
What was Syria like before the war - iheredia
https://searchingforsyria.org/en/what-was-syria-like-before-the-war/
======
OliverJones
I lived in Aleppo with my family 1962-1964. My dad was a US consul at the
time. It's heartbreaking to see those pictures of that great city trashed.
Half a century is a long time in the history of an American city, but the
twinking of an eye in the history of Aleppo.

The people of the city were incredibly supportive of us -- their guests -- in
the aftermath of JFK's murder. Strangers on the street came up to us to
express condolences.

There was violence back then; the pan-Arab movement of Egyptian president
Gamal abdel-Nasser was stirring up nationalist fervor, pro and con. He was
frightening and annoying Hafez al-Assad, the father of the present ruler, so
government forces were cracking down on Nasser supporters.

But nothing like this.

A family of Syrian refugees lives in my town, and I'm proud to call them
friends. Their eldest daughter is pulling straight As in high school. They get
hassled sometimes by 'murican yahoos, which is stupid, but still better than
being in the Jordanian refugee camp they came from.

~~~
jimmy2020
i am syrian from aleppo, so proud to hear someone talk nicely about my
destroyed city, thanks man.

------
123456789abcdef
I was lucky enough to have visited Syria in 2009. I spent 3 weeks in Damascus.
My impressions at the time:

    
    
        * The pepole were surprisingly westernised
        * Most younger people spoke great English
        * Alcohol was available, but limited because *most* people didn't drink (instead people socialised in tea halls)
        * Cheap oil meant that the taxi to the burger joint cost less than the burger did
        * The people were extremely friendly
        * I never felt unsafe
        * The city was extremely clean
        * ...however, the air was polluted
        * Bakdash pistachio ice-cream was AMAZINGLY good https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakdash_(ice_cream_parlor)
        * The old city was beautiful and packed with history...
        * One day we rented a van to see some surrounding areas. The driver was extremely friendly. He showed us around and told us about the history of the places. I still have very fond memories of that desert trip
    

I had never considered visiting there before that, but left thinking I'd love
to come back. I guess that's no longer possible and I shudder to think that
everything I saw might be destroyed and wonder if the people I met are ok. It
really was an incredible place.

The signs of the Assad regime were everywhere: posters of Bashar al-Assad were
everywhere and armed police on most street corners. Beyond that, it felt very
_normal_ (from a westerners perspective) and I never felt like I was in (what
the US calls) a "rogue state".

~~~
temp_12345
Yeah, this mirrors my impression. It was unequivocally a controlled society :
one simply didn't speak about the regime in anything less than absolutely
glowing terms. The threat of the secret police was persistent.

As far as the people go, your odds of being hustled in Syria were pretty high
(but not any worse than, say, Thailand) - other than that I totally agree wrt
the westernization and general pleasantness.

I don't think it's really possible to argue the country is in any way better
off than it was before the insurrection. I don't want to trivialize the
experience of living in a police state, but there are worse things in this
world.

~~~
ido

        I don't think it's really possible to argue the
        country is in any way better off than it was 
        before the insurrection.
    

The question is then, what would have been a better solution? Surely as long
as Assad was ruling they were stuck (at best) at a local maximum and would
have never transitioned to a free democracy without overthrowing the current
government.

~~~
mafribe

       as long as Assad was ruling
    

Assad's secular dictatorship is massively preferable to ISIS rule, especially
to the 25% of the Syrian population that are non-Sunni.

~~~
jansho
Sigh, it seems so surreal now that the Arab Spring was once cheered on by the
whole world.

Edit: word

~~~
varjag
The less Arab revolutions were stomped on, the more favorable was the outcome.
The progression from Tunisa through Egypt and Lybia to Syria is quite evident.

What's really surreal is so many people in the (still relatively free) West
denying basic agency to their fellow human beings in the Middle East.

~~~
jansho
> so many people in the (still relatively free) West denying basic agency to
> their fellow human beings

Because there's a lot of cynicism with charities and foreign aid. There is an
active campaign here in Britain to reduce the latter and anecdotally, I have
friends and relatives who refuse to donate to aid agencies because they
believe that the whole thing is a sham.

Sure there's bureaucracy, but most of them are genuinely hardworking and
already operating on shoestring budgets...

