They are just one of the biggest buyer and holder of US currency in the world. They can buy the United States friendship without a single problem
Saudis face 'divine revenge' for executing al-Nimr
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They are just one of the biggest buyer and holder of US currency in the world. They can buy the United States friendship without a single problem
The United States is a friend to the Saudis and Israel and that has been a standing
tradition for decades. The Saudis are sponsors of terror and murder at home and
anywhere else that suits them I wouldn't trust them under any circumstances. We
are making a big mistake saddling up to ride to bring down the Syrian government
too as it will create another vacuum like Iraq.
Will there be divine intervention not likely God doesn't care about a Shia Cleric
But it shows how low we will stoop, we go after Syria while the Saudis kill their
enemies in bunches and beheading is there fun parlor game
tradition for decades. The Saudis are sponsors of terror and murder at home and
anywhere else that suits them I wouldn't trust them under any circumstances. We
are making a big mistake saddling up to ride to bring down the Syrian government
too as it will create another vacuum like Iraq.
Will there be divine intervention not likely God doesn't care about a Shia Cleric
But it shows how low we will stoop, we go after Syria while the Saudis kill their
enemies in bunches and beheading is there fun parlor game
Of course the name of the individual really means nothing to non Muslims, or non observers of the activities in the Middle East and that is the point.
Why do some want to drag us into this mess?
But as a retired soldier you may know people still active which is why you should join the chorus in not letting Canadians get involved and risk limb and life by being sent to these **** holes.
And why should our tax dollars be wasted pretending to make a difference over there?
Yes I have empathy for the innocents caught in the middle between the religious zealots and corrupt governments but we should let those who started this finish it.
The West has interfered for 100 years in trying to instill Democracy as the West knows it and still hasn't realized that you cannot have Democracy when you have Theocracy.
Or maybe they do realize that you can't have Democracy when you have Theocracy but they don't want the citizens of the West to appreciate that fact.
The following is long so I will cite a few paragraphs and let you read it all........
It has taken almost a century for the breakup of the Ottoman Empire to reap the colonialist harvest that was sown in the peace diplomacy that followed World War I. In the notorious Sykes-Picot Agreement diplomats of England and France in 1916 secretly negotiated arrangements that would divide up the Middle East into a series of artificially delimited territorial states to be administered as colonies by the respective European governments.
Among other wrongs, this devious undertaking representing a betrayal of promises made to Arab leaders that Britain, in particular, would support true independence in exchange for joining the anti-Ottoman and anti-German alliance formed to fight World War I. Such a division of the Ottoman spoils not only betrayed wartime promises of political independence to Arab leaders, but also undermined the efforts of Woodrow Wilson to apply the principle of ethnic self-determination to the Ottoman aftermath.
After World War II
Is it any wonder, then, that the region has been extremely beset by various forms of authoritarian rule ever since the countries of the Middle East gained their independence after the end of the Second World War?
Whether in the form of dynastic monarchies or secular governments, the stability that was achieved in the region depended on the denial of human rights, including rights of democratic participation, as well as the buildup of small privileged and exploitative elites that linked national markets and resources to the global economic order. And as oil became the prime strategic resource, the dominance of the region became for the West led by the United States as absolutely vital.
After the Cold War
When the Cold War ended, the United States unthinkingly promoted the spread of capitalist style constitutional democracy wherever it could, including the Middle East. The Clinton presidency talked about the ‘enlargement’ of the community of democratic states, implying that any other political option lacked legitimacy (unless of course it was a friendly oil producer or strategic ally).
The neocon presidency of George W. Bush with its interventionist bent invoked ‘democracy promotion’ as its goal, and became clear in its official formulation of security doctrine in 2002 that only capitalist democracies were legitimate Westphalian states whose sovereign rights were entitled to respect.
The White House apparently hoped to embark on a series regime-changing interventions in the Middle East and Asia with the expectation of producing at minimal cost shining examples of liberation and democratization, as well as secure the Gulf oil reserves and establish military bases to undergird its regional ambitions.
The attacks on Afghanistan, and especially Iraq, were the most notorious applications of this misguided approach. Instead of ‘democracy’ (Washington’s code word for integration into its version of neoliberal globalization), what emerged was strife and chaos, and the collapse of stable internal governance. The strong state that preceded the intervention gave way to localized militias and resurgent tribal, clan, and religious rivalries leading domestic populations to wish for a return to the relative stability of the preceding authoritarian arrangements, despite their brutality and corruption.
