Ardennes posted:

Outside of this forum, it would be considered a negative thing. In all honesty, this forum has a bit of its own indoctrination going on nowadays and I have been around forever.

Brown Moses posted:

We also just published a piece showing US CENTCOM lied about killing a bunch of Syrian civilians in a cruise missile attack, and the Saudi's bombing desalination plants in Yemen, but I guess that's just us tricking people or something.

Discendo Vox posted:

Your sampling and perspective on broader discourse around Russia in the US and online are skewed. "phobic" implies irrationality, and there's not a lot of that here when it comes to the things Russia's been doing of late.

Brown Moses posted:

We also just published a piece showing US CENTCOM lied about killing a bunch of Syrian civilians in a cruise missile attack, and the Saudi's bombing desalination plants in Yemen, but I guess that's just us tricking people or something.

Ardennes posted:

You also had Kasparov give an interview. You have to admit some people have a right to make some inferences on your bias.

Sinteres posted:

I think you do interesting work, but as a journalist or researcher or whatever exactly the hat is you wear these days, it seems like you have better things to do than shut down speech on a forum when someone trolls you. As a mod you can do whatever you want, but as an individual it seems beneath the role you have these days, and a little hypocritical.

Gimmick Account posted:

No, he threatened people with banning if they kept making baseless claims about victims of well-documented Russian and Syrian terror bombings. Gave them a chance to offer up evidence for their bullshit, too.

Having followed this thread and the eastern European one for a long time, I have no idea how anyone not on a Russian payroll could even arrive at the conclusion that you did in the quote.

Svartvit posted:

The Russian Brown Moses-CIA shill conspiracy thing is as interesting and cool as the 9/11 truther posts that used to appear on these forums. Personally I don't mind if BM permabanned them all, why not?

Svartvit posted:

The Russian Brown Moses-CIA shill conspiracy thing is as interesting and cool as the 9/11 truther posts that used to appear on these forums. Personally I don't mind if BM permabanned them all, why not?

Cat Mattress posted:

Brown Moses can't melt Kremlin trolls

Volkerball posted:

Bias is a meaningless term if it's not accompanied by a denial of facts and misrepresentation of events.

Sinteres posted:

It's just kind of ironic for a journalist who's critical of Putin to shut down dissent like that. I genuinely don't understand why he'd even want to be a mod here anymore. He can do what he wants, it just seems like a weird choice.

Sinteres posted:

I think you do interesting work, but as a journalist or researcher or whatever exactly the hat is you wear these days, it seems like you have better things to do than shut down speech on a forum when someone trolls you. As a mod you can do whatever you want, but as an individual it seems beneath the role you have these days, and a little hypocritical.

Ardennes posted:

You can still have a bias if you only tell a limited truth without needed context. You may not actually lie or misrepresent but you are still culling the truth in your favor. This is a rather general point.

Domattee posted:

Test-fire. They've never been fired at a real target but they're tested regularly and there's a new video of one failing every time there's major Russian maneuvers.

Woozy posted:

It makes perfect sense if you consider that Brown Moses is a pathetic goon who did this to himself. If he wanted to shut down discussion he could have grown some balls and just banned the guy but instead he wanted to throw a little circus with his flunkies. Any D&D mod who actually does his loving job could have seen this coming a mile away but that's okay it's definitely fine that BM gets his own personal feifdom to gently caress up now and then.

Volkerball posted:

What context is missed by listening to Kasparov.

quote:

The People’s Protection Units (YPG) launched a major offensive to liberate Margada town, military sources reported on Sunday. Margada is the Islamic State’s (ISIS) last stronghold in Hasakah Governorate. It is located on the administrative border between Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor Governorates.

The YPG initiated the offensive by shelling the local ISIS headquarters with mortar batteries and heavy artillery. The Kurdish units intend to secure the town and thereby end the incessant jihadi attacks on their positions. Payman Mirkham, a media activist, told ARA News that “earlier in the day, ISIS militants launched a mortar attack on the YPG security checkpoints in the [nearby] towns of Kashkash and Fadghami.”

“The Kurdish forces responded by bombing Margada in one of the fiercest offensives against ISIS,” Mirkham reported. Salah Osman, a Kurdish officer, told ARA News that ISIS “had suffered heavy losses in manpower and equipment.” The People’s Protection Units and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish, Arab and Assyrian militias, are reportedly pushing south along the Khabur River.
--
Islamic State militants have spent the preceding months fortifying Margada town but their earthworks are reportedly incomplete. The extremist group has also tried to impede the Syrian Democratic Forces’ advance by planting dozens of landmines along the town’s periphery.

