Geopolitics in the 2020s.

[Wee-Bey]

13 minutes ago, moses1924 said:

Not going to even pretend I know the first thing about this, I take it Assad basicly "won" the civil war and Syria is back under his rule?

He was never deposed so Syria has technically always been under his rule, although just like during the height of the civil war there's various US/Israeli, Turkish and Iranian proxies roaming about. I'm not sure but Turkey actually might still be officially occupying part of Northern Syria.

And the US squatting on the oil obviously.

[invergowrie arab]

So Assad has the central belt, Turkey the borders and the US have Invergordon.

That sounds like winning to me.

[SlipperyP]

Won't posted too much, (for obvious reasons)but Thailand courts have disbanded they biggest party, you in the know will have read about this...

No riots this time, however internet was down for 4 hours after the judgement.

Bigger and stronger

Pray for my kids

Edited August 9 by SlipperyP

[Freedom Farter]

Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves and it has been extracting and selling that oil for over a century now. Oil prices follow boom and bust cycles so during the boom times, dollars have poured into Venezuela and enriched its capitalists. Those capitalists found more profit in importing goods and selling them to Venezuelan consumers rather than incurring the costs of creating native Venezuelan industry to produce goods for sale. Venezuelans were also too poor to buy much so any industry developed would've been producing goods for export into markets abroad. Greeks could manufacture cars if they wanted but French or Dutch or British consumers would not buy those cars because German cars already dominate the European market. Venezuela would've been like that in the Latin American market. The solution was and still is to lift Venezuelans out of poverty so they can afford to buy goods and you have a domestic market.

Oil prices then drop and Venezuelan capitalists have less dollars to import goods with. Therefore those goods grow scarcer in Venezuela so the price of them rises. Also during boom times, the state would take on lots of debt because international banks have wanted Venezuelan business, confident that due to the high oil revenues, Venezuela would be able to pay back the debt no problem. When the oil price drops, the government has to devalue the Venezuelan currency in order to shore up the dollars needed to continue financing debt. It prints more local currency while restricting access to dollars. This creates a black market for dollars which is the main source of corruption in Venezuela. Individuals with links to the government can get access to dollars then sell those dollars at huge profit to your average Venezuelan on the black market. Your average Venezuelan wants dollars because unlike the Venezuelan currency, the dollar isn't going to lose a chunk of its value at a moment's notice.

Venezuela had been through multiple of these cycles prior to Chavez. He was voted into power in 1999 on the promise that next oil boom cycle, the wealth pouring into Venezuela would be distributed more evenly rather than just concentrated into the small capitalist class. He did that by nationalising much of Venezuela's oil industry and using the profits to fund social welfare programmes. He achieved that nationalisation in 2003 which is why he started appearing in our news from that time. He'd been in power since 1999 but Bill Clinton wasn't bothered by him. However, George Bush was the oil lobby's president so he went nuts when Chavez nationalised Venezuelan oil. We started being told that the legitimately elected Chavez was actually an "autocrat" because he'd defied ExxonMobil and Chevron. 2003 also was a year in which oil prices began to boom due to Bush's Iraq invasion. All Bush's plans were coming together nicely until this Afro-indigenous upstart decided Venezuelan children deserved fed and educated.

Chavez lifted millions out of poverty. It's worth noting that it was the poverty in Venezuela specifically, not in Argentina, which radicalised Che Guevara. Chavez doing something for those people was very welcome and long overdue. Chavez's policies meant Venezuelans had disposable income for the first time which went some way to creating a viable domestic consumer market. What he didn't do was invest in domestic production, he didn't build industry. That meant Venezuelans were just consumers still dependent on the old model of imported goods. Chavez left much of Venezuela's private sector, from banking to manufacturing, untouched. He didn't empower workers.

Easier said than done, though. Chavez faced intense opposition from the off. Like in every society, Venezuela's capitalist class owned all the political parties other than Chavez and owned all the media. The Church - able to influence the poor - normally side with the capitalists (see the Spanish Civil War, Ustashe, etc.). These forces convinced allies in the military to attempt a coup in 2002 but fortunately enough of the military resisted so the attempt failed. The next plan of the Venezuelan right wing to topple Chavez was to shut down the oil industry which he was attempting to nationalise. The still private companies forced their workers to strike. The drop in revenue meant Chavez had to implement emergency currency controls which hugely spiked that problem with dollar corruption which I mentioned above. That's when the "Chavez is to blame for corruption" lie started.

That's enough typing for now. I set out to ramble about Maduro and this recent election but I'll do that next time.

[Freedom Farter]

BBC report:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cged9qgwrvyo

 

EU and German response to Tbilisi protests back in May can be contrasted with their response to these Belgrade protests. It's not quite as cynical as naked financial interests driving everything but its a lot closer to that than we like to imagine.

[Freedom Farter]

On Georgia, here's New York Times giving a far more balanced picture than what we normally get.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/23/world/europe/georgia-heartland-soviet-union.html

[Freedom Farter]

More Georgia, as I think its such an archetypal case and so poorly explained by mainstream media.

Worms in their food, scabies infections from insect bites, no ventilation, leaving work in ambulances, pitiful minimum wage and on it goes.

Georgia has the misfortune to be both an accession candidate to the EU as well as a US pet project. A Swedish company is the employer of these striking workers so the EU is the more relevant of the two in this case. In UK we tend to view the EU as more often a guarantee of labour protections over domestic governments. That can be true for member nations. For accession candidates, though, it works in reverse. The priority then for the EU is opening up those markets as much as possible, ensuring conditions that can maximise profits of EU capitalists. The deregulation sees labour rights slashed to the bone. Theoretically, increased labour protections could eventually come to Georgia with membership but not until then. 

[Freedom Farter]

On 12/08/2024 at 04:32, Freedom Farter said:

Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves and it has been extracting and selling that oil for over a century now. Oil prices follow boom and bust cycles so during the boom times, dollars have poured into Venezuela and enriched its capitalists. Those capitalists found more profit in importing goods and selling them to Venezuelan consumers rather than incurring the costs of creating native Venezuelan industry to produce goods for sale. Venezuelans were also too poor to buy much so any industry developed would've been producing goods for export into markets abroad. Greeks could manufacture cars if they wanted but French or Dutch or British consumers would not buy those cars because German cars already dominate the European market. Venezuela would've been like that in the Latin American market. The solution was and still is to lift Venezuelans out of poverty so they can afford to buy goods and you have a domestic market.

Oil prices then drop and Venezuelan capitalists have less dollars to import goods with. Therefore those goods grow scarcer in Venezuela so the price of them rises. Also during boom times, the state would take on lots of debt because international banks have wanted Venezuelan business, confident that due to the high oil revenues, Venezuela would be able to pay back the debt no problem. When the oil price drops, the government has to devalue the Venezuelan currency in order to shore up the dollars needed to continue financing debt. It prints more local currency while restricting access to dollars. This creates a black market for dollars which is the main source of corruption in Venezuela. Individuals with links to the government can get access to dollars then sell those dollars at huge profit to your average Venezuelan on the black market. Your average Venezuelan wants dollars because unlike the Venezuelan currency, the dollar isn't going to lose a chunk of its value at a moment's notice.

Venezuela had been through multiple of these cycles prior to Chavez. He was voted into power in 1999 on the promise that next oil boom cycle, the wealth pouring into Venezuela would be distributed more evenly rather than just concentrated into the small capitalist class. He did that by nationalising much of Venezuela's oil industry and using the profits to fund social welfare programmes. He achieved that nationalisation in 2003 which is why he started appearing in our news from that time. He'd been in power since 1999 but Bill Clinton wasn't bothered by him. However, George Bush was the oil lobby's president so he went nuts when Chavez nationalised Venezuelan oil. We started being told that the legitimately elected Chavez was actually an "autocrat" because he'd defied ExxonMobil and Chevron. 2003 also was a year in which oil prices began to boom due to Bush's Iraq invasion. All Bush's plans were coming together nicely until this Afro-indigenous upstart decided Venezuelan children deserved fed and educated.

Chavez lifted millions out of poverty. It's worth noting that it was the poverty in Venezuela specifically, not in Argentina, which radicalised Che Guevara. Chavez doing something for those people was very welcome and long overdue. Chavez's policies meant Venezuelans had disposable income for the first time which went some way to creating a viable domestic consumer market. What he didn't do was invest in domestic production, he didn't build industry. That meant Venezuelans were just consumers still dependent on the old model of imported goods. Chavez left much of Venezuela's private sector, from banking to manufacturing, untouched. He didn't empower workers.

Easier said than done, though. Chavez faced intense opposition from the off. Like in every society, Venezuela's capitalist class owned all the political parties other than Chavez and owned all the media. The Church - able to influence the poor - normally side with the capitalists (see the Spanish Civil War, Ustashe, etc.). These forces convinced allies in the military to attempt a coup in 2002 but fortunately enough of the military resisted so the attempt failed. The next plan of the Venezuelan right wing to topple Chavez was to shut down the oil industry which he was attempting to nationalise. The still private companies forced their workers to strike. The drop in revenue meant Chavez had to implement emergency currency controls which hugely spiked that problem with dollar corruption which I mentioned above. That's when the "Chavez is to blame for corruption" lie started.

That's enough typing for now. I set out to ramble about Maduro and this recent election but I'll do that next time.

Part Two:

Spoiler

Chavez died in 2013 and Maduro suceeded him. Supposedly Maduro drastically lacks the charisma Chavez had and in any democracy, a lot of folk vote on vibes. So even in Maduro's first election, back in 2013, he only narrowly managed to win. Maduro seemed to learn from this early experience that elections were going to be a weak point for him. This is in total contrast to Chavez who constantly re-earned his legitimacy through election wins. That was especially powerful in Venezuela because his right wing opposition had shown themselves so hostile to democracy. Their temporary military coup against Chavez had completely shot their legitimacy. The US-based, Nobel prize-winning Carter Center monitored all Chavez's elections. Its head, Jimmy Carter, said this in 2012; "As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we've monitored, I would say that the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world".

By the time of the 2018 election, Maduro may have committed some electoral fraud, we don't know. Yet all the years of crying wolf during Chavez's time, plus the military coup they'd orchestrated, left few in Venezuela willing to trust the opposition. Further, it was apparent to many Venezuelans that Trump's sanctions - the most crippling applied on any nation ever by USA - were the primary problem before Maduro. 

Yet now, in 2024, its a different story. Maduro lost this election, overwhelmingly. The difference this time is that nearly all the left in Venezuela now oppose Maduro, including many of the poor in the barrios. 

Where Chavez had benefited from the 2003 oil boom, Maduro struggled from the 2014 oil crash. That came less than a year into his presidency and it was always going to lead to popular discontent. I explained in my first comment how oil crashes always increase corruption in Venezuela. This has been worse than usual under Maduro because he greatly expanded the number of generals in the military. Each general was given an import sector to oversee. So you get things like the (military) general for rice. That general gets access to dollars in order to organise the rice importation and distribution. Its that dollar access which is central to corruption in Venezuela. In expanding who gets dollar access, Maduro has expanded corruption.

Maduro has gradually enacted more and more austerity since the 2014 oil crash with much of the redirected funds going to his military circle. The final straw for his former supporters was his decision to dollarise the Venezuelan economy. The thinking behind the move was that the Venezuelan economy could then better benefit from the remittances of the 7M Venezuelans living abroad. However, poor Venezuelans in the barrios see no improvement from this because they don't have any relatives living abroad so they took this as another slap to their faces.

There have been US sanctions first imposed by Trump which have caused tens of thousands of excess deaths (Venezuela is almost entirely dependent on imports for medicine and to a large extent for food also). Even the furthest right wing element of the Venezuelan opposition urged the US to lift those sanctions. There was the Juan Guaido nonsense where a random idiot was declared pretend president of Venezuela by Trump's USA. There was our slobbering UK government freezing Venezuela's access to its own gold reserves in the Bank of England, done at USA's request. There was a bizarre attempted invasion by a Florida-based mercenary group, tacitly supported by Trump. There was that Bellingcat group doing their OSINT on behalf of an attempted coup by a fascist faction in the Venezuelan military. 

I know all this and therefore its tempting to support Maduro to get it right up that list of absolute wankers. However, Venezuelan leftists are, in the main, not of this opinion. The United Socialist Party that Maduro heads was only created by Chavez in 2007. Chavez's earlier 1999 and 2004 election wins had been as part of a broad left coalition. Maduro and his party do not have sole ownership of the Bolivarian movement.

In this recent election, the opposition was led by a stand-in for Maria Corina Machado (Edmundo Gonzalez). She is a complete ghoul who was one of the main protagonists of the 2002 coup against Chavez. She wants to privatise not only oil in Venezuela but also healthcare and even education. Yet Machado/Gonzalez could only take power now as part of a coalition which would force them into compromise. Then next election they could be voted out altogether as the Venezuelan electorate are still majority pro-Bolivarian (although the longer Maduro remains in power, the more that will wither). The military are also now solidly pro-Bolivarian. Then there's a third layer of Bolivarian support, the colectivos. They are rural-based militias initially formed to protect the peasantry there from the violence of historical right wing dictatorships. Bolivarianism is not going away and removing Maduro will likely strengthen it.

 

Edited August 27 by Freedom Farter

[Dunning1874]

Fifty days on from the election and after initially kicking the can down the road with excuses such as "we need to wait until after the Olympics", Macron has shut the NPF out of power. He has refused to appoint their nominee for Prime Minister (they proposed a civil servant who isn't a member of any parties in the coalition precisely to avoid a controversial candidate) because they don't have an overall majority - which didn't stop him appointing his own PM when his own party were the largest without a majority in 2022 - and he has a responsibility not to allow France to be "blocked or weakened" so blocking their government is therefore necessary for "institutional stability", because the rest of Parliament would immediately censor and impeach an NPF led government. No mention of the fact he could direct his own party not to trample over democracy in this fashion and allow them to attempt to govern as a minority. In the meantime, an Ensemble PM and government remain in place.

LFI have begun impeachment proceedings against Macron in response but that's just a symbolic gesture really as they need a two thirds vote to succeed as Les Republicains will never vote with the left over Macron and believe they have a route into government with Ensemble from here, while Macron also met with Le Pen yesterday, so there's a chance RN are also involved in the stitch up somehow.

[Wee-Bey]

I'm sure the US, EU and UK governments will be along shortly to condemn this.

[Zetterlund]

Arresting social media CEOs and now this. Something smells a bit fashy in France.

[Freedom Farter]

US media is raging at Mexico again.

 

 

Claiming that Mexico is a threat to "the rule of law" in Mexico is a funny argument. What they mean is that the Mexican government is enacting laws which US capitalists don't approve of and didn't write. For example, here's a Washington think tank angry about an electric industry law Mexico passed:

There's a key bit in there.

Quote

...if the Mexican government does not understand the value of a predictable environment where investors have the certainty that their lawful rights will not be threatened by the political fluctuations of the time.

That there is the fabled neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism is not the laissez-faire of classical liberalism. Neoliberalism uses the state apparatus to enforce the market. Instead of government intervening in the economy to try to better quality of life indicators, the government intervenes in the economy to create markets, keep them functioning and enforce the rules it sets for those who operate within them. This is what's meant by "rules-based international order", by the way, and how Saudi can be a valued part of that order despite chopping off heads. 

A bit of democratic, majoritarian pushback is allowed against this system in the Global North. Some respite from the market is allowed in some industries, such as in healthcare and the like. Yet not in the Global South. Those folk in Mexico are not allowed to do what they're currently doing. This can't stand.

Another thing about neoliberalism is it goes against this lie that capitalists deserve their reward because they take risk. When the rules which govern Mexico's industries are drafted in Washington then they're going to be stacked in favour of American capitalists. Everything possible is done using state levers to minimise the risk to the "investors". 

