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Sinteres posted:The US House voted today to slap sanctions on Turkey and Erdogan personally, and also to recognize the Armenian genocide. Niceeeee. About loving time. Less Claypool fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Oct 30, 2019 |
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Oct 30, 2019 00:40
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The crook always returns to the scene of the crime, and Turkey is rolling around the Syrian desert again.
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Oct 30, 2019 00:43
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They must be really pissed if they're going to formally recognize the armenian genocide, god drat.
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Oct 30, 2019 00:46
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Herstory Begins Now posted:They must be really pissed if they're going to formally recognize the armenian genocide, god drat. Does the Senate need to ratify any of this?
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Oct 30, 2019 00:51
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Pretty Random but the band System of a Down are all Armenian Americans and have been trying to push for the recognition for like 20 years. A lot of people didn’t know about the genocide until the band really big. https://youtu.be/rcJjxOqgANM
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Oct 30, 2019 00:51
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pro starcraft loser posted:Does the Senate need to ratify any of this? doesn't really matter, they're doing that specifically just to piss of erdogan House also voted overwhelmingly to sanction Turkey, too
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Oct 30, 2019 01:16
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Surprising re: recognition of Armenian genocide. It's the kind of thing people campaign on but then fail to deliver when in office; I think both W and Obama did this.
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Oct 30, 2019 01:17
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i imagine this also played into that vote https://twitter.com/trtworld/status/1187768280867454976
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Oct 30, 2019 02:11
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Trump decision has only led to good results besides the north Syrian megadeath* *which was mostly avoided
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Oct 30, 2019 03:48
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Vasukhani posted:Trump decision has only led to good results besides the north Syrian megadeath* Thank you Mr Press Secretary.
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Oct 30, 2019 03:54
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Grape posted:Thank you Mr Press Secretary. 1) Nato weakened 2) Armenian Genocide recognized 3) Syrian war ended 4) Pakistan helping Turkey make nukes
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Oct 30, 2019 03:58
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Vasukhani posted:1) Nato weakened 5) lmao
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Oct 30, 2019 04:02
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Grape posted:Non-Mediterranean Euro looking people absolutely physically stand out in the Levant, which is what I mean by white here. Trust me, they do! I semi-regularly visit the island right next to Lebanon, where people generally look just like the Lebanese and yeah when a Brit or Russian walks by they stand the heck out (especially the Russians). Yeah, that's me (way in the back and face turned away from the camera). You see pretty much every variation in skin color and eye color that you'd see in Greece in the Lebanese, but I never saw a actually-Scandinavian-blond adult male like myself, so I do stand out, even if like 80-90% of other French/Brits/Norwegians would not stand out there. Not sure I've ever seen a Scandianvian-blond adult Greek person either. I even saw some red headed Lebanese, there were two brothers on my flight into Beirut in the first place, speaking Arabic and with other than the hair, were stereotypically "Mediterranean", although who knows maybe they were half-Irish. My wife is North African (and next to me in that video but also hard to see besides what she's wearing) but no one ever notices until they see her name... and even then, often think she's Italian or something. Except for immigration officers at Arab countries, who are then almost always assholes to her and start grilling her about her parents names, place of birth, other citizenships, etc etc, even when she shows her European passport. I guess that's one way to know just how dead Pan Arabism is, and how it has been buried, exhumed, shot, butchered, and then incinerated.
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Oct 30, 2019 07:32
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Vasukhani posted:1) Nato weakened 1) not significantly, 2) okay, 3) not really, 4) how is that good?
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Oct 30, 2019 11:58
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pro starcraft loser posted:He's going to demand the author of this piece be arrested. Turkey just issued an Interpol Red Notice on 58% of Germans.
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Oct 30, 2019 12:26
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One thing that has puzzled me about a resolution in Lebanon is the mechanics of the situation. One thing is the because of Taif Agreement, there needs to be a certain amount of cooperation across the sectarian divide...fine, but Hariri was leading a government that was formed across the Lebanese political spectrum and included almost every major party. If there was another election, wouldn't be exactly the same parties in power? Also, ff the parties forming the current coalition resigned in it entirity, who would be left to run the government long-term? Moreover, how are the Amal Movement and Hezbollah so important in the context of the protests when they are a just another part of the broad governing coalition that also includes Christians and Sunni parties? I get there are reasons for the protests. Lebanon is in fact in a tough situation, but what is an actual path to the resolution of the situation? The most refugeees aren't going to Syria, the peg to the dollar is unsustainable (and honestly pegging local currencies to the dollar usually doesn't work out well), and the much of the dysfunction of the political system is simply due to how the government is designed to work.
