalashnikov – and hurried into the courtyard outside. They stopped next to the truck and looked inside and visibly stopped in their tracks. "Finished," one man said. "Take him to the graveyard." The dead man was a major, the leader of the Free Syria Army in this town, and one of many wounded by an attack on an outpost not far from here.

As night fell, the numbers of dead and wounded appeared to increase. Every massive boom in the near distance seemed to herald the arrival of more patients.

"There coming from the hospital that we ran away from," said one medic, Dr Qassem. "It's only a kilometre away."

Regime snipers were also wreaking havoc from a nearby intersection on the road to Homs. Opposition forces, meanwhile for the most part watched from hideouts in apricot and peach orchards and farm-houses dotted along muddy brown laneways.

More wounded were brought in, a rebel shot in the hand, another two with bullets in their back. The television showing footage of the carnage in Homs had by now been switched off as the triage room swarmed with walking wounded, frantic medics and others taking refuge from the shelling.

The first lieutenant inside was fading fast. As other surgeons piled the patient's intestines onto his stomach, Dr Qassem, who was holding a lamp over the operation said: "They are coming for us now. It is going to be very bad."

And then he added an optimistic note to a day that had so far offered nothing but misery. "The vote at the UN could be good for us in the future," he said. "All our students and doctors study in Russia and the standards are not good. "All our factories have Chinese equipment and it's the same thing. If we win, things will change, God willing."

He switched back to the dying patient as attention switched to the newest casualty, a man shot in the wrist, his blood streaming over shoes piled at the room entrance.

"There have been more than 100 people killed today," said one young university medical student as he held an x-ray machine over a patient lying prostrate on the floor. "We all have family in Homs and we are very worried about the situation there. It is much worse than here.

"Every day it has been getting worse here and there. No one is coming for us and we accept our fate."

Early in the day, a re-supply – of sorts – did arrive for the rebels; three sacks of rockets and rusting mortar tubes. They too were brought into the medical clinic and stored out of sight. It was hardly an arsenal to embolden a clearly struggling rebel army, but it was a sign that some weapons are finding their way across the porous Turkish and Lebanese borders.

"These are old," said one young fighter. "But they will do. We are grateful for everything that we get."

etalian posted:

In Libya the NATO intervention really evened up the odds by wiping out Gaddafi's conventional forces and heavy armor.

etalian posted:

In Libya the NATO intervention really evened up the odds by wiping out Gaddafi's conventional forces and heavy armor.

https://www.facebook.com/baba.amr.eye/posts/322558464446932 posted:

Decades before the revolution,

When I was a small child, we had a divorced neighbor with a small boy and girl. She survived on a very small salary and had lost her job and lived with an old woman close to her. I do not know the nature of the relationship between them.

But they were grandmothers for all the neighborhood kids, especially for the children like me that didn't have grandmothers.

They were living on this salary and all the neighbors felt sorry for their condition, but because we are kind people, they didn't feel that they were any less than others, even though they were living on aid.

The children grew up and the girl married and left the neighborhood.

The boy became a young man, but regrettably he was a burden on his family. He was a child with bad morals. How many times he hit his mother and his aunt..that the neighbors [did something I can't figure out]

After years of suffering with this child, he left, to where I don't know. After he married, he left his wife and children at his mother's.

And to this day, she raises chickens and some livestock at home to support herself (heavily paraphrased).

A number of years ago, another old woman came to live with the two old women and the grandchildren, we do not know her relationship to them.

Over the years, the neighbors built several floors around them, but the women's house is still covered by tin/zinc sheets. It is only two rooms and a small bit of land for the chickens and livestock.

Today al-Assad's soldiers targeted this vulnerable house by plane.

Shells and rockets easily pierced the tin roof.

The two old women died and pieces of their bodies scattered. The mother and grandchildren are seriously injured.

Every neighborhood kid has lost these kind grandmothers. May they rest in peace.

These are the "terrorist gangs" that are fighting against al-Assad.

Nasser the Revolutionary 2/9/2012.

Corny posted:

I read an article months ago, about some Daraa resident who was pleading for the world to intervene. That person asked for anybody, and even said "Let the Israelis come! Let the Jews come! Anything is better than Assad!"

At the time, I thought to myself "I doubt Syria is ever going to progress to the point of Libya, Assad is not nearly that crazy"

I'm sad to say not only was I wrong in that it would progress to Libya, it has progressed past Libya. I was horribly wrong.

gently caress Assad, gently caress Khamenei, and gently caress Hezbollah.

Omnicarus posted:

quote:

Wasn't he supposed to be a dentist or something?

Omnicarus posted:

You've got to hand it to Assad, he looks the part of Evil rear end in a top hat. Ghaddafi, especially towards the end, looked like a crazy ranting grandpa who couldn't hit his rear end with both hands.



This guy, on the other hand, he has an "I'll blow up you, your house, your dog, your neighbors, the girl riding the bike outside your house, I'll blow her up too." look in his eyes.

Xandu posted:

Nir Rosen's argued that the inability of al-Assad to send ground troops into Homs and his reliance on artillery is a sign of his weakness in the area.

suboptimal posted:

I disagree. I see: "Oh dear. I'm not supposed to be here. This was supposed to be my brother's job, before he killed himself in a spectacular sports car crash. I should be in London, plowing my gorgeous wife atop a mattress littered with Vogue magazines. I can't even grow a proper mustache and I have a recessed chin. There, DAD! I just shelled Homs! Do you love me yet?!"

suboptimal posted:

He could be right. It's easier and probably better for morale to ring a city with artillery and blow it to pieces than it would be to send soldiers in to kill their former comrades and countrymen in what would likely be house-to-house fighting. Defected soldiers have said things to the effect of "They told us we were fighting Salafi terrorists, but when I was given the order to shoot at women and children, I ran" as their reasons for defecting, it's likely that sending in ground forces may have the same effect on a massive level. The regime is probably thinking about trying to preserve the cohesion of its increasingly unraveling armed forces, and will probably rely more and more on standoff weapons in order to remove the human element.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/world/middleeast/egypt-18-border-guards-abducted.html posted:

Bedouin tribesmen kidnapped 18 Egyptian border guards in the Sinai along the Israeli border on Thursday, security officials said. The officials said the kidnapping was retaliation for the killing of a fellow Bedouin, a smuggler, as he tried to sneak into Israel days ago. The officials said there were negotiations for the guards’ release.

Xandu posted:

What's النفير mean in that picture?

Xandu posted:

Nir Rosen's argued that the inability of al-Assad to send ground troops into Homs and his reliance on artillery is a sign of his weakness in the area.

Omnicarus posted:

Mans posted:

Assad is Machiavelli personified.