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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42020959quote:Russia has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have extended an international inquiry into chemical weapons attacks in Syria. It is the 10th time Moscow has used its veto powers at the UN in support of its ally since the conflict began. US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, accused Russia of undermining the organisation's ability to deter future chemical attacks. The Russian ambassador dismissed the criticism. So what does this actually mean? Russia can't actually shut down the investigative committee with this, can it? Or is this just more political theater?
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Nov 17, 2017 11:04
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Toplowtech posted:Also do you remember when there was that Muslim country in the 70s with a "progressive" dictator who was westernizing his country? I can't remember the country name. Ira- something. Whatever happened to them? Well, that was before they betrayed the American Empire. The House of Saud has been a trusty stooge of American geopolitical hegemony for the last 80 years
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Nov 17, 2017 11:27
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Let's not forget what the "am" in Aramco stands for.
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Nov 17, 2017 11:33
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lollontee posted:http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42020959 It means the OPCW-UN JIM won't be renewed, so there's no UN approved mechanism to investigate chemical incidents that the OPCW FFM confirms happened. The FFM can only say an incident occurred, not who did it, it's up to the OPCW-UN JIM to do that. The last chemical incident the OPCW-FFM published about was a March 30th 2017 Sarin attack that predated the April 4th Khan Sheikhoun attack, but was pretty much ignored in the media. It's probably why they did it again on April 4th. The OPCW FFM found the same chemical markers the OPCW-UN JIM found at Khan Sheikhoun which they used to link the Sarin used in that at to the Syrian government, and the remains of the same bomb were found at both sites, and the remains matches a type of Syrian chemical bomb. So it's pretty obvious the JIM would blame Syria for that incident, meaning Russia has a clear motivation for preventing them from continuing their work.
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Nov 17, 2017 11:44
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Brown Moses posted:It means the OPCW-UN JIM won't be renewed, so there's no UN approved mechanism to investigate chemical incidents that the OPCW FFM confirms happened. The FFM can only say an incident occurred, not who did it, it's up to the OPCW-UN JIM to do that. The last chemical incident the OPCW-FFM published about was a March 30th 2017 Sarin attack that predated the April 4th Khan Sheikhoun attack, but was pretty much ignored in the media. It's probably why they did it again on April 4th. The OPCW FFM found the same chemical markers the OPCW-UN JIM found at Khan Sheikhoun which they used to link the Sarin used in that at to the Syrian government, and the remains of the same bomb were found at both sites, and the remains matches a type of Syrian chemical bomb. So it's pretty obvious the JIM would blame Syria for that incident, meaning Russia has a clear motivation for preventing them from continuing their work. I don't understand how they managed to do this work in the first place. Since before Ghouta and long after, Russia successfully prevented the UN for blaming the regime or Russia for anything directly. It was always just a call on both sides to resume negotiations and come to terms on a ceasefire. Do you think something has changed in the last year or two? Maybe the UN convoy bombing fundamentally changed the relationship between UN agencies and Russia? Carla Del Ponte's resignation? Or maybe Russia just hosed up and didn't veto something they probably wish they did in hindsight? Idk, it's really weird.
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Nov 17, 2017 11:57
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Good article about how KSA is floundering in its fight against Iranian influence and why they keep failing:- https://twitter.com/mazmhussain/status/931528631813394432
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Nov 17, 2017 16:20
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Volkerball posted:I don't understand how they managed to do this work in the first place. Since before Ghouta and long after, Russia successfully prevented the UN for blaming the regime or Russia for anything directly. It was always just a call on both sides to resume negotiations and come to terms on a ceasefire. Do you think something has changed in the last year or two? Maybe the UN convoy bombing fundamentally changed the relationship between UN agencies and Russia? Carla Del Ponte's resignation? Or maybe Russia just hosed up and didn't veto something they probably wish they did in hindsight? Idk, it's really weird. The OPCW-UN JIM has actually blamed the Syrian government for previous chemical attacks, a number of the chlorine attacks in 2014, I just think people give less shits about chlorine, and Sarin use is harder to ignore. Another major change in the last two years is Russia is directly involved with combat, so any body investigating war crimes in Syria is more of a threat to Russia now.
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Nov 17, 2017 18:01
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icantfindaname posted:Well, that was before they betrayed the American Empire. The House of Saud has been a trusty stooge of American geopolitical hegemony for the last 80 years Well, oil embargo is an exception. But look at all the progress they've made since in making peace with Israel!
