88888 posted:

oh no

edit: snipe

five eights, can you explain the connotation of 'snipe' on the boards? I've seen it around and I don't get it.

Gibbonstrength posted:

Now he's starting to slip in the feeling that, hmm, maybe this isn't a stupid strategy if all you want is a whirlwind of endless chaos and war in Syria...

This is a noob materialist question, I'm sure, but what specifically does the U.S. stand to gain by destabilizing Syria? Relatedly, what did they gain from toppling Gaddafi?

Belphegor posted:

Gibbonstrength posted:

Now he's starting to slip in the feeling that, hmm, maybe this isn't a stupid strategy if all you want is a whirlwind of endless chaos and war in Syria...

This is a noob materialist question, I'm sure, but what specifically does the U.S. stand to gain by destabilizing Syria? Relatedly, what did they gain from toppling Gaddafi?

Sovereign, stable, self reliant countries are nice if you like that sort of thing, but fractured bantustans full of craters and starving peasants are easier to turn into fully dependent slave states. Bomb the shit out of them until you get a collaborator government in place, then offer to help reconstruct. All they have to do is sign these oil/mineral leases that they have no negotiating leverage to contest because if they say no they're terrorists and we'll keep bombing. Once the bombing stops, thanks to USAID, all the reconstruction work will be done by US corporations.

We'll take their wealth, we'll sell them back their own water and electricity, we'll put the population to work making cheap plastic shit for a quarter an hour, and we'll murder anyone that doesn't like it. And we'll even try to make them pay for the bombs too.

xipe posted:

https://yallalabarra.wordpress.com/2016/08/10/video-portrait-abdallah-al-muhaysni-the-man-who-heads-the-us-backed-aleppo-offensive/a bunch of translated short videos of the leader of “Jaish al-Fatah”/“Army of Conquest”

good shit

Belphegor posted:

This is a noob materialist question, I'm sure, but what specifically does the U.S. stand to gain by destabilizing Syria? Relatedly, what did they gain from toppling Gaddafi?

colddays, marxultor and tears answered correctly

for more specifics see, e.g., the rush to feed on libya's still-warm corpse after the structures regulating foreign distributors & contracts were removed

Max Forte, Slouching Towards Sirte posted:

Fast forward to 2011: just as the Libyan government began to crumble after six months of continuous NATO bombings of its troops and civilian brigades, the U.S. immediately rushed in to secure business opportunities, especially the kinds from which they had been blocked before. As battles raged in Sirte in late September 2011, U.S. Ambassador Gene Cretz returned to Tripoli just a week after those loyal to the Al-Fateh Revolution were beaten back, and he immediately “participated in a State Department conference call with about 150 American companies hoping to do business with Libya.” Which kinds of business opportunities most occupied Cretz? Infrastructure. As he told the media, “even in Qaddafi’s time they were starting from A to Z in terms of building infrastructure.” Cretz added: “If we can get American companies here on a fairly big scale, which we will try to do everything we can to do that, then this will redound to improve the situation in the United States with respect to our own jobs.” While “oil is the jewel in the crown of Libyan natural resources,” Cretz stated that it was never the “predominant reason” for U.S. intervention— indeed, to say so would neglect all of the other economic, strategic, and military reasons. The New York Times’ correspondent observed that Cretz’s remarks were “a rare nod to the tacit economic stakes in the Libyan conflict for the United States and other Western countries,” and that his comments “underlined the American eagerness for a cut of any potential profits” (Kirkpatrick, 2011/9/22).

As the fighting ravaged Sirte, Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister of Turkey and a NATO member, also visited Tripoli, “hoping to reap political and economic dividends from Libya’s new rulers.” Turkey had contracts totalling around$15 billion U.S. in Libya. As for other leading NATO members that actively led in the attack on Libya, France and the UK were told by Libya’s NTC that “their support may be repaid in business contracts” (Logan & Farge, 2011/9/16).

