DdCno1

joined 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Why are you blaming Syria on America, even though it was internal unrest sparked by the Syrian government torturing a bunch of kids for anti-Assad graffiti? This resulted in increasingly larger protests, which were crushed with incredible violence by the regime, which in turn led to mass defections from the Syrian army as more and more soldiers were unwilling to kill their fellow citizens, creating factions that fought both against the Syrian government and among each other.

America caused none of this. In fact, it's the Syrian government that claimed foreign agents were responsible for the initial protests. It's not a good look to repeat this obvious and transparent lie.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Power, opportunism, thirst for war, corruption (not oil though). Plenty of reasons for this war.

Your logic has a flaw though: It's not like Saddam would have just stopped doing his thing in 2003 had he not been removed from power. The country was a powder keg anyway, so perhaps it would have ended up just like Syria eventually (I can't imagine the Arab Spring leaving it alone) - or perhaps we would have seen another war between it and Iran. Another possibility would have been Iraq attacking a neighbor other than Iran again, perhaps at a time when they weren't expecting a harsh American response (e.g. under a Democratic US presidency).

None of this excuses that Bush and Blair made up reasons to invade the country nor the incompetent handling of it afterwards that led to most of the up to one million dead post-Saddam, but let's not pretend that everything would have been rosy had the second Gulf War not happened.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (7 children)

The upper estimates for the number of people killed under Saddam Hussein are about one million as well. Now what?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (9 children)

Iraq was better off before the invasion. Fact.

I don't think this is a fact. Let's look at a few metrics, starting with HDI:

https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Iraq/human_development/

Infant mortality rate:

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IRQ/iraq/infant-mortality-rate

GDP per capita (ignore the silly outlier):

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IRQ/iraq/gdp-per-capita

These basic figures suggest that a number of key aspects of life are indeed better than they were during the dictatorship.

The homicide rate is higher now:

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IRQ/iraq/murder-homicide-rate

Keep in mind though that there is no way of knowing how accurate official figures from the past were (this also goes for the numbers on human and economic development, of course). Also worth noting that the government itself could kill and maim with impunity back then:

https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde14/003/1996/en/

Freedom of the press is still pretty abysmal these days (and the page also touches on what you were likely mentioning the instability):

https://rsf.org/en/country/iraq

A report from 2002 on the state of affairs under Saddam's rule:

https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/iraq/press.html

I would admit that life in Iraq could be safer under Saddam Hussein compared to today, given that he kept a lid on especially religious conflicts, but this came with a big asterisk: Provided you didn't run afoul of the regime or provided the regime didn't think you did (no court of appeal, no independent judiciary, torture and murder are common - you can be the most loyal Baathist and still just be unlucky), provided you didn't have a pretty daughter (or were one) in a place where Saddam's son were looking for girls to rape, torture and murder, provided you weren't a member of a persecuted ethnic group, provided you didn't own something Saddam or his sons wanted from you, etc. The usual caveats of living under autocratic rule, with the added "insane son of dictator" factor (see also: what Kim Jong Il was up to in his younger days).

[–] [email protected] 184 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I looked for Ethiopian or African news sites that confirm this story, but it seems like it's not accurate. This African green news site only mentions that ICE cars will be phased out in line with the EU by 2035 and that the government encourages the sale of electric cars through incentives and local assembly:

https://www.afrik21.africa/en/ethiopia-non-electric-vehicles-soon-to-be-banned-from-importation/

There is nothing on this on any large Ethiopian news site. The Reporter has no article on this:

https://www.thereporterethiopia.com/?s=electric+cars

Neither does The Ethiopian Monitor:

https://ethiopianmonitor.com/?s=electric+cars

This Senegalese outlet states that it's not clear when the ban comes into effect:

https://apanews.net/ethiopia-to-ban-importation-of-non-electric-cars/

Given that there are significant issues with maintaining and insuring existing electric cars in the country, it's safe to assume that the ban will not happen immediately:

https://www.thereporterethiopia.com/30035/

There is a different car import ban since October of last year aimed at returning citizens, which doesn't appear to have anything to do with the move to electric vehicles though:

https://www.thereporterethiopia.com/36044/

So in other words, this awful article containing a chat log for some reason (What on Earth was the author thinking with that?) is just an example of poor reporting.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Thanks. I had only heard of them using explosives salvaged from ships that sank off the coast of Gaza during WW2.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Got an article on this?

[–] [email protected] -3 points 9 months ago

Wait, are you denying Russian and Chinese interference?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

A short string used to identify files shared via P2P software. You paste it into a Bittorrent client and it'll then try and piece the file together from other users who have done the same thing.

As an example, here's one for Warzone 2100, an excellent free open-source real-time strategy game:

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:80e5f0b142306e3b5660990c45d6406a5a259a9c&dn=warzone2100_win_x64_installer.exe&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.opentrackr.org%3A1337%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ffosstorrents.com%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ffosstorrents.com%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.torrent.eu.org%3A451%2Fannounce&ws=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2FWarzone2100%2Fwarzone2100%2Freleases%2Fdownload%2F4.4.2%2Fwarzone2100_win_x64_installer.exe&ws=http%3A%2F%2Ffosstorrents.com%2Fdirect-links%2F%2Fwarzone2100%2F4.4.2%2Fwarzone2100_win_x64_installer.exe

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