French special forces died in Benghazi when their helicopter was shot down, and the UN backed government's officials have been on television condemning France since this -in their view- confirms that the French are backing General Khalifa.
Interesting. It seems like there's some decent AA capability in northeast Libya; I remember seeing reports of some of Tobruk's planes being shot down near Derna some time ago (within a few months, I think).
"What's clear is that Western forces are helping Haftar coordinate air strikes in eastern Libya, which is where his base of control is. But the targets there aren't actually Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS)," Karim el Bar, the journalist who reported the story, told Al Jazeera.
"They [the targets] are his [Haftar's] political enemies - some of whom are Islamists, some of whom have other political affiliations...
..."The government in Tripoli is launching an offensive in Sirte against ISIL, and so we have this bizarre situation where Western governments are diplomatically and publicly supporting the government in Tripoli, but then their militaries are supporting Haftar in the east," el Bar said.
The Islamists of Benghazi (a coalition led by Ansar al-Sharia, which is believed by some to be Libya's AQ affiliate) and Derna (the Mujahidin Shura Council, which fought IS for control of the city) aren't exactly moderate (edit - since moderate is vague, what I mean by this is that they are more along the salafi-jihadist side of things than more mainstream Islamism [e.g. Muslim Brotherhood] side of things, from what I've seen), so the idea that the French would want to help Tobruk fight them doesn't surprise me. But it is indeed a convoluted political situation.
edit - Also, I remember reading reports a few months ago about how a multinational force of something like 5k ground troops + air forces, composed of Italy, France, UK, US, and maybe somebody else I dunno was being considered to try to get Libya under control.
That didn't happen, but it seems like rather than publicly come to an agreement on a war plan, the various countries are just gradually putting more special forces on the ground while using their air forces and basically accomplishing the same thing, "covertly" (not nearly as easy in the age of smart phones and social media). Probably not 5,000 special forces, though.
Turkey's government has blocked access to wikileaks after the AKP email leak. I wish I could read Turkish, I bet translators are working hella overtime right now.
Erdogan is almost taking over Putin's number one spot on my despise list.
It's really close.
Not to get all conspiracy-minded, but I wonder about the realpolitik of the sudden hostility against USA combined with the recent sudden friendliness towards Russia, ie apologizing for shooting down that jet, etc.
I've been wondering along these lines too. A Turkish shift away from the US and toward Russia would be pretty momentous. I dunno, though, the NATO shield is so nice that I have a hard time picturing many in Turkey's military/intel community wanting to give it up.
edit- I feel like Erdogan trying to do so might provoke another coup attempt, this time with more support from top generals
Erdogan is also real short on friends, or even anybody not shooting at him.
Its easier to apply pressure to the US/Europe when he can turn around and cozy up to Russia once in a while. When everyone in the region/world hates you, its pretty tough to apply diplomatic pressure.
There's also a plan to give Syrian refugees voting rights.
People who are conveniently 90% Sunni muslim.
Turkey is this much Sunni or more, probably.
I think people might be putting too much weight into the Sunni thing. Keep in mind that for the most part the Kurds are Sunni too, but that hasn't prevented fighting. I've read a lot of hand-wringing over Erdogan turning Turkey into an Islamist theocracy. If you want one of those, look at KSA or Iran. Turkey is still one of the most secular places in the region. I'd be much more worried about Erdogan concentrating power on himself, personally, as opposed to any greater ideal that he doesn't have a monopoly over.
According to wiki, Turkey's Muslim population (which makes up >95% of the population according to most sources I'm seeing) is 72% Sunni, 25% Alevi, and 3% Twelver Shia. I was surprised by a number of 25% for Alevis, which is higher than I'd have guessed, so I checked the cite (which wiki had flagged as potentially reliable) and it's some random guy's angelfire blog from the 90s. So far I haven't actually found a good source via Google (though I'll search a little more) so I asked the question of /r/Turkey to see if they could help. Hopefully asking about sectarian affiliation will not be controversial or interpreted in a hostile way.
I had the same thought as you when I read SanderJK's post - "that sounds like Turkey generally."
According to a fellow I talked to when I was over there on vacation those statistics are ridiculous skewed because in order to change your religion in Turkey it's an official process (because it's on the ID obviously) and after doing so your name and religious affiliation is published in the newspaper for everyone to see. As a result of this (and the close proximity of religious fanatics that would love to kill anybody not Islamic) Turkey has had a total of 8 Atheists in its history. Guy that told me this was a "Muslim" even though he was an Atheist, and gave a rough estimate of closer to 80% of the country being Muslim. @Basar ?
