I lived in Aleppo with my family 1962-1964. My dad was a US consul at the time. It's heartbreaking to see those pictures of that great city trashed. Half a century is a long time in the history of an American city, but the twinking of an eye in the history of Aleppo.
The people of the city were incredibly supportive of us -- their guests -- in the aftermath of JFK's murder. Strangers on the street came up to us to express condolences.
There was violence back then; the pan-Arab movement of Egyptian president Gamal abdel-Nasser was stirring up nationalist fervor, pro and con. He was frightening and annoying Hafez al-Assad, the father of the present ruler, so government forces were cracking down on Nasser supporters.
But nothing like this.
A family of Syrian refugees lives in my town, and I'm proud to call them friends. Their eldest daughter is pulling straight As in high school. They get hassled sometimes by 'murican yahoos, which is stupid, but still better than being in the Jordanian refugee camp they came from.
I was lucky enough to have visited Syria in 2009. I spent 3 weeks in Damascus. My impressions at the time:
* The pepole were surprisingly westernised
* Most younger people spoke great English
* Alcohol was available, but limited because *most* people didn't drink (instead people socialised in tea halls)
* Cheap oil meant that the taxi to the burger joint cost less than the burger did
* The people were extremely friendly
* I never felt unsafe
* The city was extremely clean
* ...however, the air was polluted
* Bakdash pistachio ice-cream was AMAZINGLY good https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakdash_(ice_cream_parlor)
* The old city was beautiful and packed with history...
* One day we rented a van to see some surrounding areas. The driver was extremely friendly. He showed us around and told us about the history of the places. I still have very fond memories of that desert trip
I had never considered visiting there before that, but left thinking I'd love to come back. I guess that's no longer possible and I shudder to think that everything I saw might be destroyed and wonder if the people I met are ok. It really was an incredible place.
The signs of the Assad regime were everywhere: posters of Bashar al-Assad were everywhere and armed police on most street corners. Beyond that, it felt very normal (from a westerners perspective) and I never felt like I was in (what the US calls) a "rogue state".
Yeah, this mirrors my impression. It was unequivocally a controlled society : one simply didn't speak about the regime in anything less than absolutely glowing terms. The threat of the secret police was persistent.
As far as the people go, your odds of being hustled in Syria were pretty high (but not any worse than, say, Thailand) -
other than that I totally agree wrt the westernization and general pleasantness.
I don't think it's really possible to argue the country is in any way better off than it was before the insurrection. I don't want to trivialize the experience of living in a police state, but there are worse things in this world.
Meta-commentary: This is one of the more fascinating threads I have seen on HN. It seems to parallel many of the problems with political discourse in the world today - maybe it's always been like this, but I'm not old enough to know.
I would break down the comments into several types:
1) conspiracy theorists who believe in some secret cult that is unilaterally organizing everything
2) trolls - state sponsored or otherwise pushing an anti-humanitarian cause. They are throwing chaff into the discussion to confuse and disorient and to detract from the real issues.
3) people with experience in these events trying desperately to be heard - these are the people meant to be drowned out by the trolls
4) alarmists - people with relatively little knowledge of the actual goings-on who insist that every minor event is the end of the world (or Syria). I'm not saying that Syria hasn't been decimated, but that it was (and is) a process not an event
5) the rest of everyone who is trying to make heads or tails of things and seems to fall into one of those camps.
So, to one of the brighter communities on the internet (that's you HN) I ask: how do we (humanity) convey a full, factual picture to one another so that we may use those facts in conjunction with our values to agree or disagree with one another?
It's not easy, but it's pretty simple. Longer attention spans, and not treating all opinions as equally reasoned and/or valid. We are in the midst of a terrible anti-intellectualistic & dirt-kicking-religious-fundamentalism conundrum globally. Education is the only atmosphere where growth is the only goal - every human enterprise involves winning and losing, more or less.
In the context of Education, the goal is self-reflexive when employed properly - as in, discussion and growth and learning for their own sake, not because some asshole in the Federal Government wants every kid from Baton Rouge and Seattle and San Diego to be able to pass a highly sterile, multiple-choice "NCLB" type test. There's a lot of stuff to un-screw up.
A person like Betsy DeVos is akin to Emperor Nero's Horse.
> how do we (humanity) convey a full, factual picture to one another so that we may use those facts in conjunction with our values to agree or disagree with one another?
I think this is an essential question, and one that people often dismiss as having no solution. IMHO it's an excellent, highly valuable problem for someone to solve. In my very humble thinking, I've come up with or collected these ideas:
1) You are entitled to your own opinion but not to your own facts. Facts are can be common ground on which all good faith people can stand, and in which they all share an interest - whatever your opinion, you want it to be true and consistent with the facts. Of course, that's trickier in practice than in theory; see the note on propaganda.