[MazzyStar]

On 27/08/2024 at 07:32, Dunning1874 said:

Fifty days on from the election and after initially kicking the can down the road with excuses such as "we need to wait until after the Olympics", Macron has shut the NPF out of power. He has refused to appoint their nominee for Prime Minister (they proposed a civil servant who isn't a member of any parties in the coalition precisely to avoid a controversial candidate) because they don't have an overall majority - which didn't stop him appointing his own PM when his own party were the largest without a majority in 2022 - and he has a responsibility not to allow France to be "blocked or weakened" so blocking their government is therefore necessary for "institutional stability", because the rest of Parliament would immediately censor and impeach an NPF led government. No mention of the fact he could direct his own party not to trample over democracy in this fashion and allow them to attempt to govern as a minority. In the meantime, an Ensemble PM and government remain in place.

LFI have begun impeachment proceedings against Macron in response but that's just a symbolic gesture really as they need a two thirds vote to succeed as Les Republicains will never vote with the left over Macron and believe they have a route into government with Ensemble from here, while Macron also met with Le Pen yesterday, so there's a chance RN are also involved in the stitch up somehow.

They picked Barnier. Les Republicans got less than 7% of the vote. I’ll be waiting patiently for the likes of James O’Brien to give their opinion on this undemocratic decision. 

[Freedom Farter]

The two nations that buy the most influence over USA are Saudi and Israel. However, Democratic and Republican parties agree on this being a good thing therefore no complaints are made. The parties differ on Russia - at least in terms of rhetoric, less so in terms of action - therefore Russia wasting money on moronic podcasters, as was revealed last week, becomes big news. Does creating an association between the Republican Party and Russia/Putin actually change any votes? I don't know if there's actually much efficacy in that strategy. What I'm more interested in, though, is the true believers who genuinely think this is a good moral argument. It's a terrible stance. It suggests that victims of Russian crimes are worthy of empathy while victims of Saudi and Israeli crimes are not. The justification being that USA co-authors the Israeli and Saudi crimes but not the Russian crimes. 

Saudi and Israel do a lot more than fund podcasters in USA. I'll not bother with Israel as there's a thread elsewhere on the forum dealing with a lot of that. Instead here's a ramble on USA's relationship with Saudi and why Americans should be yelling about it far more than they do about Russian influence:

Spoiler

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire after WW1 created an opportunity for Arab liberation. The oil and gas resources in the region meant the British, among other imperial powers, did not want that to happen. The Saud tribe - a particularly brutal and austere bunch - were thus sponsored to act as a bulwark against that attempted Arab liberation. The Saudis succeeded in quashing the nascent democratic attempts at state building by other groups and were rewarded with their own state by the British. They ruled it as an absolute monarchy and similar was done elsewhere in the peninsula with the emirates (UAE) and others. This created an allied network of autocratic ruling regimes on the peninsula that all backed each other up to thwart any attempted democratic uprisings. You had the Egyptian Nasser, not a great guy but nonetheless a believer in self-determination and popular sovereignty, as the main power on the other side of the equation. He was a problem to the British and then US (post-Suez USA took over from UK as the main imperial power in the region) because he promoted resource nationalism.

The North Yemen civil war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Yemen_civil_war) was extremely important in terms of turning Saudi into a favoured child of USA. This war, between the Yemeni monarchist regime and a popular uprising, pitted Egyptian forces on the side of the uprising and Saudi forces on the side of the Yemeni monarchy. This was also when the Israel-Saudi (and by extension Israel-UAE) alliance began. Israel invaded Egypt in 1967. So Saudi was weakening Egypt by bogging them down in Yemen and Israel struck at that moment of maximum Egyptian weakness. Egypt capitulated on both fronts and Nasser fell shortly after. The main threat to the plundering of the region's oil and gas had been removed.

Saudi donated $32M to the Nicaraguan Contras in a move to further ingratiate themselves with USA. They also donated $10M to Italian anti-communist politicians, in line with USA Operation Gladio aims (https://archive.ph/7SXca). That was during the Reagan era. The Saudis, much like the Israelis, prefer Republican presidents.

The Arabian peninsula monarchies let US capitalists (not the US masses) access the oil and gas in exchange for US military might (which does involve the US masses dying as soldiers) propping them up. This backfires spectacularly for USA at times. Saudi did 9/11. New evidence keeps emerging: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/september-11-attacks-saudi-arabia-lawsuit/678430/ and https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/21/9-11-video-saudi-man-washington.

