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Randarkman posted:Here's what I'm wondering, even if it wasn't a video game screenshot why would it be conclusive proof that the US was working with ISIS? I came to this thread hoping to see someone answer that question. I've seen a million places posting the 'lol Russia' thing, but even if it had not been a video game screenshot, I'm not sure what an aerial photo of a convoy of vehicles is supposed to mean? Even if they could somehow be proven to be Daesh vehicles and also proven to be somewhere to the east of the Euphrates, what does that have to do with the United States? Maybe they should have photoshopped a bunch of Abrams escorting the Daesh convoy, and some US army guys giving out slices of Thanksgiving Turkey in Abukamal.
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Nov 15, 2017 16:46
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Cat Mattress posted:I kind of dislike these "uncleaned" audio transcripts. They have no value outside of linguistic studies IMO. I know people talk like this, but when you read it instead of hear it, it just make them seem like morons, because it brings emphasis to all the hesitations and abandoned sentence fragments that you normally just ignore in a conversation. Completely agree, and on top of that it's also a lovely transcription, e.g. So, you the enemy hasn't declared their -- their done with the are yet. I'm almost positive he did not orally specify "their" instead of "they're", and I would be similarly sure that he said "area" instead of "are." I have no idea what "So, you the enemy" means, but I'm also guessing he did not say that, though possibly it is verbatim. Based on all the other errors, it's fairly likely the person transcribing missed "So, you see the enemy...".
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Nov 19, 2017 22:21
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Cat Mattress posted:Hariri is back at home, and announced that he 'suspends' his resignation. So is there a betting pool on whether or not MBS orders accidents to happen to Hariri’s two children who are captive in Saudi Arabia, or will he just take all of the Saudi-based money of Hariri and his companies?
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Nov 22, 2017 19:09
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Shageletic posted:Yeah the linkage of blackwater which doesn't even exist anymore (I think even Xe might be defunct) and the fact its the daily mail makes that particular claim look super bullshit. But yeah they're obvi being tortured by someone. The part where the author says « and the name blackwater is being whispered » is where I realized that daily mail had accidentally found and published a Michael Crichton script when they thought it was investigative journalism. The article might be somewhat accurate but it reads like a 22 year old fan fiction draft of a future movie about MBS. E: and also daily mail has a reputation for solid journalism alongside breitbart in that its news journalism but also not really. Saladman fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Nov 26, 2017 |
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Nov 26, 2017 01:16
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Warbadger posted:Massacring tens of thousands of random people in a hospital and infrastructure bombing campaign to prop up a national socialist authoritarian regime at the cost of 50% of the population displaced, half a million dead, and a continuing civil war: better results! I mean that sounds almost the same as Iraq. Although I guess one is the Russians and SAA actively doing it while the other is the population themselves doing it. Still, end result isn’t much better in Iraq than Syria.
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Nov 28, 2017 13:50
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Mans posted:It's impressive the point where D&D has reached where it's controversial to say that US foreign policy in the middle east is a cancer that has destroyed the entire region for generations to come. God forbid that D&D be one of those forums where people can realize the world is nuanced and that many factors play a role in disasters.
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Nov 29, 2017 22:47
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OhFunny posted:https://twitter.com/DEFCONWSALERTS/status/936737949869379584 Serious question: do Iran or even Russia have the tech to shoot down incoming missiles? I was under the impression that this is something that is super hard to do and only Israeli and US tech can do it, and they’re not even that reliable unless the projectiles are super slow (like the ones generally fired at Israeli). I find it hard to believe that Syria has a missile defense shield that can shoot down 60% of incoming modern missiles fired from Israel, if the basis of the story is even true. If shooting down missiles was that easy, then you’d think the US would be shooting down the North Korean missile launches the second they entered international waters. Trump would get a massive approval rating boost by doing that, so I can’t believe he’s holding back for any reason. Saladman fucked around with this message at 10:02 on Dec 2, 2017 |
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Dec 2, 2017 09:59
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A Buttery Pastry posted:The word "missile" covers a lot of variety. I'm no expert, but I wouldn't be surprised if a missile fired from an aircraft was relatively slow, compared to long-range ballistic missiles. I mean, the challenge with intercepting ICBMs is that you generally have to get them while they're still accelerating because the missile has enough gas to reach speeds no interceptor can. Seems like one fired from an aircraft might not be able to reach those kinds of speeds? Huh, yeah no kidding. Around 1 km/s for new Israeli air to surface missiles (http://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/content/iai-reveals-new-air-ground-missile), around 1.5km/s for a SCUD and around 8km/s for an ICBM in terminal phase. Also I bet Shafik would prefer his family -not- come with him to egypt.
