quadratic posted:

Arabs absolutely love conspiracies.

Rotacixe posted:

There is a cultural thing which makes accepting responsibility virtually impossible. The loss of honor is like the worst thing that can happen to an Arab.

Rotacixe posted:

There is a cultural thing which makes accepting responsibility virtually impossible. The loss of honor is like the worst thing that can happen to an Arab.

QuentinCompson posted:

Yes, and while we're at it, why don't you start talking about how they're savages who can't govern themselves?

Close your racist trap.

ShortStack posted:

This sounds like the death rattle of a regime way way past it's prime. I'm so excited for the people of Libya the will get the freedom they so badly deserve, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Brown Moses posted:

I heard that claimed a few times on AJE, but it's difficult to confirm anything at the moment.

Xandu posted:

I was sort of hoping he was taking quadratic's statement to the extreme to prove a point.

Xandu posted:

They were translating a message from a tribal leader, so I'd treat it as confirmed.

Isentropy posted:

So I just heard that the local administration in Benghazi is threatening to end oil exports to the West within 48 hours if violence doesn't end, via RDI live broadcast. This seems important but I wonder if anyone else can confirm this.

Reuters is carrying it as well

QuentinCompson posted:

Yes, and while we're at it, why don't you start talking about how they're savages who can't govern themselves?

Close your racist trap.

quote:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the Obama administration would support—but not seek to direct—pro-democracy forces...

...Mrs. Clinton said the U.S. would focus on providing "technical assistance" and financial support to help authentic democracy take root. That's what activists have "asked for in their online blogs and in their posters and in their interviews," she said.

The-Mole posted:

You've obviously never dealt with Arabs if you don't think that family honor is supreme.

How are u posted:

It'd be nice if you tried to back statements like this.

quote:

Sheikh: In many Arab states, the middle class is disappearing. The rich get richer and the poor get still poorer. Look at the schools in Jordan, Egypt or Morocco: You have up to 70 youngsters crammed together in a single classroom. How can a teacher do his job in such circumstances? The public hospitals are also in a hopeless condition. These are just examples. They show how hopeless the situation is for us in the Middle East.

Heumann: Who is responsible for the situation?

Sheikh: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the most important reasons why these crises and problems continue to simmer. The day when Israel was founded created the basis for our problems. The West should finally come to understand this. Everything would be much calmer if the Palestinians were given their rights.

Heumann: Do you mean to say that if Israel did not exist, there would suddenly be democracy in Egypt, that the schools in Morocco would be better, that the public clinics in Jordan would function better?

Sheikh: I think so.

Heumann: Can you please explain to me what the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has to do with these problems?

Sheikh: The Palestinian cause is central for Arab thinking.

Heumann: In the end, is it a matter of feelings of self-esteem?

Sheikh: Exactly. It’s because we always lose to Israel. It gnaws at the people in the Middle East that such a small country as Israel, with only about 7 million inhabitants, can defeat the Arab nation with its 350 million. That hurts our collective ego. The Palestinian problem is in the genes of every Arab. The West’s problem is that it does not understand this.

Nessus posted:

So like, are they asking us to send in the Marines? Are they volunteering to be invaded by America?

Suck it, Qaddafi!

Nessus posted:

So like, are they asking us to send in the Marines? Are they volunteering to be invaded by America?

Suck it, Qaddafi!

davebo posted:

What's funny to me is that this past week I've been playing through Just Cause 2 on my pc, which if you're unfamiliar is a game where you're basically displacing the regime in this fictional south pacific island nation. Every time you do some mission and destroy government facilities you see these TV announcements about how everything is fine and the people love their glorious leader. Then I exit and flip back over to this thread or the AJE feed and it's like the same thing but with real life people being killed.

Rotacixe posted:

I didn't realize that it was going to be controversial.

I don't see how anyone can deny that they like to blame everyone else for their problems. Especially Israel. Israel might not be a force for good, but they give it too much credit.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/219504/israel-did-it/victor-davis-hanson

Al-Jazeera's editor in chief Ahmed Sheikh:

Suntory BOSS posted:

Barbary War III: The Barbariest

Nenonen posted:

WOAH WOAH, hold it buddy! Some gunship policy logic you've got there. The tribal leader is demanding the government forces to stop the violence, or else the only source of income will be plugged. Where did you read a request for foreign invasion in that?

And US Marines, on top of that? What makes you think that any Arab Muslim would want them to invade their homes? It'd be like the Tea Party asking for Russians to come and protect them from Obama.

e: or did you mean that Gaddafi is asking for intervention... IDGI

Nessus posted:

I misread this as a threat to the world from the main government, not a threat from a tribe to the main government. MY BAD

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>

The Brown Menace posted:

I think you mean Barbary War 3: Obarbar's Brabrabar.

ShortStack posted:

http://www.libyafeb17.com/ says that people were getting shot during the speech, twitter reports snipers in Tripoli and that mercenaries have started attacking people in their homes

QuentinCompson posted:

Durr those Arabs sure like to blame everyone else for their problems! It's not like their current countries were invented out of whole cloth by the West after the Ottoman Empire was crushed in WWI! It's not like the whole reason Lebanon is so unstable is their constitution, which was written by the French and disenfranchises the Shi'a to a crazy extent. It's not like Syria is a patchwork amalgam of ethnic groups that were turned against one another by colonial divide-and-conquer tactics. It's not like Iraq and Jordan were also invented by the British and were given to the sons of Sharif Hussein Ali, someone from loving Istanbul, to rule.

And here are the Arabs, rising up and taking control of their own destinies in a beautiful example of human spirit and all you racist clowns can do is bleat like lobotomized sheep about HONOR and LOVE OF CONSPIRACIES.

GnatKingCoal posted:

Rotacixe posted:

I see. It's racist to criticize cultural aspects of less developed countries. They are strong enough to defend their own beliefs. You don't have to do it for them.

I also don't think that i attributed every single misfortune of the Arab world to their culture. But some of the things they do sure look strange, if you view them from an Western POV and not theirs.

http://213.251.145.96/cable/1979/08/79TEHRAN8980.html

http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/AD_Issues/amdipl_17/articles/deatkine_arabs1.html

Rotacixe posted:

I see. It's racist to criticize cultural aspects of less developed countries. They are strong enough to defend their own beliefs. You don't have to do it for them.

I also don't think that i attributed every single misfortune of the Arab world to their culture. But some of the things they do sure look strange, if you view them from an Western POV and not theirs.

http://213.251.145.96/cable/1979/08/79TEHRAN8980.html

http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/AD_Issues/amdipl_17/articles/deatkine_arabs1.html

QuentinCompson posted:

And here are the Arabs, rising up and taking control of their own destinies in a beautiful example of human spirit and all you racist clowns can do is bleat like lobotomized sheep about HONOR and LOVE OF CONSPIRACIES.

Paradox Personified posted:

Also, a new relevant article:
http://www.allfacebook.com/egyptian-baby-girl-named-facebook-after-revolution-2011-02

As the url indicates, a man from Egypt (Jamal Ibrahim) named his daughter Facebook Jamal Ibrahim.

What are good analogies for events in the past about people being named after revolutionary stuff? Heh.

benito posted:

Someone here did this as a Photoshop a while back (sorry, don't remember who). Babar went to Europe, became Westernized, and returned to rule his African kingdom, with the supposed support of the colonial power. Some have criticized the book as trying to gloss over the often bloody and messy history of French involvement in Africa: