https://www.quora.com/What-did-ancient-humans-think-about-gorillas-Were-they-considered-savage-men-or-just-animals

"Hanno called them “gorillae,” which apparently meant “hairy men” in one of the local languages used by his interpreters:"

“Amazingly, gorillas wouldn't be encountered again by western explorers until the sixteenth century AD, nearly two thousand years later. An English sailor named Andrew Battel was captured by the Portuguese off the coast of West Africa. Battel, kept on the mainland, described two kinds man-like apes (gorillas and chimpanzees) that could occasionally be seen prowling around the campfire. Later accounts in the 1600's would confuse these animals with pygmy tribesmen.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanno_the_Navigator

"Finally arriving at a bay, the "Horn of the South", there is an island with hostile, hirsute men named "Gorillas""

We can see based on our history that what counts as "people" is a spectrum.

Once upon a time Jews wouldn't have counted the gentiles as people.

Christians wouldn't have counted pagans as people.

Muslims would not have counted infidel as people.

The Britishers did not count third world as people.

The Germans did not count the Jews as people during WW2.

The Jews don't count the Palestinians as people.

What counts as people keeps changing every few decades with some new group no longer counting as people.

It is entirely possible that a thousand years from now we will look at some of the ethnicity from this era and honestly wonder how the people could have been dumb enough in those times to mistake those ethnicity as actual people like themselves.

Would we in the future have museums with skulls of East Asians or Sub Saharan Africans next to the skulls of Homo Neanderthals and Homo Erectus? Honestly nobody knows.

This is the third part of a series where I look at what the situation was for each faction in the Lebanese Civil War every 5 years. It's not meant to cover all the important events of the war, but just to show you how much the fortunes of a person or group could change in so little time.

Part 1: Syria

Part 2: Christian Militias

It was much harder to write about the Shi'a militias as they remain somewhat mysterious. There is abundant sources in English for all the minutiae of what the Christians were up to, but most people who write in English don't know or don't care about the Shi'a. It's even more difficult since Hezbollah was so good at keeping secrets. We still don't know for sure how they were organized, who was really leading them, or how they made decisions. I've also had to greatly simplify some things that were just too complicated to explain, like how the Shi'a and Palestinians interacted. Finding photos was even harder than the research, partly because search engines suck so much these days. I had to translate my search terms into Arabic just to find anything that didn't have a Getty Images watermark.

I repeat my cavaet before that this is about Shi'a organizations, not all Shi'a people. Many of them joined other groups of all kinds: the Lebanese army, Fatah, the SSNP, the Communist Party, the South Lebanon Army. Most had nothing to do with the militias at all.

1975

While the Palestinians and Maronites were training for the impending war, the Shi'a were much less militant. They lived mostly in the Bekaa valley and the south, far from the struggles going on in Beirut. Politics was left to the feudal landowners who dominated rural society. In 1975 their political awakening was just beginning. The charismatic Iranian-born Imam Musa al-Sadr had founded a movement to demand better treatment for the poor who never benefited from all the wealth passing through Beirut. As war broke out he formed his own militia, Amal. Sadr wanted change in Lebanon, but he was not a radical like the leftist Druze leader Kamal Joumblatt. During the intense fighting of 1975-1976 Amal did some fighting against the Lebanese Forces but Sadr kept them out of the action for the most part.

Children in Akkar on their way to fill up water from a well, July 1967. source

Sadr was unique among the faction leaders. Unlike the Maronite and Palestinian warlords he didn't shake down the population in his area for protection money. He sponsored the construction of schools and hospitals in the deprived regions of the country. He was widely respected outside of his own sect as a man who truly wanted to ease the burden of all the oppressed in Lebanon, no matter their sect. Somehow he managed to maintain close relationships with both the Iranian exiles plotting to overthrow the Shah and the Shah's secret police. Iran, flush with cash from booming oil prices, sent money to help Sadr in his charitable works. If there was one person in Lebanon who had the political and military power, the foreign contacts, and the temperament to bring the warring factions together and make peace, it was Musa al-Sadr.

Musa al-Sadr hanging out with his bros, the oppressed peoples of Lebanon.

1980

By 1980 Sadr was dead. On a trip to ask Arab leaders for help during Israel's raid in 1978 he arrived in Libya and was never heard from again, undoubtedly killed by Ghaddafi. His successors Hussein el-Husseini (yes, that's his real name) and Nabih Berri were shrewd but did not have the gravitas of Sadr.

In America they anglicized their name to Berry. I think raspberries are my favorite. They're so easy to grow.

The south was in crisis. Palestinian guerillas from a dozen different factions roamed freely with heavy weapons, oppressing the Shi'a population worse than the government ever had. Their terrorist raids into Israel provoked the Israelis to bomb and shell the border areas. In 1978 a major IDF raid swept over the border area, displacing around 200,000 people. They had nowhere to go except the slums sprouting up in the south of Beirut. Amal was building up its militia but it was in no shape to take on the Palestinians.

Kataeb militia in the the Maronite village Klea on the border. There was a large Christian minority in the south living in scattered villages. They fought for both sides in large numbers.

Meanwhile huge events were happening in Iran. The Shah was overthrown and replaced by Khomeini's revolutionaries, many of whom had been associates of Musa al-Sadr. The new regime kept sending aid to Amal, but some cracks were developing in Shi'a solidarity. Many members of Amal were inspired by the Iranian Revolution and wanted to emulate it. Amal's leaders were not so hot-headed and understood that they could no more build a Shi'a theocracy in Lebanon than they could on the moon. Nabih Berri came from an entirely different world from these rural fanatics. He was well versed in modern society, even working for General Motors in Dearborn for a time. This disconnect between the secular side of Amal and the devout revolutionary side would only deepen over time.

Ayatollah Khomeini having a nice little chortle. He actually smiled but there was some kind of unwritten rule among Western journos that you could only ever show pictures of him scowling.

1985

The cracks emerging in Amal had burst open by 1985. The fanatical elements of Amal had broken away to form Hezbollah. Some Shi'a who had been fighting for Palestinian groups also joined. While Amal's patron was Syria, Hezbollah was armed and trained by Syria's ally Iran. It was an awkward situation as the two rival groups in Lebanon were supposed to get along with each other like their patrons did. Hezbollah during this period was notorious around the world for their suicide bombings. Other groups used suicide bombers, even Christian ones (the SSNP), but Hezbollah stunned the world with devastating attacks against the US Marines and French, the US Embassy, another US Embassy building, and the Israeli headquarters in Tyre. They also began taking hostages, any Westerner they could no matter how innocent they were. Syria was not pleased as it did not want to bring down the wrath of America, especially when these terrorist attacks served more to serve Iran's interests than bring victory in Lebanon.

Survivors search the ruins of the US Marine barracks where 241 men were killed by a single suicide bomber.

The Israeli invasion of 1982 was not immediately opposed by the Shi'a of the south. Some even welcomed them as liberators come to drive out the Palestinians who had been tormenting them. But instead of cultivating them as potential allies, the Israelis treated them like a conquered enemy. Tensions rose, the Israelis began assassinating local imams, and a guerilla war soon broke out with both Hezbollah and Amal fighting the occupation forces. By 1985 the Israelis were in the process of withdrawing to their "security zone", a strip of land along the border, but the war would continue.

The most important event for the Arab world in 1982: Algeria beat West Germany at the World Cup!

Amal was now the largest militia in the nation. The invasion had driven even more refugees into Beirut and, desperate for money, they were easy to recruit. Several small militias had disbanded during the Israeli occupation and now many of the survivors joined Amal. The rapid expansion of the militia made it one of the most powerful forces in Lebanon but also lead to discipline problems as men from different backgrounds with different motives were hired. Weapons and ammunition flowed in from Syria, including a lot of artillery.

When Syria made an effort to bring together all the sects to make peace in 1985 (the "Tripartite Pact"), he brought in Amal, the Druze, and the Lebanese Forces. By now the militia was not just recognized as representing the Shi'a, but as one of the most powerful factions in the nation.

A mother tries to get her children to safety as the Syrians and their allies attack the Shatila refugee camp yet again. This massacre never caught the attention of Western media because it happened bit by bit over years.

Amal had always been friendly with Assad's regime but now it had practically become an extension of it. Berri was forced to do Syria's dirty work, joining with other Syrian-dominated groups to besiege the remaining Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut (the "War of the Camps". Fighting continued on and off for years as Assad was determined to not let Fatah ever use the camps as bases again.

