I want to know how many people rely on RT to make

[gandabacha7241]

Question explains everything.

[wolverine]

46 minutes ago, gandabacha7241 said:

Question explains everything.

Except some people might not know what RT is.  

[gandabacha7241]

1 hour ago, wolverine said:

Except some people might not know what RT is.  

oh i guess lol

Most people probably did look at stuff from RT one way or another though , if you're interested in politics . RT is a Russian-backed news channel that people follow mainly because it confronts the mainstream western narrative : right wingers in the west, people from russia or countries it backs, some muslims that want a news source that shows the west as antagonists . 

https://www.rt.com/

and the famous gadaffi video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuqZfaj34nc  

[Mohamed1993]

55 minutes ago, gandabacha7241 said:

oh i guess lol

Most people probably did look at stuff from RT one way or another though , if you're interested in politics . RT is a Russian-backed news channel that people follow mainly because it confronts the mainstream western narrative : right wingers in the west, people from russia or countries it backs, some muslims that want a news source that shows the west as antagonists . 

https://www.rt.com/

and the famous gadaffi video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuqZfaj34nc  

I do follow it from time to time, it has critical views of US foreign policy, and it has even academics from the west that you'd never see invited to mainstream US media channels like Noam Chomsky for example. Is it biased? Of course it is, if you want critical views of the Russian government, don't look to RT to provide that for you, but if you want a critical perspective on US policies, it is a pretty good outlet. It obviously will not portray the US accurately in every regard, but like I said it does have academics who present facts you can't really argue with on their shows. 

[wolverine]

1 hour ago, gandabacha7241 said:

oh i guess lol

Most people probably did look at stuff from RT one way or another though , if you're interested in politics . RT is a Russian-backed news channel that people follow mainly because it confronts the mainstream western narrative : right wingers in the west, people from russia or countries it backs, some muslims that want a news source that shows the west as antagonists . 

https://www.rt.com/

Thank you for explaining what RT is.  

[justAnothermuslim]

+ presstv, veteranstoday, zerohedge, whatreallyhappened, aljazeera, reddit/r/syriancivilwar....

[Mohamed1993]

Btw, RT is way better than CNN, Fox, NBC etc, even though it is state funded. The difference is in the coverage, RT does actually report on things, regardless of what you think about them, they'll have debates and academics on their show, when you watch CNN you literally feel like it is out there to dumb people down. They spend so much time demonizing Russia and on Trump's tweets, its ridiculous, there is so much about the Trump administration that's wrong but all CNN will talk about is how Trump is tweeting the wrong things and is calling Kim Jong Un "rocket man", there's very little intellectual debate on policy and related issues. A majority of the American population that opposes Trump doesn't have an idea that some of the same policies happened under Obama, but because their media would never talk about Obama beyond just Fox News talking about how he wasn't really American and that he was muslim, there was very, very little coverage of policies. As Chomsky stated, any dictator would admire the obedience of the US mainstream media to the official narrative. So keep that in mind when the US media calls RT propaganda, because the corporate media will tell you they aren't state-funded and free, but there is a ton of censorship given who owns these channels, it pretty much becomes as bad as state media if not worse.

[gandabacha7241]

7 hours ago, Mohamed1993 said:

Btw, RT is way better than CNN, Fox, NBC etc, even though it is state funded. The difference is in the coverage, RT does actually report on things, regardless of what you think about them, they'll have debates and academics on their show, when you watch CNN you literally feel like it is out there to dumb people down. They spend so much time demonizing Russia and on Trump's tweets, its ridiculous, there is so much about the Trump administration that's wrong but all CNN will talk about is how Trump is tweeting the wrong things and is calling Kim Jong Un "rocket man", there's very little intellectual debate on policy and related issues. A majority of the American population that opposes Trump doesn't have an idea that some of the same policies happened under Obama, but because their media would never talk about Obama beyond just Fox News talking about how he wasn't really American and that he was muslim, there was very, very little coverage of policies. As Chomsky stated, any dictator would admire the obedience of the US mainstream media to the official narrative. So keep that in mind when the US media calls RT propaganda, because the corporate media will tell you they aren't state-funded and free, but there is a ton of censorship given who owns these channels, it pretty much becomes as bad as state media if not worse.

