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Sat, 07 Dec 2024 23:54:31 -0800
zerosugar
from private IP, post #18802683
/all
Syria
Assad is really out. I wonder if he will at least release a video to his people.
I am just really really shocked he left. This guy was basically like a king and
so was his father before him. I think he should have stayed and fought even if
it meant dying like Gaddafi. Anyway, will wait and see. They are saying
Assad’s plane possibly crashed. I will refrain from giving my opinion on the
opposition at this time and on other countries involved on either side. It’s
an all around sad and crazy situation for so many people.
#Politics
Sun, 08 Dec 2024 06:02:03 -0800
Andy from
private IP
Reply #12168724 That would be funny if Putin
sabotaged Assad's plane. One less asylee!
Sun, 08 Dec 2024 06:50:58 -0800
zerosugar
from private IP
Reply #11223853 I don't think he was planning to
go to Russia, but to Abu Dhabi. Jordan and Egypt had supposedly offered him
asylum as well. Still possible he was on his way to Russia, as maybe he did not
trust these Arab countries wouldn't turn him over to ICC. Another crazy twist is
that some are suspicious of a Gambian plane. It would be insane if he decided to
go to an African country. Members of the Syrian military reported they were
basically told to stand back and do nothing. Jolani just entered. There was not
even a battle. I think it's too early to assess what Jolani will do, but he was
with a branch of Al Qaeda offshoot group.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/12/06/jolani-syria-hts/
P.S. I sort of wonder if he survived what his life will be like. He isn't the
type of guy who will become some influencer posting frequently on social media.
Then again, I don't see him being as low key as Ahmadinejad, but maybe more like
Aisha Gaddafi. She had an art exhibit recently. I can see Assad going back into
photography and eventually having a gallery.
Sun, 08 Dec 2024 14:59:26 -0800
whiteguyinchina from private IP
Reply #11769342 Your career options after being a
deposed dictator are a bit limited imho
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 06:27:04 -0800
zerosugar
from private IP
Reply #10650179 They just selected a very scary
PM. Jolani made it seem like he was extending an olive branch and allowing the
PM Assad appointed to stay in power.
Isis are now entering the Alawite villages as per many videos posted on
telegram. There are foreign fighters there too not just Syrians, one foreign
fighter entered a hospital and murdered an Alawite solder and a Kurdish soldier.
Heartbreaking that the USA wanted to support these criminals. Heartbreaking that
Assad just abandoned his people with no word. He should have left peacefully
back in the early days of the war and appointed somebody moderate for a
transitional government.
BTW, I am a westerner of course, but I spent enough time in the Northern
Lebanese city of Tripoli to know quite a bit about these guys and the hate they
have for anybody who is not Sunni. Even the ones who seem moderate and dress
Western have this mindset. The French colonialists lclearly knew what they were
doing in seeking out the Alawites as allies. I don’t hate Sunni btw and many
seem peaceful, but in their hearts, they believe anybody who is not their faith
is not worthy of paradise. This is why I had a hard time connecting with people
who believed I was damned.
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 06:44:23 -0800
zerosugar
from private IP
Reply #13286404 They escorted out the old PM.
They first made it seem like they were extending an olive branch to the other
side by letting the old PM stay. Now they just appointed a PM. Also, weren’t
Israel and the USA for democracy? Notice how no election now. Just an appointed
government.
See below:
On the same day, a video was published showing al-Jalali being escorted in
Damascus by Tahrir al-Sham militia.
On the old PM
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Ghazi_al-Jalali
This is their new PM. See the flag behind him.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/who-is-mohammad-al-bashir-syrias-caretaker-prime-minister/amp_articleshow/116198755.cms
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 10:07:05 -0800
whiteguyinchina from private IP
Reply #19602131 i have no idea why syria is of
any interest to these various powers, such as russia or usa or chayna. but it
seems usa benefits from this outcome. the other side lost an ally, but not sure
if that ally was worth anything in the first place. what strategic value did
syria have anyway? why was the us and russia in there? no idea.
in the micro context you destabilize a country, in the macro context you score a
small win on the geopolitical chessboard. i would guess no one in washington or
london is losing much sleep over muslims killing muslims.
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 10:10:43 -0800
whiteguyinchina from private IP
Reply #11400129 https://www.eurasiareview.com/09122024-the-geostrategic-importance-of-syria-geography-power-and-global-influence-analysis/
well this kind of educated me
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 10:53:15 -0800
marlon from
private IP
Reply #10147146 Russia needs Syria for a military
base & a warm-water port, so they can keep going their operations in Africa,
whatever it is.
the USA has dozens of foreign military bases but Russia has only one.
