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Liberal_L33t posted:Any movement that the Muslim Brotherhood can't be dis-entwined from doesn't merit an ounce of support from the west. The sooner the west can get that message across to all the activists of the middle east, the better. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-31914964
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Mar 16, 2015 23:06
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How did the US and Saudi Arabia end up so close together? Weren't they originally pretty isolationist?
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Mar 16, 2015 23:14
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karl fungus posted:How did the US and Saudi Arabia end up so close together? Weren't they originally pretty isolationist? uhhh, no? the gulf played a key role in the region by financing the fight against nationalism, secularism, leftism, communism, in the cold war, bankrolling an eternal war against Iran in the 80's, spreading the most reactionary and lovely interpretation of islam that's super subservient to dictators yet also super obscurantist and socially silly, who happily bankroll the destruction of the only shot the arab world ever had at democracy, bankrolling military regimes to kill democracy, monopolizing the entire media of the arab world to ensure no pesky 'free thought' takes root, propping up the western arms industry by buying weapons their too incompetent to use except internally, etc. Israel is the aircraft carrier, while the gulf is the banking arm of oppression in the middle east. utterly indispensable for western interests in the fight to keep the Arab world backwards and in ruin. if I were the west I wouldn't even dream of having a better ally. Al-Saqr fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Mar 16, 2015 |
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Mar 16, 2015 23:26
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What if the United States suddenly ceased to have any foreign policy whatsoever, right now. Basically it's gone except there is no economic black hole in its place, the world just goes on without it otherwise though. What changes in the Middle East?quote:if I were the west I wouldn't even dream of having a better ally. Except for 9/11, funding radicals throughout the M.E., and furthering anti-American radicalism at home or abroad, sure. If they didn't have oil we wanted to buy we'd probably be bombing them. Best Friends fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Mar 16, 2015 |
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Mar 16, 2015 23:30
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karl fungus posted:How did the US and Saudi Arabia end up so close together? Weren't they originally pretty isolationist? Well, once upon a time there was a company called Standard Oil of California who paid a lot of money to the Saudi King for oil prospecting rights. Turned out that they were sitting on the goddamn motherlode, and a lot of other oil companies got in on the shebang and they all started a company called Aramco. A bit later the Saudi King told them that he wanted a cut, so Aramco went to some Congressmen, who they had also paid a lot of money to, and got a deal where they'd get a tax break equivalent to the royalty money they had to pay to the saudis, and so they agreed to split the profits 50/50 with King Abdulaziz with the US taxpayer footing the bill. At this point the whole business was so big and important and the Saudis so wealthy that they could buy a lot of guns and planes from the US, and this was good business all along for the oil companies and weapons manufacturers, and they had, after all, paid a lot of money to a lot of Congressmen to make it stay that way. The rest is basically inertia. The short answer is that it's about oil.
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Mar 16, 2015 23:30
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Nonsense posted:How about just killing the son of a bitch when the idiot actually takes a peak to negotiate? That makes the US even more of a bad faith actor than the Cotton Letter or the Iraq Invasion. All nation-state actors have to work out how to deal with ISIL, and regional players need to bury the hatchet. Have you guys seen Obama's Vice Interview? He confirms ISIL is a continuation of Zarqawi's organization.
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Mar 17, 2015 00:28
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TildeATH posted:Not sure Muslims would agree with you there. I can only say this from my experience, but as a born Muslim and a person who grew up in the ME, this Shia/Sunni poo poo wasn't something I wasn't even aware of. I'm a Sunni, but growing up my parents just referred to us as Muslims, and in my friend group consisting of Lebanese, Emiraties, Syrians, Jordanians, a random German, we're just not up on this stuff. Think about it this way: how much do you know about Christianity? How many kids know even the domination they are? I just remember the vague concept of haram (shame and sin), but that was it. It's the madness of war and terrible current events that brings this up to the surface. To this day I can relate to a Morrocan or a Pakistani due to a similar net of pretty vague things that came up in childhood, but the deep level of religious background passed around here isn't going to be known by the average layman or woman, unless something truly terrible is happening around them.
