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randombattle posted:It's pretty clear they are all getting scared at just how quickly a population can rally together with the internet and modern technology in it's hand. They want to crush this as fast as they possibly can but I think the revolutions in Egypt and whatnot have shown that it can be done. They won't. It only energizes the protesters because now they've got something specific and incredibly recent to hate you for. If someone calls you an rear end and you respond by punching him in the throat, he's not going to start thinking "oh I guess he's actually a really great guy!"
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Feb 18, 2011 00:50
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Pureauthor posted:The thing that gets me is how similarly all these revolution stories are playing out. It's like the various dictators never spent their period in power figuring out a less stupid way of attempting to retain control in the face of a discontented populace. Dictators aren't very smart. They think that once they have power it will last forever and they can do whatever they want.
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Feb 18, 2011 03:07
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Space Monster posted:(I'm also one of those damned conservatives. Love this thread full of stereotyping hatred.) There's nothing wrong with actual conservatives. The ones people hate are the bigoted "GOD HATES FAGS MUSLIMS ARE TERRORISTS YOU'RE EITHER WITH US OR AGAINST US" nutjobs that use conservatism to justify their hatreds.
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Feb 19, 2011 01:46
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Goreld posted:The word's been pretty corrupted over the years. What is labeled 'conservatism' is actually 'authoritarianism'. Case in point - if U.S. Republicans were truly conservative, why are they completely unwilling to reduce defense spending? Because they remain convinced that the US is still at war with somebody. They just need to figure out who that somebody is, but when they do, you're going to be glad you've got that big army!
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Feb 19, 2011 02:02
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Samurai Sanders posted:Just to confirm, there's no chance that he will volunteer to step down, right? If he was planning to step down gracefully I don't think he would have ordered the army to go out and indiscriminately murder people. What is his plan here exactly? Does he think he can just kill everyone in the whole country and run it himself?
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Feb 21, 2011 22:53
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Brown Moses posted:It really sounds like he's trying to wipe out anyone who is against him, and doesn't care if innocent civilians get in the way. I'm pretty sure that to him "innocent civilians" and "people who are against me" is the same group.
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Feb 21, 2011 22:57
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I suppose if it's any consolation, being hit by ammunition like that would kill someone too quickly for them to even feel it. That doesn't justify it in the slightest but at least you can feel relatively secure that those horrifying mutilated bodies that used to be people didn't suffer. (Unfortunately there's probably a lot of people who survived as collateral damage and have lost limbs who are suffering greatly  )
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Feb 21, 2011 22:59
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Doccers posted:sadly, it's often the opposite. These things leave burning hot steel fragments everywhere. If you're not hit somewhere immediately fatal, you have a burning hot chunk of metal imbedded in you and it's ripped open your flesh like Pyramidhead or the chainsaw loving massacre guy. Yeah, I realized that and edited in my comment about the survivors. I was really just referring to the absolute worst of the images where all that's left of someone is their head and bits of their legs. Those things look terrible but they had it quick and easy compared to the people who are getting mutilated but surviving. It's a really depressing situation.
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Feb 21, 2011 23:08
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Jalumibnkrayal posted:If I was in Wisconsin and the government was shooting me with tanks and AA vehicles, I would cheer Satan himself if he came to defend me. There is no enemy greater than the one that is shooting your unarmed neighbors with a tank. This is true and it's why a lot of countries were very friendly towards the Americans directly following WW2. In Belgium they LOVE Canadians because it was the Canadian forces that kicked the Nazis out. The difference is that in that case it was a foreign invader that occupied the country so when they were gone, there wasn't a need to rebuild the government because one already existed. It's a lot touchier in a case of a dictator declaring war on his own people, because the only way to really win that war is to completely wipe out the government and military (or at least, wipe them out to the point that the remainder defects/surrenders). I think the best thing they could do is provide supplies to the protesters; food and medical supplies of course, but even weapons and training if they request it. The problem right now is you have the Libyan military attacked the unarmed populace, so although the people vastly outnumber the military, they don't have the means to defend themselves. If those means are provided, you won't really need to have a foreign military presence to help them remove their dictator, and allowing them to win the war for themselves also helps avoid the "nation building" problem that the US has in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's a complicated problem, really. When a nation gets to the point that Libya is at, it becomes very difficult to figure out what to do. Of course Qadafi is the bad guy here, and he needs to be gone pronto. But if you hand out weapons to the civilians, and the guy who ends up replacing Qadafi with the weapons you gave him turns out to be just as bad, the whole thing starts over again. I can understand why other nations are hesitant to take a stance that strong. They should at least send them medicine and food though. There is no way that could turn bad and the people really need the aid.
