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I drove back to Beirut today from Saida, all roadblocks are gone. There are some "road irritants" where like two of the three lanes on the highway have stuff strewn across them, but always there is a path through. In central Beirut I saw a driver park his car and start dismantling one block himself, no one was there to try to "protect" it. My wife is not a top notch navigator and drove us by the Egg (a central protest site) and the roads around it too were pretty much unblocked. Our apartment is like 100m from place des martyrs, and we can see el amine mosque from our balcony, so I’ll wander over later and check it out. I’ll post some OC for this thread later on when I get some better photos and pull out my computer. We got a few of the road irritations on the drive in; there was a film crew at one of them that outnumbered the number of protestors like 2:1. That said it’s only like 1pm, and I haven’t been to any protest site after 5pm this week since I was staying in mountain houses and really don’t like driving at night, especially since we’ve had HUGE rainstorms here the last two days. Today is much nicer so maybe more people will come back out. The universities and I think probably most schools will reopen on Monday. AUB tried to reopen on Wednesday but failed, but now many professors are also willing to go back. We’ll see what happens this weekend but right now it seems like a lot of the energy is gone. Anyway I’ll see how it is tonight, maybe I’ll even fly my drone out there from the apartment. I’ll have to think about how potentially terrible of an idea that is, although I do have a Lebanese drone permit (but not for this particular case, and every shooting technically has to be separately registered with time/date/place). I’ve never been asked to show it, but I’ve also only been shooting in the countryside and mountain villages before, never in cities.
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Oct 25, 2019 10:54
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Well here are a couple photos that my wife took from the car while we were driving, so sorry the framing and composition sucks, but we'll get better shots later. Here's what the barricades largely look like now; this is in downtown Beirut but even on the highway almost 99% of them look like this. The only "professional" heavy scale roadblock I saw in the last 9 days -- where I have driven approximately 1000 km through Lebanon -- was near Chtaura. Don't think we got any photos of that, but it was high metal or concrete barricades, like blast shield military style.  That church is the Cathedral of Saint Gregoir the Illuminated on Rue General Foaad Chehab in towntown Beirut. And here's the news media at one of the roadblocks on the highway south of Beirut at around noon today:  This was Tripoli's Place al Nour (main square) last Sunday at maybe 3pm:  This was Bsharri last Friday night around 7pm, the only time I've seen tyre fires was last Friday where I saw them in Jbeil (relatively serious, on the highway at like 10am) and in Bsharri at night (some kids loving around and getting chastised by older people in the town) -- never saw them again anywhere after that.  E: Links fixed. I got more photos too but will have to pull them off the camera later. Saladman fucked around with this message at 11:25 on Oct 25, 2019 |
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Oct 25, 2019 11:09
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Unimpressed posted:Huh? Name one. Tunisia, Israel (ehhh), Cyprus, also believe it or not North Cyprus.
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Oct 25, 2019 11:45
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Grape posted:Tunisia, Israel (ehhh), Cyprus, also believe it or not North Cyprus. Israel is as much a democracy as bird poo poo is flying when it's dropping onto your head. Tunisia has been a democracy for about 5 minutes and yet to prove it really is democratic. Elections, even fair ones, do not a democracy make. Cyprus I guess I think of as being in Europe, maybe I'm wrong about that.
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Oct 25, 2019 12:14
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Unimpressed posted:Elections, even fair ones, do not a democracy make. ???
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Oct 25, 2019 12:32
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I think he is saying, fair ones don’t make a democracy great. Which is pretty true because most people are ignorant. See middle America.
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Oct 25, 2019 13:14
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America's a plutocracy rather than a democracy tho
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Oct 25, 2019 13:25
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Less Claypool posted:I think he is saying, fair ones don’t make a democracy great. Which is pretty true because most people are ignorant. See middle America. People freely choosing a stupid government is exactly how democracy is supposed to work.
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Oct 25, 2019 15:10
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Sinteres posted:??? Some people think of democracy as some totally idealized entity that represents the pinnacle of truth and justice and all that is right. In reality no two democracies are the same and they all have their faults. Israel, Iran, Russia, Turkey, the US, Switzerland-- these are all democracies. The first four have clear flaws. The US has its own lesser flaws in how money plays so large a role. Switzerland with its direct democracy is really closer to some ancient ideal than most other countries.
