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Is there any good resource on what's happening in Libya post-Gaddafi? I've been told its on the verge of a sectarian civil war.
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Jul 24, 2012 08:41
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Brown Moses posted:The Libya Herald is a good English language news site for Libya. I think anyone saying it's on the verge of a sectarian civil war is maybe over-egging things a bit. Thanks. I was just curious as to how things have turned out because information on Libya has completely dried up on the news sources I usually visit.
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Jul 24, 2012 08:56
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Any good articles, blogs or resources on what's going on in Iraq these days? I don't mean just the news about the recent bomb attacks, but the current power structure, tensions, relative stability of different regions, the activities of any remaining US advisors, stuff in that vein.
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Aug 18, 2012 18:35
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That gets me too. I thought US embassies were highly guarded near fortresses in volatile countries.
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Sep 12, 2012 12:30
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Libyan government officials claiming that these were organized by 'cells of the former government'. Seems weird, I thought Gaddafi was secular and not particularly linked with religious extremists?
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Sep 12, 2012 12:58
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Mirthless posted:I am in the same boat. Right now I would be perfectly happy if we just air dropped some tanks at the south end of Libya and didn't stop until the whole goddamn nation was a parking lot. As far as I'm concerned, the people of Libya have lost all legitimacy in their new nation. Every time a secular government falls apart in the middle east it gets replaced with fanatics who turn to murder at every opportunity. It pisses me off too when the US drone murders pakistani villagers but I don't call for America to get turned into a parking lot. Most Libyans following the liberation from Gaddafi are pro-America, so this is a really stupid post.
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Sep 12, 2012 14:16
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Happydayz posted:There are also unconfirmed photos of the Ambassador's corpse being dragged through the streets. Someone else posted that Clinton said those were pictures of him being taken to the hospital.
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Sep 12, 2012 22:41
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The Mic posted:I consider myself mildly left of center, and this is worth requoting multiple times. I loathe the tendency of some on the left to not exactly defend, but spin or equivocate these incidents by trotting out some atrocity committed by the West. There's a caveat in that you'd never see the same level of grief and outrage around here or in the west in general when it's muslim civilians getting murdered by the USA.
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Sep 13, 2012 21:15
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Habitual Quitter posted:The Taliban is absolutely a functional organization. I'm not sure why you would think otherwise. It will remain that way as long as Pakistan is next door to Afghanistan. And as long as the US government continues to fund Pakistan and the ISI. It still puzzles me why the US continues to supply an organization that is involved in attacks on their own soldiers.
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Sep 14, 2012 05:46
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SilentD posted:India, that's why Pakistan funds them, and we are hosed either way. We need to fund Pakistan to buy influence, Pakistan needs to fund the Taliban because of India and that region is lawless. I don't think it's that simple; Pakistani meddling in the country began with the need to fight off the Soviets, and probably established a network of useful contacts which led to the formation of the Taliban. In the civil war preceding them taking power, they essentially burst out of nowhere and were extremely well funded and trained despite having no one related to any of the big players in Afghanistan up to that point. Most Afghans I know believe they were set up as a means of controlling Pakistan's own Pashtun population by making sure their neighbour was a puppet government that would never raise any issues along the border. None of this had anything to do with India. On the one hand you have Pakistan willingly collaborating with the CIA to allow America to drone strike and murder Pakistani citizens, women and children included, and on the other hand they fund and supply the people attacking US troops in Afghanistan. It's just a bizarre status quo to keep killing people on the ground like that and butchering innocents along the way while continuing to indirectly fund the Taliban with American money.
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Sep 14, 2012 07:02
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Saint Celestine posted:And so forth. Its back and forth on number of civilian casualties, but the drone strikes certainly aren't taking out entire weddings and poo poo, and it looks like they've been an effective tool in killing actual terrorists. The same article you linked states anywhere from 400 to 800 civilians killed, including 176 children. Out of 3000 deaths. Sick k:d ratio, I guess they were all terrorist children? It's loving telling that in the same thread showing anger over the killing of 4 people can casually dismiss many times that number of innocent people elsewhere dying because the latter aren't Americans. mila kunis fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Sep 14, 2012 |
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Sep 14, 2012 19:24
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AllanGordon posted:Probably actually. Enemy combatants hide out with their families quite often leading to unfortunate casualties when they're taken out. Go gently caress yourself. Apparently all the anguish over the sanctity of life and senseless murder only applies when it's Americans on the receiving end of it.