The Saudi-aligned diddy monarchy Kuwait infamously influenced USA to war on their behalf with tactics like the Nayirah Testimony (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony) Note I'm not in any way defending the Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait here, rather I'm pointing out influence over US politics. Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to USA.

Saudi crushed the 2011 Bahraini uprising with US-provided weapons. Saudi resumed its favourite pastime of killing Yemenis in 2015 with full US support. That caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. Grotesquely, the successful Yemeni resistance is still portrayed by some as the bad guys.

We have a situation now where UAE - the same absolute monarchists as the Saudis - have been funding and arming various paramilitaries in Africa, including the Russian fascist paramilitary Wagner. UAE are the main sponsors of the RSF, the worse side in the current Sudanese civil war. Nothing can be done to stop this because USA (along with lesser powers like UK) protects UAE. Trump actually brought USA even closer to UAE with his Abraham Accords which Biden has continued with.

Biden has recently been trying to seal a Nato-style deal with Saudi (https://archive.ph/cMaZT). This isn't because Saudi faces any external threat. It's a deal that would see USA intervene militarily if the Saudi regime faces an uprising from its own population, as will happen at some point as oil prices continue to fall. The supposed benefit to USA is it will ensure Saudi only buy arms from US manufacturers and not China.

Many influential Washington think tanks are funded by Saudi and UAE. The Atlantic Council, Middle East Institute, The Center for Strategic and International Studies. Talking heads from these think tanks get interviewed on CNN.

Jamal Khashoggi, PGA Golf merger. Saudi are the second largest shareholder of Twitter after Musk. 

So much other shit but that'll do.

 

Edited September 9 by Freedom Farter

[Zetterlund]

7 hours ago, Freedom Farter said:

The two nations that buy the most influence over USA are Saudi and Israel. However, Democratic and Republican parties agree on this being a good thing therefore no complaints are made. The parties differ on Russia - at least in terms of rhetoric, less so in terms of action - therefore Russia wasting money on moronic podcasters, as was revealed last week, becomes big news. Does creating an association between the Republican Party and Russia/Putin actually change any votes? I don't know if there's actually much efficacy in that strategy. What I'm more interested in, though, is the true believers who genuinely think this is a good moral argument. It's a terrible stance. It suggests that victims of Russian crimes are worthy of empathy while victims of Saudi and Israeli crimes are not. The justification being that USA co-authors the Israeli and Saudi crimes but not the Russian crimes. 

Saudi and Israel do a lot more than fund podcasters in USA. I'll not bother with Israel as there's a thread elsewhere on the forum dealing with a lot of that. Instead here's a ramble on USA's relationship with Saudi and why Americans should be yelling about it far more than they do about Russian influence:

  Hide contents

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire after WW1 created an opportunity for Arab liberation. The oil and gas resources in the region meant the British, among other imperial powers, did not want that to happen. The Saud tribe - a particularly brutal and austere bunch - were thus sponsored to act as a bulwark against that attempted Arab liberation. The Saudis succeeded in quashing the nascent democratic attempts at state building by other groups and were rewarded with their own state by the British. They ruled it as an absolute monarchy and similar was done elsewhere in the peninsula with the emirates (UAE) and others. This created an allied network of autocratic ruling regimes on the peninsula that all backed each other up to thwart any attempted democratic uprisings. You had the Egyptian Nasser, not a great guy but nonetheless a believer in self-determination and popular sovereignty, as the main power on the other side of the equation. He was a problem to the British and then US (post-Suez USA took over from UK as the main imperial power in the region) because he promoted resource nationalism.

The North Yemen civil war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Yemen_civil_war) was extremely important in terms of turning Saudi into a favoured child of USA. This war, between the Yemeni monarchist regime and a popular uprising, pitted Egyptian forces on the side of the uprising and Saudi forces on the side of the Yemeni monarchy. This was also when the Israel-Saudi (and by extension Israel-UAE) alliance began. Israel invaded Egypt in 1967. So Saudi was weakening Egypt by bogging them down in Yemen and Israel struck at that moment of maximum Egyptian weakness. Egypt capitulated on both fronts and Nasser fell shortly after. The main threat to the plundering of the region's oil and gas had been removed.