Civilians evacuate Shatila with the help of the Red Cross, 1987.

Despite its relationship with Syria, Amal also tried to get along with Western powers. Hezbollah's kidnappings put them in a difficult position. Amal's failure to rescue them could be interpreted as either protecting Hezbollah or, even worse for their image, that they were not really in control of the chaos in West Beirut. They used the US as a conduit to indirectly negotiate with the Israelis and try to reduce the level of violence in south Lebanon where both Amal and Hezbollah were carrying out guerilla attacks on the Israeli troops remaining in the border zone.

Terry Waite on his way to negotiate with Hezbollah for the release of the hostages. They took him hostage too. He spent 4 years in solitary.

1990

Amal was now no longer a top-tier military power on the same level as Hezbollah and the Lebanese Forces. They had suffered badly in clashes with the Druze in West Beirut ("The War of the Flag") followed by the inevitable clash with Hezbollah, the "War of Brothers". Their militia was large but bloated with troops who were inexperienced and poorly motivated. They were no match for Hezbollah's troops, who were trained intensively by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards at bases in the Bekaa Valley. The war lasted on and off into 1990 with countless temporary cease-fires. Amal put up a good fight in the beginning but Hezbollah gradually gained the upper hand. By the end of the struggle, Amal was in terrible shape. Iran could afford to pay its proxy troops far more than impoverished Syria, so many Amal fighters defected to Hezbollah. In both of these wars, Amal had to be rescued by Syrian military intervention, making them even more dependent.

Amal militiamen, 1980s. source

While Amal's military power was cut down drastically by these defeats, it remained an important player in politics. Hezbollah was hampered by its mission to spread the Iranian Revolution. Most Shi'a were not interested in Ayatollah Khomeini's strange new form of Islam. His vision may have appealed to many rural Iranians but it was less compelling to Arabs who had lived side by side with other religions for countless generations. The idea of establishing a theocratic state where 2/3 of the population weren't even in the same sect was ludicrous, and even if it had been possible most Shi'a would not have wanted it. Hezbollah won on the battlefield but still lost the vote.

Iran banned these bloody rituals done on Ashura. Hezbollah followed their lead and stopped but many Shi'a Lebanese did not.

Hezbollah's military power and the skill of Amal's envoys gave the Shi'a an important seat at Taif where the final settlement of the war was negotiated. At first glance, the agreement doesn't seem to do much for the Shi'a, but there was one important change. Power was shifted from the president to the cabinet, which needed a quorum of 2/3 of its members to do business. In practice, about 1/3 of the cabinet will represent Shi'a parties, so if they have a few allies they can effectively veto anything that the government wants to do by just not showing up.

If you google "amal" you get pages and pages of Amal Clooney. But she's kind of r-slurred so I decided to post Salma Hayek instead.

Hezbollah had a unique position after the peace agreement. Their war wasn't over yet. They still had to drive out the Israelis. While all the other militias were disarmed, Hezbollah was allowed to keep their weapons.

Epilogue

Amal and Hezbollah mended their differences and as the "Shiite Duo" they now cooperate closely. Hezbollah does the bulk of the fighting while Nabih Berri of Amal, a master at patronage and manipulation, handles the parliament. By not attending cabinet meetings they are able to block the government from doing anything they disapprove of. Unfortunately this means nothing ever gets done. The government is completely paralyzed and unable to deal with the many crises that have hit the country in recent years.

Hezbollah troops celebrating on the day of Israel's evacuation.

Hezbollah did in fact use its weapons to great effect over the next 10 years. In the late 1990s Iran began supplying them with antitank missiles. At the same time, Hezbollah managed to thoroughly infiltrate the SLA (Israel's puppet army on the border) and kill or capture key leaders. The Israelis were reduced to cowering in their bunkers. In 2000 the decision was finally made to pull the plug. Without even waiting for the day they had planned to leave, the IDF abruptly abandoned their positions and headed home. Hezbollah had won. The purpose for which it was created had been fulfilled. This would have been a great time for them to lay down their guns or integrate themselves into the national army. But of course nobody puts their guns down when they're on a winning streak. Hezbollah now has come full circle, shooting across the border into Israel and triggering devastating retaliation just like the Palestinians had when they ruled the south.

