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THE AWESOME GHOST posted:The leaders are former MPs, they're protesting changes to the election law that will make it harder for them to get reelected (everyone gets one vote instead of 4) and they are doing it under the guise of "we want freedom" like the rest of the region when the main organizer is a Salafi who spent most of his time in parliament trying to make women wear the hijab and who is trying to segregate all schools by gender, even private ones. What was the reason behind the changes in election law? Why did voters ever have 4 votes to begin with? You mentioned tribal politics before, does that mean there is a partisan element to the protests or are they composed of a representative sample of the population? I mean are protestors generally wealthier/poorer than average or predominantly from specific regions. Sorry for all the questions but i really know nothing about the situation and your strong opinion made me curious.
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Oct 21, 2012 22:40
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That summary of Kuwaiti politics reminded me i dont unxerstand the first thing about arab tribal identity. Like i associate the word tribe with ethnicity, and would normally imagine a tribe shares something like language that separates them from outsiders, but that obviously doesnt apply in the middle east where everyone is an arab and speaks arabic. I mean, what binds a tribe together? Especially in a wealthy modern state like Kuwait? Are they just a codified system of nepotism? Or do they provide valuable services to their members not offered by the state? Does everyone have a tribe in Kuwait or are they an achaic institution only preserved by the jerkoff Saudi immigrants. The entire institution seems weird and alien to my western conceptions of identity and governance, which i guess are mostly shaped by the institution of the nation-state and racial identity groupings.
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Oct 23, 2012 02:50
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I resently read an article describing efforts by one of the big rebel umbrella groups to pay fighters, sorry I don't have the link handy. The planned checks were really small- maybe $80 a month. What it really seemed to be was an attempt to document fighters-and control them. Does anyone have more info on this issue?
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Nov 4, 2012 05:14
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V. Illych L. posted:I don't see that this follows. A society in distress will generally have more overt/pervasive religious or pseudo-religious influence, which really does seem to be consistent with reality. Obviously, there are exceptions (hello, Saudi Arabia), but to deny that it seems to be a rule doesn't seem legitimate.
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Dec 2, 2012 09:25
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Pedrophile posted:No, you give them to a group like the SNC who are a lot more accountable being mainly foreign and highly educated expatriates who can better allocate resources, without a centralized group like that you end up with the fragmented and unaccountable forces that we have now. Those characteristics come with terrible baggage, exiles are often disconnected from realities in Syria and alienated from the people fighting on the ground. We should keep in mind how scummy the exile groups the U.S. worked with in Iraq and Afghanistan turned out to be, even if the SNC ever had the ability to exert influence you claim, which I doubt. Squalid fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Dec 8, 2012 |
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Dec 8, 2012 04:33
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Devil Child if you still insist on your weird and incorrect version of history and warfare it might be best to shift this debate to the military history thread here: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3297799 Where you're sure to find lots of posters happy to correct your misperceptions and this thread can get back on track.
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Dec 15, 2012 01:31
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Devil Child posted:More importantly, Qutb said that in the mid-20th Century, when the Arab Slave System was still very much active. He wasn't just glad-handing a relic of the past, he was pussyfooting, and even apologizing for, and awful system that was still very much in place in nations like Saudi Arabia. Mind linking the whole article that quote is taken from? As presented I don't have a clue what Qutb is arguing and I want to be reassured you didn't just swipe it off a list of quotes mined and primed for anti-islam rants.
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Jan 13, 2013 23:45
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Sergg posted:I'm like 95% sure it was the Syrian government attacking with chemical weapons, considering they're the ones sitting on a gigantic stockpile of poison gas and their state control is disintegrating. Also this isn't the first time. They attacked with, I hope I'm spelling this right, deliriants before, chemicals meant to make you delirious. I don't know why you're so confident when we literally have no evidence there was a chemical weapon attack. Also the deliriant attack was debunked a while ago, it never happened. That rumor is a great example of why you need to keep a critical eye on these claims, as even a cursory overview of the subject should start raising flags. The United States did attempt to develop weaponized deliriants during the cold war but they proved completely impractical and the research was scrapped, there is absolutely no reason Syria should even have any stockpiled, they're militarily worthless. What has been found is evidence of chemical exposure, and when you're blowing up huge proportions of a state's industrial infrastructure there's a good chance something nasty is going to get out.
