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Author Topic: AmeriPol thread  (Read 3533559 times)

EnigmaticHat

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Re: AmeriPol: new thread subtitle pending
« Reply #19845 on: May 15, 2018, 11:48:28 am »

They are throwing molotov cocktails at soldiers, lighting kites on fire and releasing them over the fence to try and start brush fires, and generally demonstrating which is the civilized side of the border.

Sure, the civilized side is the one with most gun, right? Israel pretty much live by:
"Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not. "

I mean, it's pretty hilarious that you manage to convince yourself that the side that killed close to 100 since those protests began is the nice, civilized one and the side that killed zero and injured 1 are the only baddies.
Until Hamas is out of power and relative calm is maintained voluntarily, Israel has no reason to trust the signatories of a peace deal. And until Iran stops funding Hamas and like-minded extremists, the radicals won't fall out of power. Peace not parity.
Israel launches retaliatory attacks the same way Hamas does.

And the radicals won't fall out of power until the Israel actually follows its damn treaties.  Its borders extend far beyond what they're supposed to.  They've turned Palestine into East Berlin and West Berlin.  Complete with the walls.

The US STILL supports terror groups by giving weapons to Saudi Arabia.  We use our control of the entity that investigates WMD development to hide the open secret that Israel has nukes, again in violation of international treaties that both them AND us have signed.

Of course Iran wants nukes.  Of course they want an Israel afraid of a local enemy.  Otherwise they're within airstrike distance of a nuke armed rogue state that follows no international laws, lies flagrantly about everything, and is controlled by a far-right militaristic party.  And to top it all off if Israel does do something like bomb suspected uranium enrichment plants, Iran can't do anything about it because they're hemmed in by US military bases.  What do you think happens to the Iran government if they get bombed by Israel and then do nothing in response?  They get overthrown by their own populace.  Or a military coup.*  Militarily Iran needs nukes or else Israel has coercive power over them.  And politically, they need to fund terrorists in order to survive, so they can say they've done something about Israel even tho they actually haven't.  You can say whatever you want about it but we put them in this box and frankly there's nothing you can accuse Iran of that either the US, or Israel, or both aren't guilty of.

*if you don't believe me, remember how we acted after 9/11.  Think Bush would have been re-elected if he hadn't declared war on anyone?

Edit: To be clear, considering Iran is an authoritarian regime I'm not categorically opposed to the US trying to topple or weaken it.  But its silly to do that shit and then get mad at people for fighting back.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2018, 12:22:29 pm by EnigmaticHat »
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Reelya

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Re: AmeriPol: new thread subtitle pending
« Reply #19846 on: May 15, 2018, 12:10:10 pm »

Actually I've been reading more about the Saudis. Apparently they have a program called "Saudi Vision 2030".

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenrwald/2016/04/27/saudi-arabias-surprising-new-military-goals

Quote
Saudi Arabia finally announced its much-hyped Saudi Vision 2030. According to its architect, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, the strategy will eventually wean Saudi Arabia off of its “addiction” to oil.
...
Saudi Arabia is the third largest purchaser of defense and military equipment but builds only 2% of that domestically.
...
Ultimately, the Kingdom would like to localize 50% of the military equipment it buys.
...
In December, President Erdogan of Turkey visited Saudi Arabia, where he and King Salman signed a strategic cooperation agreement that included military provisions. According to reports in the Turkish press, the two countries are in the process of establishing a joint Turkish-Saudi army with a central command in Riyadh.
...
Saudi Arabia is not simply lining up allies in its quest to counter Iran or to suppress the expanding Islamic State. The Kingdom is positioning itself to be the regional military supplier and power that will maintain stability for itself and its allies. 

Basically, Saudi Arabia's published strategic plan is to effectively create for themselves an arms-export industry worth at least $50 billion a year, but probably aiming for 100s of billions (It's supposed to completely replace oil revenue after all), and to pull in as many weaker nations as possible in the region in as client states and keep them buying the gear. Part of the reason for importing so much gear is clearly to look at reverse-engineering it for their own fledgling arms-export business they're trying to build. Now, the thing is, for that to work, you need a threat to keep the people buying your weapons, so we can safely assume Saudi Arabia won't actually go after Iran. e.g. why do that when it's more profitable to keep Iran around and sell weapons to your neighbors? After all, when the oil runs out, they need a new export, and they've already decided that guns and tanks are the thing they're going to specialize in.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2018, 12:17:10 pm by Reelya »
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smjjames

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Re: AmeriPol: new thread subtitle pending
« Reply #19847 on: May 15, 2018, 12:14:02 pm »

What happens when everybody decides to stop fighting? In the hypothetical since obviously Saudi Arabia would keep up the FUD as long as they can.