~~~
wavefunction
You could point them to clearinghouses like CharityNavigator [0] (which is
probably US-centric) that rate the charities on things like how much of their
donations go to administration.

The short of it is that one can donate to Oxfam, Save the Children or Medecins
san Frontieres and remain confident that >95% of funds raised go to direct
relief efforts.

[0][https://www.charitynavigator.org/](https://www.charitynavigator.org/)

------
peterlk
Meta-commentary: This is one of the more fascinating threads I have seen on
HN. It seems to parallel many of the problems with political discourse in the
world today - maybe it's always been like this, but I'm not old enough to
know.

I would break down the comments into several types:

1) conspiracy theorists who believe in some secret cult that is unilaterally
organizing everything

2) trolls - state sponsored or otherwise pushing an anti-humanitarian cause.
They are throwing chaff into the discussion to confuse and disorient and to
detract from the real issues.

3) people with experience in these events trying desperately to be heard -
these are the people meant to be drowned out by the trolls

4) alarmists - people with relatively little knowledge of the actual goings-on
who insist that every minor event is the end of the world (or Syria). I'm not
saying that Syria hasn't been decimated, but that it was (and is) a process
not an event

5) the rest of everyone who is trying to make heads or tails of things and
seems to fall into one of those camps.

So, to one of the brighter communities on the internet (that's you HN) I ask:
how do we (humanity) convey a full, factual picture to one another so that we
may use those facts in conjunction with our values to agree or disagree with
one another?

~~~
lefstathiou
What I find interesting about the Syrian issue is that it is becoming
increasingly clear that diplomacy, the UN, media exposure etc is failing.
Despite this "humanitarian crisis" (which I fully agree is reaching crisis
levels), my impression is that almost all the media outlets and pundits are
ignoring the obvious solution to this problem... unilateral US military
intervention (and before we go there... keep in mind that if that doesnt solve
the problem, nothing can).

So the question I have for the parent is as follows: how far do things have to
deteriorate before military intervention is the only viable and recommended
solution?

It is 100% within the means of the United States to end this situation.

~~~
jl6
What would such an intervention involve? Shoot the bad guys? Which are the bad
guys and how do soldiers identify them?

~~~
euyyn
If by the bad guys you mean only ISIS (and not Assad's or the rebel forces),
that's what the people currently fighting there are doing. Why would it be
harder for US soldiers?

------
candiodari
I wish there were more definite sources detailing what the actual conflict is
about. People are giving all sorts of accounts online and it seems to be
divided into a few camps:

1) western and sunni middle eastern press: it's all Assad's (government's)
fault. People want democracy. Specifically this is supposed to be a response
to violent repression of pro-democracy protests from March 2011.

Problem: very hard to believe. The attitude of the government against the
people of Syria has not changed, and the "protesters" do not seem very pro-
democracy at all.

Second problem: the middle eastern press (al Jazeera) is owned by a government
that would stand to benefit substantially from the pipeline issue. Even aside
from the pipeline, that government is involved in funding the exremists in
Syria.

2) shi'a middle eastern press

Coordinated Sunni attack against one of the two last multicultural/tolerant
middle eastern Countries (the other one being Iran, and while Israel is
multicultural/tolerant Iran doesn't see it that way). It's an attack to
massacre the last vestiges of tolerance in the middle east.

Problem: obviously this is state propaganda. That doesn't mean it's not true,
of course, but there are military interests at stake by the same people who
own these press.

3) Russian press (there were/are hundreds of thousands of Russians from the
Soviet union who lived in Syria)

This is a coordinated assault against the last Russian ally on the
mediterranean. They note the same as the Shi'a press does (attack on tolerance
for non-Sunnis), and also note the pipeline project that would deliver oil
from.

Problem: of course this too is state propaganda.

4) Catholic information sources (there is/was no shortage of Monasteries in
Syria)

Well-funded Sunni extremists attacking (and killing) everyone in sight, with
no identifiable cause. Ethnic cleansing, including even of Sunni's that don't
want to fight for them. They seem to disagree with the notions that the
fighters care about either Russian interests, or the pipeline (though the
funding parties might think differently)

Problem: They're not very willing to come forward with information, and the
few times they do they say they really fear retaliation. The ones that come
forward are refugees.