2) Some fields have methods for separating fact from fiction, such as science and law. Some parts of those methods can be applied here, though of course people in Internet forums don't have the resources (especially time) to utilize those methods completely.
3) We must decide to trust some people and sources to a greater degree than others. As someone said, there is no art, no judgment, in trusting nobody. I trust the NY Times more than (some random conspiracy site), for example.
4) Propagandists try to disrupt all of the above; keep an eye out for their tactics. A/the fundamental tactic of professional propaganda (and seemingly adopted by amateurs, maybe unwittingly) is not to persuade but to create uncertainty: Portray all fact as equivalent opinions and discredit any trust in anything, from science to government to news media. Consider climate change, where false uncertainty has brought U.S. federal government action to a standstill; that is exactly the means and outcome of propaganda (as I understand it). Another tactic is to drown signal with noise using a barrage of baseless allegations.
5) As a way to both filter out propagandists and greatly improve the content of forums, focus on input that are based on sound factual foundations and which contributes value - which significantly adds to the reader's knowledge. The propagandists generally reduce knowledge or create uncertainty; they raise endless questions without basis. (Other people do this too; they aren't all intentional propagandists, but it has a similar effect.)
> trolls - state sponsored or otherwise pushing an anti-humanitarian cause.
I've seen this idea brought up a few times here in our community, and have been accused of it at least once for expressing an unpopular opinion.
I have such a hard time believing there's state sponsored posters who troll hacker news. It seems extremely tinfoil hat to me. Honestly folks we're not that important.
Honestly to explain the nuance of the situation would take too long and isn't super easy to reduce to right and wrong. The background required to understand how syria came to be is not something that can be sufficiently and succinctly explained in a comment thread.
Attempts to simplify it run into the exact issues you've noticed above. You're bias comes into play which conflicts with various other peoples PoV, and it all devolves into a shouting match.
Also the pipeline/Syke-Picot people will interject themselves into any conversation about the middle east because "this one simple event explains everything" is appealing to a ton of folks.
> state sponsored or otherwise pushing an anti-humanitarian cause.
What's the anti-humanitarian cause? Throwing enough resources at the fight to keep it going for years instead of weeks/months, but not enough to actually end it, for what I hope are callous realpolitik reasons and not simple incompetence?
What I find interesting about the Syrian issue is that it is becoming increasingly clear that diplomacy, the UN, media exposure etc is failing. Despite this "humanitarian crisis" (which I fully agree is reaching crisis levels), my impression is that almost all the media outlets and pundits are ignoring the obvious solution to this problem... unilateral US military intervention (and before we go there... keep in mind that if that doesnt solve the problem, nothing can).
So the question I have for the parent is as follows: how far do things have to deteriorate before military intervention is the only viable and recommended solution?
It is 100% within the means of the United States to end this situation.
I wish there were more definite sources detailing what the actual conflict is about. People are giving all sorts of accounts online and it seems to be divided into a few camps:
1) western and sunni middle eastern press: it's all Assad's (government's) fault. People want democracy. Specifically this is supposed to be a response to violent repression of pro-democracy protests from March 2011.
Problem: very hard to believe. The attitude of the government against the people of Syria has not changed, and the "protesters" do not seem very pro-democracy at all.
Second problem: the middle eastern press (al Jazeera) is owned by a government that would stand to benefit substantially from the pipeline issue. Even aside from the pipeline, that government is involved in funding the exremists in Syria.
2) shi'a middle eastern press
Coordinated Sunni attack against one of the two last multicultural/tolerant middle eastern Countries (the other one being Iran, and while Israel is multicultural/tolerant Iran doesn't see it that way). It's an attack to massacre the last vestiges of tolerance in the middle east.
Problem: obviously this is state propaganda. That doesn't mean it's not true, of course, but there are military interests at stake by the same people who own these press.
3) Russian press (there were/are hundreds of thousands of Russians from the Soviet union who lived in Syria)
This is a coordinated assault against the last Russian ally on the mediterranean. They note the same as the Shi'a press does (attack on tolerance for non-Sunnis), and also note the pipeline project that would deliver oil from.
Problem: of course this too is state propaganda.
4) Catholic information sources (there is/was no shortage of Monasteries in Syria)
Well-funded Sunni extremists attacking (and killing) everyone in sight, with no identifiable cause. Ethnic cleansing, including even of Sunni's that don't want to fight for them. They seem to disagree with the notions that the fighters care about either Russian interests, or the pipeline (though the funding parties might think differently)
Problem: They're not very willing to come forward with information, and the few times they do they say they really fear retaliation. The ones that come forward are refugees.
Not that I have followed it that closely, but of course it's not a black vs white conflict, more like several factions wanting to win power/suppress their enemies.