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 11:25:34 -0800
whiteguyinchina from private IP
Reply #11945772 Yea it seems like the Iran needs
Syria for something such as whatever
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 11:41:26 -0800
TribalBarConnection from private
IP
Reply #11160051 Rip Lion of Damascus.
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 12:05:22 -0800
marlon from
private IP
Reply #19856126 yeah the Black Sea sucks because
of Turkey.
Polar ports suck.
Russia is like a landlocked country.
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 12:21:24 -0800
TribalBarConnection from private
IP
Reply #11872548 It's why they have wanted to take
Dardanelles for centuries.
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 13:51:57 -0800
zerosugar
from private IP
Reply #14532655 Syria is filled with natural
resources. Assad himself transferred like over 100 billion to Russia and bought
about 20 apartments in this fancy high-rise supposedly. I am shocked at how this
man lived, even fancier than the wealthy Gulf Arabs. In public, he seemed simple
and humble. One of my friends is Alawite and her family are still there and
terrified. I told her to tell them to try to cross into Lebanon or Turkey or
something, but then the rebels will assume they are war criminals trying to
escape and kill them. She contacted an old friends of hers who lives in the part
of Syria that Israel entered and where some fighting occurred. She just wanted
to ask her friend who is Sunni if her family were ok and the friend rudely
started talking to her like she was a criminal, telling her that if she knows
anybody who was in the military or with Assad that she needs to report them to
the new government and that she knows "you people" know a lot of them. This girl
used to be one of her best friends.
What's funny is that when Assad first fell, my friend was happy. Her family were
happy too. The Alawite lived so poor even under Assad and he just abandoned them
and left them to the wolves to be blamed for his crimes. People I saw online had
so much hope Jolani would do the right thing and even claimed he would name a
Christian as mayor of Hama. People including the Alawite even thought it was
beautiful how he prayed when he arrived to Damascus. Now, just a few days later,
the rebels are showing their true face.
They are also burnt Hafez al Assad's (Bashar's father) grave today. I thought
burning graves was haram in Islam and one of the worst things ever. Whether he
was good or bad, it's still a grave and still part of Syria's history. They
could have simply closed off the area and left it for tourists to see how Syria
used to be and how this family built these extravagant monuments while people
starved and were forced into war. They are basically destroying an entire
country, but having a Wahhabi or Takfiri or whatever you want to call them
militia group carry off the old PM when Jolani previously told him he could
stay is crazy.
here are some points I notice:
1) Hezbollah and Assad messed up by fighting so much for the Palestinians and
being basically the only forced in the Arab world who care about Palestine. Even
Hafez al Assad before Bashar. They thought they were going to be principled and
fight for the little guy, but the "little guy" who are mostly Sunni extremists
consider them scum anyway. It's almost nonsensical that they made the
Israel/Palestinian conflict their mission. Nasrallah should have focused on
Lebanon and occasionally gone into Syria to help against the extremists. He
should have never made Palestinians his mission because that made him a target
for Israel. The funny thing is Palestinian militia groups sabotaged Lebanon in
the Lebanese Civil War anyway. I of course feel bad for the innocent Palestinian
civilians caught in crossfires, but that shouldn't have been Nasrallah's
mission. He also shouldn't have been so visibly aligned with Iran because
everybody dislikes Iran.
2) The downfall of Hezbollah makes me see how strong they really were. They were
carrying Assad on their back. The Iranian military alone seem to be useless and
Russia are not too focused on Ukraine.
P.S. Putin's hilarious save face that he is in touch with the opposition is
hilarious. They don't care about him and will take his bases.
3) Assad should have just left in the early 10s and handed over power to
somebody moderate so a peaceful transition could have happened while keeping nut
jobs under control. Now he escaped and left this vacuum for these groups to just
take over. If he would have left properly, maybe they could have transitioned to
a sort of confessional system like in Lebanon which seems to have had relative
peace after the Lebanese Civil war.
4) Syria will be like Iraq or Libya now.