~~~
netsharc
Not that I have followed it that closely, but of course it's not a black vs
white conflict, more like several factions wanting to win power/suppress their
enemies.

I think it started as a demonstration against the corrupt Assad that turned
violent when his army started shooting. The "rebels" picked up arms and
probably brutally kills pro-government soldiers/citizens, so they are not
saints either. Meanwhile ISIS takes advantage of the chaos to try to win
control of regions. The Kurds are fighting them because there's probably a
Kurdish area in Syria? But Erdogan doesn't like a Kurdish rise, so he's
probably quietly looking the other way as European ISIS sympathisers travel
via Turkey in and out of Syria. Russia wants Assad to stay in power because
he's a puppet, so he's bombing "rebels" and ISIS.

We haven't even mentioned Iran and the USA. As this report
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/16/world/middlee...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/16/world/middleeast/untangling-
the-overlapping-conflicts-in-the-syrian-war.html?_r=0) says, in one side of
the conflict USA (at least Obama's USA) is working with Russia, in another
side they're backing opposing sides.

~~~
mafribe

       started as a demonstration 
       against the corrupt Assad
    

It's unlikely that this was spontaneous, and most likely the first public
result of a planned and well-funded regime-change operation.

~~~
matt4077
Yeah, never in the history of mankind has anyone protested without being paid
by George Soros, right?

~~~
mafribe
I'm not sure in what sense your answer is a constructive contribution.

There is a long history of engineering 'grassroots movements' toward
overthrowing governments. All powers have been engaging in this practise, and
you can find how-to manuals -- I recommend reading some, it's highly
enlightening. For example many of the de-colonialisation movements in the
second part of the 20th century were actively run by the Soviet Union, leading
to such absurdities as Cabo Verde becoming an independent state.

Clearly various powers had strategic interests in destabilisation of Assad.
[1] is an interesting document in this direction.

[1] [https://wikileaks.org/clinton-
emails/emailid/18328](https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/18328)

~~~
shaki-dora
That document doesn't prove anything. It's clearly an email send to Clinton,
so it doesn't reflect her views any more than whatever spam she got. Plus
there's actually nothing nefarious in there. Nobody is disputing that the US
government's position is and has always been that Assad needs to go.

If it were written with more than public knowledge, it would actually proof
that the US and Clinton did not organise any sorts of fake-grassroots
protests, considering the document is arguing for US engagement against Assad
a full year after the war started,

~~~
mafribe

       doesn't prove anything.
    

The world of regime change isn't one where things are "proved". The Wikileaks
mail I cited gives evidence, plausibility. That's the best we can hope for.

Your counterevidence is not going to be a proof in ZFC set theory either ...

------
jimduk
In 2010, before this war, the BBC produced a 5-part documentary series called
"Syrian School" -doing a fly-on-the-wall in four schools in Damascus. I only
saw half of it, but looking back it is heart breaking. The short answer is,
day-to-day life in a Syrian school was very similar and recognisable to e.g.
the UK.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUDxznlkm6Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUDxznlkm6Y)

------
nray
Not Syria but Syrian music, from Aleppo to be precise. I saw the Al-Kindi
Ensemble ([http://www.alkindi.org/](http://www.alkindi.org/)) many years ago,
and you can find an album on Spotify.

The whole evening was enchanting, and reading up on their story, then seeing
footage of Aleppo, I realised how completely gone all that old beauty is.
Daesh hates them too, no doubt, but then that's their thing.

------
iamjeff
This is totally off topic (and may _even_ be taken to be insensitive
considering the plight of the Syrian people), but I had to ask: is there any
way that you/anyone/HNer could offer suggestions on how to deploy such a site
for a non-developer...are there free/self-hosted themes and/or frameworks
whose installation and use is noob-friendly enough to lend themselves well to
interactive storytelling...? Any help/pointers would be immensely appreciated.