20 years ago, a Colorado man died for our freedoms.

Today I'll tackle the various Christian militias of the civil war. Many Christians fought for the "Muslim" side in various organizations like the Communist Party and SSNP, but here I'm just looking at the militias that openly identified themselves as fighting for sectarian reasons. Popular Christian figures who sought compromise with the Muslims were forced to flee the country to avoid assassination, so the gangsters leading the militias were the only ones who mattered in those years.

Organizations

Kataeb

These guys are often called the "Phalangists" in English because some journo a long time ago thought it would be cute or something. It was one of the first real political parties to win a large following, formed by Pierre Gemayel, a soccer player who had been in the 1936 Olympics. While some superficial inspiration came from European fascists, their real agenda was independence from France. They represented middle class Christians (especially Maronites) who wanted a Lebanese state dominated by Christians. The last genocide had happened in the 1860s and they had legitimate reasons to fear what might happen if they were swallowed up into Syria or a pan-Arab state where they would be vastly outnumbered by Muslims. In order to prevent this nightmare scenario, they were determined to keep the powers reserved for the Christians in Lebanon's unofficial constitution, the presidency and a majority in parliament. They saw this as the only guarantee against Arab nationalism.

Everyone called him "Sheikh Pierre". I expect the same treatment from you.

During the brief 1958 civil war, Kataeb was one of the main forces on the "right-wing" side against Nasserists. Just as this threat began to dissipate in the late 1960s, armed and militant Palestinians began pouring into the country and acting like they owned the place. This triggered the deep seated fears of many Christians of being swept up into some greater Arab community with no control over their own destiny. They began building up their own militia before the war, trying to train it to be a match for the Palestinians. They were by far the largest of the Christian parties.

US troops land at Beirut to deal with the crisis, 1958. It was resolved peacefully with the help of American troops and diplomats.

National Liberal Party

Like most "parties" in Lebanon this was not a real political party. It was more like a medieval lord leading his underlings. Camille Chamoun was a za'im, one of the wealthy landowners who held his part of the country under almost feudal conditions. He had been president in the 1950s so he had political connections throughout the nation. The NLP was mostly run by people who were in some way connected to Chamoun through his land holdings or political patronage. He had an especially large following among Christians to the south and east of Beirut. His party was second in importance to Kataeb among Christians.

This is some French singer called Camille. Imagine choosing to spell it the way girls do. At least call yourself Kamil or something.

Marada

Suleiman Franjieh was another za'im with his base in and around Zgharta in the north. Many inhabitants of the area had long been loyal to his family. Franjieh was president when the war broke out but much of his power still came from his ability to put men with guns out into the streets to enforce his will in his territory. When war broke out these men were organized into the Marada militia. He had very close personal ties to Hafez Assad, who had sheltered him when he was a fugitive in the 1950s.

Zgharta.

Minor Groups

Several smaller Christian militias were formed as war drew near, such as the Guardians of the Cedars. These groups were motivated by bloodlust and fanatical hatred of the Palestinians. While the larger militias often engaged in atrocities during the war, for the smaller groups that was the purpose of their existance. Each one could put only a few hundred men into the field but they were determined fighters, eager to get access to helpless people to torture and slaughter. With slogans like "It is a duty for each Lebanese to kill a Palestinian" it's no wonder that they were blamed for a wildly disproportionate share of war crimes.

Etienne Saqr, AKA Abu Arz (Father of the Cedars), leader of the Guardians of the Cedars.

1975

Pierre Gemayel put his son Bashir in command of Kataeb's militia and Chamoun put his son Dany in command of his. At the outbreak of war, the Christian militias formed an umbrella organization, the Lebanese Forces, to coordinate their actions. Their forces were not well trained but a large part of the army sympathized with them and supplied weapons, defended key locations, or even defected outright to join the LF. They were a powerful force, at least in the Maronite heartland between East Beirut and Tripoli.

An M113 APC carrying LF fighters. Both sides got some from army defectors and put them to good use. You'll often see guys riding on top of it outside of combat because it doesn't have air conditioning.