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Feb 21, 2011 23:18
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Pureauthor posted:What the hell is this speech even about?! Everything he can possibly think of before someone comes along and murders him.
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Feb 22, 2011 17:47
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Slantedfloors posted:He's desperately trying to come across the collection of random strung-together words that will open the portal that will allow him to return to the dimension of pure gibbering chaos he originated from. This just conjured up a mental image of him staring at some smudged writing on his hand and going "gently caress! I knew I should have written down the return code on paper."
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Feb 22, 2011 17:50
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I have to wonder how anyone could have allowed this guy to lead a country considering how batshit insane he is. I don't mean the people themselves since obviously they didn't "let" him, but how can his supporters possibly buy into his insane ramblings? I mean I imagine he's paying them a great deal but surely at least one of them must have realized that they could just shoot him and take over leading the country and have access to his wealth.
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Feb 22, 2011 18:05
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Xandu posted:And while Gaddafi was speaking, Wow. When 1/5th of your country's entire population is angry enough to take to the streets, it's really time for you get the hell out of there.
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Feb 22, 2011 18:34
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Suntory BOSS posted:A revolution in North Korea would be extremely bloody and almost certainly result in international involvement. However, it seems to belong in the 'very unlikely' category for now. North Korea has nukes, or at least nuke technology, don't they? I don't think I'd want to see what would happen if Kim Jong Il had his back to the wall and decided to take the country down with him like Gaddafi.
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Feb 25, 2011 19:19
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Samurai Sanders posted:Maybe I don't understand mercenaries very well, but why would they take a side that will almost certainly get slaughtered indiscriminately by an angry mob, heavily armed and fed up with 40 years of oppression? What money is worth that? Traditionally, mercenaries don't stick around when it reaches the point that they would be in serious danger to continue fighting. They basically like getting paid to kill unarmed people and do that until they start fighting back with more than rocks.
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Feb 25, 2011 19:49
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junyatwin posted:If the reports are right, these mercs are from impoverished areas of Africa in a lot of cases. Where, $2000 is more than they've made in years if not a decade. Not to sound cynical, but at a certain point, money is more appealing than sense for the average person. It's like if you were to shop around the southern US offering a few million dollars to people to go to the border with guns and shoot Mexicans with no consequences. Yeah most people would probably refuse on moral grounds but there's bound to be a few takers that would do it just out of racism. Everywhere else in the world works more or less the same way; it's just the amount of money that qualifies as "A lot" that varies.
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Feb 25, 2011 20:20
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Sivias posted:Why is it every single post of yours is a simplistic naive interpretation of reality? It depends, are the people being executed the total amount of people who have blue eyes, or is it just a one-off? Because irrational hatred is less irrational if you don't wipe out the entire group. (I am being facetious to point out the absurdity of arguing over the definition of "genocide". If someone is murdering a lot of people does it really matter if it's over racial or political grounds? He's still murdering people)
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Feb 25, 2011 21:54
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Thrust On Moore posted:I thought I'd share an amusing article that I stumbled across a few hours ago, about how these protests will come to the US. Yeah, Louis Farrakhan isn't the most stable and reasonable of individuals.