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Mar 17, 2015 01:04
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JeffersonClay posted:I think this argument fails when we look at the electronics industry in Latin America, where Intel chose to build a processor factory in Costa Rica (now 10th largest world exporter), which has the best environmental policies, strongest democracy and highest wages in the region. Nobody wants to make a billion dollar investment in a country that might explode in 6 months. Even if the other posters hadn't shot this down, it would still have no bearing on where and how electronics manufacturers get the raw materials they process.
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Mar 17, 2015 01:09
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Shageletic posted:I can only say this from my experience, but as a born Muslim and a person who grew up in the ME, this Shia/Sunni poo poo wasn't something I wasn't even aware of. I'm a Sunni, but growing up my parents just referred to us as Muslims, and in my friend group consisting of Lebanese, Emiraties, Syrians, Jordanians, a random German, we're just not up on this stuff. Think about it this way: how much do you know about Christianity? How many kids know even the domination they are? I once met an adult Protestant from Germany who was apparently unaware that there was more than one denomination of Protestantism.
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Mar 17, 2015 01:12
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There is finally a good reason to vote for Bibi.
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Mar 17, 2015 01:52
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In terms of our international standing, what would happen if the US just immediately started ignoring everything in the middle east, except for I guess giving aid to refugees?
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Mar 17, 2015 02:33
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Sharkie posted:In terms of our international standing, what would happen if the US just immediately started ignoring everything in the middle east, except for I guess giving aid to refugees? ISIS would rebound and Iran will invade, triggering Saudi Arabia to mobilize.
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Mar 17, 2015 02:34
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OwlBot 2000 posted:You understand that countries that appear to you to be "ruined" and "out of control", like Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti and Honduras, are actually working exactly as intended? In one case you have warlords competing to bring the cheapest tantalum and diamonds to multinational companies so they can have arms money, and in Haiti and Honduras the persistent poverty, violence and lack of democratic control leads to a desperate populace that has to work for pennies. The American military may attempt to contain some of the violence and chaos so other important things don't get destabilized, but they much prefer a ruined and weak Middle East ruled by Sisi, House of Saud and a handful of greedy dictators who dont' care about their people than one with a stable, democratic governments who might decide to reevaluate their arrangements with BP and Exxon. So failed states warred over by competing bands of thugs in the midst of total anarchy are proof for your conspiracy theory. Because apparently the US wants their subject nations weak and fractured. But states with strong, authoritarian governments who exert total control over the public life of their country and whose authority is unchallenged.....are also evidence in favor of your conspiracy theory. Because apparently the US wants their subject nations ruled by iron-fisted strongmen who wield absolute power. That is some serious Owlbot-grade thinkin' right there.
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Mar 17, 2015 02:50
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The Insect Court posted:So failed states warred over by competing bands of thugs in the midst of total anarchy are proof for your conspiracy theory. Because apparently the US wants their subject nations weak and fractured. There's no conspiracy, it's done out in the open and declassified now, and I've already mentioned that different industries want different things. That's some high-quality The Insect Court strawmanning.
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Mar 17, 2015 03:00
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OwlBot 2000 posted:There's no conspiracy, it's done out in the open and declassified now, and I've already mentioned that different industries want different things. That's some high-quality The Insect Court strawmanning. You do understand that Stable Democracy and the Middle East do no go together right? In fact, the entire region is much more stable when there are strong-handed dictatorships present to quell what would otherwise be numerous warring factions (Ex. Libya, Iraq, Syria, Iran post-1921, Afghanistan during the days of Mohammed Daoud Khan, Yemem during the Saleh days, etc etc etc) towelieban fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 03:06
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towelieban posted:You do understand that Stable Democracy and the Middle East do no go together right? In fact, the entire region is much more stable when there are strong-handed dictatorships present to quell what would otherwise be numerous warring factions. If you read back a bit further, you'll see that someone suggested that big business almost always prefer stability and democratic governance; I gave many examples of industries (logging and mining, for one) that prefer warlordism and chaos because it creates a buyers' market and eliminates any regulatory hurdles. I also mentioned that more geographically fixed and technology-intensive industries like manufacturing in (relatively) stable but poor and undemocratic countries. There's no contradiction here.
