Luigi is a rich libertarian techbro bordering on AI cultist. he likes Thiel and Musk, he thinks that human immortality is feasible, that AI will outsmart us all real soon, and bought in in a bunch of other tpot/longtermist/ea horseshit hook line and sinker. he also only started caring about state of healthcare industry when it touched him personally. he's not leftist in any useful meaning of this word
just two weeks ago Turkish-allied, trained and supplied SNA attacked Tal Rifat area, forcibly displacing around 120k Kurdish civilians
this week they also attacked Manbij, population around 100k, that was part of AANES for around decade now. there are turkish airstrikes on AANES territory daily for last week, but sure, it's the Kurds that are in the wrong
It's less that Erdogan likes Putin, Erdogan will strike a deal with anyone for his own gain. He was manoeuvring between west and east, but now it's turkish vs russian interests and he won't let it go, unless he trades it for something else. But this time russians have little to offer, and are much more openly hostile to NATO
But they were stopped north of Homs by armor reserves. They then just drove around, and southern command got up and approached Damascus from south, now undefended, rather quickly. Weren't for this, Bashar would be there for like 2 more weeks
There's more. Tartus was russian logistics base for their various African activities, like wagner in Mali or supporting Haftar in Lybia (there's still civil war going on there remember?) Turks do not want to see support for Haftar, so Tartus and Latakia bases need to go. Maybe they'd try to get Assad back and try him in exchange for letting bases stay in some capacity
Also there are some rumors about SDF advancing in Deir-ez-Zor getting evidence that russians did a few false flags as ISIS, so there's that
This is on top of this "we don't want the people who bombed our hospitals" thing. There's probably a few more layers that i don't even know are there
you don't have to get AP article for every claim, but it helps. if you can get geolocated footage, that's still a bit better than just rumors, many of these maps work this way. this time a few things were missing
it seemed plausible when it happened. i still think it's likely that that plane crashed, there's a red dot on FIRMS map for 8.12 around that area that wasn't there before or after. there's a SAM site (S-125) at 34.707328, 36.788321 near Homs and there floated a photo of these missiles on liveuamap. whether these were used in this incident, or usable at all, is different question
you can take a guess by looking at how HTS/SSG administered areas looked like two weeks ago. they might be aiming for something like very slightly more liberal saudi arabia (women are allowed to study)
Syrian Civil War is over. Now another Syrian Civil War will begin
i somehow doubt that that widely divergent alliance of convenience will hold any reasonable time. there's a massive issue of ceasefire between SDF and SNA/SSG/FSA or however they're called now, and it's not like the latter is a monolith. there is everything from former AQ jihadis to secularists and minorities like Druze
Buk (TEL) lacks a radar. Pantsir or MANPADS lacks range (7km altitude give or take). Either they networked radar to Buk, or made these super old S75 work, or planted bomb onboard like with Prigozhin, or something else. It's also possible that F35 sneaked around and took it down with A2A missile, not that we'll ever see it
yeah, luigi is a bootlicker too, he says so in first sentence of his manifesto:
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/luigis-manifesto