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Sep 14, 2012 19:35
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PT6A posted:No, if terrorists hide out with their family and friends in order to use them as human shields, it's still their fault when their family dies. It's regrettable, but that's what happens when combatants do not abide by the rules of war and hide in civilian areas. Everyone's a terrorist, murder all the children. Space Gopher posted:Why is that an acceptable tactic? If someone fighting the US got a bomb into on-base housing to kill a US soldier and their family, would you say that the victims were "unfortunate casualties" of a legitimate operation to "take out an enemy combatant?" It's not terrorism when the US murders civilians, only vice versa. The hundreds of thousands of people in the muslim world dead at American hands are meaningless, because the lives of Arabs and Afghans and Pakistanis are worth nothing.
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Sep 14, 2012 19:49
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Mans posted:I kind of agree, there's an history thread and a military history thread, both of which are much better to discuss this. This isn't history, this is current events?
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Sep 14, 2012 20:12
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PT6A posted:And the alternative is what? To allow these bits of human filth to wage war with impunity by hiding behind women and children? As long as they continue to disregard the rules of warfare by trying to blend in with civilians as a tactic, they do not deserve all of the protections that derive from the rule they are breaking. They are the ones putting their families and friends at risk of death. The reason these protests and attacks on american embassies are spreading everywhere is because the koran burning and mohammed insulting is just the straw breaking the camels back on top of the piles of dead created by your country's hands. You cheerfully characterize every single civilian killed by the US as a 'bit of human filth' and absolve away the crime of the murders of women and children from their actual loving murderers, the only filth here is you. The right wingers who honestly state that they don't care about ragheads or whatever you call it dying are in a way more refreshing than the hypocritical shitheads talking about freedom and democracy and the sanctity of human life when it's clear that it doesn't really matter to them.
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Sep 14, 2012 20:31
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ryan8723 posted:War is and always was about exploiting any advantage you have over the enemy be they geographical, personnel, training or technology. This is how it has always been and how it always will be. There is no such thing as an even playing field in war. This isn't about even playing fields or whatever the hell you're talking about, it's about the killings of civilians. Anyone even posting a mild variant on the horrible poo poo PT6A was saying about it being fine that civilians are being killed would be permabanned here if they said it about vile rat or other americans.
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Sep 14, 2012 20:42
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HiroProtagonist posted:Yet you're doing the same thing, by categorizing broad swaths of people under a single label and justifying your righteous outrage at the injustice of it all. Have you read a single thing I've said. US drone operators are a 'broad swath of people'?  I am 'righteously outraged' over women and children being murdered by drone strikes, thank you for pointing out my severe case of Care over it. Maybe you should tell the people getting angry over the attacks on the embassies that they're being overly emotional too.
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Sep 14, 2012 21:00
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iyaayas01 posted:Erecting strawmen and refusing to acknowledge that there might be methodological concerns with this study makes it that much harder for those of us who actually have serious problems with the U.S. drone campaign but who also recognize that UAVs aren't literal godless killing machines that do nothing but intentionally kill babies and puppies. I understand that North Waziristan is not going to be the easiest place to conduct any sort of rigorous social science study, for a whole variety of reasons, but the proper way to address that is to acknowledge that shortcoming while you make your point, not going They did acknowledge those shortcomings in the study, referencing the logistical impossibility of traveling into Waziristan and having to rely on shuttling in people from there to interview - in addition there's been several interviews conducted with people other than Pashtun villagers, including members of the press, government officials and politicians, doctors operating in the area etc. Acknowledging shortcomings though is a far cry from the responses here asserting the paper lacks any credibility at all, from the braindead character assassination of people risking retribution to give firsthand accounts of living under US terrorism as "the equivalent of asking a cigarette manufacturer to provide people for a study on lung cancer" to questioning their 'bias' as 'self-selected anecdotes' from 'selected tribesmen' (ie people affected by the attacks); imagine asking friends and families of 9/11 victims how unbiased they are towards Al-Qaeda.
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Sep 27, 2012 10:55
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: "Well I guess you just think all brown people overseas are terrorists, typical American."