Ummm, half right. Yes, there's an official process to change whatever is written at the religion field on your ID and this is a major problem because even though the process is quite easy (you get an appointment and it's done in 30 minutes and costs something like 15 USD), the consequences of not having Islam in that field can be very bad. The simplest one is that you won't get hired by most Turkish companies, because they'll ask for your ID to do a background check. You for sure cannot work at any government office or government contractor.
Another thing is that you cannot officially be an atheist because atheism is not a religion and that field is for monotheistic religions only. So you can have Islam, Christianity or Judaism but not Buddhism or Pastafarianism, or you can leave it blank. I left mine blank.
My guess (no math, no method, just guesses) for religious affiliation in Turkey:
The Taliban have taken a district in Kunduz province (Qala-i-Zal, northwest Kunduz). I'm not sure what the territorial map of Kunduz would look like right now - LWJ has an interactive map in that article, but I think it's out of date and inaccurate. My impression was that the ANSF had retaken at least some districts after they retook Kunduz last fall, and while I read of heavy fighting in the province at the start of this year's "fighting season," the articles I saw described the ANSF holding up and not losing much ground, although not retaking ground either.
But Afghanistan's front lines are amorphous and unreported in comparison to those of Syria and Iraq (which are all over Twitter the moment any random village falls), and many areas are "contested" in a subtle way that does not lend itself well to maps. Government controls the roads during the day, Taliban at night, for example, or both sides having networks and influence within an area without clearly holding different parts of it. Plus, Afghans just don't post online as much as Arabs generally, and there are far fewer translators of Afghan languages than of Arabic. Finally, both the Taliban and National Unity Government are notoriously unreliable when it comes to accurately describing the scale and outcome of battles (though when one side takes/loses a district center it is reported accurately most of the time, from what I've seen). So despite my fairly diligent attempts to read anything written in English about the Afghanistan War, I still don't have a very detailed picture of the current state of things.
In response to the US's latest decision to maintain more troops in Afghanistan than previously planned, the Taliban spokesperson said:
"We are stronger than ever and 8,400 troops cannot stop us. So its basically useless for them to make such decisions, a waste of time."
Expected Taliban commentary, really, but for some reason I found its phrasing amusing.
Yeah, remember Afghanistan? There's been so much excitement in the world lately, and not really much news from that particular corner of it, so it's kinda fallen out of the public mind...
But this 2014 documentary was a really good historical rundown of the country and its situation, adding influencing world events as context. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRbq63r7rys
We had some trouble finding good versions of the film, we started watching this series but some copyright troll had nuked the sound from p. 3, and other uploads seem to have sound removed as well. :bigfrown: But the whole thing should be watchable on the tubes.
[T]his dump does include massive databases containing sensitive and private information of millions of ordinary people, including a special database of almost all adult women in Turkey.
Yes — this “leak” actually contains spreadsheets of private, sensitive information of what appears to be every female voter in 79 out of 81 provinces in Turkey, including their home addresses and other private information, sometimes including their cellphone numbers. If these women are members of Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (known as the AKP), the dumped files also contain their Turkish citizenship ID, which increases the risk to them as the ID is used in practicing a range of basic rights and accessing services. I’ve gone through the files myself. The Istanbul file alone contains more than a million women’s private information, and there are 79 files, with most including information of many hundreds of thousands of women.
That’s right.
We are talking about millions of women whose private, personal information has been dumped into the world, with nary an outcry. Their addresses are out there for every stalker, ex-partner, disapproving relative or random crazy to peruse as they wish. And let’s remember that, every year in Turkey, hundreds of women are murdered, most often by current or ex-husbands or boyfriends, and thousands of women leave their homes or go into hiding, seeking safety.
I have confirmed that these files indeed appear to contain correct private information by confirming that dozens of my friends and family members in multiple cities were included in that database, to my horror, with accurate private data. The files also include whether or not these women were AKP members — right after a brutal and bloody coup attempt to overthrow the AKP.
Should i laugh? Cry?
Not sure anymore.
I mean, sure, you're stooges of a dictator in all but name, fine, but do you have to bo so fucking obvious at your biases?
Is basic competence too much to ask of our villains?
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CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
Should i laugh? Cry?
Not sure anymore.
I mean, sure, you're stooges of a dictator in all but name, fine, but do you have to bo so fucking obvious at your biases?
Is basic competence too much to ask of our villains?
Yes; if it wasn't too much to ask for, they wouldn't be villains in the first place, and we wouldn't have the satisfaction of hearing all about their dastardly schemes in time to escape from their slow moving death ray ala James Bond.