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Dec 2, 2017 19:23
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That's Hamas though. When do they ever not call for intifada? If Fatah says something then maybe there'll be an uprising, but it's not like Hamas can really do much since they're all already in a massive prison (at least the Gazan ones) and it's not like Sisi is going to help them.
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Dec 7, 2017 11:18
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Going to chime in with the rest here, that it's really ironic that Al-Saqr cries "fascist" several times in every post, but then thinks it's OK to shame, fire, and humiliate someone for having taken a photo with someone from a country that he don't like. Guess what? That's one of the hallmarks of being a huge fascist sack of poo poo. I guess it's seeped into his skin by osmosis from growing up in KSA. I work with some Iranian dudes (I'm a US citizen). I hope no one posts photos from our Christmas party on Friday of me sitting next to them and laughing together since then we'd both be fired and shamed by our families and suffer death threats. Saladman fucked around with this message at 13:20 on Dec 17, 2017 |
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Dec 17, 2017 13:16
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Volkerball posted:Oh yeah I forgot to post this. It's hilarious. Did I just watch the Saudi army roll in with tanks through Tehran with cheering Iranians holding Saudi and Iranian flags together with portraits of MBS. How could anyone older than 14 make that video? FFS Also shouldn’t they all be slaughtered anyway since they are infidel sub-Jew taqiya scum?
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Dec 20, 2017 14:27
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Cat Mattress posted:Speaking of which, we haven't seen Al-Saqr in a while. He stopped posting (at least in this thread) after everyone called him an rear end in a top hat for making GBS threads all over that Iraqi woman who took a pic with Miss Israel and posted it. I think / hope it’s an issue of feels got hurt and not MbS being a goon who saw this thread and doxxed al saqr.
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Dec 30, 2017 14:01
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Al-Saqr posted:Have fun maintaining any semblance of control in Afghanistan now that Pakistan has zero incentive to try and control their side of the border. At least some Pakistani lives can finally be spared from the internal war they e been fighting against the taliban. That is an... optimistic outtake. I’m pretty sure Pakistani taliban would continue murdering deaths of children whether or not the ISI tels them to.
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Jan 6, 2018 08:11
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I can't imagine commercial small drones being remotely useful against a modern military even a couple years from now, in the same way that the US's large UAVs are worthless against anyone with modern air defences (minus maybe those stealth UAVs). Commercial drones are incredibly slow, low-flying, and (I guess) must have obvious visual and heat signatures when compared against the sky from video tracking algorithms. Put that together with an automatically-aiming medium-caliber anti-drone weapon and I don't even see how swarms of them are going to get past even as something as basic as a couple M16's controlled by video processing algorithms.
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Jan 8, 2018 16:06
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Count Roland posted:Are these standard equipment anywhere? Video game style auto-aim has been a thing in civilian tech for a while, e.g. I remember: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/01/17000-linux-powered-rifle-brings-auto-aim-to-the-real-world/ off the top of my head. I'm not a computer scientist but I imagine adapting that to target drones would not be a huge leap in technology. But yeah you're right, I was just thinking along the lines of securing military sites. For street combat then self-targeting weapons wouldn't work nearly as well.
