The western world had no right to go intervening in Syria's internal affairs in the first place. Guns and mercenaries were flooding in what was Assad supposed to do about it? What about those chemical weapons, notice we don't use that as a reason for our meddling anymore? It's because we now know that it was actually rebels on our side who used them and they were supplied by a Saudi prince. We constantly try to imply is was Assad but in fact we knew it was our side almost from day one. Whats the real reason for all this mess? Well it's oil of course. Qatar wanted to build oil pipelines in Syria and Assad wanted to do a deal with the Iranians and Russians instead, so we decided to give him and his people the international equivalent of a punishment beating. The cold war is over? Pull the other one.

Right, the Russians who prop up a dictator whose almost immediate response to the Arab uprising was to fire on the protesters and who terrifies his people into submission with barrel bombs and chemical weapons - they're the good guys.

See here's the funny thing. You or whatever you're reading is stuck in the Cold War mindset of the US intervening to prop up murderous dictators against the perceived threat of communism. However now that it's Russia intervening on behalf of its favored dictators you're too stuck in your narrative to see the irony of your position.

Russia is only intervening against ISIS to the extent it props up Assad. The US still of course supports dictators when it is in its economic interests (see Saudi Arabia and implicitly supporting its war in Yemen) but the fact that it's largely avoided arming the government or rebel groups in Syria, neither of which have their hands clean should indicate a lesson learned from arming the mujaheddin against the Soviets in Afghanistan, not a mistake.

You do realise it was Russia and China who were against causing the clusterfuck in Syria in the first place? At least in Iraq we bothered to come up with an excuse to go to war, even if there turned out to be no WMD. In Syria we didn't even bother to do that, we just said Assad is a bad person and sent in mercenaries and lots of guns and called them rebels and freedom fighters and watched the whole place blow up. Assad is such a bad person? Compared to the Saudi's? The Russians are the only ones who have stopped the place become an ISIS state by now.

@newtboy

you said:
Call it what you will. To me, massive illegal immigration with the goal of territorial control is invasion...no matter why they invaded. Invaders always have a reason.
Hence my making the distinction between Arab and Jewish controlled Palestine. Officially the British were still ruling over Palestine, but in most practical ways, Palestine was already divided before the mass immigration started. There was essentially Jewish Palestine and Arab Palestine, and the normal conflicts between close neighbours with different religion were already significant before the illegal immigration. Of all the places for Jewish Europeans to flee to, the land already in the possession and control of welcoming Jewish Palestinians hardly stinks of invasion to me.

Sorry, I know I tried to refocus on what they should have done and immediately leapt off the rails myself.

You said:
should have fought the Nazis, not the mostly blameless (for the atrocities) Palestinians
A majority of them that made it into Britain and America did just that. In fact, so many fought against the Nazis that when the civil war in Palestine came to a head and WW2 veteran Jewish soldiers started showing up it's counted part of the Arab narrative as 'western' support and part of the unfair military advantage that made Israel the mighty power and the Arab league army the underdogs.

You said:
The U.S. was open...if they could get here.
No, nothing was open. As pictures of the camps spread, doors started opening but that was very much after the fact. Leading up to and during WW2 immigration numbers were very restricted to jewish people. There simply was absolutely no legal immigration option for thousands and thousands of Jewish Europeans.

You said:
neighbors and allies try to secure their borders that are being crossed by invaders
You misunderstand my statement on the Arab League member's intentions. They had NO intention of defending their neighbouring Arab Palestinian's land. Sure, publicly they declared a joint effort to liberate Palestine. Each member nation though was stating that as code for liberate a portion of Palestine by making it a part of themselves. Israel was able to take the best equipped and trained Jordanian army out of the battle without a single shot fired by agreeing with them to simply abandon the portion of Palestine that Jordan proceeded to make a part of itself. The other Arab states made similar bids militarily, refusing to co-ordinate their assaults because each wanted to declare the ground gained their own. As they each rushed their offensives and attacked individually Israel had the time to plant 100% of their forces in the path of each of them.

