Syria from Space | Hacker News Reader

Syria from Space

bbc.co.uk

108 pointsdigdigdag32 comments

Excellently made article in terms of web tech. It's media-heavy but loads progressively and fast, the employed effects support and enhance the content, resizing the browser works well even in the middle of effects, it looks nice in general and is very readable - great work bbc team who made this.

The 2011/2017 before/after images are striking, mostly because they use scrolling to show the before/after effect. I've never seen that before, and it gives a lot of control over the viewing experience compared to dragging a handlebar.

I wish it were a bit easier to tell which parts of the image are showing bombed areas, since it's difficult to tell whether the diffs are due to explosions or natural changes over time.

To the people who make stuff like this: how much time do you put into a page like this? I feel like (in my world) this would require an endless set of meetings, then design + revisions, then programming, and eventually someone would say "this is taking too much time / costing too much."

> the employed effects support and enhance the content

I thought the scrolling effects distracted from it if anything.

I can appreciate the achievement, but I closed the article halfway through, because the unpredictable scrolling behavior made me feel a little dizzy. I'd have strongly preferred to grab some widget and swipe back and forth to see the before/after images, instead of having the same gesture, which feels like it ought to scroll the page, instead make some elements move some ways sometimes and different elements move a different way some other times.

When plenty of hereditary monarchies are given a hall pass, I cannot fathom why anyone thought cracking open this one might have been a good idea.

I've tried to mull over whatever calculus might have been at play, when a room full of people drew up quiet plans to rip this country apart, and I don't see the motivation.

A generation from now, nothing will be normal in these imploded countries, but kings and princes elsewhere will thrive with no elections at all, I'm sure.

> I cannot fathom why anyone thought cracking open this one might have been a good idea.

Here's one theory: http://imgur.com/uYYaQ8N

That's a motivator, but other factors like the simmering unrest in Iraq that was never adequately contained, the Kurdish separatists, lingering Ba'ath elements, and a prolonged draught are all part of the problem.

> when a room full of people drew up quiet plans to rip this country apart, and I don't see the motivation.

I'm not sure I follow. I'm sure you are aware that the Syrian Civil War started as a popular uprising against Assad, so I don't see where the "room full of people" comes in.

Firstly the West has been involved in Syria for centuries. Secondly every civil war, although starting as a local conflict, quickly draws in international players.

What foreign players were involved in the US civil war? France in particular didn't seem as eager as they were in 1776 to pick sides.

The CSA certainly tried to elicit the aid of France and Britain. The commerce raider the CSS Alabama was in fact built, outfitted, and crewed in Liverpool.

Actually the South's early strategic goals were built around bringing Europe into the conflict. The purpose of Lee's 1862 Maryland campaign was to demonstrate to Europe that the South could survive militarily and deserved recognition and support.

I agree with your second point in the case of Syria, but OP seems to have reduced the Syrian conflict to purely external causes.

America in particular was put in a bind. There was no love for the ruling regime, but none of the rebel groups was going to be any better, and some could actually be far, far worse.

Politically this is one of those things you can't win. If the US went to bat for the regime they lose, everyone will be horrified, and if they back the rebels they end up with another Libya which is still a total mess.

Decades ago this could have been avoided by dealing with the regime head-on, by helping to foster a better political environment without meddling, but that point is long past. Now it's Russia and the US taking turns beating the hornet's nest.

US and aligned nations have spent the years since the USSR was no longer able to "help" destroying Arab countries that do not fall into line. Two invasions of Iraq, the bombing of Libya, one civil war in Syria.

Russia had bigger problems for 20 or so years, but the brutal killing of Kadafi and the overthrow of the Ukraine government (imagine the reaction in the US if Russian-supported protestors overthrowing an elected government in Canada) spurred Putin into action.

On a geopolitical level it makes sense.

http://www.businessinsider.com/stratfor-george-friedman-pred...

George Friedman: "Well what are our geopolitical objectives? First, that North America be peaceful, prosperous, dominated by the United States. Second, that no nation be able to approach the United States militarily ... Those are the goals. It's very simple. We achieve that by making certain that all conflict takes place in the Eastern Hemisphere so we don't have conflict here."

It's survival of the fittest countries by stirring up stuff in other countries.

The main players cracking this one open were rich Wahabis in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Emirates, for whom religious sect is far more important than peace or stability.

The US got into the game late and was stuck in a bind, but the Sunni Arab nations that despised the Hezbollah / Syrian / Iranian Shia (+ minority) crescent were the ones who really financed the initial insurgencies.

The United States dropped over 12,000 bombs in Syria last year. I'm ashamed for my country that profits from perpetuating killing and destruction.

Source?

https://airwars.org

Another interesting remote-sensing analysis would be to look at NDVI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalized_Difference_Vegetati...) - there was already a terrible drought leading up to the conflict, but this war must have also taken a significant toll on the country's agricultural output.

I still don't understand why the US won't fight IS together with Russia and Assad. I though it was well known by now that the FSA and IS are difficult to take apart, they are basically mercenaries fighting for whoever has money. When IS got oil wells (and the means to make money off of them by secretly selling to Erdogan) the FSA, at least partly, became IS. Assad has been saying since the beginning that the FSA are animals, and some of them were barbecuing heads at some point.

Civil wars are just so vicious. The medical effects of this conflict will linger on for decades, and most of the good doctors have left the country.

Not only doctors, engineers as well.

The view from space doesn't quite do the destruction on the ground justice. Also from the BBC [1]. I hope the perpetrators of this atrocity are identified and brought to swift justice.

[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38396747

If the government is overthrown the Alawites will probably vanish from the middle-east. There's a saying "Christians to Beirut, the Alawites to the grave" [0].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectarianism_and_minorities_...

This is a group effort with a lot of guilty parties. There's no singular entity responsible for all of the destruction, everything's way too complicated at this point.

I don't suppose anyone knows which particular NASA dataset the BBC is likely to have taken those images from? I'd love to find one that has high spatial and temporal resolution.

I had a look at the linked article at the bottom (https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/new-night-lights-m...) but looking at the linked layer in WorldView, it's nothing like as high resolution.

No mention of drought in the article. Would it make sense that the drought in the middle east is the single biggest contributor to the instability there?

People argue that US should help Syria? Why? Doesn't US have their own problems? Why spend more money on other countries problems if they aren't helping you back?

I think all US should do is not interfere at all. That means no weapon exports to Syria as well.

I'm with Trump on this. We are not the world's police. Last time Hillary and Co helped, more damage was done.

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