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What was Syria like before the war

searchingforsyria.org

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Re: What was Syria like before the war

#81

Post by alva »

RandVal30141 wrote: post #68
Phil_Latio wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I mean this, and it's just the info you find on wikipedia, there is more: > Observers have questioned whether Bana understands the concepts that she tweets about. She is a seven-year-old child who does not speak English. A journalist for The New Yorker noted that her "video statements often have a scripted quality, as if she is being coached by her mother to communicate her thoughts in a language that she is onl…

""Bana" is a media campaign." A child.

"Bana" is both a real child and very likely a well resourced propaganda operation.

Re: What was Syria like before the war

#82

Post by venatiodecorus »

Kluny wrote: post #8

Wow, I'd love to check this out but I got this message: "It looks like you're using an older device or web browser. Please update your browser or visit on a newer device." A bit of an odd thing to see when I'm on the latest version of Chrome on a Mac and it says "In partnership with Google" right under that. What gives?

I got this message as well, latest Chrome, on Sierra, MBP 2016. Also saw this message on the map of land ownership in England that was posted today.

Re: What was Syria like before the war

#83

Post by tyingq »

CydeWeys wrote: post #79
romanovcode wrote: post #74

Refugee stats: 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?

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.

In this case, the lumping together of the stats is likely done by westerners. They are trying to dispel the notion that a large amount of the refugees are ISIS fighters in disguise trying to infiltrate the west.

The source stats aren't lumped together. That's the journalist's decision.

Re: What was Syria like before the war

#84

Post by ido »

LostInTheWoods2 wrote: post #70
ido wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but that wasn't my question - can Syria have something better than Assad eventually, and how do you get to it without overthrowing Assad?

Assad eventually dies, probably of old age.

Current Assad is already the son of the previous dictator.

Re: What was Syria like before the war

#85

Post by punkrex »

peterlk wrote: post #80

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 othe…

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.

Re: What was Syria like before the war

#86

Post by matt_wulfeck »

peterlk wrote: post #80

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 othe…

> 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.

Re: What was Syria like before the war

#88

Post by gscott »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #71
candiodari wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The death of Hamza Khateeb Ok, but how do you go from that to islamic state ? And frankly, how does a protest like that get organised in the first place by the locals ? > regular chemical weapons attacks by the regime Maybe I'm misinformed, but I seem to only recall that the government was accused of doing this once. This is neither regular, nor was it the cause of the conflict.

> Ok, but how do you go from that to islamic state ? How did Trump win the election?

Collusion of the DNC and Hillary campaign to hurt Sanders, Hillary's not ever turning over her work emails when she was done at the State department, Clinton's universal college plan which would bankrupt the United States... and it goes on and on.

Re: What was Syria like before the war

#90

Post by pjc50 »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #86
peterlk wrote: post #80

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 othe…

> 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.

It's fairly well established that intelligence agencies have active "social media" operations, and that there's paid distributors of "fake news" about.

Establishing any particular account as a paid troll is almost impossible, although the moderators might be able to infer things from the login IP addresses if their opsec is bad.

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