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Chortles posted:Don't forget that Assassin's Creed was about a Syrian Arab shanking Europeans and some Arabs along the way. Who was conspicuously both white and the only person in the Middle East with an American accent. At least they fixed that in Assassin's Creed 2. That said, I agree with the notion. It'd be a huge step forward to see some heroic Arabs in popular media nowadays.
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Sep 2, 2011 07:22
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quote:When I asked whether, in his opinion, Lindauer could have been recruited by an intelligence service, he paused for a long time before he responded. ''I would say that's a hard question to answer. If you're looking at it from the standpoint of an intelligent intelligence agency, absolutely not. She'd be the worst person you could ever recruit. If you're looking at it from the standpoint of my knowledge of Mideast intelligence services, are they dumb enough to recruit her, the answer is yes.'' Clearly he's in on the NATO rape murder parties that only she knows about.  The worst part is that I keep seeing her page linked in comments sections on news stories. Do you think that Ghaddafi has the funds and/or intelligence to hire people to post pro-regime propaganda on western sites, China style? Maybe Russia is helping, considering Russia Today's pro-regime stories. 
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Sep 3, 2011 02:43
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quote:Agreed, this is probably the most fascinating information free for all I've seen given its inherent ability to implicate pretty much every major international player in some shady poo poo. I'm honestly not that shocked or surprised by the shady poo poo that organizations like the CIA or MI:6 pull off. What bothers me is when people point at it and say "See! See! The West is just as underhanded and bad as Qaddafi!" in response to the information. Every nation has a shitload of dirty laundry that's kept under wraps, and these revelations don't change the horrors that Qaddafi committed. It could hurt Britan and the USA's relations with the rebels, but I think that shady black ops campaigns committed during the War on Terror are trumped by NATO basically carrying the rebels to victory in their revolution in terms of how the rebels view the west.
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Sep 3, 2011 19:28
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Tortilla Maker posted:I believe the NYT had an interview piece with him. He basically said that he understood the American position at the time, forgave the Americans, and denounced al-Qaeda as their "global" war had no place in the goals and aspirations of a free Libya. He also said the revolution was a collective movement and no group or ideology should attempt to take credit. Interesting read. Is this it? http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/02/world/africa/02islamist.html?pagewanted=all NY Times posted:In Bangkok, Mr. Belhaj said, he was tortured for a few days by two people he said were C.I.A. agents, and then, worse, they repatriated him to Libya, where he was thrown into solitary confinement for six years, three of them without a shower, one without a glimpse of the sun. There's more in the article, where he does denounce Al Qaeda and says he doesn't want anything to do with them, and that he understands the West's reaction considering the 9/11 attacks. Very good read, although it'll be interesting to see if it's just lip-service to keep the bombs dropping or if he actually means it. quote:When maintenance of power is your ruling ideology you can be very flexible in your friendships. You could question if that sort of extreme pragmatism which could carry over from Qaddafi regime holdovers into the new state would be helpful in maintaining Libyan sovereignty in the face of presumed Western Imperialistic designs. Sort of like you implied with your previous post, it seems like one of the primary means that dictators use to hold onto power is by focusing their people's attention outward rather than inward, which explains why people like Kim-Jong il are constantly talking about how The West is gonna get you unless you support Great Leader. It really does hinge on how well the NTC can keep its word, if it can turn the general attitude of the people from "Other nations are potential enemies" into "other nations are potential friends as well." Fojar38 fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Sep 3, 2011 |
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Sep 3, 2011 21:59
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quote:So much for Belhaj being OK with it: I'm actually fine with this. The fact that he's demanding inquiries and threatening to sue is a step forward from demanding blood and threatening jihad. It's when he does those things that we should be worried. I say, let him sue the British and American governments. That's the sort of process that a new, democratic Libya should be supporting.
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Sep 6, 2011 04:22
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Young Freud posted:Has she explained her period of absence from the internet between the Rixos and Malta? Kidnapped and brutally interrogated by a giant hairy American British French Canadian Italian NATO rape mercenary. She barely escaped with her life!
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Sep 7, 2011 00:44
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quote:I'm sure they convinced roughly no-one with that amazingly retarded statement. Who thought that was a good lie? I'm sure that Lizzie is furiously writing down this obviously objective and unbiased source, and we'll be seeing it cited by morons in news comments sections before the week is over.