Two immediate objectives of the LF when fighting broke out were the hotels district and the Tal el-Zaatar refugee camp. The hotels were tall enough to give an excellent view down into Beirut. They happened to be near the dividing line between Christian East Beirut and the enemy's territory in West Beirut, so they rushed their troops in to secure them first. Tal el-Zaatar was on a hill overlooking East Beirut. Its position in the middle of Christian territory was a major threat to the LF but also an opportunity. The Palestinians had dug fortifications and a maze of tunnels beneath the camp, but they were vulnerable to a siege.

The LF at this point were opposed to Syria intervening in the war, fearing that they would impose some kind of left-wing Arab nationalist regime.

1980

By the end of 1980 Kataeb had destroyed or absorbed all the other members of the coalition. From this point on it and the Lebanese Forces are essentially the same thing. Gemayel first eliminated Marada by hitting Tony Franjieh in his own stronghold in the Ehden massacre. His right hand man Samir Geagea led the attack, famously killing his wife, daughter, maid, and dog in the process. Then he turned on the NLP, launching a surprise attack against his supposed allies, gunning down dozens in broad daylight in Beirut. Chamoun got out of the militia business after that.

This is a dog, perhaps similar to the one that was killed.

The LF had opposed Syrian intervention in 1975 and it did in 1980 as well, but only after coming full circle. Facing defeat at the hands of the Palestinian/leftist forces in 1976 they begged the Syrians to intervene and rescue them. It only took a couple years for them to start resenting their rescuers and their remaining presence in Lebanon and fighting broke out between them. Now in 1980 there was an uneasy calm as the LF held on to the Christian neighborhoods of Beirut. Kataeb had long been recieving semi-covert aid from Israel. By 1980 this was out in the open as the Israelis built up the LF's military capabilities, seeing it as a bulwark against both Syria and the Palestinians.

An upgraded M4 Sherman given to the LF by Israel. WW2 technology still performed well against poorly trained militia.

Some remnants of defected army units and the smaller militias in the south of the country ended up fighting for Israel. Their puppet South Lebanon Army would be a powerful force near the border until long after this war ended.

1985

By 1985 the situation has completely changed. Bashir was dead and the Israelis were pulling back to the border. As they left, the LF entered the mixed Christian/Druze Chouf region and ran into the Druze militia. They took turns massacring each others' villages. In the Christian heartland they were still completely dominant. They had a steady revenue stream from taxing goods coming through the ports under their control and a relatively sophisticated bureacracy to manage it. It was effectively its own little state.

The port of Jounieh. The LF controlled it and several other small ports on the coastline it controlled.

But by now the writing was on the wall. The Syrians were all over the place with no other foreign power to seriously oppose them. The little Christian ministate had no viable future with Syrian artillery in the hills above East Beirut, ready to fire any time they had a disagreement. The LF's leader Elie Hobeika entered negotiations with Syria to bring the LF over to their side. Meanwhile Samir Geagea was plotting a coup against him.

Elie Hobeika deep in thought plotting his next scheme, 1985.

1990

Now there was an entirely new threat. Fed up with years under the thumb of the LF's gangster "militia", a large part of the Christian population was rising up against him. Gen. Michel Aoun led parts of the Lebanese army in attacks against them. He called it the "War of Elimination", vowing to wipe out all the militias, ressurect the Lebanese state, and regain independence from foreign occupiers. The LF was on the defensive, unable to match the firepower of a real army, especially its artillery. But when ammunition supplies from Iraq were cut off and Syria given the green light for a full invasion by the US, Aoun's forces were quickly overrun.

Gen. Michel Aoun, when he was the only one left brave enough to fight against the Syrian occupation, 1990. In the mid-2000s he abruptly decided that they weren't so bad after all and became their main Christian ally in Lebanon.

Epilogue

The LF accepted the Taif Accords but did not fare well in the aftermath. Geagea was now its leader. In 1994 he was arrested for allegedly blowing up a church and 11 people in it. Whether or not he actually did it doesn't really matter. He had certainly murdered many people during the Civil War, especially his Christian rivals. Not that anyone was actually trying to get justice for an atrocity. The Syrians didn't trust him so they had their puppets in the Lebanese security forces pin the blame on him. He wasn't released until the Syrians were finally driven out.

Samir Geagea the elder statesman, who hopes we'll forget about Samir Geagea the hitman of the 1970s.

