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Bohemian Nights posted:The generally excellent Caspian Report has published a new video about the "geo-economics of Saudi Arabia’s NEOM project" I, too, play Cities: Skylines with unlimited funds mod
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# ¿ Nov 6, 2017 21:41 |
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# ¿ May 12, 2024 12:15 |
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Rigged Death Trap posted:
Seriously, he's making GWB appear sympathetic in comparison
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# ¿ Nov 12, 2017 18:25 |
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Zedsdeadbaby posted:Invaded Iraq under false pretences basically. The consequences are still felt to this day, most notably the rise and fall of ISIS But he was innocent, he was just following God's orders.
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# ¿ Nov 12, 2017 22:55 |
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It shouldn't be binary. An attack against a military target can be terrorism by its intent and effects and if we compare the effectiveness of this strike in military terms and in terms of publicity, I'd say it didn't hurt Iranian armed forces at all but it made international news.
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# ¿ Sep 22, 2018 19:32 |
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Sinteres posted:You think deliberately murdering civilians can be good? Subjectively any act of violence can be good, otherwise there would be no violence of any sort because what would be the point. Was bombing German cities in WW2 good, even when it killed civilians, including children and people who resisted Nazis? It depends entirely on perspective. But objectively there is zero difference between good and evil, you idiot!!!
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# ¿ Sep 23, 2018 19:13 |
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HorrificExistence posted:what's a civilian? If you pay taxes or otherwise give any material or moral support to a military or a non-state armed faction, then you are a legit military target according to someone's definition.
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# ¿ Sep 23, 2018 19:21 |
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Frightening Knight posted:I genuinely don't understand the point of the body double. Were they trying to establish some kind of alibi? He took a cab, so maybe the plan was that the driver would back the story. I just don't understand how they didn't think that there'd be CCTV everywhere they went in Istanbul. Or maybe these geniuses thought that security cameras in year 1440 after Hijra would record on betamax cassettes with grainy b/w quality.
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# ¿ Oct 22, 2018 18:15 |
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Rust Martialis posted:Allegedly they've found body parts... It's going to be a Halloween themed easter egg hunt.
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# ¿ Oct 23, 2018 15:52 |
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BM: Brown Moses, that's a little too close to poo poo Moses. How 'bout if I'm Beige Moses? That sounds good to me, I'll be Beige Moses. Lowtax: You're not Beige Moses. Some guy on some other subforum is Beige Moses.
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# ¿ Oct 28, 2018 20:13 |
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Cable Guy posted:Saudi sisters whose bodies were found bound together near Hudson River died by suicide Willie Tomg posted:They'll be in good company with the BLM activists who were found to have shot themselves in the head twice. I think it's certainly plausible, if extremely dark. Makes you think what kind of living hell awaited them in Saudi Arabia if a double suicide by drowning was the preferable option... At the same time, there is some super-bitter sweetness in considering that they chose to stay together to the very end with the help of duct tape. It's awful to imagine.
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# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 19:08 |
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Tab8715 posted:What reason would Iran have with current environment to gain from attacking tankers in Gulf? The US sanctions on Iran are causing desperation. Since Iran doesn't want to capitulate, they have to escalate things to the point where USA is willing to negotiate again. At the same time, escalating to a full war wouldn't serve them but incidents like these would send enough of a message to Washington while retaining plausible deniability. If US warships were attacked then that could lead to the public supporting war measures giving Trump more room for response, but when civilian tankers are attacked then oil market prices will go up, which is bad for Trump, but most likely the public are not going to lean to hawkish measures when the cause is uncertain.