~~~
PetitPrince
From a "I think it's more technical" to "I think it's less technical" order:

* This website uses fullPage.js [1], which is a widely used javascript library for such full screen presentation (for instance Apple use it in their Mac Pro promo page [2]). You can get around it's API if you know a little HTML and a little javascript, but it's still a lot of manual work. And the neatier features are locked behind a (totally justified) paywall.

* One neat generator I know is Jack Qiao's Expose[3] which he mainly uses in his travel photography website [4]. Check out those sweet cinemagraphs ! Unfortunately it is a command-line program which may be a bit obtuse to non-developer (especially on Windows), and the text placement has to be set manually

* Shameless plug: as a side project, I made a clone of Expose in Python [5] (demo [6]) with no video support but explicit Markdown support (so you can embed maps, youtube videos and others ). It's still a command line app, but I'm working on a second version that uses Electron and has a more WYSIWYG approach. It is still very much a side project though.

* You could look at some web-based presentation framework. Slid.es [7] is an WYSIWYG builder for the reveal.js library [8]. It's mainly used for Powerpoint-ish presentation (ex. [9][10]), but with a touch of creativity you can do neat thing, like this portfolio [11].

[1]: [https://alvarotrigo.com/fullPage/](https://alvarotrigo.com/fullPage/)

[2]: [https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/](https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/)

[3]: [https://github.com/Jack000/Expose](https://github.com/Jack000/Expose)

[4]: [http://jack.ventures/](http://jack.ventures/)

[5]:
[https://github.com/PetitPrince/pyxpose](https://github.com/PetitPrince/pyxpose)

[6]: [http://petitprince.github.io/pyxpose-
demo/gallery.html](http://petitprince.github.io/pyxpose-demo/gallery.html)

[7]: [https://slides.com/](https://slides.com/)

[8]:
[https://github.com/hakimel/reveal.js](https://github.com/hakimel/reveal.js)

[9]:
[http://motivate.slides.com/motivateco/deck-8-9#/](http://motivate.slides.com/motivateco/deck-8-9#/)

[10]: [https://ourworldindata.org/slides/world-
poverty/](https://ourworldindata.org/slides/world-poverty/)

[11]: [http://ianspiro.com/portfolio/](http://ianspiro.com/portfolio/)

EDIT: Whoa, paradite mentionned Pageflow. This seems really neat !

~~~
paradite
There was a huge discussion of scrollytelling (company creating propitiatory
interactives with Pageflow) accusing Al-Jazeera of using their code:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12524998](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12524998)

[https://www.scrollytelling.io/al-
jazeera.html](https://www.scrollytelling.io/al-jazeera.html)

That's when I learnt about Pageflow.

~~~
iamjeff
Hi paradite.

Pardon the late reply, I have set up fairly aggressive noprocrast settings
which means that I am not always in a position to reply immediately.

Pageflow is especially neat: the pages load fast, the pricing is friendly, and
the company can self-host the page. Thank you for taking the time to reply-
will be checking this out with my buddy over the weekend.

PetitPrince also provides appealing options, some more noob friendly than the
others... I will take the time to download the git repos and see just how
successful I can be installing/deploying the code.

All in all, thank you guys for reaching with helpful suggestions.

------
romanovcode
Refugee stats:

3.6 Women and Children

1.6 Men

God, I hate stats like these, why is it so hard to break up men, women and
children separately to give more insight. Women are not the same as children.

Or is google trying to tell us that woman are basically, well, children?

~~~
tyingq
UNHCR has detailed stats, here:
[http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php](http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php)

If you draw the line at age 18: Roughly, 27% male adults, 25.5% female adults,
47% children.