Today the LF is just a political party doing ordinary political things in parliament, with Geagea still its leader. It leads to some awkward situations. When Tony Franjieh's family was killed, his son Sulemein happened to be away. Now Hezbollah wants to make him president. Geagea has been adament in opposing him. Media outlets like AP and AFP will tell you this is because the politics of the current moment. Really? Maybe Geagea is just worried that the guy is gonna go full John Wick and get revenge for his dog if he's president.

I've had insomnia for about a week, so all I can do is .

I think I've finally come up with a good way to explain what happened in the Lebanese Civil War. Telling a straightforward narrative takes 15 hours and that's only if you skip over a lot of the details. Even if you were willling to take that much time, it's just too complicated to fit into your head. So instead I'm going to take a snapshot of where each faction was at five year intervals from 1975 to 1990. I think that's more than enough to show how fricked-up the conflict was. You'll notice that by the end of the war everyone has fought with and been allied with pretty much everyone else. It's not uncommon to see one party flip between alliances twice before the war is over. You might think that arbitrarily skipping around every 5 years must be leaving out something important, but as you'll see, there were very few actual permanent territorial gains or decisive achievements by anyone so you're not missing much.

I start out with Syria because it is the most important player throughout. If you were going to sum up the war in the simplest way possible, it wasn't between Muslims and Christians or part of the Cold War. It was a struggle by the Syrians to keep other foreign countries and their local allies from taking control of Lebanon. Every other conflict ultimately ties into this. Countless other countries came, got involved, and got out but the Syrians were there from start to finish. When the war finally ended, they were the "winners" left in power over the ruins of Lebanon.

1975

Phoenicia Hotel, 1974.

Syria's most pressing interest in Lebanon was simple: Keep the Israelis out. Only 2 yeras earlier there had been a full scale war and there was every reason to believe it could break out again at any time. Damascus is only 30km down the road from the Majdal Anjar border crossing. If the Israeli troops were stationed there they could be in the capital within hours.

But Assad had other more long term concerns. There had been 10 presidents in the 25 years betweeen World War II and Assad seizing power. He had held on far longer than them, an entire 5 years, but he could hardly expect his regime was built on a sturdy foundation. Many of those coup plots were hatched by dissidents taking refugee in Lebanon. But Syria could not simply close its borders and ignore the outside world. Its economy was much too closely linked to Lebanon's, especially the connection between Damascus and the port of Beirut. Over a million tons of cargo followed this route in 1975. It could not be replaced. If a rival power like Iraq got a presence in Lebanon it would be a foot in the doorway of Syria.

Rare photo of notorious Fatah commando Abu Marsey and his daughter, 1976. Credit to @houellebecq.

Assad's more ambitious goal was to take control of the Palestinian liberation movement. The Palestinians were a chaotic, disruptive force in the region. If that energy could be directed away from hurting Assad's interests and toward his enemies it would give him a great advantage in dealing with the other Arab states. Taking up the leadership of the Palestinian cause would also bring great prestige in Syria itself and the whole Arab nation. Beyond that, Assad personally loathed Arafat since working with him in the 1960s. He would feel much better dealing with a compliant vassal, hopefully part of as-Saiqa, the Palestinian branch of the Syrian Ba'ath Party.

Assad's reply when Kamal Joumblatt insisted on trying to win a military victory over the Christian militias.

He was not particularly drawn to either side of Lebanon's domestic squabbling between Muslims and Christians. He had long cultivated ties with important Christian leaders like President Sulemein Franjieh as well as Muslim Arab nationalists and revolutionaries. The one thing he didn't want was for either side to win a total victory and ethnically cleanse the other. That would bring chaos to his doorstep and possibly even worse, a unified state in Lebanon strong enough to defy his meddling. Oddly enough this meant that he shared a desire for a peaceful settlement with the Americans and he did not turn up his nose at the chance to cooperate with them.

1980

Hafez al-Assad, the protagonist of our tale.

The Camp David Accords left Syria in dire straits. It now had to face the overwhelming military power of Israel on its own. In the past the Saudis had grudgingly bankrolled its army as its contribution to the struggle against Israel, but now that was on the back burner. They were spooked by the Iranian revolution and their own internal troubles and drawing closer to the USA. Syria's friendly relations with the new Iranian regime further isolated it from fellow Arabs.

