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KingColliwog posted:I think he's trolling Obama. I'm not american, but do you guys think Republicans and tea party will use this against Obama? I'd be willing to bet yes if it gets around the news enough. Also kalonji let me see if I understand your position correctly, since we can't help everyone all the time, when the political conditions give us the chance to do the right thing for once for some people we shouldn't do it? Alright got it.
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Mar 19, 2011 17:04
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New Division posted:I wonder what Freepers think of the prominent French role. More proof Obama is trying to destroy America from the inside. Al Jazeera just reported on its live blog Spain has dedicated fights to the UN mandate and France is sending its Charles de Gaul carrier to match up with our Enterprise. If wikipedia is to be trusted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_no-fly_zone#Enforcement Fighters from at least: -France -Britain -United States -Belgium -Greece -Qatar -United Arab Emirates -Denmark -Italy -Norway -Possibly Sweden, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Netherlands might wind up taking part soon enough. Look alive people, not only is Libya in the middle of civil war by this point, but this is probably the only time in the next two decades you'll see the UN actually use teeth with one of its mandates.
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Mar 19, 2011 18:43
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Baddog posted:By intervening in Libya, even just by air, I think we have now taken moral responsibility for the outcome there, and while I hope that we will not be drawn in like we have elsewhere, if things go badly, I think we will be. Uh why would we? We kept the no fly zone in Iraq going or 10 years and probably would've kept it going for another 10 years if we didn't have a president hell bent on invading Iraq, and it worked, the northern Kurdistan region of Iraq stayed de facto independent the entire time, and even post invasion was the most stable region of the country. More importantly though, minus the protests held in Iraq a few weeks ago, Iraq and the Iraqi invasion is beyond irrelevant to both the situations currently unfolding in the mid-east as well as any intervention taken by other countries.
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Mar 29, 2011 21:05
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thefncrow posted:Boy, arming a bunch of rebels that we don't know much if anything about other than that we share a common opponent sounds like such a fantastic idea when you put it like that. That's never had a history of completely blowing up in our faces. Here's an idea, stop comparing either Afghanistan/Iraq to Libya, they're completely different things. Also we know who the rebels are, they've done a pretty good job at trying to set up a provisional government to make themselves legitimate, in fact here's their president and prime minister: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Abdul_Jalil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Jebril
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Mar 31, 2011 08:12
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Contraction mapping posted:While Western intervention certainly has a spotty track record, saying it results in universally negative outcomes is essentially bullshit, and you'd be hard-pressed to find many Kuwaitis or South Koreans who agree with your sentiment. He'd also be pretty hard pressed to find many people in Benghazi, Tobruk and other eastern Libyan cities that share that sentiment also.
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Apr 1, 2011 06:27
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:The problem right now is that the West appears to be supporting the NTC unconditionally. It's a binary issue as much as some people don't want to admit it. If you don't support the NTC, you're basically supporting Gaddafi, it's in fact that simple, there is nothing else to possibly support yet as even the NTC and rebel fighting forces are so far working on an us/them basis. What I don't get is before the intervention nobody really doubted the fact regardless of how corrupt or authoritarian any rebel government might be, that given other current events in the region that inspired these events in Libya we could assume some form of representative government, even if incredibly flawed would probably come out of a rebel victory. At the least people would be substantially more free than they were before or could've ever hoped for until a few months ago. All of a sudden the west goes in to help the rebels and it becomes "Well how do we know the NTC and rebels aren't just going to become the new Gaddafi, hmmmmmmm?" Granted I'm sure like in any political body anywhere in the world enough members of both the fighting rebels and the NTC governmental body are hoping to secure their power base for any future national government. However to think a rebel victory wouldn't at least lead to some form of flawed democracy seems asinine given what they're fighting for and other events in the region, unless we all really believe at the end of the day if the NTC takes over that the Libyan people will be fine with going back to business as normal after all this as long as the new CEO doesn't have the name Gaddafi. Hell even if they do form a legitimate democratic government at breakneck speed a lot of people in the thread seem to have this wet dream that western involvement in any form lays the foundation for a CIA revolution to make sure Libyans live in an authoritarian nightmare for ever.
