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Brown Moses posted:Just put together another post, The Holy See And Senior Catholic Church Members Criticise Pro-Assad Clergy, all about lying nuns and fake bishops. I had a read of this and then had a look at this article containing this quote: quote:According to the Swiss newspaper Le Courrier, Agnès-Mariam was “comfortable among [Assad’s] security services,” and she told their reporter it was hoped he could “dismantle the propaganda of Western media.” And linking to this article in Le Courrier. The quote rather underplays the allegations, statements and inferences made by the article against Sister Agnès-Mariam. It's a description by two Swiss reporters of the their trip to Syria with Gilles Jacquier and his wife during which Gilles was killed. Sister Agnès-Mariam was the person who coordinated the trip and was the person who provided them with their Visas and was one of the people liaising with the Syrian Ministry of Information during their trip. She initially promised them free rein but then first insisted they had a specific translator with them at all times and also insisted that their movements be green-lit by the Information Ministry. She also orchestrated the trip to Homs during which Gilles was killed and had apparently threatened him with expulsion should he refuse to come along with the group. [edit] I found a translation online and it's all right. It's essentially accurate but some of the sections are moved around: http://www.ufppc.org/us-a-world-new...-operation.html The main bit about the nun is titled "WHAT GAME IS THE NUN AGNÈS-MARIAM PLAYING?". Munin fucked around with this message at 11:24 on Jun 29, 2012 |
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Jun 29, 2012 11:07
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Brown Moses posted:It's more to collect date to understand the level of equipment different regions have, and their improving abilities. I know, for example, only two brigade have B-10 recoilless rifles at the moment according to activists I've spoken to. So, if I were to come across a video of a B-10 somewhere else then I know to examine it more closely to confirm the location if possible, and if I can confirm the location it'll support the conclusion another region has acquired B-10's. This is getting towards the kind of stuff the military and intelligence agencies do. If well put together summarised and presented it would be a crowdsourced assessment of rebel general locations and capabilites for the Syrian regime. That said I would presume that they have better first hand information sources then a bunch of people on the internet who are thousands of kilometers away.
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Jun 29, 2012 16:13
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"Torture is bad and has bad results." More progressive than US politicians! 
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Jun 29, 2012 17:21
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Xandu posted:So how much Stella did Fisk have before he decided to open his column with Is there anyone else hinting that or is this just entirely Fisk being Fisk? If so is there any credibility to those rumours? I thought one of the success stories of the elections was how the various factions managed to get a good independent verification of the count?
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Jul 2, 2012 12:24
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Brown Moses posted:And perhaps Where is that sourced from? Interesting is true, especially if we get more detail about what the meeting was about and it was of an operational nature.
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Jul 18, 2012 14:49
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Brown Moses posted:From the Telegraph live blog: Man, there is indeed no cat big enough for that one. Well, we always knew that us westerners were a huge bunch of hypocrits. vv So it turns out that he wasn't that stable then.
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Jul 18, 2012 15:33
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Shadoer posted:Thinking assassination? Well, I am certain someone is thinking that.
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Jul 19, 2012 11:16
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Btw, is someone putting together a post of best practices for dealing with having UXO etc scattered all over your village/city quarter? The "don't do this" is nice and all but when the area you have to live in is riddled with them is there any constructive advice that can be given? I imagine that many of them would find it difficult to decamp somewhere else. Btw Alchenar, is there a story behind your new Avatar? I saw someone with the matching other half.
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Jul 23, 2012 13:08
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I find the stance taken by some of these German papers rather interesting. The FAZ is generally known for having pretty solid reporting. The same is the case with Die Welt and both are pretty right wing in their editorial outlook. They certainly didn't used to be to prone to general anti western sentiment. The fact that this was picked up by some CDU representatives is also interesting. It would be nice if someone in Germany could comment on the background for all this. I'm also rather curious how they'll respond to the work done by the Spiegel, which again has a solid reputation. It's amazing they managed to get someone in there to get first hand material.
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Jul 24, 2012 09:35
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Section 31 posted:Maybe you can ask this guy: Not sure how much he knows about what is driving editorial strategy in Germany. Actually I should have a read of some more of the coverage in these papers to check if those articles do reflect the general editorial stance or they are more the opinions held by specific columnists which are then generalised as the FAZ etc stance.
