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Okay champ. Anyway..quote:From the Associated Press: So basically CIA attempting to influence the Islamist factions and the balance of power in Syria by training secular defectors from the Syrian army to fight in Syria. Very interesting..
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 14:41 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 01:58 |
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Lascivious Sloth posted:Okay champ. Anyway.. I cannot see a scenario where this ends well, and the CIA should have learned from their own mistakes at this point.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 15:02 |
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THE AWESOME GHOST posted:I cannot see a scenario where this ends well, and the CIA should have learned from their own mistakes at this point. Xth time's the charm.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 15:07 |
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How long until we see a Syrian version of the Atlacatl battalion? I'm all for supporting the Syrian opposition, but US trained groups never end well.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 16:04 |
THE AWESOME GHOST posted:I cannot see a scenario where this ends well, and the CIA should have learned from their own mistakes at this point. They're determined to make it work even after the previous 12903821903810293821 times failed.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 16:39 |
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Here's a very well made video, in Arabic, about DIY mortar production in Syria https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps-BiLIplhM
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 16:48 |
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cochise posted:They're determined to make it work even after the previous 12903821903810293821 times failed. It's probably institutional inertia at this point. "Alright guys, I know this hasn't worked too well for us
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 17:02 |
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Acebuckeye13 posted:It's probably institutional inertia at this point. "Alright guys, I know this hasn't worked too well for us 'If we don't do our job (and go by the book) we can't justify our budget to the tax payer.'
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 17:07 |
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Brown Moses posted:Here's a very well made video, in Arabic, about DIY mortar production in Syria This is in Rif Dimashq (the Damascus countryside). The rebels now run organized production lines for mortars up to 160mm, using scrap metal as the basic material. And that is all within 20kms of Damascus at most.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 17:07 |
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Muffiner posted:This is in Rif Dimashq (the Damascus countryside). The rebels now run organized production lines for mortars up to 160mm, using scrap metal as the basic material. And that is all within 20kms of Damascus at most. That's something I find really amazing, especially as these factories aren't unique, but there's lots of them producing mortars and rockets across Syria. This video is a great demonstration of the advantage a weapon like the M60 Recoilless gun, provided by Saudi Arabia, gives the opposition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIBaE0v-7M8 And here's the best Allahu Akbar of the conflict so far https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWuTf_nhMDw&t=23s
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 17:11 |
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Brown Moses posted:That's something I find really amazing, especially as these factories aren't unique, but there's lots of them producing mortars and rockets across Syria. Production started with landmines and later mortar tubes in Houla near Homs, sometime in early 2012 or late 2011. They've come a long way since then, when development and research of the mines took multiple lives.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 17:20 |
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THE AWESOME GHOST posted:I cannot see a scenario where this ends well, and the CIA should have learned from their own mistakes at this point. Wasn't Hamas a creation of Israel and the CIA to counter the Left leaning, secular, USSR friendly PLO? Zuhzuhzombie!! fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Mar 26, 2013 |
# ? Mar 26, 2013 17:29 |
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Zuhzuhzombie!! posted:Wasn't Hamas a creation of Israel and the CIA to counter the Left leaning, secular, USSR friendly PLO? Hezbollah. Although that might've just been the Mossad loving up on their own, I can't recall.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 17:32 |
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I know that guy wasn't arguing in the best of faith, but just a reminder. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7grlfg0K2s There's nothing illegitimate about Morsi's election. Dude owned for the weeks before and after the election, and I still think he was the best guy for the job as far as bringing people together after the revolution. He was democratically elected, fairly, and there will be another election in the future. I don't think it's fair to claim that their democracy is somehow less pure than ours just because we don't like the guy they voted for. It's a learning process. I'm interested to see how their next election pans out, because security and the economy have got to be becoming bigger sticking points than Islam.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 17:40 |
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The United States still didn't have our poo poo figured out a hundred years after we became an independent democracy. We and other Western democracies still don't have a lot of poo poo figured out more than 250 years later. We shouldn't expect anyone else to turn into a leftist utopia overnight, because it's not only unrealistic, it's also hypocritical. I realize that most of the folks in this thread realize that, but the media, at the very least, seems to have forgotten that it takes more than a single election to modernize centuries of entrenched, regressive cultural norms.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 18:11 |
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Brown Moses posted:
Truly the best right here.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 18:25 |
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Brown Moses posted:That's something I find really amazing, especially as these factories aren't unique, but there's lots of them producing mortars and rockets across Syria. I've got next to no clue about heavier arms like these, but how much of a concern is backblast with something like the M60--and is that still an M60 in the second video, there? How much instruction does it seem like they've been given on setting up the weapons right in terms of backblast, recoil, etc?