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Oct 30, 2019 14:27
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Trash pocket post
Jezza of OZPOS fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Oct 30, 2019 |
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Oct 30, 2019 16:07
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Another trash pocket post!
Jezza of OZPOS fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Oct 30, 2019 |
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Oct 30, 2019 16:09
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Ardennes posted:One thing that has puzzled me about a resolution in Lebanon is the mechanics of the situation. One thing is the because of Taif Agreement, there needs to be a certain amount of cooperation across the sectarian divide...fine, but Hariri was leading a government that was formed across the Lebanese political spectrum and included almost every major party. If there was another election, wouldn't be exactly the same parties in power? Also, ff the parties forming the current coalition resigned in it entirity, who would be left to run the government long-term? Moreover, how are the Amal Movement and Hezbollah so important in the context of the protests when they are a just another part of the broad governing coalition that also includes Christians and Sunni parties? Yeah that first paragraph is kind of the messed up thing but it’s also why people wanted an election ASAP. The Taif agreement requires certain quotas of each religious group to be elected—that’s actually probably not a terrible idea even for the near future—but they can be in whatever party they want to be. A Shia MP could join Lebanese Forces if they really wanted, and there are probably a handful of such cases, but the problem is that the religious quotas also happen to basically perfectly overlap with the specific parties that people actually vote for. there are non sectarian parties, but basically no one has been voting for them previously. If they have an election ASAP people would probably vote for these parties, but if it waits 6-12 months of crisis then there’s a high risk people will stop being "Lebanese" and go back to being "Maronite" and "Melkite" etc. Path to real resolution: shiiiit? Hariri’s plans last week sound good but people I talked to (including a Lebanese banker) were like, this might hold things together for another two years, but eventually it’s a house of cards. What’s kind of interesting about Lebanon is it’s reasonably democratic, even on those democracy rankings — it just gets a bad overall rating because like the "functioning of government" rating is rock bottom, dragging the ranking from "flawed democracy" into "semi authoritarian" even though Lebanon is super not even remotely an authoritarian state (except maybe in Hezbollah strongholds, dunno, but definitely not in Beirut or generally country-wide). As for who’s going to run things now? Dunno, but they need to do something to prevent a bank run and stop the parallel market, but going to a market exchange rate will also bleed them dry. One thing I’ve seen incorrectly reported is that the Lebanese Central Bank has $30bn of reserves, which would cover like... 5 years of imports or something huge, so people were wondering wtf is the issue. The issue is that the central bank doesn’t own that money, it just has access to like 10% of people’s dollar-account deposits in the country that it can use to spend on stuff, but it has to put it back, and if there’s a bank run then suddenly that all falls apart. One partly saving grace for them is, while they’re super indebted like Greece, the majority of that debt is held in Lebanese pounds (iirc like 60%?) and much of the rest is dollar debt but owed to government agencies in Lebanon like the (totally hosed) electricity company and to private citizens. So it’s more like Japan style debt and not Greek style debt. Both are a big issue in the long run but they can actually pay it largely off, it would just cause a big economic collapse as the lira collapses and Lebanese become pissed at their own country. Not that I’m an economist, I guess both are pretty bad situations to be in. I don’t know why the debt to GDP ratio doesn’t seem so much of a crisis to the Japanese. Saladman fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Oct 30, 2019 |
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Oct 30, 2019 18:55
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US Forces en masse making there way back to Kurdish syrian region. Presidential Backpedal?  What's interesting is the SAA and TFSA are still engaging in firefights, While Russia plans joint patrols of the 7KM region The SAA Are not acting in accordance with the ceasefire, yet Russia is. This shows a breakdown in continuity of their alliance. LETS remember folks, The Sykes-Picot agreement is being redrawn by Russia and Turkey. Syria is a non-existent placeholder state commanded by a placeholder president who can be used as a police officer for Russian warm water ports in a much smaller state. Russia needs a sphere of influence in the ME. Mainly a 100% Damascus centered Russian sphere economic area, a Latakia and Tatar centered Rich Alawite small state where Russia can export and import in the Mediterranean with an Israeli state style tech economy, and a 100% Sphere of influence Turkish state centered around Aleppo as it's capital. -- Massive Bombardments taking place in Idlib province, much larger singe day bombing today than the past 30 days. I fully expect a "WHY WOULD RUSSIA SPEND ALL THIS $$$$$ IF THEY DON'T WANT THE TERRITORY? galaxy brain takes WAR CRIME GIGOLO fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Oct 30, 2019 |