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Mar 17, 2015 03:09
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OwlBot 2000 posted:If you read back a bit further, you'll see that someone suggested that big business almost always prefer stability and democratic governance; I gave many examples of industries (logging and mining, for one) that prefer warlordism and chaos because it creates a buyers' market and eliminates any regulatory hurdles. I also mentioned that more geographically fixed and technology-intensive industries like manufacturing in (relatively) stable but poor and undemocratic countries. There's no contradiction here. Oh ok. Makes sense. My fault I jumped in the middle of that, though it was about something else.
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Mar 17, 2015 03:15
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Cerebral Bore posted:
In the west there is this conception of Mossadegh as a great statesman, who reconciled all these discordant groups in Iranian society. It''s not true. There is only one person in the modern era who can make that claim, Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, and he only managed it for a brief moment (maybe one Muharram). By spearheading the nationalization campaign, Mossadegh bought political space from the Majles; he used that space to extend his emergency powers, establish limited women's suffrage and incrementalist land reforms, and hold a referendum dissolving the parliament, so he could permanently bypass the Ulema and communists. By that point Mossadegh had destroyed his coalition and alienated many liberals who felt he had betrayed the legacy of 1906. The notion that all these groups needed to be bribed into opposing Mossadegh is ludicrous. Mossadegh thought he could get away with not purging the clergy or the communists, and remain unaligned, and pursue social democratic reform, all while under blockade. If you'll let me indulge in some counter-factuals: for Mossadegh to have survived 1953, he would have needed to have been the Shah or Khomenei, i.e. get the US or USSR to assist you in creating a secret police and then crushing opposition, or conscript a paramilitary force from your supporters, bypass the army, and crush your opposition ( he should have mobilized the trade unions). As usual I recommend Abrahamian: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2009/08/history-used-and-abused.html
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Mar 17, 2015 03:42
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OwlBot 2000 posted:If you read back a bit further, you'll see that someone suggested that big business almost always prefer stability and democratic governance; I gave many examples of industries (logging and mining, for one) that prefer warlordism and chaos because it creates a buyers' market and eliminates any regulatory hurdles. I also mentioned that more geographically fixed and technology-intensive industries like manufacturing in (relatively) stable but poor and undemocratic countries. There's no contradiction here. Um... looking at your examples I'm really not sure there's any truth to this claim, which is pretty strong, that logging and mining industries prefer warloardism and chaos. For example there are many examples of civil war disrupting mining, for example in Nigeria and Bougainville, places where I suspect international conglomerates would love a more stable government. Timber exports too are dominated by relatively stable states. According to the Swedish Forestries Federation the leading exporters of wood products are places like Canada, Russia, Brazil, and other stable states with strong governments. This bears out when looking at deforestation, which tends to progress most rapidly in stable states with rapidly growing economies like Costa Rica in the 1980s, while relatively unstable places like Nicaragua possess much more extensive forests. Notably Nicaragua's deforestation rate increased dramatically in the 1990s after the end of their civil war. Today only 7.5% of Costa Rica is covered in primary forest, compared to 35.6% of Nicaragua. That mining and logging can exist amidst civil war does not imply it is "preferred," and if you want to make this claim I think you need stronger evidence.
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Mar 17, 2015 04:11
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The diamond trade and coltan are prime examples. The entire electronics industry has profited billions through the latter. There was, of course, a 2010 law in the US that reduced the ability of American businesses to take advantages of the low, low prices afforded by illegal mines run by warlords.
