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The are a rebranding of Al-Nusra, a split of Al-Quaeda.

This is their leader: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Mohammad_al-Julani

They are putting on a "moderate" face, it remains to be seen if they mean it.

The other option: overthrow the violent regime with magic.

I mean very narrowly this moment right now. This moment of uncertainty where anything is possible. This is what freedom looks like: anything is possible, the best and the worst.

Respectfully, that's a load of nonsense:

Paving the way for outside actors to mess with those elections.

So? If potential future foreign interference is a legitimate reason to NOT have democracy at all, then ALL democracy becomes impossible. You're basically making the argument that democracy is impossible so Syrians should never ask for democratic reforms because ...if they do sometime in the future some external actor might try to influence their election?

And it's actually worse than that. They asked for democracy and they got bullets, chemical warfare and over a decade of destruction and dispossession. Was the threat of some potential election meddling that horrible that all of that is preferable? Ask any Syrian refugee in Lebanon if they wouldn't trade the destruction of their country with Lebanon's broken sectarian system.

Ultimately you're making an argument that either they should have 100% of a good thing or 0% of the thing AND brutality for asking for the thing in the first place. And that's utterly nonsensical.

You can guarantee that whoever comes out on top will be establishing an ultraconservative theocracy and things will be worse for the Syrian people

You actually cannot "guarantee" it. It is a possibility, but there are no guarantees. You can be pessimistic of course. But history never guarantees anything. I mentioned elsewhere in the thread that by "freedom", I was referring to this particular moment right here, where nothing is for sure and things could go to the better or the worse. RIGHT NOW, there is uncertainty. Even if tomorrow HTS tries to enforce a khalifate or whatever shit, right now, this is a moment of freedom for Syrians. Just look at what they are saying. You can't deny what you see. They are saying that after decades they are able to finally breathe. The future IS open, but not guaranteed.

Ha ha and their only warm water port, except that in Kaliningrad, which, thanks to putin, is now incercled by the NATO alliance lol.

Turning in a circle while turning off the transponder would seem to be a sensible thing if you suddenly realise people could be viewing your projected route..

altitude decreased at 15ft/s before disappearing at 1500ish ft, and few minutes later syrian army command informed officers about fall of regime

i don't think they just faked it, there's also no airport there and emergency landing in terrain like this is, i think, quite extravagant option

If it were true (currently I don't think so) we'd have a warm spot on FIRMS and civilian reports of a transport plane coming down, but nobody has reported one so far. (However, Syria is likely to have so many warm spots currently that a private researcher may be unable to count them and make sense.)

However, assassinating someone with an air defense complex while retreating / evacuating yourself in face of an advancing opponent - that's unreliable. (Russians were last seen evacuating their air defense systems and flying away with what could be taken along, but rebels did get some really interesting items.)