4 ms·

Any regime change that involves freeing many thousands of women and children from prisons notorious for torture and mass-executions seems like a decent one! The

• lukan 2y ago
  Have you heard of a thing called, Islamic State? They had a thing for creative murder. Aside from the usual behadings, they came up with things like pushing homosexuals from buildings in the public and alike. They are also now free again.
  • gwervc 2y ago
    [flagged]
  • j_maffe 2y ago
    HTS has cut off ties with ALQaeda and IS since almost 10 years.
    • lukan 2y ago
      A) in the open B) they released all prisoners now. And at least some of them were part of ISIS.
      • j_maffe 2y ago
        The majority of them (at the Saydenia) are political imprisoned citizens.
        • lukan 2y ago
          Well, technical IS supporters (who did not participated in killings themself) are political imprisoned citizens as well. The point is, that no matter what they did, they are all free now.
          • j_maffe 2y ago
            What are you trying to state? There's a small number of citizen IS supporters and they're now free, along with all others who showed opposition to the regime. Ok. So what? Please don't use a general understanding of the patterns in the region to extrapolate wild takes when you don't know the specifics of each country and their people. Syrians are not Afghans are not Libyans are not whatever, as much as the west would like to portray them.
            • lukan 2y ago
              "There's a small number of citizen IS supporters and they're now free" If their numbers are so small, why was the IS a global problem then, a couple of years ago?
              • sabbaticaldev 2y ago
                10 years ago. They were a problem because they used American cars, clothes, weapons and media.
                • lukan 2y ago
                  Ah, so you claim they were a american controlled group? While the US spend lots of effort on hunting them? Keeping the flames high, to play firemen? I don't think that there was a need of more flames, for that theory to be plausible. Occasionally some western weapons likely did found their ways towards IS as well, but they rather captured the bulk of it. Or do you have other sources?
                  • j_maffe 2y ago
                    Afghanistan is the obvious example, among many. Beyond that, American interventionism has fueled extremism in the region for decades. This is not a wild take, but one agreed upon by scholars.
    • guerrilla 2y ago
      [flagged]
      • dralley 2y ago
        I mean, they've literally gone to war against both ISIS and Al-Qaeda. You don't have to trust them exactly but it's not like there's no grounds to believe they're at least not going to be ISIS.
        • guerrilla 2y ago
          I'm not sure why you think that means they aren't terrorists. Al-qaeda and ISIS have also been at war for a decade. Does that make one of them any less terrible than they have always been? It's not about trust. We have enormous amounts of evidence from all human rights organizations monitoring the situation. You may not understand this but the entire war was filmed. You can just go look up who they are, what they believe and what they have done to people. They advertised it themselves for the majority of their career.
          • dralley 2y ago
            I said no such thing. I also wouldn't dispute that the PKK are also "terrorists". I still think it's pretty clear that there can be some hierarchy within that category. HTS and the Kurds are less evil than the Taliban, which is less evil than Al-Qaeda, which is less evil than ISIS. Like you said, there is plenty of history to look at here. HTS has run Idlib for years and they have done nothing that compares to the likes of ISIS. Maybe that will change if they consolidate total power, but neither of us have any evidence to state definitively what will happen. There are plenty of reasons to be either pessimistic or optimistic.
            • guerrilla 2y ago
              I misunderstood then. My bad. > I still think it's pretty clear that there can be some hierarchy within that category. HTS and the Kurds are less evil than the Taliban, which is less evil than Al-Qaeda, which is less evil than ISIS. This I can agree with for sure. There are lesser evils and a hierarchy. I think the hierarchy also depends on the situation on the ground for who it's tolerable to support at a specific time. If it would have taken HTS as much bloodshed to get to where they are today as it did Assad to originally regain control, then I think it would less favorable than what actually happened, for example.
  • orwin 2y ago
    I mean, unlike another nation south of them, at least for now, they didn't destroy Christian churches (the opposite in fact, rebel-controled territory rebuilt Christian churches), and let Christian orphanage/school stand without expropriation under false pretense. How it will develop has yet to be seen, but I'm hopeful.
  • aaa_aaa 2y ago
    How is this an answer to the op's statement?. Assad was a war criminal just like his father. Remember the Hama 1982. Son followed dad by killing thousands, torturing and displaced millions. West will support and try a rosy picture of so called secular totalitarians as long as it fits to their agenda.
    • lukan 2y ago
      It is an answer to the claim, that freeing everyone is always to be considered a good thing. Freeing all the political prisoners, yes, I support that. I am not a fan of Assad. But also all the IS militants who while being free, made a competition, of who can be the most cruel? I am sceptical. And also about where those people will end up. And they are more than a handful.