No, but i was referring specifically to "making sense of politics/wars in the Middle East" .  CNN and Fox are useless, yes, but they're irrelevant here. 

"Do you support bashar al assad? Is the Arab Spring a sham? Gadaffi was a hero? ISIS is a proxy by US? (you might not have to believe that last part, but you get my drift-?)"

[Mohamed1993]

1 hour ago, gandabacha7241 said:

No, but i was referring specifically to "making sense of politics/wars in the Middle East" .  CNN and Fox are useless, yes, but they're irrelevant here. 

"Do you support bashar al assad? Is the Arab Spring a sham? Gadaffi was a hero? ISIS is a proxy by US? (you might not have to believe that last part, but you get my drift-?)"

Ah ok, I don't support Assad, but he is the best option for now, even if there is to be political change in Syria, it won't happen through the "rebel" groups currently in Idlib, Ghouta etc. I think there can be room for future elections though after Al Qaeda and ISIS (which is nearly eliminated) are gone. 

Arab Spring was not entirely a sham, there were organic movements in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain. The US wouldn't have manufactured an uprising in Bahrain, a very close ally, and in Egypt, they supported Mubarak until they no longer could because of the popular movement against him. In Libya and Syria though, the US and the CIA in particular, along with regional gulf countries played an instrumental role in militarising the early protests. There were indeed genuine protests against both these governments, but not all the protests were the same, some were violent and had sectarian and genocidal slogans and they were not peaceful either. The peaceful protests also became very quickly militarized and other countries with their twisted agendas got involved and started arming people. The governments in these countries however, also did not help, and did not a very good job of dealing with the early protests either. 

Gaddafi had his flaws, he was a dictator no doubt, but he did create something for the Libyan people that not many African countries had managed to do. And looking at Libya today, and the slave markets and people drowning in the mediterranean trying to reach Europe, Gaddafi seems like a saint compared to the people running Libya now.

As for ISIS, the US has used them and other groups for their own convenience when they saw fit. Indeed in 2012, if you look at leaked documents by the DIA, the document stated that the opposition in Syria was dominated by 3 groups (1) Al Qaeda in Iraq, (2) Muslim Brotherhood, (3) Salafi groups and the opposition was supported by the West, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. The regime was supported by Russia, China and Iran. It went onto state that If the situation unravels there is a possibility of establishing a salafist principality in Eastern Syria and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want to weaken the Syrian government which is seen as a strategic depth of Shiite expansion (Iran, Iraq (post Saddam), Syria, Hezbollah). In 2013, the Obama administration openly (the CIA program early on in 2011/12 wasn't openly disclosed, but journalists have exposed this as well) began arming what they claimed were "moderate rebels" but given that they knew through the document in 2012 that the insurgency was dominated by extremists, it obviously means they saw no qualms arming an extremist controlled insurgency as long as it fulfilled the greater goal of toppling Assad. We also know that CIA backed rebels called Nour-e-Dinn Al-Zenki beheaded a Palestinian child and that group was still called moderate even after that. Also, in 2014, a leaked tape of John Kerry stated that the US let ISIS grow because they were hoping it would bring Assad to the negotiating table. When ISIS started beheading western journalists, the US went into Syria uninvited to bomb them, but they have tried repeatedly to use them against the government when they could, indeed many times you would find ISIS fleeing to government held areas, or the US "mistakenly" bombing Syrian soldiers. Also, it was very clear that ISIS money was coming from oil that they were selling to Turkey, and the US knew this and did nothing about it. Also, indirectly the US has helped ISIS by arming rebel groups and so preventing the Syrian government from fighting ISIS because they had to fight other rebel groups and could not channel their energy to fighting ISIS. Now you see the US has bombed ISIS but instead of cooperating with the Syrian government, they've tried to use the SDF, which comprises of Arab and Kurdish forces. It's difficult to say what exactly they hope to achieve with this, I was assuming it was so they could have more bargaining chips against the Syrian government during future negotiations, but I'm just speculating here. It may well be that the Kurds and the Syrian army will work out a deal and the US will eventually be phased out. 

So these are complex issues, there aren't black and white answers to these questions, but there is an element of truth to what you've asked no doubt about it. 