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Apr 1, 2011 17:42
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Space Monster posted:It's a legitimate question. The NTC can say it has democratic values all it wants, but that proves nothing. It's not a legitimate question. Asking the ultimate goals, who leads the NTC, how they plan to govern Libya in an interim period, ect are legitimate questions. Making a point on how no one elected a body that basically had to be build itself from nothing in an area that after 40 years of dictatorial rule suddenly found itself under the hands of a bunch of ragtag rebels is asinine, especially when there's still a civil war raging and their hold on their territory is tedious still at best. Tunisia is currently being ruled by unelected(or elected under rigged elections) government officials and Egypt by a military council, guess we should call Mubarak and Ali and tell them to come back, the revolution has failed.
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Apr 1, 2011 18:26
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Randandal posted:This might blow your mind but I really think you should check Al-Jazeera for information about Eman al-Obeidy. You could even use their search function to search the entire website for "rape Qatar". This might be true, in fact searching those nothing came up for rape in Quarter and the only article that came up for Eman was: http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/listeningpost/2011/04/201142141233146945.html But if you just search rape Al-Jazeera does run reports on it: http://english.aljazeera.net/video/africa/2011/05/20115381016787271.html http://english.aljazeera.net/video/africa/2011/03/201132845516144204.html http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/rizkhan/2011/03/20113281926561788.html I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt to an organization actually at least covering the problem of rape in a region where to convict a rapist you often need multiple witnesses who have to be men. Al Jazeera isn't out to be a progressive force of nature unless you count actual free reporting in the Arab world as progressive.(which it is) Also searching Eman al-Obeidy can get you vastly different results depending on how much the news source at hand wanted to go with the story. Huffington post for example has numerous articles about or mentioning her, NPR turned up two. Also Al Jazeera does more than just news and actually makes some great programing, some of which is far more progressive than anything on American television including a great documentary they did on racism in the US, as well as ones on the horrors of female circumcision, and one I really liked, Lebanon's women warriors: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5K949l_qs0 I'm not defending Al Jazeera for its faults, I'm not just not crucifying them for not intensely covering one woman or rape in one specific place, when in fact they have done numerous programs about rape not only in Libya but in DRC, Afghanistan and many other nations of the area. They might not be bleeding heart liberals but they are a decent news agency which often features quite progressive reporting, and progressive from a general western viewpoint, not an Arabian peninsula one. *edit* Granted this is all Al Jazeera English. Does anyone speak Arabic and can testify to the differences between Al Jazeera and Al Jazeera English?
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Jun 2, 2011 23:51
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Have there been any good recent reports or analysis out of Tunisia recently? Seems like it's been completely forgotten.
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Jul 12, 2011 15:58
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KashiMane posted:Western involvement is pretty much the reason. We said no more after Iraq and yet, not only are we in Libya, but they fooled you into thinking that it's some humanitarian mission. Rebels picked the other side and are out to get paid. I don't care for either side, I care about the people of Libya. They are in the middle of a struggle for power and resources, and all we can do for them is call them "collateral damage" when they are murdered. If you cared about the people of Libya you'd support a movement that is helping to bring down a 4 decade dictator who among other things if you remember why this all started used snipers to fire on random civilians returning from funerals, and threatened to annihilate the city of Benghazi if it required going room to room hunting people down like rats. Also the people of Libya asked us to intervene. The NTC might not be saints but there is a clear right and wrong in this conflict and the rebels are on the side of right at the moment, even if the revolution post Ghaddafi failures to live up to hopes.
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Aug 19, 2011 18:16
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This is spectacular, go out for three hours and in the course of that the news goes from rebels securing the four cities they had captured to battles raging in Tripoli. I can only hope it turns into "Ghaddafi flees Libya" before going to bed. After god knows how many deaths it finally seems like it's finally near a close. While it's terrible so many people had to die just to be able to have basic democratic rights, I have a lot of hope for Libya post-Ghaddafi for the fact thousands of Libyans actually took up arms, created a rebel army, and died for their human rights. I don't think the Libyan people will settle for anything but a functioning democracy after this.
