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General Trump hilarity free-for-all thread

Started by Mesozoic Mister Nigel, November 22, 2016, 04:26:22 PM

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Junkenstein

This is going to be a fun one. I trust you'll be keeping a good eye? Any updates pleasant, I'm still stuck being able to read but only write on odd occasions.

Also, likely fallout for SA? I'm guessing lots of hand-wringing and polite demands for answers then back to trying to sell them arms in say, 3 weeks? The comment for Hunt about "shared common values" still has me chuckling.
Nine naked Men just walking down the road will cause a heap of trouble for all concerned.

Cain

This case had me interested even before I knew that Jared Kushner might be an accessory to state terrorism.  I actually taught a kid of one of the Khashoggi's for a while...nice lad.

It looks like a lot of civil society issues are cropping up for the Saudis right now.  Nothing earth-shattering, but having prominent businessmen and public intellectuals withdrawing from your state-run organisations isn't a good look for a "modernising" state.  Maybe this will get a few cheerleaders looking more critically at Saudi Arabia's quite frankly insane actions in the past few years.

But until a significant military supplier to Saudi Arabia cuts a trade deal, it's all so much hot air.  Trump has made it clear he gives precisely zero fucks, even though Jamal Khashoggi was a US resident.

Prelate Diogenes Shandor

Praise NHGH! For the tribulation of all sentient beings.


a plague on both your houses -Mercutio


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrTGgpWmdZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVWd7nPjJH8


It is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would plunge us back into the darkness -H.P.Lovecraft


He who fights with monsters must take care lest he thereby become a monster -Nietzsche


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q


You are a fluke of the universe, and whether you can hear it of not the universe is laughing behind your back -Deteriorata


Don't use the email address in my profile, I lost the password years ago

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Prelate Diogenes Shandor on October 11, 2018, 11:49:31 PM
Saudi Arabia really needs to be toppled

Yeah?  What's in this for me?  Besides $6/gallon gasoline and the economy nailed to the fucking floor through its skull?
Molon Lube

Doktor Howl

I mean, looking back, having Libya fall over was just fucking brilliant, right?
Molon Lube

Prelate Diogenes Shandor

#1955
I've got a dozen grand I can drop on solar panels if it comes to it. It's a very significant chunk of my savings but I could do it if need be

EDIT:
In any case, Saudi Arabia is one of the most evil regimes in the world, or at least one of the most efficient exporters of evil. There's plenty of evil governments but the Saudi Arabian government does a really good job of having a negative impact on the entire world rather than jist their own oppressed subjects

EDIT:
They're like Russia or China. They've got enough influence to spread their evil into the world at large. But unlike Russia or China their collapse wouldn't result in a huge number of nuclear ICBMs becoming loose and contested.
Praise NHGH! For the tribulation of all sentient beings.


a plague on both your houses -Mercutio


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrTGgpWmdZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVWd7nPjJH8


It is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would plunge us back into the darkness -H.P.Lovecraft


He who fights with monsters must take care lest he thereby become a monster -Nietzsche


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q


You are a fluke of the universe, and whether you can hear it of not the universe is laughing behind your back -Deteriorata


Don't use the email address in my profile, I lost the password years ago

Cain

Roger's point is that toppling a regime will always have unintended consequences.  Toppling Saudi Arabia in particular would have so many downstream ramifications it would make the Sicilian Expedition look like a reasonable military plan by comparison. 

I'm all for not doing business with them, throwing (Magnitsky Act) sanctions on them, kicking out their diplomats. 

But you topple the regime, the country will fracture.  Ikhwanist lunatics will seize power.  Iran will act to take advantage of the geopolitical weakness of the Sunni Arab states...if the Gulf states don't strike first.  Oil prices will go through the roof.  Innumerable markets face "adjustments" as Saudi money flows are cut off.   Iranian linked groups will try to seize the oilfields, which are in Shi'a majority areas.  Yemeni mercenaries current guarding the southern border will go rogue.  The Saudi National Guard will engage in brutal massacres to try and hold onto power.  The Red Sea will become a haven for piracy, threatening global supply chains.

These are just the things that are occuring to me before I finish my first coffee of the morning.

Faust

But a show of force needs to be made right, If I was even tangentially related to the saudi royalty and traveling abroad I would be nervous right now.
Sleepless nights at the chateau

Cain

Magnitsky Act everyone on that list the Turkish authorities provided, and a few senior members of Saudi intelligence.  And have the former declared Specially Designated Global Terrorists too, just to underscore that this is an act of state terrorism (the effect on the finances are the same, the legal precedent could be very interesting).

Faust

Oh that is a nice way of handling it without the need for tit-for-tat murders.
Sleepless nights at the chateau

Cain

It is.  Even better, the Senate has finally done a smart thing...in the US legal system, if the chairman and ranking member of "an appropriate congressional committee" requests the Magnitsky Act be used, it triggers a provision where the President has 120 days to respond with a classified or unclassified briefing that has to determine if a crime has been committed and whether the President intends to impose sanctions if so.

Bob Corker and Robert Menendez, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, have requested the act be used.

LMNO

It's a weird feeling to see politics actually working the way it was intended, i.e. resolving disputes without too much bloodshed.

Cain

Well, let's not count all our chickens just yet.

Any investigation is going to confirm that Jared and Bolton were talking with Saudi officials about Khasoggi, just days before he vanished.  And the President doesn't have to do anything, other than give a briefing explaining what the investigation found, and what he intends to do.  So of course, Trump will do nothing.

More interesting to me is that a significant number of Senators were willing to to this level right away.  I suspect recent Saudi behaviour has been raising more eyebrows in DC than is commonly acknowledged...maybe the Senate is finally getting sick of having to clean up whatever mess MBS has gotten himself into this week.  They're nowhere near jettisoning the alliance of course, not yet, but it's a step closer.

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Prelate Diogenes Shandor on October 12, 2018, 07:02:33 AM
I've got a dozen grand I can drop on solar panels if it comes to it. It's a very significant chunk of my savings but I could do it if need be

How nice for you.
Molon Lube

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Cain on October 12, 2018, 04:06:45 PM
Well, let's not count all our chickens just yet.

Any investigation is going to confirm that Jared and Bolton were talking with Saudi officials about Khasoggi, just days before he vanished.  And the President doesn't have to do anything, other than give a briefing explaining what the investigation found, and what he intends to do.  So of course, Trump will do nothing.

More interesting to me is that a significant number of Senators were willing to to this level right away.  I suspect recent Saudi behaviour has been raising more eyebrows in DC than is commonly acknowledged...maybe the Senate is finally getting sick of having to clean up whatever mess MBS has gotten himself into this week.  They're nowhere near jettisoning the alliance of course, not yet, but it's a step closer.

I do not expect that this president or congress will do anything to anybody but our own people.
Molon Lube