Edited December 22, 2017 by Mohamed1993

[justAnothermuslim]

On 12/21/2017 at 6:23 PM, gandabacha7241 said:

No, but i was referring specifically to "making sense of politics/wars in the Middle East" .  CNN and Fox are useless, yes, but they're irrelevant here. 

yeah...making sense of politics/wars in ME is a tough one. but once you know the truth, i guess you will know the people of truth.

[Shakir 49:6] O you who believe! if an evil-doer comes to you with a report, look carefully into it, lest you harm a people in ignorance, then be sorry for what you have done.

if you are strong in iman, you can read anything. Insha Allah, they will not affect you in any way. thus reading RT, presstv, npr and the likes, you are getting info from the other side of the coin.

On 12/21/2017 at 6:23 PM, gandabacha7241 said:

"Do you support bashar al assad? Is the Arab Spring a sham? Gadaffi was a hero? ISIS is a proxy by US? (you might not have to believe that last part, but you get my drift-?)"

the bold is mine and is the main issue for some people. if given the option between bashar al assad and ISIS, i'll go with the lesser evil; basyar in this case.

personally, the war in syria/iraq is not about sunni-shia conflict as some wahhabis (or some duped sunnis) would like the ummah to believe. in fact syria and iraq are sunni countries since they both have grand muftis, which iran ( a shiite country) has not. 

[hasanhh]

On 12/20/2017 at 11:03 PM, gandabacha7241 said:

and the famous gadaffi video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuqZfaj34nc  

The video also mentioned Saddam. Even at the time in the US media it was said that Saddam had just destroyed himself. Plus invading lraq had the primary objective of "turning right" into lran.

Since 20March2012, lran has sold its oil in a basket of currencies per barrel.

Remember the "Neutral Zones" between Iraq and KSA? This is because of the gold there. KSA has gold mining operations in Arar (see: maaden.com). The Neutral Zones were set up that way to control the gold market. l forget when the first Neutral Zone was eliminated, but the one near Kuwait was eliminated after the lnvasion of lraq.

[justAnothermuslim]

what a field day conspirators today have. the masses have been indoctrinated to belief what's not in mainstream media, are all conspiracy theories :-(

[gandabacha7241]

2 hours ago, justAnothermuslim said:

what a field day conspirators today have. the masses have been indoctrinated to belief what's not in mainstream media, are all conspiracy theories :-(

I wouldn't say i follow a "mainstream media" . I don't see the world as black and white, "the Russian/conspiracy theorist vs American mainstream media"

This is how i see the Middle East, divided into three major factions :

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

1 - Saudi Arabia and allies (UAE, Egypt, Kuwait, Bahrain, etc) : These countries want a status quo and fear revolutions because they might spread to their own countries, So they have been often a "counter-Arab Spring", which you can see in how they supported Abdal Fattah al Sissi who ousted Egypt's first democratically elected president, how they gave refuge to the dictator of Tunisia, Ben Ali, and supported parties that were linked to him, and have been supporting the military general in Libya. However, they support any revolutions happening in Shia-ruled countries, like Syria and Iraq. They also somewhat pan-Arabic, and are backed by U.S.A, and their interests align with Israel because of their shared enmity towards Iran

2 - The so called "Shia Crescent" (Iran, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Houthi Yemen) : They also want a status quo and we have seen how they (syria and iraq) brutally suppress opposition, but only in their own countries. They have supported shia revolutions in yemen and bahrain, which are backed by the Saudi-led faction. These countries are backed by Russia and are very anti-Israel

3 - Turkey, Qatar and Muslim Brotherhood : These are one of the main perpetrators of the Arab Spring, a lot of which was driven by a pan-Islamic ideology, because many arabs had realized that the post-ww1 Pan-arab socialism had left them with failed states. They seek an Islamic democracy, which is basically a democracy with a newly reformed Islamic constitution. Turkey and Qatar supported many movements like them in the Arab Spring. One can say that the Arab Spring was "ignited" by a Tunisian man who burnt himself, but the Muslim Brotherhood was the "fuel for the fire". But they seem to be on the losing side: Turkey had to deal with a military coup, Qatar is facing a blockade by the Saudi-led group, and the Muslim Brotherhood was overthrown in Egypt, and thousands of its supporters were massacred, and its leaders were arrested by the Saudi-backed Egyptian government.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Then there are "lone wolves" like

Gadaffi's Libya (which fell long ago) : The country was isolated, left alone by Russia and Iran, while the USA, the Libyan people, Saudi Arabia and Qatar all wanting an end to his reign. Libya had the "best living standards in Africa", but that was because they had oil. Much of their wealth was concentrated within the elite ranks loyal to Gadaffi. The fact that they had the "best living standards" does not mean much if you're in Africa, and they already had lots of oil. Saudi Arabian citizens have the best living standards..does that mean the Saudi government is good? They massacred their own people during the Arab Spring, which gave the NATO a good excuse to get rid of him. 