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Mar 19, 2013 23:53
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Here's a FP article debunking the deliriant myth, they require registration but it's free and you don't even have to answer a confirmation email http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/01/25/buzz_bomb?page=0,0&wp_login_redirect=0 quote:Now, to be clear: BZ is a real chemical incapacitant. The United States, the United Kingdom, and others stockpiled it. U.S. scientists discovered BZ in 1951, producing it as a byproduct of peaceful chemical production (though not in a pure or isolated form). Iraq did research on BZ, including importing a sample from Egypt. There is no evidence that Syria has a BZ program, which is probably why the National Security Council released a statement describing the allegations outlined in the cable as "not consistent with what we believe to be true about the Syrian chemical weapons program."
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Mar 20, 2013 00:18
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Sergg posted:From everything I've read, the Bosnian Serbs did, in fact, use deliriants on Bosnian forces retreating from Srebrenica, and there are hundreds of witnesses that testified about it. Never heard about the Kosovar accusations and this is the first time I've heard of the alleged 'debunking' of the gas attacks earlier this year. source? To my knowledge there's never been any serious evidence of actual deployment of bz. A cursory google search mostly turned up newspaper articles written at the time, with weird allegations like colored smoke induced their hallucinations, which is odd because bz is colorless and odorless. Witness testimony is the only evidence I've seen, and I'm skeptical a witness could accurately identify the effects of bz exposure. If someone was exposed to industrial chemicals, can we expect them to know the difference between it's effects and the effects of a chemical weapon? Really there isn't much to debunk, like the only evidence of deliriant use is an unnamed source in a secret U.S. embassy cable. There might have been a chemical weapon attack but if there was it was a nerve agent, which makes sense, as those are serious weapons with a history of combat use. Here's the New Yorker's take on the incident: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/01/the-case-of-agent-15-did-syria-use-a-nerve-agent.html quote:The key symptoms described here are consistent with poisoning from a nerve-agent-type drug. Behavioral changes and vomiting can be caused by many chemicals, but when combined with other symptoms, a fairly clear picture emerges: miosis and muscle pain, along with death triggered by a buildup of bronchial secretions, are all associated with nerve-agent poisoning. Typically, one would also observe muscle twitching and convulsions—perhaps the doctor’s reference to “seizures” is meant to account for this. But the most important detail provided by Dr. Abdo is something that he indicates later in Rogin’s story: doctors had been treating victims with atropine. If such treatment was having an ameliorative effect, then there is no way that the chemical in question was an anticholinergic, because dosing a casualty with atropine in such instances would only add fuel to the fire, augmenting the toxicity. Atropine, however, is the classic medical therapy—often combined with oximes—for nerve-agent-type poisoning.
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Mar 20, 2013 09:02
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What the heck's a front room
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Mar 22, 2013 10:46
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You should absolutely fault cnn for that. What kind of retard journalist takes pols statements at face value without any evidence. It's not like Congressmen don't have a long history of spouting bullshit to the press, see McCarthy for example. Their nasty habit of spreading rumors is the kind of behavior that got us into Iraq. It's also the laziest way to make deadline and keep the 24 hour news stream flowing. edit: For a more detailed explanation of why you shouldn't trust that kind of government statement, see the FP article i linked a few pages back Squalid fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Mar 26, 2013 |
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Mar 26, 2013 03:06
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McDowell posted:I'm concerned that Russia encouraged these guys in order to retaliate over Syria and US support of 'terrorism'. They emigrated under Putin. Of course this is complete speculation, but its just as valid as Alex Jones claiming the Feds did it (a narrative that serves Russia whether or not they are involved) If you have to justify your own pet theories by comparing them to Alex Jones's schizophrenic nonsense you probably don't need to be concerned. For future reference.