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Jul 24, 2012 13:13
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Btw, I can't remember that being mentioned in the thread but this FAZ story concludes with a mention that prisoners revolted in the central prison in Aleppo. It also states that they hadn't been able to obtain independent confirmation of this. Did this get mentioned by any other outlets and in what kind of states are the prisons and detention centers anyway with all the conflict going on. I'm sure some people would be interested in getting the political detainees held by the regime out. Maintaining control of the prisoners should also be rather more difficult. http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/arabische-welt/syrien-nationalrat-akzeptiert-uebergang-unter-assad-vertrautem-11830278.html
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Jul 25, 2012 09:39
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We might end up with a similar situation to Yemen as opposed to what we saw in Lybia.
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Jul 25, 2012 11:59
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What does the text say?
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Jul 26, 2012 15:09
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Zedsdeadbaby posted:That particular man personally cut the throats of many young children. The people were furious and rightly so. Is this substantiated? Why the gently caress would he do that?
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Jul 31, 2012 20:28
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McDowell posted:In my country we murder murderers I don't think anyone is surprised. Summary executions are indeed to be expected in many ways especially if the guy was as notorious as claimed. There is a distinct difference between "expected" and "the guy might very well have deserved this" and the kind of conduct we should be cheering about or talk about in approving tones.
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Jul 31, 2012 20:53
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McDowell posted:Neither am I. I'm just saying you really can't apply ethical judgements in this kind of situation. We have the Geneva Convention but there's a lovely precedent that it doesn't apply to irregular combatants. Why are you bringing up the fact that the legal framework of the Geneva convention does not apply here? Why are the ethics of the situation not something that can be discussed and weighed up? In any case one of the things that was being condemned was the reaction on these boards, which is very far away from the conflict itself.
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Jul 31, 2012 21:06
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Xandu posted:No, I just think killing this guy is a poor example of an atrocity. I have much bigger issues with forced sectarian-based population transfers (aka ethnic cleansing), holding up in civilian areas, and executing rank and file Syrian soldiers. What's happening to captured Syrian Soldiers is a huge issue. Especially since their even with the best will in the world the Rebels just plain don't have the infrastructure to detain people at the moment. And in many cases revenge is what is topmost in mind in anyway. There was a recent "From our own correspondent" piece covering that in passing this week. A school had been turned into a militia base and the "high risk" detainees had been locked into the school cupboards. (The piece is illustrated with the same photo as the one by Brown Moses.)
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Jul 31, 2012 22:36
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Brown Moses posted:I have no idea where the picture is from, they picked it themselves. In case you're curious: http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/fighters-from-the-syrian-opposition-rest-in-a-former-news-photo/149235732 Dated July 25 and provided by a photographer called Bulent Kilic. There are more in that series.
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Aug 1, 2012 00:08
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SexyBlindfold posted:normally this would make sense, but since the state media has been running with the "dangerous, violent extremists" angle for a while, I honestly can't see how actual atrocities or prominent signs of religious fanatics are going to have much of an effect on the position that the average Syrian is taking towards the conflict. most pro-Assad people are already fighting, most of those who side with the opposition won't give a poo poo, and most of those caught in-between won't really change their minds unless they get first-hand accounts of what happened, since they have no way of knowing if it's the real deal or yet another tall tale from SANA. Yeah, as bad as the execution of combatants and regime figures is, as long as we don't have widespread atrocities against civilians (i.e. widespread reprisals against Alawites, which seem to have been thankfully rare so far) or they start systematically executing regime soldiers the rebels should still be on top of the propaganda war. Obviously this is a sliding scale and the more executions we get, the more people will start to treat the FSA as Genocidaires. I don't think rumours of foreign fighters being around will have much of an impact. That canard has been wheeled out for every Arab Spring revolt so far and even with some foreign presence has yet to have much of an impact.