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Sep 15, 2011 01:43
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Scaramouche posted:Man where's the Canada love? We sent... a guy. According to Wikipedia, we sent: Wikipedia posted:Royal Canadian Air Force[17] So yeah, Canada did participate quite a bit, although not quite as much as Britain, France, and the US. Besides, those three nations are much higher profile. I doubt that Rebel media had "Canada pledges to help fight for the revolution!" in their headlines. Which does sorta suck. It'd be nice to see a bunch of foreigners going "Canada is awesome!" when we help out for once. Most of the Dutch don't even remember that it was Canada who liberated them in WWII. They think it was the Americans.  Amused to Death posted:I actually remember seeing a Canadian flag being waved around in Benghazi during celebrations a few weeks ago. I remember that it's flying in Benghazi alongside the rest of the NATO flags, but I don't recall it being waved around in celebration. 
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Sep 16, 2011 05:03
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WHOLE DIK AND NUTS posted:Ghadaffi will probably lead resistance in the Southern desert along with the Tuareg tribes living there. He may not have treated them well, but money talks and he still has a poo poo load of it. Given that the NTC has trouble capturing the last few Ghadaffi strongholds, they will have a rough go of it in the largely inhospitable southern desert, especially against well armed Taureg tribesmen. If Libya360 is to be believed, he'll do it by pulling out a ninja sword and sprinting across the desert at mach speed, slicing up NATO special forces and African Mercenaries Matrix style. He'll occasionally do backflip kicks to deflect NATO missiles that rebound and blow up the planes and ships that fire them. When he reaches the border he'll shoryuken Charles Bouchard in the jaw while the masses of totally-not-rebelling Libya cheer him on. Fojar38 fucked around with this message at 05:27 on Sep 27, 2011 |
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Sep 27, 2011 05:21
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Warcabbit posted:http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-obamas-war-room-20111013?print=true That was a really good read. And I'm glad that Obama told Congress to go screw themselves on this one. The last thing that we needed was that bipartisan bickering bullshit that they can't seem to get around stalling any action while Benghazi burns.
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Oct 20, 2011 02:04
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OwlBot 2000 posted:I'm glad the people of Libya didn't get just brutally slaughtered, but I can't say I'm glad we've got moderate-to-left leaning people (I'm assuming you're not a George W. Bush style neocon, Fojar38) thinking the executive branch ignoring checks and balances and telling other branches to "go screw themselves." That's Cheney-talk. Moderate to left leaning actually describes my stance pretty well, but looking at the state of Congress and the Senate right now, it would've inevitably been drawn out into a stupid Right vs. Left debate and by the time any action was actually decided upon then it would've been too late. Obama was in between a rock and a hard place, but the facts that were laid out before him were pretty clear that waiting for congressional approval would have resulted in a massacre at Benghazi. He did the right thing here.
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Oct 20, 2011 02:28
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AllanGordon posted:Are you forgetting who had the lead in NATO operations in Libya began? Gotta agree here. The Europeans and Canadians are crucial to the effort in Libya in that they supply a good chunk of the manpower and training (including Special Forces and in the case of Europe, air bases), but the US has the most equipment and power from which it can call on, all conveniently located in the region already. The rest of NATO could've neutralized Ghaddafi's forces no doubt, but the question is how quickly they could do it, and to do so in the necessary timeframe the US had to be involved. This is one of the first truly NATO operations we've seen in a while. The US couldn't have done it alone, but neither could the rest of NATO either, I think.
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Oct 20, 2011 06:36
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ThePutty posted:From articles, it seems like the Syrians want NATO to intervene so they can get together an armed force. The problem seems to be mobilizing them and getting together because of the mass crackdown. NATO issuing a No-Fly Zone would essentially blow up the powder keg with the lit fuse, that's inevitably going to blow up down the line. Better to have Syria on your side rather then hate you and condemn the west for not intervening. The problem with Syria is that their armed forces are effective enough that airstrikes alone wouldn't do enough. NATO would have to get ground forces involved and that's just not going to happen.
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Oct 20, 2011 23:55
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Canadians can watch the Fifth Estate episode about Ghaddafi now. Ghaddafi was a very, very bad man. There's footage here that I'm not sure has been released to the public before. http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2011-2012/gadhafi/
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Oct 21, 2011 05:51
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HoveringCheesecake posted:I'm not sure. There's a video in the D&D thread where they beat the tar out of him after the pull him out of the culvert. Someone elsewhere thought they might have ripped his left ear off in the process. I agree that they should admit what they did, but I don't think that they should be judged for it any harder than if a bunch of Soviet soldiers found Hitler in the invasion of Berlin and executed him after beating the tar out of him would be judged for it. Yeah, it's bad that due process wasn't observed, but it's not like there's a chance that Ghaddafi was innocent here and I doubt that the Libyans would be satisfied with him spending the rest of his days in a cushy Belgian cell.