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Aug 20, 2011 23:42
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Zorba the Greek posted:It could have, and NATO getting involved was incredibly stupid. I'm glad the revolution is happening but NATO, specificlly the UK, getting involved was just ridiculous. So you're saying you want the revolution to have been quashed in its original weeks, because really there is no alternative, without NATO that's what it would've become.
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Aug 22, 2011 00:17
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If anyone wants some more hilarious reading: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26155 quote:Surpassing previous mass media fabrications, both in scale and boldness, yesterday morning's Al Jazeera mise-en-scène will surely go down in history as one of the most cynical hoaxes committed by corporate media since the manipulated pictures of Iraqis topplying Saddam Hussein's statue after the US invasion in 2003. I really would like to know what it's like to live in the world when your perception of reality is well, unrealistic.
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Aug 23, 2011 20:39
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Between these revelations about Kucinich in Libya and his "fact finding" mission to Syria I've been losing a lot of respect for Kucinich. I mean it's one thing to be against intervention, but Kucinich seems like he's hell bent on showing the leaders really aren't that bad and these are western fueled uprising, irrelevant of what the people in the mid-east actually want. At least on the plus side if he ever steps down from politics he'll be able to get a good correspondent job at RT 
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Aug 31, 2011 20:11
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Scratch Monkey posted:Here's a head scratcher. Rebels found a deep freezer that apparently contained the dead body of a Russian (maybe?) soldier or something that was stuffed in there by GF. I though the Condoleezza Rice photo albums would be the strangest thing to come out of this war but drat if I wasn't wrong.
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Sep 2, 2011 03:22
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Brown Moses posted:Alight I've racked my brain and just can't put a name to the face, who is all the way on the left.
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Sep 15, 2011 19:35
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I actually remember seeing a Canadian flag being waved around in Benghazi during celebrations a few weeks ago. Also thanks for the answer on Susan Rice.
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Sep 16, 2011 04:19
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Golbez posted:Eliminating Gaddafi? Gaddafi WAS one of those allies, as of about five years ago. Ghaddafi really wasn't an ally, more of a business partner, we didn't even have diplomatic relations until a few years ago. When he said he'd voluntarily give up his WMD programs and handed over a lot of secret information to the IAEA, there was a basically an exchange of deals made between Ghaddafi and the west that got things both sides wanted. Libya, along with Syria have definitely always been the Soviet/Russian sphere of influence in the mid-east. Amused to Death fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Sep 19, 2011 |
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Sep 19, 2011 19:17
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Jut posted:Who knows? Civilians were given ample time to leave the city though. It's completely ridiculous to say the NTC should just not attack Sirte and remove the pro=Ghaddafi forces. I mean what heck kind of civil war ends with the victor going 'Ehhh let's just leave these cities full of enemy forces" *edit* Especially when the vast majority of Libyans and everything in Libya is along the coast, and Sirte lies directly in the middle of the east and western parts of the nation. It's not like it's some nothing oasis town in the middle of nowhere. Amused to Death fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Oct 3, 2011 |
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Oct 3, 2011 18:51
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Jut posted:Yea gently caress them for not running while they could. Good point, this is more reason to attack the city when Ghaddafi forces are forcing civilians to stay in a war zone, arguably as human shields to try to prevent shelling and bombing. And no doubt some may feel threatened by the rebels, at the same time though people who have fled the city have reported they didn't even know the rebels had taken over near the whole country, CQ's forces aren't that into letting civilians make educated decisions. quote:rebels ceasefire to let civilians escape didn't happen. I'm talking about before the battle even happened. I'm sure word on the grapevine had to have traveled to Sirte that the rebels were nearing the city. Regardless though, for the civilians in the city life must be dangerous and terrible, no doubt, and it's awful the ceasefire never got a chance to take hold, but still if an army was never allowed to attack a city that civilians were still in, well there'd be no more war period. It can't be avoided in war, especially when plenty of people regardless of circumstances or information will always refuse to leave their homes be it from war or natural disasters.