I think it started as a demonstration against the corrupt Assad that turned violent when his army started shooting. The "rebels" picked up arms and probably brutally kills pro-government soldiers/citizens, so they are not saints either. Meanwhile ISIS takes advantage of the chaos to try to win control of regions. The Kurds are fighting them because there's probably a Kurdish area in Syria? But Erdogan doesn't like a Kurdish rise, so he's probably quietly looking the other way as European ISIS sympathisers travel via Turkey in and out of Syria. Russia wants Assad to stay in power because he's a puppet, so he's bombing "rebels" and ISIS.
We haven't even mentioned Iran and the USA. As this report https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/16/world/middlee... says, in one side of the conflict USA (at least Obama's USA) is working with Russia, in another side they're backing opposing sides.
In 2010, before this war, the BBC produced a 5-part documentary series called "Syrian School" -doing a fly-on-the-wall in four schools in Damascus. I only saw half of it, but looking back it is heart breaking. The short answer is, day-to-day life in a Syrian school was very similar and recognisable to e.g. the UK. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUDxznlkm6Y
Not Syria but Syrian music, from Aleppo to be precise. I saw the Al-Kindi Ensemble (http://www.alkindi.org/) many years ago, and you can find an album on Spotify.
The whole evening was enchanting, and reading up on their story, then seeing footage of Aleppo, I realised how completely gone all that old beauty is. Daesh hates them too, no doubt, but then that's their thing.
This is totally off topic (and may even be taken to be insensitive considering the plight of the Syrian people), but I had to ask: is there any way that you/anyone/HNer could offer suggestions on how to deploy such a site for a non-developer...are there free/self-hosted themes and/or frameworks whose installation and use is noob-friendly enough to lend themselves well to interactive storytelling...? Any help/pointers would be immensely appreciated.
From a "I think it's more technical" to "I think it's less technical" order:
* This website uses fullPage.js [1], which is a widely used javascript library for such full screen presentation (for instance Apple use it in their Mac Pro promo page [2]). You can get around it's API if you know a little HTML and a little javascript, but it's still a lot of manual work. And the neatier features are locked behind a (totally justified) paywall.
* One neat generator I know is Jack Qiao's Expose[3] which he mainly uses in his travel photography website [4]. Check out those sweet cinemagraphs ! Unfortunately it is a command-line program which may be a bit obtuse to non-developer (especially on Windows), and the text placement has to be set manually
* Shameless plug: as a side project, I made a clone of Expose in Python [5] (demo [6]) with no video support but explicit Markdown support (so you can embed maps, youtube videos and others ). It's still a command line app, but I'm working on a second version that uses Electron and has a more WYSIWYG approach. It is still very much a side project though.
* You could look at some web-based presentation framework. Slid.es [7] is an WYSIWYG builder for the reveal.js library [8]. It's mainly used for Powerpoint-ish presentation (ex. [9][10]), but with a touch of creativity you can do neat thing, like this portfolio [11].
God, I hate stats like these, why is it so hard to break up men, women and children separately to give more insight. Women are not the same as children.
Or is google trying to tell us that woman are basically, well, children?
Not that women are children, but that women and children's lives are more precious than men. Men are disposable. They are supposed to fight and die. (Obviously not a video that I endorse)
I'm pretty sure it has to do with women and children are seen as more important and if any gender is suppose to survive a conflict, it's the women and children. Men are supposed to accept the situation and allow women and children to survive. I find this very old and outdated but it still fits when it comes to statistics.
I think it says more about the society that the refugees are fleeing from. Imagine some hypothetical civil war in Florida with millions of refugees -- the American women would not be lumped in with the children.
> Why would they bomb us and kill innocent people everyday? > - Bana
So I doubt that being "exploited" by the evil UN anti-warmongerers is of particular concern to her. I'd even guess she would want to help to stop this, and prevent further atrocities of this magnitude.
You've really gotten away with the wrong lessons from Wag the Dog if you consider this exploitative. The problem in WtD was that it was intended to rouse nationalistic furore justifying a military intervention. This is intended to produce goodwill for refugees.
And, of course, the problem in Wag the Dog was that the girl was an actress in California, and there was no war.
Thanks for this. It's always great to hear personal experiences.
I read an interview of a female architect still living in Syria. If anyone has a source, I would appreciate it.
If I recall correctly, she said what follows. I hope I am not putting words into her mouth.
She had been urged to get out of the country. She chose to stay as she wanted to be involved in rebuilding her city.
She criticised those who wanted to go back to what it was like before the uprising. She said that all was not nice in the past.
She pointed to the corruption in the exam system. She pointed to the fact that people could not travel freely throughout the city, as different parts of the city were controlled by different factions.
The UN is not objective. They keep repeating the "peaceful protests" thing, but what sort of peaceful protests would aim to take down the president by force ? I'm not an Assad supporter but come on, we saw how that peaceful protests ended up in Libya; France was doing air strike to stop the Libya government to interrupt the protests, people killed their former leader with their bare hands.