~~~
didibus
I think it was done to appease people. I have an impression most would feel
more compassionate knowing that there are little men, since they tend to cause
more issues. Though when you split the stats, you see there's actually more
men than women refugee.

------
somename1235
The funny thing that this site is forbidden in Syria (By Google themselvs).

I am currently in Syria, tried opening it, it gave me 403 response (As all
sites based on Google cloud services do)

------
AnonNo15
A few links from Russian fotoblog:

[http://www.tema.ru/travel/syria-1/](http://www.tema.ru/travel/syria-1/)

[http://www.tema.ru/travel/syria-2/](http://www.tema.ru/travel/syria-2/)

[http://www.tema.ru/travel/syria-3/](http://www.tema.ru/travel/syria-3/)

------
Phil_Latio
>Meet 7-year-old Bana, who shared her experience of war on Twitter.

It's like the movie Wag the Dog. Sad to exploit a child like this.

~~~
matt4077
She posted on Twitter:

> Why would they bomb us and kill innocent people everyday? > \- Bana

So I doubt that being "exploited" by the evil UN anti-warmongerers is of
particular concern to her. I'd even guess she would want to help to stop this,
and prevent further atrocities of this magnitude.

You've really gotten away with the wrong lessons from Wag the Dog if you
consider this exploitative. The problem in WtD was that it was intended to
rouse nationalistic furore justifying a military intervention. This is
intended to produce goodwill for refugees.

And, of course, the problem in Wag the Dog was that the girl was an actress in
California, and there was no war.

Are you doubting that there is a war in Syria?

~~~
Phil_Latio
Well I mean this, and it's just the info you find on wikipedia, there is more:

> Observers have questioned whether Bana understands the concepts that she
> tweets about. She is a seven-year-old child who does not speak English. A
> journalist for The New Yorker noted that her "video statements often have a
> scripted quality, as if she is being coached by her mother to communicate
> her thoughts in a language that she is only beginning to learn."

> In a now deleted tweet, Bana said it is "better to start 3rd world war
> instead of letting Russia & assad commit #HolocaustAleppo".

> In a separate incident, Bana appeared on Turkish television program Channel
> TV, where she was asked what her favorite food was, and she replied, "Save
> the children of Syria".

"Bana" is a media campaign.

>The problem in WtD was that it was intended to rouse nationalistic furore
justifying a military intervention.

Yes

~~~
RandVal30141
""Bana" is a media campaign."

A child.

~~~
alva
"Bana" is both a real child and very likely a well resourced propaganda
operation.

~~~
cat199
So many conspiracies!

I simply must put on my white helmet to keep out the radiation..

------
mattfrasernz
I covered what it was like growing up in Syria before the war with fellow
software developer Nada in my podcast if you'd like an in depth answer from an
actual Syrian: [https://mattfraser.co.nz/2017/04/08/s1e1-syrian-woman-
nada/](https://mattfraser.co.nz/2017/04/08/s1e1-syrian-woman-nada/)

~~~
pdm55
Thanks for this. It's always great to hear personal experiences.

I read an interview of a female architect still living in Syria. If anyone has
a source, I would appreciate it.

If I recall correctly, she said what follows. I hope I am not putting words
into her mouth.

She had been urged to get out of the country. She chose to stay as she wanted
to be involved in rebuilding her city.

She criticised those who wanted to go back to what it was like before the
uprising. She said that all was not nice in the past.

She pointed to the corruption in the exam system. She pointed to the fact that
people could not travel freely throughout the city, as different parts of the
city were controlled by different factions.

------
roadbeats
The UN is not objective. They keep repeating the "peaceful protests" thing,
but what sort of peaceful protests would aim to take down the president by
force ? I'm not an Assad supporter but come on, we saw how that peaceful
protests ended up in Libya; France was doing air strike to stop the Libya
government to interrupt the protests, people killed their former leader with
their bare hands.

The only peaceful end during the Arab spring was in Tunisia as their former
president escaped in the beginning. A coalition of western countries took over
their country to "establish democracy", and now Tunisian people are letting
Europe teach them how to be a democracy. It's not free of course. I met bunch
of Danish people getting paid really well for working for Tunisian government,
as a part of the transition.

