Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Descan]

I don't see how the West has been active. The Amerians started training the Syrian Free Army a couple years ago, sure, but there were no airstrikes or boots on the ground, or even materiel as far as I was aware. The SFA weren't perfect but they were the best of a bad bunch, and now they're marginalized so it's basically "Choose Assad or choose ISIS" which it didn't have to be.

[Reelya]

We would have done more to crush Assad earlier, but the Russians used their UN Veto to prevent that. Which is completely fair since the US does that to prevent anti-Israel votes literally every single year. It's not just America in this case it's Britain and France also supplying weapons to the rebels. This was actually an interesting read:
http://www.mintpressnews.com/MyMPN/the-west-created-perpetuates-the-syrian-civil-war/

In many of the early protests that were widely reported to the West as a slaughter of innocents, more Syrian police actually died than protesters. Which kind of questions the narrative assumptions about what was going on in those early demonstrations. That just never happens at a peaceful protest. This article lays the main blame at the feet of the British for deliberately arming up groups which then destabilized things through armed insurrection. Some of these protester groups had machine guns from basically day one of the protests. Sure, suppressing dissent is bad, but when the dissent is random people machine gunning down the police, it's not the same thing. The article below refers to people firing "heavy machine guns" at the authorities as a "protest" which is being unfairly crushed by the armed forces. I think as soon as you start firing the machine guns you no longer have the excuse of "we were just protesting why are they sending the army?"

https://web.archive.org/web/20110815020301/http://www.debka.com/article/21207/
(August 2011) NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons. Syrian fight Palestinians in Latakia

For the first time in the five-month anti-Assad uprising, Syrian forces clashed with dissident Palestinians Sunday, Aug. 14, in the al-Raml a-Filistini district of Syria's biggest port Latakia. As they moved toward the town center, the two Syrian tank divisions and armored infantry were challenged by Palestinians firing heavy machine guns, anti-tank RPGs and roadside bombs. Nineteen of the 24 dead Sunday were Palestinians.

Whether or not the various Western powers who stoked the insurgency intended the rise of ISIS is fairly inconsequential to whether or not actively destabilizing the Assad regime actually had the effect of creating an environment in which ISIS could rise.

[Eric Blank]

Stop. Editing. Your Post. We got the message. @_@

[Baffler]

Just bought my books, came out to $1135.15, plus an extra $85 worth of "fuck you, Baffler" on top in the form of sales tax. more than half the pay I got over the summer gone, just like that. And it's not like I bought them brand new either (well, that was the only option for one or two because of new editions) I'm renting used books here. I don't even get to keep the damn things after paying so much for them in most cases. At least I know they'll be in good shape because the previous owner was probably fucking terrified of doing even the slightest bit of damage to them, and getting billed for a brand new replacement (per store policy!) Now, I understand that some of this stuff can't exactly be found on wikipedia, but this is just ridiculous. I haven't even started paying my tuition yet and that'll be at least 4x that much, and that's after loans and scholarships have gone in.

The best part? This is a state run institution, with a cost of attendance that's below average. If I was going to Ohio State I'd have had to drop out and start manufacturing drugs by now.

[Reelya]

Eric, you didn't need to keep refreshing the page, that's on you, not on me. And making one post, then editing it, is the exact opposite of spamming info. Editing a post multiple times does not in any way shove info in your face. You'd have a right to complain if I posted multiple times on the same topic.

The only reason I made a second post on the topic is to provide the backing sources for my first post, which had been called into question. If you make a statement which is questioned, it is a good sign you need more information supporting the position (i.e. citations etc). So, in that case, it was fully justified to link extra sources that back the original statement, and I edited in more information as I tracked down additional, older sources. Sure, I could have skimped on detail in the second post, but then, would I have had another reply from someone else asking where my sources for were for the assertions in that one?

[Frumple]

... for what it's worth, editing does cause the thread to be re-recognized as having new stuff, if it's the last post made. Makes the little (new) button pop up again, probably something else, I'unno. So it does cause a bit of face shoving, even if the person isn't refreshing the specific page the post is on. Insofar as someone not actually looking in the thread goes, it's pretty much exactly like multi-posting.

And... yeah, editing a post repeatedly over a fairly lengthy span is actually a little annoying, when the thread title keeps doing what it normally does when new posts are made. Leads a person to checking to see if discussion has continued when it... mostly hasn't.

[Yoink]

I'm sure I had some interesting dreams last night, but I can't remember them at all.

[pisskop]

My dream was about scavanging for food because zombies.  the zombies would walk down the street during the day, and if your window was open they'd smell you.  But if you closed your window it was soo hot and humid.  I chose the zombies.

[Bauglir]

Just bought my books, came out to $1135.15, plus an extra $85 worth of "fuck you, Baffler" on top in the form of sales tax.

What the actual fuck? What are you studying!

[pisskop]

Arent textbooks tax exempt?

[RedKing]

Just bought my books, came out to $1135.15, plus an extra $85 worth of "fuck you, Baffler" on top in the form of sales tax.

What the actual fuck? What are you studying!

Marketing 513: Recouping the Cost of My Education By Making You Buy My Textbooks, apparently.

[Baffler]

Just bought my books, came out to $1135.15, plus an extra $85 worth of "fuck you, Baffler" on top in the form of sales tax.

What the actual fuck? What are you studying!

Marketing 513: Recouping the Cost of My Education By Making You Buy My Textbooks, apparently.

No kidding. The biggest single item was Quantitative Chemical Analysis, bought used at $237.63. It was followed closely by Principles of Biochemistry, rented used at at $233.10. Buying a new copy of that one would have cost almost $400. The rest of them were between $125 and $175, plus some online access bullshit that, all told, cost about $180. I was not a happy camper when I saw that last one

[Helgoland]

Are there no libraries in your universities?

[Orange Wizard]

If it's anything like here, the libraries have three copies of the textbook, all of which have been overdue since 2009.

[Frumple]

... dunno about edition, but there's ebook versions of QCA going for ~80 bucks online. Through amazon, by the look of it. Loose leaf going for ~180. Also, at least for the 7th & 8th edition, it looks a lot like there's, uh. Other ebooks. Looks like the 7th is actually hosted, maybe not intentionally, by some university or another. Wikibooks actually seems to have most of (some version of) (something named) Principles of Biochemistry, too. Seeing 5th editions of lehinger's renting for sub 40, buying used for like 45-90, again off amazon. 6th ed is buying used from 166 USD. Not saying you didn't look hard enough, baff, but...