The only peaceful end during the Arab spring was in Tunisia as their former president escaped in the beginning. A coalition of western countries took over their country to "establish democracy", and now Tunisian people are letting Europe teach them how to be a democracy. It's not free of course. I met bunch of Danish people getting paid really well for working for Tunisian government, as a part of the transition.
Syria was a failure for whoever organized Arab spring. Assad gave a CNN interview in the beginning of the war, saying that he'll lead the transition to democracy. But, he'll fight whoever choose violence. Whoever organized those protests already wanted a war, so it didn't matter what Assad said. Please go back to 2011 editions of your favorite western papers and look at the news about Syria, reporters based in London were hysterically telling people about how peaceful protesters in Syria are being killed by a demon, Assad. Same propaganda machine most recently made campaigns about a group called White Helmets, founded by James Le Mesurier, a well known MI6 agent.
I traveled three times during the war to the Turkey - Syrian border, volunteered in the refugee camps there. There was not even one UN tent although every year they make big promises such as water pipeline, schools, etc. If you look at UNCHR website, you'll see they are asking money for regions where they don't even report from because they got no volunteers there at all. Later, I traveled to other middle eastern countries around Syria and met chance to meet UN volunteers, told them my observation about their operation. They explained me how they basically count victims and collect money. They bring an NBA or Hollywood star to one of the camps in either Iraq or Lebanon, take some photos and fill the pockets with millions of money that will be spent in 5 star hotels, business class flight tickets, western bars and restaurants in the wealthy neighborhoods of poor middle eastern towns.
If you're looking for truth, don't expect these corrupt organizations to tell you, do some research. Who was the US foreign minister during arab spring, who has been backing his/her political campaigns ? If you find this name, all you need is to research that person and find out what he has been organizing "peaceful protests that turn to violent" all over the world, from Ukraina to Egypt, from Libya to Syria.
The protests probably started organically, the neighbouring Arab Springs seemed successful at the time and Syria was dealing with a long drought, food being one of the primary causes of major protest. Various Sunni generals then defected, probably figuring it would end quickly and they would be primed for chief roles in the new government. al-Assad didn't step down though, and outside help started pouring in from both sides.
Whether Clinton got involved before the Sunni generals defected or after, I can't say for sure. The US has no qualms supporting potential coups but Sunni's rising up against an Alawite leader isn't surprising either. Blaming her for the protests seems like a stretch. Acting like she's some lone agent in the US pushing this kind of stuff requires ignoring centuries of history.
>If you're looking for truth, don't expect these corrupt organizations to tell you, do some research.
Here's the data, from the horses' mouth: http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php. UNHCR runs accommodation for half a million refugees. More importantly, they have changed tactics in the last decades, and are trying to get refugees to live among the normal population, instead of tent cities.
If you doubt their numbers, a simple search on youtube will give you hundreds of videos from UNHCR camps. Are they all fake? Here's one of many: https://youtu.be/04sN1xn5tTQ?t=3m17s
> Who was the US foreign minister during arab spring, who has been backing his/her political campaigns ? If you find this name, all you need is to research that person and find out what he has been organizing "peaceful protests that turn to violent" all over the world, from Ukraina to Egypt, from Libya to Syria.
Ohh, now I get it! It's the evil zionist George Soros, isn't it? Yes, I'm sure it's Hilary Clinton's jewish conspiracy that started all this.
>The only peaceful end during the Arab spring was in Tunisia as their former king escaped in the beginning.
Tunisia is not a kingdom, never had a king.
> A coalition of western countries took over their country to "establish democracy"
Again, this shows your lack of knowledge, there was no take over or any coalition that went to Tunisia.
> letting Europe teach them how to be a democracy
Working for someone and "Teaching them" are two different things.
> Syria was a failure for whoever organized Arab spring
If you don't know who initiated the Arab spring, you should probably not talk about it as if you were an expert.
> Assad gave a CNN interview in the beginning of the war, saying that he'll lead the transition to democracy
Ohhh, Thank you. Let's all believe the guy who is and was using violance before the arab spring even happened and is a dictator.
> Please go back to 2011 editions of your favorite western papers and look at the news about Syria, reporters based in London were hysterically telling people about how peaceful protesters in Syria are being killed by a demon, Assad.
That is actually true. Other parties/nations got involved in the conflict with different interests. Situation escalated and became what it is today; a nightmate.
They're not repeating the "peaceful protests" thing just like that:
The conflict in Syria is complex
It dates back to March 2011, when several teenagers
were arrested for painting anti-government graffiti
in the southern town of Daraa.