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Mar 17, 2015 04:16
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This is probably best for the Marxism thread, but, the idea that resource extraction is cheaper from conflict zones does not hold up. ISIS are presumably paying less for oil than a non slaver warlord would, but everyone else in the chain is paying more. Making South America a hellhole has more to do with 19th century economics and inertia and Cold War paranoia cooped by individual agendas than it does some greater capitalist master plan. If capitalists wanted hell on earth the entire world would be hell on earth. Edit: yes let's look at diamonds, which are controlled by a cartel to inflate prices via government influence and warlordism. That means the price is actually being raised by them. Best Friends fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 04:20
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Best Friends posted:This is probably best for the Marxism thread, but, the idea that resource extraction is cheaper from conflict zones does not hold up. ISIS are presumably paying less for oil than a non slaver warlord would, but everyone else in the chain is paying more. Making South America a hellhole has more to do with 19th century economics and inertia and Cold War paranoia cooped by individual agendas than it does some greater capitalist master plan. If capitalists wanted hell on earth the entire world would be hell on earth. Again, you assume that every capitalist across every country and industry has identical interests. That's just silly. Many will lobby for similar things (generally lower taxes, weaker regulation, reduction in workers' rights) but can have very different interests when it comes to the level of government investment, immigration policies, strength of central government, and dozens of other things depending upon their size, where they're based and most importantly what they produce or own. And there are other savings to be had aside from wages in getting resources from warlords in countries with weak central governments: disposal costs and other regulations can really eat into profits. quote:Edit: yes let's look at diamonds, which are controlled by a cartel to inflate prices via government influence and warlordism. That means the price is actually being raised by them. The cartel doesn't use warlordism to inflate prices; they use warlordism to acquire the diamonds as cheaply as possible. To inflate prices as a cartel they control the rate at which diamonds are sold to artificially limit the supply. Unsurprisingly they want the biggest gap between how much they paid for the diamond and how much they can sell it for. OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 04:32 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 04:30
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OwlBot 2000 posted:The diamond trade and coltan are prime examples. The entire electronics industry has profited billions through the latter. There was, of course, a 2010 law in the US that reduced the ability of American businesses to take advantages of the low, low prices afforded by illegal mines run by warlords. They are not good examples. The fact there is still trade within conflict zones of Central and West Africa does not imply that this is an optimal, or even desirable state of affairs for "big business." To use Syria as an example again petroleum production has plummeted since the revolution began, and a few Kurds running pickup trucks loaded with jerrycans into Turkey isn't making up the billions of dollars lost through the destruction of Syria's infrastructure. Like, those diamonds and that coltan would still be mined even if there wasn't war in those places. There's still money to be made in conflicts, but I don't see any reason to believe they profit specifically BECAUSE of the conflict. Frontline recently had a good documentary relevant to this conversation, about firestone's rubber plantations in Liberia, and how the company reacted to the civil war in that nation: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/firestone-and-the-warlord/ it didn't make them any money
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Mar 17, 2015 04:45
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Yeah really the only industries that benefit from war are the arms industries and defense contractors. War is bad for business.
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Mar 17, 2015 04:51
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Chuck Norris is a piece of poo poo and I hope he dies (this is a long-standing opinion of mine not a response to that video). He's a gay-hating creationist nutjob.
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Mar 17, 2015 04:55
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OwlBot 2000 posted:Again, you assume that every capitalist across every country and industry has identical interests. That's just silly. Many will lobby for similar things (generally lower taxes, weaker regulation, reduction in workers' rights) but can have very different interests when it comes to the level of government investment, immigration policies, strength of central government, and dozens of other things depending upon their size, where they're based and most importantly what they produce or own. Assuming all capitalists are on the same page is actually the mistake I thought you were making. So yes, some capitalists want to have things be hellholes. Other capitalists do not. I agree, but so what? How is saying "oh this is a hellhole because capitalists" meaningful in any way? If we're not looking at the aggregate, there's no meaningful tendency or system to consider.
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Mar 17, 2015 06:18
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Al-Saqr posted:
This actually touches on a thing that had some folks in the analyst community real excited about Morsi: sure, he had his downsides, but there was a slender chance that he might follow through and unfuck the Suez Authority. No prizes for guessing how likely Sisi is to do so.
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Mar 17, 2015 06:18
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Sergg posted:Chuck Norris is a piece of poo poo and I hope he dies (this is a long-standing opinion of mine not a response to that video). He's a gay-hating creationist nutjob. He already knows bibi will lose anyway, since Obama won, ushering in a thousand years of darkness. This is how it begins.
