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Darth Walrus posted:The neighbourhood demolitions are accompanied by torture/death camps, though? There's all those hospitals in Damascus with the rows of suspiciously long ditches out back, and then there's the ludicrously huge civilian casualty rates they're racking up on the front lines. The demolitions are just an indicator of who they're particularly targeting, and their target list seems suspiciously ethnic. It doesn't work quite like that. The US targeted Japanese people during WW2 in the Pacific. But it wasn't because they were Japanese, it was because of who their leaders were, to put it very simply. The US firebombing and nuking Japanese cities was, as far as I'm concerned, a war crime/crime against humanity. Like I'd consider Assad's crimes. But genocide it isn't, and again I'll stress that this doesn't make the actions one iota morally better, imo.
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May 29, 2019 14:50
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Oh, is it time for the "but what really is the definition of genocide" argument again?
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May 29, 2019 14:55
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Coldwar timewarp posted:Not trying to whitewash here, but look at any of those estimates, and you will see a problem. The male portion of the civilian casualties is much higher, 5-15x, that of the women. The numbers of what are clearly combatants are being left in the same section as civilians. It’s sort of hard to say with any certainty, but this discrepancy is shown in pro-rebel SOHR numbers as well. Male civilians being especially targeted for death has an extremely long history my dude. Srebrenica leaps immediately to mind.
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May 29, 2019 15:15
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Jagged Jim posted:Oh, is it time for the "but what really is the definition of genocide" argument again? Is it really so hard to say 'ethnic cleansing' instead? Like seriously...do you get the impression that word somehow redeems Assad moreso than 'genocide'? All it is is more accurate.
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May 29, 2019 15:35
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"Ethic cleansing" is what you call a genocide you tacitly support.
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May 29, 2019 15:37
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Rent-A-Cop posted:"Ethic cleansing" is what you call a genocide you tacitly support. thought it was what you called one that failed, like our attempt to purge Iraq of all those viewed as ethnically inconvenient
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May 29, 2019 15:44
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Rent-A-Cop posted:"Ethic cleansing" is what you call a genocide you tacitly support. Yes...this is clearly what I am getting at, you loving moron.  Someone 'genocide' this thread, or better yet all of D&D. Or even better, just me while letting Yeowch or thatfatkid keep going.
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May 29, 2019 15:46
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:thought it was what you called one that failed, like our attempt to purge Iraq of all those viewed as ethnically inconvenient
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May 29, 2019 15:47
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Rent-A-Cop posted:"Ethic cleansing" is what you call a genocide you tacitly support. No it's an actual term with distinction. My father-in-law was ethnically cleansed in 1974, and died from lung cancer in 2015. This would not be possible if genocide was a synonym for it. Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:thought it was what you called one that failed, like our attempt to purge Iraq of all those viewed as ethnically inconvenient If your goal is to remove X group from a specific set of land, and so long as they're no longer there you're happy? You do not have to kill them. You can kill some and scare away the rest from the example, literally march them off the area, ghettoize them, destroy or otherwise make inaccessible their homes etc. This is still Class A war crimes territory, and can go hand in hand with genocide, or develop eventually into genocide, but not the same thing. Grape fucked around with this message at 15:59 on May 29, 2019 |
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May 29, 2019 15:56
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Darth Walrus posted:I mean, even if you take away the casualties from aerial and artillery bombardment, the SAA has killed roughly twenty times as many civilians as ISIS, a literal fundamentalist death-cult who are the second most murderous faction in the country. It takes some serious and unusual dedication to genocide to get those sorts of numbers. ...yes and therefore what? I asked what the argument being made was, not that why assad was a baddie. Just because he has had the chance, a chance which the jihadists would dearly have appreciated, doesn't itself tell us loving anything. except tgat youre terrible at debate and discussion
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May 29, 2019 16:08
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Can we maybe cool it with the strawmen and this strange competition in which we argue about who supports dictators the most 🙏
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May 29, 2019 16:10
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So what's going on with Sudan and Algeria lately?
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May 29, 2019 16:12
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you knew the answer to that before you even started typing comrade
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May 29, 2019 16:12
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In Algeria, the vipers in command have turned against each other to appease the anger of the crowd in the streets, but once there was only one remaining, they still weren't satisfied, so now the one guy remaining instead of stepping down, is cranking up the repression a notch. Still several notches to go before it gets real bad, but after a promising start, it's not going in a pleasant direction anymore.