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# ¿ Jun 16, 2019 12:27 |
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This loving thread
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# ¿ Jun 16, 2019 17:26 |
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Warbadger posted:It's not really a normal outcome, both in that crews lobbing missiles around should be aware of where not to lob said missiles and a lot of SAMs being designed to detonate once the target has been lost/missed. But the SAA isn't exactly the most competent group around and their missiles are mostly old Soviet stuff that didn't really prioritize those kind of considerations. During the Kosovo war a NATO fighter fired an anti-radar missile against a Serbian SAM site that then flew its own way, landing on an apartment building in Sophia, Bulgaria. Luckily no one was injured but of course it wasn't good optics for the operation. https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/apr/30/richardnortontaylor.kateconnolly The worst outcome of a runaway missile has to be that Ukrainian army's wargame in the Black Sea when a live missile missed whatever practise target it was intended to hit and then acquired and destroyed a civilian airliner, killing 78. I'm sure there are far more 'oopsies' than get reported, but usually the missiles that miss splash to the sea in areas like this. OTOH as missile ranges increase, there will be more incidents.
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# ¿ Jul 7, 2019 23:27 |
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The most of Iran news https://www.iranhumanrights.org/2019/07/iranian-heavy-metal-band-members-escape-to-norway-after-receiving-prison-sentences/ quote:Nikan Khosravi and Arash Ilkhani, members of the Iranian heavy metal band Confess, have left Iran to escape prosecution and prison for their art. tl;dr: Iranian justice system is poo poo, heavy metal is awesome
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# ¿ Jul 30, 2019 21:04 |
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Props to Norway for having a heavy metal asylum program though. I wish Finland was like that. Seriously we're not pulling our weight compared to Norway or especially Sweden wrt quota refugees. Though the new gov is supposed to increase the quota, but not quite enough... AND Finland has the most metal bands per population, so this is helping the Norwegians catch up
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# ¿ Jul 31, 2019 15:47 |
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With regards to attacking a desalination plant, my experience is that it is really difficult to get water to burn on its own so the methods would have to be different from those used against an oil refinery. And I would think twice before poisoning the water supply of someone who could do the same to me.
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# ¿ Sep 15, 2019 17:59 |
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Fly Molo posted:Well, yeah, but any big industrial plant like that is gonna have some expensive fiddly bits that would take loving forever to replace Yes you could try that, but the difference is that you'd have to hit them very precisely and the damage would be extremely local if you are limited to drone bombing. Whereas in a petrochemical plant you can expect that just getting a few fires started will quickly spread.
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# ¿ Sep 16, 2019 18:01 |
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Grape posted:Also it gets its own green color to highlight their clean hands, while countries like Oman are left in mysterious light grey. Qatar is some oriental mystery country that BBC reporters have not visited in the past decade.
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# ¿ Sep 29, 2019 01:22 |
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Haystack posted:Might want to include a disclaimer that this is a video of active combat, for those who are troubled by such things. From the leisurely way the men close to camera are walking, my interpretation is that the gunshots heard on the video are more likely jubilant shots into the air. My understanding of Middle eastern militia's ammunition consumption based on a number of videos seen over the years is that one third goes into firing into air/at random objects in the horizon when you're approaching the target, one third is fired all over the place when engaged with the enemy, and then the last third is fired into air when the enemy retreats. Remember to fire full automatic with AK-47 without aiming, you may not hit anything but the side that makes the biggest racket usually wins.
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# ¿ Sep 29, 2019 16:28 |
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Retarded Goatee posted:I'm pretty sure that the Ottomans claimed the title of Kayser-i Rûm.
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# ¿ Oct 3, 2019 14:25 |
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GreyjoyBastard posted:who's actually going to support Turkey if we somehow god forbid get in a shooting war though Russia is so mad about this that they veto'd the UNSC resolution to condemn Turkey's attack. I just came back from a pro-Rojava demonstration. Some demands were sellable and realistically achievable, such as cancelling all arms export licenses to Turkey. Some were less so, such as cutting all diplomatic ties with Turkey.