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Nov 17, 2017 18:26
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Well now we now what's going on at the ritz Carlton https://twitter.com/ahmed/status/931465624890552320
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Nov 17, 2017 18:27
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Al-Saqr posted:Well now we now what's going on at the ritz Carlton lol its just an extortion racket purge...their bank accounts
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Nov 17, 2017 18:42
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Al-Saqr posted:Good article about how KSA is floundering in its fight against Iranian influence and why they keep failing:- "incompetent and U.S.-backed" -- I'd say "incompetent because U.S.-backed. There was no pressure to adapt since they didn't need to fend for themselves, so they allowed themselves to become complacent.
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Nov 17, 2017 18:58
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What kind of public support does the government in KSA actually have? At least in my understanding the Iranian government does have a degree of populist bona fides, through casting itself as protector of the nation and the faith, in addition to having actual meaningful elections, and this does actually win it at least a degree of meaningful support from the middle class. Does KSA have anything similar, or is the Saudi middle class attitude to the state purely sullen resentment and/or disinterest, being bought off with oil money and Wahhabi preaching?
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Nov 17, 2017 19:07
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icantfindaname posted:Well, that was before they betrayed the American Empire. The House of Saud has been a trusty stooge of American geopolitical hegemony for the last 80 years America had no presence to speak of in the Middle East until after WW2 and even then Saudi Arabia becoming a firm ally dates back to the late 60s/early 70s.
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Nov 17, 2017 19:10
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icantfindaname posted:What kind of public support does the government in KSA actually have? At least in my understanding the Iranian government does have a degree of populist bona fides, through casting itself as protector of the nation and the faith, in addition to having actual meaningful elections, and this does actually win it at least a degree of meaningful support from the middle class. Does KSA have anything similar, or is the Saudi middle class attitude to the state purely sullen resentment and/or disinterest, being bought off with oil money and Wahhabi preaching? Polls show that Saudi youths in general are more politically optimistic on the domestic front than other middle eastern nationals, but I wouldn't bet on that remaining the case forever. That type of thing can change on a dime.
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Nov 17, 2017 19:14
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Volkerball posted:Polls show that Saudi youths in general are more politically optimistic on the domestic front than other middle eastern nationals, but I wouldn't bet on that remaining the case forever. That type of thing can change on a dime. Yeah. Its important I think that Saudi public opinion or loyalty in their government has never (that I'm aware of) been put to test.
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Nov 17, 2017 19:25
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Holy poo poo I just finished listening to the two part NYTimes Daily podcast about an Iraqi from Mosul who's family was murdered by drones.
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Nov 17, 2017 19:41
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Bip Roberts posted:Holy poo poo I just finished listening to the two part NYTimes Daily podcast about an Iraqi from Mosul who's family was murdered by drones. When are we going to start prosecuting these murderous drones?
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Nov 17, 2017 19:47
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SimonCat posted:When are we going to start prosecuting these murderous drones? We already have 
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Nov 17, 2017 20:27
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Volkerball posted:Polls show that Saudi youths in general are more politically optimistic on the domestic front than other middle eastern nationals, but I wouldn't bet on that remaining the case forever. That type of thing can change on a dime. Wasn't this the case throughout all of the countries swallowed up by the Arab Spring? They were the most populous, educated and optimistic generation in memory and genuinely believed that they could reform their world.
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Nov 17, 2017 20:53
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Brother Friendship posted:Wasn't this the case throughout all of the countries swallowed up by the Arab Spring? They were the most populous, educated and optimistic generation in memory and genuinely believed that they could reform their world. lmao
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Nov 18, 2017 00:17
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Brother Friendship posted:Wasn't this the case throughout all of the countries swallowed up by the Arab Spring? They were the most populous, educated and optimistic generation in memory and genuinely believed that they could reform their world.