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Oct 25, 2019 15:13
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I would not call Iran, Russia, or Turkey democracies. They have some token nods to democracy but none of those governments tolerate challenges to their authority. Also Israel doesn’t let a majority of people living in their territory vote
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Oct 25, 2019 15:29
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Remember how Trump was supposed to sanction Turkey for buying the S-400 but didn't? Here we go again: https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/1187740458451165185 https://twitter.com/sarahemclaugh/status/1187756483494207488 Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Oct 25, 2019 |
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Oct 25, 2019 16:06
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FlamingLiberal posted:
Yeah but neither did the US for the majority of its history. Nor did Switzerland for that matter. Also Lebanon is a democratic MENA country, it’s a kind of lovely democracy but most of the problem is that people keep voting for the same sectarian idiots every time. The religions of the MPs are mandated but the parties are not. A Christian could be a hezvollah MP, (not sure if there are any) and there are Muslims in the LF and probably even in Kataeb, both of which are "Christian". Saladman fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Oct 25, 2019 |
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Oct 25, 2019 17:46
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Ah yes the multi polar world is forming nicely.
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Oct 25, 2019 17:47
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Saladman posted:Yeah but neither did the US for the majority of its history. Nor did Switzerland for that matter. It doesn't really excuse anything but it should be pointed out that even if you count in the West Bank, Israel is majority Jewish and that the Arab citizens of Israel proper do have voting rights. It is more through other and more indirect means that their political and civil rights are suppressed, the Palestinians of the West Bank (a whole lot of who work and partially reside in Israel) are more thorughly excluded from political participation and representation due to being classified as foreign workers and non-permanent residents and such, not too unlike what South Africa was trying to do with its black population and the Bantustans (though Israel has a decided advantage in that unlike the White South Africans, the Jewish population actually is the majority).
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Oct 25, 2019 17:56
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Most Arab Israelis, not in the territories, have more say in Israel than most Arab countries to be honest.
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Oct 25, 2019 19:26
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I sincerely wonder if Trump would have tried to reconcile with Iran or at least would have left the country alone if Obama didn’t negotiate the nuclear deal and give him a reason to lash out in spite. The whole obsession with keeping troops in Syria just to deny oil to Iran makes little sense even for this administration.
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Oct 25, 2019 20:11
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Snipee posted:I sincerely wonder if Trump would have tried to reconcile with Iran or at least would have left the country alone if Obama didn’t negotiate the nuclear deal and give him a reason to lash out in spite. The whole obsession with keeping troops in Syria just to deny oil to Iran makes little sense even for this administration. He probably could have toned things down a bit from what he's done, but you have to remember that giving the hawks what they want on Iran is a big part of what gives him a pass to break with his party's orthodoxy in other areas, as we've seen with the shifting goalposts by guys like Graham, who was publicly furious about the Syria withdrawal until he convinced Trump to stay for the oil. Doing what he did for North Korea to Iran just isn't an option because the Republican Party has a much greater emotional attachment to Israel than it does to South Korea or Japan.
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Oct 25, 2019 20:44
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Unimpressed posted:Tunisia has been a democracy for about 5 minutes and yet to prove it really is democratic. Elections, even fair ones, do not a democracy make. Sorry, I'm not up to date on the standards set by the Drive By Democracy Sneerer Index. Cyprus is closer to Syria, Lebanon etc than it is to the nearest parts of Greece. Like Greece itself is already historically and culturally heavily tied to the Middle East, but if we got to pick a point where Europe and the Middle East meet, ok Greece is that point sure. But Cyprus lol. Like if nothing else think about which thread talking about it makes more sense in, this one or the Euro thread. Imagine ambling in there and going "hay guyz, man anyone else worried about Turkish military incursions on their territory? Who else is working on major oil drilling plans with Egypt? poo poo, am I the only one getting buzzed by Syrian jets?? Oh btw wanna swap homemade hummus recipes?". poo poo Europeans tend to forget Eastern Europe (aside from Russia) exists half the time, let alone an island that's an hour plane flight from Cairo. Grape fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Oct 25, 2019 |
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Oct 25, 2019 20:58
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Snipee posted:I sincerely wonder if Trump would have tried to reconcile with Iran or at least would have left the country alone if Obama didn’t negotiate the nuclear deal and give him a reason to lash out in spite. The whole obsession with keeping troops in Syria just to deny oil to Iran makes little sense even for this administration. Trump also thinks there is nothing more important than oil. How many times has he said that we should have just seized Iraq’s oil after we toppled Saddam as ‘repayment’? Everything with him is transactional.