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# ¿ Oct 12, 2019 13:16 |
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Russia has no trouble backing Erdogan here because 1) it weakens the western coalition 2) it weakens the only ostensibly pro-US faction in Syria 3) there is less danger of Turkey continuing to occupy northern Syria indefinitely than there is of US-backed YPG holding onto Syrian Kurdistan - Turkish army will eventually have to withdraw, and their FSA buddies are less of an obstacle to SAA than YPG would be So while in the short period the Turkish operation is against Russia's and Syria's interests, I believe that in the long run it is a net gain to Assad and Putin. However - this being Middle East, a year from now everything can be reversed as Caliphate 2.0 conquers Istanbul and President Buttigieg sends troops to look for WMDs in Damascus and it's so frustrating!
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# ¿ Oct 12, 2019 17:00 |
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MiddleOne posted:I think anything less than the diplomatic response levied at Russia over Crimea should be considered a cop-out. Attempts at annexing territory — nevermind the thinly veiled ambition of doing it through ethnic cleansing — needs to be hit down on hard. But no one cut diplomatic ties with Russia because of the Crimea. Not even Ukraine.
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# ¿ Oct 12, 2019 21:21 |
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There is just no chance that YPG could stand against a full NATO army, not without heavy fire support or fortified positions. The question is whether they can force Turks to run out of momentum in the coming weeks while maintaining their fighting capability. With Turkish air and artillery superiority this is unlikely, you just can't fight a conventional combined arms army on the same terms if you have one arm tied behind your back. The only way for Kurds to survive is to go unconventional, conduct guerrilla raids and make bomb attacks, or surrender.frajaq posted:
well if SANA says so!
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# ¿ Oct 13, 2019 18:31 |
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Randarkman posted:You know... At least Nixon kind of took his time, mostly in an attempt to make himself and America look good (if you squinted and deluded yourself), when he betrayed the South Vietnamese. Trump is making that very difficult for even the most deluded people I believe. Not to mention that USA resettled over 1,2 million refugees from Indochina. Trump meanwhile is campaigning on xenophoby and demonization of refugees. But that's what you get for not helping Americans in Normandy!
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# ¿ Oct 14, 2019 14:16 |
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their plan worked! quote:IDLIB, SYRIA—Explaining that they hoped the personnel changes would enable the organization to avoid the State Department’s scrutiny, ISIS leaders announced Monday that they had added a few violent white supremacists to the group in a bid to get the U.S. to rescind its designation of ISIS as terrorists.
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# ¿ Oct 14, 2019 20:49 |
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frajaq posted:lol this is just sad no, if Russians aren't going to turn that into a totally rad motorbike jump ramp then that would be sad
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# ¿ Oct 15, 2019 17:19 |
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Thank you President Buck Sexton
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# ¿ Oct 17, 2019 14:23 |
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NATO is powerless about Turkey because you should never get involved in a land war in Asia Minor.
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# ¿ Oct 18, 2019 09:22 |
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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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Less Claypool posted:I didn’t realize they didn’t have some blueprint for a member to get kicked out. I also didn’t realize that a NATO member could buy military arms from Russia, I thought that would be set in stone from the get go. NATO has over the years repeatedly and explicitly said that they are not an anti-Russian alliance and even have included Russia in the Parnership for Peace which is why their eastward spread should be no reason for Kremlin to get angsty about. It wouldn't be very consistent then if NATO declared that buying arms from Russia is forbidden. In this sense Russia is no different to Sweden or Switzerland. Individual member states may have differing opinions on whether it's a good idea and you'd still need to consider compatibility of systems with NATO standards, but NATO as a treaty organization doesn't have authority to forbid members from doing arms trade with whoever they want.
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# ¿ Nov 3, 2019 14:02 |
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enraged_camel posted:The whole saga is very interesting. Here's a good summary: https://www.defenseworld.net/feature/20/Battle_of_the_Air_Defense_Systems__S_400_Vs_Patriot_and_THAAD A correction to that quote, it should be 17 thousand km/hour. Another reason why Pentagon doesn't like this is that the US had been selling F-35 to Turkey, but Turkey having both S-400 and F-35 would mean that Russians would have an opportunity to study the F-35's capabilities and develop countermeasures to it as 'instructors'. There's now five planes out of 100 ready but they are all in USA where the Turkish pilots and engineers were to be trained. All in all this is going to be a very costly cancellation and Putin must have made Erdogan some really good offers for him to risk a 9 billion dollar investment in Turkish industries. https://www.defensenews.com/air/2019/07/17/turkey-officially-kicked-out-of-f-35-program/ quote:Turkey, a partner in the F-35 program that helped fund the development of the jet, planned to buy 100 F-35As. Its first jet was rolled out in June 2018 in a festive “delivery ceremony." Though Turkey formally owns its jets, the U.S. has said it has the power to keep the planes from moving to Turkish soil and intends to keep all four existing Turkish jets from leaving the U.S.