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 18:32 |
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Chantilly Say posted:I've got next to no clue about heavier arms like these, but how much of a concern is backblast with something like the M60--and is that still an M60 in the second video, there? How much instruction does it seem like they've been given on setting up the weapons right in terms of backblast, recoil, etc? The second video is another Croatian supplied weapon, a M79 Osa, and what was very interesting is that early on we had this video of a group of men learning how to use the weapons correctly in a classroom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZYbYvTMB_M
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 18:34 |
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Brown Moses posted:The second video is another Croatian supplied weapon, a M79 Osa, and what was very interesting is that early on we had this video of a group of men learning how to use the weapons correctly in a classroom Who makes that grenade launcher sitting on the desk there? Is that a Milkor?
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 18:41 |
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I skimmed the last few pages and no one has mentioned it yet (hopefully) so I post it here: Opposition takes over Syrias seat in the Arab League The article says that the opposition also demands Syrias seat in the UN. Hopefully they'll get it, it would be another nail in Assads' coffin.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 18:47 |
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It's gotta be SO LOUD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tekhh7Iy-sM
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 18:51 |
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Libluini posted:another nail in Assads' coffin. With the amount of times this has been said here and in the media Assads' coffin will be nothing but nails when he finally loving dies.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 19:40 |
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Chantilly Say posted:Who makes that grenade launcher sitting on the desk there? Is that a Milkor? It's the Croatian licensed version, the RBG-6. They are virtually identical, apart from the position of a few bolts and other markings, so the only way I could figure out the ID was watching lots of HD Youtube videos of them in action and hoping for a close up clear enough to pick them out.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 20:12 |
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Account of Syrian Shiites claiming that the rebels are committing a campaign of 'ethnic cleansing'. Does discuss a lot about Hezbollah's involvement in border towns, too. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-fg-0326-syria-shiites-hezbollah-20130326,0,3406001,full.story
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 20:35 |
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Miruvor posted:Account of Syrian Shiites claiming that the rebels are committing a campaign of 'ethnic cleansing'. Does discuss a lot about Hezbollah's involvement in border towns, too. I suspect there's absolutely a lot of truth to what's being said in the article, but this is important quote:A visit to the border area arranged with Hezbollah representatives provided a glimpse into a war raging along the Orontes River basin in towns and villages near the city of Qusair, just a few miles from the Lebanese frontier.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 20:38 |
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You get no law in an area, you see people taking the opportunity to settle old scores. The same thing happened in Libya, after all.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 21:13 |
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Brown Moses posted:It's the Croatian licensed version, the RBG-6. They are virtually identical, apart from the position of a few bolts and other markings, so the only way I could figure out the ID was watching lots of HD Youtube videos of them in action and hoping for a close up clear enough to pick them out. That's fiendishly impressive.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 21:28 |
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Baloogan posted:Truly the best right here. The crazier part is how you can see cars driving in the background as the shell the hell out the building with the recoilless rifle.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 21:40 |
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Chantilly Say posted:That's fiendishly impressive. And probably why I keep get asked about OCD at all the interviews I've had so far this week.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 21:44 |
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Brown Moses posted:And probably why I keep get asked about OCD at all the interviews I've had so far this week. Have they really? Is it a mandatory prerequisite?