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Oct 21, 2011 07:38
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Nenonen posted:They and their officers would have faced a fate worse than death, the wrath of Stalin. In a regular army, you don't just go murdering important prisoners like the enemy head of state on your own initiative, no matter if you like them or not. The Libyan fighters on the other hand are not much better principled than your local Hells Angels section. Fair point, but I was thinking more along the lines of whether or not it's understandable or expected. A disciplined army may have been a bad example, but as you pointed out the Rebels aren't a disciplined army. They're a group of civilians with weak training who picked up guns and began fighting. I was personally expecting this to occur if it was the Rebels who found Ghaddafi, because they made it clear that they want Ghaddafi dead. The fact that people are shocked that the rebels killed him in turn shocks me.
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Oct 21, 2011 08:35
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I wonder if the "NATO is evil and killed thousands of civilians" crowd has realized that not only is that not true, but that it doesn't matter now. Who am I kidding, of course they haven't. How long can we expect to see videos on Youtube about "NATO atrocities" like a grievously injured child whose injuries have nothing to do with NATO? I'm starting to think that a good number of these posters might be being paid by the Russian/Chinese governments. There's no way there can be that many stupid people on the internet.
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Oct 29, 2011 09:43
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Mr. Self Destruct posted:First of all even just the initial cruise missile strikes were confirmed to have killed numerous innocent civilians, second of all how do you know it isn't true. Third of all why the gently caress wouldn't it matter if it was? You don't give a poo poo about civilian lives? I can't think of a single justifiable reason for letting a crime like that go without detection or punishment. Just because you can't go back in time doesn't mean it isn't important for preventing future atrocities, such apathy is ridiculous. That's not what I said. I said that continuing to spout propaganda about the evils of NATO in Libya after the intervention has ended and Ghaddafi has been defeated strikes me as pointless. It's one thing to try and deter support for NATO within NATO nations like Ghaddafi's propaganda machine was attempting to do throughout the war, it's another to continue those long after Ghaddafi has fallen and NATO is about to withdraw. And that's if that report is even true, which I find highly unlikely considering how often it was proven that Ghaddafi's supporters were lying through their teeth. Even reporters who were anti-intervention could see that all the "evidence" the regime was showing them were false. In fact, as far as those videos are concerned, the only proof that I noticed was that someone had put "NATO" and "Obama" in the title. Granted, I didn't watch the whole video because I'm not in the mood to see people with their jaws shot off, but I'd like to see more evidence of these "NATO atrocities" beyond Ghaddafi supporters telling me that they totally happened before I start condemning NATO as an evil nazi fascist imperial monstrous regime.
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Oct 30, 2011 03:03
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etalian posted:The only question is when the republican whine-a-thon and pout campaign will end. Here, let me check that for you. http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/10/31/nato-libya-mission-ends.html Some fucktard posted:They took on responsibility in Libya because Libya has oil and they want control of it ! 88 Thumbs Up. Nope.
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Nov 1, 2011 01:02
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J33uk posted:Not exactly a surprise, at least to anyone who's had their ear to the ground on this stuff. The entire Syrian reaction to the Israeli raid was the biggest heads up that it was actually a nuclear site. That said god drat did AQ Khan really hustle on selling out. I've always assumed that pretty much every dictator in the developing world has wet dreams over owning a huge cache of nukes that puts everyone under their thumb, including those pesky western governments. It should come as no surprise that Assad is/was trying to develop nukes. The problem is that cheap dictatorships like his aren't usually very compatible with scientific development, leading to endless failure and the occasional pathetic "success" like we saw in North Korea.
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Nov 2, 2011 02:59
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Shut up and JAM! posted:You are delusional if you think this isolated incident is going to end in any other way than a bloody crackdown. Tragically, this is most likely. We're going to see the Chinese Army burst in with machine guns and tanks, and it will be crushed. As much as I'd like to see this as the beginning of the end of totalitarian rule in China, it isn't. China has a track record of really not loving around when it comes to stuff like this.