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May 29, 2019 16:43
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i mean, the argument about exactly why assad is a really big bastard has been topic of intense and intensely boring debate in this thread on avarege about 20 billion times per second for the past 10 years, and during that time the question of "so loving what if he is" has been answered only by the very braeve members of the something genocidally awful john bolton fan club. you know, the guys who think that iraq was a bit of a fuckup but only because we didn't kill enough people from the getgo to terrorise the populace into submission there's never any conclusion or point to arguing about how much of a baddie gaddafi, saddam or the thousand other formerly american allied dictators were, since the end result is always "regime change" by the americans and more death than anything that those guys could ever have possibly achieved throughout their reigns. though I guess that is the point. assad is a baddie, therefore the american empire can now expand to syria. of course solely with the aim of bringing democracy and human rights to absolutely loving no-one (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 29, 2019 16:49
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Kurnugia posted:i mean, the argument about exactly why assad is a really big bastard has been topic of intense and intensely boring debate in this thread on avarege about 20 billion times per second for the past 10 years, and during that time the question of "so loving what if he is" has been answered only by the very braeve members of the something genocidally awful john bolton fan club. you know, the guys who think that iraq was a bit of a fuckup but only because we didn't kill enough people from the getgo to terrorise the populace into submission Where in this thread is the John Bolton Fan Club located, exactly? Because I've yet to see anything remotely like that. "There's no point in discussing how murderous murderous dictators are/were" is a hell of a take.
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May 29, 2019 17:26
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Plastic_Gargoyle posted:Where in this thread is the John Bolton Fan Club located, exactly? Because I've yet to see anything remotely like that. Leave him be, practicing what you're going to say to the internet wrongmen in the mirror is a delicate process.
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May 29, 2019 17:39
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in and to also contain a difference of grammatical tense
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May 29, 2019 17:39
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Plastic_Gargoyle posted:Where in this thread is the John Bolton Fan Club located, exactly? Because I've yet to see anything remotely like that. welcome to the John Bolton Fan Club, please like share and subscribe! one RT=1 prayer for the restoration of the Shah, ┏┓ ┃┃╱╲ in this ┃╱╱╲╲ house ╱╱╭╮╲╲ we ▔▏┗┛▕▔ vivisect ╱▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔╲ uppity saudi journalists ╱╱┏┳┓╭╮┏┳┓ ╲╲ ▔▏┗┻┛┃┃┗┻┛▕▔ "There has never been such a thing as a Yemeni so how can such a creature be said to have died"-JBFC_Official
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May 29, 2019 17:41
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Pretty sure that John Bolton is literally the only person someone could name that every single person who posts in this thread despises
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May 29, 2019 17:58
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Pretty sure that John Bolton is literally the only person someone could name that every single person who posts in this thread despises I was going to say Erdogan, but I'm not so sure.
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May 29, 2019 18:02
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Pretty sure that John Bolton is literally the only person someone could name that every single person who posts in this thread despises well duh, that's why he posts under volkerball... (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 29, 2019 18:04
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Kurnugia posted:well duh, that's why he posts under volkerball... John Bolton is a lying idiot. Go beat up your strawmen in CSPAM with all the other extremely online types.
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May 29, 2019 19:13
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Sudan is an interesting topic, since the protesters really seem to be operating with the benefit of the lessons learned from the Egyptian revolution. I haven't been following it super closely, but I do see updates pretty often that show people are still out demanding a civilian government.
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May 29, 2019 19:17
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Volkerball posted:John Bolton is a lying idiot. Go beat up your strawmen in CSPAM with all the other extremely online types. I do wonder if you realise, what responding to the obvious joke in the post and ignoring all the arguments besides, actually is...
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May 29, 2019 19:21
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and it's fine! you don't have to tell us why you keep posting white helmets psyops pics and screaming that assad is in fact a baddie, that's ok too! you don't necessarily need to have any kind of reason or point for endlessly debating the definition of genocide and exactly how many babies are dead because of assad, the important thing is to JUST. POST.
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May 29, 2019 19:27
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I forget is Kurnugia that Finnish drunk who kept posting incomprehensible and idiotic late night screeds? I think I remember him being really dumb but can’t recall specifics
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May 29, 2019 20:00
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Kurnugia posted:and it's fine! you don't have to tell us why you keep posting white helmets psyops pics and screaming that assad is in fact a baddie, that's ok too! you don't necessarily need to have any kind of reason or point for endlessly debating the definition of genocide and exactly how many babies are dead because of assad, the important thing is to JUST. POST. "Pallywood strikes again"
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May 29, 2019 20:58
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Squalid posted:I forget is Kurnugia that Finnish drunk who kept posting incomprehensible and idiotic late night screeds? I think I remember him being really dumb but can’t recall specifics One and the same!