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 14:06:44 -0800
zerosugar
from private IP
Reply #16874773 I became extremely interested in
Syria during my time in Lebanon. My host who was Sunni and from Tripoli
(Northern Lebanon) was driving me through an area called Jabal Mohsen. I was
just a young girl and basically knew almost nothing about Lebanon or Syria aside
from the singer Haifa. There were all these big billboards and posters of this
old white looking man. The old man didn't look Arab or Levantine at all, well
what my idea of what Arabs and Levantines should look like. In my head, I
assumed maybe he was some French or British ambassador who had been charitable
to the people! lol. I asked my host who was this old man. He responded that the
old man was Hafez al Assad, the old president of Syria. I responded that the old
man looked so western. He told me its because he was from an ethno religious
group called the Alawite. He started to tell me how the Alawite and the Druze
are secret religions that you have to be born into and with the Alawite, even
amongst themselves, only a select few of the men are taught the religion. I
found his so fascinating. That night on my phone, all I did was google about
them and try to learn as much as possible and really there is not much! They
were not accepted as Muslim until the 1970s when the liberal Shia cleric Musa al
Sadr who was later kidnapped in Libya declared them Muslim. The Belgian Jesuit
old orientalist Henri Lammens considered them a crypto Christian group. Some
anthropologists have noted they appear to have Kartvelian origins and there are
like elements of Greek mythology in their religion. The only thing that is known
about them which they are public about is they believe in reincarnation and are
not supposed to eat female animals. A man who tried to publish some of their
secrets in the 1950s and escaped into Lebanon was assassinated. There was even
an offshoot group of the Alawite started by a guy named Salman al Murshid. Their
religion is called the Murshidis. When I was in Lebanon, the Sunni guy told me
the Alawite have a holiday called hiding day where everybody gets into a closet
and who touches who first has to have sex with that person regardless of age or
if related. When I asked some Alawite this years later, they laughed and told me
it's the Murshidi who do that. Who knows the truth? lol.
The Druze religion seems to be sort of like Hinduism. They do not allow marriage
to outsiders and some outsiders who marry non Druze are even threatened with
death.
Anyway, the Levant is such a diverse region. Most Americans think of Gulf Arabs
when they think of the Middle East, but these people are vastly different than
Gulf Arabs. At most, they are merely Arabized. I also believe haplogroup J1 is
not native to the Levant, but rather arrived west with the spread of Islam.
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 14:14:05 -0800
zerosugar
from private IP
Reply #12628554 @whiteguyinchinaTest We did not win ultimately in Iraq or anywhere else
just as we lost in Afghanistan. Maybe there is no winning. If you think about
it, it seemed like a victory in Iraq, but years later, we had to pick up the
peaces with ISIS. Many members of ISIS were disenfranchised soldiers from
Saddam's old army. abu bakr al-Baghdadi was an IraqI who lived adjacent to a
mosque during the American occupation. He became radicalized as he heard a
cleric speak and as he witnessed American soldiers disrespecting the people and
throwing Qurans in the street. They watched the Shia and Kurds hang Saddam and
even though Saddam was not religious himself, he still was a Sunni ethnic.
Today, Sunni around the world view Saddam as this lion of the Sunnah.
I am not sure how Syria is a win, but Assad should have tried more to align with
the West and maybe he wouldn't be gone. I do just feel for all the Christians
and Alawite and other groups who will be harmed. The rebels will not protect
them nor will they protect so much of the beautiful history in that country.
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 14:49:56 -0800
marlon from
private IP
Reply #12895106 the Middle East has all these
arbitrary borders
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/syria-map-control-factions-civil-war-a5730e6f?mod=hp_lead_pos9
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 19:39:30 -0800
zerosugar
from private IP
Reply #19989789 The funny thing is I went over
some of my old articles and Ron Paul has been writing since 2021 about Jolani
and how Washington was trying to reposition him.
Here is a recent article Ron wrote. Btw, I’m not a libertarian. I dislike
their economic policies, but he writes some decent articles on International
Relations.
https://ronpaulinstitute.org/al-qaeda-rides-again-in-syria/
Excerpt:
As Christians around the world prepare to celebrate Christmas, a hell has been
unleashed inside Syria with the seizure of the country by the re-named
“al-Qaeda in Syria” now called Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Its leader is
a former deputy commander of ISIS, Abu Mohammed al-Julani.
While neocons and the mainstream media in the US and Europe celebrate the
overthrow of the Assad government – a priority since the Obama Administration
– as with previous US “liberations” in Libya and Iraq the outcome is
proving to be anything but liberating. Christian churches are being ransacked
and believers abused.
Sharia law has been announced by the new justice minister, Shadi Alwaisi.
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 19:41:46 -0800
zerosugar
from private IP
Reply #16391155 Here is an article from 2021 from
Ron Paul Institute.
https://ronpaulinstitute.org/how-washington-is-positioning-syrian-al-qaedas-founder-as-its-asset/
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 19:52:56 -0800
zerosugar
from private IP
Reply #19762309 @marlonTest
that's a good article too and scary. its terrifying all these militias and how
it can spill into neighboring countries. I wonder sometimes if Biden purposely
did all this to make things hard for Trump going forward. I see Syria as being a
huge mess for some time. This is bigger than Iraq and Libya imho.
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 19:55:12 -0800
whiteguyinchina from private IP
Reply #16805655 Yea it's messed up. I feel the
middle east wars of America were meant to destabilize the entire region so that
no other power could control it. That is. The deatabilization wasn't the
consequence of the wars, it was the goal.
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 20:01:19 -0800
marlon from
private IP
Reply #11175469 more migrants to Europe too
@19856126 TribalBarConnection 👍
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