Then there is ISIS and other terrorist groups , many of them were probably funded by Saudi Arabia etc  but not anymore of course

And then there's Kurdistan, backed by the US

[monad]

On 12/22/2017 at 6:50 PM, justAnothermuslim said:

what a field day conspirators today have. the masses have been indoctrinated to belief what's not in mainstream media, are all conspiracy theories :-(

Doesnt even make sense, care to elaborate?. I am assuming you are claiming mass media is correct?, if yes, prove how it is factually correct.

Yes, many sites do give impressions of their assumptions, but many also expose the lies of mass media.

gandabacha7241 - What is the purpose of this post?. Explain?

Regarding Bashar, no one claimed he was evil, until the Arab spring and ISIS, which mass media hyped, which started one month after the oil deal with Iran. Thus, this idea of bashar being evil has been implanted, unless one is syrian they would know more then the keyboard ninjas with opinions.

[gandabacha7241]

oh...something went wrong here.... "the masses have been indoctrinated to belief what's not in mainstream media, are all conspiracy theories :-(" by reading this i thought he was FOR "what's not in mainstream media".

[gandabacha7241]

31 minutes ago, monad said:

gandabacha7241 - What is the purpose of this post?. Explain?

I was presenting a different narrative.

[justAnothermuslim]

4 hours ago, monad said:

Doesnt even make sense, care to elaborate?. I am assuming you are claiming mass media is correct?, if yes, prove how it is factually correct.

23 hours ago, justAnothermuslim said:

what a field day conspirators today have. the masses have been indoctrinated to belief what's not in mainstream media, are all conspiracy theories :-(

 

nope. what i am saying is: what's in alternative media is not necessarily "fake news" 

[justAnothermuslim]

21 hours ago, gandabacha7241 said:

I wouldn't say i follow a "mainstream media" . I don't see the world as black and white, "the Russian/conspiracy theorist vs American mainstream media"

i too wouldn't say i follow the russian/conspiracy theorist "alternative media". i believe, reporter of any news (including hadith) are of 4 types; there won't be a fifth one.

1. hypocrite/liar

He doesn't think it's bad or sinful to relate false things. He heard "abcdefghijkmn" but he reported "opqrstuvwxyz". worst still, he create it out of thin air. Quran said about them:

[Shakir 63:4] And when you see them, their persons will please you, and If they speak, you will listen to their speech;

2. weak memory

Someone said "abcdefghijklmn" to him but he only remembered "a.c.ef..i..l.n" and said he heard "a.c.ef..i..l.n" from that someone. He didn't lie intentionally. If people knew he's weak in memory, they won't accept anything from him.

3. He remembered mansukh (what order has been withdrawn) and didn't remember nasikh (what is current).

4. He heard "abcdefghiklmn" and he reported exactly "abcdefghijklmn". no addition nor subtraction. he remembered Nasikh and Mansukh; acted on Nasikh and left Mansukh.

5 hours ago, monad said:

This is how i see the Middle East, divided into three major factions :

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

1 - Saudi Arabia and allies (UAE, Egypt, Kuwait, Bahrain, etc) : These countries want a status quo and fear revolutions because they might spread to their own countries, So they have been often a "counter-Arab Spring", which you can see in how they supported Abdal Fattah al Sissi who ousted Egypt's first democratically elected president, how they gave refuge to the dictator of Tunisia, Ben Ali, and supported parties that were linked to him, and have been supporting the military general in Libya. However, they support any revolutions happening in Shia-ruled countries, like Syria and Iraq. They also somewhat pan-Arabic, and are backed by U.S.A, and their interests align with Israel because of their shared enmity towards Iran