“Islamic State members have dug a trench around the northern part of Margada,” Azzam Khallawi, a local media activist, told ARA News. “The project is expected to proceed and cover the town’s suburbs from all sides.” “We are already aware of those tactics by this terrorist group,” an SDF spokesman told ARA News. “ISIS believes […] fortifications can prevent our forces from retaking Margada but we assure them that we’re prepared for any scenario.”

ISIS launched a similar project in November 2015, fortifying its headquarters and digging trenches near the town of al-Hawl. However, the project was ultimately unsuccessful as the jihadists were driven from the border town by US-backed SDF fighters.

The Long March to Deir ez-Zor

While the Islamic State controlled much of Hasakah Governorate in 2014, including Tal-Hamis and the Wadi Jarrah river valley, they have since been routed. The Syrian Democratic Forces have secured the Governorate’s capital and liberated more than 255 towns and villages. In February, ISIS was driven out of Shaddadi city in southern Hasakah. The advance came after the SDF units cut off a main ISIS supply route through Syria’s northeastern border with Iraq.

Also in February, the US-backed SDF seized control of the Islamic State’s main financial resource in Hasakah Governorate, the Jibisa gas facility. This petrochemical plant used to feed massive power stations in Syria’s central governorates. ISIS had been in control of the Jibisa gas facility for nearly two years, retrofitting it to produce portable gas cylinders which were then sold on the black market. Analysts told ARA News that at its peak, ISIS was producing 5,000 cylinders per day at Jibisa.

Talal Silo, an SDF spokesman, previously told ARA News that their “next target is Margada. Our operations will continue until we regain the entire region from ISIS.”

Sinteres posted:

In non-BM news, Russia's diplomatic isolation continues to grow:

https://twitter.com/LilingTan/status/805869889936392192

Discendo Vox posted:

Man, you'd think they'd wise up after a while. I can't tell exactly what went wrong, but it looks like it may have fired unintentionally?

Ardennes posted:

Probably the context of 90% of the Russian population, Kasparov has its own very clear bias. Seriously, few Russians even in Moscow take him seriously.

I don't think the interview was very good either to be honest either.

Jaramin posted:

What happened to the Raqqa offensive? It doesn't seem to have gone anywhere in quite some time.

Sinteres posted:

In non-BM news, Russia's diplomatic isolation continues to grow:

https://twitter.com/LilingTan/status/805869889936392192

Cat Mattress posted:

I need more context to see how China criticizing the UK is increasing Russia's diplomatic isolation.

Ardennes posted:

I see plenty of general hatred of ethnic Russians on top of the political part of the line. Btw, most of the rest of the world outside of the forum sees that Russia didn't just suddenly "turn," but its recent belligerence is part of a historical process that goes back to the end of the Cold War. It isn't just some accident about how this all came to be. I mean I have seen time in Ukrainians and Russians, I haven't ever seen opinions as extreme as on this forum.

As far as "BM", I think he has done a lot of work that is true but in all honesty Bellingcat will only give you a portion of the story.

quote:

You can't understand why Russians accept Putin without acknowledging what happened there during the 1990s.

quote:

Outside of this forum, it would be considered a negative thing. In all honesty, this forum has a bit of its own indoctrination going on nowadays and I have been around forever.

botany posted:

I think what rubs some of us the wrong way is that the sentiment here was nowhere as strong when Russia actually invaded Ukraine. Then Russia tries to influence public opinion in a US election and suddenly everyone can't stop saying how much they care about Ukraine. Like, I strongly care about the Russian invasion, one of my best friends is Ukranian and the stories are loving heartbreaking. But what's currently going on in US media and to some extent these forums is not a principled stand against the invasion of sovereign nations, it's a way to make US posters feel like they're on the right side of things because they oppose a regime that is, depending on the time of day, either a dangerous propaganda moloch hell-bent on world domination or a failed, disintegrating petrostate filled with backwards farmers who stone homosexuals to death between swigs of vodka. It's just hard to take the whole thing seriously sometimes. (Not directed at you personally, btw.)

Brown Moses posted:

I didn't shut down discussion, I challenged you to do some actual research into the claims you were making, and you lost your mind over it.

Cat Mattress posted:

what is this moon language?

Woozy posted:

You mod challenged me to "do some actual research", because you were correctly called out for being a dickless attention whore lording his little blue star over another poster who you have no business responding to at all. There were any number of perfectly valid reasons to just probate moonraker, or have someone else do it. Or you could have just handed out a probation for any of the ensuing shitposts courtesy of this thread's resident circlejerk and created an environment where actual debate was possible. Instead you went classic IK and played to the crowd.

Woozy posted:

Sinteres posted:

I was being facetious. With the next president of France likely to be pro-Assad, Russia's diplomatic situation re: Syria is pretty great these days.

