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Warcabbit posted:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IBZ3ZAS Thanks, I'll check it out. Ironically, a few weeks before ISIS started with their current destruction binge I started reading up a lot on the ancient Near East since most of what I've studied before in university has been on the post-Alexander Near East besides obligatory stuff like Gilgamesh and the Code of Hammurabi.
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Mar 14, 2015 18:58
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What's stopping ISIS from using every possible outlawed weapon during their attacks, like chemical and biological weapons? I see they're using chlorine now, but what's next?
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Mar 15, 2015 00:49
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karl fungus posted:What's stopping ISIS from using every possible outlawed weapon during their attacks, like chemical and biological weapons? Three major things: 1) Lack of access to the weapons 2) Lack of access to ways to transport and store them for and before use 3) Lack of ways to use them without massively hurting their own forces' For example, many biological weapons require rather stringent temperature etc controls until you're ready to deploy them. And chemical weapons often need to be stored separated out or if stored already mixed have to be handled rather carefully to not go inert or to not kill your own troops. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 00:54 on Mar 15, 2015 |
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Mar 15, 2015 00:51
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karl fungus posted:What's stopping ISIS from using every possible outlawed weapon during their attacks, like chemical and biological weapons? I see they're using chlorine now, but what's next? In addition to what Nintendo said - their enemies have far greater stockpiles of those weapons, so it may not be a great idea to rock the boat too much.
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Mar 15, 2015 01:07
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That's a relief, at least for the time being. By the way, who is even providing internet in ISIS-controlled areas? I remember reading an article about daily life in one of their cities, and someone complained about the internet access being intermittent, so it's obviously still available somehow. Satellite?
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Mar 15, 2015 01:16
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karl fungus posted:That's a relief, at least for the time being.
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Mar 15, 2015 01:26
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karl fungus posted:That's a relief, at least for the time being. If they haven't actively destroyed infrastructure, most of it is likely to be provided by pre-war ISPs, and people who took over the local offices if the pre-war ISPs evacuated. Intermittent access is likely to be caused in part by power randomly going out for the providing infrastructure.
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Mar 15, 2015 01:27
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Can you imagine how much of a lovely job it would be to be IT for ISIS?
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Mar 15, 2015 01:39
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karl fungus posted:Can you imagine how much of a lovely job it would be to be IT for ISIS?
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Mar 15, 2015 01:54
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I found this fairly amusing "Lets stop calling Assad bad!" http://theredphoenixapl.org/2013/10/18/decriminalizing-bashar-al-assad-towards-a-more-effective-anti-war-movement/ quote:If we are going to build an anti-war movement capable of mobilising people in a serious way to actually counter imperialist war plans for Syria, we cannot continue with the hopeless “neither imperialism nor Assad” position, which is designed to avoid the obvious question: when imperialism is fighting against the Syrian state, which side should we be on? Nckdictator fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Mar 15, 2015 |
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Mar 15, 2015 02:18
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It seems odd that the people defending Assad seem to have more in common with those who were tortured to death than any other group in Syria. Maybe they have a more global perspective on things.
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Mar 15, 2015 02:22
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Nckdictator posted:I found this fairly amusing "Lets stop calling Assad bad!" I know this is nearly two years old, but this is just adorable: quote:Syria has done a great deal – perhaps more than any other country – to oppose Israel and support the Palestinians. It has long been the chief financial and practical supporter of the various Palestinian resistance organisations, as well as of Hezbollah. It has intervened militarily to prevent Israel’s expansion into Lebanon. It has provided a home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, who are treated far better than they are elsewhere in the Arab world. In spite of massive pressure to do so – and in spite of the obvious immediate benefits that it would reap in terms of security and peace – it has refused to go down the route of a bilateral peace treaty with Israel. Palestine is very much at the forefront of the Syrian national consciousness, as exemplified by the Syrians who went to the border with Israel on Nakba Day 2011 and were martyred there at the hands of the Israeli ‘Defence’ Forces. Meanwhile: 
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Mar 15, 2015 02:58
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So I wasn't able to connect to the news during most of 2014 (from early spring on), and I'm curious to know more of the details about this second Libyan civil war. All I have are a handful of new articles and Wikipedia. What are your thoughts on Hafter and his government, as compared to the other two (obviously he's going to look good compared to the ISIS dudes in Sirte, but what about his opponents and so forth)?
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Mar 15, 2015 03:15
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karl fungus posted:That's a relief, at least for the time being. Why? It's not like they pose a special threat compared to ISIS' normal m.o.
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Mar 15, 2015 03:19
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SedanChair posted:Why? It's not like they pose a special threat compared to ISIS' normal m.o. I was just listening to the hardcore history podcast on ww1 and dying from gas seems pretty awful, not that it's super relevant
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Mar 15, 2015 03:50
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The reason chemical and other banned weapons are typically banned is because they cause extreme suffering beyond what is needed to simply incapacitate the target. They create suffering simply for the sake of causing suffering.
