Stonehenge said:

Well, that sounds very nice and assad may have done some of that stuff but we know both sides lie and exaggerate all the time so it was definitely not that much. Even one death is too many, not justifying it at all. How many innocent people have we killed? Shot dead with a drone for looking suspicious or being in the wrong general area at the wrong time, or some anon looking for a reward phoned in a tip on perhaps his enemies or the boss who fired him?

We are in no position to be moral arbitrators of the world let alone the world's cop. If protesters turn violent they may be shot, assad or his underlings may have been excessively harsh, it sounds like it. Innocents may have been shot along with the violent ones. Security probably went looking for the ones behind it and probably overreached. Isn't it like that everywhere?

I don't think assad is a great leader but if its true his people voted for him, we have no grounds even made up grounds to take him out. Its totally immoral and every administration has done it or at least since carter who was the most honest president I ever heard about, but a few presidents before him did it as well

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triphead9428 said:

Saudi Arabia happens to be extremely socially conservative, as well as having an awful human rights record, but the Syrian government has deliberately killed many more people than the Saudi regime has.

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triphead9428 said:

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch claim that Assad is guilty of crimes against humanity, a charge that isn't being brought against Saudi Arabia.

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triphead9428 said:

Syria was going to be fucked up with or without US influence. The US did arm certain groups but what that really did was make things a little more convenient for the groups that got armed. There's no reason to believe they wouldn't have found access to weapons anyway, and there's no reason to believe that the war would've been easily won by Assad without our influence since Obama mostly wanted to stay out of the conflict.

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triphead9428 said:

The 70% figure is the exact same situation as the rallies. It is really fucking dangerous to oppose Assad in Syria, I'm not surprised that a lot of people are telling pollsters that they support Assad when the government has been spending the last seven years trying to eliminate any opposition to their rule.

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triphead9428 said:

It is very very different when a drone bombs something thinking it was a military target and we later realized it was a civilian target, from ordering your soldiers to detain and murder people. The US tries really fucking hard not to kill civilians, its just impossible to avoid every civilian death. The US does not deserve anywhere near as harsh of criticism for accidentally bombing someone as Syria does for detaining someone and hanging them.

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triphead9428 said:

It isn't like that everywhere, there's protests in nearly every country in the world, Syria and Egypt's governments were the only ones that shot people by the hundreds. At least Mubarak had the decency to step down after it became clear his people didn't want him though, Assad continued to stay in power and allowed a huge civil war to tear the country apart and send millions of refugees all over the planet.

Syria's elections are a complete sham, I can't believe you're falling for that.

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BlueCoyote said:

They have witnesses for the secret torture/killing facilities of assad and what is happening there.
There even exist photos of many dead people with torture-marks on their bodies.
It's a regime of fear and kidnapping->torture->killing is the secret weapon.
It's kind of typical for arab mentality, but it's also typical of all dictatorships on this planet.

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Stonehenge said:

> Germany's human rights record is better than the United States' because we have a lot of laws that target social minorities that aren't as harsh or present in Germany.

Do you mean minority set asides, quotas in hiring and promotion, college funds earmarked for blacks, quotas at colleges, that sort of laws? Those all benefit minorities, what laws target them in a "harsh" way?

>It is very very different when a drone bombs something thinking it was a military target and we later realized it was a civilian target

Little to no care is taken in making sure of what the target is. Now what again is our justification for shooting people over there in the first place? We are invading forces, chopstick is right

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chopstick said:

It cracks my shit up that people will take the CIA propaganda against Assad at face value, but to say that Assad is actually worse than Saudi Arabia, or Israel, or the United States, is laughable at best and points to an extremely deep delusion that has taken root in your mind.

Assad will never be worse than the United States. Or Israel. Or Saudi Arabia.

Nobody will ever slaughter more innocent people than the United States of America, who have ruined the lives of countless millions in our endless efforts to maintain a vain and sadistic imperialist empire.

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triphead9428 said:

You know what cracks my shit up? Somebody who's more willing to believe the propaganda of a mass murdering dictator with an absolute plethora of evidence indicating that he's guilty of serious crimes against humanity against his own people than the US which lets you criticize the government however much you want without so much as putting you in prison or negatively affecting your life. I can say fuck Trump, he's a piece of shit, he not qualified to be president and I think 90% of the people he's hired are corrupt, and not a goddamn thing will happen to me. In Syria, say that about Assad and your ass will be in a detention center with electrodes strapped to your chest.

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triphead9428 said:

Tell you what, you love Assad so much and think his government is so great, why don't you move to Damascus Syria so you can experience their democratic utopia for yourself.