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Oct 25, 2019 21:52
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Trump has said he's willing to sit down to talk with Iran's leaders with no conditions, but Iran has stated there can be no talks until US sanctions are lifted.
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Oct 25, 2019 22:53
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OhFunny posted:Trump has said he's willing to sit down to talk with Iran's leaders with no conditions, but Iran has stated there can be no talks until US sanctions are lifted. I'm pretty sure Iran's leaders could get sanctions lifted and more if they met Trump and praised him enough.
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Oct 25, 2019 23:52
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HisMajestyBOB posted:I'm pretty sure Iran's leaders could get sanctions lifted and more if they met Trump and praised him enough. The current president of Iran doesn't really portray himself as a strongman and I don't know if Trump understands the government is full of kleptocrats so it's hard to tell if he'd take a liking to them. Throw Rouhani on a horse shirtless for some pictures beforehand and maybe it'd work.
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Oct 25, 2019 23:59
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Not to mention the fact, didn’t we steal 400 million dollars from Iran or something?
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Oct 26, 2019 00:09
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The SNA reports the SAA is deploying against the SNA and TFSA.
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Oct 26, 2019 00:37
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Warbadger posted:The current president of Iran doesn't really portray himself as a strongman and I don't know if Trump understands the government is full of kleptocrats so it's hard to tell if he'd take a liking to them. Throw Rouhani on a horse shirtless for some pictures beforehand and maybe it'd work. tbf rouhani's opponents would scream about how he's betraying the country and probably a CIA plant and probably not even a Muslim but they do that anyway, so
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Oct 26, 2019 04:54
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OhFunny posted:Trump has said he's willing to sit down to talk with Iran's leaders with no conditions, but Iran has stated there can be no talks until US sanctions are lifted.
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Oct 26, 2019 05:19
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Free elections are one part that supports the rule of the majority, real democracy is based on a core of rights that protect everyone including the minority. I'm genuinely surprised this isn't obvious to people in this thread. For example, Israel's elections, putting aside the fact that 40% of the population it controls can't even participate in them, are largely free and fair. But Israel doesn't have the concept of a democracy anymore,it is the rule of the majority. That's behind things like delegating Arabic to a second class language, or allowing small local councils to exclude Arabs from applying to relocate there. The fact that Israeli Arabs have more rights than most citizens in other Arab countries only speaks to the paucity of their rights in those countries not to some great democratic idyll in Israel.
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Oct 26, 2019 05:50
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Unimpressed posted:Free elections are one part that supports the rule of the majority, real democracy is based on a core of rights that protect everyone including the minority. I'm genuinely surprised this isn't obvious to people in this thread. I think this forum probably has more communists than Republicans, Tories, and all other members of mainstream conservative parties combined, so your comment is probably valid. But considering the rise of the populist right, I think whether or not “rule of the majority” constitutes democracy is now seriously being debated. The word “real” is not convincing to those that don’t already agree with us.