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Mar 15, 2015 03:58
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Deteriorata posted:There is archeological evidence of new settlements in the highlands of Judea starting around 1180 BC. They appear to be a semi-nomadic people that did not eat pork (no pig bones in their trash pits), and are consistent with proto-Hebrews. Given that the Sea Peoples invasions were right about 1200 BC, it's not at all crazy to think that some refugees of the fighting fled Egypt for someplace safer around then. Do you have sources for this? I tried googling but couldn't find anything about these proto-Hebrews at that time period.
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Mar 15, 2015 04:25
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ImPureAwesome posted:I was just listening to the hardcore history podcast on ww1 and dying from gas seems pretty awful, not that it's super relevant A Fancy 400 lbs posted:The reason chemical and other banned weapons are typically banned is because they cause extreme suffering beyond what is needed to simply incapacitate the target. They create suffering simply for the sake of causing suffering. Well, being killed by a bullet or bomb is pretty terrible, and can cause plenty of suffering as well. But nuclear/chemical/biological arms are special cases because of a few key reasons beyond a simple "they're awful." - They're indiscriminate. Bullets can go stray, and bombs can cause unintended deaths, but there is at least some semblance of target discrimination a combatant has to make when using them. It's the difference between, "I want to kill those people over there" and "I just want everybody in that general vicinity to die." That seems like splitting hairs, and it is, but intent does carry weight in war crimes court. - They linger. While a bomb is apt to cause collateral damage, once the blast occurs, it's over. Someone might be injured by the rubble, but that's only indirectly the bombs fault. NBC, however, sticks around for a while. They not only kill those who were present for the attack, but also people who inadvertently wander across the attack site, even months after the attack took place. (As an aside, I visited one of the sites of the Baathist gas attacks against the Kurds. Even decades later, it just smelled wrong, and crops wouldn't grow in the fields where the munitions fell.) - They can travel. Relates to the second point, here weapons don't like to stay where they were dropped. Biological agents can cause pandemics if refugees pick them up when they flee the area. Chemical agents can contaminate water supplies and leech into river systems. Radiation likes to travel on the wind.
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Mar 15, 2015 04:26
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A Fancy 400 lbs posted:The reason chemical and other banned weapons are typically banned is because they cause extreme suffering beyond what is needed to simply incapacitate the target. They create suffering simply for the sake of causing suffering. In the mind of a 19th century admiral with a handlebar mustache, maybe.
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Mar 15, 2015 04:41
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Weltlich posted:Well, being killed by a bullet or bomb is pretty terrible, and can cause plenty of suffering as well. But nuclear/chemical/biological arms are special cases because of a few key reasons beyond a simple "they're awful." One thing that really bothered me about the Ghouta attack was how good sarin was at getting into basements where people were hiding from conventional artillery. CW are heavier than air, so they sink. If you have a window open in the basement, it collects there. I saw so many horrifying accounts from survivors who were sitting in a different room in the basement watching everyone in their family start to collapse and froth from the mouth. You can pull that off with conventional artillery but not at the same scale. There's also been so much about ongoing birth defects and water contamination there that there has to be at least a grain of truth to it.
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Mar 15, 2015 04:56
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SedanChair posted:In the mind of a 19th century admiral with a handlebar mustache, maybe. There were reports from Halabja about people having involuntary spasms so strong that they broke their own back and died with their feet touching the back of their head.
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Mar 15, 2015 04:59
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Yes, that is certainly a bad way to die. So is being gutshot or dusted with burning WP.
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Mar 15, 2015 05:05
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SedanChair posted:Yes, that is certainly a bad way to die. So is being gutshot or dusted with burning WP. Well Weltlich summed up the actual justifications so who cares
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Mar 15, 2015 05:12
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All death is equal so no weapons should be banned.