Syria was a failure for whoever organized Arab spring. Assad gave a CNN
interview in the beginning of the war, saying that he'll lead the transition
to democracy. But, he'll fight whoever choose violence. Whoever organized
those protests already wanted a war, so it didn't matter what Assad said.
Please go back to 2011 editions of your favorite western papers and look at
the news about Syria, reporters based in London were hysterically telling
people about how peaceful protesters in Syria are being killed by a demon,
Assad. Same propaganda machine most recently made campaigns about a group
called White Helmets, founded by James Le Mesurier, a well known MI6 agent.

I traveled three times during the war to the Turkey - Syrian border,
volunteered in the refugee camps there. There was not even one UN tent
although every year they make big promises such as water pipeline, schools,
etc. If you look at UNCHR website, you'll see they are asking money for
regions where they don't even report from because they got no volunteers there
at all. Later, I traveled to other middle eastern countries around Syria and
met chance to meet UN volunteers, told them my observation about their
operation. They explained me how they basically count victims and collect
money. They bring an NBA or Hollywood star to one of the camps in either Iraq
or Lebanon, take some photos and fill the pockets with millions of money that
will be spent in 5 star hotels, business class flight tickets, western bars
and restaurants in the wealthy neighborhoods of poor middle eastern towns.

If you're looking for truth, don't expect these corrupt organizations to tell
you, do some research. Who was the US foreign minister during arab spring, who
has been backing his/her political campaigns ? If you find this name, all you
need is to research that person and find out what he has been organizing
"peaceful protests that turn to violent" all over the world, from Ukraina to
Egypt, from Libya to Syria.

~~~
matt4077
What a load of conspiracy-bullshit:

>If you're looking for truth, don't expect these corrupt organizations to tell
you, do some research.

Here's the data, from the horses' mouth:
[http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php](http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php).
UNHCR runs accommodation for half a million refugees. More importantly, they
have changed tactics in the last decades, and are trying to get refugees to
live among the normal population, instead of tent cities.

If you doubt their numbers, a simple search on youtube will give you hundreds
of videos from UNHCR camps. Are they all fake? Here's one of many:
[https://youtu.be/04sN1xn5tTQ?t=3m17s](https://youtu.be/04sN1xn5tTQ?t=3m17s)

> Who was the US foreign minister during arab spring, who has been backing
> his/her political campaigns ? If you find this name, all you need is to
> research that person and find out what he has been organizing "peaceful
> protests that turn to violent" all over the world, from Ukraina to Egypt,
> from Libya to Syria.

Ohh, now I get it! It's the evil zionist George Soros, isn't it? Yes, I'm sure
it's Hilary Clinton's jewish conspiracy that started all this.

~~~
mythrwy
How does a civilian population suddenly get a bunch of training and weapons
all of the sudden? Why are (or were) so many of the "upset civilians" of
foreign origin?

Cmmon, no need to yell "tinfoil hat Zionist Clinton Soros conspiracy
theorist"! in an attempt to discredit. That doesn't help the "story".

It's plainly obvious there are a number of interested parties who are
participating by proxy. Or openly even. There is nothing conspiratorial about
that. It's pretty obvious.

------
m0llusk
This focuses on the tragedy but is unrealistic about the social reality. Syria
has been loaded with sectarian divisions and strife for thousands of years.
Many of the clans fighting in this war have been in conflict for very long
periods of time already. The quote peace unquote that existed in Syria did so
in large part because the leadership had so aggressively murdered its
detractors. It is true that much has been lost, but it is false that this is
all some kind of strange mystery that was put upon Syria from the outside.
Conflicts festered in Syria for a very long time and eventually without
adequate solutions bubbled over and initiated this catastrophe.

------
kenver
I visited for a couple of months just before the war. Such an amazing country
with beautiful ancient cities.