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Apr 19, 2013 18:51
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let's put a stop to the grammatical pedantry guys. really not very relevant to the whole Middle East Wars topic.
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May 7, 2013 20:55
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McDowell posted:History is over and our leaders have a handle on the situation; parallels between the Middle East and early 20th century Central/East Europe are nil. Stop discussing unsettling possibilities that could never ever happen. I'd love to hear about these parallels 
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May 12, 2013 05:37
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McDowell posted:Decades of border conflicts, ethnic strife, and economic uncertainty coming to a head in a region where the major international players have diplomatic entanglements (Russia's support of Assad; American diplomatic obligations to Israel, Turkey, and Arab states, China's general ascendance). With the UN powerless, it seems like things can only continue to escalate and bring the major powers into conflict (not they want this because of the aforementioned MAD, but they have to support their regional interests or look like a bad ally) You admitted there are dozen of similar cases throughout the world and history. I want to hear specifically what about this situation makes you think it's going in the same direction as the 20th century Balkan peninsula, because I feel these circumstances are incomparable for as many reasons as they are similar. Like there are transnational terrorist groups operating in both cases but unlike in the 19th century Balkan peninsula today they have no prospect of actually changing international borders, it's just not internationally acceptable today. While there are international entanglements, only Turkey has treaty obligations with major powers, meaning powers like Russia and China could step backing from any escalation without violating any preexisting agreements. Also what border conflicts did you think were relevant? Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights? Turkish control of Hatay? The 2nd Balkan War? because the analogy just doesn't work for me. McDowell posted:On another note it seems like we need a Turkish Alex Jones. This is the LAST thing you need. Please stop listening the irl insane people, you might start sounding reasonable.
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May 12, 2013 19:12
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I don't know how someone calling for a military coup could have the gall to call "gifts" for the poor a subversion of democracy, but there it is. Really pathetic seeing the fascists out crying crocodile tears.
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Jun 2, 2013 23:23
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CommieGIR posted:Not to mention him coming out in support of the Police who warned the kissers in the subway about breaking 'Moral Laws' Why not? Have any poles that show what "the people" want? I don't know anything about Turkey or Turkish politics so show me how Erdogan is driving away his base. Anecdotes from college kids in Istanbul don't count.
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Jun 3, 2013 00:16
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Perfidia posted:Just ripping off the Romans. Could somebody explain to me why Erdogan is the one buying all the votes and not his opponents? Like do all the monocled Monopoly Guys in Turkey love Islamism or are his political opponents just too principled to subvert the democratic process; how is he out bribing the competition?
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Jun 3, 2013 00:24
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Mans posted:His political career isn't about taking the poors out of poverty but simply giving local poor communities gifts for voting for him. Thats not how you run a democracy you idiot. A democratic vote is based on civic duty, knowledge of the history and intentions of each party and voting accordingly. A strong armed conservative that literally buys votes isn't winning elections because of his political success, his achievements or future goals, hes using poverty, which he didn't solve in the 12 years he was there, to buy desperate voters into his political campaign. Why is Erdogan bribing voters but not his opponents? What makes his campaign so much more effective than his opponent? I mean we know it isn't the oppositions commitment to the Democratic Process considering how coup happy they are (as illustrated here itt), so what's he doing that his foes aren't? really want to know, because usually in these situations both sides are equally eager to bribe voters. As you said earlier this kind of political climate tends to favor large moneyed interests which often bias election results towards capitalist/oligarch interests, and I'm trying to understand the class conflicts underlying Turkish politics. Not knowing anything about Turkish politics I'd suspect the big money'd be behind the traditional military backed secularists, but I don't know, maybe donations from radical mosques are throwing off the balance. Protecting local green-space is cool and all but that does't necessarily mean overthrowing the government is a good idea. Also nobody's yet shared any sources suggesting Erdogan undermined Turkish democracy. So I'm not even sure the issues we're talking about are real or just unsubstantiated accusations by his political opponents. I've heard the stuff about arrested journalists before but was under the impression that had more to do with protecting Ataturk from slander and busting Kurdish balls, you know stuff all the Turkish parties support.
