BabyChoom posted:

Rigged Death Trap posted:

Help I've watched too much coverage on this new fangled gadget and now I have urges to destroy it all.

Brown Moses posted:

I was digging around some old Syria photos and came across a couple that appear to show an example of an unexploded chemical barrel bomb two months before the first reported attacks in Kafr Zita on April 11th. It's also in Daraa, hundreds of miles from Kafr Zita and the other reported attacks as well. I've put the details here.

This photo shows a Hezbollah fighters with a pair of improvised barrel bombs



This confirms a couple of things I've assumed based of the debris. One, there's small wheels on the base to help push them out the aircraft, secondly, the three tail fin configuration is because four would prevent them from being pushed out the back so easily (probably requiring a raised platform).

Brown Moses posted:

It's from this image posted on pro-Hezbollah social media, including his Hezbollah funeral

Al-Saqr posted:

well I'm glad he got his just desserts in the end, man that's one pig-faced goon.

Volkerball posted:

The rate at which people are imprisoned on flimsy pretense and thrown into torture camps, then tossed in mass graves, and the incessant bombing on residential areas with conventional and chemical weapons, kills more and destroys more lives than any bumfuck jihadists could ever hope to. They've spent years trying to overrun a few thousand Kurds in the north, and they can't even pull that off, but of course they're propped by governments all around the world and are unanimously supported in rebel-held Syria to the point that they completely dominate the narrative in American news. You sit there and preach about propaganda, but you eat up all the desperate clinging to half truths and small sample sized atrocities committed by ISIS and JaN your sources (which you've never posted except for a reddit comments section just now) are spewing without even realizing how conveniently it all fits in with the Russian/Syrian narrative that they've been pushing since before jihadists even started flowing in from Iraq. RT and SANA don't have anywhere near the resources as a bunch of bakers tweeting at each other carrying ziploc bags as ammo pouches. Lol that Brown Moses is somehow responsible for people watching a conflict where a madman massacres so many people indiscriminately just to maintain control of the country, while so many countries turn their back that the victims have to turn to loving al qaeda for help, and feeling basic human empathy and a desire to do something. Not that anyone signing up with ISIS or JaN gives a poo poo about any of that stuff anyways. You're seriously dumb as gently caress dude. I wish you were a troll just because it's a sad thought realizing that you have to live every day with yourself.

Panzeh posted:

I'm sure that replacing barrel bombs with Mk 82s will massively improve the well being of the bakers you speak of, and that they will totally create governments that tolerate the Allawites. Assad is a tough motherfucker to have stayed in power and has fought well to hang onto what he has.

The idea that people "in the middle" would be better off with US intervention is so laughable that I guess we should just forget about everything that's happened in the past 20 years. Anyway, no government created by foreign intervention there would ever be legitimate. It's for the best that whoever wins the civil war gets the government because at least that way their opponents will truly be defeated.

quote:

A Dangerous Method: Syria, Sy Hersh, and Art of Mass-crime Revisionism

ON THE DAY the London Review of Books published a widely circulated article by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh exonerating the Syrian regime for last year’s chemical attack, 118 Syrians, including 19 children, died in aerial bombing and artillery fire. Only the regime has planes and heavy ordnance.

Since last November, Aleppo has been targeted by helicopters dropping explosives-filled barrels from high altitudes. Between last November and the end of March, Human Rights Watch recorded 2,321 civilian deaths by this indiscriminate weapon. Only the regime has helicopters.

For many months after the chemical massacre, the targeted neighborhoods and the Yarmouk refugee camp were kept under a starvation siege. Aid agencies were denied entry. Only the regime controls access.

The regime’s ruthlessness has never been in doubt. Reports by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry, and myriad journalists and on-the-ground witnesses have repeatedly confirmed it. The regime has demonstrated the intent and capability to inflict mass violence. The repression is ongoing.

So when an attack occurred last August, employing a weapon that the regime was known to possess, using a delivery mechanism peculiar to its arsenal, in a place the regime was known to target, and against people the regime was known to loathe, it was not unreasonable to assume regime responsibility. This conclusion was corroborated by first responders, UN investigators, human rights organizations, and independent analysts.

When a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and a respectable literary publication undertake to challenge this consensus, one reasonably expects due diligence. The gravity of the matter demands that a high burden of proof be met. Sources would have to be vetted, claims corroborated, contrary evidence addressed.

But the editors didn’t do that. They gave precedence to storytelling over truth-telling. They disregarded available evidence and, based on the uncorroborated claims of a single unnamed source, absolved the perpetrator of a horrific atrocity, demonized his opponents, and slandered a foreign head of state. Worse, in using Hersh as click bait, they provided a smokescreen for new violations. (cont)

Rukeli posted:

They just arrested a 29 year old suspect of the Brussels shootings. Apparently he had been in Syria, which is going to lead to more debate on preventing people from traveling there.

Panzeh posted:

I'm sure that replacing barrel bombs with Mk 82s will massively improve the well being of the bakers you speak of, and that they will totally create governments that tolerate the Allawites. Assad is a tough motherfucker to have stayed in power and has fought well to hang onto what he has.

The idea that people "in the middle" would be better off with US intervention is so laughable that I guess we should just forget about everything that's happened in the past 20 years. Anyway, no government created by foreign intervention there would ever be legitimate. It's for the best that whoever wins the civil war gets the government because at least that way their opponents will truly be defeated.

Brown Moses posted:

It's from this image posted on pro-Hezbollah social media, including his Hezbollah funeral

Radio Prune posted:

Al-Saqr posted:

In other news, Bassem Yousef, the Egyptian version on John Stewart is cancelling his program completely.