Here are some photos I posted a while ago from a similar thread:

[http://imgur.com/a/gkqlj#0](http://imgur.com/a/gkqlj#0)

------
alexhutcheson
Highly recommended read (and less political than the title might imply):
[https://theringer.com/syria-barack-obama-
legacy-853644abdd1b](https://theringer.com/syria-barack-obama-
legacy-853644abdd1b)

The author has some great personal stories of what it was like to visit family
in Syria under the Assad regime.

------
bArray
Would love to read this, but no scrollbar. I don't like websites dictating to
me how I should consume content.

~~~
oliv__
Not the time...

------
h1d
Nice presentation. First time I ever saw a web site use phone's gyrometer to
rotate around for 360 view.

~~~
BooglyWoo
Have you seen hypernom.com for visualizing 4 dimensions?

------
75dvtwin
I dislike intellectually dishonest titles, that try to hide the humanitarian
or politically oriented motif.

In this instance, much of the material is not about what Syria was like
before, but about the horrors of war. And that Syrians are great refugees to
have...

a) they do not really want to leave Syria and live in first world countries

b) they are more educated than Americans... With a strange 'inference and
comparasing'

" .. 18 in 100 Syrians* have advanced degree vs 11 in 100 Americans ..."
*Based on Syrian immigrants living in the US

What does it even mean? Syrian refugees have a projected higher contribution
to US economy than Americans?

Overall, the article should have been in Arabic, English, Spanish and Chinese.

The article should have been labeled: "50 great reasons why you should want
displaced Syrian refugees to immigrate into your country..."

------
Joeri
It's an interesting article, but they really should have stayed away from the
fancy navigation. I found it so unusable on my ipad that I gave up halfway
through.

------
guilhas
Syria was and still is beautiful and very rich in culture.

Just a pro-Assad post

Although it is a very complicated conflict, I would argue that most Syrians
like Assad and not "just speak good because their afraid of the secret
police". Just by looking at the videos [1] [2] which capture refugees voting,
we can see genuinely excited people going to vote in someone they always
believed. Even mainstream outlets had difficulty to capture otherwise. You can
see in several places people talking like few would do of their own
presidents. Obviously it was not the perfect country like every other, and
there was people dissatisfied. But what the rebels want is not democracy, is
Assad out. And Islamic law.

[1] Massive turnout for Syrian vote in Lebanon
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vgx6ZmWywM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vgx6ZmWywM)

[2] Syrians abroad begin casting votes in presidential election
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyD61Q5KVNk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyD61Q5KVNk)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXt5MhiPHas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXt5MhiPHas)

Syrian to BBC Reporter: "You Are Not Telling the Truth About Syria"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKjsjEJDMUk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKjsjEJDMUk)

Most Syrians back President Assad, but you'd never know from western media
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jan/17/syrian...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jan/17/syrians-
support-assad-western-propaganda)

Syria: Damascus celebrates as Assad wins re-election
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zufjMn8Jf0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zufjMn8Jf0)

Dr. Bashar Hafez al-Assad wins post of President of Syria with sweeping
majority of votes at 88.7%
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-e7W_INzbo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-e7W_INzbo)

Syria Election Celebrations 2014/06/05 إحتفالات سوريا بفوز الرئيس بشار الأسد
بالإنتخابات
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsgEJvAMt4s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsgEJvAMt4s)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6jMxI16VAg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6jMxI16VAg)

Video Pro-Assad used mistakenly by anti-Assad
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X18sC1kCoK0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X18sC1kCoK0)

Pro Assad Rally - 03a - Aleppo, 19-10-2011
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3f9QB_z-
_Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3f9QB_z-_Q)

Pro Assad Rally Damascus, Syria
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsDP8S3ry1A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsDP8S3ry1A)

Millions attend pro-Assad rally
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNEFfdTNaqk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNEFfdTNaqk)

------
RandVal30141
"I wish there were more definite sources detailing what the actual conflict is
about. "

The death of Hamza Khateeb[1] comes to mind. Political and civil unrest was
already underway, but the open violence against civilians including children
sent Syria down a path. The government butchered that child among others
caught for demonstrations or showing dissent.