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Jan 8, 2018 20:40
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Volkerball posted:Some poo poo is going down in Tunisia. There have been protests like that every couple months for the last 7 years (well, maybe only the last 5) including with semi-accidental deaths like the guy yesterday. I guess this could always be the protest that makes it big, but really it's business as usual in Tunisia right now. I follow Tunisian news/politics for personal reasons, and e.g. am headed down there this weekend. Just do a French google news search for tunisie + manifestation, it's almost as frequent as France and strikes. English media just only randomly covers it whenever there's a slow news day about whether the man has made a tweet or not. Saladman fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Jan 9, 2018 |
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Jan 9, 2018 19:57
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Volkerball posted:Everyone is hyper sensitive on middle eastern protests at the moment as well. I don’t know why they’re focusing so much on that, when there’s a separate imperialist invasion of Tunisia that just started which is guaranteed to kill more people in the long run: http://www.businessnews.com.tn/kfc-ouvre-son-premier-restaurant-en-tunisie,520,77207,3
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Jan 10, 2018 15:38
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From what I hear from Tunis, the only (?) protest in the center of the city was at Av Habib Bourguiba—a major landmark outside the medina—but it was pretty much a non-events as far as newsworthiness of protests go in Tunisia given how frequent they are. One of my wife's friends was there and took some photos but it wasn't more than a hundred-ish people. Only article I can find on it at all is: https://www.tunisienumerique.com/tunisie-video-manifestation-nocturne-a-lavenue-habib-bourguiba-pour-la-liberation-dactivistes/ It does sound like the protests are more serious in Kasserine and some of the other provincial towns, and we'll see if anything happens, especially since this Sunday is a holiday for the 7th anniversary of the flight of Ben Ali. I'm not there for politics at all, but I'll probably walk over and look if something is going on av Habib Bourguiba... more because I'd have to go out of my way to -not- go that way than anything else. TBH I think it's getting more news because of the trumped up stuff about Iran and anything that gets called a protest in an Arab (+Iranian) country right now is hot press cakes. Saladman fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Jan 11, 2018 |
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Jan 11, 2018 16:49
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Squalid posted:Do you think Tunisia is safe for tourists now? Would probably help the economy if that sector could recover Yeah, it's fine for tourists -- there have only been two terrorist attacks since the revolution that affected tourists (both in 2015), so if you're not worried about going to France or NYC then there's no reason to worry about terrorism in Tunisia. But, tourists worry far far far more about Muzzlim countries than they do about terrorism elsewhere. Like, why does almost no one cancel trips to Thailand despite it being run by a brutal military regime every bit as bad as Egypt and, if discounting Sinai, suffers similar levels of terrorism? That said, by the way minibus drivers drive, I get the impression they all have previous experience driving SVBIEDs at hardened military outposts. After a handful of such experiences I'll now take the trains or rent a car. On that note, by far the most dangerous thing that tourists usually do in any country is taking inter-city buses, but that doesn't quite grab headlines the same way unless it's like in Peru or Bolivia where one goes off a cliff and kills 80 people every few months. E: There are a handful of "no go zones" like the mountains around Kasserine and the Libyan border but generally nothing that a tourist would go to anyway. I've heard that the wall they built on the Libyan–Tunisian border also helped a lot in terms of security, as previously there were a lot more attacks on security forces, but this was really focused specifically on Ben Gardane in the far south, where a tourist isn't going to go anyway unless they really love dusty, depressing, decayed Mad Max towns. Saladman fucked around with this message at 09:27 on Jan 12, 2018 |
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Jan 12, 2018 09:22
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The western coverage of Tunisia right now is comical, eg http://www.bbc.com/news/world-afric...reporting-story « Hundreds » of people protested on av habib Bourguiba today (major street in centra Tunis, though it’s been largely closed to traffic for years and is almost a pedestrian mall now). Hundreds is an absolutely tiny turnout considering it’s Sunday and a national holiday for the 7th anniversary of the revolution. I’m staying one block off Habib Bourguiba and walked through it today at 9:30am—there was some set up with banners and stuff, but not particularly many people, and when I walked back again at 9:30pm it was nothing but a few watching football in the cafes there. Naturally there probably was a demonstration there since there are photos, but it’s so emphemeral and tiny it’s comical that western media is even covering it. A friend of mine here works in a bank on av Bourguiba and he said he was looking out his window when people were askinge « whoa le temps is reporting huge protests in tunis!! » and he was like « yeah there are maybe twice as many people here as an average day ». I guess media needs something to report on when it’s not making up new words for « big storm » like « bomb cyclones « or whatever the gently caress. I would never know there were protests a block away from me if it wasn’t for the news.