Toxic Geopolitics
It is impossible to understand and explain such a disastrous failure of military interventionism without considering the effects of two toxic ‘special relationships’ formed by the United States, with Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The basic feature of such special relationships is an unconditional partnership in which the Israelis and Saudis can do whatever they wish, including pursuing policies antagonistic to U.S. interests without encountering any meaningful opposition from either Washington or Europe.
all of it...
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/slouching-toward-global-disaster
While democratization may have been an honest goal by various governments, obviously not enough research was done to understand the sensibilities of each region and its ended up being the total disaster we have today.
Which is why I have often said, it's nice to be compassionate and want to help people, but know who it is you're helping because if you don't, it could bite you in the **s!!
JMHO
Which is why I have often said, it's nice to be compassionate and want to help people, but know who it is you're helping because if you don't, it could bite you in the **s!!
JMHO
Just to add even more to the confusion of who's who.........
Bahrain cuts diplomatic ties with Tehran
Saudi Arabia and Iran are the key Sunni and Shia powers in the region and back opposing sides in Syria and Yemen.
Bahrain is ruled by a Sunni Muslim king but its population is majority Shia.
The kingdom on Monday gave Iranian diplomats 48 hours to leave the country.
The United Arab Emirates has said it is downgrading its diplomatic representation in Tehran and will cut the number of Iranian diplomats in the country.
Bahrain accused Iran of "increasing, flagrant and dangerous meddling" in the internal affairs of Gulf and Arab states.
It said the attack on the Saudi embassy was part of a "very dangerous pattern of sectarian policies that should be confronted... in order to preserve security and stability in the entire region".
Saudi Arabia-Iran row: Bahrain cuts diplomatic ties with Tehran - BBC News
Bahrain cuts diplomatic ties with Tehran
Saudi Arabia and Iran are the key Sunni and Shia powers in the region and back opposing sides in Syria and Yemen.
Bahrain is ruled by a Sunni Muslim king but its population is majority Shia.
The kingdom on Monday gave Iranian diplomats 48 hours to leave the country.
The United Arab Emirates has said it is downgrading its diplomatic representation in Tehran and will cut the number of Iranian diplomats in the country.
Bahrain accused Iran of "increasing, flagrant and dangerous meddling" in the internal affairs of Gulf and Arab states.
It said the attack on the Saudi embassy was part of a "very dangerous pattern of sectarian policies that should be confronted... in order to preserve security and stability in the entire region".
Saudi Arabia-Iran row: Bahrain cuts diplomatic ties with Tehran - BBC News
For those of you not familiar with the 'recent' history of the Middle East here's another view from Britain's FP and the little mentioned Treaty of Sèvres and the Treaty of Lausanne ........
First came WWI and we told them that if they sided with us instead of their ruling Ottomans then, once we had defeated the Germans and their Ottoman allies, we would ensure their freedom.
Germany and the Ottomans went down to defeat.
We (France and Britain) decided that they would rather parcel up most of the Ottoman territories between themselves and so Messrs. Sykes and Picot got out their pencils and their straight edges and began carving the place up. Straight lines. Ethnic (Arab, Persian, Kurd) and religious (Sunni, Shiite) considerations were ignored.
We almost kept our word to the Kurds. Treaty of Sevres.
We quickly broke our word to the Kurds. Treaty of Lausanne just two years after Sevres.
Spent the next decade or two running around keeping those pesky and sullen Sunnis and Shia Persians and Arabs and Kurds in line, usually at gunpoint. One thing we knew for sure - you couldn't trust those damned Muslims.
Then came WWII. Some of those Arabs sort of sympathized with our enemy, the Germans, but they kept out of it knowing what awaited when we lavished them with promises would probably be worse when we didn't.
Germans crushed. Second War over. What next? Oh yeah, let's take the Palestinian homeland, parcel it up, and give half of it to the new state of Israel to atone for what Europeans did to Jews during the war and ease our guilty consciences at how we failed to stop it in time. In the decades afterward we stood by as Israel gradually absorbed the rest of the Palestinian territories while it subjugated those Arab people.
Then came Iran, those uppity buggers. We had blessed them with the British American Oil company that selflessly removed Iranian oil at almost no charge to the Persians. When the Iranian people democratically elected a leader who said "Hell no, that oil belongs to Iran" the CIA instigated a coup and installed a monarch, Shah Pahlavi, to sit on the peacock throne as our stooge. We even built him a secret police force, the Savak, who made the Gestapo look like cub scouts.