In this desperate situation, the Syrians and Palestinians found they were forced to work together as they were the only two countries still in active military confrontation with Israel. Jordan and now Egypt had been neutralized. It didn't take a genius to figure out the Israelis would try for Lebanon next. Assad now had to try to keep the Palestinian presence alive so that they and their Lebanese allies could block any attempt by the Christian militias to sign a peace treaty with Israel.

Gen. Mustafa Tlass tries to make sense of contradictory intelligence reports, 1982.

Syria was now more dependent than ever on the Soviets. But the Soviets had been burned by ungrateful Arabs too many times in the past. Syria in particular had angered them by launching the 1973 war without consulting them and playing footsie with the USA during the mid-1970s. While the Americans had continued to supply Israel with cutting edge weapons during this period, Syria was left with equipment 10 years out of date. This would have disastrous consequences when they met in battle.

1985

Shatila refugee camp, Beirut. After the massacre by Israel's allies it was shelled for years by Syria's allies.

Syria's position had flipped from desperation to confidence over the last 5 years. The pieces were all falling into place. Inside Syria, he had survived the Hama uprising, beating the Muslim Brotherhood down for a generation. Israel was pulling back to its border zone in the south and would never again strike deep into Lebanon. But first they had done Assad's dirty work for him, driving out Arafat and most of his troops. The Americans and French had tried tried to intervene but they too had gone home. At this point there was no external power able or willing to seriously contest Syrian domination of Lebanon.

All that remained was to consolidate these gains. Damascus aimed to neutralize the Palestinian threat permanently by backing Abu Musa's anti-Arafat defectors from Fatah and reducing the refugee camps that still defied him to rubble. The Lebanese Forces were a thorn in the side right now, but likewise a carrot and stick approach could be used to break it up into rival factions and bring them under control. As the Israelis left, the Druze once again switched sides back to Damascus. Once the Shi'a, Christian, and Druze leaders were on board it would only be a matter of time before they accepted Syria's dominant position and ended the war.

Syria had suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Israelis in 1982, but the latter had no appetite for more more military adventures. In the wake of the disaster the Soviet Union, apparently as strong as ever, reequiped them with modern weapons.

1990

You ever notice that whenever this dumbass did something really stupid it radically changed the course of world events?

Years of Assad's machinations as well as world and regional events came together to finally put him into position to "win" the Lebanese Civil War. Rival countries had learned to stay out of the quagmire. All major factions inside Lebanon (apart from Aoun's resurgent Lebanese Armed Forces) had been gradually worn down by war, bribery, and assassination until they were unable to resist. Now it was time to bring the international community together to acknowledge Syria's triumph.

Fortuitously, Saddam Hussein picked this moment to make one of his world-changing catastrophic blunders. His invasion of Kuwait brought together the US and all major powers into a united front against Iraq. The Americans quietly acquiesced to Syrian dominion over Lebanon as the price for joining the coalition. The flow of arms and ammunition from Iraq to Aoun's forces, the last hold outs fighting for Lebanese independence, was cut off. Now nothing was left to stop Syria from using military force to crush any remaining opposition.

As favorable as the regional situation was, the collapse of the Soviet Union meant it was time for the Syrians to accept compromise, not push their luck. Without a superpower patron to protect them it was impossible for Syria to win a full scale war against its many stronger foes. There was nothing they could do if Israel or America went in Desert Storm style with overwhelming force. So the Syrians went into the Taif negotiations willing to let the Saudis have a slice of the economic and political pies in order to placate the Arabs and the West.

Epilogue

Aleppo, Syria, 2010s.

It cannot be denied that Assad was ultimately the winner of the struggle. At the end of the day, everyone else had fled the battlefield and only the Syrians remained. Eventually in 2005 they left under massive pressure from within Lebanon and the rest of the world, but their tentacles remain embedded in the military and security services. His regime survived to be inherited by his son who has managed to stay in power despite enormous efforts to overthrow him.

But victory had come at a price that only someone like Assad was willing to pay. Thousands of Syrian troops were killed. Most of his allies in Lebanon were assassinated at some point over the 15 year period. Beyond these tangible wounds, Syria had been gravely hurt in more subtle ways. It was an international pariah, never to be forgiven by either Western or Arab countries. And perhaps worst of all, those long years of war and occupation reinforced in the Syrians the idea that looting, torture, and assassination are the proper cowtools for solving problems. When Syria's own civil war broke out, the younger Assad tried to fix it in the same way and brought ruin to his country.