Public demonstrations calling for democratic reforms
spread across the country, meeting swift government
opposition. Peaceful uprisings gave way to violent
clashes, and ultimately a brutal civil war.
can you please write more about this and especially about your personal experiences? or provide some links so that we can do our own research. but i wouldnt even know where to start....
This focuses on the tragedy but is unrealistic about the social reality. Syria has been loaded with sectarian divisions and strife for thousands of years. Many of the clans fighting in this war have been in conflict for very long periods of time already. The quote peace unquote that existed in Syria did so in large part because the leadership had so aggressively murdered its detractors. It is true that much has been lost, but it is false that this is all some kind of strange mystery that was put upon Syria from the outside. Conflicts festered in Syria for a very long time and eventually without adequate solutions bubbled over and initiated this catastrophe.
I dislike intellectually dishonest titles, that try to hide the humanitarian or politically oriented motif.
In this instance, much of the material is not about what Syria was like before, but about the horrors of war.
And that Syrians are great refugees to have...
a) they do not really want to leave Syria and live in first world countries
b) they are more educated than Americans...
With a strange 'inference and comparasing'
" .. 18 in 100 Syrians* have advanced degree
vs 11 in 100 Americans ..."
*Based on Syrian immigrants living in the US
What does it even mean?
Syrian refugees have a projected higher contribution to US economy than Americans?
Overall, the article should have been in Arabic, English, Spanish and Chinese.
The article should have been labeled: "50 great reasons why you should want displaced Syrian refugees to immigrate into your country..."
[+] [-] OliverJones|8 years ago|reply
The people of the city were incredibly supportive of us -- their guests -- in the aftermath of JFK's murder. Strangers on the street came up to us to express condolences.
There was violence back then; the pan-Arab movement of Egyptian president Gamal abdel-Nasser was stirring up nationalist fervor, pro and con. He was frightening and annoying Hafez al-Assad, the father of the present ruler, so government forces were cracking down on Nasser supporters.
But nothing like this.
A family of Syrian refugees lives in my town, and I'm proud to call them friends. Their eldest daughter is pulling straight As in high school. They get hassled sometimes by 'murican yahoos, which is stupid, but still better than being in the Jordanian refugee camp they came from.
[+] [-] jimmy2020|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 123456789abcdef|8 years ago|reply
The signs of the Assad regime were everywhere: posters of Bashar al-Assad were everywhere and armed police on most street corners. Beyond that, it felt very normal (from a westerners perspective) and I never felt like I was in (what the US calls) a "rogue state".
[+] [-] temp_12345|8 years ago|reply
As far as the people go, your odds of being hustled in Syria were pretty high (but not any worse than, say, Thailand) - other than that I totally agree wrt the westernization and general pleasantness.
I don't think it's really possible to argue the country is in any way better off than it was before the insurrection. I don't want to trivialize the experience of living in a police state, but there are worse things in this world.
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] peterlk|8 years ago|reply
I would break down the comments into several types:
1) conspiracy theorists who believe in some secret cult that is unilaterally organizing everything
2) trolls - state sponsored or otherwise pushing an anti-humanitarian cause. They are throwing chaff into the discussion to confuse and disorient and to detract from the real issues.
3) people with experience in these events trying desperately to be heard - these are the people meant to be drowned out by the trolls
4) alarmists - people with relatively little knowledge of the actual goings-on who insist that every minor event is the end of the world (or Syria). I'm not saying that Syria hasn't been decimated, but that it was (and is) a process not an event
5) the rest of everyone who is trying to make heads or tails of things and seems to fall into one of those camps.
So, to one of the brighter communities on the internet (that's you HN) I ask: how do we (humanity) convey a full, factual picture to one another so that we may use those facts in conjunction with our values to agree or disagree with one another?
[+] [-] 6stringmerc|8 years ago|reply
In the context of Education, the goal is self-reflexive when employed properly - as in, discussion and growth and learning for their own sake, not because some asshole in the Federal Government wants every kid from Baton Rouge and Seattle and San Diego to be able to pass a highly sterile, multiple-choice "NCLB" type test. There's a lot of stuff to un-screw up.
A person like Betsy DeVos is akin to Emperor Nero's Horse.
[+] [-] hackuser|8 years ago|reply
I think this is an essential question, and one that people often dismiss as having no solution. IMHO it's an excellent, highly valuable problem for someone to solve. In my very humble thinking, I've come up with or collected these ideas:
1) You are entitled to your own opinion but not to your own facts. Facts are can be common ground on which all good faith people can stand, and in which they all share an interest - whatever your opinion, you want it to be true and consistent with the facts. Of course, that's trickier in practice than in theory; see the note on propaganda.
2) Some fields have methods for separating fact from fiction, such as science and law. Some parts of those methods can be applied here, though of course people in Internet forums don't have the resources (especially time) to utilize those methods completely.
