Unlimited MENA Revolt Thread

[Balls Wellington]

Forgot about the Jasmine Revolution in China.

Right about now, I'm guessing most of the people participating in the Jasmine Revolution wish they could forget about it as well.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Forgot about the Jasmine Revolution in China.

Right about now, I'm guessing most of the people participating in the Jasmine Revolution wish they could forget about it as well.

Is it just me, or is the international news beginning to look like a giant game of whack-a-mole?

[Balls Wellington]

Fuck if I know, I don't have TV at my apartment.

ECH,
worst kind of heretic

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Fuck if I know, I don't have TV at my apartment.

ECH,
worst kind of heretic

I haven't watched TV since 1987.  They have these websites, see, where they put news up.  It's a recent innovation out West.

[Faust]

Fuck if I know, I don't have TV at my apartment.

ECH,
worst kind of heretic

I haven't watched TV since 1987.  They have these websites, see, where they put news up.  It's a recent innovation out West.

It'll never catch on.

[BadBeast]

Fuck if I know, I don't have TV at my apartment.

ECH,
worst kind of heretic

I haven't watched TV since 1987.  They have these websites, see, where they put news up.  It's a recent innovation out West.

It'll never catch on.

My TV only gets X-Box since we went digital. I dont miss it much either.

[Luna]

Fuck if I know, I don't have TV at my apartment.

ECH,
worst kind of heretic

I have a TV set up for the sole purpose of viewing DVDs.  Since I moved in on 1/1, I believe it's been turned on (other than setting it up and making sure the bloody thing worked) twice.

[Cain]

Forgot about the Jasmine Revolution in China.

I dont believe twenty guys on Twitter count as a revolution.

Neither does the Chinese government, really, but that wont stop them from treating them as such.

[Suu]

What's a television?

[Cain]

Going rate for mercenaries in Libya just jumped four-fold.  According to the word on the street in Lagos and Conakry, the governent is now hiring at $2000 a day.  That's also four hundred times the average Libyan daily wage.

Gadhafi is looking desperate.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Going rate for mercenaries in Libya just jumped four-fold.  According to the word on the street in Lagos and Conakry, the governent is now hiring at $2000 a day.  That's also four hundred times the average Libyan daily wage.

Gadhafi is looking desperate.

BBC reported that there are claims of Eastern European mercs in Tripoli now as well.

[Cain]

Yugoslav or ex-Bloc?

[BadBeast]

For that kind of money I should think he can get Chechens.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I find it interesting that mercenaries are once again a prime mover in international politics.

Jerry Pournelle was right, but for all the wrong reasons.

[Cain]

To be fair, they never really went away in Africa, or the Middle East.  Britain managed to retain an informal empire after the collapse of the actual one in no small part due to a mercenary, namely Col. David Stirling (founder of the SAS).

I'd be interested to find out if a greater proportion of mercenaries nowadays are state-sanctioned/linked (ie Blackwater, DynCorp etc) or true freelancers, and the distribution of payment between those groups, though.