As early as a week before Muammar Gaddafi was murdered in Sirte on October 20, a delegation of 80 French companies arrived in Tripoli to meet with the new NTC regime and the new British defence minister, Philip Hammond, urged British companies to “pack their suitcases” and head to Tripoli. Western security, construction and infrastructure companies turned the NTC’s dependency on and support for NATO into a competitive advantage, as they spotted profit-making opportunities in Libya. Such opportunities were just starting to diminish in Afghanistan and Iraq: “entrepreneurs are abuzz about the business potential of a country with huge needs and the oil to pay for them.” “Whilst speculation continues regarding Qaddafi’s killing,” Trango Special Projects said on its Web site, “are you and your business ready to return to Libya?” (Shane, 2011/10/28).

Finally, Mahmoud Jibril’s comments deserve mention. Jibril served first with the National Economic Development Board under Gaddafi from 2007 to 2011, and then joined the NTC and toured as its “Head of International Affairs” before serving as an interim Prime Minister under the NTC. He later resigned from the NTC altogether and made some stunning declarations that few seemed to want to discuss. In one interview, Jibril stated quite plainly: “every foreign power you can think of is trying to look after its own interests in Libya. No one is excluded. This is the name of the game. This is politics. Countries have interests in Libya and everybody is looking out for their own” (Campell, 2011). Far from being a humanitarian mission to save lives, deeper interests were at work, according to Jibril himself, someone with intimate familiarity with a wide range of deals that were struck behind closed doors as NATO bombed Libya.

also, i think i've linked this before but

In connection with Syria impeding the achievement of US goals in the Middle East, the Congressional Research Service made the following points in 2005 about the Syrian economy: It is “largely state-controlled;” it is “dominated by…(the) public sector, which employs 73% of the labour force;” and it is “still based largely on Soviet models.”

that's a whole lot of labor-power to free up by toppling the state. primitive accumulation, baby.

April 4th 2011

Mr Assad raises wages and pensions and lowers tax rates

On March 24th Mr Assad issued three decrees conferring significant financial benefits on public-sector employees and on low-wage earners in general, together with a fourth decree amending sections of a 2004 law covering the sale of land in border areas. The package of measures was clearly aimed at garnering popular support in the wake of the protests that had started in mid-March and which had been particularly intense in Deraa, a town near the border with Jordan. The measures were as follows:

• Decree 40. All public-sector wages will be increased by S£1,500 (US$32) per month with effect from April 1st. The Ministry of Finance has specified that this will entail consolidating the heating and cost-of-living living allowances into the monthly salary. An additional increase of 30% of the new consolidated salary will be awarded for all employees earning less than S£10,000 per month, and workers earning more than this will get a 20% raise. The minimum wage for all workers in both the public sector and the private sector will increase to S£9,765.
  
  
• Decree 41. The basic state pension will be increased by S£1,500 per month, again through consolidating heating and cost-of-living allowances. There will also be a 25% increase in the consolidated pension, and the minimum level for a state pension will be raised to S£9,390 from S£6,010.
  
  
• Decree 42. The personal income tax bands will change, based on raising the initial threshold to S£10,000 per month, from S£6,010. The rate for the first band, for earnings up to S£15,000, is 5%, rising to 7% for earning up to S£20,000, 9% up to S£25,000, 11% up to S£30,000 and 13% for earnings of S£38,000, corresponding to the top grade in the public sector. The highest rate of income tax will remain at 22% and will be levied on earnings over S£75,000 per month.
  
  
• Decree 43. Several articles in Law 41 of 2004 relating to the exploitation of land in border areas have been amended so as to tighten the condition for the purchase and development of such land. There have been complaints in many border regions that the law had enabled well-connected business groups to set up highly profitable commercial ventures in such areas, including Deraa, which had damaged the interests of local people.

Aspie_Muslim_Economist_ posted:

Nothing short of abject subservience to US interests is enough, I suppose.

like i said - not woke and intersectional enough

To misquote Celine, when you're in, you're in pic.twitter.com/QTZI3DOzd3

— LENIN_LOVER69 (@PissPigGranddad) October 24, 2016