2 - The so called "Shia Crescent" (Iran, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Houthi Yemen) : They also want a status quo and we have seen how they (syria and iraq) brutally suppress opposition, but only in their own countries. They have supported shia revolutions in yemen and bahrain, which are backed by the Saudi-led faction. These countries are backed by Russia and are very anti-Israel

3 - Turkey, Qatar and Muslim Brotherhood : These are one of the main perpetrators of the Arab Spring, a lot of which was driven by a pan-Islamic ideology, because many arabs had realized that the post-ww1 Pan-arab socialism had left them with failed states. They seek an Islamic democracy, which is basically a democracy with a newly reformed Islamic constitution. Turkey and Qatar supported many movements like them in the Arab Spring. One can say that the Arab Spring was "ignited" by a Tunisian man who burnt himself, but the Muslim Brotherhood was the "fuel for the fire". But they seem to be on the losing side: Turkey had to deal with a military coup, Qatar is facing a blockade by the Saudi-led group, and the Muslim Brotherhood was overthrown in Egypt, and thousands of its supporters were massacred, and its leaders were arrested by the Saudi-backed Egyptian government.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Then there are "lone wolves" like

Gadaffi's Libya (which fell long ago) : The country was isolated, left alone by Russia and Iran, while the USA, the Libyan people, Saudi Arabia and Qatar all wanting an end to his reign. Libya had the "best living standards in Africa", but that was because they had oil. Much of their wealth was concentrated within the elite ranks loyal to Gadaffi. The fact that they had the "best living standards" does not mean much if you're in Africa, and they already had lots of oil. Saudi Arabian citizens have the best living standards..does that mean the Saudi government is good? They massacred their own people during the Arab Spring, which gave the NATO a good excuse to get rid of him. 

Then there is ISIS and other terrorist groups , many of them were probably funded by Saudi Arabia etc  but not anymore of course

And then there's Kurdistan, backed by the US

i've to admit, what you are saying is what the majority of the ummah believes in.

to me, israel is the canser to ME and iran is its' vaccine. of course. i could be wrong here. 

[Zulfiqar1472]

RT is ok

[gandabacha7241]

On 12/23/2017 at 6:12 PM, justAnothermuslim said:

nope. what i am saying is: what's in alternative media is not necessarily "fake news" 

so i was right, monad was the one that got confused

On 12/23/2017 at 7:07 PM, justAnothermuslim said:

i've to admit, what you are saying is what the majority of the ummah believes in.

to me, israel is the canser to ME and iran is its' vaccine. of course. i could be wrong here. 

Um, i think you misunderstood my post

I'm more pro-Iran than KSA, but I wouldn't say Iran is a "vaccine"  when it supports governments that brutal governments like Syria.

Also, I'm pretty sure "most of the ummah" in the west, especially many shias here don't share my views about the Muslim Brotherhood.

On 12/21/2017 at 8:00 PM, Mohamed1993 said:

 if you look at leaked documents by the DIA, the document stated that the opposition in Syria was dominated by 3 groups (1) Al Qaeda in Iraq, (2) Muslim Brotherhood, (3) Salafi groups and the opposition was supported by the West, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.

also another thing i have to make clear : (and this is my fault that i didnt say) this post is also a response to @Mohamed1993

The Muslim Brotherhood which you seem to be classifying as one of these terrorists - does not even have much of a presence in the Syrian War. Its members only joined groups like FSA rather than form their own group and claim that they will go through the political process after the end of the war.

I responded in my post about other statements in his post like :

On 12/21/2017 at 8:00 PM, Mohamed1993 said:

Gaddafi had his flaws, he was a dictator no doubt, but he did create something for the Libyan people that not many African countries had managed to do.

 

On 12/21/2017 at 8:00 PM, Mohamed1993 said:

There were indeed genuine protests against both these governments, but not all the protests were the same, some were violent and had sectarian and genocidal slogans and they were not peaceful either. The peaceful protests also became very quickly militarized and other countries with their twisted agendas got involved and started arming people. The governments in these countries however, also did not help, and did not a very good job of dealing with the early protests either.

Yes, the protests became quickly militarized, because Assad fired at the people, like he did many times before when there was any sign of opposition(long before the revolution). Note that the core of the Syrian opposition at the start was made up of defectors and army commanders from Assad's army , does that not say a lot?