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Jan 14, 2018 22:03
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Quixotic1 posted:Is Turkey's government still going ahead with the rebuild of the barracks in Gezi Park, or is it now in limbo? Its been a while since the protests and the intentions to build it. No idea what's in the planning, but at least about a year ago when I was there, there was absolutely nothing hinting at construction or changes. I'm surprised they haven't torn up Taksim Square, as it's a huge eyesore even in winter/fall/spring, and it must be a brutally hot baking nightmare all summer.
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Jan 16, 2018 18:51
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Warbadger posted:The war was pretty explicitly about the Houthi (who the Iranians back) putting the boot to the filthy heretics the Saudis/Jews/Americans backed and regime changing Yemen. The Saudis joining admittedly made it a mutual thing. So does two groups of people trying to genocide each other cancel out, or what’s the idea?
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Jan 17, 2018 18:13
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Darkman Fanpage posted:And unlike the Kurdish community that seems to be something the Turkish community is incapable of doing: admitting they did something wrong. Ehh... I doubt Wikipedia is exhaustive but https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_recognition_of_the_Armenian_Genocide Especially Ocalan’s « recognition » is glaring, as he basically says that « it was the Turks!!! gently caress the Turks! We and the Armenians are brothers against evil ». The PKK recognition also mainly blames outside powers for manipulating some Kurdish factions. The KDP declaration is similarly weak. So there are some genuine apologies here but all from bit players.
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Jan 18, 2018 09:34
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Flayer posted:Everyone's thoughts and behaviour are affected by the world we live in, whatever the ethnicity. Picking out one ethnic group as if they are the only ones to have their thinking warped by their environment is idiotic. Either way Erdogan just publicly announced his desire to ethnically cleanse a region of a foreign country, which is a universally reprehensible action. It's a weird moment to be bringing up anecdotal biases about white people disliking Erdogan. I think the guy who is "part Kurd" is just playing Devil's Advocate FWIW. Also I think I've almost never heard anyone describe themselves as "part" of an ethnicity unless it's some totally made up thing, like Elizabeth Warren (or [insert half of white Americans]) saying they're part Cherokee, or so far displaced to be totally irrelevant, like Kim Kardashian being "Armenian" because two of her great-great grandparents moved to the US from there in 1900. On a related note to this thread: I love following Twitter feeds of what's going on in Syria because it's a bunch of Kurds calling the turks "turDs" and a bunch of Turks calling the Kurds "Turds". It's so great that they can use the same childish play on words on each other by only changing one different letter, and then using capitalization for emphasis. Edit: Also the broken English with occasional intermittent Turkish thrown in. VVV: Yes, I completely agree with that. Unless you were responding to someone else. Saladman fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Jan 22, 2018 |
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Jan 22, 2018 19:34
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Saladin Rising posted:https://twitter.com/JulianRoepcke/status/956903913768280065 It might be because there were/possibly still are a lot of Russian (and SAA?) soldiers there.