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triphead9428 said:

Its one thing to say you think Assad might not be so bad, its another thing to act like their government is even remotely more democratic than America's. If you're gonna do that you better be ready to back your shit up.

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Falcon91Wolvrn03 said:

Syria is in a civil war.  This would likely stop after the civil war is over (if the US ever allows it to end).

triphead9428 said:

Saudi Arabia is very clearly guilty of crimes against humanity.  More here and elsewhere on the web.  Saudi Arabia benefits from being allied with the West, which funds the organizations you mentioned.


Yes, there is.  The war was about over by a great many accounts, then the West stepped in to restart it with a false flag chemical attack.

Ya, that's what people said about Crimea.  So I visited the place, and found there is zero Government pressure to say anything.  People on both sides were very eager and happy to share their opinions with me, which aligned closely with the polls there.

They deserve criticism for bombing first, negotiating later.
Ya, that's what they said about the Crimean elections, but that clearly turned out to be a lie.

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Saudi Arabia is definitely guilty of war crimes, and you're right, they may be guilty of crimes against humanity. Ultimately though, Assad's crimes against humanity are still on a much higher level of severity than Saudi Arabia's. The US specifically might turn more of a blind eye to Saudi Arabia's crimes than other countries but Saudi Arabia still gets frequently criticized by the broader UN for human rights violations. While the Saudi human rights record is recognized internationally as very poor, they still haven't gassed entire neighborhoods with sarin gas, rounded up thousands of people to be hanged, gunned down hundreds of protesters in the streets, and tortured hundreds or even thousands of children. Most of the world agrees that indiscriminate bombing, while being an immoral method of conducting war, is not nearly on the same moral level as directly killing civilians. During WW2, all sides indiscriminately bombed each other but the Nazis, Imperial Japanese, and the Soviets were clearly much more guilty of war crimes than the US and the British were.

Russia is not nearly as authoritarian as Assad's regime is. Russia's government relies on a very sophisticated propaganda machine to sway public opinion in their favor but there isn't a whole lot of force against average civilians involved. If you're an average civilian in Russia and you say you don't like Putin, you'll probably be alright. The real danger in Russia comes from being someone with a high level of power or public influence and speaking out against Putin. If you're a journalist for example, or someone high up in the government and you give a speech attacking Putin, you're in serious trouble. Russia is free enough though that average civilians do not feel the strains of authoritarianism very much. This is the way most authoritarian regimes in modern times are, they don't go after anybody who criticizes the government, rather they go after high profile critics. Some regimes, like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, and Sudan may go after regular civilians but not on a large scale. Syria and North Korea are the only governments right now that are classical dictatorships that attack anyone and everyone that criticizes the government.

The Crimea referendum was not entirely a sham, but the Russian government heavily exaggerated how much the Crimeans supported leaving Ukraine. The official vote was 97% in favor of leaving, whereas real polls indicated much more division. The reason I say its not entirely a sham is because a lot of polls did show the majority of Crimeans wanting to leave Ukraine, but with a large minority that still wanted to stay. Most indicated that around 40% of Crimeans did not support leaving. The Russian government instead made it look like the entire region was essentially imprisoned by Ukraine and everyone was begging to be freed. Since you claim you went there yourself I'm sure you know that people weren't so overwhelmingly in favor of leaving that you'd have to talk to nearly 40 people before you could find somebody in favor of leaving.

Falcon91Wolvrn03 said:

That's what everyone says about Russia, and I know with 100% certainty that isn't true.  I'm not certain about Syria, but if you believe the propaganda about Russia, you'd probably believe any propaganda about Syria.

No one said Assad is so great.  Let's stop the straw man arguments.

No one said Syria is more democratic than America.  Jesus dude.

The statement was "Nobody will ever slaughter more innocent people than the United States of America, who have ruined the lives of countless millions in our endless efforts to maintain a vain and sadistic imperialist empire."  Just look at Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan...

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triphead9428 said:

The Crimea referendum was not entirely a sham, but the Russian government heavily exaggerated how much the Crimeans supported leaving Ukraine. The official vote was 97% in favor of leaving, whereas real polls indicated much more division. The reason I say its not entirely a sham is because a lot of polls did show the majority of Crimeans wanting to leave Ukraine, but with a large minority that still wanted to stay. Most indicated that around 40% of Crimeans did not support leaving. The Russian government instead made it look like the entire region was essentially imprisoned by Ukraine and everyone was begging to be freed. Since you claim you went there yourself I'm sure you know that people weren't so overwhelmingly in favor of leaving that you'd have to talk to nearly 40 people before you could find somebody in favor of leaving.

