UnderpantsWeevil @ UnderpantsWeevil @lemmy.world

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Or is there a possibility they’re moving towards something more nefarious?

The Khashoggi killing had roots in a cutthroat Saudi family feud

The cutthroat scheming within the House of Saud over the following years matches anything in the fantasy series “Game of Thrones.” The fallout extended to the United States, China, Switzerland and other countries, as the two most powerful clans of the royal family jockeyed for power. As the tension increased, the royal court around Mohammed bin Salman, the new king’s favorite son, even dared to try to kidnap a member of the Abdullah faction in Beijing in a brazen operation in August 2016 that reads like a chapter in a spy thriller.

MBS, as Salman’s son is known, became increasingly anxious and aggressive toward those he considered enemies. Starting in the spring of 2017, a team of Saudi intelligence operatives, under the control of the royal court, began organizing kidnappings of dissidents abroad and at home, according to U.S. and Saudi experts. Detainees were held at covert sites. The Saudis used harsh enhanced interrogation techniques, a euphemism for torture, to make the captives talk. They were forced to sign oaths that if they disclosed any of what happened, they would pay a severe price.

This real-life drama was described to me in a series of interviews by prominent Saudis and U.S. and European experts, in the United States and abroad, in the weeks since Khashoggi’s death. These sources had firsthand knowledge of events but asked not to be identified because they involve sensitive international matters. The information was checked with knowledgeable U.S. sources to confirm its accuracy. It helps explain the vortex of rage and lawlessness that ultimately sucked in Khashoggi, a Post Global Opinions columnist, when he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.

Here’s the bottom line, for U.S. and Saudi experts who have reviewed the intelligence findings: Khashoggi was murdered by a team sent from the royal court in Riyadh, which was part of the rapid-action capability that had been organized 18 months before. Khashoggi’s provocative journalism and his ties to Qatar and Turkey had offended the increasingly autocratic crown prince, who issued a “bring him back” order in July 2018, one that wasn’t understood by U.S. intelligence until three months later, after Khashoggi’s disappearance in Istanbul.

They literally think they are part of a Master Race and that their magic jizz will create a future line of ubermensch.

It's esoteric fascism.

In a 100 years, we're going to have wars between the scions of the various Sacred Houses of Silicon Valley, as people kill one another for being part of a heretical bloodline.

his six real children

I mean, he fathered them. They're his biological children. And he's a billionaire, so its not like he doesn't have enough cash to spread around. No one is going hungry.

I guess his Nanny’s raised I don’t know

Right. The dude just wanted to maximize his baby-making rate. He didn't want to be a father. He just wanted to have offspring because he's in a Quiverfull cult in Silicon Valley that considers your number of children some kind of high score.

What a bizarre way of looking at the world.

That's billionaires for you. Abolish them.

Why does Trump need an actual terrorist attack. He can just show up on TV, flash an AI generated face-melting re-edit of a scene from the TV show 24, announce "We are under attack and must respond immediately", and fire up the bombers.

At this point, I bet you that you could show Trump a deep fried still-image meme and convince him that we need to strike back.

Why not?

Because Trump doesn't like losing. Iran has already shot down four F-35Is, plus dropping bombs all over Tel Aviv to the horror of the Israelis who thought Iron Dome made them impervious to consequences. The 2002 Millennium Challenge already taught us that an invasion of Iran would be a bloodbath far in excess of our Iraqi Adventure. And Trump fucking knows it, because he was one of the most public critics of Bush's War back when popular opinion soured in 2008.

He needs someone in the room who can convince him that Iran will be a quick and easy win. Alternatively, someone willing to hand him a truly prodigious new bribe. And if he sees Israelis getting their teeth kicked in? While MBS and the Qatars are sitting on the sidelines making the "stop fucking our shit up, we don't need this right now" hand gestures?

Like, that's the whole thing about Donnie. He's a mercenary, not a Cheney-style Neocon with delusions of global domination. If this were Costa Rica or Tunisia or Cyprus? A country that couldn't hit back? Ab-so-fucking-lutely. Same reason he was so eager to drop bombs over Yemen (until they hit back and he got annoyed at his Beautiful Generals pooching it).

But he doesn't want to go down as The President Who Lost An Aircraft Carrier. When he's got a liquored up fuckboi as his Secretary of Defense and he routinely disses his own commanders for incompetence, he doesn't need this right now. Less actual wars, more sending in the Marine Corps Gestapo to gun down rioters in LA.

He doesn't want to do this on his own.

But he'll happily let Congress do a big vote to take the blame.

Europe has not been aggresive at all.

France is no stranger to military intervention in Africa. Indeed, a cornerstone of Françafrique, France’s sphere of influence over its former colonies in sub-Saharan Africa, was France’s permanent military presence on the continent. Since decolonization in 1960, the French military has intervened over fifty times in Africa. These interventions have ranged from brief counter-insurgency missions and evacuations to longer-term peacekeeping operations. While France would scale back the scope of its operations in Africa following it’s failure to stop the 1994 Rwandan genocide, it nevertheless maintained a force of 5,500 troops on the continent.

