Earlier quoted context omitted.
Current Assad is already the son of the previous dictator.
Can we get his children interested in programming or something?
Assad is an ophtalmologist with a British spouse. Didn't seem to help much.
What was Syria like before the war
121–130 of 213 posts
Re: What was Syria like before the war
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
How is it established? What proof of any kind do you have that people are being paid to troll in our corner of the internet? Even if agencies had a presence on social media, what advantage do they having coming to HN and trying to convince a bunch of computer nerds that life was better in Syria under Assad?
You can find plenty of articles in serious sources which contain serious research on Russian astroturfing operations. Based on those, any forum is a target and HN is more influential than most.
Re: What was Syria like before the war
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
How is it established? What proof of any kind do you have that people are being paid to troll in our corner of the internet? Even if agencies had a presence on social media, what advantage do they having coming to HN and trying to convince a bunch of computer nerds that life was better in Syria under Assad?
The Stratfor leaks show the US government contracting out the development of astroturfing software.
Re: What was Syria like before the war
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
The less Arab revolutions were stomped on, the more favorable was the outcome. The progression from Tunisa through Egypt and Lybia to Syria is quite evident. What's really surreal is so many people in the (still relatively free) West denying basic agency to their fellow human beings in the Middle East.
> so many people in the (still relatively free) West denying basic agency to their fellow human beings Because there's a lot of cynicism with charities and foreign aid. There is an active campaign here in Britain to reduce the latter and anecdotally, I have friends and relatives who refuse to donate to aid agencies because they believe that the whole thing is a sham. Sure there's bureaucracy, but most of them are gen…
You could point them to clearinghouses like CharityNavigator [0] (which is probably US-centric) that rate the charities on things like how much of their donations go to administration.
The short of it is that one can donate to Oxfam, Save the Children or Medecins san Frontieres and remain confident that >95% of funds raised go to direct relief efforts.
Re: What was Syria like before the war
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is it established? What proof of any kind do you have that people are being paid to troll in our corner of the internet? Even if agencies had a presence on social media, what advantage do they having coming to HN and trying to convince a bunch of computer nerds that life was better in Syria under Assad?
You can find plenty of articles in serious sources which contain serious research on Russian astroturfing operations. Based on those, any forum is a target and HN is more influential than most.
I am afraid that burden of proof is still on you. The habit of throwing in an accusation and suggesting that your opponents go and look for proof, became too widespread.
Re: What was Syria like before the war
#126Meta-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…
> 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.
Do the "Sykes-Picot people" attribute everything to that agreement or just view it as a logical starting point for many of the current political problems seen in the Middle East that can not be attributed to other factors (geography, sectarian conflict, control of natural resources, migrant populations that defy modern borders, a history of historical conflicts/slavery, and/or pressure from environmental, political, and cultural changes)?
Sykes-Picot isn't exactly a fringe internet theory.... any textbook on the modern Middle East is going to devote substantial time to it.
Re: What was Syria like before the war
#127Meta-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
#128Meta-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…
> 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.)
Re: What was Syria like before the war
#129Wow, 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.
I got the same message, with a pretty recent version of Chrome, for the "ownership in England" site as well. Turned out, they're browser detection was based on/foiled by some third-party JS I had blocked, by default, with uMatrix.
Whitelisting that JS solved the problem.
Re: What was Syria like before the war
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 do…
I don't think it's really possible to argue the country is in any way better off than it was before the insurrection. The question is then, what would have been a better solution? Surely as long as Assad was ruling they were stuck (at best) at a local maximum and would have never transitioned to a free democracy without overthrowing the current government.
If it's a free democracy we're after, we should get rid of the western double standard provided to other states that had Arab Springs which were violently suppressed by their undemocratic governments. Such as Saudi Arabia[0], Bahrain[1] and Yemen[2]. I don't remember hearing about rebels being armed, no fly zones being established and missiles being launched by western states in these countries.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011%E2%80%9312_Saudi_Arabian_...
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahraini_protests_of_2011
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemeni_Crisis_(2011%E2%80%93pr...