I guess i should be happy that our villains are so incompetent.
But it just depresses me all the more to see them succeed so often inspite of their stupidity.
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CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
I guess i should be happy that our villains are so incompetent.
But it just depresses me all the more to see them succeed so often inspite of their stupidity.
Their saving grace is the stupidity of those that follow them being greater then their own.
Should i laugh? Cry?
Not sure anymore.
I mean, sure, you're stooges of a dictator in all but name, fine, but do you have to bo so fucking obvious at your biases?
Is basic competence too much to ask of our villains?
So since when did wikileaks become a stooge of Russia? They don't leak against Putin or something?
Should i laugh? Cry?
Not sure anymore.
I mean, sure, you're stooges of a dictator in all but name, fine, but do you have to bo so fucking obvious at your biases?
Is basic competence too much to ask of our villains?
So since when did wikileaks become a stooge of Russia? They don't leak against Putin or something?
Assange has had Russian ties for some time now (he has a show on the main Russian government channel, for example.)
Yeah I'd heard about the DNC links, and that they might have come from Russian hackers.
This is still pretty far from a Russian stooge. If Wikileaks has declined to release Russian leaks or otherwise cover for them, then yeah that's getting close. But even then, most media organizations have bias of some sort, and governments everywhere routinely use media to plant stories. **shrug** Its just more of the same to me.
Yeah I'd heard about the DNC links, and that they might have come from Russian hackers.
This is still pretty far from a Russian stooge. If Wikileaks has declined to release Russian leaks or otherwise cover for them, then yeah that's getting close. But even then, most media organizations have bias of some sort, and governments everywhere routinely use media to plant stories. **shrug** Its just more of the same to me.
His denial that there is any proof the emails came from Russian intelligence services certainly flies in the face of the facts.
Were he a neutral dumping ground, I would expect him to shrug and say "So what? I just post the shit people send me."
Should i laugh? Cry?
Not sure anymore.
I mean, sure, you're stooges of a dictator in all but name, fine, but do you have to bo so fucking obvious at your biases?
Is basic competence too much to ask of our villains?
So since when did wikileaks become a stooge of Russia? They don't leak against Putin or something?
Strictly speaking, the second is not true in the past. Take Wikileak's documents on the Ukrainian Civil War that directly fingered Russian backing of Crimean separatist forces well back in 2014, or the tens of thousands of Russian-language documents leaked in the Syria Files (though many of the Syria Files also angered American and European corporations that had dealings with the Syrian government prior to the civil war).
Though those by themselves would not necessarily make them, or not make them, "stooges" of the Russian government.
Amnesty is like the old grandfather among international observers. If you're getting his stink eye then just fuck you, man, you've deserved it.
Significant testimonies and triangulation of the state Turkey's in right now.
Should i laugh? Cry?
Not sure anymore.
I mean, sure, you're stooges of a dictator in all but name, fine, but do you have to bo so fucking obvious at your biases?
Is basic competence too much to ask of our villains?
So since when did wikileaks become a stooge of Russia? They don't leak against Putin or something?
Assange has had Russian ties for some time now (he has a show on the main Russian government channel, for example.)
I wonder how much of that is just him having to sell his soul to Russia so that they don't extradite him to the U.S..
Should i laugh? Cry?
Not sure anymore.
I mean, sure, you're stooges of a dictator in all but name, fine, but do you have to bo so fucking obvious at your biases?
Is basic competence too much to ask of our villains?
So since when did wikileaks become a stooge of Russia? They don't leak against Putin or something?
Assange has had Russian ties for some time now (he has a show on the main Russian government channel, for example.)
I wonder how much of that is just him having to sell his soul to Russia so that they don't extradite him to the U.S..
Snowden's in Russia. Assange is stuck in an embassy.
Should i laugh? Cry?
Not sure anymore.
I mean, sure, you're stooges of a dictator in all but name, fine, but do you have to bo so fucking obvious at your biases?
Is basic competence too much to ask of our villains?
So since when did wikileaks become a stooge of Russia? They don't leak against Putin or something?
Assange has had Russian ties for some time now (he has a show on the main Russian government channel, for example.)
I wonder how much of that is just him having to sell his soul to Russia so that they don't extradite him to the U.S..
Snowden's in Russia. Assange is stuck in an embassy.
People seem to be getting the two mixed-up a bunch lately (they tend to fall in and out of the news cycle at the same time, and they are connected in their won way).
On the other hand, I can think of a dozen people who were firmly convinced Snowden would be dead after the first year, much less the third. Assange sort of just...is.
