Frozen Horse posted:

I'm going to reverse my earlier optimism about Quaddafi's chances for pulling off a soft landing. I'm also going to predict that the army is going to react poorly to foreign mercenaries attacking their countrymen. Maybe I'm a soft westerner, but $30,000 wouldn't be enough for it to be worth it to get shot by the Libyan army.

Slantedfloors posted:

A couple more and they got a basketball team. They can be the new Washington Generals.

Mad Doctor Cthulhu posted:

I'll give it more one country to topple before we go that far. But Saudi Arabia getting involved in everybody's affair is going to be very interesting. If anything, capitalism as a concept is getting a good beating here: these protests are basically going against the corruption inherent in the system that a lot of people globally can relate to.

Astrolite posted:

Driving them is pretty easy. Firing the main gun would be a bit more difficult, unless it's a very old model.

Nenonen posted:

Ah, well in that case...

Actually that might be made into an interesting scenario. Muammar could rig a few oil tankers with explosives and then send them to the coasts of Spain, France, Italy and Greece, then demand EU to quell the uprisings or the tankers will blow up. <strokes the white cat>

Xandu posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JosiAgoiWow

Weapon used against protesters in Benghazi.

The Brown Menace posted:

Ok, taking bets now.

$5 says he left for Venezuela.

Samurai Sanders posted:

I didn't even know that you could point anti-aircraft guns at targets on the ground. Or can the protesters fly?

Boner Slam posted:

Here is one of these anti-air weapons in action.
Imagine this beeing fired at people holy poo poo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUUeqSseERo&feature=related




gently caress literally everything

Toplowtech posted:

berserker posted:

This picture is much funnier if you imagine that instead of them going in for a handshake, they are in the process of a much more elaborate handshake, and are currently about to do the "backhand slap".

Xandu posted:

Why not?

Vladimir Putin posted:

If the UN is going to institute a no fly zone, then what it's really doing is asking the US air force to shoot down Libyan planes. Because honestly, no other country has the capability to do it on such short notice.

Vladimir Putin posted:

This is absolutely true. Whoever is enforcing the no fly zone needs to be willing to bomb ground targets when they get painted by radar or fired on from the ground.

Young Freud posted:

So, that would mean that those Libyan AA guns would 1) not be chopping up large numbers of protesters and 2) be blown the gently caress up, preventing them from chopping up large numbers of protesters.

I see no problem with this.

Nenonen posted:

They do have tanker planes, like all of the main NATO countries. But I'm not sure how well prepared they would be for such a mission on a short notice for an undefined period of time. Jet fighters require continuous maintenance, it's no good to declare a no-fly zone if after a week all planes are grounded due to wear and tear.

Vladimir Putin posted:

Talk of the details of a no fly zone is kind of pointless, I've just realized. China and/or Russia would never let it pass the Security Council. They're too afraid of the precedent they will set when one day they might be blowing up their own protesting citizens. Russia, maybe not, but China is probably looking at all of this and taking notes for the future.

Kaymaster posted:

According to this, Libya does have a somewhat capable air defense network, including a few SA-5s that could prove dangerous, but the question is how well integrated are they and how many of the Early Warning and Engagement Radars actually work. They do have some heavy equipment, but without the possibility of an operational SA-20, tactical SEAD shouldn't be a problem for just about any modern Air Force. You hit the few EW radars and fire control center vans they have operational and you pretty much take-out their entire SAM network, minus a few line-of-sight SAMs that may be manned. Stay above a certain altitude and MANPADS shouldn't be a problem.

I'm a nerd.

Brown Moses posted:

Keeping Up With The Gaddafis

Slantedfloors posted:

Bonus points if the Series finale ends like a mix of the Sopranos and Ceausescu.

Xandu posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65-VzR3GZbo

I couldn't pick up all of it, but they're discussing a mercenary tank and showing off bottles of (supposedly) alcohol taken from the tank and showing off a uniform.

http://imgur.com/9b3SH

BIG HORNY COW posted:

those things in the middle are, I believe, canisters from smoke launcher

Celexi posted:

I doubt he was always insane, at least on this picture when he was younger he does "appear" to be normal:

Pine Cone Jones posted:

From the Al Jazeera live blog, how true this is i do not know, but I hope for the peoples sake this isn't the truth.

Jack Napier posted:

Asianews.it (reliable?) is saying that North Korea is having a few protests, the first in Kim's history, due to the food shortage :x

http://www.asianews.it.nyud.net/news-en/First-public-protests-against-the-Kims%E2%80%99-regime-20861.html


So, uh. Yeah?

Narmi posted:

I remember seeing a piece on the news awhile ago that showed how NK intelligence officers in charge of monitoring the south tended to defect once they learned just how bad their lives were. They even tried to join the south's army, but weren't allowed, and ended up forming their own little militia, ready to make war with their former home.

quote:

Speaking at the United Nations Security Council, Choi Young-jin, representing South Korea, said that after eight days of interrogation in South Korea, she was permitted to see a film of life in the country on a television screen, and realized that "life ... on the streets of Seoul was entirely different from what she had been led to believe. She began to realize that what she had been told while living in the North was totally untrue."[9] Kim then "threw herself into the arms of a female investigator" and confessed to the bombing.[9] In Korean, she said, "Forgive me. I am sorry. I will tell you everything,"[9] and said that she had been "exploited as a tool for North Korean terrorist activities", and made a detailed and voluntary confession.[9]

EskimoFreeState posted:

It's really a bummer that they have smuggled Chinese cell phones, but (if I'm reading this correctly) have to live/be within 10 km of the border to communicate with anyone. I assume that if you live farther south and the government keeps seeing you commute 200 miles out of your way twice a week, they're gonna get suspicious.

Better than nothing, I suppose.

Mr Plow posted:

I just read a news report that South Korea has been dropping leaflets over North Korea about the revolutions in the middle east.

TheDamien posted:

Wth, there's a place called Tataoine?! Also it looks like aaw901 is circling.

Brown Moses posted:

So Gaddifi apparently said this in his speech:

Patter Song posted:

Just a quick point about N. Korea, because I know it's a digression, but it's been talked about a lot here. Whatever respect Kim himself has will not necessarily transfer to his son (and, by all accounts, isn't transferring very well). There's a more than decent chance that the DPRK's military will decide after KJI's death that they don't want to be ruled by a roly-poly, imbecilic fellow in his mid-20s and organize a coup and a military regime. Whether that'd be an improvement is a tough question, but it'd be a hell of a change.

cioxx posted:

If they shoot down a single plane they'll probably give the NFZ enforcers to carpet bomb Gaddafi's installations.

The conspiracy theorist in me says that's exactly what they're going for.

Xandu posted:

In case anyone forget, tomorrow is the 8th anniversary of the Iraq War.

Jut posted:

Is there really any need to be taking out air defense and bases? Is CQ still using them? if not is it really risking collateral damage?
I would have thought that the UN forces would pretty much be safe from CQ's air defenses without having to blow them up.

Slantedfloors posted:

Are you talking about the fictional US-Israel-Iran-Al Queda plot to give Libyans riot pills, or has one of the Al-Queda affiliates in North Africa shown support the revolution? Because it turned out that a bunch of those affiliates are drug dealers looking for a tough reputation.

Koesj posted:

AJE showing festive rebels on a captured SA-8 mobile SAM launcher, expect blue-on-blue (green on blue? ) fire very soon.