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 21:55 |
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There's been a lot of questions along the lines of "do you have an obsession/compulsion to do this?". Also "do you ever feel endangered by what you've uncovered?", like Syrian/Croatian/Saudi assassins are waiting outside my front door.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 22:17 |
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Do you have an obsession/compulsion to do this? Do you ever feel endangered by what you've uncovered?
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 22:18 |
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gobertech posted:Being honest, if the fighting stopped tomorrow and fair elections are later held with Bashar's name somewhere on the ballot I wouldn't be surprised if he actually wins. It does indeed speak to the regime's strength that is has lasted so long, but lets remember that Gaddaffi was wildly unpopular except with a few tiny groups, and that he was winning the civil war in Libya before NATO intervened to prevent the kind of slaughter we're seeing now.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 22:27 |
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Baloogan posted:Do you have an obsession/compulsion to do this? You'll be able to find out those answers soon enough! Probably several times over as well.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 22:31 |
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Muscle Tracer posted:The United States still didn't have our poo poo figured out a hundred years after we became an independent democracy. We and other Western democracies still don't have a lot of poo poo figured out more than 250 years later. We shouldn't expect anyone else to turn into a leftist utopia overnight, because it's not only unrealistic, it's also hypocritical. True. Unlike Egypt, the United States didn't let women or non-whites, or indeed anyone who didn't hold a certain amount of land to their name, to vote. Yeah, you're god drat ashamed - and I get that. None of that poo poo is true in Egypt. I would like to see discourse take place at a level above "herf a derf, the US went like this, so therefore this completely different place at a completely different times is the same". As far as I'm aware, Egypt didn't disenfranchise large portions of its minorities during the election in the way that the US does EVERY SINGLE ELECTION, and as far as I'm aware there aren't laws on the books that exclude ex-felons (I mean blacks, I mean ex-felons) from voting. Even if there are, it can't be the same as a system which is set up, all the time -not just at election season, to take black men away from their families and provide slave labour for the state, disenfranchising the hell out of them. Then setting up single-booth polling stations in their former neighbourhood. And you want to talk about who's progressive at the end of all of that? quote:entrenched, regressive cultural norms. You call yourself a leftist? You're a loving imperialist. "USA numbah one, western culture da best, better than regressive savages - we know how to do it but they need to learn to do it like us" There are so many disgusting opinions running around this thread, so many racist assumptions. It's no wonder that there are few Arab goons following it. Just a bunch of sweaty white nerds with a war toy fetish.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 22:35 |
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I bet Egyptian Copts and Shia feel differently about their place in society. And you think women are given equal status as men? I don't know any Egyptian women who feel that way.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 22:39 |
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Brown Moses posted:You'll be able to find out those answers soon enough! Probably several times over as well. You might want to start doing some research into what polonium tastes like, as a precaution.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 22:44 |
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Xandu posted:I bet Egyptian Copts and Shia feel differently about their place in society. And you think women are given equal status as men? I don't know any Egyptian women who feel that way. I'm pretty sure there weren't any attempts to take away their ability to vote.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 22:44 |
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Disenfranchisement is an important issue, but its hardly the only way to measure marginalization.
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# ? Mar 26, 2013 22:47 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 01:58 |
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I'm not sure how you misconstrued a post that boiled down to "America is extremely flawed even centuries after becoming a democracy, why do Americans keep expecting other democracies to succeed where we still fail, and in their infancy" as pro-American imperialism, but I'm sorry that you came to that incorrect conclusion. e: I'm also not sure whether you are insinuating that there are no oppressive or regressive regimes in West Asia, but that appears to be the case. Muscle Tracer fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Mar 26, 2013 |
# ? Mar 26, 2013 22:56 |