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Oct 26, 2019 06:30
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Maybe half of shops are open in downtown Beirut, as well as all cafes and restaurants. The music started on Place des Martyrs today at around 13:30 and it shut off last night around 11pm. We left at 7 and didn’t go back but a friend of ours was there in the later evening and took some videos of the concert. There were maybe 10k people max at any one point there yesterday. Estimating crowd sizes is hard but I’ve been to enough music festivals to know what 50-100k feels like and it was definitely never close to that size. Also comparing the 1 million person March photos in Santiago this week there’s no way Beirut was ever anywhere even remotely close to that, and I haven’t seen any drone photos showing extensive protest numbers since last Sunday, which was no way anywhere even close to 1 million people in Beirut. NYT has a fake news piece today which refers to Beirut being on "lockdown" and businesses "shuttered" which is absolutely loving a lie. Even the choice of "shuttered" as a synonym for "closed" is, while technically OK, gives the connotation of shutters being down, which is not true. Even the two Versace stores don’t have shutters down, just regular glass doors that anyone with a metal bar could break. I’d guess maybe 10% of shops/businesses are abnormally shuttered for a Saturday, and another maybe 40% are abnormally -closed- but not shuttered/barred and with merchandise in full view. Makes me goddamn furious to see NYT publish fake news about a Beirut lockdown. If I can drive my car all the way from Sidon to Martyrs Square on the main roads and not get even my ID, let alone my trunk, checked one time, what the gently caress kind of person would refer to that as a lockdown? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/25/opinion/lebanon-protests.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage Choke on a dick, Cohen you lying gently caress. This is a photo of Beirut Souks from last night around 5:30pm. See any shutters? No? Also see any police? Or security? No? Right. Even a couple restaurants in Beirut Souks were open, although there was like no one there except waiters and a couple regular security guards who would be there any time.  This is the square between the Egg and Al Amine mosque at just after zuhr yesterday (6pm), the center of the protest site. Not exactly packed, is it?  There's so much loving misinformation going around, from Western sources exaggerating the "danger" of the protests, to the protestors inflating their protest size numbers with photoshopped images and continual re-use of photos from last Sunday, the one and only day that appeared to have actually pretty massive crowds. This is a fake image that was posted on Reddit, for instance (and fwiw was called out for being fake): https://www.reddit.com/r/lebanon/comments/dlm58m/with_how_corrupt_our_government_is_i_really_hope/ I have seen several other fake crowd images as well, though also a couple ones that were probably real, like the one someone else posted a couple pages back on this thread. Saladman fucked around with this message at 12:49 on Oct 26, 2019 |
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Oct 26, 2019 12:22
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Well there are a lot more people today at Martyrs Square in Beirut. Hard to guess crowd size though. It’s pretty chill, lots of families and little kids. We’ve been chilling here for about an hour.
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Oct 26, 2019 18:09
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Unimpressed posted:Free elections are one part that supports the rule of the majority, real democracy is based on a core of rights that protect everyone including the minority. I'm genuinely surprised this isn't obvious to people in this thread. This argument only makes sense if you assume "democracy" must be synonymous with "good things." It would make more sense to say that protections for minority rights are limits on democracy that are nevertheless good things; liberal democracy and pure democracy are different things, and liberal democracy is preferable.
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Oct 26, 2019 20:38
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It's insane that the US still has access to the roads near Qamishli after the pullout. They just went a convoy to eastern DeZ using that route today.
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Oct 26, 2019 21:08
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It's similar to that convoy that was driving around with Russian flags in previously unheard of areas: no one is shooting at anything with a US or Russian flag. Hell the entire intervention the US was doing was literally just having some American flags flying in sdf convoys and having small outposts with some american flags attached to sdf/ypg bases so they couldn't be shelled by anyone who didn't want counter battery fire and air strikes.
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Oct 26, 2019 22:34
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There are rumors starting up that Baghdadi is dead and that Trump is going to announce this at a morning press conference The man literally does nothing work-wise on the weekend so for him to have a conference on a Sunday makes me think it's true
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Oct 27, 2019 04:36
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FlamingLiberal posted:There are rumors starting up that Baghdadi is dead and that Trump is going to announce this at a morning press conference (cross-quoted from USPol)
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Oct 27, 2019 05:58
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https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1188312525210828800
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Oct 27, 2019 08:09
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how many times have we claimed that we've killed baghdadi?
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Oct 27, 2019 08:18
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From the rumors I don’t think we killed him, he detonated his suicide vest. Not that it really matters. Russia loving with NATO again https://twitter.com/dev_discourse/status/1187288569557196801/ Less Claypool fucked around with this message at 08:46 on Oct 27, 2019 |
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Oct 27, 2019 08:24
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This is at 36.165848, 36.627291, roughly 5km away from the Turkish border: https://twitter.com/ryanmofarrell/status/1188336055713521665
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Oct 27, 2019 08:26
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:how many times have we claimed that we've killed baghdadi? With this level of media attention? Maybe... twice?
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Oct 27, 2019 08:26
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