  • jajko 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • skissane 2y ago
      > Hamas has been killing homosexuals in Palestine by throwing them from buildings long before any form of ISIS existed, plenty of stuff on internet. That's misinformation which has been debunked: https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.347B339 https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.347B339 https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/video-people-thrown-roof-shows-punishment-by-is-not-hamas-2023-12-14/ https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/video-people-thrown-roof-... To quote Wikipedia: > Homosexuality is not a capital offence in the Gaza Strip or elsewhere in Palestine.[54][55] The laws against homosexual behavior in Palestine[d] are a relic of the British and Ottoman rule in Palestine; they specify prison sentences of 10 to 14 years.[54][55] There is no evidence that these British colonial-era laws are actually enforced in Gaza.[54] > Reports of extra-judicial killings of LGBT people in Palestine have circulated, without being confirmed. Sources such as the news agency Reuters, the news outlet The New Arab, and the NGO Human Rights Watch, characterise many of these reports as misinformation: the stories are exaggerated, oversimplified, or misattributions of events that occurred elsewhere.[56] Examples of this include: > Two members of Palestinian nationalist militant groups were accused of espionage and killed by their comrades in situations that included rumours about homosexuality or bisexuality.[57][58] > During the Israel–Hamas war, a video described as "Hamas executes people by throwing them off a roof of a building!" circulated on social media. Some derivatives of the meme claimed the men were executed for being gay.[56] The video, however, was from 2015 and not from Palestine.[56] A July 2015 report from Al Arabiya, included identical images and states that they were originally shared by the so-called Islamic State, and showed the execution of four gay men in Fallujah, Iraq.[56] > In February 2016, the Al-Qassam Brigades (the militant wing of the Hamas movement) executed Mahmoud Ishtiwi, the commander of Al-Qassam's Zeitoun Battalion.[59] The alleged offences were described evasively, the stated reason was Arabic: تجاوزاته السلوكية والأخلاقية التي أقر بها, lit. 'for behavioral and moral violations, to which he confessed',[58] which some western news media interpreted as a euphemism for homosexual activity.[60][61] Local sources clarified that Shteiwi was convicted of spying for Israel.[62] The Qassam Brigades alleged that Ishtiwi had been executed by firing squad,[63][58] but people who saw his body before burial alleged that he might have died in custody and been shot after death.[64][58] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_for_homosexuality#Palestine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_for_homosex...
• selivanovp 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • throwup238 2y ago
    Sednaya wasn’t a regular civilian prison. It was run by the military to house and torture political prisoners and anyone the government considered a “rebel.” Its notoriety long predates the civil war.
  • nozzlegear 2y ago
    Just to be clear, you're talking about prisons like Sednaya, the infamous "Human Slaughterhouse?" The one where Assad imprisoned thousands of political opponents, journalists, military deserters, Muslim minorities and civilians, and then systematically tortured and executed those people? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sednaya_Prison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sednaya_Prison
    • selivanovp 2y ago
      I do remember the same shit promoted when Gaddafi was toppled. And then Western mass media stopped showing news from "freed" Libya. Because, you know, public executions and human slave markets kinda not something, their population should know about, unless it's done by "bad guys".
      • deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
• HideousKojima 2y ago
  >Any regime change that involves freeing many thousands of women and children from prisons notorious for torture and mass-executions seems like a decent one! Overthrowing Gaddafi didn't make Libya a better place. Now it has open air slave markets, amongst other loveliness.
  • MoreMoore 2y ago
    [flagged]
  • threeseed 2y ago
    Slavery was common place during the Gaddafi era as well.
    • inglor_cz 2y ago
      American education tends to concentrate on American history of slavery, so many American are ignorant about just how widespread slavery was/is in the Islamic world and how many Muslims until today consider it a regular institution explicitly endorsed by God. I certainly wouldn't like to be a black manual worker in any Arab country. Even if you aren't a formally legally enslaved person, you will be treated as one.
      • jajko 2y ago
        Or any other place from Asia, ie nepalis or philippinos are treated absolutely horribly in many rich middle east places. That culture, barring exceptional ethical individuals, has nothing in common with modern western values.
• theowss 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • cladopa 2y ago
    Please don't use the word "liberal" to refer to something outside the US, because the concept of "liberal" only exist there. This concept of neoMarxist sympathies of educated people(white collar workers) in urban areas and Ivy Leagues, that focus extremely on sex and wokeism, that concept only exist in the US. In Europe "liberal" means he who follows economic liberalism, that is being part of the "right". In Asia and Middle East is even weirder. Iran is probably the place of Earth that had more Empires in its History. Nationalism, ethnic identity and religion is way more important than anything else, specially on Sha's time. If you call communists people you are referring to Chinese land type of communism instead of industrial, very different from Europe or the US one. I had a great time skiing on Iran back on the day.
  • jampekka 2y ago
    And then liberals in UK and USA joined hands with Islamists to overthrow the Mossadeq government.
  • 7952 2y ago
    It is curious that you don't mention the fact that the Sha was in power due to an American/British coup that deposed a democratic government to protect oil interests.