Should i laugh? Cry?
Not sure anymore.
I mean, sure, you're stooges of a dictator in all but name, fine, but do you have to bo so fucking obvious at your biases?
Is basic competence too much to ask of our villains?
So since when did wikileaks become a stooge of Russia? They don't leak against Putin or something?
Assange has had Russian ties for some time now (he has a show on the main Russian government channel, for example.)
I wonder how much of that is just him having to sell his soul to Russia so that they don't extradite him to the U.S..
Snowden's in Russia. Assange is stuck in an embassy.
People seem to be getting the two mixed-up a bunch lately (they tend to fall in and out of the news cycle at the same time, and they are connected in their won way).
On the other hand, I can think of a dozen people who were firmly convinced Snowden would be dead after the first year, much less the third. Assange sort of just...is.
Should i laugh? Cry?
Not sure anymore.
I mean, sure, you're stooges of a dictator in all but name, fine, but do you have to bo so fucking obvious at your biases?
Is basic competence too much to ask of our villains?
So since when did wikileaks become a stooge of Russia? They don't leak against Putin or something?
Assange has had Russian ties for some time now (he has a show on the main Russian government channel, for example.)
I wonder how much of that is just him having to sell his soul to Russia so that they don't extradite him to the U.S..
Snowden's in Russia. Assange is stuck in an embassy.
Although, by sheer coincidence, Assange is stuck in the same embassy from which the unsigned travel documents allowing Snowden to leave Hong Kong for Russia originated.
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion.
Guys, can you not turn this into a wikileaks thread? It's a pretty useful thread for many of us to talk about Middle East issues and this really isn't.
Should i laugh? Cry?
Not sure anymore.
I mean, sure, you're stooges of a dictator in all but name, fine, but do you have to bo so fucking obvious at your biases?
Is basic competence too much to ask of our villains?
So since when did wikileaks become a stooge of Russia? They don't leak against Putin or something?
Assange has had Russian ties for some time now (he has a show on the main Russian government channel, for example.)
I wonder how much of that is just him having to sell his soul to Russia so that they don't extradite him to the U.S..
You are thinking of Snowden, not Assange. Snowden is, imo, almost certainly a poor stupid bastard stuck under Russia's thumb because of his own actions and against his will.
Posts
Googling after reading your post led me to this AJE article: "Leaked tapes suggest West supports Haftar"
The Islamists of Benghazi (a coalition led by Ansar al-Sharia, which is believed by some to be Libya's AQ affiliate) and Derna (the Mujahidin Shura Council, which fought IS for control of the city) aren't exactly moderate (edit - since moderate is vague, what I mean by this is that they are more along the salafi-jihadist side of things than more mainstream Islamism [e.g. Muslim Brotherhood] side of things, from what I've seen), so the idea that the French would want to help Tobruk fight them doesn't surprise me. But it is indeed a convoluted political situation.
edit - Also, I remember reading reports a few months ago about how a multinational force of something like 5k ground troops + air forces, composed of Italy, France, UK, US, and maybe somebody else I dunno was being considered to try to get Libya under control.
That didn't happen, but it seems like rather than publicly come to an agreement on a war plan, the various countries are just gradually putting more special forces on the ground while using their air forces and basically accomplishing the same thing, "covertly" (not nearly as easy in the age of smart phones and social media). Probably not 5,000 special forces, though.
Ummm, half right. Yes, there's an official process to change whatever is written at the religion field on your ID and this is a major problem because even though the process is quite easy (you get an appointment and it's done in 30 minutes and costs something like 15 USD), the consequences of not having Islam in that field can be very bad. The simplest one is that you won't get hired by most Turkish companies, because they'll ask for your ID to do a background check. You for sure cannot work at any government office or government contractor.
Another thing is that you cannot officially be an atheist because atheism is not a religion and that field is for monotheistic religions only. So you can have Islam, Christianity or Judaism but not Buddhism or Pastafarianism, or you can leave it blank. I left mine blank.
My guess (no math, no method, just guesses) for religious affiliation in Turkey:
Practicing Sunni: 40%
Nonpracticing Sunni: 30%
Alevi: 20%
Atheism: 9%
Other: 1%
Take care, Basar.
Stay safe, @Basar.
Steam | XBL
*until Erdogan is deposed and democracy restored, or heat death of the universe, whichever happens sooner.
There has been a lot of argument about whether a twelve-year old boy that was beheaded on camera was a child soldier or not.
In news that won't make you swear and cry uncontrollably for a hour the coalition against ISIS is finalizing battle plans for, well, the end.