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Feb 28, 2011 17:44
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Xandu posted:I know what you mean, but they aren't really. They, along with most of North Africa, identify as Arabs and there's a difference. I'd imagine the media coverage surrounding this has contributed to the hostility towards Africans in Libya, though. Yeah, geographically they're African, but in a lot of people's minds, "African" means "Black people". Which is why black people in the US are referred to as "African Americans" even if they've never been to Africa in their life. People seem to fall very easily into an "us versus them" mentality, sadly. All you need to do to unite a group is to point to another group and go "those guys hate us! gently caress those guys!" That said, not all the protesters are like that; as other people have mentioned the mercenaries that have been captured have been treated humanely as POWs. With any kind of large civil unrest though, you're going to get opportunists that are delighted that they can now justify their prejudices and act upon them. I think the best way to look at it is: Some Libyans are racists, but that doesn't mean the revolution is illegitimate. The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Feb 28, 2011 |
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Feb 28, 2011 17:47
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Sivias posted:It's like the Gulf of Tonkin all over again. Has that ever stopped the US in the past? Side question for those history buffs out there: Has Quaddafi ever faced resistance on the scale of what's going on in Libya right now? I'm curious if there's any way he might possibly recover from this or if it's a sure sign that he's finally on his way out.
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Feb 28, 2011 19:02
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Sivias posted:The thing about it is it's not a doomsday scenario. Empires come and go. You can't avoid it. Ottomans, Persians, Greek, Roman, British, French, German. Each thought they were unique and their reign would last forever and they were the most powerful the earth has ever seen. Originally, WW1 was called "The war to end all wars".
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Feb 28, 2011 19:35
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Sivias posted:^^^ For some reason when you said that I imagined Gaddafi as a quarterback in the super bowl. It's 4th and long. His team is down 5 points with no time on the clock. He needs to make this pass. Also the entire stadium crowd hates him and wants him to die. (They represent the rest of the world)
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Feb 28, 2011 20:52
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cioxx posted:I keep thinking how harder the job of protesters is getting with each succeeding revolution. Those regimes aren't sitting still and learn from the mistakes of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. At the same time though, it just energizes the protesters more, because they can point at all those other countries and say "They fought for their freedom and won, now it's our turn."
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Feb 28, 2011 21:11
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Ham posted:What the hell is that terrible logo anyway? It's basically them putting in the absolute minimum amount of effort to make a logo. "Well, we can't just put '2012' in big letters in Times New Roman. What if... now hear me out... we write '2012' on two lines, and like, Jazz it up some with one of those fonts you have to pay for? And we'll give it a drop shadow because bitches these days are ALL about the drop shadows. Oh, and stick the Olympics logo on there somewhere." Though Iran's opposition to it is pretty hilarious. "If you squint really hard and rearrange the letters is kind of looks like 'ZION', which is offensive to us because we're antisemitic." Yes Iran, that will win you lots of friends.
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Mar 1, 2011 01:03
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the walkin dude posted:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/27/king-saudi-arabia-protesters Wow. If they actually do start doing public demonstrations in Saudi Arabia that's a BIG deal. Though the US is so buddy buddy with them I think they would end up stepping in despite the many, many reasons why they shouldn't.
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Mar 1, 2011 02:25
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Those would be a few of those many reasons I mentioned, but honestly Saudi Arabia is pretty much the last place left in the Middle East that PRETENDS to like America (they don't), and they're a huge supplier of oil, so the US might feel that they need to step in if their stability is threatened. Even if the US doesn't do it on their own initiative, the SA government might threaten to hold back oil if they don't send military aid, thus putting direct pressure on the US and forcing them to choose between either helping an ally and pissing off the rest of the middle east even more (and if the SA government still falls, REALLY pissing off whoever replaces them), or sitting back and pissing off the current SA government and probably losing them as a "friend", but not making the rest of the middle east any angrier (and potentially ending up on neutral terms with a possible revolutionary government). It's sort of a lose-lose situation for the US, though I can't feel too sorry for them since it's the hole they dug for themselves in the first place.
