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Guildencrantz posted:Whenever I read that someone did a thing to "raise awareness" I immediately append "of their own existence" to it, never been wrong Best example: Live 8 in 2005. "This time screw the whole charity thing because we're going to raise awareness... awareness that Pink Floyd is playing together again!"
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Nov 15, 2014 13:14
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Mightypeon posted:I have heard credible rumors that Putins circle treats the western reaction to this as a running joke. People find the pictures funny - hardly a hysterical reaction. If Putin likes to play dress up for the amusement others that's fine but generally you want your head of state to appear serious and with some authority instead of spending his time making funny pictures for the internet.
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Dec 1, 2014 23:37
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Cippalippus posted:United States produce roughly as much oil, and don't have the same increase. For the US resource extraction is a smaller component of a larger economy. Specifically the US gets less than 1% of its GDP from oil/gas whereas Russia gets about 16%.
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Dec 2, 2014 15:02
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Cippalippus posted:Of course natural extractions are a larger part of Russian economy, but the increase is not only about oil. I'm not going to extract the numbers and I don't think they are interesting. What would it matter if Putin was an economic genius? It tells us nothing about how the economic gains are used in the Russian economy, how much it benefits the Russian people vs the tiny elite or how it secures the future prosperity of Russia. It doesn't matter. It's a bit similar to the Russian poster that started ranting about inferior American cars and cosmetics. what? Let's assume it's true - those American products are terrible - so what? It tells us nothing important about the American condition or if the US is a force for good or not. It's a bizarre notion that industrial proficiency should somehow reflect on a country and it's similarly absurd that we should look at a macro economic trend and then somehow draw a conclusion about a leader from that. It's an essentially authoritarian worldview - X is bigger than Y so therefore X is better! Putin supports separatist movements in several neighboring countries, started a civil war and subsequently invaded that country - and incredibly lies about it - while crudely antagonizing neighbors by flying military hardware around their borders. There's issues with suppression of political opponents and political influence on the media in Russia. Do you believe Putin is a force for good and why should we support his vision?
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Dec 2, 2014 16:39
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Amusingly present day Mongolia gives zero fucks about the whole massacre and genocide thing - they love them some Genghis Khan. It must be a bit unsettling for Iranians and Iraqis that visit but I suppose no more so than Columbus Day is for Native Americans.
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Dec 6, 2014 22:04
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Morbus posted:1940's Germany: A Land Free of Ethnic Fissures Well late 40s.
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Apr 23, 2015 02:29
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I remember the Bush administration talking about a domino effect in the Middle East to be kickstarted by the overthrow of Saddam.
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Apr 23, 2015 03:44
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fade5 posted:This guy watched the Bambi and the Lion King growing up. Think about that for a minute. omg they're human
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May 29, 2015 01:50
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-03/sex-slaves-sold-by-islamic-state-the-younger-the-better  Apparently verified by the UN.
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Aug 5, 2015 01:41
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Liberal_L33t posted:All of this talk of Russia putting appendages in blenders seems a bit premature. If they are prepared to make a serious troop commitment, a moderately-sized force on the ground with air support sent by a 3rd-rate military like Russia's is still going to be able to steamroll over any gangs of irregular militants stupid enough to engage them in a pitched battle. Assad is too hated to rule the country now, but with Russian troops on the ground the possibility that the rebels are going to actually overrun his strongholds on the coast is drastically reduced, if not eliminated. If you want to actually take cities you need a lot of boots on the ground and the Syrian army seems to be short on manpower. The question is if Russia would be willing to commit the forces and take the hits needed to do more than defend.
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Sep 23, 2015 08:05
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FaustianQ posted:Russia may also be putting it's dick on the blender so it can play Kingmaker after it gets rid of Assad quietly. I'm fairly sure both Iran and Russia are pulling their hair out on how incompetent Assad has been. Russia has lost like 4-500 soldiers in Ukraine? I suppose you can't compare it to other conflicts but that still seems quite high when the coalition lost 4.500 people through 8 years of invasion and occupation in Iraq. I dunno, it'll be interesting to see what they can do. I suspect the most difficult part is not dropping the bombs; it's correctly identifying targets. All else being equal the US should have decades of experience doing that and working out how to do it with locals - I'd be surprised if Russia could do it with the same efficiency without regularly bombing weddings and the Syrian army. I really don't see how this will work out for Putin. Either they commit to an all out Iraq war style clusterfuck in which case a lot of Russians will die for.... Assad. Or they hunker down around the coast and just drop bombs in a learning-by-doing scheme and hope the Syrian army will totally be able to do all the fighting on the ground, which they won't. All of it assuming of course that the Russian air force won't simply fall out of the sky
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Sep 23, 2015 09:22
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Dapper_Swindler posted:why do i have a feeling this is going to be another Afghanistan for Russia. The list of potential political/military disasters is extensive while there's few to possibly no positive outcomes.