"The attitude of the government against the people of Syria has not changed"

Laughable commentary in the face of regular chemical weapons attacks by the
regime and it's paramilitary forces/Hezbollah allies.

This is a government that besieges and pummels civilian areas with
indiscriminate weapons until they accept forced displacement under the
'reconciliation' campaign. To say it's attitude has not changed since before
the protests is absurd.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Hamza_Ali_Al-
Khateeb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Hamza_Ali_Al-Khateeb)

~~~
candiodari
> The death of Hamza Khateeb

Ok, but how do you go from that to islamic state ? And frankly, how does a
protest like that get organised in the first place by the locals ?

> regular chemical weapons attacks by the regime

Maybe I'm misinformed, but I seem to only recall that the government was
accused of doing this once. This is neither regular, nor was it the cause of
the conflict.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
> Ok, but how do you go from that to islamic state ?

How did Trump win the election?

~~~
gscott
Collusion of the DNC and Hillary campaign to hurt Sanders, Hillary's not ever
turning over her work emails when she was done at the State department,
Clinton's universal college plan which would bankrupt the United States... and
it goes on and on.

~~~
pjc50
Nobody seems to care what _Trump_ does with his emails:
[https://thenextweb.com/politics/2017/01/26/trump-staffers-
in...](https://thenextweb.com/politics/2017/01/26/trump-staffers-insecure-
email-gmail/)

More generally, he's been even more disastrous than people campaigning against
him expected, up to the point of letting Russian intelligence wander around
the Oval Office and take pictures.

------
Kluny
Wow, I'd love to check this out but I got this message:

"It looks like you're using an older device or web browser. Please update your
browser or visit on a newer device."

A bit of an odd thing to see when I'm on the latest version of Chrome on a Mac
and it says "In partnership with Google" right under that. What gives?

~~~
aaron695
Same.

Working on my phone, I think it's mobile only?

~~~
madiathomas
It isn't mobile only. I visited it using Chrome Version 58.0.3029.110 (64-bit)
on Windows 10. Works fine.

~~~
Kluny
Version 58.0.3029.110 (64-bit), except I'm on a Mac. Is it possible they've
got a bug that misidentifies Mac browsers?

~~~
madiathomas
They probably assumed everyone using Mac is using Safari. I have seen lots of
code shared on programming forums that simply check for Mac and assume the
person is using Safari.

~~~
matt4077
Then you should read better "programming forums", because I haven't seen
anything like that since the late 1990s, and it's preposterous to think that
something produced with this level of quality would commit such atrocities.

Also, it does work on Chrome, Chromium, Firefox.

~~~
madiathomas
One of those forums was Stackoverflow. I don't know a better programming Q&A
forum than SO. Please share so that I can switch to them.

------
easilyBored
For the record: I don't think that Mid-East is ready for democracy yet (the
majority wouldn't support basic human rights IMO) so the biggest mistake was
for the "West" to support the Arab Spring. Yeah, those dictators were bad, but
they were predictably bad.

Nature abhors vacuum and radical Islam is filling in.

P.S. I don't care about down votes.

~~~
mattfrasernz
Iran had democracy in 1953. The democratically elected prime minister was
overthrown in a coup that was orchestrated by the CIA in order to protect the
profits of BP. This isn't a conspiracy, this information has since been
declassified. Look it up on Wikipedia. If there's any truth to your statement
that the middle east "can't handle democracy" it's in no small part due to our
interference.

~~~
easilyBored
Name one Mid-east democracy right now that "we" would want to live in /where
basic human rights are protected 1

1\. Minus Israel....not that it fits my description.

~~~
losteric
So what?

1764 America was a subjugated colony of a monarch, I'd hate to live there.
1863 America was embroiled in Civil War, I'd hate to live there. 2017 America?
Democratic global superpower, lots of room for improvement but I still love
living here.

What about Germany? 1944 Germany was a fascist racist shithole. 2017 Germany
is one of the leaders of the free world.

We don't control the past... shit happened, get over it. We learn, mature, and
build the future.