Saudi donated $32M to the Nicaraguan Contras in a move to further ingratiate themselves with USA. They also donated $10M to Italian anti-communist politicians, in line with USA Operation Gladio aims (https://archive.ph/7SXca). That was during the Reagan era. The Saudis, much like the Israelis, prefer Republican presidents.

The Arabian peninsula monarchies let US capitalists (not the US masses) access the oil and gas in exchange for US military might (which does involve the US masses dying as soldiers) propping them up. This backfires spectacularly for USA at times. Saudi did 9/11. New evidence keeps emerging: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/september-11-attacks-saudi-arabia-lawsuit/678430/ and https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/21/9-11-video-saudi-man-washington.

The Saudi-aligned diddy monarchy Kuwait infamously influenced USA to war on their behalf with tactics like the Nayirah Testimony (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony) Note I'm not in any way defending the Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait here, rather I'm pointing out influence over US politics. Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to USA.

Saudi crushed the 2011 Bahraini uprising with US-provided weapons. Saudi resumed its favourite pastime of killing Yemenis in 2015 with full US support. That caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. Grotesquely, the successful Yemeni resistance is still portrayed by some as the bad guys.

We have a situation now where UAE - the same absolute monarchists as the Saudis - have been funding and arming various paramilitaries in Africa, including the Russian fascist paramilitary Wagner. UAE are the main sponsors of the RSF, the worse side in the current Sudanese civil war. Nothing can be done to stop this because USA (along with lesser powers like UK) protects UAE. Trump actually brought USA even closer to UAE with his Abraham Accords which Biden has continued with.

Biden has recently been trying to seal a Nato-style deal with Saudi (https://archive.ph/cMaZT). This isn't because Saudi faces any external threat. It's a deal that would see USA intervene militarily if the Saudi regime faces an uprising from its own population, as will happen at some point as oil prices continue to fall. The supposed benefit to USA is it will ensure Saudi only buy arms from US manufacturers and not China.

Many influential Washington think tanks are funded by Saudi and UAE. The Atlantic Council, Middle East Institute, The Center for Strategic and International Studies. Talking heads from these think tanks get interviewed on CNN.

Jamal Khashoggi, PGA Golf merger. Saudi are the second largest shareholder of Twitter after Musk. 

So much other shit but that'll do.

 

There's also the minor fact that any 'influence operation' the US accuses other countries of will be reciprocated x10 in the other direction at all times.

[ClydeTon]

9 hours ago, Freedom Farter said:

The two nations that buy the most influence over USA are Saudi and Israel. However, Democratic and Republican parties agree on this being a good thing therefore no complaints are made. The parties differ on Russia - at least in terms of rhetoric, less so in terms of action - therefore Russia wasting money on moronic podcasters, as was revealed last week, becomes big news. Does creating an association between the Republican Party and Russia/Putin actually change any votes? I don't know if there's actually much efficacy in that strategy. What I'm more interested in, though, is the true believers who genuinely think this is a good moral argument. It's a terrible stance. It suggests that victims of Russian crimes are worthy of empathy while victims of Saudi and Israeli crimes are not. The justification being that USA co-authors the Israeli and Saudi crimes but not the Russian crimes. 

Saudi and Israel do a lot more than fund podcasters in USA. I'll not bother with Israel as there's a thread elsewhere on the forum dealing with a lot of that. Instead here's a ramble on USA's relationship with Saudi and why Americans should be yelling about it far more than they do about Russian influence:

  Hide contents

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire after WW1 created an opportunity for Arab liberation. The oil and gas resources in the region meant the British, among other imperial powers, did not want that to happen. The Saud tribe - a particularly brutal and austere bunch - were thus sponsored to act as a bulwark against that attempted Arab liberation. The Saudis succeeded in quashing the nascent democratic attempts at state building by other groups and were rewarded with their own state by the British. They ruled it as an absolute monarchy and similar was done elsewhere in the peninsula with the emirates (UAE) and others. This created an allied network of autocratic ruling regimes on the peninsula that all backed each other up to thwart any attempted democratic uprisings. You had the Egyptian Nasser, not a great guy but nonetheless a believer in self-determination and popular sovereignty, as the main power on the other side of the equation. He was a problem to the British and then US (post-Suez USA took over from UK as the main imperial power in the region) because he promoted resource nationalism.