3) We must decide to trust some people and sources to a greater degree than others. As someone said, there is no art, no judgment, in trusting nobody. I trust the NY Times more than (some random conspiracy site), for example.
4) Propagandists try to disrupt all of the above; keep an eye out for their tactics. A/the fundamental tactic of professional propaganda (and seemingly adopted by amateurs, maybe unwittingly) is not to persuade but to create uncertainty: Portray all fact as equivalent opinions and discredit any trust in anything, from science to government to news media. Consider climate change, where false uncertainty has brought U.S. federal government action to a standstill; that is exactly the means and outcome of propaganda (as I understand it). Another tactic is to drown signal with noise using a barrage of baseless allegations.
5) As a way to both filter out propagandists and greatly improve the content of forums, focus on input that are based on sound factual foundations and which contributes value - which significantly adds to the reader's knowledge. The propagandists generally reduce knowledge or create uncertainty; they raise endless questions without basis. (Other people do this too; they aren't all intentional propagandists, but it has a similar effect.)
[+] [-] Danihan|8 years ago|reply
How open-minded of you.
[+] [-] matt_wulfeck|8 years ago|reply
I've seen this idea brought up a few times here in our community, and have been accused of it at least once for expressing an unpopular opinion.
I have such a hard time believing there's state sponsored posters who troll hacker news. It seems extremely tinfoil hat to me. Honestly folks we're not that important.
[+] [-] punkrex|8 years ago|reply
Attempts to simplify it run into the exact issues you've noticed above. You're bias comes into play which conflicts with various other peoples PoV, and it all devolves into a shouting match.
Also the pipeline/Syke-Picot people will interject themselves into any conversation about the middle east because "this one simple event explains everything" is appealing to a ton of folks.
[+] [-] ashark|8 years ago|reply
What's the anti-humanitarian cause? Throwing enough resources at the fight to keep it going for years instead of weeks/months, but not enough to actually end it, for what I hope are callous realpolitik reasons and not simple incompetence?
[+] [-] awkwardtortoise|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lefstathiou|8 years ago|reply
So the question I have for the parent is as follows: how far do things have to deteriorate before military intervention is the only viable and recommended solution?
It is 100% within the means of the United States to end this situation.
[+] [-] candiodari|8 years ago|reply
1) western and sunni middle eastern press: it's all Assad's (government's) fault. People want democracy. Specifically this is supposed to be a response to violent repression of pro-democracy protests from March 2011.
Problem: very hard to believe. The attitude of the government against the people of Syria has not changed, and the "protesters" do not seem very pro-democracy at all.
Second problem: the middle eastern press (al Jazeera) is owned by a government that would stand to benefit substantially from the pipeline issue. Even aside from the pipeline, that government is involved in funding the exremists in Syria.
2) shi'a middle eastern press
Coordinated Sunni attack against one of the two last multicultural/tolerant middle eastern Countries (the other one being Iran, and while Israel is multicultural/tolerant Iran doesn't see it that way). It's an attack to massacre the last vestiges of tolerance in the middle east.
Problem: obviously this is state propaganda. That doesn't mean it's not true, of course, but there are military interests at stake by the same people who own these press.
3) Russian press (there were/are hundreds of thousands of Russians from the Soviet union who lived in Syria)
This is a coordinated assault against the last Russian ally on the mediterranean. They note the same as the Shi'a press does (attack on tolerance for non-Sunnis), and also note the pipeline project that would deliver oil from.
Problem: of course this too is state propaganda.
4) Catholic information sources (there is/was no shortage of Monasteries in Syria)
Well-funded Sunni extremists attacking (and killing) everyone in sight, with no identifiable cause. Ethnic cleansing, including even of Sunni's that don't want to fight for them. They seem to disagree with the notions that the fighters care about either Russian interests, or the pipeline (though the funding parties might think differently)
Problem: They're not very willing to come forward with information, and the few times they do they say they really fear retaliation. The ones that come forward are refugees.
[+] [-] netsharc|8 years ago|reply
I think it started as a demonstration against the corrupt Assad that turned violent when his army started shooting. The "rebels" picked up arms and probably brutally kills pro-government soldiers/citizens, so they are not saints either. Meanwhile ISIS takes advantage of the chaos to try to win control of regions. The Kurds are fighting them because there's probably a Kurdish area in Syria? But Erdogan doesn't like a Kurdish rise, so he's probably quietly looking the other way as European ISIS sympathisers travel via Turkey in and out of Syria. Russia wants Assad to stay in power because he's a puppet, so he's bombing "rebels" and ISIS.
We haven't even mentioned Iran and the USA. As this report https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/16/world/middlee... says, in one side of the conflict USA (at least Obama's USA) is working with Russia, in another side they're backing opposing sides.
