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Squalid posted:What does Cossack actually mean in this 21st context They're still a distinct group with a lot of "warrior race" baggage that the gangs and paramilitaries exploit. Obviously most are just people, but a lot of young men get conned into playing brownshirt for the elite and beating up gays, Muslims, etc. and generally just being lovely thugs.
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Feb 15, 2018 23:46
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Is there evidence of the 350 Wagner casualties besides hearsay? Or did the 200 unscathed guys carry them all off?
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Feb 16, 2018 00:10
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A Bag of Milk posted:Assad and SDF were just sending each other offers for a settlement and possibly working together to defend Afrin a few weeks ago. Seems like a missed opportunity for serious negotiations especially given their shared enemies in HTS and Turkey. I guess it wouldn't really work since they're just proxys of greater powers who hate each other and want leverage over each other more than peace, but an escalating shooting war between the two groups is such an unfortunate bloodbath that just feels super unnecessary. https://twitter.com/aronlund/status/964276480195944449?ref_src=twcamp%5Ecopy%7Ctwsrc%5Eandroid%7Ctwgr%5Ecopy%7Ctwcon%5E7090%7Ctwterm%5E1 The regime is everyones best friend until it's not.
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Feb 16, 2018 00:15
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Volkerball posted:Morsi himself came to power because of the military. They distanced themselves from Mubarak and came out in favor of the protesters, which was a huge reason the revolution in Egypt was relatively painless. At that point, Egypt was already at the mercy of the military, and they had sided with democracy. While I have no doubt that Sisi and co were pulling strings near the end to foster as much discontent as possible (~the biggest protests in human history~), it was clear to me at the time Morsi had lost the public to a degree that made it really unlikely he was going to be able to keep things together until the end of his term. yep that's the Middle East for ya. The issues generally do not necessarily tend to be ideological, they tend to be organizational failures. I think the real problem there is that Kurdistan continues to not have a country for itself & that is causing serious trouble & unrest in the region
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Feb 16, 2018 00:18
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A Bag of Milk posted:Assad and SDF were just sending each other offers for a settlement and possibly working together to defend Afrin a few weeks ago. Seems like a missed opportunity for serious negotiations especially given their shared enemies in HTS and Turkey. I guess it wouldn't really work since they're just proxys of greater powers who hate each other and want leverage over each other more than peace, but an escalating shooting war between the two groups is such an unfortunate bloodbath that just feels super unnecessary. Not sure if you've noticed but Assad's approach to regaining control of Syria has not featured a ton of diplomacy and compromise. He's going to ask for unconditional surrender and submission to his authority. He will use force to both incentivise and achieve this. If the Kurds surrender to Assad he will probably protect the clay they live on. Not so much the people - there will probably be a purge of those involved in the SDF and Kurdish armed groups and governance positions. If they don't, they will get the exact same treatment everyone else got. In the end, having a foreign power unfairly (and temporarily) occupying a slice of his country is going to look a lot more palatable to a strongman than an independent or autonomous region that looks like it "won". Warbadger fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Feb 16, 2018 |
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Feb 16, 2018 01:17
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A Bag of Milk posted:Assad and SDF were just sending each other offers for a settlement and possibly working together to defend Afrin a few weeks ago. Seems like a missed opportunity for serious negotiations especially given their shared enemies in HTS and Turkey. I guess it wouldn't really work since they're just proxys of greater powers who hate each other and want leverage over each other more than peace, but an escalating shooting war between the two groups is such an unfortunate bloodbath that just feels super unnecessary. The SDF holding the oil fields with US support are mostly local Arabs and remnants from the former southern front FSA who (reasonably) don't give a poo poo about Afrin. There were rumors that the YPG tried making a deal with Assad to let him reclaim the oil in exchange for assistance for Afrin, but it's not their territory to deliver. Now that the war against ISIS has mostly faded into the background, the US doesn't really need the YPG as much in general, and they're really more of a liability than an asset at this point since they cause so much friction with Turkey. The problem for the US is just that the YPG flipping to Assad would leave the oil producing territory we actually care about that much more isolated and surrounded, but hey we're keeping Tanf open despite no longer being relevant, so maybe we'd keep saying YOLO and occupying the oil wells just because we can. It's not like Trump has been subtle about wanting to steal resource wealth when we intervene. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Feb 16, 2018 |
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Feb 16, 2018 01:25
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its not even that much oil, is the thing also ignoring ISI in iraq when they got down to a few hundred guys is how we got ISIS in the first loving place and I know you know this! I'm not posting at you when I'm posting at you, but... I GOTTA POST! I feel like a massive tragedy is developing and the general run of folks aren't gonna see it coming until its too late because there's too much other bullshit in the media right now. Willie Tomg fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Feb 16, 2018 |
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Feb 16, 2018 02:05
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Tortuga posted:Is there evidence of the 350 Wagner casualties besides hearsay? Or did the 200 unscathed guys carry them all off? One of the reasons every discussion thread about the SCW is so psychotic is because the conflict is so hazardous to reporters that most of everything is based on secondhand hearsay from sources on the ground, or at least exists in the Schroedinger realm of paradoxical superposition until ~48hrs or so passes and a prevailing narrative takes hold over the event in question. I've seen similar figures crop up in enough disparate places to be satisfied with the 80-100 dead figure with another hundred or two wounded with one wounded in response. Also "wounded" doesn't necessarily mean you're in a stretcher. Someone can get pretty hosed up and still walk/carry their corpus away.