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Jan 26, 2018 20:36
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Blut posted:Destroyed buildings, a tank carcass, and a recently built monument. Thats a Stalingrad circa 1945 looking city-scape right there. It's a little hard to tell, but I don't think there are any destroyed buildings in that photo. They all look more like they're under construction. (Replacing destroyed buildings, no doubt.) Lots of places in the middle east, and Greece, look like that because every single building is always under construction. Usually it is to avoid paying taxes — you don't pay home owner taxes if your house is under construction — although I doubt that's the case here.
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Jan 28, 2018 14:01
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Volkerball posted:I haven't watched this whole thing yet, but flipping through, it looks intriguing. It's a documentary on the Syrian metal scene throughout 2013 and 2014. Free on YouTube. Super interesting, thanks! I'm about halfway through now. It's also kind of interesting how 100% of the music-related words use the English word, even ones which have Arabic or French words like "drums", "club", and "underground". E: The film and cut quality is great too, even a fair number of good drone shots. Saladman fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Feb 6, 2018 |
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Feb 6, 2018 23:05
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Zudgemud posted:One of the few drone shots from Syria without people dying I hope. It's mostly architectural drone shots, although there are some from in front of a tank and some of watching bombs drop. I think some of it might be stock footage slash stuff he found on YouTube, as otherwise I don't know how he'd have footage of directly above (like 1 meter) a tank gun firing. RussiaWorks (Александр Пушин on YouTube) also has some great drone footage of Syria. Some of it is war porn, but others show more lively aspects of Syria, like central Damascus ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0-THsw4RLc ). I watched a short documentary a while back about nightlife in Aleppo back when it was still directly a war zone, and it was interesting to see how normal it looked. Can't remember at all what it was called. I never saw anything similar produced in any of the ISIS-controlled territories except those ones by John Cantlie, which were probably only about 80% staged and 20% real, and then the ones produced by RBSS which were OK at first but got progressively more garbage as time went on, I guess because all the real reporters there got executed by ISIS or fled. Also I don't speak Arabic which naturally cuts down my sources by a lot.
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Feb 7, 2018 14:12
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Volkerball posted:it's a free documentary I sent him €30 and I hope I’m not now on some watchlist for funding Syrian devil worshippers.
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Feb 7, 2018 17:38
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tekz posted:The IMF is trying to neoliberalize and gently caress up Tunisia, the only country that came out relatively stable out of the arab spring: I don't know much about the relationship between the IMF and countries and whether it's a poison pill or worth doing, but this article has a lot of weird mostly-incorrect statements like "Price increases have been deepened by a rise in VAT and consumption taxes – the most unprogressive forms of taxation, paid by everybody no matter what they earn". The the increase in consumption tax/VAT was 1% across the board which is regressive, but the big increases were for things like chocolate (+10%) wine, alcohol (+30%), watches (+50%), designer perfumes and makeup (+30%), and other luxury imports that will almost exclusively affect the richest echelons of Tunisian society. It is absolutely possible to do progressive VAT taxes, and most countries do this. Also a lot of those things with a 1% VAT increase simply aren't going to be paid by anyone, e.g. anything produced in Tunisia and sold in a souk or market, which is the majority of anything that a poor Tunisian will buy. That article is also about 3 weeks old. There's absolutely nothing going on in Tunisia anymore wrt protests. The protests were vastly, vastly, vastly overstated and exaggerated in Western media. My wife is Tunisian, and also I was literally staying next door to where protests were supposedly going on for the 7th anniversary of the revolution on the main avenue in central Tunis, and although I wasn't standing around there all day, what I saw at 10am was like 200 people chanting for a few minutes and that was it. There were some smaller but significant protests further out, apparently, although nothing even remotely vaguely close to 7 years ago.
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Feb 8, 2018 18:34
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Sinteres posted:I'm not a fan Turkey under Erdogan in general, or of the Olive Branch operation specifically, but this is quality trolling. Not really, it’s a lame copycat of the US trolling Russia by renaming the street the Russian embassy in DC is on. If they’d thought of it first it’d be kind of clever but as is it just seems dumb. Also in like two years no one will remember the relevance of olive branch and they’ll think it was named that for positive peace-building reasons.