Over the following decades we, the West, backstopped every obedient thug willing to do our bidding from Iran to Iraq, Egypt to Libya. We made sure their lands were well vaccinated against unruly democracy and looked the other way as they subjugated their own people to what were often feudal conditions only to later denounce them for their lack of modernity and sophistication.
That largely sums up a century of Our dealings with Them.
In 1915, as British troops prepared to march on Istanbul by way of the Gallipoli peninsula, the government in London printed silk handkerchiefs heralding the end of the Ottoman empire. It was a bit premature (the battle of Gallipoli turned out to be one of the Ottomans’ few World War I victories) but by 1920 Britain’s confidence seemed justified: With allied troops occupying the Ottoman capital, representatives from the war’s victorious powers signed a treaty with the defeated Ottoman government that divided the empire’s lands into European spheres of influence. Sèvres internationalized Istanbul and the Bosphorus, while giving pieces of Anatolian territory to the Greeks, Kurds, Armenians, French, British, and Italians. Seeing how and why the first European plan for dividing up the Middle East failed, we can better understand the region’s present-day borders, as well as the contradictions of contemporary Kurdish nationalism and the political challenges facing modern Turkey.
Forget Sykes-Picot. It’s the Treaty of Sèvres That Explains the Modern Middle East. | Foreign Policy
In his latest essay for TruthDig, Chris Hedges explores the glue that holds America's empire together. It's pretty much the same formula that the European powers used in their colonial past - terror, intimidation and oodles of violence.
Chris Hedges: The American Empire: Murder Inc. - Chris Hedges - Truthdig
First came WWI and we told them that if they sided with us instead of their ruling Ottomans then, once we had defeated the Germans and their Ottoman allies, we would ensure their freedom.
Germany and the Ottomans went down to defeat.
We (France and Britain) decided that they would rather parcel up most of the Ottoman territories between themselves and so Messrs. Sykes and Picot got out their pencils and their straight edges and began carving the place up. Straight lines. Ethnic (Arab, Persian, Kurd) and religious (Sunni, Shiite) considerations were ignored.
We almost kept our word to the Kurds. Treaty of Sevres.
We quickly broke our word to the Kurds. Treaty of Lausanne just two years after Sevres.
Spent the next decade or two running around keeping those pesky and sullen Sunnis and Shia Persians and Arabs and Kurds in line, usually at gunpoint. One thing we knew for sure - you couldn't trust those damned Muslims.
Then came WWII. Some of those Arabs sort of sympathized with our enemy, the Germans, but they kept out of it knowing what awaited when we lavished them with promises would probably be worse when we didn't.
Germans crushed. Second War over. What next? Oh yeah, let's take the Palestinian homeland, parcel it up, and give half of it to the new state of Israel to atone for what Europeans did to Jews during the war and ease our guilty consciences at how we failed to stop it in time. In the decades afterward we stood by as Israel gradually absorbed the rest of the Palestinian territories while it subjugated those Arab people.
Then came Iran, those uppity buggers. We had blessed them with the British American Oil company that selflessly removed Iranian oil at almost no charge to the Persians. When the Iranian people democratically elected a leader who said "Hell no, that oil belongs to Iran" the CIA instigated a coup and installed a monarch, Shah Pahlavi, to sit on the peacock throne as our stooge. We even built him a secret police force, the Savak, who made the Gestapo look like cub scouts.
Over the following decades we, the West, backstopped every obedient thug willing to do our bidding from Iran to Iraq, Egypt to Libya. We made sure their lands were well vaccinated against unruly democracy and looked the other way as they subjugated their own people to what were often feudal conditions only to later denounce them for their lack of modernity and sophistication.
That largely sums up a century of Our dealings with Them.
In 1915, as British troops prepared to march on Istanbul by way of the Gallipoli peninsula, the government in London printed silk handkerchiefs heralding the end of the Ottoman empire. It was a bit premature (the battle of Gallipoli turned out to be one of the Ottomans’ few World War I victories) but by 1920 Britain’s confidence seemed justified: With allied troops occupying the Ottoman capital, representatives from the war’s victorious powers signed a treaty with the defeated Ottoman government that divided the empire’s lands into European spheres of influence. Sèvres internationalized Istanbul and the Bosphorus, while giving pieces of Anatolian territory to the Greeks, Kurds, Armenians, French, British, and Italians. Seeing how and why the first European plan for dividing up the Middle East failed, we can better understand the region’s present-day borders, as well as the contradictions of contemporary Kurdish nationalism and the political challenges facing modern Turkey.