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Oct 30, 2019 20:49
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Saladman posted:One partly saving grace for them is, while they’re super indebted like Greece, the majority of that debt is held in Lebanese pounds (iirc like 60%?) and much of the rest is dollar debt but owed to government agencies in Lebanon like the (totally hosed) electricity company and to private citizens. So it’s more like Japan style debt and not Greek style debt. Both are a big issue in the long run but they can actually pay it largely off, it would just cause a big economic collapse as the lira collapses and Lebanese become pissed at their own country. Not that I’m an economist, I guess both are pretty bad situations to be in. I don’t know why the debt to GDP ratio doesn’t seem so much of a crisis to the Japanese. Oh and one other thing I just remembered along these lines: There's been a lot of corruption in Lebanon, but it's substantially fund misappropriation with profits stolen and principle returned, like businessmen giving themselves state bank loans at favorable interest rates. It's not Equatorial Guinea style, with politicians literally stealing the money from the public bank and and sending it out of the country to spend on boats and stuff. I'm sure there's some of that too, but a lot of the stolen/misappropriated public money was spent to build the shiny new buildings in Beirut. Solidere is a weird public-private partnership company ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidere ) that was tasked with rebuilding Beirut after the civil war, and it owns basically all of the territory that used to be in the Green Line, including all of the super glitzy new poo poo downtown, and a smattering of stuff elsewhere. They have in fact done what they said they would do, but everything is absurdly glitzy and expensive and way out of the reach of like 99.5% of Lebanese, so if you go to e.g. Beirut Souks, it's a total ghost town (even like two weeks ago when it was open), as who is going to Louis Vuitton and Versace and whatever? I guess maybe some Gulf tourists in summer, but it's going to be basically empty almost all of the rest of the year. In addition to being a ghost town, it's also totally soulless and generic "nice mall". It's a nice mall and has decent architecture, but it's not a souk and it has no soul and it never will. Solidere did some iffy eminent domain things to claim ownership of the destroyed buildings in the old Green Line area as well, and while it probably turned a profit for the government overall and it did completely make downtown Beirut not look like a war-torn shithole and fixed many image problems, a lot of profits of the land going up massssively in value after reconstruction were kept by the private investors, rather than the public. More iffy/corrupt than solidere, there's a program in Lebanon that helps middle class (and maybe poorer people too) finance homes, so they can get a loan from the government with like a 1% interest rate, which is great since apartments in Beirut have gone up by 10x in price since 2005 (and a lot basically everywhere else as well). However the guy who was running this ended up taking billions of dollars of it for his own property purchases--as did many other rich Lebanese--and essentially using that as a bank loan with a super low interest rate, thus speculating in property and turning huge profits. This gave back very little to the state, and also meant the system didn't have nearly enough money for regular Lebanese to buy places, making it very hard for them to actually get the loans at low interest rates. There was also a huge problem of rich Gulf Arabs buying property, further pushing up the property rates, which stopped happening a couple years ago after the spat that the UAE and SA had with Lebanon, and there's been a significant crash in property prices (which is good for everyone except speculators), but now there are a poo poo ton of empty apartments in Beirut that have been purchased and are now idle, since obviously Saudis who spent $1.5m on an apartment don't want to let it go now for $1m, and they're also scared because their government told them not to go to Lebanon -- although that was lifted in the last couple months for SA and UAE, so next summer I guess many will be back. Anyway long story short, Lebanon could recover this by simply appropriating the property built by these iffy and probably-corrupt business deals, or eminent domain and purchase them at way under current-face-value, and then try and sell it on the market and recover funds that way as well as a one time wind fall and as a gently caress you to the corrupt businessmen like Hariri who benefitted from this. There is likely also a lot of stolen money that can never be recovered, but mostly the money was inappropriately borrowed and the profits were stolen, while the state did get the principle back. Anyway, probably everyone involved in construction in Lebanon needs to have like 90% of their investments taken by the government as ill-gotten gains, but that's probably never going to happen, even though the ill-gotten gains are largely in Lebanon itself. Maybe there's some way out of it, though.