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May 29, 2019 22:14
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Squalid posted:I forget is Kurnugia that Finnish drunk who kept posting incomprehensible and idiotic late night screeds? I think I remember him being really dumb but can’t recall specifics Too good to debate the insane eh? I knew this thread had a long-standing ableist bend to it
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May 30, 2019 01:39
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Volkerball posted:Most of the centers of Assad's power are relatively untouched by the war, and weren't in need of power. It's simply another tool at his disposal to punish victims and flex nuts at the rest of the country. Same deal with humanitarian aid going into his hands. It's humanitarian aid, it's good! Then it ends up being sold in shops in Damascus and not seen in the places most affected, so the smuggling networks still end up doing just as much work. These networks rely on cracks within the Syrian political apparatus to deliver aid because the state relentlessly pursues them. The more stabilized the Assad regime becomes, the worse the humanitarian situation is going to be for whoever he deems an enemy, so there's nothing "unambiguously good" when it comes to his consolidation of power. This seems to be contradicted by the fact that the regions of Syria under government control - which includes the majority of the population - have better access to food and water than those living outside government control. The regions that fell outside government control also experienced massacres and ethnic cleansing so exclusively attributing that to government forces is a sketchy way of trying to misrepresent a multi-sided ethnic conflict as a straightforward rebellion against the government. Kaal posted:It would if the average Syrian was reconnecting power to their white-picket fence houses and going back to their normal 9 to 5. Or if the Russians and the Assad regime was intending to use that power to create the conditions for a peace process rather than a military victory followed by a genocide. Since that clearly isn't happening there's little to be excited about. The "average Syrian" whose house was blown to poo poo and family scattered to the four winds and is crossing their fingers that they don't get picked up in the purges like half their friends isn't benefiting from Assad having a functional power grid to dole out as he chooses. While at this point it's pretty clear that anyone who can should flee rather than continue fighting, the reality is that a quicker end to the war isn't going to reduce the casualties at this point - any opposition still in Syria is going to be killed before the shooting stops. A dam going back online is not a return to normalcy, it's just a noose tightening. This is a hell of a take, arguing that ending the war will have literally no effect on how many people are dying. Your presentation of the 'average Syrian 'is really selective as well and, like above, obfuscates the fact that this is a conflict between fragments of the Syrian population, not just a struggle between the people and the government. Polling suggests that while the government is loathed by most of the people it still has durable centres of support that are much higher than your post implies:  The Syria regime is awful but inflating Assad to the level of super mega Hitler and trying to argue that endless chaos and zero infrastructure would be a better outcome for the population of Syria long term vs. a dictatorial but stable government rebuilding the country really beggars belief. The American backed Iraqi government also bombed large cities indiscriminately and oversaw the mass ethnic cleansing of Sunni neighborhoods and towns but I've never seen anyone here argue that Iraq would be better off as a perpetual Libya-style failed state with no central government or reliable services.
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May 30, 2019 18:55
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Helsing posted:This seems to be contradicted by the fact that the regions of Syria under government control - which includes the majority of the population - have better access to food and water than those living outside government control. The regions that fell outside government control also experienced massacres and ethnic cleansing so exclusively attributing that to government forces is a sketchy way of trying to misrepresent a multi-sided ethnic conflict as a straightforward rebellion against the government. People in Israel are much better off than those in Gaza, and most of the massacres in the area have occurred in Gaza and the West Bank. Should Israel occupy these areas and make the trains run on time in the interest of human rights? Would that end the fighting? Syria's dictatorial but stable central government is the reason that this war has periods of months where the death toll was higher than the last 10 years in Libya combined. Bombing campaigns in Jobar, Ghouta, and Aleppo were seeing 100+ people die every day. Well over 10,000 people have been tortured to death in Assad-run concentration camps. Millions of people have been forcibly displaced to Idlib as the regime has moved forward, and as Idlib falls, the number of people forced out of Syria is going to increasingly make the Nakba look like mere gentrification. Just because it isn't what the US wanted doesn't mean it's progress.
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May 30, 2019 19:32
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https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1135268775316598784
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Jun 2, 2019 21:01
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https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1135332642851893250?s=20
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Jun 3, 2019 02:27
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There's been a big sit-in in Khartoum going on for I think a few months now. The military came in dispersed it today with live rounds. Seen death tolls of around 2-8 so far, but it might be a bit early to get an accurate assessment on that front. https://twitter.com/ThomasVLinge/status/1135458546466938880
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Jun 3, 2019 12:16
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One could ask the same questions about Yemen.
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Jun 3, 2019 12:24
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Speaking of killing civilians: https://twitter.com/TBIJ/status/1135433368848556033 https://twitter.com/TBIJ/status/1135433376729587712 https://twitter.com/TBIJ/status/1135433381309587456 https://twitter.com/TBIJ/status/1135433386879795201 https://twitter.com/TBIJ/status/1135433390264594432 https://twitter.com/TBIJ/status/1135433394320498691 [edit] Video of the above: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUNihuiCp3o Brown Moses fucked around with this message at 15:13 on Jun 3, 2019 |
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Jun 3, 2019 13:28
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The SAA crossed into Idlib proper for the first time recently today, as the rest of the offensive had thus far been in Hama. They haven't really managed to grab a ton of territory so far at all, with the offensive seeming to have stalled out for a while (despite continuing aerial bombardment), so we'll have to see if today's move was a one off or the start of a new concerted push.
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Jun 3, 2019 20:38
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lmao at goons arguing intensely about how an eletric drat supplying power to parts of syria again is a bad thing
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Jun 4, 2019 18:20
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https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1135960577472376834?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Surely this won't have negative consequences.
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Jun 4, 2019 18:41
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