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Sep 23, 2015 22:19
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Miltank posted:Question: How is RF gonna sustain two wars on two fronts amidst international sanctions, counter-intervention, and a slumping oil market? Print money, no problem.
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Oct 1, 2015 00:23
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It would be very odd to have Russian dudes anywhere near what looks like the front line. Could be advisors I guess but still, there's just not really any reason you'd want them to be that exposed. In any event it's telling that there been a video of a Russian plane shot down and now Russian soldiers getting killed. It seems the rebels really, really want to kill them some Russians 
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Oct 3, 2015 21:49
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Cippalippus posted:Perhaps the world needs a superior governing body, but that body is the General Assembly of the United Nations and not the President of the USA. American foreign policy after the second world War has constantly and surely made the world less safe. The US had done alright since it took the reigns in '89. 
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Oct 7, 2015 02:22
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Cippalippus posted:American intervention in the Syrian civil war, in particular, has been a tragedy for Syria. When you decide to intervene, you either go in or you don't. Bombing runs and arms to the rebels just make sure that no side can clearly win, it just fuels the war. The US started bombing ISIS in december and since then the major developments has been that ISIS has lost land and the Kurds have gained land. Why do you feel this has been a disaster?
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Oct 7, 2015 12:47
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Cippalippus posted:This, in particular, is probably the only part of the American intervention that isn't a disaster. Ok, but isn't that mostly what the US has been doing? Cippalippus posted:American intervention in the Syrian civil war, in particular, has been a tragedy for Syria. When you decide to intervene, you either go in or you don't. Bombing runs and arms to the rebels just make sure that no side can clearly win, it just fuels the war. Ok, so... the US bombing ISIS has been a tragedy for Syria but it was also the only part of their intervention that wasn't a disaster?
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Oct 7, 2015 14:24
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With those kinds of losses the offensive better lead to significant advances or they might as well just call it quits now and fortify around the coast. Or Putin goes all in on the quagmire.
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Oct 7, 2015 16:59
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Ardennes posted:I wonder how much of it is a willing sacrifice in order to hunt down TOW teams. That is a terrible cost-benefit analysis on part of the Russians unless the heli pilot happens to also be politically undesirable..
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Oct 8, 2015 01:15
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So basically they cut off the salient at the base in order to create a cauldron they can hammer and systematically destroy? That's what it looks like on the maps anyway. Well regardless of airpower they still gotta go in there with infantry and do house to house cleaning.
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Oct 8, 2015 05:16
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Young Freud posted:It looks like the Russians at using a New cruise missiles called Kaliber. So, it looks like they're using Syria to test out new equipment. And providing samples with free shipping to interested buyers.
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Oct 8, 2015 19:27
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Dilkington posted:We all have to go one day, but pray God let it not be over Afghanistan. An unspeakable country filled with unspeakable people, sheepshaggers and smugglers, who have furnished in their leisure hours some of the worst arts and crafts ever to penetrate the occidental world. I yield to none in my sympathy to those prostrate beneath the Russian jackboot, but if ever a country deserved rape it’s Afghanistan. Nothing but mountains filled with barbarous ethnics with views as medieval as their muskets, and unspeakably cruel too. Hemingway?
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Oct 8, 2015 20:25
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Rukeli posted:More of Russia's "precision bombing" What is happening? Are they just dropping dumb bombs?
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Oct 9, 2015 17:13
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Mackers posted:Gulf Arabs 'stepping up' arms supplies to Syrian rebels. 500 TOWs included supposedly. Christmas came early and they won't even celebrate it.
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Oct 9, 2015 20:16
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Mooseontheloose posted:Does Putin really want to radicalize terrorists? Moderate terrorists are too unpredictable.
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Oct 10, 2015 16:26
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Liberal_L33t posted:So now that Erdogan has revealed himself to be another Assad at best (or potentially an Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a tailored suit), what are the odds of the EU (or NATO) taking serious diplomatic action against his regime? Like, set the wheels in motion for ejecting Turkey from NATO and make it known to certain parties in Turkey via back-channels that they can expect to lose all of their western alliances unless the AKP is removed from power? Maybe, just maybe, the West is not the solution.
