And next, Syria?

[Divisive Cotton]

so some bonkers Islamists are the only credible resistance to Israeli aggression. You're be swearing allegiance to Al-Qa'ida next. I don't support any Islamists anywhere in the world because I am a secular socialist.

 

[camouflage]

Yes. Hezbollah is the only credible resistance force to Israeli aggression. The resistance they put up in the 2006 Lebanon War in face of israeli brutality was incredibly impressive. Contrast that to the laughable sunni states whose army have a history of running everytime they encounter IDF. Their history is plagued with humuliation and defeat in the hands of Israel. Hezbollah is well organised, disciplined and trained. It cannot be allowed to be weakended by Assads overthrow.

I kind of agree with this, the Party of God did indeed kick the colonialists ass when they went marching into the Lebanon in boots filled with hubris. It's was also encouraging when Hizbollah put out a much more inclusive message about defending all the communities of Lebanon from Isreali aggression regardless of religious background. It's not impossible that an islamic paramilitary organization may evolve into a non-chauvanistic (in the French meaning of the word) kind of agenda. Very interested to hear the point of view of secular women and non-muslims on the ground though. At the end of the day they started out as peasant villagers just trying to defend themselves from a nasty Isreali occupation and swaggering Palestinian gunmen.

 

[thriller]

so some bonkers Islamists are the only credible resistance to Israeli aggression. You're be swearing allegiance to Al-Qa'ida next. I don't support any Islamists anywhere in the world because I am a secular socialist.

You clearly don't have a clue if you sit there typing such shit. Hezbollah are anything but bonker islamists. Perhaps you can point to any other resistance force to Israel aggression? Thought not.

 

[goldenecitrone]

Syria's Defence Minister has been killed. Getting closer to Assad.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18882149

 

[mrfusion]

Assad's brother-in-law killed too.

 

[audiotech]

Head of the security office too reported dead, bringing the death toll to four.

 

[butchersapron]

Right, here we go then.

 

[TruXta]

Right, here we go then.

You off to lend them a hand, butchie?

 

[youngian]

This suicide bomb horror wasn't perpertrated by terrorists though. According the BBC World at One they are 'the rebels.'

 

[camouflage]

1980's Beirutification: Today's the day minus 5.

 

[Divisive Cotton]

Hundreds of fighters streaming into Damascus, reports of mass defections and leading government ministers assassinated - is this the end game?

 

[Divisive Cotton]

tweets from journalists in Syria about the apparent suicide bombing:

Hala Gorani ‏@HalaGorani
It's been 7 hours and still not a single frame of footage showing aftermath of "suicide bombing" in Damascus. ‪#Syria

Lina Sinjab ‏@BBCLinaSinjab
Just walked around national security building and saw no sign of explosions, no broken window, no heavy security presence ‪#Damascus‬ ‪#Syria

 

[Divisive Cotton]

You clearly don't have a clue if you sit there typing such shit. Hezbollah are anything but bonker islamists. Perhaps you can point to any other resistance force to Israel aggression? Thought not.

oh yeah that great progressive force called Hezbolla?! what planet are you living on?!

 

[Divisive Cotton]

I bet the rebels will be happy with taking out Assef Shawkat who is reputedly one of the biggest cunts of the lot of them

 

[Knotted]

Hundreds of fighters streaming into Damascus, reports of mass defections and leading government ministers assassinated - is this the end game?

Where are these reports?

There has been very little expression of popular support for the opposition in either Alleppo or Damascus so far. We're surely miles from the end game.

 

[IC3D]

Ramadan starting on Friday will I imagine only intensify matters. Hopefully it will be fast and decisive.

 

[Dan U]

has Assad fled to Venezuela yet?

 

[goldenecitrone]

has Assad fled to Venezuela yet?

Belarus is nearer.

 

[thriller]

oh yeah that great progressive force called Hezbolla?! what planet are you living on?!

name me one progressive force in the arab world? They have immence support within the Shia population of Lebanon. you really shouldn't dismiss their standing and support.