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# ¿ Nov 4, 2019 16:21 |
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It's pathetic how Assad's troops would have done this more cleanly. Just drop chlorine on the site, killing all the terrorists without explosions and civilian blood, then send troops in to remove the explosives and the civilian bodies. Bing bang bong its simple!
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# ¿ Nov 5, 2019 19:53 |
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Brown Moses posted:Let's see if his security attack some protesters this time around. Has Trump already ordered the withdrawal of all US security personnel from DC so Turks can establish a Peace Corridor?
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# ¿ Nov 13, 2019 09:24 |
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Pavel will exercise his biceps and pecs by pumping American iron. THEN PAVEL SMASH THINGS.
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# ¿ Nov 16, 2019 13:46 |
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Speaking of dual citizenships - Iraqi defense minister Najah al-Shammari and his wife are now being investigated by Swedish police for welfare fraud. Based on some reporting an Iraqi government minister can't hold the citizenship of another country? https://nyheteridag.se/iraqi-defense-minister-is-receiving-welfare-in-sweden-investigated-by-police/ quote:Najah al-Shammari’s current registered residence is in a suburb of Stockholm, despite him being the Defense Minister of Iraq. Al-Shammari is also a Swedish citizen, something which he achieved in 2015, after six years in Sweden. A story which Nyheter Idag revealed earlier in the week using legal documents and several sources, one being AFP journalist Ammar Karim, based in Baghdad. I just hope Mr. Karim stays safe, reporting on the Iraqi defense minister's crimes while based in Baghdad sounds dangerous
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# ¿ Nov 22, 2019 22:58 |
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Unimpressed posted:Wow, Swedish welfare must be pretty good for it to matter to a senior government minister in one of the most corrupt governments in the world. Less than a thousand euros a month for the two of them. Definitely doesn't sound like worth it, so either a) they are that stupid and greedy b) someone else is drawing welfare on their names c) this is a mistake or any mix of the above!
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# ¿ Nov 22, 2019 23:57 |
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Iraqi PM Abdul Mahdi resigns after police kill 40 protesters About time he took the hint, but the price is unbearable. And Sudan is Middle East, right? Oh well, close enough. Some moderately positive news. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-50596805 quote:Sudan has repealed a restrictive public order law that controlled how women acted and dressed in public. Nenonen fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Nov 29, 2019 |
# ¿ Nov 29, 2019 14:37 |
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Turkey recently signed a maritime agreement with Libya (I'm sure Turkey's military support has nothing to do with Libyan government's willingness to sign) that basically gives Turkey the control of eastern Mediterranean and blocks the building of EastMed pipeline from Israel to Greece via Greek Cyprus. All of the neighbouring countries have protested this as a blatant grab of oil and gas reserves. Turkey acts like Crete or Cyprus don't even exist.
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# ¿ Dec 15, 2019 18:15 |
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# ¿ May 12, 2024 12:15 |
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Count Roland posted:How does this block the construction of a pipeline? Other countries do not need to recognize an agreement between Turkey and Libya. They have been sending Turkish navy to drive away anyone breaching their self-claimed maritime rights. So far they have been blocking research vessels from Italy and Israel. An Italian frigate made a stop in Cyprus last week reportedly to deliver the message that they too can show their flag in the area. I love what a beautiful mess NATO is in the Med.
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# ¿ Dec 15, 2019 18:50 |