Forget Sykes-Picot. It’s the Treaty of Sèvres That Explains the Modern Middle East. | Foreign Policy
In his latest essay for TruthDig, Chris Hedges explores the glue that holds America's empire together. It's pretty much the same formula that the European powers used in their colonial past - terror, intimidation and oodles of violence.
Chris Hedges: The American Empire: Murder Inc. - Chris Hedges - Truthdig
Correction. Israel was given back by the British at the end of the first war. In a deal to help fund England's war against Germany. As oil had just made its entrance as a essential commodity on the world market, England struck a deal with Jewish bankers. As both Germany and England new that stoping the enemies oil supplies would cripple the ability to operate huge war engines that depended on it.
England struck a deal. Help fund the war effort into the Middle East and we shall give you your homeland back. It's even considered to some historians as the last crusade
.Hitler then slaughtered millions of Jews as revenge perhaps. In world war 2
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The best thing for canada right now is if these two to keep flexing at each other without going to war. Good for oil and somewhat good for our bitumin.
Actually now to think of it. If Iran nukes Saudi Arabia instead of Israel then everyone wins. Canada becomes an oil giant and Iran gets to show everyone how tough they are. Everyone wins, even Saudi Arabia
Actually now to think of it. If Iran nukes Saudi Arabia instead of Israel then everyone wins. Canada becomes an oil giant and Iran gets to show everyone how tough they are. Everyone wins, even Saudi Arabia
Only the ones that hide a murderous cult. Is this like the moment the US told Saddam they don't care about Arab-Arab relationships and then his world came tumbling down after the knife in the back?
Nuke?? Did you miss the part where it was agreed that Iran doesn't have the bomb. The Saudis dug their own grave, all Iran has to do is keep doing what they are doing in Iraq and Syria.The best thing for canada right now is if these two to keep flexing at each other without going to war. Good for oil and somewhat good for our bitumin.
Actually now to think of it. If Iran nukes Saudi Arabia instead of Israel then everyone wins. Canada becomes an oil giant and Iran gets to show everyone how tough they are. Everyone wins, even Saudi Arabia
The best thing for canada right now is if these two to keep flexing at each other without going to war. Good for oil and somewhat good for our bitumin.
Actually now to think of it. If Iran nukes Saudi Arabia instead of Israel then everyone wins. Canada becomes an oil giant and Iran gets to show everyone how tough they are. Everyone wins, even Saudi Arabia
Too bad our current government does not like fossil fuels produced in Canada and are obstructing development of infrastructure required to get oil to any market other than rail to the US.
SO the Iranians hate all Muslim countries?
He supports pipelines to get Canadian oil to market – if they have environmental support and societal buy-in. He supports the Keystone pipeline in the United States, but opposes the Northern Gateway pipeline through British Columbia, preferring an alternative route to the West coast if it meets his criteria.
Trudeau tells Alberta he’s ‘not opposed to pipelines’ - The Globe and Mail
No.
Iran's issue is with Wahhabism and their invasiveness.....
ISIS threatens to destroy Saudi prisons after executions
Islamic State threatened to destroy Saudi Arabian prisons holding jihadists after Riyadh's execution of 47 people including 43 convicted al Qaeda militants.
The militant group, which has claimed responsibility for attacks in the kingdom and stepped up operations in neighboring Yemen, singled out the al-Ha'ir and Tarfiya prisons where many al Qaeda and Islamic State supporters have been detained.
"The Islamic State always seeks to free prisoners, but we calculate that the ending of the issues of prisoners will not happen except with the eradication of the rule of tyrants, and then destroying their prisons and razing them to the ground," it said in an article posted online on Tuesday.
While Islamic State and al Qaeda are rivals who have condemned each other on ideological grounds, they are both united in enmity towards Saudi Arabia, which has declared them terrorist groups and locked up thousands of their supporters.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) threatened in December to "shed the blood of the soldiers of Al Saud" if its members were executed.
AQAP is the Yemen-based wing of the global militant movement and was formed by local jihadists and veterans of al Qaeda's earlier uprising in Saudi Arabia from 2003-06, for participation in which most of those executed on Saturday were convicted.
Islamic State threatens to destroy Saudi prisons after executions | Reuters