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Oct 10, 2015 21:34
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asaf posted:I feel the most useless schadenfreude now in relation to Westerners finally catching on to the fact that Erdogan's a villain. He has always been that villain. And now you now, but what good does that do for anyone, I don't know. Erdogans repressive and religious tendencies have been reported on ever since he was first elected. What are western countries supposed to do about it?
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Oct 11, 2015 13:10
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DancingShade posted:They seem pretty carefree when it comes to regime change in a lot of other places. What makes Turkey so special that it gets excluded? And the west supports totalitarian regimes in other cases such as Saudi Arabia. It depends on possible outcomes and which are deemed preferable and likely.
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Oct 11, 2015 14:36
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Those rebels got moxie. 20 jeeps blown up and they just keep getting into new ones and driving in circles.
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Oct 12, 2015 14:08
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Cippalippus posted:It's always strange to see how Americans just don't realize how much the world hates them. It's more that Putin is considered better but if Russia is determined to get its hands dirty in the ME they'll figure it out soon enough.
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Oct 12, 2015 22:39
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Well there is that regime pocket in Kurdish territory.
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Oct 13, 2015 04:05
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Putin is really pissy about the US not sharing intel about the rebels. The US should offer a quid pro quo of intel sharing in Ukraine and Syria 
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Oct 13, 2015 16:32
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Cippalippus posted:You joke, but offering a deal like that would make a lot of sense for both. How would sharing intel about the rebels in Ukraine, a large part of which are Russian troops, make sense to Russia?
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Oct 13, 2015 17:24
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Saudi Arabia has money which buys weapons and militias which is to say there's not going to be peace in Syria no matter how much land Assad retakes.
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Oct 14, 2015 16:21
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Sergg posted:The only way to solve the Syrian Civil War is for the Alawites and Assad family to give up their grasp on power and acknowledge that they will not ever rule all of Syria again, then join the coalition of moderate Sunnis, Kurds, Christians, etc. to fight off ISIS. The other solution is Iran and Russia goes all in, Syria is put back under Assads control after which the Sunni population is exterminated until there is no resistance. Russian troops in the country prevent the US from stopping it while an indignant Putin denies anything bad is happening. Bates fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Oct 15, 2015 |
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Oct 15, 2015 18:55
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Baudolino posted:Can the alawites be forgiven at this point? So much blood has been spilt that it`s hard to see the opposition stopping at removing them from power. It's not only that - the Alawites would have to accept being politically marginalized while oil profits will be distributed in a very different way. Short of imminent collapse I don't imagine they would do that although I suppose Russia could force Assad with the end of a gun barrel. Now Iran is involved so they have to accept some kind of negotiated solution which gives Sunnis more power than prior to the war - and it has to be enough for the Sunnis to feel they actually get something and stop Saudi Arabia from throwing money at an insurgency. Meanwhile Al Qaeda and ISIS ain't gonna negotiate poo poo so you'll still have to defeat them on the battlefield. I don't know what specifically Putin has in mind with his autonomous regions scheme but if he pulls it off without going full Chechnya on the Sunnis it really will be very impressive.
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Oct 15, 2015 19:20
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LeoMarr posted:Iran is here to crusade against Sunni's. Yes. That's why they are unlikely to accept it. edit: And the distribution of oil means that any autonomous Sunni region will also control all the oil and if Assad doesn't get it back under control then what's left of Syria will effectively rely on perpetual Russian/Iranian aid. 
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Oct 15, 2015 19:26
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Well let's hope Russia and Iran force Assad to do it then. I'm betting they won't. Russia will talk a lot about it though - but you know those kinds of negotiations are terribly complex and can take years and decades to resolve.
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Oct 15, 2015 21:38
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Sucrose posted:Should he have been arrested and put in handcuffs? No. Should he have been questioned for hours without a parent present? Absolutely not. But did the school do anything amiss in calling the police to check it out? No, they did exactly what they should have done. If there's any doubt you're dealing with a bomb, you evacuate any children from the premises. If you suspect a bomb is present, but do not evacuate, you do belong anywhere near a position of authority and should be fired immediately. I'm ok with that. Let's do it. What you don't get to do is claim it totally looked like a bomb but there's no reason to act like it actually might be.
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Oct 18, 2015 12:33
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The Kingfish posted:Are there enough resources available for an independent Sunni state to survive between Shia' Syria and Shia' Iraq? Not if ISIS runs it and after Assad/Iran/Hezbollah/Russia rolls over those areas the Sunni populations will be reduced to a very manageble size.
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Oct 21, 2015 13:32
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