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Falcon91Wolvrn03 said:

triphead9428 said:

The Crimea referendum was not entirely a sham, but the Russian government heavily exaggerated how much the Crimeans supported leaving Ukraine. The official vote was 97% in favor of leaving, whereas real polls indicated much more division. The reason I say its not entirely a sham is because a lot of polls did show the majority of Crimeans wanting to leave Ukraine, but with a large minority that still wanted to stay. Most indicated that around 40% of Crimeans did not support leaving. The Russian government instead made it look like the entire region was essentially imprisoned by Ukraine and everyone was begging to be freed. Since you claim you went there yourself I'm sure you know that people weren't so overwhelmingly in favor of leaving that you'd have to talk to nearly 40 people before you could find somebody in favor of leaving.

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But I did speak to dozens of people (that's why I went to Crimea), and I struggled to find anyone in favor of staying with Ukraine.  It took a lot of work, but I finally found some people that did which I talked about here with an interesting follow up here.

EVERYONE I spoke with, INCLUDING the folks who wanted to stay with Ukraine, agreed with the official results.  I'd love to see where you got your 40% number.  I suspect that was either American propaganda, or it included other parts of Ukraine as well.

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triphead9428 said:

This is where I found the polls. There's several there indicating different things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_status_referendum,_2014#Polling

Guess I can't argue with that, but even if Crimea's referendum was accurate, Russia is a very different government from Syria. Organizations have found that Russia has only imprisoned 300 individuals for political purposes. Contrary to popular belief, not every authoritarian regime is trying to arrest/kill every citizen that disagrees with the government. Very few governments do that anymore since the UN would harshly criticize them for it.

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Falcon91Wolvrn03 said:

triphead9428 said:

This is where I found the polls. There's several there indicating different things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_status_referendum,_2014#Polling

Guess I can't argue with that, but even if Crimea's referendum was accurate, Russia is a very different government from Syria. Organizations have found that Russia has only imprisoned 300 individuals for political purposes. Contrary to popular belief, not every authoritarian regime is trying to arrest/kill every citizen that disagrees with the government. Very few governments do that anymore since the UN would harshly criticize them for it.

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Thanks for the polls.  As you saw, those only went through 2011, but FAR more importantly, those were taken under a President elected by the people; not one installed by a US orchestrated coup (you saw my post of the leaked Victoria Nuland call where she discussed who the US was going to install as leader, right?)

Again, I'm not trying to argue Syria is a great country or even comes close to Russia and especially the US.  Just explaining why I don't believe they're as bad as the West tries to make us believe.

By the way, did you see my post on the new evidence showing there was no chemical attack?  That supports chopstick's claim of the US being brutal as well.

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triphead9428 said:

The idea that it could've been oxygen deprivation instead of chemical weapons does make sense, but I seriously doubt that there was an actual staged attack by the British government as Syria and Russia claim.

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But Russia did NOT claim that.  In fact, as chopstick pointed out, Russia claimed there was no evidence of a chemical attack right off the bat.  I was the one that looked at the pictures and had my doubts about Russia's story, and even said that chemicals might have been used.  But it turns out RT appears to have been right again.

Interestingly, I've NEVER been burned by an rt.com story.  In fact, I previously challenged the shroomery to find fake news from them, and no one delivered.  Can you? 

Falcon91Wolvrn03 said:

triphead9428 said:

The idea that it could've been oxygen deprivation instead of chemical weapons does make sense, but I seriously doubt that there was an actual staged attack by the British government as Syria and Russia claim.

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But Russia did NOT claim that.  In fact, as chopstick pointed out, Russia claimed there was no evidence of a chemical attack right off the bat.  I was the one that looked at the pictures and had my doubts about Russia's story, and even said that chemicals might have been used.  But it turns out RT appears to have been right again.

Interestingly, I've NEVER been burned by an rt.com story.  In fact, I previously challenged the shroomery to find fake news from them, and no one delivered.  Can you? 

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Quote:

Ms. Wahl's resignation comes on the heels of her colleague Abby Martin's recent comments in which she voiced her disagreement with certain policies of the Russian government and asserted her editorial independence. The difference is, Ms. Martin spoke in the context of her own talk show, to the viewers who have been tuning in for years to hear her opinions on current events – the opinions that most media did not care about until two days ago. For years, Ms. Martin has been speaking out against US military intervention, only to be ignored by the mainstream news outlets – but with that one comment, branded as an act of defiance, she became an overnight sensation. It is a tempting example to follow.

When a journalist disagrees with the editorial position of his or her organization, the usual course of action is to address those grievances with the editor, and, if they cannot be resolved, to quit like a professional. But when someone makes a big public show of a personal decision, it is nothing more than a self-promotional stunt.

We wish Liz the best of luck on her chosen path.

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