Jeza posted:

You gotta play dice with Saudi, basically. Same as the myriad other powerful nations who imprison and execute their own citizens for frivolous reasons, i.e. half the world. You might well argue Saudi Arabia was taking moderating baby steps over time compared to some of those others, at least until 2015. Denouncing them publicly will do exactly nothing beyond a warm fuzzy feeling of moral superiority, and the next time some British idiot in Riyadh has a molecule of cocaine on their Nike Airs they'll just tit-for-tat chuck them in prison for a decade or cut their head off.

Executing Nimr is a pretty big deal though, but it's a sectarian thing. What the hell are we going to do about it? Their version of populist politics is executing Shias, in the same vein as ours is talking tough on immigration and welfare.

forkboy84 posted:

Stop selling them bombers & other weapons? Lead an international campaign for a full arms embargo? You say "you gotta pay dice with the Saudis" but you don't say why.

Yes, lots of other countries behave very badly, but Saudi Arabia is quite possibly the worst one that isn't a pariah state. See how we've treated Iran for decades? Saudis are no better, quite possibly worse.

Jeza posted:

Money, oil. Saudi are a massive trade partner for the UK. They aren't some bit player. You think the UK Government will just drop literally billions of pounds worth of arms contracts with Saudi? It won't matter how many clerics get snuffed. If the UK unilaterally pulled out of selling arms to Saudi, aside from half crippling the arms industry in the UK (I'm sure this thread won't weep however), the contracts will go to the US or Russia instead. No way will the entire world, let alone the West, stop selling arms to Saudi over their national human rights abuses. It's an impossible dream.

Saudi govts at least on the whole are in support of our geopolitical interests in the region.

Jeza posted:

Besides, it isn't like UK terrorist attacks are performed by BAE-built Typhoons or whatnot.

XMNN posted:

Yes, David Cameron will more than likely continue to play best friends with the Saudis because it would be difficult to do the right thing, but that doesn't change the fact that he isn't doing the right thing.

Jeza posted:

I'm not saying what's right or wrong, merely pointing our what you hope for is never going to happen and the idea of leading an arms embargo which everyone agrees to on Saudi seems so distant as to be a mad pipe dream.

Lunar Suite posted:

So the Independent, citing "a Corbyn ally", says "Jeremy Corbyn faces 'beginning of the end' if he fails to win 35 per cent of vote in May elections".

...Why?

thespaceinvader posted:

Because we must set arbitrary targets we feel he will fail so we can prove he's failing like we want him to.

The nameless source is certainly not a Corbyn ally. Unless 'being in the same party' counts as an ally.

(What I kind of hope is that he blows right the gently caress past those arbitrary targets, rather like with Oldham, and just leaves those allies sputtering to try to seem happy congratulating him.

Jeza posted:

I'm not saying what's right or wrong, merely pointing our what you hope for is never going to happen and the idea of leading an arms embargo which everyone agrees to on Saudi seems so distant as to be a mad pipe dream. If it ever happens, we will be reluctant parties, not initiators. The Al-Yamamah arms agreement is the largest UK export deal in history. A country doesn't drop that for human rights abuses, sadly.

It's not a question of the playground politics of someone else doing it too, my point is merely that we only stand to lose by taking the moral high ground. And countries with arguably more repellent foreign policies than us, like the US and Russia, will gladly take up the slack. That is how international politics functions in general.

Lord of the Llamas posted:

Given the current mood in Europe I doubt it'd be that hard to stir up an EU embargo against the Saudis, and then declare that the EU will only trade with countries that also adhere. Basically it's clear we need a common EU foreign policy so we can wave a relatively moral dick around big enough to compete with US/Russia/China.

OwlFancier posted:

There is something mildly worrying about the notion of a unified European foreign policy as a means of combating US, Russian, and Chinese foreign policies.

It sounds like you're trying to set the world up for the start of a really lame RTS.

Lord of the Llamas posted:

relatively moral dick

Jeza posted:

Money, oil. Saudi are a massive trade partner for the UK. They aren't some bit player. You think the UK Government will just drop literally billions of pounds worth of arms contracts with Saudi? It won't matter how many clerics get snuffed. If the UK unilaterally pulled out of selling arms to Saudi, aside from half crippling the arms industry in the UK (I'm sure this thread won't weep however), the contracts will go to the US or Russia instead. No way will the entire world, let alone the West, stop selling arms to Saudi over their national human rights abuses. It's an impossible dream.

Saudi govts at least on the whole are in support of our geopolitical interests in the region.

OwlFancier posted:

There is something mildly worrying about the notion of a unified European foreign policy as a means of combating US, Russian, and Chinese foreign policies.

It sounds like you're trying to set the world up for the start of a really lame RTS.

Malcolm XML posted:

unless you start fracking to remove dependence on foreign energy sources in the short term while you transition to sustainable renewable source but lol @ that happening

blowfish posted:

Bets on Pigfucker doing his best to prevent an embargo against the Saudis?

Ddraig posted:

Given that the EU is (supposedly) a union of the lesser states of Europe into a single political entity I see no real reason why that couldn't be extended to agreement of foreign policy.

Surely one of the advantages of such a union would be that such things would be possible. I imagine it would be about as easy as herding cats to actually implement, but in theory there's nothing too off about it.

Jeza posted:

Saudi govts at least on the whole are in support of our geopolitical interests in the region.

Guavanaut posted:

A shock good proposal from a Tory MP? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35214487

The UK correctly decided that it was a bad idea to have a person's race on any of their official documentation, so this seems like a logical step.

Bonus "we are also relevant" from Tim Farron.