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Mar 1, 2011 02:31
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the walkin dude posted:Isn't Saudi Arabia the country with Chop-Chop Square and severe oppression of their women? Saudi Arabia is basically the harshest, most oppressive regime in the entire Middle East. They don't get a lot of attention for it because they're oil buddies with the US so the media typically doesn't talk about it. DonT15 posted:Man, I don't know. For this to happen, the Saudis have to be willing to go big, or go home. And by that, I mean that there has to be thousands of them willing to do it Libya-style. That is, they need to be unafraid of imprisonment, torture, whatever. A few dozen, or even a few hundred protestors, isn't going to do the job. If anything, they would have to be even BIGGER and harder than in Libya, because of the high chance of US involvement if it went to open conflict. The only thing that would keep the US out is if the protesters managed to completely topple the government and have clear control of the country in like, week 1. Also, I once met a kid from Saudi Arabia when I was in summer camp. His father was a general or something, and he lived in a mansion with servants. He considered himself to be "Not that rich". I think the upper classes in Saudi Arabia literally have no idea how badly the poor have it, save for maybe a few that are the ones directly responsible for that situation. They're sort of like the French aristocracy there; they just kind of assume that because they're living in luxury that everyone else is doing okay and any dissent is just people being uppity. (the kid ended up leaving camp after like 3 days. My guess is he found the standard of living at a sleep away camp too difficult. He was honestly surprised that you have to wipe your own rear end. I swear, that is actually something he said. I really, really hope he's just used to having a bidet and not that he actually has someone to wipe his rear end for him) The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Mar 1, 2011 |
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Mar 1, 2011 02:56
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Sivias posted:This is something I've been warning about since the start of this thread. Keep your eye on the Saudis. Part of me wants to see the US succumb to their dependence on oil and crash and burn, but of course that's a crazy notion since if the US falls they'd take the rest of the world's economy with them, and even if the US DOES need a serious kick in the rear end to get off of oil, millions of people would have their lives utterly destroyed before there'd be any hope of recovery. It's just one of those situations where doing the right thing ends up screwing you more because of all the wrong things done by your predecessors.
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Mar 1, 2011 03:31
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farraday posted:There are serious and compelling reasons why Saudi Arabia is similar to other regimes we've seen overthrown, and yet I still can't see it happening. That's the scary part, really. There is a LOT resting on that little (well, not THAT little) kingdom in the middle east, and the royal family is all too aware of how much power their wield over the rest of the world.
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Mar 1, 2011 03:54
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TheBalor posted:Well, supposing the cracks do occur and the House of Saud is overthrown, what are these consequences that could occur? Obviously the calculus of power in the region would change; it seems like every time I hear of some regressive or anti-democratic movement in the ME, it can be traced back to the house of Saud. The issue is more what would happen to the world if the oil supply was interrupted, which it would be for the duration of any sort of revolution. Even if it was eventually restored, there would be serious economic problems from just a temporary shortage. Pretty much everything depends on the cost of oil; plastics are everywhere, transportation, electricity, etc. We don't have the infrastructure set up to just shrug it off. In the very long term, it would be a good thing for the world at large. But in the more immediate future it would probably plunge the entire world into a situation that makes the Great Depression look like a slight stock market dip.
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Mar 1, 2011 04:07
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Sivias posted:You clearly have very little understanding about the level of influence oil has on the structure of the human civilization. Well, not entirely true. Technically, it would just send us back to the dark ages, so humanity has suffered like that before. Though it would seem a lot worse going from the internet age to the dark ages than it would just being born in the dark ages.
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Mar 1, 2011 06:17
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Hmm, you raise a good point; I forgot to account for the dramatic difference in population since then. So a lot of people would probably die, THEN we'd be in the dark ages. You know what kind of sucks? The fact that Nuclear power never really caught on because people didn't really understand how it works. It's a LOT cleaner than most of the popular forms of power we use now; obviously nuclear waste is EXTREMELY toxic, but miniscule amounts are produced compared to the pollution generated by burning coal/oil. It's not quite "renewable", since it does depend on a raw material, but it takes very little of said material to generate staggering amounts of power. Sadly this is one of those cases where it was the LEFT being reactionary idiots and acting against their own interests (because replacing coal and gas plants would have massively reduced pollution); take note, liberals! Using your brain is still a requirement even if you're on the progressive side of politics! So now the nuclear plants we have are the only ones we'll EVER have, unless the world finally gets over Three Mile Island and Chernobyl (both of which were caused because the safety procedures which ALREADY EXISTED at that point were not being followed. Also nobody actually died from Three Mile Island). Still. Maybe the unrest in the middle east will get the world thinking about its reliance on oil, even if it doesn't end up leading to a global economic meltdown.