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Feb 16, 2018 02:23
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I seem to remember someone posting awhile back that either the Russians or the Syrian Army asked the US for permission to collect their dead and wounded and that it was granted. Perhaps that's how they evacuated the more serious casualties.
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Feb 16, 2018 02:32
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I'm having trouble finding the original quote, but back during the height of white mercenaries in Africa in the post-WWII struggles, some Euro politician quipped something like: "the thing to keep in mind with mercenaries is that so many of them live to write their memoirs."
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Feb 16, 2018 02:32
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HorrificExistence posted:At the end of the soviet union they signed a law allowing them to form hosts again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tL1zxejuYKM
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Feb 16, 2018 02:40
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Willie Tomg posted:One of the reasons every discussion thread about the SCW is so psychotic is because the conflict is so hazardous to reporters that most of everything is based on secondhand hearsay from sources on the ground, or at least exists in the Schroedinger realm of paradoxical superposition until ~48hrs or so passes and a prevailing narrative takes hold over the event in question. I've seen similar figures crop up in enough disparate places to be satisfied with the 80-100 dead figure with another hundred or two wounded with one wounded in response. Also "wounded" doesn't necessarily mean you're in a stretcher. Someone can get pretty hosed up and still walk/carry their corpus away. You have to be careful with "disparate sources," least you fall into the same trap that caught the New York Times before the Iraq War when they were verifying statements from their sources in the Bush administration by comparing them with statements from Iraqi exiles. The same Iraqi exiles it turned out were the intelligence sources for Bush's intelligence agencies. Really though the Syrian Civil war is remarkably well documented compared to other recent conflicts. In Afghanistan the only information available today on some regions are like "October 2013 Afghan government press release claims they evicted Taliban from district center." or "March 2017 Taliban publication includes region in list districts for which they control at 95% of territory, excluding district capital." Yemen is less opaque than Afghanistan, but still the scope of available data is much less than for Syria, which makes it much harder to tell what's going on.
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Feb 16, 2018 02:41
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Volkerball posted:That isn't firing back. How would you define firing 125mm tank rounds at people? Or do you mean they stopped firing when the bombs started dropping from the various things they could not effectively shoot at?
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Feb 16, 2018 02:50
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Warbadger posted:How would you define firing 125mm tank rounds at people? Or do you mean they stopped firing when the bombs started dropping from the various things they could not effectively shoot at? What is to be gained from this conversation. I posted the quote from the source. It wasn't a riddle.
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Feb 16, 2018 03:03
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Volkerball posted:What is to be gained from this conversation. I posted the quote from the source. It wasn't a riddle. I was just pointing out that the source's quote implies they rolled up to 3 miles from the base and then got bombed without returning fire. This seems inconsistent with the only video footage of the encounter floating around, which clearly shows their tank firing its 125mm gun before getting hit with a bomb. The only way this part of his account makes sense is if he omitted the mercs opening fire to kick off the engagement and "no return fire" means they stopped shooting after they started to take fire themselves. Anyways, just seems like a strange take because he never mentions the mercenaries firing at the SDF - only taking fire. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 03:40 on Feb 16, 2018 |
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Feb 16, 2018 03:37
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Warbadger posted:I was just pointing out that the source's quote implies they rolled up to 3 miles from the base and then got bombed without returning fire. This seems inconsistent with the only video footage of the encounter floating around, which clearly shows their tank firing its 125mm gun before getting hit with a bomb. The only way this part of his account makes sense is if he omitted the mercs opening fire to start the engagement and "no return fire" means they stopped shooting after they started to take fire themselves. I read that statement to mean they didn't attempt to engage the aircraft, rather than an attempt to claim they did not actually attempt to attack a YPG position.