[+] [-] jimduk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nray|8 years ago|reply
The whole evening was enchanting, and reading up on their story, then seeing footage of Aleppo, I realised how completely gone all that old beauty is. Daesh hates them too, no doubt, but then that's their thing.
[+] [-] iamjeff|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paradite|8 years ago|reply
example of final product:
http://multimedia.dw.com/the-mysterious-mass-die-off-of-saig...
[+] [-] superasn|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PetitPrince|8 years ago|reply
* This website uses fullPage.js [1], which is a widely used javascript library for such full screen presentation (for instance Apple use it in their Mac Pro promo page [2]). You can get around it's API if you know a little HTML and a little javascript, but it's still a lot of manual work. And the neatier features are locked behind a (totally justified) paywall.
* One neat generator I know is Jack Qiao's Expose[3] which he mainly uses in his travel photography website [4]. Check out those sweet cinemagraphs ! Unfortunately it is a command-line program which may be a bit obtuse to non-developer (especially on Windows), and the text placement has to be set manually
* Shameless plug: as a side project, I made a clone of Expose in Python [5] (demo [6]) with no video support but explicit Markdown support (so you can embed maps, youtube videos and others ). It's still a command line app, but I'm working on a second version that uses Electron and has a more WYSIWYG approach. It is still very much a side project though.
* You could look at some web-based presentation framework. Slid.es [7] is an WYSIWYG builder for the reveal.js library [8]. It's mainly used for Powerpoint-ish presentation (ex. [9][10]), but with a touch of creativity you can do neat thing, like this portfolio [11].
[1]: https://alvarotrigo.com/fullPage/
[2]: https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/
[3]: https://github.com/Jack000/Expose
[4]: http://jack.ventures/
[5]: https://github.com/PetitPrince/pyxpose
[6]: http://petitprince.github.io/pyxpose-demo/gallery.html
[7]: https://slides.com/
[8]: https://github.com/hakimel/reveal.js
[9]: http://motivate.slides.com/motivateco/deck-8-9#/
[10]: https://ourworldindata.org/slides/world-poverty/
[11]: http://ianspiro.com/portfolio/
EDIT: Whoa, paradite mentionned Pageflow. This seems really neat !
[+] [-] romanovcode|8 years ago|reply
3.6 Women and Children
1.6 Men
God, I hate stats like these, why is it so hard to break up men, women and children separately to give more insight. Women are not the same as children.
Or is google trying to tell us that woman are basically, well, children?
[+] [-] tyingq|8 years ago|reply
If you draw the line at age 18: Roughly, 27% male adults, 25.5% female adults, 47% children.
[+] [-] wtvanhest|8 years ago|reply
Men are much more likely to be warriors historically.
[+] [-] tonmoy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hasenj|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Whatarethese|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CydeWeys|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] somename1235|8 years ago|reply
I am currently in Syria, tried opening it, it gave me 403 response (As all sites based on Google cloud services do)
[+] [-] AnonNo15|8 years ago|reply
http://www.tema.ru/travel/syria-1/
http://www.tema.ru/travel/syria-2/
http://www.tema.ru/travel/syria-3/
[+] [-] Phil_Latio|8 years ago|reply
It's like the movie Wag the Dog. Sad to exploit a child like this.
[+] [-] matt4077|8 years ago|reply
> Why would they bomb us and kill innocent people everyday? > - Bana
So I doubt that being "exploited" by the evil UN anti-warmongerers is of particular concern to her. I'd even guess she would want to help to stop this, and prevent further atrocities of this magnitude.
You've really gotten away with the wrong lessons from Wag the Dog if you consider this exploitative. The problem in WtD was that it was intended to rouse nationalistic furore justifying a military intervention. This is intended to produce goodwill for refugees.
And, of course, the problem in Wag the Dog was that the girl was an actress in California, and there was no war.
Are you doubting that there is a war in Syria?
[+] [-] mattfrasernz|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pdm55|8 years ago|reply
I read an interview of a female architect still living in Syria. If anyone has a source, I would appreciate it.
If I recall correctly, she said what follows. I hope I am not putting words into her mouth.
She had been urged to get out of the country. She chose to stay as she wanted to be involved in rebuilding her city.
She criticised those who wanted to go back to what it was like before the uprising. She said that all was not nice in the past.
She pointed to the corruption in the exam system. She pointed to the fact that people could not travel freely throughout the city, as different parts of the city were controlled by different factions.
[+] [-] roadbeats|8 years ago|reply
The only peaceful end during the Arab spring was in Tunisia as their former president escaped in the beginning. A coalition of western countries took over their country to "establish democracy", and now Tunisian people are letting Europe teach them how to be a democracy. It's not free of course. I met bunch of Danish people getting paid really well for working for Tunisian government, as a part of the transition.