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Aug 1, 2012 09:40
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With only one source and no other corroboration then you can't treat it as confirmed or even solid. Generally in this thread people have waited for a report to come from more than one source or for there to be footage available which confirms the story. You're currently treating the NBC story as authoritative which without corroboration it isn't. It is laughable to treat it so with the amount of rumours flying about and the number of people with an agenda to push. The US *might" be supplying MANPADs to the rebels but that isn't something you can solidly claim with the only evidence being one account of the rebels having been supplied with MANPADs. It relies on a long chain of suppositions and heavily discounts the fact that other sources of them are out there especially considering the amount of looted arms in the region at the moment. The fact that someone was "preventing the importation of MANPADs" is also a supposition. The rebels have been pretty badly supplied for a while and generally have not been able to reliably source advanced equipment. As time goes on they've managed to leverage their better position on the ground into better support and logistics and a gradually improved stock of arms. Eventually a moment arrives where they manage to get access to certain weapons which they didn't manage to get hold of before. At each one of these moments you could pull the "someone was preventing them from gaining access to X and now they are allowing them some" card. However it is just a natural event which arises out of the situation at hand.
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Aug 2, 2012 13:02
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i poo poo trains posted:Yeah and if it turns out that one of the Iranians was Mahmoud Ahmidinejad wearing a bald hat and thick rimmed glasses the allegations would also be difficult to deny. As of yet there is no proof or factual basis for absolutely any of the hostage takers' allegations, and the only references to an 'al-Baraa Brigade' I could find online that didn't mention Iran or hostages was (several) sites reporting on the formation of the 'al-Barra Ibn Malik Martydom Brigade' in Homs, an extremist group which named itself after an al-Qaeda suicide bomb cell in Iraq. It's not a stretch to assume that it's the same group. These people are terrorists. You should treat anything they say with the same caution as you would a Taliban press release or an allegation made by Zawahiri, and it's completely fair to assume that they are lying about their motivations for taking 50 civilians hostage. No, they named themselves after one of the companions of Mohammed. It is facile to presume they are the same organisation when all you know they share is a moniker based on a historic Muslim figure. It would be like assuming that all these Knightly Orders of St. George were part of the same organisation (and perhaps tied to Georgia to boot). Munin fucked around with this message at 09:57 on Aug 6, 2012 |
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Aug 6, 2012 09:52
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zero alpha posted:The group who took the Iranians hostage are threatening to kill them if Assad does not stop bombing Aleppo. I understand that it is a bargaining chip, and that Assad has killed tens of thousands, but human rights are human rights even when it isn't "practical." In other news, Chulov claims the FSA have nine tanks in Aleppo. Rather counterproductive all round that. I don't think Assad gives any drat about some more people getting killed. Threatening hostages (let alone killing them) is really not good for their cause.
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Aug 6, 2012 16:29
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az jan jananam posted:I'll avoid being a pompous grandstanding rear end in a top hat like As'ad AbuKhalil and just say simply that linguistic and cultural competence are important and you made errors in several places, first being that you relied on an English translation of "Baraa Brigade" and tried to wrongly generalize from there. There are multiple words in Arabic that are translated into English as "brigade"; two of them being liwaa' and kateeba. The one you believe you are thinking of is kateebat al-Baraa' bin Malik, the group that took the Iranians is lawaa' al-Baraa'. That's the kind of post I go to SA for. I wasn't really aware of all this. At risk of a slight derail but what does dissociation imply in this context? Does it hint at a more sectarian outlook? Going back to the hostages, has there been any comment or response by any other part of the FSA? Any comment or reaction on the threats made to the hostages by the Baraa Brigade? i poo poo trains posted:Whether they're related to Al Qaeda isn't really important (if you even want to argue that Al Qaeda is something that exists in a meaningful sense anymore), but it would be unlikely in the extreme that they got the basic facts of this story wrong (1. there is a group called the al-Baraa Brigade 2. operating in Syria 3. that is an extremist Sunni organization) and then, completely coincidentally, that a group with the same name kidnaps 50 Shiite pilgrims 6 months after the article was published. No matter what you think of source it is not reasonable to assume that they are different groups, and it's not reasonable to assume that the group holding the hostages are 'normal' members of the FSA that their word should be taken as valid. The post you linked to to support your assertion that they are linked to the group formed in Jordan and Iraq does not add any additional information and does not even solidly state that link, it opens up the inference that they