Not sure whether this should be offramped into the Mideast thread or not as it’s tangentially relevant due to American foreign policy.
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Sheb

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Re: AmeriPol: new thread subtitle pending
« Reply #19848 on: May 15, 2018, 12:38:01 pm »

Well, at least now we have some proper reasoning as to why Saudi Arabia's military budget is so damn high: it's a future business model.

Also a handy bribe for US politicians.
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Reelya

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Re: AmeriPol: new thread subtitle pending
« Reply #19849 on: May 15, 2018, 12:47:10 pm »

However, more recent news is that the Turks and Saudi Arabia had a falling out. Saudi Arabia was buttering Turkey up to be a future military client state as per that 2016 story, but on the side, it came out they were funneling weapons to the Kurds to use against both Turkey and Iran.

"That's a nasty Kurd problem you got there mate, I got these nice planes, guns and tanks that can help with that, wanna buy some?".

Except Turkey worked out what was going on, so apparently they're friends with Iran now, and don't like the Saudis anymore.

~~~

So bringing that back on topic, is Trump saying anything about Turkey now? It seems like a big deal if there's an Iran/Turkey/Russia/Syria alliance brewing. Iraq would probably be drawn into that too.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2018, 12:57:38 pm by Reelya »
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Trekkin

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Re: AmeriPol: new thread subtitle pending
« Reply #19850 on: May 15, 2018, 01:06:07 pm »

What happens when everybody decides to stop fighting? In the hypothetical since obviously Saudi Arabia would keep up the FUD as long as they can.

I don't think anyone knows. The whole region has been anomalously violent for at least six thousand years, so there's not really a sense of what it looked like before the onset of hostilities to serve as a baseline for the shifts an ordinary war would effect. Every attempt to unilaterally impose a new order thus far has also done little more than reorganize the existing belligerents, as well.

That's not to say that there can't be a lasting peace, only that I don't think we have any data to inform a model of what it'd look like.
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Magistrum

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Re: AmeriPol: new thread subtitle pending
« Reply #19851 on: May 15, 2018, 01:12:42 pm »

It gets really peaceful when a single unopposable dictator holds it down with extreme violence, but them again, you would need to do so for long enough that secularism became popular, and you neither want nor can hold it like that for long.
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Reelya

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Re: AmeriPol: new thread subtitle pending
« Reply #19852 on: May 15, 2018, 01:16:48 pm »

The "anomalously violent for at least six thousand years," year thing is pretty wrong.

Remember that the Ottoman Empire controlled most of the region from ~1520 to 1918. They weren't warring each other for 400+ solid years because they were all under one unified government.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2018, 01:19:54 pm by Reelya »
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Dunamisdeos

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Re: AmeriPol: new thread subtitle pending
« Reply #19853 on: May 15, 2018, 01:17:44 pm »

If my memory serves, there was a period before that where the area was more or less unified, and then the Mongols came and flattened everything.

And then before that was the Roman Empire, they held most of that territory.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2018, 01:19:51 pm by Dunamisdeos »
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Reelya

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Re: AmeriPol: new thread subtitle pending
« Reply #19854 on: May 15, 2018, 01:22:06 pm »

Yeah, though the thing is the claim was "anomalously violent" but we have European history to compare that to. There's nothing anomolous about the middle-east. e.g. they had a 400+ year empire / single government ruling them up until the early 20th century whereas Europe in that period was all over the shop. And even then, Europe in the 20th century wasn't exactly peaceful for the first half of last century.

Really, Europe can only claim to be "anomalously peaceful" since 1945. And the main reason for that lull in conflict was that everyone was terrified of the gigantic mass-murdering empire next door (the Soviets).

If my memory serves, there was a period before that where the area was more or less unified, and then the Mongols came and flattened everything.

And then before that was the Roman Empire, they held most of that territory.

don't forget the period in which the Catholics invaded and flattened everything. That's a relevant point to the discussion.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2018, 01:28:46 pm by Reelya »
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wierd

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Re: AmeriPol: new thread subtitle pending