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Feb 12, 2018 16:28
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coathat posted:It’s all lame copying of Iran changing the British embassy to Bobby Sands Street. Ha, I didn't know about that one. So snidely renaming the streets of embassies has been going on for 30 years now? I wonder if someone's made a list of those. Probably.
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Feb 12, 2018 17:51
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How political are the YPG really? Like I kind of assumed that they just paid lip service to socialism/Ocalanism but that realistically it was a broad assortment of people of different ideologies united temporarily under the banner of making an autonomous province in Syria, and that the minute they actually succeed they’ll divide in intercine conflicts like the Kurds of Iraq. The socialist bit just seems to be propaganda for Assadist right wing Americans to froth about and left wing internet commentators to drool over. I mean I don’t hear about anything remotely in the terms of political policy in Qamishli or Kobani or wherever. It seems like it’s the typical Arab government of a state of varying levels of repressiveness and most things being free enterprised and untaxed because who is going to report taxes accurately.
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Feb 13, 2018 08:55
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Bates posted:Russia's Blackwater lost 100+ Russian contractors in their little skirmish with the US in Deir Ezzor. Is Bloomberg pretty reliable? Because that's a loving crazy number of Russians to be killed. Iranian militias are one thing, but presumably Russian mercenaries are reasonably well-trained and reasonably well supported by the motherland. Unless Russian mercenary doesn't mean "Russian national" but "somebody on the payroll of a Russian company".
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Feb 13, 2018 14:42
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Bip Roberts posted:Wait, who is not currently a state sponsor of terror? I was going to say “Nauru” but then I realized poo poo, even they are running a concentration camp.
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Feb 16, 2018 10:23
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WhiskeyWhiskers posted:Well they're taking money to have one on their island. I don't know if that counts as running. I mean it's not like Australia is militarily forcing them to do so. You can't murder someone for money just because you need to pay for your cancer treatment or whatever. If you could, then Breaking Bad would have been a lot shorter.
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Feb 16, 2018 11:21
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Cat Mattress posted:A couple of articles about Saudi Arabia recognizing that yes, they have been fostering terror left and right. But it's only because Iran exists. Wow, that is actually pretty shocking. I don't think I've ever seen a dictatorship which is still in power admit to doing anything wrong or making mistakes, ever, even with all these caveats. I really can't think of another time where 100% of the blame wasn't laid elsewhere. So long as Adel al-Jubeir doesn't end up in a 5* torture cell tomorrow for saying all this stuff on record, at least.
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Feb 21, 2018 23:33
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Grouchio posted:Presenting: The most likely first hotspot for water wars - Egypt! Wow 85% of Cairo’s Nile water comes from the Blue Nile? That’s crazy, I would’ve thought the outlet from Lake Victoria would be more than a small fraction. If that video is accurate anyway and not an Egyptian propaganda piece. Although not exactly the first water war by a long shot. Just off the top of my head there was also the ultra high altitude space battles between Pakistan and India over controlling the Siachen glacier that forms the source of the Ganges.
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Feb 24, 2018 10:24
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There’s a difference between bias and obvious sensationalism.
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Feb 24, 2018 23:23
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Duckbox posted:Actually it's a bunch of different groups with a wide variety of aims and that's why it was so easy for foreign powers to coopt some of those groups. “It’s” is a contraction of “it is” and not “it was” though. Is the FSA/SNC anything at all today besides Turkish puppets? I haven’t followed too closely but I get the impression that the majority of the FSA who wasn’t a terrorist-lite stooge of Turkey had defected to SDF or left into the refugee world or tried to blend back in Assad’s Syria. E: I’m sure there are plenty of rank and file normal dudes, I mean the current leadership. Saladman fucked around with this message at 09:20 on Feb 25, 2018 |
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Feb 25, 2018 09:18
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