Woozy posted:

You mod challenged me to "do some actual research", because you were correctly called out for being a dickless attention whore lording his little blue star over another poster who you have no business responding to at all. There were any number of perfectly valid reasons to just probate moonraker, or have someone else do it. Or you could have just handed out a probation for any of the ensuing shitposts courtesy of this thread's resident circlejerk and created an environment where actual debate was possible. Instead you went classic IK and played to the crowd.

Ardennes posted:

You can't understand why Russians accept Putin without acknowledging what happened there during the 1990s.

Ardennes posted:

If anything I probably know more about Russia and the Soviet Union than almost anyone anyone on this forum. I mean that in the most bland and technical manner. From what I seen on this forum is a complete lack of interest in cause and effect and a total interest in "scoring" even when an argument is in direct contradiction with itself.

fishmech posted:

Yeah he got let into a high position of power by the outgoing establishment and then rode the wave of popularity from a war against terrorism to high personal approval. Then he started clamping down on all opposition.

Jaramin posted:

What happened to the Raqqa offensive? It doesn't seem to have gone anywhere in quite some time.

Sinteres posted:

It was either a feint like the last one, or the Kurds lost interest in going where the US wanted them when the US didn't have anything to offer them regarding al-Bab.

quote:

Some analysts suspect that talking up an impending full-scale offensive on the city was as much designed to spook IS as anything else — aimed at preventing the terror group from dispatching reinforcements to Mosul and bolstering defenses there in the face of the Iraqi assault.

“I was suspicious of the announcement from the start, to be honest,” Charles Lister, an analyst at the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think tank, told VOA in an email exchange. “Everything I’d been told by coalition members suggested we were in no position to initiate anything close to a full-scale assault on Raqqa. I think shaping operations in the surrounding countryside will prolong for some time,” advised Lister, author of the book The Syrian Jihad.
--
A Turkey-based Western diplomat, who asked not to be named for this article, said part of the delay concerns what force is available to Washington to mount the assault. “To have the Kurds be the main force is a recipe for disaster -- local Arabs are scared of the Kurds and fear what they will do once they enter the city. ISIS has been highly successful in fanning those fears," the diplomat said.

Another Western diplomat noted that the Arab and Turkmen militias in the Kurd-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces are not up to the task alone of subduing IS in Raqqa. “The only force capable are the People’s Protection Units,” the diplomat said, referring to the Kurdish militia known by its abbreviation, YPG. “Let’s be frank, at best the Arab and Turkmen militias are just self-protection forces for the defense of towns; at worst, some of the militias consist of thugs with criminal backgrounds or they’re rejects from Free Syrian Army,” the diplomat said.
--
The YPG has become increasingly distracted with the drive by Turkish units and Ankara-backed Syrian rebels in northern Syria in operation Euphrates Shield, which is aimed at driving both IS militants and the Kurds back from Turkey’s border.

“I doubt the YPG will prioritize the capture of Raqqa, when two far more important cities in northern Syria, namely al-Bab and Manbij, are threatened by Turkish-backed forces,” said Michael Horowitz, with the Middle-East-based geopolitical consultancy Prime Source.

quote:

I heard that many #SDF fighters at Raqqa fronts are transferred to Ziyanat and Fadghami since some days. Not confirmed though.

reddit poster 'YPG-Got-Aleppo' posted:

YPG controls the liberated parts of Aleppo together with local YPG-friendly NDF (so the opposite of Hasakah, we could say).

There are YPG checkpoints and NDF checkpoints. I have heard of one checkpoint where both controlled the same checkpoint. Flags fly together, the liberated areas seem to be ruled together as well. The neighborhoods in North Aleppo (City) used to have significant Kurdish minorities. Sometimes Kurdish Majorities (Bani Zaid, Sheikh Maqsoud, Ashrafiyeh district).

I assume Kurdish civilians are returning to those neighborhoods. In Rebel-Held Aleppo just being Kurdish was a reason to be afraid. So I assume some of those local NDF are Kurds as well.

I don't know if any side-to-side combat against Rebels took place between YPG and SAA, NDF or Liwa al Quds. I do know that the Regime's strategy was called "Steel Ring" by some people. This means that the SAA fought especially for the not so populated areas first to create a kind of "Steel Ring" around the populated areas. Changing fronts and new checkpoints for civilians to flee makes it easier for them to flee: The checkpoints to flee into Regime areas are somewhat new everytime. I assume there has been NDF-YPG side-to-side fighting against the Rebels. YPG seems to have a guiding role inside the city, SAA seems to take the lean on all of the outside of rebel-held territories.

Punkin Spunkin posted:

Do you mean in the sense Fillon is just as pro Assad as Le Pen? Cuz I really don't think it's fait accompli that she'll win the way a lot of media seems to be panicking
And I thought the new right wing UK government was supposed to be more Assad sympathetic?