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Mar 17, 2015 07:52
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Silver2195 posted:I once met an adult Protestant from Germany who was apparently unaware that there was more than one denomination of Protestantism. Well European Protestants generally are either vanilla Lutherans or Anglicans, and are on the whole pretty homogenous. It's only in the US that the evangelical splinter cells really took off, after Europe deported most of them here icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 08:47 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 08:37
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icantfindaname posted:Well European Protestants generally are either vanilla Lutherans or Anglicans, and are on the whole pretty homogenous. It's only in the US that the evangelical splinter cells really took off, after Europe deported most of them here Toplowtech fucked around with this message at 09:14 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 09:12
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Well yeah that's what I mean. I can easily see a German person going " What the gently caress?" on hearing about Baptists or Mormons or the speaking in tongues people and stuff, despite that person being Lutheran themselves
icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 09:35 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 09:29
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Sergg posted:Chuck Norris is a piece of poo poo and I hope he dies (this is a long-standing opinion of mine not a response to that video). He's a gay-hating creationist nutjob. Chuck Norris is an interesting guy. Did you know that in addition to being a noted Quran Scholar and incopetent plagiarist, he also used to be an actor? Well, "actor" might be overstating it, but he has scowled and awkwardly side-kicked things in a lot of movies, including some of the most Muslim hating trash ever put to film. That's from "The Hitman" and apparently the context for that clip is he's an undercover cop trying to provoke a confrontation, but the racism still feels pretty genuine (don't read the comments). Another Chuck Norris movie with disgusting Muslim caricatures as villains was "The Delta Force" one of several movies he did with Menahem Golan and Yorun Globus, two Israeli movie producers who represented something of a cottage industry of B movies where inept, inhuman Arabs threaten to blow things up and then get blasted. That Norris would have would still have friends in the Israeli rightwing is not surprising.
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Mar 17, 2015 09:57
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Dilkington posted:In the west there is this conception of Mossadegh as a great statesman, who reconciled all these discordant groups in Iranian society. It''s not true. There is only one person in the modern era who can make that claim, Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, and he only managed it for a brief moment (maybe one Muharram). I think you've misunderstood my point here. I never said that Mossadegh unified all factions of Iranian politics into one happy family, what I said was that Ajax brought about changes that provided some really solid motivation for all opposition factions in Iranian politics to support a revolutionary solution. It's true that Mossadegh didn't have the true loyalties of Tudeh and the leaders of political Islam, but as he didn't crack down on them he left them other political avenues than toppling the government by force. Not so with the Shah as an absolute monarch and SAVAK running the show, at that point revolution was the only plausible option if Tudeh or the Ulama would ever have their way. Hell, even if Mossadegh's government wouldn't have survived in the end, pretty much any other plausible counterfactual solution wouldn't have left the Shah running the show himself, and thus not set up the political situation that led to 1979. Finally I'm not sure myself whether some groups needed to be bribed into opposing Mossadegh, but it is a documented fact that they were, in fact, bribed into opposing Mossadegh. Even Khomeini himself engaged in some good old graft, IIRC. Therefore it is a bit hard to judge how the situation would shake out if the US hadn's signed on on Ajax and the millions upon millions of foreign bribe money would have stopped flowing into Iran, or at least diminished in a significant degree.
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Mar 17, 2015 10:24
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The regime decided to celebrate Halabja with a chemical attack of their own outside of Idlib in a city called Sarmin.  for babies and chlorine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmvVJYQGKnM
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Mar 17, 2015 11:28
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icantfindaname posted:Well yeah that's what I mean. I can easily see a German person going " Somehow I feel Germans would understand baptists considering what happened in Munster.
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Mar 17, 2015 14:16
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mastershakeman posted:Somehow I feel Germans would understand baptists considering what happened in Munster. I don't see why people think baptists are an American thing. Germany is full of evangelical baptists.
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Mar 17, 2015 14:41
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Volkerball posted:The regime decided to celebrate Halabja with a chemical attack of their own outside of Idlib in a city called Sarmin. b-b-b-b-ut we had an agreement! How dare Assad do this!!!
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Mar 17, 2015 15:01
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Xtronoc posted:b-b-b-b-ut we had an agreement! How dare Assad do this!!! Maybe Kerry could negotiate with Assad how many villages he is allowed to gas per year and reach a grand compromise?
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Mar 17, 2015 15:03
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Xtronoc posted:b-b-b-b-ut we had an agreement! How dare Assad do this!!! the ol' sandwichet Ghawwar.
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Mar 17, 2015 15:04
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Volkerball posted:the ol' sandwichet Ghawwar. Sandwichet Ghawwar: you go to buy a steak sandwich. You get sold a steak sandwich. Unbeknownst to you, the vendor has tied the steak in the sandwich to a string, and yoinks out the steak just as you take the first bite out of the sandwich, reselling it in another 'steak sandwich' to the next trusting schmuch to come along.
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Mar 17, 2015 15:46
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