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Nov 18, 2017 00:39
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Volkerball posted:Pretty sure they could just stop bombing Somalia tomorrow without saying a word to anyone and like two people would notice. They can afford to be patient, and make opportunistic strikes while waiting to see what the future holds for the political environment there. I've not seen many reports of civilian casualties from these strikes, al-Shabaab has massacred God knows how many people, and the strikes and raids seem to be hitting their target. So what makes this issue so pressing to deal with? Do you have a better idea for how to fight jihadists in MENA? Is it just an ideological pillar of yours that says bombing terrorists only empowers chaos? If so, how does Rojava and the intervention against ISIS fit into your view? I would say that America's global anti-terror operations have in many places produced blow-back far exceeding whatever potential they ever had to protect American lives and interests. These actions have proved broadly ineffective at accomplishing their stated aims but are enormously expensive, and should be canceled purely for practical reasons, even putting aside issues of morality and principle. Of course I feel this is unlikely because the public wants leaders to "bomb the poo poo" out of someone, and they are less concerned about whether doing accomplishes anything beyond a sense of extracting vengence. In Somalia prior to 2004 there was no organized jihadist movement. However there were small informal social networks of veterans of the Afghan war, as well as probably less than a dozen Al Qaeda affiliates who had assisted in the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi. Following 9/11, the US initiated what in Somalia is known as the "Shadow War," in which warlords were offered weapons and millions of dollars to assist in killing or capturing associates of Al Qaeda. This operation was a disaster. Flush with cash and guns, the warlords reignited the civil war in Mogadishu. To defend themselves, the Afghan veterans closed ranks around the Al Qaeda members and formed the organization that would become Al Shabaab. The thuggish antics of the warlords alienated the Somali public, who turned instead to the Islamic Courts Union, a political movement that integrated the growing jihadist network into new Islamist state powerful enough to control all of southern Somalia. Now instead of a few dozen conspirators, there were thousands. As part of the effort to counter this movement the US backed the Ethiopian invasion that unseated the ICU, funded, trained, transported, and equipped the African Union peackeeping force that replaced the Ethiopians, and sponsored the Somali Federal puppet government which mostly exists to siphon UN money into the Dubai real estate market. The ICU wasn't a perfect government by any measure, however it was Somalia's last best chance to end the civil war and bring peace to southern Somalia. The invasions destroyed any hope of peace, and the elements of the ICU that survived the invasion reformed into Al Shabaab, adopting whole heartedly the radical jihadist program of Al Qaeda. Now fighting an international occupying force, Al Shabaab sought to strike back directly at its attackers, and adopted the tactics of international terrorist attacks against civilians. There is today no prospect of defeating Al Shabaab militarily in the near future, and our allies in the region are by any measure just as monstrously brutal in their behavior as Al Shabaab, they just aren't Islamists as well. One example I like to bring up of the measure of our allies in the region is the former President of Galmudug province, who was arrested in Sweden on charges of genocide for ordering a mass execution including children. He managed to escape because the film of the event was too blurry to identify him. From the beginning of US counter-terror operations we went from a small informal network with less than a dozen people who had participated in terrorist attacks against the US, to a massive trans-national terror network that would probably become a government if foreign support was pulled from its rivals in Mogadishu. I am convinced US policy made this situation worse, and not better. Sometimes so called counter-terror experts will make the point that though US policy in places like Yemen have obviously failed to destroy jihadist organizations continuing the present policy can serve to keep them "disrupted," hampering their organizational capacity to threaten the US. I find this argument. . . plausible. HOWEVER, it has costs. Drone bombing was immensely unpopular in Yemen, and contributed to anti-American sentiment. The Houthi slogan was considered subversive by Saleh because it was viewed as a criticism of his assistance to American policy. Patience did not prove amenable to American efforts in Yemen. See, American policy makers thought they could just keep plinking away at Al Qaeda forever, but then Hadi's government was overthrown and American counter-terror operations had to flee the country with him. Now AQAP has ballooned in terms of membership from probably several hundred in 2010, to over 4,000 as of 2015 and probably even more today. The evidence of success here is minimal. Maybe policy has succeeded in disrupting international networks and operations. However it has failed at destroying local affiliates, despite enormous money and effort. Money better spent on more productive endeavors elsewhere. Further I believe the occupations of Afghanistan and Somalia suffer the same fundamental flaws as the occupation of Iraq, and hence probably cannot succeed either, at least in the foreseeable future. Defeating Al Qaeda in Yemen is utterly hopeless as long as the Saudi Coalition continues flailing about that poor country.
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Nov 18, 2017 04:10
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Al-Saqr posted:Well now we now what's going on at the ritz Carlton Torture on the Ritz. https://twitter.com/rulajebreal/status/931744532630261760
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Nov 18, 2017 12:11
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There is no way MBS will make it to the natural end of his life without a knife in his back. This is going to foster an enormous amount of resentment from virtually the entire rest of the royal family
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Nov 18, 2017 15:49
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Zedsdeadbaby posted:There is no way MBS will make it to the natural end of his life without a knife in his back. This is going to foster an enormous amount of resentment from virtually the entire rest of the royal family I'm pretty sure he's paving the way for the entire kingdom imploding on itself if someone manages to stop him.