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Feb 16, 2018 03:40
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Yeah the way I read it it was: Battalion rolls up, begins firing artillery, tanks. Gets hit. Stops firing and withdraws. US CAS allows them to withdraw.
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Feb 16, 2018 04:46
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Those darn dishonorable aircraft.
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Feb 16, 2018 04:47
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RaffyTaffy posted:Those darn dishonorable aircraft. Really ruined the surprise attack!
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Feb 16, 2018 05:00
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Play stupid games win stupid prizes.
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Feb 16, 2018 05:12
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Bip Roberts posted:
Dangit, you could've gone with "talk poo poo, get hit".
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Feb 16, 2018 05:14
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Willie Tomg posted:One of the reasons every discussion thread about the SCW is so psychotic is because the conflict is so hazardous to reporters that most of everything is based on secondhand hearsay from sources on the ground, or at least exists in the Schroedinger realm of paradoxical superposition until ~48hrs or so passes and a prevailing narrative takes hold over the event in question. I've seen similar figures crop up in enough disparate places to be satisfied with the 80-100 dead figure with another hundred or two wounded with one wounded in response. Also "wounded" doesn't necessarily mean you're in a stretcher. Someone can get pretty hosed up and still walk/carry their corpus away. Yeah but this was an extremely vicious defense. Like enough to see most people escaping the attack were losing a limb or two. A battalion out in the open vs a highlyly motivated highly equipped force with air assets ranging from close air to orbiting bombardment. Losing 100 shows the U.S forces knew it was a PMC and made a bloody nose show of force. No russian is going to go gently caress with us bases now.
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Feb 16, 2018 06:09
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Scrambling F-22s to the area was a pretty big signal for Russia not to get any cute ideas about sending air support next time either.
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Feb 16, 2018 06:13
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Sinteres posted:Scrambling F-22s to the area was a pretty big signal for Russia not to get any cute ideas about sending air support next time either. Which is part of how these PMCs hide in the shadiw of the real militaries. Such that when these PMCs do a thorough job liberating somethiggn its "US Forces In the area Capture xxx with air support" or "Russian SOF Troops capture xxx" in reality its treasure hunter sergey in a blue striped shirt. No one questions US Military forces being assisted by US Military air assets. but a PMC Supported by soverign air assets? THat's a pretty quick way to be a State Sponsor of Terror
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Feb 16, 2018 06:54
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Warbadger posted:How would you define firing 125mm tank rounds at people? Or do you mean they stopped firing when the bombs started dropping from the various things they could not effectively shoot at? He is right though, you can argue that an attacker isn't firing back, since he is the one firing first And if after that the attacker is obliterated, he obviously can't fire back, either!
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Feb 16, 2018 07:21
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LeoMarr posted:Which is part of how these PMCs hide in the shadiw of the real militaries. Such that when these PMCs do a thorough job liberating somethiggn its "US Forces In the area Capture xxx with air support" or "Russian SOF Troops capture xxx" in reality its treasure hunter sergey in a blue striped shirt. No one questions US Military forces being assisted by US Military air assets. but a PMC Supported by soverign air assets? THat's a pretty quick way to be a State Sponsor of Terror Wait, who is not currently a state sponsor of terror?
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Feb 16, 2018 09:06
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This is a good thread. https://twitter.com/LibyanBentBladi...90%7Ctwterm%5E1
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Feb 16, 2018 10:14
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Bip Roberts posted:Wait, who is not currently a state sponsor of terror? I was going to say “Nauru” but then I realized poo poo, even they are running a concentration camp.
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Feb 16, 2018 10:23
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Saladman posted:I was going to say “Nauru” but then I realized poo poo, even they are running a concentration camp. Well they're taking money to have one on their island. I don't know if that counts as running.