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Mar 15, 2015 05:24
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AllanGordon posted:All death is equal so all weapons should be banned. ftfy
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Mar 15, 2015 06:08
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Megasabin posted:Do you have sources for this? I tried googling but couldn't find anything about these proto-Hebrews at that time period. Wikipedia has a decent summary: quote:In The Bible Unearthed (2001), Finkelstein and Silberman summarised recent studies. They described how, up until 1967, the Israelite heartland in the highlands of western Palestine was virtually an archaeological 'terra incognita'. Since then, the traditional territories of the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, Ephraim, and Manasseh have been covered by intensive surveys. These surveys have revealed the sudden emergence of a new culture contrasting with the Philistine and Canaanite societies existing in the Land of Israel earlier during Iron Age I.[7] This new culture is characterised by the lack of pork remains (whereas pork formed 20% of the Philistine diet in places), an abandonment of the Philistines/Canaanite custom of having highly decorated pottery, and the practice of circumcision. The Israelite ethnic identity had been created, not from the Exodus and a subsequent conquest, but from a transformation of the existing Canaanite-Philistine cultures.[26] Another source: http://www.academia.edu/4062281/Pig_Husbandry_in_Iron_Age_Israel_and_Judah Searching for "judean highlands iron age I" turns up lots of discussion on the subject. The evidence does not directly connect these settlements directly with Egyptian refugees. The evidence also does not demonstrate that they were not. Egypt had ruled the Levant area for centuries up until the Sea Peoples invasions, so one would expect a new batch of settlers straight from Egypt would not be too dissimilar from the cultures already there. Since creating floods of refugees was one of the hallmarks of the Sea Peoples invasions almost everywhere, it seems likely that there were some. The timing of the events certainly works, with the new settlements seeming to appear within a generation of the invasion. Given that the core of Jewish identity is that they originated as refugees from Egypt, it seems that much of the story of Exodus is probably true, even if the account of how it happened is embellished beyond recognition.
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Mar 15, 2015 06:09
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SedanChair posted:Yes, that is certainly a bad way to die. So is being gutshot or dusted with burning WP. i miss your old redtext, sedan
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Mar 15, 2015 06:09
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SedanChair posted:Yes, that is certainly a bad way to die. So is being gutshot or dusted with burning WP. Another reason why they are/ought to be banned is that chemical and biological weapons are far more effective against civilians than they are against conventional militaries.
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Mar 15, 2015 06:46
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Cyber weapons are too, should they be banned as well?
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Mar 15, 2015 08:24
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Baloogan posted:Cyber weapons are too, should they be banned as well? I guess, if you consider mild inconvenience on par with dying horribly as every inch of your skin becomes covered in blisters.
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Mar 15, 2015 08:38
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Baloogan posted:Cyber weapons are too, should they be banned as well? The UN already did this hth.
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Mar 15, 2015 08:58
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Deteriorata posted:Wikipedia has a decent summary: Cool Thanks. I wonder if they have found any evidence in Egyptian archaeology of such a subgroup during the time period they would have reportedly lived in Egypt. As in if they lived together as a separate sub-culture or just integrated with the rest of Egypt' society.
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Mar 15, 2015 09:12
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Megasabin posted:Cool Thanks. I wonder if they have found any evidence in Egyptian archaeology of such a subgroup during the time period they would have reportedly lived in Egypt. As in if they lived together as a separate sub-culture or just integrated with the rest of Egypt' society. There's actually quite a bit of evidence for Semitic language speaking groups in Egypt dating back to the Old Kingdom. Some lived in merchant's towns and didn't assimilate, others did, and during the Second Intermediate Period they ruled most of Egypt as the Hyksos. Egyptians also adopted and modified some Levantine deities. Basically, there are Levantine people in Egypt across most of its history.
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Mar 15, 2015 09:50
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Martin Random posted:Someone in an I/P thread got seriously butthurt at about a dozen posters and bought us all Nazi avatars. Being a particularly ignorant person, they tried to insult me by giving me a big red title and a picture of Rommel, who conducted himself honorably during the war and is still much admired. I actually think Rommel was a pretty cool guy, and was flattered. Another Lol, the clean Wehrmacht myth rides again.
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Mar 15, 2015 14:29
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was spent to correct the error, but as you can see, the person buying the titles isn't exactly clever. I adblocked it a while ago, so I forget it's there. I think they were embarrassed and they definitely had a hair trigger, because the only thing I did in the I/P thread was ask a few questions which I felt were worded neutrally.
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Syria conflict: We have to talk to Assad, admits KerryBBC News posted:The United States will "have to negotiate in the end" with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Secretary of State John Kerry has said.
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Mar 15, 2015 14:37
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Goddammit, Obama. Can you not do ANYTHING right? This is so frustrating to see play out. 'Negotiating' with Assad is about as useful as 'negotiating' with Putin, and we even have past experience to draw from! Why are they even attempting to go down this route again? Another round of face-saving 'we gotta be seen doing SOMETHING'-type of non-measures that embarrassed the West every single time it tried that in the past?
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Mar 15, 2015 14:48
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Is the merger of Boko Haram into ISIS going to change anything? Like, aren't they too far apart to easily transfer forces and weapons?
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Mar 15, 2015 15:01
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The Putin comparison is apt. Since the US isn't going to remove him militarily, and flooding the region with weapons is also a bad idea, trying to talk him down is the alternative to ignoring the situation completely. Which one might also advocate, I guess.
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Mar 15, 2015 15:03
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karl fungus posted:Is the merger of Boko Haram into ISIS going to change anything? No, probably not
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Mar 15, 2015 15:07
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kustomkarkommando posted:No, probably not Wait until more extermist groups in Western Africa start pledging allegiance to Daesh and integrating together.
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Mar 15, 2015 15:12
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