!historychads

Chud or Chude is a term historically applied in the early East Slavic annals to several Baltic Finnic peoples in the area of what is now Estonia, Karelia and Northwestern Russia.

Who knew the Chuds were a real historical people!

According to the Primary Chronicle, the invading troops of Yaroslav I the Wise defeated "Chuds" in a battle in 1030 and then established the fort of "Yuryev" (in what is now Tartu, Estonia).

This kills the Chud:

According to Old East Slavic chronicles, the Chuds were among the founders of the Rus' state.

As we all suspected, Russoids basically have Chud blood running through their veins.

In Russian folk legends, the Chuds were described as exalted and beautiful. One characteristic of the Chuds was 'white-eyed', which means lightly colored eyes.

Interesting. Chuds really have degenerated over the last 1,000 years haven't they?

Russian bylinas reminisce about the destruction of the Chuds when the Slavs were occupying their territories. When a Chud township was attacked, Chud women drowned themselves, along with their jewels and children, in order to avoid robbery or r*pe

Chud women would rather keep themselves safe than be subject to fiery but mostly peaceful actions in their vicinity, an attribute they and their descendents still express to this day.

Chud has become a swear word in the Arkhangelsk region. As late as 1920, people of that region used legends of the Chuds to scare small naughty children.

Warn all your kids that if they don't behave the Chud is going to come for them! They'll be sacred shitless.

Battle of Thermopylae was cool and all, but that's like their only point of relevance

!Karaboga come and witness the first of our aquatic brethren

Mutton, an Indigenous woolly dog, died in 1859 − new analysis confirms precolonial lineage of this extinct breed, once kept for their wool.

• Indigenous Coast Salish women traditionally wove blankets using woolly dogs' fur, a breed specifically bred for their fleece, which declined in the 19th century due to colonialism and repressive government policies.

• Mutton, the last confirmed woolly dog specimen, lived in the 19th century and his DNA analysis revealed a long history of selective breeding and isolation from other dog lineages, with evidence of European settler-introduced genes.

• The study of Mutton's genetic sequencing and reconstruction of his appearance sheds light on the importance of preserving Indigenous traditions, with hopes of reviving the woolly dog breed through selective breeding and care in the future.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2263518/I-left-love-life-I-thought-I-better-Now-Im-childless-42.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_political_sex_scandals_in_the_United_States#Grover_Cleveland

He also killed two people

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Actor Oliver Reed died during the production of ‘Gladiator.' He consumed 3 bottles of Captain Morgan's Jamaica rum, 8 bottles of German beer, numerous cognacs after challenging sailors from HMS Cumberland to a drinking contest. He then defeated several sailors in arm-wrestling before collapsing.

Tim Leissner was a wild dude.

In  2014, he married Kimora Lee Simmons, while he was still married to his first wife. Leissner gave Simmons photoshopped documents showing that he was divorced, and created a fake email account in his wife's name, pretending to be her in order to convince Simmons that he was really divorced.

Even as a Partner at Goldman, he once seduced and got engaged to a female CEO in an attempt to win her business, and "converted" to Islam to win a big Indonesian mandate.

But the real mastermind of the 1MDB fraud was Jho Low, a nerdy, fat kid who leveraged his relationship with the Malaysian Prime Minister (who is also now in jail) to pretend to be a hotshot financier.

After stealing $4 billion, he paid out $1 billion in bribes, kicked back $150 million to Leissner, and then spent the rest on real estate, a private jet, a $120 million yacht, a $50 million Basquiat, and a $20 million diamond necklace.

He financed "The Wolf of Wall Street," hosted parties in Vegas and St. Tropez, and paid Britney Spears, Kim Kardashian, and Paris Hilton to show up.

He also gave Miranda Kerr $8 million in jewelry to be his girlfriend, and bought Marlon Brando's Academy Award, which he gave to Leonardo DiCaprio as a birthday gift, along with a Picasso.

He is currently a fugitive on the run in Malaysia.

Great book called Billion Dollar Whale

https://www.amazon.com/Billion-Dollar-Whale-audiobook/dp/B07G9JJ6TB