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Feb 16, 2018 10:48
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State sponsored by terrorism.
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Feb 16, 2018 10:55
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Saladman posted:I was going to say “Nauru” but then I realized poo poo, even they are running a concentration camp. Swaziland?
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Feb 16, 2018 11:01
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Saladman posted:I was going to say “Nauru” but then I realized poo poo, even they are running a concentration camp. WhiskeyWhiskers posted:Well they're taking money to have one on their island. I don't know if that counts as running.  yay
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Feb 16, 2018 11:16
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WhiskeyWhiskers posted:Well they're taking money to have one on their island. I don't know if that counts as running. I mean it's not like Australia is militarily forcing them to do so. You can't murder someone for money just because you need to pay for your cancer treatment or whatever. If you could, then Breaking Bad would have been a lot shorter.
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Feb 16, 2018 11:21
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https://twitter.com/CNNTURK_ENG/status/964411301303787523?ref_src=twcamp%5Ecopy%7Ctwsrc%5Eandroid%7Ctwgr%5Ecopy%7Ctwcon%5E7090%7Ctwterm%5E3 This seems strange and nonsensical although Tillerson was just in Turkey saying that there's no daylight between the US and Turkey on Syria so who knows. Also there was just the general strike against the SDF in Manbij due to forced conscription and then another one even more recently due to the PYD alledgedly torturing two guys to death, so it looks like the SDF/US administration is wearing out some goodwill. Compared to Turkey though, lol. Turkey's been playing a really long game with Manbij. They made a serious play for it in the 1920s iirc. Edit: https://twitter.com/anadoluagency/s...90%7Ctwterm%5E3 I actually lmaoed irl A Bag of Milk fucked around with this message at 11:42 on Feb 16, 2018 |
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Feb 16, 2018 11:37
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WhiskeyWhiskers posted:Well they're taking money to have one on their island. I don't know if that counts as running. One day they'll pass a law to forbid using the phrase "Nauruan Death Camp".
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Feb 16, 2018 12:11
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Saladman posted:I mean it's not like Australia is militarily forcing them to do so. You can't murder someone for money just because you need to pay for your cancer treatment or whatever. If you could, then Breaking Bad would have been a lot shorter. Nauru depends pretty much entirely on Australian goodwill and financial aid though. They have no other industry since we extracted all their phosphates. It's like taking a job as a cop under capitalism. They are being forced to, but it's still immoral. WhiskeyWhiskers fucked around with this message at 13:11 on Feb 16, 2018 |
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Feb 16, 2018 13:09
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Sinteres posted:Scrambling F-22s to the area was a pretty big signal for Russia not to get any cute ideas about sending air support next time either. It was probably just whatever was ready to go. When a large scale attack like that is headed straight for a base with artillery fire ahead of it there isn't a lot of time to pick and choose which planes with bombs on them are going to respond. They probably responded with everything on station and ready on the ground, hence the mix of things. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 17:11 on Feb 16, 2018 |
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Feb 16, 2018 17:03
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A Bag of Milk posted:https://twitter.com/CNNTURK_ENG/status/964411301303787523?ref_src=twcamp%5Ecopy%7Ctwsrc%5Eandroid%7Ctwgr%5Ecopy%7Ctwcon%5E7090%7Ctwterm%5E3 Tillerson supposedly met without a translator and on his own initiative lol. So I'll honestly be amazed if all this doesn't just result in another round of miscommunication and Sultan Erdogan screaming about being betrayed by the US again.
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Feb 16, 2018 18:17
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CrazyLoon posted:Tillerson supposedly met without a translator and on his own initiative lol. So I'll honestly be amazed if all this doesn't just result in another round of miscommunication and Sultan Erdogan screaming about being betrayed by the US again. No translator and no aides, and obviously Tillerson himself has no real experience with diplomacy. US foreign policy is run by even bigger morons than usual.
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Feb 16, 2018 18:23
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Huh, the UK's actually going to go ahead with charging two people who went and joined the YPG: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/feb/16/british-man-aidan-james-fought-isis-syria-charged-terror-offences http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...p-a8199796.html quote:A British man who travelled to Syria to fight against Islamic State has been charged with terror offences, police have said.
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Feb 17, 2018 01:13
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