Over Fifty Times.

Truly, a master of his craft.

I await with interest your explanation as to how and why private gun ownership “caused and supported” the current unlawful government

Dollars to Donuts half those badgeless, masked vigilantes kidnapping people from immigration courts are members of the NRA.

Furthermore, gun laws are deliberately structured such that the police and various government forces throughout the country enjoy considerably less restriction (or even none) on the type, number, and nature of guns that they’re allowed to own and use.

Mulford Act, etc. Sure. The disarming of the public is always at the expense of the working class progressive. It never seems to come for the right-wing reactionaries, the domestic terrorists, or the conservative-aligned militia movements.

But that's where things get sticky, because "Gun Rights" has become synonymous with "Fascist Politics" as a result. Guns are regularly touted as the tools to overthrow liberal politicians. And as a result liberal politicians champion gun control out of a sense of self-preservation. Meanwhile conservative politicians champion more money spent on the security state, because it allows them to arm and organize far-right police, private security, and paramilitary groups.

What becomes extra frustrating is when liberal politicians give conservative paramilitary groups the weapons and funds they need to organize, on the grounds that these conservative paramilitaries will protect the liberals from the Lone Wolf / Rogue Agent. Rather than guarding them, these police agencies effectively take the liberal political class hostage.

"Resisting Unlawful Government" is when you need to fight a Ranger who is trying to keep your stray cows from grazing in a public park.

"Stop Breaking the Law, Asshole!" is when you need to throw on a mask, wave a gun, and snatch someone into a van after they showed up to court for a green card hearing.

FOX News had it wall-to-wall all day. But the spectacle was lame, so it was mostly talking heads standing over the front talking about how amazing it was, while the parade was fully obscured in the background.

I'm sure the roads were still proper fucked by the end of it. And I fully expect to see Congressional hearings over why the DC city government allowed potholes to get this bad.

You don't. You have lots of conscription to supplant your front lines. You do all sorts of corruption in the middle-ranks of the military, so junior officers can generate income off the desperation of their greener soldiers. You create an industry around the war, such that everyone hates it but someone is always profiting off the misery of others.

And then the machine grinds on.

"We need people from this big war to fight the next big war!" is the line of thinking that's going to burn everything to the ground, just like it did a century ago.

Between Ukraine/Russia, Israel/Iran, Britain floating warships off the coast of China, Indian and Pakistan firing on one another, North Africa in a decade long bloodbath, the US sending marines to suppress unrest in local cities... its not good folks.

If you make sweeping generalizations about an entire ethnic group, you might be a racist.

Broadly speaking, sure. I think the "Afghanis didn't want Americans holding their nation at gunpoint for two decades" is empirically well-proven, though.

The rest of the shit is just ahistorical nonsense. The primary appeal of the Taliban is rooted in their opposition to the secular warlords and opium cartel bosses who were backed by the US in place of civilian government. Just like in Iran, after the takeover by the Shah, urban liberals were either ingested into the American murder machine or exterminated as disloyal opposition. What opposition was left fell to rural religious conservatives who spent the next generation resisting the occupation.

When the Taliban was suppressed they had schools for girls and nobody forced people at gunpoint to go to them.

When the Taliban was suppressed, a few major cities had schools for the families of occupying soldiers and civilian bureaucrats. And some of the Afghanis were permitted to attend, as an incentive to remain compliant. The women and girls in the rural backwaters weren't invited to these schools. The young boys weren't invited either. The country was plundered, the bulk of the population subjugated, and individuals who resisted were arrested, tortured, and executed.

The idea that Kandahar was transformed into Boston under US occupation is absolutely farcical. Poverty was endemic during most of the US occupation, percipitating multiple famines during the '00s and '10s. 36% of the country experienced extreme poverty under US occupation. One in five children died under the age of five years old.

How Taliban insurgents initially managed to win support in those early years was by rebuilding the domestic supply lines that the '02 invasion had flattened. Only after they'd revitalized the western provinces could they shepherd the manpower to repeal western forces. And, in the end, it was those who could supply the bread that made the rules.

Proximity to the equator and high elevation make for ideal launch sites. Then eastward facing, because you want to run counter to the earth's spin as you launch and be out over open water if something fucks up. One reason why Kenya, Brazil, and Indonesia were floated as a high efficiency international spaceports decades ago, when efficiency was considered more important than inflating a billionaire's ego.

My grandparents would be so ashamed of their boomer children

It's great that your grandfather was one of the good ones. I've got a grandfather who was a big fan of Mussolini.

Region governed by eugenicists doing exactly what you'd expect.

I mean... its a big deal if you're anywhere near the launchpad. Or, in or around South Padre Island.

Also can't help but notice that Starbase, Texas is practically hugging the US/Mexico border. Almost as though Abbott didn't want this shit landing in his own backyard when it failed.

Just put on Marti Grais masks, you freaks