might be related. It mentions that a group called the "Al Baraa Ibn Malik Martyrdom Brigade" was formed in Syria, the video contained a fairly standard Muslim black flag (black mark for calling it an "Al-Qaida" flag). Then it mentions the "coincidence" that a group of the same name was formed in Iraq in 2005 and claimed allegiance to AQI. Other than the name it mentions not other links. From that mention of al-Qaeda it then segues into statements made by Ayman al Zawahiri followed by mentions of suicide bombings in Syria which are irrelevant to the argument at hand. It is currently not even certain clear if this "Al Baraa Ibn Malik Martyrdom Brigade" formed in Homs mentioned in the article is the same group as the "Al-Baraa Brigade" which captured the Iranians in Damascus. i poo poo trains posted:but it is still tangential to whether or not they should be considered terrorists for kidnapping 50 Shiites and then threatening to murder them. That's a better way to put your point than riding on tenuous connections to other groups. It highlights the core of your concerns. That these are hostages (they certainly became so when they started using them as bargaining chips even if they weren't before), there is a possible sectarian dimension and that they are being threatened with death. Whether they are "terrorists" would still be debatable since the definition of the term is highly debated itself and we're dealing with an armed party in a civil war. Quick aside, having read up on it it looks like zero alpha was wrong when he said they demanded that the Syrian regime stop bombing Aleppo. http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=425520 posted:Al-Baraa Brigade of the Free Syrian Army announced on its Facebook page that "three of the Iranian prisoners were killed in fierce shelling today in Damascus." They were being shelled in Damascus (and claim that three of the hostages died in the shelling) and they threatened to kill the hostages should the shelling on them not stop. Note that the regime claims that they regained full control of Damascus on Saturday. Munin fucked around with this message at 13:08 on Aug 7, 2012 |
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Aug 7, 2012 13:06
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This blog post linked to a very nice Defection Tracker on Al Jazeera which includes a spider diagram of the Parliament Members, Cabinet, senior military figures and close family members each with currently known details and if defected more info and a link to what they used as a prime reference for their defection. The blogger also give a call out to Brown Moses saying that people can check his blog for news of future defections.  Chart of cumulative defections from Al Jazeera: 
Munin fucked around with this message at 09:45 on Aug 8, 2012 |
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Aug 8, 2012 09:41
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what's the current status of the Ahmadinejad/Khomeini power struggle that had been going on btw? I haven't been following closely but how big a setback has the defeat of many of his allies in the Parliamentary elections May turned out to be? Does it look as if there will actually be elections next year?
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Aug 10, 2012 18:36
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Xandu posted:I haven't read the whole survey, but there's some interesting data here. That is indeed very interesting stuff. The regional differences are quite marked and the rejection of the denomination labels in SE Asia not mindblowing when told about it but not something I had considered before.
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Aug 11, 2012 14:33
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Xandu posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTVp9zUPWTY The only question, is it MANPADs? But seriously, any indication that this is due to them having gotten hold of better stuff or is it just them finally getting lucky?
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Aug 13, 2012 10:51
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Stepping away from Syria for an moment. This is an excellent overview of the current state of Egypt and the challenges it faces: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/49600/Egypt/Politics-/Guide-The-Challenges-Egypt-and-the-Morsi-Aministra.aspx It covers everything from the rising costs of fuel subsidies to food security issues (with Egypt importing 40% of its total food stocks and 60% of its wheat it is highly vulnerable to the rising global food prices), electricity shortages and so on and so forth.
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Aug 21, 2012 15:31
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i poo poo trains posted:That's a pretty orthodox counter-insurgency tactic (i.e. inflicting atrocities and generally making life difficult against civilians in neighborhoods that are friendly to the insurgents) because forcing civilians to become refugees or otherwise cowing them by terrorizing them and denying them access to food will ultimately gently caress over the FSA. Chances are the population already is hostile to the regime so by killing them they aren't exactly making new enemies. Winning 'hearts and minds' isn't nearly as important or effective in winning against an insurgency compared to massacre and intimidation. It's the kind of thinking that made the general bombing of cities such a great strategic success in the second world war.
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Sep 1, 2012 00:18
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I like the "Working Draft - V3" in the corner. I bet you the first one was simpler and had a message that made sense (even though it left out some important bits).
