Lily

the arab-nationalist syrian state led by takfiri jihadist exleaders is not to become a democracy in the middle east for anyone who isn't an arab muslim? *gasps* i wonder what other arab nationalist aspirations we should empower next hoping they would respect the indigenous rights of ancient ethnoreligious minorities like jews, druze or assyrians, rather than pursue imperial jihadist genocides.

for anyone wondering what's really happening with the 360º from assad to alsharaa in syria- these arab nationalists align geopolitically against russia and china bc of turkey, and turkey is in NATO, meaning they want to seem democratic to western leaders and at least an obstacle for iran (philo-zionist, ideally) to the US.

turkish nationalists support ethnically turkic peoples such as the uyghurs -especially turkish fascists- and both turkey and syrian warlords of all stripes wanted to curb kurdish autonomy.

so these factions of syrian rebels (anti-assad) trained uyghur fighters, too. they are takfiri, jihadists who accuse other jihadists of being kafir, especially those who align with marxists; they are enemies of iran, and had ties to DAESH. so alsharaa wants to be friends with people who are bad news for kurdish self-determination, like turkish leaders (and for erdogan, this is an 'enemy of my enemy' situation), and that means people who oppose NATO don't like such alliances (that's russia). and because china isn't exactly fond of takfiri who promote separatism in xinjiang, alsharaa sees in the rivals of china potential alignments (that's the US and EU).

don't be fooled, though. nothing that happened in syria brings it closer to freedom for women, queers, freethinkers, or religious ethnic minorities like christians or the druze. it's quicksand.

Basically it was an electoral college system where people had to apply to join the electoral committee for each district*, then they elect candidates that barely did any sort of campaigning. And 1/3rd of the seats of parliament is appointed directly by the president.

Allegedly, this was because the government had no electoral infrastructure or voter registration (which is fair, the country is fresh out of a war so census data is unreliable).

* the Druze-majority Sweida governorate and the SDF-controlled Raqqa and Hasaka governorates had their elections postponed because of "security concerns" (read: government doesn't have much control over there), so they don't get any representation.

Given the complete lack of any sort of elected legislature before this is kinda a step in the right direction but calling them elections really paints the wrong picture of the situation.

He always has a Lot to report.

This is often forgotten or denied because the community has built itself around it and accommodated itself to it like a tree growing around a boulder.

There is not a single tech in the game that would not benefit from leniency mechanics, minimal predictability (cb or ultras especially) and proper player feedback.