Renaissance Robot posted:

I also take issue with our geopolitical interests in the region.


That'd be nice. Be interesting to see who whinges about it.

thespaceinvader posted:

Because cutting off the resources used by the opposition isn't that?

Let's see, in the past few months we've seen the conservatives:
- Dramatically throttle the already limited powers of trade unions to strike in their members' interests
- Cut off large amounts of political funding from those trade unions to the parties they support
- Threaten to neuter the second chamber for doing their job of vetting and challenging lovely legislation and underhanded tactics
- Threaten to cut off the funding which allows the opposition to act on a level playing field with the Government.
- Repeatedly lie about the motivations of the opposition and utilise a friendly press to make out that the opposition are everything from a security threat to outright terrorist sympathisers
- Start a war (or exppand it to an new country, anyway) with a nebulous and ill-defined foreign enemy in order to stir jingoistic fervour
- Repeatedly demonise the leaders of the opposition for any number of imagined slights to said jingoistic fervour

I don't know about you but I'm getting progressively more and more terrified of Cameron and cronies right now. And this is only 8 months into a 5 year term.

e: some relevant historical fact I don't know.

Kaislioc posted:

Kaislioc posted:

How could you write a post on this without mentioning increasing the number of spies threefold and trying to get powers to spy on everyone in secret courts where it is also a crime to tell people exactly how the government is trying to hack people's PCs and their long standing commitment to getting rid of the red tape of the humans rights act so are boys can't be trialed for war crimes?

quote:

1. Right Wing: Fascists are fervently against: Marxism, Socialism, Anarchism, Communism, Environmentalism; etc – in essence, they are against the progressive left in total, including moderate lefts (social democrats, etc). Fascism is an extreme right wing ideology, though it can be opportunistic.

2. Nationalism: Fascism places a very strong emphasis on patriotism and nationalism. Criticism of the nation's main ideals, especially war, is lambasted as unpatriotic at best, and treason at worst. State propaganda consistently broadcasts threats of attack, while justifying pre-emptive war. Fascism invariably seeks to instill in its people the warrior mentality: to always be vigilant, wary of strangers and suspicious of foreigners.


3. Hierarchy: Fascist society is ruled by a righteous leader, who is supported by an elite secret vanguard of capitalists. Hierarchy is prevalent throughout all aspects of society – every street, every workplace, every school, will have its local Hitler, part police-informer, part bureaucrat – and society is prepared for war at all times. The absolute power of the social hierarchy prevails over everything, and thus a totalitarian society is formed. Representative government is acceptable only if it can be controlled and regulated, direct democracy (e.g. Communism) is the greatest of all crimes. Any who oppose the social hierarchy of fascism will be imprisoned or executed.


4. Anti-equality: Fascism loathes the principles of economic equality and disdains equality between immigrant and citizen. Some forms of fascism extend the fight against equality into other areas: gender, sexual, minority or religious rights, for example.


5. Religious: Fascism contains a strong amount of reactionary religious beliefs, harking back to times when religion was strict, potent, and pure. Nearly all Fascist societies are Christian, and are supported by Catholic and Protestant churches.

6. Capitalist: Fascism does not require revolution to exist in capitalist society: fascists can be elected into office (though their disdain for elections usually means manipulation of the electoral system). They view parliamentary and congressional systems of government to be inefficient and weak, and will do their best to minimize its power over their policy agenda. Fascism exhibits the worst kind of capitalism where corporate power is absolute, and all vestiges of workers' rights are destroyed.


7. War: Fascism is capitalism at the stage of impotent imperialism. War can create markets that would not otherwise exist by wreaking massive devastation on a society, which then requires reconstruction! Fascism can thus "liberate" the survivors, provide huge loans to that society so fascist corporations can begin the process of rebuilding.

8. Voluntarist Ideology: Fascism adopts a certain kind of “voluntarism;” they believe that an act of will, if sufficiently powerful, can make something true. Thus all sorts of ideas about racial inferiority, historical destiny, even physical science, are supported by means of violence, in the belief that they can be made true. It is this sense that Fascism is subjectivist.

9. Anti-Modern: Fascism loathes all kinds of modernism, especially creativity in the arts, whether acting as a mirror for life (where it does not conform to the Fascist ideal), or expressing deviant or innovative points of view. Fascism invariably burns books and victimises artists; artists who do not promote the fascists ideals are seen as “decadent.” Fascism is hostile to broad learning and interest in other cultures, since such pursuits threaten the dominance of fascist myths. The peddling of conspiracy theories is usually substituted for the objective study of history.

Ddraig posted:

From the Encyclopaedia of Marxism:

https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/f/a.htm#fascism


I think we just need to get 9 for a full bingo. IDS alone can completely and totally sustain number 8 on his own, with his completely unerring belief that if he believes it to be so, it is.

Lord of the Llamas posted:

Given the current mood in Europe I doubt it'd be that hard to stir up an EU embargo against the Saudis, and then declare that the EU will only trade with countries that also adhere.

Pistol_Pete posted:

We don't support and trade with the Saudis because the governing establishment likes them, we do it because the governing establishment's view is that the alternatives to the current Saudi regime are either chaos, or ISIS: there is no moderate democratic replacement waiting in the wings. Given the critical importance of Saudi Arabia in the middle east, any collapse of the current regime would likely mean a Syria style conflict spreading across the entire region, which nobody wants to see and which would be a hideous nightmare to deal with.

Once you understand this view (which, frankly, seems a plausible enough one to me), you can understand why we behave as we do towards the Saudis: an unpleasant regime, able to maintain at best a brittle stability, is nonetheless preferable to the alternative of chaotic instability.