The North Yemen civil war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Yemen_civil_war) was extremely important in terms of turning Saudi into a favoured child of USA. This war, between the Yemeni monarchist regime and a popular uprising, pitted Egyptian forces on the side of the uprising and Saudi forces on the side of the Yemeni monarchy. This was also when the Israel-Saudi (and by extension Israel-UAE) alliance began. Israel invaded Egypt in 1967. So Saudi was weakening Egypt by bogging them down in Yemen and Israel struck at that moment of maximum Egyptian weakness. Egypt capitulated on both fronts and Nasser fell shortly after. The main threat to the plundering of the region's oil and gas had been removed.

Saudi donated $32M to the Nicaraguan Contras in a move to further ingratiate themselves with USA. They also donated $10M to Italian anti-communist politicians, in line with USA Operation Gladio aims (https://archive.ph/7SXca). That was during the Reagan era. The Saudis, much like the Israelis, prefer Republican presidents.

The Arabian peninsula monarchies let US capitalists (not the US masses) access the oil and gas in exchange for US military might (which does involve the US masses dying as soldiers) propping them up. This backfires spectacularly for USA at times. Saudi did 9/11. New evidence keeps emerging: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/september-11-attacks-saudi-arabia-lawsuit/678430/ and https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/21/9-11-video-saudi-man-washington.

The Saudi-aligned diddy monarchy Kuwait infamously influenced USA to war on their behalf with tactics like the Nayirah Testimony (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony) Note I'm not in any way defending the Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait here, rather I'm pointing out influence over US politics. Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to USA.

Saudi crushed the 2011 Bahraini uprising with US-provided weapons. Saudi resumed its favourite pastime of killing Yemenis in 2015 with full US support. That caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. Grotesquely, the successful Yemeni resistance is still portrayed by some as the bad guys.

We have a situation now where UAE - the same absolute monarchists as the Saudis - have been funding and arming various paramilitaries in Africa, including the Russian fascist paramilitary Wagner. UAE are the main sponsors of the RSF, the worse side in the current Sudanese civil war. Nothing can be done to stop this because USA (along with lesser powers like UK) protects UAE. Trump actually brought USA even closer to UAE with his Abraham Accords which Biden has continued with.

Biden has recently been trying to seal a Nato-style deal with Saudi (https://archive.ph/cMaZT). This isn't because Saudi faces any external threat. It's a deal that would see USA intervene militarily if the Saudi regime faces an uprising from its own population, as will happen at some point as oil prices continue to fall. The supposed benefit to USA is it will ensure Saudi only buy arms from US manufacturers and not China.

Many influential Washington think tanks are funded by Saudi and UAE. The Atlantic Council, Middle East Institute, The Center for Strategic and International Studies. Talking heads from these think tanks get interviewed on CNN.

Jamal Khashoggi, PGA Golf merger. Saudi are the second largest shareholder of Twitter after Musk. 

So much other shit but that'll do.

 

It's crazy to me how, after so long, World War I/II are still pretty much responsible for every Geopolitical conflict in one way or another.

[Freedom Farter]

4 hours ago, Zetterlund said:

There's also the minor fact that any 'influence operation' the US accuses other countries of will be reciprocated x10 in the other direction at all times.

Very much. Even with Saudi and Israel, its the case that they only have that privileged status because USA wants them to have it. Israel is only a small power and therefore entirely dominated by USA. A good example of this is how Israel has to vote every year at the UN to support USA's Cuba sanctions despite Cuba being of zero relevance to Israel. Saudi is different, its more of a medium power and can hold its own a bit more in its relationship with USA. Yet it could still be dropped at any moment if USA so chose.

[Freedom Farter]

 

Example of how "pro-Russian" is often just a cynical smear when it comes to EU candidate nations.

Edited September 12 by Freedom Farter

[welshbairn]

 

[Claudia Gentile]