I'd like to add the "slogans" became so sectarian and genocidal AFTER those events and the people that Assad killed. I mean, i admit there are a lot of sectarian salafi groups in the opposition. I am not justifying terrorists, but i am just showing how supporting Assad in for any reason is wrong. Let's look more into his side. What i know for sure is that if i was a sunni Syrian villager I wouldn't want to be around there when it gets captured by Hezbollah or militants like it. I mean, there have been cases of massacres from shia militants in both syria and iraq as there have been from salafi groups.

Also, there can be progress, In some places you'll see people going out in the streets and protesting the occupation from al-Qaeda groups.To go even further there is Turkey keeping Ahrar al Sham in check, and also the group adopting the flag of the Syrian revolution (which led to Ahral al Sham's war with Tahrir al Sham, former al-Nusra).

[Mohamed1993]

On 12/24/2017 at 2:55 AM, gandabacha7241 said:

Yes, the protests became quickly militarized, because Assad fired at the people, like he did many times before when there was any sign of opposition(long before the revolution). Note that the core of the Syrian opposition at the start was made up of defectors and army commanders from Assad's army , does that not say a lot?

I'd like to add the "slogans" became so sectarian and genocidal AFTER those events and the people that Assad killed. I mean, i admit there are a lot of sectarian salafi groups in the opposition. I am not justifying terrorists, but i am just showing how supporting Assad in for any reason is wrong. Let's look more into his side. What i know for sure is that if i was a sunni Syrian villager I wouldn't want to be around there when it gets captured by Hezbollah or militants like it. I mean, there have been cases of massacres from shia militants in both syria and iraq as there have been from salafi groups.

Also, there can be progress, In some places you'll see people going out in the streets and protesting the occupation from al-Qaeda groups.To go even further there is Turkey keeping Ahrar al Sham in check, and also the group adopting the flag of the Syrian revolution (which led to Ahral al Sham's war with Tahrir al Sham, former al-Nusra).

Yeah, I'm not denying that the Syrian government played a pretty horrible role at the beginning of the conflict, but what I'm saying is it wasn't just them that sparked sectarianism and extremism among protestors. It was a combination of factors. Also, the sectarian slogans began very early on right in like April 2011, when you had people like Zahran Alloush (who was considered a moderate rebel btw), called for ethnically cleansing christians to beirut and alawis to the grave. On the very first day of protests, there was violence against Syrian army, 7 policemen were shot I believe, this was reported on Israeli media of all places. Check this out; http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/143026. Where did these weapons come from? Around the same time, weapons shipments from Iraq and Jordan were seized by the Syrian government. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-iraq/syria-says-seizes-weapons-smuggled-from-iraq-idUSTRE72A3MI20110311. You may choose not to believe the Syrian government, but this was even before any protests had happened, which first started on March 15. Anyway, later on, thanks to excellent investigative reporting by Seymour Hersch there was evidence that the CIA in 2011 was helping facilitate shipping armaments from rebels in Libya to Syria through Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

Also, I don't believe government violence alone justifies calling for ethnic cleansing of all minorities, and surely this alone cannot explain this kind of behaviour, there has to be something else. Government violence can explain shooting at soldiers and stuff, but not calling for ethnically cleansing alawites and christians and other minorities as Zahran Alloush and some other rebel leaders did. I don't believe these leaders were motivated by government violence, rather by hateful ideology spread from external gulf countries. 

As for the massacres by the Shia militants and the Iraqi/Syrian armies, they ought to be condemned but I would not equate this to ISIS or Al Qaeda or many of these salafi groups, where killing Shias or ethnically cleansing them from Syria and Iraq along with other minorities is official policy. None of these human rights abuses or massacres justify carrying out suicide bombings of innocent civilians in those countries and indeed in Western countries in many cases. 

The point is, even if you want to blame Assad for this, the situation the way it is, is not entirely his fault. Arguing about tactics is entirely debatable, for that matter even the bombing of Dresden in WW2 is justified today because it was against the Nazis, but they carpet bombed everything and no one questions it, so I don't know a better way to deal with such an insurgency. Perhaps you could say they should've had freedom and democratic processes to not allow room for the uprising and the hatred of the government, but I don't know if this would've prevented the situation because foreign powers got involved, and indeed these foreign powers had an interest in toppling Syria for a very long time. Former french foreign minister talked about how the British had approached him about wanting to topple Assad since 2009. CNN was already interviewing Assad in 2005 about Bush looking for a new Syrian leader to replace Assad, because they didn't like him. So its tough to say what would've happened had he not responded violently, but I suspect we would've had a similar situation.