But Afghanistan's front lines are amorphous and unreported in comparison to those of Syria and Iraq (which are all over Twitter the moment any random village falls), and many areas are "contested" in a subtle way that does not lend itself well to maps. Government controls the roads during the day, Taliban at night, for example, or both sides having networks and influence within an area without clearly holding different parts of it. Plus, Afghans just don't post online as much as Arabs generally, and there are far fewer translators of Afghan languages than of Arabic. Finally, both the Taliban and National Unity Government are notoriously unreliable when it comes to accurately describing the scale and outcome of battles (though when one side takes/loses a district center it is reported accurately most of the time, from what I've seen). So despite my fairly diligent attempts to read anything written in English about the Afghanistan War, I still don't have a very detailed picture of the current state of things.
In response to the US's latest decision to maintain more troops in Afghanistan than previously planned, the Taliban spokesperson said:
Expected Taliban commentary, really, but for some reason I found its phrasing amusing.
But this 2014 documentary was a really good historical rundown of the country and its situation, adding influencing world events as context.
We had some trouble finding good versions of the film, we started watching this series but some copyright troll had nuked the sound from p. 3, and other uploads seem to have sound removed as well. :bigfrown: But the whole thing should be watchable on the tubes.
Turkey extends detention without charge to 30 days
ISIS claimed it.
edit: and I have a friend currently in Kabul. Though no reason to think he'd be near the protest.
Wow. Fuck Wikileaks.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
At this point, Wikileaks should be considered a Russian intelligence operation and treated accordingly.
Not sure anymore.
I mean, sure, you're stooges of a dictator in all but name, fine, but do you have to bo so fucking obvious at your biases?
Is basic competence too much to ask of our villains?
Yes; if it wasn't too much to ask for, they wouldn't be villains in the first place, and we wouldn't have the satisfaction of hearing all about their dastardly schemes in time to escape from their slow moving death ray ala James Bond.
But it just depresses me all the more to see them succeed so often inspite of their stupidity.
Their saving grace is the stupidity of those that follow them being greater then their own.
So since when did wikileaks become a stooge of Russia? They don't leak against Putin or something?
Assange has had Russian ties for some time now (he has a show on the main Russian government channel, for example.)
e: Sorry, that sounds a bit too dismissive:
He's been on 60 minutes, interviewed by Rolling Stone, on Canadian radio... etc. Showing up on a TV channel doesn't mean anything.
He doesn't have a regular television show on any of those, and none of those are de-facto arms of their state government.
And has been released solely to sink Clinton in the US general election vs Trump.
Two articles on that, if you want to peruse
theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/07/dnc-hack-wikileaks-russia/492878/
nytimes.com/2016/07/25/us/politics/donald-trump-russia-emails.html?_r=0
This is still pretty far from a Russian stooge. If Wikileaks has declined to release Russian leaks or otherwise cover for them, then yeah that's getting close. But even then, most media organizations have bias of some sort, and governments everywhere routinely use media to plant stories. **shrug** Its just more of the same to me.
His denial that there is any proof the emails came from Russian intelligence services certainly flies in the face of the facts.
Were he a neutral dumping ground, I would expect him to shrug and say "So what? I just post the shit people send me."
Strictly speaking, the second is not true in the past. Take Wikileak's documents on the Ukrainian Civil War that directly fingered Russian backing of Crimean separatist forces well back in 2014, or the tens of thousands of Russian-language documents leaked in the Syria Files (though many of the Syria Files also angered American and European corporations that had dealings with the Syrian government prior to the civil war).
Though those by themselves would not necessarily make them, or not make them, "stooges" of the Russian government.
Trigger warning, while the article is not particularly graphic, it does note how some people are reportedly being victimized.
Significant testimonies and triangulation of the state Turkey's in right now.
I wonder how much of that is just him having to sell his soul to Russia so that they don't extradite him to the U.S..
Snowden's in Russia. Assange is stuck in an embassy.
People seem to be getting the two mixed-up a bunch lately (they tend to fall in and out of the news cycle at the same time, and they are connected in their won way).
On the other hand, I can think of a dozen people who were firmly convinced Snowden would be dead after the first year, much less the third. Assange sort of just...is.
Yeah, my bad there.
Although, by sheer coincidence, Assange is stuck in the same embassy from which the unsigned travel documents allowing Snowden to leave Hong Kong for Russia originated.
- John Stuart Mill
You are thinking of Snowden, not Assange. Snowden is, imo, almost certainly a poor stupid bastard stuck under Russia's thumb because of his own actions and against his will.