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Jun 3, 2013 04:10
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cafel posted:Just a little reminder, if you have political grievances, being able to publicly and peacefully air those grievances should be respected even if it's a minority opinion politically. When the government meets the peaceful mass airing of grievances with 'non-lethal' rounds being intentionally fired at the head at close range people are going to get angry with the government whether or not it was fairly elected. Yeah thanks but you don't have to convince me about the value of civil disobedience. I'm just doing my best to try and understand how the hell you're supposed to restore democracy by overthrowing a democratic government. These guys pining for a coup don't give a poo poo about people power; you'd have to be a fool to think a military government is going to restore press freedom or crack down on spoils based politics, however late they let the bars stay open. I mean these protestors grievances sound totally legitimate and if I were in their place I'd definitely be in the streets right beside them, but hearing the total contempt for popular sovereignty and the desperate eagerness for military intervention by posters like SBJ sets my teeth on edge.
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Jun 3, 2013 08:06
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A votes for cash scheme is really bad and illegal in most places for good reason. It's a common feature of oligarchical governments in latin america and is often used by lovely conservative governments while they gently caress the poor. There isn't any reason to to defend the practice.
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Jun 3, 2013 23:07
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-Troika- posted:I'm just going to say what everyone is dancing around: the treatment of women in Egypt and in other Middle Eastern countries is pretty much directly religion related. When everyone is taught from an early age that women are second class citizens, it's unsurprising that women get treated like poo poo. After all, they arn't REALLY people. Yeah this isn't a youtube comments section; don't spout horrible bigoted poo poo if you can't support it with evidence. There are some serious theories explaining why the middle east is more patriarchal than other regions. They don't have anything to do with Islam though. quote:The production of oil has a harmful effect on the economic and political status of women. http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/bwep/colloquium/papers/Ross2006.pdf Sorry that this is a complex multi-dimensional explanation of phenomena that doesn't even attempt to account for 100% of differences, it doesn't even offer anyone to hate, but I'm sure your little bigot soul can find another outlet for its frustration.
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Jul 2, 2013 19:48
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Amused to Death posted:It could possibly be problems in Islam might be part of this multi-dimensional problem. It's not like they're the only religion that has serious problems when it comes to women, its just their conservatives currently seem to hold a disproportionate amount of clout. We all try to dance around it, but really trying to pretend Islam at least when practiced in a conservative nature isn't part of the problem is like trying to pretend conservative Christianity in the US isn't part of the problem on attacks against women's rights here. Fine. Cool. I'll believe it. Just show me the evidence. Something. Anything. just stop posting your horrible common sense bullshit. All I hear right now is opinions, assumptions and unsupported assertions. Don't have any? Maybe you should reevaluate what you believe. I mean there are plenty of Imams floating around who advocate terrible attitudes towards women but there are also plenty of christian preachers doing the same. Without serious cross cultural studies of muslim communities around the world I just don't believe you can make any strong claims regarding specifically Islamic attitudes towards women. I mean Albania is overwhelmingly Muslim but that hasn't stopped Albanians from permitting the existence of a traditional class of transexuals. The overwhelming focus on arab society in any discussion of Islam doesn't help.