You asked:
Should I think you call Turkey an invader of Daesh, and you a supporter of Daesh?
In the sense that you are asking, it's a near yes. The original Syrian resistance is a group I really do support, and the Kurdish fighters have largely been on their same side and I support their efforts there as well. Daesh was much more interested in killing the 'legitimate' resistance than Assad and Putin's forces. Similarly, the Russians have made it a firm practice to exclusively attack the 'legitimate' resistance and doing their best to largely not bother attacking Daesh unless forced to. The main reason being that once Daesh is all that's left, the scorched earth fix becomes all the more easily justified, and the actual rebels pose a much more real and legitimate alternative to Assad's government than Daesh.

Haven't you heard? Stormtroopers are deadly accurate. They just had orders in the original Star Wars not to kill anyone because it was one big fake out because a tracker was put on the Falcon.

Look how easily they took out the rebels when they captured Leia, or how many Ewoks they massacred before simply being overwhelmed.

Not really. You don't ask what peoples beliefs are at a job interview, why would you do it here? And asking her to seek faith? It would be no better than panel of Muslims suggesting to a Christian competitor that they should convert to Islam.

Frankly the overwhelming feeling I was detecting from the panel was fear. It was as if the slaves were trying to convince the rebel to shut up lest master hear and give them all the cane. Love is not a command to be obeyed.

*quality Sam!
My grandparents moved to Suquamish, WA after grandpa retired from Sears. I still remember the Salmon Days festival every summer ... good times. Good people [though I was allegedly acquainted with a few of the bad boys of the tribe ... rebel that I was]

Your video, The Rebel Lieutenant, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Jyn Oso, so, not the Rebel agent you were looking for.
Hamill looks like he's desperately trying to keep the Joker in check.

There's church tongue, porno tongue, then there's Rebel tongue.

When I watched the first Star Wars movies, it always seemed that the Jedi were just extremely long lived due to the Force and that the Empire had been in power for such a long time people had forgotten about the republic. Even Yoda mentioned he was many hundreds of years old.

It wasn't until the horrible prequels that this was shown to be incorrect and that it had only been a couple of decades. Of course the prequels also introduced other stupid crap like midichlorians (sp?), ship and vehicle designs that seemed far more advanced than anything the empire had 20 years later, tech like robot sized force fields that block light sabers, the Emperor's face being caused by force lightning (instead of just being ancient), etc etc.

Plus, it wasn't just Han Solo who felt this way. For instance:

Tarkin: The Jedi are extinct. Their fire has gone out of the universe. You, my friend, are all that's left of their religion.

Motti: Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes or given you clairvoyance enough to find the Rebels' hidden fort-(begin force choke).

So, to be fair, either the Jedi should have had very little presence in the Republic in the prequels (like to the point that nobody really believed in them beyond 'that's a bunch of hokum), or it should have been many years between the fall and the rebellion. Of course, that means that Luke and Leia would have to have been like great great great grandkids of Vader's, but either way would have made more sense. Having them basically 'running' the Republic's military and people seeing them use the Force all the time just doesn't fit.

I don't believe the Russian account for a second.

The Turks complained several times in recent weeks of Russian aircraft invading their airspace and I never heard a Russian attempt at denial. Now one's been shot down and the Russians claim it was nowhere near Turkish airspace? B.S.

The Turks have nothing to gain from stirring this pot, but the Russians have a ton to gain, as they're using it as an excuse to bring AA batteries into the area now, weapons which can only be useful against NATO forces, because the rebels have no air force.

The Russian pilot claims he never got any warning, but every other pilot operating in the region from all nationalities heard it clearly.

Putin's been running a campaign against the moderate rebels (the only clear alternative the West would accept over Assad) and has shown no interest in targeting ISIS positions. It's pretty easy to see every action he's taken in the area is to prop up Assad at the expense of everyone else (except ISIS, who reap the benefits).

Your video, vice-chris hedges on what it takes to be a rebel, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Beta was fun! It got old playing the same map. People eventually found annoying advantages like getting an at-st right at the start and stomping/shooting rebels as they spawned. But yes, the sound effects/music alone made the game.