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Red7 posted:That literally is the The Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy's "Drone Attacks—A Survey" paper which has unfortunately disappeared from the internet. There might be a reason that it's disappeared: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/06/2011613931606455.html quote:As a matter of fact, the only known survey "on the ground in FATA" at the time was carried out by a "letterhead organisation" named the Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy whose conclusions can fairly be described as deeply unreliable and dubious. It claimed that 55 per cent of respondents in a survey it carried out in "parts of FATA that are often hit by American drones" (among which it curiously included Parachinar, which has never been hit and whose overwhelmingly Shia population is deeply hostile to the virulently anti-Shia Taliban) did not think that the attacks caused "fear and terror in the common people"; 52 per cent found them "accurate in their strikes"; and 58 per cent did not think they increased anti-Americanism.
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Sep 27, 2012 12:25
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Don't know if this was posted yet, but: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2012/11/201211416528796956.html RPG battles in Tripoli, carbombs in Benghazi. I hope the situation doesn't deteriorate.
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Nov 6, 2012 05:56
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http://www.libyaherald.com/2012/11/07/a-second-car-bomb-in-benghazi/ Another car bomb in Benghazi, and apparently it triggered a fight between the military and the police ?? I wish I had more resources on what's happening on the ground In Libya, but without a flareup like the embassy attack it seems everyone's lost interest in the country now that the war porn's over.
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Nov 9, 2012 18:35
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Forget the murdered Palestinians guys, here's the real victim: the markets http://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...73ac_story.html
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Nov 14, 2012 20:13
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So Iraq's still a shambles. Constant bomb blasts just this week (http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/02/201322815546843982.html, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/02/201322815546843982.html) and shootings. A sunni member of the cabinet got booted out recently as well. I wonder if there's a possibility of a reignited civil war; or what the general security situation is in the country. Is the government's control over sunni areas tenuous or actual?
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Mar 1, 2013 21:12
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ReV VAdAUL posted:That is pretty much how all US media portrays American foreign policy. If you don't follow US foreign policy/politics or generally benefit from it it would be easy to assume there is at least some truth to the fiction you watch. It creeps up everywhere like that idiot from earlier in the thread talking about how the US is still in Afghanistan because Baloogan posted:We're killing bad guys. , who I hope was being sarcastic.
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Jun 29, 2013 21:33
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Xandu posted:The opposition just accused the US and Muslim Brotherhood of working together against Egypt, too. What I find strange about Morsi is that apparently he's maintained good relations with the US and Israel (correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't been in the middle east for a while and I'm really out of the loop), maintaining the Gaza blockade even though it's run by a fellow Islamic organization? It seems like all the fervent young devout muslims these days hate america but get funneled into movements that cooperate with the US (outside of Iran), or further its interests like by destabilizing a regime hostile to it as in Syria. Funny that the Saudis are the strongest supporters of wahhabism in the world and also staunch US allies.
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Jun 29, 2013 21:48
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McDowell posted:As things become more chaotic Israel will have to be more aggressive in order to defend itself - creating more chaos as leader's reactions to Israel could produce more sovereignty crises. What? Israel's leaders are probably laughing their asses off at how little they have to do to maintain the status quo right now, arab civil wars and sectarian strife is exactly what they want. A divided arab world is one that could never challenge it on freeing Palestine. mila kunis fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Jun 30, 2013 |
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Jun 30, 2013 06:58
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N00ba the Hutt posted:I would really be very interested to see some of those matches. Something tells me that their usual "good guy/bad guy" relationships may be a wee bit different from those of the initial target audience. Haha I bet they root for the muslim caricatures in our movies too because they're scary and evil unlike us.
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Oct 2, 2013 10:05
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CharlestheHammer posted:The fact that this thread gets really, really bloodthirsty at the drop of a pin would be funny if it wasn't so creepy. I just want a decent thread where i can go to to find out whats going on without wading through lovely wannabe state department intern level analysis garbage and all the retards replying to it, this thread is unreadable
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Oct 21, 2014 04:18
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ascendance posted:No, no. I just want religious extremists on both sides to inflict horrendous casualties on each other, while leaving nice, secular socialists alone. Welcome to the Ba'ath party.