I saw this coming a million miles away, if he doesnt do something similar or move to a new channel soon, he'd have been just another coward who couldnt bring themselves to confront the fascists and simply left politics the second the going got tough for them. It was clear that he was nowhere near as brave towards Sisi as he had been towards Morsi, and now he's eating the result of his inability to show courage and an unwillingness to rock an already sunken boat.

Baloogan posted:

Are there any arab nations with a healthy democracy?

quote:

On 3 March 2011, the president announced that elections to a Constituent Assembly would be held on 23 October 2011. International and internal observers declared the vote free and fair. The Ennahda Movement, formerly banned under the Ben Ali regime, won a plurality of 90 seats out of a total of 217.[60] On 12 December 2011, former dissident and veteran human rights activist Moncef Marzouki was elected president.[61]
In March 2012, Ennahda declared it will not support making sharia the main source of legislation in the new constitution, maintaining the secular nature of the state. Ennahda's stance on the issue was criticized by hardline Islamists, who wanted full-blown sharia, and was welcomed by secular parties.[62] On 6 February 2013, Chokri Belaid, the leader of the leftist opposition and prominent critic of Ennahda, was assassinated.[63]

Baloogan posted:

Hey that is cool, human rights activist president. One success story so far, plus now that I think about it Jordan doesn't seem too bad either. Quite a charismatic king there, I've seen a couple of interviews.

Does Jordan's king take an active role in government? Or is he more like Elizabeth II?

Baloogan posted:

Hey that is cool, human rights activist president. One success story so far, plus now that I think about it Jordan doesn't seem too bad either. Quite a charismatic king there, I've seen a couple of interviews.

Does Jordan's king take an active role in government? Or is he more like Elizabeth II?

Brown Moses posted:

I was digging around some old Syria photos and came across a couple that appear to show an example of an unexploded chemical barrel bomb two months before the first reported attacks in Kafr Zita on April 11th. It's also in Daraa, hundreds of miles from Kafr Zita and the other reported attacks as well. I've put the details here.

This photo shows a Hezbollah fighters with a pair of improvised barrel bombs



This confirms a couple of things I've assumed based of the debris. One, there's small wheels on the base to help push them out the aircraft, secondly, the three tail fin configuration is because four would prevent them from being pushed out the back so easily (probably requiring a raised platform).

FightingMongoose posted:

Pardon my ignorance, what vehicle is he inside for this photo?

quote:

DAMASCUS, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Hassan Nouri, one of the three Syrian presidential candidates, said his country is witnessing a " big national victory" by holding the June 3 presidential vote.

After casting his ballot at a polling station in Sheraton Hotel in central Damascus, Nouri said to reporters that "we are witnessing a big national victory and a new dimension to Syria. Syria in the post-election era is a new Syria, with political plurality."

Meanwhile, the 54-year-old businessman admitted the "big popularity" of incumbent President Bashar al-Assad, but projected himself as a "strong competitor."

Nouri said that if he loses, he would remain "a good citizen," expressing optimism because "I have become a prominent figure in the Syrian political life."

Syria's one-day presidential election started Tuesday, with more than 15 million eligible and registered Syrian voters expected to cast their ballots for the country's three presidential contenders, including incumbent President Bashar al- Assad.

The Interior Ministry said 9,610 polling stations are available across the country amid reports that the government has also set up ballot boxes in displacement shelters to allow thousands of displaced Syrians to participate in the voting process.

The three candidates -- incumbent President al-Assad, former minister Hassan al-Nouri and lawmaker Maher Hajjar -- have put forth their electoral platforms that carry nearly the same political headlines with different visions on how to rescue the collapsed economy.

The election is the first of its kind held in half a century in Syria. Previously, there were only referendums to support Assad or his late father Hafez al-Assad who was in office from 1971 to 2000.

Nouri served as minister of administrative development and minister of state for parliamentary affairs from 2000 to 2002. He also served as the general secretary of the Chamber of Industry from 1997 to 2000, and was a member of the Syrian Parliament from 1998 to 2003.

The Monkey Man posted:

I'm actually shocked that there are other candidates on the ballot at all.

quote:

“Why do they need to bring a monster like me to this election?” he said. “Why do they need to bring someone very popular in Syria? I come from a very rich family, a very big family, a very known family.”

Al-Saqr posted:

Jordan has one of the most vicious Secret polices in the middle east, the first ever mainframe computers to be introduced to the arab world was used by the Jordanian ministry of interior of the middle east to keep tabs on their political opponents.

Hong XiuQuan posted:

Yeah, as bad as the Mukhabarat in Jordan are you're going to have to scale that down as there are patently more vicious secret services throughout the middle east. Jordan needs to get behind Egypt, Syria, Iraq and (in terms of viciousness alone) probably the Occupied Palestinian Territories too.

Hong XiuQuan posted:

Yeah, as bad as the Mukhabarat in Jordan are you're going to have to scale that down as there are patently more vicious secret services throughout the middle east. Jordan needs to get behind Egypt, Syria, Iraq and (in terms of viciousness alone) probably the Occupied Palestinian Territories too.

SedanChair posted:

Hey according to Xinhua there's an election going on in Syria! We were talking about healthy democracies right?


I wonder if there's anything else going on in Syria.

Count Roland posted:

Algeria is very bad as well.

I wonder about little Jordan. It has done well in avoiding the chaos that surrounds it, but I wonder for how long this can continue. They've got hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living there which is a constant issue, and now there are huge amounts of Syrian refugees as well. Like so many post-colonial states, it doesn't seem to have anything to fundamentally hold it together. Just a bunch of people that wind up inside these borders, with violent autocracy to keep it together. Amazing that it has lasted this long.

Rogue0071 posted:

It's come pretty close to busting apart in the past.