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Jul 2, 2013 20:45
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Phlegmish posted:The sharp distinction that is being made between 'culture' and 'religion' doesn't make much sense. A nation's culture and the worldview of its inhabitants are at least partly shaped by its traditional religious beliefs, even if it's currently a secular society - the same way Protestantism left its mark on modern Scandinavia. Bleh. I don't care what you say about Islam, As long as you support it with evidence! If you're going to make a claim like this you drat well better have something to back it up. If you made it without seeing the correlation first, why are you so certain of it's truth? If you're just going to sit back and patiently explain how religion and culture are interrelated and you can't separate islam from arab patriarchy, well that's fine. I'm going to call you a racist moron, though, and unlike your assertions mine will have plenty of evidence to back them up. Really I wouldn't be surprised if I'm completely wrong and there are actual correlations between professed Islamic religiosity and conservative attitudes towards women. Just show them to me, cross check attitudes between cultures and look for confounding variables. Ask yourself where did certain beliefs of yours come from, and are they sources you still trust. Xandu posted:Egypt isn't really an oil-based economy like the Gulf.  Michael Ross posted:The region’s oil wealth has also had an indirect influence on women in some of the oilpoor states. Even though Yemen, Egypt, and Jordan have little or no oil, they have fewer women in the labor force [figure 5] and parliament [figure 6] than we might expect. These anomalies may be partly the result of labor remittances: from the 1970s to the 1990s, these countries were the largest exporters of labor to the oil-rich countries of the Persian Gulf, and received large remittances from them in turn. Between 1974 and 1982, official remittances made up between 22 and 69 percent of Yemen’s GDP, between 10 and 31 percent of Jordan’s GDP, and between 3 and 13 percent of Egypt’s GDP; unofficial remittances were probably much larger [Choucri 1986]. Remittances tend to have the same effects as oil on the supply of female labor, by raising unearned household income; they may also have a similar effect on the demand for female labor by raising the exchange rate and making low-wage, export-oriented manufacturing uncompetitive. Yemen is farther below the trend lines for female labor and female representation than any other Mideast country; it has also received more remittances (as a fraction of GDP) than any other country. Lawman 0 posted:Actually come to think of it the other north african arab states seem rather progressive compared to Egypt. Not at all! quote:Oil production helps explain much of this intra-regional variation. Figures 4, 5, and 6 are scatterplots that show the relationship between oil rents per capita (averaged over 1993-2002) and the first year of female suffrage, female (nonagricultural) labor force participation, and the fraction of parliamentary seats held by women, for each state in the region. In general, the states that are richest in oil (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, and Oman) have been the most reluctant to grant female suffrage, have the fewest women in their parliaments, and have the fewest women in their nonagricultural workforce. States with little or no oil (Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon, Syria, Djibouti) were the first to grant female suffrage and tend to have more women in parliament and the workplace.
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Jul 3, 2013 00:31
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Jut posted:I think the MB are dead and buried, their calls for an uprising were basically met with "Ok you first!". If the military stick to their timetable for transition then all is good. The existence of civilian authority doesn't mean the military has relinquished power. What we have here is a Praetorian system, in which the military doesn't need to monopolize political power to protect its interests.
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Jul 10, 2013 19:05
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Aurubin posted:I'll agree here. Isolated from the context, Morsi's government was not a healthy entity for these reasons. And considering the overtures the Muslim Brotherhood was making in regards to the region, and their "guns and moltovs" approach to protesting, was not good for Egypt. But considering the police are suddenly back on the street and the lights are working again, yeah that's suspect. It remains to be seen if the transitional government and the potential official one after will merely be a puppet regime for Al-Sisi and the army, or if they'll be content with their slice of the pie. Still, the larger problem of increasing population combined with scant resources is a problem I can't see being fixed in the interim, and that is frightening for a nation the size of Egypt. The police aren't just "suspect," they were completely open about their anti-Morsi activity. Before his ousting an article quoted a police chief threatening retaliation against officers protecting the Muslim Brotherhood. Their political activity is well documented.
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Jul 11, 2013 20:23
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Yeah it will be interesting if any evidence of organized manipulation of fuel and power supplies turns up. I wonder if the military has any control over the energy grid or gas reserves?
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Jul 11, 2013 21:08
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Aurubin posted:Every day I'm more and more convinced that the United States intelligence agencies have no idea what's going on in the Middle East. The end of the Cold War lead to a real arrogance, both among the letter agencies and politicians. The recent shift to data mining, rather than human intelligence, while relying heavily on local, bribed sources, means the intelligence community has no effective HUMINT capability anymore. Every single report about the Middle East since the Arab Spring was wrong. But the US still feels the need to stick it's dick into everything. Do you have a link about this shift? I'd love to read more about modern U.S. intelligence operations!