« Reply #19855 on: May 15, 2018, 01:25:25 pm »

The issue, IM(N)HO, is that the popular belief structures are mutually exclusive, and mutually abusive. (or at least, promote mutual abuse of the outed group.)

EG---

Jews view that they are god's chosen, and get special privilege.
Muslims believe that they are god's chosen, and get special privilege.

Only one can be god's special, spoiled child caste. Neither will relent about being the special one.

The only long term viable solution is cultural extinction of one (or both) groups. Since that is unethical, I cannot provide a solution.
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Trekkin

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Re: AmeriPol: new thread subtitle pending
« Reply #19856 on: May 15, 2018, 01:29:12 pm »

If my memory serves, there was a period before that where the area was more or less unified, and then the Mongols came and flattened everything.

And then before that was the Roman Empire, they held most of that territory.

I'm not arguing that it's never been unified, just that even when it's been unified it hasn't been peaceful where "peace" is defined in terms of the rate of all violent death. Then again, I'm basing that off of this.
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smjjames

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Re: AmeriPol: new thread subtitle pending
« Reply #19857 on: May 15, 2018, 01:37:48 pm »

@trekkin: 6000? That’s practically all of recorded history that’s like saying there was constant war for 6k years, and you might as well apply that to every region if you’re gonna use that large of a timespan.

Tl:dr: 6k is a useless timespan as you’re using ALL of recorded history and then some. Europe was equally fractitious and violent for a very long time, it was only after two huge world wars that it mostly stopped having wars.

Not necessarily saying that the MidEast needs a massive regional or world war or two to calm down.

Also, did SA seriously think they could make Turkey into a client state? The two are on roughly equal terms as far as power goes and Turkey has their own ambitions. Pretty serious misread of Turkey by them.

We’re going way Off-Topic from AmeriPol now.
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Dunamisdeos

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Re: AmeriPol: new thread subtitle pending
« Reply #19858 on: May 15, 2018, 01:41:23 pm »

If my memory serves, there was a period before that where the area was more or less unified, and then the Mongols came and flattened everything.

And then before that was the Roman Empire, they held most of that territory.

I'm not arguing that it's never been unified, just that even when it's been unified it hasn't been peaceful where "peace" is defined in terms of the rate of all violent death. Then again, I'm basing that off of this.

Yeah, I mean I guess the point is that hostilities between the ethnic groups there go way, way back before the present conflict.

The ancient Hebrew folks also flattened things before founding Israel initially, and that was in like 800 BC or whatnot. I don't think there's much in the way of extensive records before then, but the people living there were reportedly less than peaceful as well (accounts given mostly by the folks that conquered them, of course).

I live in America, where we also outright murdered the people that lived here before. There is not a place on earth where a modern civilization does not have a foundation of conquest or ethnic war at some place in their foundation.


We’re going way Off-Topic from AmeriPol now.

This is a true statement.

Here is a new gem from the current US/Iran nucular kerfuffle.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/world/middleeast/iran-sanctions-central-bank-terrorist.html
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Reelya

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Re: AmeriPol: new thread subtitle pending
« Reply #19859 on: May 15, 2018, 01:41:51 pm »

A homicide rate of 25% of the entire population seems pretty unlikely, given that the area would have had fairly good record-keeping, having been part of the Ottoman empire. e.g. if that region did have a 25% homicide rate for virtually forever then at least one writer would have noted that.

e.g. if 1 in 4 people died by being clubbed on the head, how many people died by being strangled, stabbed, poisoned, drowned in a bathtub, shot with an arrow? e.g. homicides that aren't head-bashing with a blunt instrument. Unless literally everyone in the region walked around constantly with clubs for 6000 years and no other weapons, it seems far-fetched and too convenient. Something's wrong with their data set , or with their interpretation.

EDIT: it doesn't seem likely. The British did comprehensive surveys and worked out infant mortality in the Palestinian territory back in the early 20th century. If you made it past 5 years old (infant mortality), you would usually live to about 50 years old, e.g. similar to a European as long as you didn't succumb to infant diseases. That's not really consistent with the idea that 25% of people were bashed to death.
http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/Story559.html
« Last Edit: May 15, 2018, 02:06:58 pm by Reelya »
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