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Dec 14, 2011 23:07
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Zedsdeadbaby posted:Didn't one of the Knesset ministers say recently that there's only a few months left to go before any such attack would be ultimately fruitless? I think that this is ultimately blowing hot air. Israel has several times the military ability that Iran has and short of Iran literally building a bomb and an effective delivery mechanism overnight any war between Iran and Israel, especially with American support on the Israeli's side will likely end in a decisive Israeli victory barring intervention from the Norse Gods. The real problem here is that it would cost many lives, tons of money, destabilize the region, and while Russia and China probably wouldn't stick their necks out for Iran when push comes to shove it would hurt their respective relations with the west. The problems are less physical and more abstract.
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Aug 15, 2012 21:54
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Alchenar posted:How exactly is Israel supposed to exert it's military capacity against Iran? I'm not familiar with its true military capacity and I don't think that anyone aside from the Israeli government is. I'll admit that I'm speaking largely from speculation but considering Israel's nationwide siege mentality and horrendously bad relationship with their neighbours I wouldn't be surprised if they had a plan for everything. Of course, Iran probably has a plan for Israel as well. It'll be largely an air war and a test of Israel's ability to defend from missile attacks. As far as completing military objectives though, Israel would have the advantage no matter what its comparative military strength is. Israel's objective would be to disable the Iranian nuclear capacity. This can be accomplished without a large ground-war or even any strikes against Iranian population centres or fortified positions (unless of course they got in the way of the strikes, which is likely.) Iran's objective here would be, what? Stop Israel from destroying its nuclear facilities? How? They could exact a toll on the Israeli population but unless it has decisive air superiority over the IAF those nuclear facilities are hosed either way. Keep in mind I'm not arguing in favor of war, I'm arguing against it being militarily unfeasible from an Israeli perspective.
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Aug 15, 2012 22:08
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Alchenar posted:And at this point I'm arguing that you're spouting complete nonsense that's apparent to anyone who glances at a map. What aspect of Iran's geographical location specifically do you think is a difficult or insurmountable obstacle in an Israeli air campaign?
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Aug 16, 2012 02:25
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Saint Celestine posted:I would imagine the Israeli's would have a plan for dealing with the S-300 if it did get deployed? I assume so, cause of their track record dealing with state of the art SAM systems, like in the Bekaa valley back in the day? According to my plebeian understanding of modern military tactics you deal with serious anti-air defenses by either capturing it on the ground, hitting it with long range missiles, or simply swarm it. None of them are particularly feasible without either casualties on the attackers or casualties among civilians. A single S-300 battery can be pretty easily dealt with by a western force but not without incurring civilian casualties (particularly since it's Soviet tech and NATO has trained to fight Soviet tech since forever.) If I'm being a dumbass then someone please correct me.
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May 28, 2013 22:04
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Charliegrs posted:I wonder if part of the reason that Russia is so staunchly defending Syria is because Russia is just sick of losing allies to the west? Back during the cold war, Russia had influence over many parts of the world but it seems like that has slowly eroded away and they have never really regained any friends. Like Egypt, once they made peace with Israel they left the Soviet side and gladly took US military aid to keep the peace. After the Cold war ended, Russia lost a lot of territories like East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Georgia etc. Many of which switched sides and even joined NATO. The US took out Saddam Hussein, a valuable Russian arms purchaser. And NATO helped end Gaddafi's regime, another arms purchaser. Also Russia lost it's ally in the Balkans Sloban Milosevic. This is basically VladmirPutinsRussia.txt. Russia is still trying to act like it's the cold war and that they are a superpower. quote:“We have strategic weapons and we’re capable of responding,” he said. “Normally the strategic weapons are aimed at Israel.” It's like we time warped back to 2011 when Ghadaffi was threatening to start WW3 if NATO intervened in Libya.
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Aug 27, 2013 04:48
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Blackbird Fly posted:The answer is above you, on the post with the picture of the Shia cleric about to get killed. Russia won't engage in war if there is intervention. It makes more sense to bleed the US over Syria then start WW3. Like a LOT more sense. Assad is not worth world annihilation. WW3 is not going to happen, especially not over this.
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Aug 27, 2013 05:00
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Ardennes posted:I don't know if I would rely on world opinion being with the US necessarily. I too believe that the content of GBS and D&D is an accurate measure of how the world views the US.
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Aug 27, 2013 05:27
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Ahahahaha
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Jul 15, 2016 22:54
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