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Jul 29, 2013 21:06
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Aurubin posted:Snippets I read about how DNI Clapper talked about how he was sure Qaddafi could hold on to Libya, how the Muslim Brotherhood was a secular ally of the United States, how Bashar Al-Assad would undoubtedly fall relatively quickly, how Saddam must of moved his mobile WMD platforms to Syria, etc. This combined with the fact that nobody in Abbotobad gave a poo poo that Bin Laden was there to Karzai demonizing the US while taking scads of cash makes me wonder what happened to the concept of long term surveillance. When you have a hammer every problem looks like a nail kind of thing. Plus the whole sweeping up random brown people during Bush, and then throwing those involved to the wolves when the Italian police found the whole playbook. Then the fact that they're only going to arm the "good" rebels while making sure nothing falls into the hands of Al-Nusra, etc. Half the arms used by Al-Nusra are American, the remnants of Libyan arms deals. Nobody remembers what happened when Charlie Wilson armed the mujaheddin in Afghanistan? Or the whole invasion of Iraq? I could blame it all on the politicians, but after that master CIA spy with the blonde wig got caught in Russia, I'm not left with the best impression of the competence of the CIA. To be sure, I could be found dead tomorrow of self inflicted gunshot wounds, with me somehow shooting myself twice in the head but it doesn't speak of competence, but of thuggery. Ah, so you don't actually have any evidence the CIA invests less in human assets?
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Jul 29, 2013 22:27
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Excuse me, I meant to ask Aurubin if he had evidence that American intelligence's shift towards data mining had reduced CIA HUMINT capability.
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Jul 30, 2013 02:13
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There was a good Washington Post article today about the lives of whistleblowers after they made their revelations. Surprise surprise many of them had their careers wrecked for sticking their nose into internecine conflicts or irritating powerful bureaucrats. http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifes...fadf_story.html quote:Sibel Edmonds was once described by the American Civil Liberties Union as “the most gagged person in the history of the United States.” And she was a regular on Washington’s protest circuit. There's lots of good stuff in the article. Even in cases where whistleblowers were cleared of any wrong doing they are still generally blacklisted from both public and private jobs in the security industry, in addition to having their pensions hosed with, etc.
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Jul 30, 2013 05:36
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Brother Friendship posted:Between Hezbollah and the Iranian trained People's Militia, Assad's army account for no more than half of the fighting force presently battling the rebellion correct? What's left of the regime's economy is heavily subsidized by Iranian funds, Russian arms have become a vital lifeline to maintain weapon supremacy, he's struggling to secure an Alawite coastal enclave and has all but lost the north, he's no longer in control of the armed forces and now he's sold off control of the post war development presuming his regime even survives. Foreign powers may have propped up Assad's regime, but it seems that all they've left him is a shell of power. He seems more governor than dictator at this point. I wonder if there is any information available on control of Syria's economic assets, infrastructure and organization. Like are there private companies operating across regime and rebel territory? Are rebels capable of operating captured cement plants, power-plants, etc? How does one run a business when half the country is shooting the other half?
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Jul 31, 2013 21:26
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MrMenshevik posted:Alasdair MacIntyre has a pretty good discussion of this in After Virtue when he's talking about the managerial or technocratic mindset. In order to justify giving special powers to a person, we need to assert that he has some special kind of knowledge. A mechanic can legitimately tell you to replace a part, because he knows poo poo about cars that you simply don't. If a technocrat or manager has the right to tell you how to do things, then he must know poo poo about the technical working of human society that you simply don't. MacIntyre's point is that it's largely a sham knowledge, because we really can't predict with the required level of precision how groups will interact and evolve. However, asserting such knowledge does exist is a good way of avoiding more fluffy philosophic discussions that we aren't confident we can resolve. Asserting that some kind of social or material tech can solve our problems is a way of saying we don't have to resolve ethical questions in politics just a special scientific kind. For another example check out the DnD picture thread for dumbass amateur political scientists dusting off hegemonic stability theory, which happens to be a great excuse for dodging certain moral questions regarding U.S. foreign policy.
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Aug 3, 2013 03:52
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gfanikf posted:Who said that? I found comparing them to the American Civil Rights absurd. The video was posted to compare YOU to the John Birch Society, you moron.