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Oct 3, 2011 19:17
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[quote="Jut"] You're really going out of your way to excuse the NTC's gently caress ups. On this very page http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/03/libya-sirte-aid-idUSL5E7L31TG20111003 Back to the killing them for their own good argument. [/quo If they're not letting civilians leave which you yourself brought up, then yeah I'm going to feel no sympathy if they die, they're using civilians as human shields if they're not letting them leave, which CQs have already been accused for months of doing anyways, even amnesty said they had evidence of this http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/report/libya-attacks-against-misratah-residents-point-war-crimes-2011-05-05 Which is back to the main overall point, getting rid of Ghaddfi forces is protecting civilians.
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Oct 3, 2011 19:33
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That must've been one hell of a plane considering a division is about 15,000 people. Apparently the Spruce Goose is back.
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Oct 4, 2011 15:28
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Holy gently caress, the NTC better arrest him soon, Caro is like a war crime waiting to happen.
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Oct 6, 2011 15:17
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dj_clawson posted:Bad situation: China and Tibet. Though Tibet was clearly independent pre-1950, with a pretty solid border, there are now more ethnic Chinese living in Tibet than Tibetans, and their status would become unclear immediately up any theoretical Tibetan independence. Actually Tibetans compose over 90% of the population of the Tibetan autonomous region. Most of the Han are concentrated near solely in Lhasa, which they're still a minority. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/guides/456900/456954/html/nn5page1.stm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lhasa#Demographics
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Oct 10, 2011 17:47
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ThePutty posted:God yes. If Tunisia works out, I'd love to link it's positive progress to half of these Pro-Gaddafi fuckwits and see what kind of reaction they can come up with. Simple. They'll just say all these happy people taking part in democracy are just a tool of the imperialist west and continue to read RT as a trusted news source.
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Oct 23, 2011 17:14
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Nenonen posted:Please source your claims when you use them to support murder. Thank you. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/09/08/muammar-gaddafi-s-shocking-university-love-den.html http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/09/08/qaddafi_love_den_jacuzzi_gynecological_equipment_found_beneath_l.html The rape aspect is still just speculation though.
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Oct 23, 2011 23:10
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Caro you crazy bastard, shine on, and for the love of god don't try to perform medicine on anyone.BeigeJacket posted:I'm still unclear on how some crazy goon managed to get into Libya and hook up with some militia without getting killed or deported. Getting into Libya is pretty easy, just take a plane to Egypt, and bus into Libya. A lot of Libyan people who were living abroad did it. In fact I believe the Tripoli brigade was full of them. I remember someone posting a video following their advance and they were lead by an Irish guy with balls of steel who one of his parents had fled from Libya years beforehand, but I believe he had never actually lived there.
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Oct 26, 2011 17:04
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Bulky Brute posted:<--- ahaha oh boy, opposing a NATO military intervention is extreme leftism now? In this instance, yes. There's no point at all in even having a UN and international relations if the world is not willing once in a while to stop a loving lunatic from massacring his own people. Countries have national sovereignty but it doesn't mean they get to do whatever the heck they want as long as they keep it in their own borders. The only problem with UN(I say UN because this is not NATO intervention, this is NATO and a few others carrying executing a United Nations resolution) intervention is it doesn't happen enough because the security council among other organs is broken as gently caress. *edit* It's not a principled stand against imperialism, it's an asinine "never changing my beliefs regardless of circumstances and facts" situation. Not to say our power structures in the US aren't guilty of enough abuses of their own, but if the government actually started using fighter jets to open indiscriminate fire on the streets of Chicago I'd hope to hell the world intervened. *double edit* Using the word imperialism in the Libya case cheapens the hell out of it as well Amused to Death fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Oct 26, 2011 |
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Oct 26, 2011 21:30
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Well credit is due where it's due, Caro's videos are pretty good. In one there's a receipt for some type of ordinance I believe that appears to be dated from 1977. Is this in any way normal for a military to hold onto surplus supplies or is this related to Gaddafi not really keeping the military upgraded to ensure no threats to him?