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Oct 22, 2014 15:23
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http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/10/22/world/africa/new-freedoms-in-tunisia-drive-support-for-isis.html?_r=0&referrer=quote:Mourad, 28, who said he held a master’s degree in technology but could find work only in construction, called the Islamic State the only hope for “social justice,” because he said it would absorb the oil-rich Persian Gulf monarchies and redistribute their wealth. “It is the only way to give the people back their true rights, by giving the natural resources back to the people,” he said. “It is an obligation for every Muslim.” These guys need to google Marx haha
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Oct 23, 2014 08:50
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ascendance posted:Thing is, we like the Kurds because they are plucky underdogs, who seem to like all the things we like - secularism, pluralism, free enterprise, equal rights for women, etc. The Kurds have everything from islamists (consider how many kurdish recruits ISIS has) to hardline leftists and are basically your average american patriot's worst nightmare. Also poo poo like honor killings and backwards tribalism is pretty rife among rural kurds. Female genital mutilation is still widely practiced, although obviously not by urban and educated kurds, and the Communists stamp it out where they have control. I really don't know how this idealized fantasy poo poo gets peddled because this group of sand warriors is at war with people the west doesn't like. Was this how the mujahideen got romanticized in the 80s? mila kunis fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Oct 24, 2014 |
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Oct 24, 2014 19:59
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Torpor posted:Who said anything about idealized? Are you incapable of reading?
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Oct 24, 2014 20:13
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ascendance posted:I got to say, I definitely like a bunch of hardline leftists way more than any muj. Hell, same. It's a shame the soviets lost.
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Oct 24, 2014 20:55
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Kurd cleansing of an arab village, reported by the Dutch government press. Here's a lovely machine translation: quote:Kurdish fighters in Iraq IS executing prisoners and revenge have at least one Arab village razed. That says a Kurdish commander in a report that Nieuwsuur broadcasts tonight. Human rights organization Human Rights Watch demands investigation.
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Oct 25, 2014 09:36
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Adar posted:If the mid-case outcome from supporting the Kurds is a slightly more religiously tolerant Libya-style tribal anarchy region and the mid-case from not doing it is literally mass crucifixions posted on Youtube, you know what, for once there's actually a greater evil and I'm okay with arbitrarily grading it as such. How are things in Libya these days anyway?
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Oct 25, 2014 18:26
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suboptimal posted:En Nahda had previously made concessions to secular parties, and they've accepted that their secular rivals won this election and conceded accordingly. Tunisia really is looking like the sole glimmer of hope here. RIP Egypt.
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Oct 28, 2014 06:02
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Israel is probably happy ISIS exists because sectarianism and poo poo that keeps their neighbors in chaos and fighting each other is great.
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Nov 20, 2014 19:17
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Poor kids, RIP. Hope this means the ISI will finally stop collaborating with the Afghan taliban, but fat chance.
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Dec 16, 2014 18:43
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A3th3r posted:Widespread starvation inside households in India, the southeast corner of the Middle East, is an enormous, desperate crisis. Oil exports bring cashflow & high status for those who are either willing&able to do work for themselves (the non-elderly), or are the type to recruit others to do this work for them. With that in mind, there is relatively little oil infrastructure in India given the abundant natural resources out in the nearby Indian Ocean and inside the official boundaries of the country. Cars are becoming increasingly prevalent among the richer half of the population in the region as guys rev their engines in order to impress girls. Indians are apparently unaware that anyone can mine oil if they mail some paperwork to the proper government office, have a $1million oil derrick, know where some oil is, & try to construct a $50 website. Universities in India probably just aren't on par with the top 100 in the world (the Ivy Leagues, Cambridge, Berkeley, etc) so maybe Indian students haven't learned that lesson in class. The country where Yoga exercise was invented can do better, especially since the 'Cloud City' of Delhi is risk-averse, starved for coherency & no one rules it. There are just various companies in it. Here is a map that shows the current status of oil resources in India. Isolated living Indians are subject to 'dinner table dramas' about the lack of food in the region when the resources to tentatively resolve the crisis are freely available for those in the know. Anyone else feel like this guy's posts come out of a random text generator.
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Dec 17, 2014 04:33
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I don't know much about Yemen, except for this article on the Houthis: http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21620284-are-they-ansar-houthis-take-over They don't seem all that bad? Legit grievances, treat other groups and opposition better than most in the middle east. Has that changed?
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Mar 26, 2015 08:49
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