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Aug 17, 2013 17:58
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I know this thread is mostly just for cheerleading and all guys, but I'd appreciate if you could stop acting like weird defensive children. If you can't be assed to share even a modicum of evidence maybe you should mosey on over to GBS where nobody cares, I like to think DnD holds itself to a somewhat higher standard.
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Aug 22, 2013 02:19
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farraday posted:Like actually looking at the evidence posted before demanding people prove things to you? And not claiming things like sources are unacceptable because they're the ones who are making claims you don't agree with, despite not speaking a drat word of Arabic to be able to verify that the group making one claim is the same as a group making another? Nobody has actually committed those offenses you listed, or at least the claims I could understand; your rhetorical questions degenerated into incomprehensible nonsense about at the point you went off about arabic. I saw Brown Moses listed the location of the recent chemical weapon attacks over each video but I don't think it's unreasonable for someone, especially someone who isn't following him regularly, to request how a British blogger determined there location. Not everyone knows he has translation help and there are many misattributed videos floating around, as anyone following this thread should know.
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Aug 22, 2013 03:03
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Volkerball posted:Because facts are conspiracies by the capitalist oppressors. What were you expecting? No offense, but this is an awful, awful attitude to take and if you actually believe you can think like this and form correct conclusions you are going to be wrong, often. For god's sake please google logic. Good work Brown Moses. You're really doing great things here, I really feel better informed reading your blog than I do watching any major news network. Is there any information yet on what sort of range these newest munitions can achieve? That would narrow their source down a bit.
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Aug 26, 2013 01:41
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Young Freud posted:The "rogue commander" rumor may be beneficial to Assad to avoid a foreign intervention. If he did order the attack, he could still go and pick a scapegoat amongst his commanders and have him publicly executed and give a speech with crocodile tears to appease his foreign critics and potential opponents. Of course, doing so would weaken morale considerably and cause his men not to follow his as-brutal orders anymore for fear that they too will be sacrifice to avoid foreign airstrikes. I somehow doubt that even if 100% reliable evidence that rogue elements were responsible for the attack appeared, something that is extremely unlikely, it would be sufficient to hold off interventionists. Someone determined to intervene could argue Assad's inability to restrain his commanders justifies retaliation, regardless of any scapegoats he sacrifices.
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Aug 26, 2013 02:20
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Sergg posted:Nobody in this thread works for foreign or domestic intelligence services. I'm a social studies/special ed teacher and a nurse in the US. Brown Moses is a journalist in the UK. We are coming to the conclusions based on the weight of eyewitness accounts of the victims in the suburbs and eyewitness accounts from civilians inside Damascus of varying loyalties, and taking into account forensic evidence of the delivery munitions. The strongest evidence for this being a deliberate regime attack is that it coincides with several days of bombardment with explosive rockets, shells, and air strikes, followed by a major ground offensive, which take time to plan and execute. For the false flag narrative to be a reality, the rebels would have to be cooperating with the Syrian regime to coordinate their poison gas rocket strikes with the Syrian military bombardment. You also have a history of leaping to conclusions without a shred of evidence. See: all your posts itt. It was pretty rich reading you go off about psychological studies on entrenched beliefs, when your own opinions were so obviously formed months ago. Brown Moses has already directly contradicted some of the baseless conclusions you've been throwing around lately, for example that the attack came from Mount Qassion, and unlike you his conclusions were founded on evidence, so maybe you should get off your high horse? Eyewitness accounts are about the least reliable evidence imaginable, even if there weren't any issues of partisan bias to deal with your average eyewitness only has a 50% chance of remembering the color of the car which hit him, much less the source of the rockets that killed his family. We have every reason to believe that there was a chemical attack and that it was perpetrated by the Syrian government. That is exactly why we must only draw our conclusions from real evidence, and to assess every possible scenario which could have lead to the purported attack. If the regime claims it was rebels who shelled these neighborhoods, how are you going to refute them? Squalid fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Aug 26, 2013 |
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Aug 26, 2013 03:39
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