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Sep 2, 2012 16:30
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Brown Moses posted:Time has a really great article on the dehumanising effects of the conflict, including lighthearted moments like this  We feared things turning that way. It wasn't inevitable but pretty drat likely and really tragic that it did. Of course as this kind of stuff increasingly happens it makes the likely eventual outcome increasingly grim.
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Sep 4, 2012 15:42
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TheBalor posted:The real stupidity is that permanent seats or a single-country veto exists at all. The UNSC should be a rotating body with a collective veto on the General Assembly's motions decided by a majority vote. It is working as designed and the major powers would never abide a body like that with serious teeth. As mentioned the Americans barely tolerate it as is and generally only treat it as a rubber stamp to lend their actions more legitimacy and ignore it when they either can't get the rubber stamp or they try to restrict US freedom of action in any way (or censure them for that matter).
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Sep 6, 2012 14:21
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Vilerat posted:The security council should be dissolved because it literally does nothing. It doesn't even serve a useful purpose because if it says no it has no teeth and if it says yes it has no legitimacy beyond its tiny membership. It's basically a necessary evil for the UN to exist and I for one think that the UN is a valuable institution to have. It gives all countries a pulpit which is far more in the public light than their foreign ministry in Ouagadougou or Vientiane. This is not even to mention the various associated programs and institutions associated with it. They might very well have been established in any case but without any existing framework would have been harder to roll out globally.
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Sep 6, 2012 15:48
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Baruch Obamawitz posted:Oh man, Hillary just said that the picture leading drudgereport was a picture of Libyan civilians carrying the ambassador to the hospital, not taking of a trophy reminiscent of what happened in Iraq. Someone else posted something saying the same earlier and I was just about to post asking for a source. If that is the case we really need to make that part of the story as well because I'm sure the fact that Libyans were trying to help him won't get much play in many places.
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Sep 12, 2012 15:07
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*pedant*Dolphin posted:The US is not Germany, freedom of speech is an important tenet of american culture, Anyway, this attribution of blame discussion isn't heading anywhere. Could we have some more info about local and general reaction, for example, rather than people talking at or past each other.
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Sep 12, 2012 15:48
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Acebuckeye13 posted:The issue is when an angry mob becomes an attacking mob. If you've got a looser RoE, it's possible that "Hordes of angry protesters storm embassy, 4 dead" turns into "US Marines fire into protesting crowd, 20+ civilians dead". In this case, additional violence (Even if it's to secure the safety of US citizens) can only make the situation much, much worse. Precisely, not having that kind of restraint leads to things like the gunning down of the South African miners. The other thing to bear in mind is that disturbances near US embassies (and consulates) abroad is rather common. Note the IRC quote from Vile Rat someone posted earlier where Vile Rat mentions that it's nice to have windows and fresh air and it means that he can also hear protesters. The situation with these mobs can get rather hairy and it is a testament to how things are generally handled how rarely things get really out of hand. A tight RoE is part of that. [edit] Thanks for posting that Facebook thing az jan jananam.
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Sep 12, 2012 16:41
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I know someone made a "Mitt Romney smirking" site could someone collate all these photos? I feel it's rather more important that they get a wide audience [e]rather than Romney photoshops.
Munin fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Sep 12, 2012 |
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Sep 12, 2012 21:36
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Spacedad posted:The vengeful side of me wants our own photoshop thread for that to trash Romney for exploiting vilerat's death for cheap political points, but the better part of me just feels too disgusted to do something that pedantic. Just to make absolutely clear. I want the photos of the Libyans to get a wider since I think they are more important than cheap Romney shots. e/sp Munin fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Sep 12, 2012 |
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Sep 12, 2012 21:48
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Mradyfist posted:It's tempting to read more into your posts than you've said, but since I don't really have any context for the US embassy in Yemen it won't actually add any signal to noise. Why would Yemeni security forces let protesters get closer to a US embassy than necessary? Could be anything from lack of personnel to maintain a larger perimeter to them having underestimated the size and aggressiveness of the mob or not having a proper response plan set up in advance so they just ad hoced it to "defend the embassy" without considering the wider tactical situation.
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Sep 13, 2012 12:25
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Deteriorata posted:That would be the best outcome, being handled as a law enforcement issue by the Libyan government. I hope civilization can win for once. That's a sentiment I can really get behind. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
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Sep 14, 2012 00:11
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