 

[IC3D]

Gory sounding reports on twitter about beheading commited by state forces, no reason not to believe them

Shelling in Maidan



@HamaEcho: Massive Brigade of the FSA formed in ‪#Aleppo‬ - "Unification Brigade"

 

[camouflage]

I bet the rebels will be happy with taking out Assef Shawkat who is reputedly one of the biggest cunts of the lot of them

wow, on the one hand you lay into Hezbollah, on the other hand you applaud the dodgy bunch of Islamist cunts that have just suicide-bombed some dodgy secular cunt. Fair enough if you're against Hezbollah, but the reasoning you're using doesn't add up, definitely some far-out moral algebra at play though.

 

[thriller]

the thread is full of clueless idiots.

 

[Riklet]

It seems pretty unlikely it was a suicide bomber doesn't it? If this was a bodyguard he'd have to have walked into the room, and got in there wearing an explosive vest.

There's rumours on twitter (yeah, i know...) that it might have been a bomb/IED fitted inside a water-cooler or something in the room. Which points to something fairly organised and sophisticated. A penetration of the regime's security forces and structure at a high level.

Worth bearing in mind that the Syrian regime has not hushed this up. It's been on State TV all day etc. They're admitting 4 senior members of the regime killed. What does that say? About either the bombing all their response.

Lol at thriller and co. Hizbullah the nice guys. Yeah right. If there's any lessons to be learned from Iraq, Libya etc. any serious future movement for the Syrian people would shoot the Islamists and their Waahabi Gulf/Iranian backers ASAP, same with all these all-too-late defectors from the regime. To be trusted at their peril...

 

[camouflage]

It seems pretty unlikely it was a suicide bomber doesn't it? If this was a bodyguard he'd have to have walked into the room, and got in there wearing an explosive vest.

There's rumours on twitter (yeah, i know...) that it might have been a bomb/IED fitted inside a water-cooler or something in the room. Which points to something fairly organised and sophisticated. A penetration of the regime's security forces and structure at a high level.

Worth bearing in mind that the Syrian regime has not hushed this up. It's been on State TV all day etc. They're admitting 4 senior members of the regime killed. What does that say? About either the bombing all their response.

Lol at thriller and co. Hizbullah the nice guys. Yeah right. If there's any lessons to be learned from Iraq, Libya etc. any serious future movement for the Syrian people would shoot the Islamists and their Waahabi Gulf/Iranian backers ASAP, same with all these all-too-late defectors from the regime. To be trusted at their peril...

Dunno anything about the bombing, but 'Hizbullah the nice guys' said with a sneer betrays your perspective here. As is typical of the west, your utter dismissal of the thoughts and opinions popular in the local area involved sez it all. Next you'll be talking about how you want Democracy or something to break out in the area.

To many Lebanese Shi'ites Hizbullah are the 'nice guys'. Deal with it.

 

[elbows]

And fuck knows why or how shooting Islamists is supposed to be a lesson from Libya. Hell even in Iraq that lesson wasnt readily apparent, seeing as 'we' did shoot rather a lot of Sunni ones, and unleashed scary propaganda against the Shia ones until something changed behind the scenes and suddenly Muqtada al-Sadr disappeared from our BBC tv screens.

 

[Riklet]

Dunno anything about the bombing, but 'Hizbullah the nice guys' said with a sneer betrays your perspective here. As is typical of the west, your utter dismissal of the thoughts and opinions popular in the local area involved sez it all. Next you'll be talking about how you want Democracy or something to break out in the area.

To many Lebanese Shi'ites Hizbullah are the 'nice guys'. Deal with it.

Lol nice overreading much?

How are my comments an "utter dismissal of the thoughts and opinions popular in the local area"?

It's possible to engage in critical political analysis without just reducing it to A vs B. Hizbullah vs Israel. Assad vs The Free Syrian Army.

Sure, I'd rather a more direct version of democracy was struggled and fought for, by Syrians and others in Arab countries than perverted political forms of Sunni Islam, or in the case of Hizbullah, Shia doctrine and a political agenda set by Iran.