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Oct 28, 2011 20:47
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Brown Moses posted:New Caro video, seems to be in the middle of the fighting at the Conference Centre in Sirte I still can't believe a borderline crazy goon managed to fight from Misrata to Sirte. His videos are honestly some of the most interesting I've seen though. Between your news updates BM and Caro's videos goons really have provided the best information on Libya. It's actually too bad I've seen Caro's post history, otherwise I would just think it's some guy who would make an awesome war correspondent. *edit* I love the guy in the conference center who's casually shooting pool as gunfire rings out all around. Also Caro using his gun as a cue stick. Amused to Death fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Oct 30, 2011 |
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Oct 30, 2011 17:23
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Casimir Radon posted:Borderline you say? Well he might be paranoid and delusional, alright just all around insane, but he's sane enough to stay alive in a war zone and take some great videos, so I'll give him credit for that.
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Oct 30, 2011 18:00
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In regards to the hypothetical Turkey-Syria war, there basically is no parity. The Turkish armed forces are not only larger, but more importantly much more advanced and better trained than their Syrian counterparts. Aside from basically always having a better economy to equip the military, being a NATO member for 50 years, and one of the most strategically placed NATO members, has its advantages. Heck just look at the difference in military spending: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spending.htm Syria on paper has a lot of armor, but a lot of it is old, wiki says it has around 1,000 T-72s as it'a main battle thank, of which 100 something were upgraded by an Italian firm. God knows how many of them are actually running. Also Turkey hasn't face many defections from military units during ongoing mass protests against their government.
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Nov 1, 2011 20:27
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Question on Tunisia, as we all know, since a moderate Islamic party won the elections, Tunisia will soon have Sharia law. But no to be serious, until Ennahda does something to prove otherwise, given Tunisia's relative liberalism I'll assume they will in fact try to model themselves after the AKP in Turkey.(which last I heard hadn't even been able to lift the ban on headscarves in government buildings). But I was looking at the election results here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunisian_Constituent_Assembly_election,_2011 And while Ennahda obviously got the largest share of the votes, it seems the various other parties in all their political views appear to be secular at least in regards to religion(at least by what wiki says), and together they hold a slim majority. So it seems to kind of nullify the fears people were already having despite nothing having happened yet. So basically as is normal, people are freaking out over nothing?
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Nov 8, 2011 16:37
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Apparently I've lost some of my violence desensitivity. I remember watching the Pearl beheading back in 10th or 11th grade and getting through it. I made it about 2 seconds into this before pausing.
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Nov 9, 2011 19:01
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Brown Moses posted:Caro has finally made it to Mathaba.net Never thought I'd be defending Caro but I swear to god if these pro-Gaddafi people try to spam caro's youtube or anything to the point he takes down the videos I'm going to be so pissed. They are legitimately fascinating and better than any normal news source can provide.
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Nov 10, 2011 05:28
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ThePutty posted:More and more footage is coming out showing opposition soldiers vs government soldiers in Syria, so at this point a Libyan style Civil War is proabably inevitable. I just hope our western governments support the right side. They won't. Russia will never allow a UN resolution to go through and the US isn't going into any conflict until at least post 2012 election, which would leave Britain and France by themselves to institute any kind of intervention/coalition. Though to my knowledge Sarkozy has an election coming up so that basically leaves Britain.
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Nov 11, 2011 20:13
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farraday posted:I think that covers most of the major points... oh, also Brown Moses daughter was born, so you should offer congrats on that. I forgot this even happened. Now I just find it even more ridiculous how Brown Moses can near solely provide us with quite possibly the best collection of up to date information on the Arab spring better than any actual news site while also raising a new born. BM do you ever sleep? but yeah as summed up, poo poo is hosed up and bullshit in the Arab world beyond what we could ever imagine. However Arabs when given the chance has proven to what are possibly the best protesters in the world, and in one case, soldiers. If you like seeing dictators fall and inspiring people power stories, this is the best thread.
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Nov 13, 2011 04:35
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http://www.aljazeera.com/video/middleeast/2011/11/2011111352513127803.html Syrian army defectors are now getting some heavy arms
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Nov 13, 2011 17:44
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Arab pressure steps up on Syria, this time from a neighbor http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15723023 quote:Jordan's king calls on Syria's Assad to step down
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Nov 14, 2011 19:15
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http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/11/17/the_grim_toll_of_syria_s_violence?page=0,2 This graph I thought put numbers into perspective. About as many Syrians have currently died in 8 months of violence as American soldiers who died in 8 years of war.
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Nov 18, 2011 07:13
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