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Oct 30, 2019 22:09
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Is anybody in Lebanon taking American cash? I'm pretty sure I remember the US funds the army but I recall every Lebanese party has at least one foreign sponsor so I wouldn't be surprised if there are politicians with a particularly close relationship to the USA.
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Oct 30, 2019 22:27
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Iraq’s protests have been getting really massive and intense especially tonight, I really wonder how they’ll overcome the sectarian government they’re stuck with currently.
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Oct 31, 2019 01:24
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https://twitter.com/attackerman/status/1189859860936101890
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Oct 31, 2019 12:30
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We did a video with Newsy on Turkish backed forces executing civilians on the M4 highway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQKxXmeNu6Q Brown Moses fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Oct 31, 2019 |
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Oct 31, 2019 15:34
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Brown Moses posted:We did a video with Newsy on Turkish backed forces executing civilians on the M4 highway: I just feel clicking that link will upset me beyond belief.
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Oct 31, 2019 17:27
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Yeah I was watching John Oliver’s show of all people and he showed clips of Turkish soldiers laughing as they were shooting Kurds on the street, so disgusting man.
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Oct 31, 2019 17:59
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https://twitter.com/NicholasAHeras/status/1189945230272937984 The SDF is going to end up being five local dudes with rifles surrounded by American combat vehicles.
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Oct 31, 2019 18:28
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Reading between the lines on that: Kurds are read receipting the US, as well they should
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Oct 31, 2019 19:32
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Other way around, the Kurds are begging for help and the US is saying new phone who this?
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Oct 31, 2019 19:33
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Sinteres posted:Other way around, the Kurds are begging for help and the US is saying new phone who this? It's not like the US is offering anything at all to them
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Oct 31, 2019 19:37
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Right, the US is telling the Kurds to drop dead. I don't get your point. This is weird: https://twitter.com/AlbertoMiguelF5/status/1189566588296585222 In related news, the prime minister just agreed to step down. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Oct 31, 2019 |
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Oct 31, 2019 19:41
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Sinteres posted:Right, the US is telling the Kurds to drop dead. I don't get your point. Are we seeing the mantle of thr US ME dominance shrivel?
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Oct 31, 2019 21:09
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Sinteres posted:Right, the US is telling the Kurds to drop dead. I don't get your point. Maybe they'll make the annexation official 
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Oct 31, 2019 21:22
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WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:So russia is negotiating for syria, iran is negotiatiny for iraq It definitely seems that way. Putin is very close allies with Iran and Assad, now with the poo poo he sold to Turkey, he is seeing a lot of opportunities in the region. The Iraq war completely hosed that part of the region so I think with us troops moving out, they are going to get replaced. I’m sure Israel is pissed. Is there an actual chance Turkey gets kicked out of NATO? Less Claypool fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Oct 31, 2019 |
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Oct 31, 2019 21:27
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Less Claypool posted:
There's no mechanism to suspend or expell a NATO member.
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Oct 31, 2019 22:45
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Amnesty just published a report that includes multiple examples of Iraqi security forces shooting protesters in the head with tear gas grenades: https://twitter.com/samdubberley/status/1189934851232808960 https://twitter.com/Brian_Castner/status/1189926686126686208 There's a number of these images that have been circulating for the last couple of weeks, along with videos of victims just after they've been shot, rolling around with smoking pouring out their skulls. VVV Fair enough Brown Moses fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Oct 31, 2019 |
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Oct 31, 2019 22:56
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bm while I appreciate you posting the things I think this merits spoiler tags
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Oct 31, 2019 23:18
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kinda defeats the point of tear gas if you're just going to shoot people in the head anyway
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Nov 1, 2019 00:20
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Less Claypool posted:It definitely seems that way. Putin is very close allies with Iran and Assad, now with the poo poo he sold to Turkey, he is seeing a lot of opportunities in the region. The Iraq war completely hosed that part of the region so I think with us troops moving out, they are going to get replaced. Its more likely Trump will leave NATO than turkey getting kicked out.
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Nov 1, 2019 00:56
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