Syria was a failure for whoever organized Arab spring. Assad gave a CNN interview in the beginning of the war, saying that he'll lead the transition to democracy. But, he'll fight whoever choose violence. Whoever organized those protests already wanted a war, so it didn't matter what Assad said. Please go back to 2011 editions of your favorite western papers and look at the news about Syria, reporters based in London were hysterically telling people about how peaceful protesters in Syria are being killed by a demon, Assad. Same propaganda machine most recently made campaigns about a group called White Helmets, founded by James Le Mesurier, a well known MI6 agent.
I traveled three times during the war to the Turkey - Syrian border, volunteered in the refugee camps there. There was not even one UN tent although every year they make big promises such as water pipeline, schools, etc. If you look at UNCHR website, you'll see they are asking money for regions where they don't even report from because they got no volunteers there at all. Later, I traveled to other middle eastern countries around Syria and met chance to meet UN volunteers, told them my observation about their operation. They explained me how they basically count victims and collect money. They bring an NBA or Hollywood star to one of the camps in either Iraq or Lebanon, take some photos and fill the pockets with millions of money that will be spent in 5 star hotels, business class flight tickets, western bars and restaurants in the wealthy neighborhoods of poor middle eastern towns.
If you're looking for truth, don't expect these corrupt organizations to tell you, do some research. Who was the US foreign minister during arab spring, who has been backing his/her political campaigns ? If you find this name, all you need is to research that person and find out what he has been organizing "peaceful protests that turn to violent" all over the world, from Ukraina to Egypt, from Libya to Syria.
[+] [-] boomboomsubban|8 years ago|reply
Whether Clinton got involved before the Sunni generals defected or after, I can't say for sure. The US has no qualms supporting potential coups but Sunni's rising up against an Alawite leader isn't surprising either. Blaming her for the protests seems like a stretch. Acting like she's some lone agent in the US pushing this kind of stuff requires ignoring centuries of history.
[+] [-] matt4077|8 years ago|reply
>If you're looking for truth, don't expect these corrupt organizations to tell you, do some research.
Here's the data, from the horses' mouth: http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php. UNHCR runs accommodation for half a million refugees. More importantly, they have changed tactics in the last decades, and are trying to get refugees to live among the normal population, instead of tent cities.
If you doubt their numbers, a simple search on youtube will give you hundreds of videos from UNHCR camps. Are they all fake? Here's one of many: https://youtu.be/04sN1xn5tTQ?t=3m17s
> Who was the US foreign minister during arab spring, who has been backing his/her political campaigns ? If you find this name, all you need is to research that person and find out what he has been organizing "peaceful protests that turn to violent" all over the world, from Ukraina to Egypt, from Libya to Syria.
Ohh, now I get it! It's the evil zionist George Soros, isn't it? Yes, I'm sure it's Hilary Clinton's jewish conspiracy that started all this.
[+] [-] MattLeBlanc001|8 years ago|reply
Tunisia is not a kingdom, never had a king.
> A coalition of western countries took over their country to "establish democracy"
Again, this shows your lack of knowledge, there was no take over or any coalition that went to Tunisia.
> letting Europe teach them how to be a democracy
Working for someone and "Teaching them" are two different things.
> Syria was a failure for whoever organized Arab spring
If you don't know who initiated the Arab spring, you should probably not talk about it as if you were an expert.
> Assad gave a CNN interview in the beginning of the war, saying that he'll lead the transition to democracy
Ohhh, Thank you. Let's all believe the guy who is and was using violance before the arab spring even happened and is a dictator.
> Please go back to 2011 editions of your favorite western papers and look at the news about Syria, reporters based in London were hysterically telling people about how peaceful protesters in Syria are being killed by a demon, Assad.
That is actually true. Other parties/nations got involved in the conflict with different interests. Situation escalated and became what it is today; a nightmate.
[+] [-] matt4077|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mpfundstein|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m0llusk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kenver|8 years ago|reply
Here are some photos I posted a while ago from a similar thread:
http://imgur.com/a/gkqlj#0
[+] [-] alexhutcheson|8 years ago|reply
The author has some great personal stories of what it was like to visit family in Syria under the Assad regime.
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] bArray|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oliv__|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] h1d|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BooglyWoo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 75dvtwin|8 years ago|reply
In this instance, much of the material is not about what Syria was like before, but about the horrors of war. And that Syrians are great refugees to have...
a) they do not really want to leave Syria and live in first world countries
b) they are more educated than Americans... With a strange 'inference and comparasing'
" .. 18 in 100 Syrians* have advanced degree vs 11 in 100 Americans ..." *Based on Syrian immigrants living in the US
What does it even mean? Syrian refugees have a projected higher contribution to US economy than Americans?
Overall, the article should have been in Arabic, English, Spanish and Chinese.
The article should have been labeled: "50 great reasons why you should want displaced Syrian refugees to immigrate into your country..."