As for the MB links to the FSA, bear in mind that the FSA is not one group, there are multiple factions, certain FSA groups are not moderate. They have been responsible for ethnically cleansing Shia villages in Homs and Aleppo, and they've worked alongside Al Nusra etc. I'm not saying this is all of the FSA, but there are some factions.

As for Turkey, they've played a pretty horrible role in this war tbh, difficult to trust anything they're doing, their number one enemy seems to be the Kurds, and they've even supported Al  Nusra in an attempt to fight the Kurds and Assad. So for them to now say we are against extremism is pretty laughable. Biden himself has stated this and how Erdogan told him he let people into Syria through the Turkish border. What role do foreign fighters have in Syria? Why would Turkey let them in? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40NGN5mN7Nk. Its funny Erdogan claims to defend democracy in Syria, yet he has ties to the apartheid regime in Israel. And Ahrar al Sham is hardly moderate, they've worked with ISIS before (I would never trust such a group even if they say we've reformed now), they want Sharia implemented in Syria, and while you may not see this may not be a bad thing in itself, remember Syria has been secular for a very long time, would they want to live under a Sharia system? Probably not. In fact, most Syrians still support Assad, even by most NATO polls, I presume this is probably because there aren't many decent alternatives to him, not because everyone loves him, though I suspect the Alawites in Latakia, Tartous do. https://off-guardian.org/2015/12/19/western-poll-assad-supported-by-most-syrians/.

My point here overall is this is not a black and white issue the way the Western media has portrayed it, as evil dictator and ISIS on extremes vs. moderate rebels in the middle fighting for freedom, these moderate rebels in many cases are not a whole lot different to ISIS. Yes, no side is innocent, no side has no blood on its hands. However, If Assad were toppled, and the Western powers got what they wanted, well then we'd see what is happening in Libya and at that point they'll call it a mistake and say oh we didn't know, and go after their next country, which is Iran. Look, we can debate over who did what and who is responsible for what, but the point remains is how do we solve this conflict? I think the only way is through the UNSC resolution, defeat ISIS/Al Nusra, isolate all the other opposition from Al Nusra and bring to the table, have a unity government and then an election eventually. But the problem is the rebels don't want Assad to run in this election, but surely if he is so hated, he won't win, the problem I think for the rebels is that he might still be popular enough to win. As non-Syrians should it be our role to override the political will of the people in their country? I don't think it should, no matter how much we may despise their leaders. 

[Mohamed1993]

1 hour ago, gandabacha7241 said:

Also, I'm pretty sure "most of the ummah" in the west, especially many shias here don't share my views about the Muslim Brotherhood.

On 12/21/2017 at 8:00 PM, Mohamed1993 said:

A lot of Sunnis in the West love Erdogan, so if you support the MB, you're probably not very diff to a lot of Sunnis. I'm not sure why there is such strong support for Erdogan, Turkey has extremely close ties to Israel, which we can agree is the most aggressive actor in the region, which frequently uses violence against its neighbours with total impunity. 

[justAnothermuslim]

15 hours ago, gandabacha7241 said:

Um, i think you misunderstood my post

I'm more pro-Iran than KSA, but I wouldn't say Iran is a "vaccine"  when it supports governments that brutal governments like Syria.

bro, i'm not being pro-Iran or anti-KSA or anti-Israel or whatever label that can be used. when things get too complicated to be understood, i always ask "cui bono?"

so besides US military industrial complexes, israel benefits most from what's happening in ME. IMO. 

vaccine? maybe antidote is more correct, to the cancerous greater israel plan. 

long before "syrian civil war" broke out, i read iran dan syria has a military agreement to help out each other in case of being attacked militarily. so Iran is just fulfilling a strategic obligation for her own survival, coming to the aid of syria. 

to me, what KSA is doing in Yemen is more brutal than what basyar has done to protect the integrity of syria.

[wolverine]

I never watch RT until somebody posts a link from ShiaChat and says look at this.