#121
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#122
UNUSUALY COOL
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internationally recognized! governments don't get better than that!
#123
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cars posted:

internationally recognized! governments don't get better than that!



i won't be satisfied until the biggest stars of today start singing in a video about it

#124
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The thing to know about Erik Prince is that he's very good at taking on jobs and then driving them into the nearest concrete wall at high speed. Also Haftar is running out of money, his last offensive failed (again), and his UAE backers were just meeting to figure out what to do with him. Old grey Soviet-trained artillery officers ain't what they used to be.



Also:


Gregory Shupak: I think that the war will drag on. And I think that the drop in the price of oil, is that something thing to keep an eye on and it’s relevant. However, oil is still the engine of the global economy in many ways.

And it’s also worth considering that oil is not the only natural resource in Libya or in Africa as a whole. And in fact, I think there’s some reason to believe that part of why Israel is interested in Libya is to give Israel more of a foothold on the continent. It should be understood I think in context of Netanyahu’s visit to Chad where he met with president Debbie last year. This was a historic advance for Israel in Africa.

So African countries have all kinds of resources that are of interest to outside powers; mineral resources, for example. It’s not only a matter of oil.

And so from that perspective, I think we can understand a lot of the reason why outside powers have been involved in Libya on not only Israel, and in fact, dating back to the original 2011 intervention to overthrow the Libyan Government, the NATO led intervention, which is sort of brought so many horrors in the country; whether we’re talking about the return to slavery or the emergence of slave markets or the total social breakdown.

So I think that that thirst for resources extends even beyond oil and beyond Libya, itself, to something that we can see as Libya being an outpost for access to other parts of the continent.

Kim Brown: I mean, you raise an excellent point as to what are some of the motivations of Israel to be interested in the Libyan Civil War. But why would Israel take such a risk of being exposed for supporting the warlord Haftar’s forces and in defiance of the United Nations?

Gregory Shupak: Yeah, it’s a good question. I think that Israel has done many things that have flouted international law; certainly with regard to the Palestinians, but also historically in recent history in Lebanon and present day in Syria.

So I don’t know that international public perception or international law are major concerns for Israel. I think that, like most states, Israel is pursuing, it’s ruling classes, perceived material interests. And in this case, that can include not just the natural resources and geopolitics that we’ve been talking about, but things like having an alliance with someone they can work with, which they believe Haftar to be since they’ve met with him, Israeli officials have.

And this could lead to future weapons contracts, for example, if a Haftar were to come to power; so that could be lucrative. Israel’s a big player in the international arms market. So you know it may be that Israel miscalculated like it has in other contexts to endure maybe a bit of a bad press here and there in order to pursue these longer term economic and geopolitical advantages.

#125
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lol if erdoğan wins in libya
#126
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If you go back a page and look at the Foreign Policy article hyping up Russia's support for Haftar (which Al-Monitor has translated to "Hifter," i.e. Hitler? Kinda weird) as a decisive move that'll help him take Tripoli, while he was being smashed outside Tripoli, then contrast that with this article about how Russia has been wary of him for awhile, but doesn't have the heft to replace him with somebody else, then maybe that support wasn't ever that decisive after all. Oh well! Like c'mon, it wasn't Russia that supplied all those armored vehicles in the cool videos with the soldiers jumping through the flaming hula hoops. That was the same supplier as always, the UAE. Then there's Saudi Arabia, Egypt and France -- the latter which buzzed Misrata a few days ago with a jet fighter.

Nice pic of him with the ushanka though.

#127
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sovnarkoman posted:

lol if erdoğan wins in libya