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Mar 1, 2011 06:37
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Sivias posted:This, my friend, is called 'bargaining'. The middle east and Greece is currently going through 'Anger'. (Quit skipping steps!) Well the point really is that the current oil crisis would have been lessened if some of the energy burden had been offloaded to nuclear power back when it was first developed, instead of suddenly halting production, not for economic reasons, but out of fear. I agree it wouldn't solve the problem, but with more electricity available and less reliance oil to produce it, things like the electric car might have proved to be more popular (or at least, the oil companies would have had powerful competition in the form of the nuclear power companies to fight against their suppression of the technology). Still not sustainable, but a lot closer than we were. From there it's on to solar power, then if I remember my Sim City correctly you get Microwave power, then Fusion power and it's just a matter of building Arcologies and blasting off into space. I suppose it's easy to say "Well that's how they SHOULD have done it" in retrospect. It's just kind of annoying to see that they already HAD something, and then just... stopped. The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Mar 1, 2011 |
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Mar 1, 2011 06:57
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Mnoba posted:Not sure if you caught this article yesterday, but it goes along with them trying to stay relevant : It makes a lot of sense really; Al Qaeda may claim that they hate all the puppet dictators put in place by the US, but the truth is that they need them. If the people aren't constantly being crushed under the thumb of an oppressive regime, they won't have the impotent, aimless anger that people like Al Qaeda exploit to push their own agenda. Terrorists do not benefit from a world in which everyone is empowered.
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Mar 1, 2011 18:31
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Slantedfloors posted:Am I the only one who enjoys how non-sensical the conspiracies the dictators churn out are? It's basically a paranoiac's dart board. I guess they figure if they hit at least one person's favorite hot button ideology, then the rest doesn't matter because that one issue is enough to get that person on board. Sadly, that does actually work for some people. The good news is it only works on the REALLY crazy people, whose numbers are too low to be meaningful.
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Mar 1, 2011 19:31
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To be honest, the US is the worst example of a democratic country when it comes to those issues. Yeah, corruption exists elsewhere, but not nearly to the extent that you guys have it. So I wouldn't be too worried about the middle east. Sorry you guys have such poo poo laws and politicians v  v
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Mar 1, 2011 19:38
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Roark posted:Ever heard of Italy, Spain, Greece, most of South and Central America, South Africa, South Korea, India, or the Balkan nations, among others? The US has it's problems with corruption and it's political system, but we're a drat beacon of cleanliness and functionality compared to some other democracies. Okay, point. The US does kind of have a disproportionate amount of corruption compared to their quality of life, though. Most of those countries have poor living conditions because of their poor governments. In the US you live well but it's like you're actively trying to make your lives worse.
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Mar 1, 2011 19:53
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Italy is a weird case, because they've had trouble with their government ever since Mussolini fell, but it's like the people all kind of decided to just keep on living their lives. I think your average Italian cares even less about politics than your average American.
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Mar 1, 2011 20:02
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Spiky Ooze posted:If you lived in a non super power country that was in dire peril would you expect the UN to save you? I sure as hell wouldn't expect them to do much of anything. Sure they care, but they've stood by and watched so much poo poo go down over the years that it's to the point of no one having confidence in that way of helping people. The thing is, the UN isn't an independent sovereignty with its own military or anything. UN peacekeepers are just volunteers from the militaries of member nations. What the UN does is basically provide a place where world leaders can meet and agree on things that are in everyone's best interest; they don't have any power to ENFORCE those things, because the whole point is that if you agree to something then it's supposed to show your intentions of actually doing that thing and you shouldn't have to be forced. Of course in practice it doesn't work out that way, and often you have the US opting out of a lot of the resolutions because it might technically implicate their military actions as being criminal and they'd have to prosecute. It's a voluntary system, basically. It's meant to foster goodwill between nations rather than act as some sort of global code of law.
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Mar 1, 2011 23:04
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I think that all seems pretty reasonable. Really, they shouldn't HAVE to do anything, but I can understand them wanting to be ready in case things take a sudden turn for the worse (like if some of the pilots actually started following through on the orders to bomb the country). The best thing they can do for Libya right now is to stay out of it, but keep an eye on it. The Libyan people seem to have established a pretty strong foothold in the country now, and while Qaddafi is apparently willing to fight until his dying breath, it's really just a matter of time now.
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Mar 2, 2011 06:11
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