To plenty of Palestinians Hamas are a decent political organisation who organise charity, provide security and respond to Israeli aggression. Does that make them immune to criticism? No it doesn't. Does it stop them, like Hizbullah, being fundamentally pinned to a reactionary anti working class ideology which they have and would happily kill the average Lebanese "nice guy" without a second thought? Not really.

I'll accept I phrased the thing I wrote about Islamists rather badly. I'm not sure how to elaborate on that right now, aside from fundamentalist Islamic groups posing one of the biggest threats to the "power vacuum" which doubtlessly will emerge in Syria in the forthcoming months. I'm sure there's plenty of lessons that can and should be learned from Iraq, no surprises there. My point about the Gulf-backed Mujuhadin types and their local operators is more that if there's any lesson to be learned from Iraq etc, it's that they're better dead in their beds than being allowed the opportunity to establish effective networks. I'll stand by that.

 

[butchersapron]

Dunno anything about the bombing, but 'Hizbullah the nice guys' said with a sneer betrays your perspective here. As is typical of the west, your utter dismissal of the thoughts and opinions popular in the local area involved sez it all. Next you'll be talking about how you want Democracy or something to break out in the area.

To many Lebanese Shi'ites Hizbullah are the 'nice guys'. Deal with it.

How are you in any way 'dealing with it'?

 

[TruXta]

How are you in any way 'dealing with it'?

I suspect in the same way that thriller deals with it, by pontificating on here.

 

[camouflage]

Lol nice overreading much?

How are my comments an "utter dismissal of the thoughts and opinions popular in the local area"?

It's possible to engage in critical political analysis without just reducing it to A vs B. Hizbullah vs Israel. Assad vs The Free Syrian Army.

Sure, I'd rather a more direct version of democracy was struggled and fought for, by Syrians and others in Arab countries than perverted political forms of Sunni Islam, or in the case of Hizbullah, Shia doctrine and a political agenda set by Iran.

To plenty of Palestinians Hamas are a decent political organisation who organise charity, provide security and respond to Israeli aggression. Does that make them immune to criticism? No it doesn't. Does it stop them, like Hizbullah, being fundamentally pinned to a reactionary anti working class ideology which they have and would happily kill the average Lebanese "nice guy" without a second thought? Not really.

I'll accept I phrased the thing I wrote about Islamists rather badly. I'm not sure how to elaborate on that right now, aside from fundamentalist Islamic groups posing one of the biggest threats to the "power vacuum" which doubtlessly will emerge in Syria in the forthcoming months. I'm sure there's plenty of lessons that can and should be learned from Iraq, no surprises there. My point about the Gulf-backed Mujuhadin types and their local operators is more that if there's any lesson to be learned from Iraq etc, it's that they're better dead in their beds than being allowed the opportunity to establish effective networks. I'll stand by that.

That's a better post than the one to which I responded I think, would be interesting to have a thread all about Hizbollah come to think of it , if just to discuss the best spelling for the group in english let alone to separate fact from propaganda. Do they really take their orders from Iran or is that just Isreali crap-chat etc. I suspect they are a lot more popular and true to the people from which they are drawn but... well, I've never been to Lebanon let alone lived there. I just don't beleive anything the media tells me these days. even Al Jazeera has become merely the Qatari propaganda department.

I think Libya holds much more relevant lessons re Syria, it's a very similar model of intervention on the part of the West than just bowling in and duffing the place up a bit with the USAF before kicking it around some with the US Army (and their little Borrower sidekicks). At least in terms of the initial stages.

In Libya a whole town of black Libyans have been ethnically cleansed, their town destroyed, over 40'000 people or something are imprisoned somewhere, torture is rampant, blacks have been rounded up and disappeared, films surface on youtube of people being force-fed the green flag. Nobody's talking about that on the BBC or Channel 4 or whatever, they're too busy cheer-leading the same treatment for Syria.

 

[camouflage]

How are you in any way 'dealing with it'?

By fitting it in my head that the likes of Hizbollah and Hamas are not Spectre, are not based out of a volcano-base somewhere in the Pacific, do not necesarrily receive their orders beamed from the Mysterons and may actually have a lot of support among the people they claim to represent.