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Nov 18, 2017 15:57
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Zedsdeadbaby posted:There is no way MBS will make it to the natural end of his life without a knife in his back. This is going to foster an enormous amount of resentment from virtually the entire rest of the royal family MiddleOne posted:I'm pretty sure he's paving the way for the entire kingdom imploding on itself if someone manages to stop him.
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Nov 18, 2017 16:00
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This is hilarious. NATO needs to stop hiring from the Fox News production team. In the diplomacy/alliance game, I'd imagine unforced errors like these would be comparable to labeling Republicans saying embarrassing things with "D"'s next to their names. Nato apologises to Turkey after Erdogan and Ataturk appear on 'enemy chart' quote:Nato’s secretary general has apologised to Turkey over military exercises in Norway during which Turkey’s founding leader, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and its president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, were reportedly depicted as “enemies”.
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Nov 18, 2017 16:14
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It was probably not an error, it was a civilian who made the chart, so it could been a turk, kurd or whomever making a political statement about turkish politics.
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Nov 18, 2017 16:30
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So Harriri is in Paris since today and stated he would be in Beirut next Wednesday for the national day.
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Nov 18, 2017 16:56
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Rincewinds posted:It was probably not an error, it was a civilian who made the chart, so it could been a turk, kurd or whomever making a political statement about turkish politics. Clearly, this could only be an omen of NATO's Norwegian alpine troops (water)skiing during the future liberation of Istanbul from its Sultan. 
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Nov 18, 2017 17:54
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Rincewinds posted:It was probably not an error, it was a civilian who made the chart, so it could been a turk, kurd or whomever making a political statement about turkish politics. Supposedly there was also a Norwegian officer with Turkish background trolling NATO internal social media with a fake Erdogan account, posting anti-NATO things in Erdogans name.
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Nov 18, 2017 19:37
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Anta posted:Supposedly there was also a Norwegian officer with Turkish background trolling NATO internal social media with a fake Erdogan account, posting anti-NATO things in Erdogans name. Now this This is fuckin hilarious The NATO have their own dead gay forum
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Nov 18, 2017 20:46
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New map of Northeast Syria: We are in the very strange timeline where the pipe dream of the SDF making it all the way to Abu Kamal has become reality. The SAA will take control of the actual town since it's on the western side of the river, but yeah it looks like the Euphrates is going to be the SAA/SDF divider, with small exceptions around Tabqa and Deir Ez-Zor. A flashback to 3 years ago, and the beginning of this year for comparison:  Also, Mattis gave a glimpse into the post-ISIS strategy: https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/1371000/hallway-press-gaggle-by-secretary-mattis/ quote:Q: Could you just talk in general about the way ahead in Syria? Well I'm sure the SDF is grateful for the continued protection, at least.
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Nov 18, 2017 22:32
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That's a whole lot of nothing he said there. Once IS no longer has any territory, the US could stay, or it could leave. I don't get the impression this had been decided yet.
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Nov 19, 2017 00:32
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I kind of dislike these "uncleaned" audio transcripts. They have no value outside of linguistic studies IMO. I know people talk like this, but when you read it instead of hear it, it just make them seem like morons, because it brings emphasis to all the hesitations and abandoned sentence fragments that you normally just ignore in a conversation.
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Nov 19, 2017 00:54
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With the fall of Rawa earlier today, IS has lost control of its last real city in Iraq. Now all that remains is to secure the Syrian border and
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Nov 19, 2017 03:08
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Qassem Solemani in Al Bukamal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9gxi6MjvYs
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Nov 19, 2017 19:34
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Cat Mattress posted:I kind of dislike these "uncleaned" audio transcripts. They have no value outside of linguistic studies IMO. I know people talk like this, but when you read it instead of hear it, it just make them seem like morons, because it brings emphasis to all the hesitations and abandoned sentence fragments that you normally just ignore in a conversation. Completely agree, and on top of that it's also a lovely transcription, e.g. So, you the enemy hasn't declared their -- their done with the are yet. I'm almost positive he did not orally specify "their" instead of "they're", and I would be similarly sure that he said "area" instead of "are." I have no idea what "So, you the enemy" means, but I'm also guessing he did not say that, though possibly it is verbatim. Based on all the other errors, it's fairly likely the person transcribing missed "So, you see the enemy...".
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Nov 19, 2017 22:21
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Hezbollah artillery in Al Bukamal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX8pxWJM4kE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4MYOZDK24Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEW2cRNNTSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv1tO_HBmA0
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Nov 20, 2017 01:00
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Is there still an IS enclave bordering the Golan Heights?
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Nov 20, 2017 04:27
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