Saudi Arabia sentences tribesmen to death for resisting displacement

For two, they may want to establish a parliamentary republic to safely avoid the fate of those from which the Saudi family's ancestors originally usurped executive power. Currently, there is only one method of establishing a new government in what is only tenuously Saudi Arabia, which is using the old ways of sneaking into the palace at night with jambiyas and assassinating everyone. My suspicion is that this inevitable coup will be composed entirely of women.

Which is what the new development does? Basically western thoughts on any non western country should be ignored. China had the right idea.

They don’t need US handouts to do that (see: OPEC+)

It’s basic eminent domain, the only crazy part is the death sentences.

Should the US be giving Indians their land back then?

Well, Hitler had his Germania megacity project to stoke his ego. They aren't too dissimilar;)

I guess dictatorships and stupid planning/construction projects go pretty much hand in hand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germania_(city)

At least this is not a $500B mistake (pretty sure that's an underestimate too, some of this is too ambitious for $500B)...

"Exterior construction completed: 14 July 2011"

It's "finished" as a wasteful potemkin monument - it's not an embarassing concrete shell anymore. It's not finished in the usefully occupied building sense, which would probably be even more wasteful. Operation costs will be stupid for little gain. IMO that's how Jeddah will eventually go, the prince will find the change to finish the tower. It'll look really cool while bleeding money.

It’s possible for people to be “lovely” but also the reason for why the country is in bad shape. I’m Bangladeshi, and folks there are very kind. My dad has stories of traveling through rural parts of the country and a villager walking miles out of his way to make sure he got back to his car without getting lost.

But they’re also a big part of the reason why things are the way they are. From the tolerance of corruption, to the lack of organization. You can say the exact same things about parts of the US that other parts of the US would regard as “shit holes” (rural Georgia or Mississippi). People are very nice! But that’s not sufficient for a developed civilization.

That's a fair statement, and I should have been more clear about separating views of the government, sects of the government, and many of the actual people.

Lovely people who overwhelmingly support death sentence for apostasy.

Bullshit. In World War 2 when the Nazis invaded Western Europe my grandparents joined the resistance. I have no respect for people who just let things happen. What’s worse is all those who flee from Pakistan to Western countries are all able bodied males. The ones that evolutionary speaking are best set up to join the resistance.

There comes a point where you have to stop blaming colonialism for the corruption of your own people. Pakistan has been an independent country for 75 years.

It's a country that committed genocide against its own people.

"3,000,000 people were killed during the genocide, making it the largest genocide since the Holocaust during World War II" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Bangladesh_genocide.

Every shithole has its redeeming qualities.

The gang rape issues alone keeps pakistan firmly in shithole territory for my mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_Pakistan

I also think that s-hole is not an appropriate description of Pakistan. Saying that, the frequently used idea that countries with extreme human rights violations are just "bad governments" is very reductionary. Similar to Russia, it's not just Putin, it's the society that shares certain values. I am not inviting to demonize any society or culture either — but to accept that these problems have deeper roots than a corrupt goverment or religious extremists with power.

The fanatical religious culture is an integral part of the overall culture of the people of that country. It's not being forced on them by some outsiders.

Why the sudden China bashing? China has more EV uptake than the U.S., in fact they pretty much invented the electric micro-car as a market, because of the density of their cities.

The reality is that U.S. is more dependent on oil than any other major industrialized economy. We consume more than the EU, and we consume almost as much as Asia, despite being some small fraction of that continent's population.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_consu...

The Saudis just flipped us off. We should get off of oil.

But if you don't want to hurt the other oil exporters, and just hurt SA, THERE IS NO way to do that

You're wrong on a number of points:

1.) While the UAE and Qatar were initially in the Saudi camp at the start of the war, they have both since left the field - Qatar because their plan was a token response from the start, and the UAE because of significant casualties (and a petition from the mother of a slain soldier).

2.) Iran is currently beating up and killing their own population for protesting. Syria used chemical gas against their own population for protesting. Lebanon is basically Iran's little Mediterranean bitch. You would like us to unsanction these regimes??

3.) Saudi Arabia hasn't been occupying Bahrain - KSA and the UAE "monitor" it on behalf of the Emir of Bahrain. A better way to rephrase this would be: force the Emir out and let the people of Bahrain decide for themselves.

4.) Yes, the West should embargo the Saudis on weapon sales. Not that it would affect them much since they'll just buy from Russia and China, but that is the moral path.

5.) Ask the Houthis for safe naval and air passage in Yemen. They're the ones causing disruptions in the area.

6.) Any humanitarian aid to Yemen somehow ends up with the Houthis.

7.) Houthis don't have any "grievances". Yemen has been divided between a Sunni half and a Shia half since the start of Islam. For the most part historically, Yemen was largely Sunni-dominated. It's only recently that the Houthis are able to put up a fight, and that's largely due to Iranian support and funding.

9.) Leaving the Houthis alone will only let Iran's theocracy impose their own puppet in the area. That is not something the world needs.

10.) Sure, sue MBS, but that's just opening a whole other can of worms.

Like it or not, Iran is just as bad as Saudi Arabia. Both countries rely on a modus operandi of training terrorists and spreading them abroad to cause chaos and fear, and ultimately acquiescence. On that front, Saudi Arabia is still a better ally, since most of the Gulf monarchies have come to the realization that supporting religious fundamentalists abroad has been a retarded thing to do because they'll return to fuck up their monarchical systems later on.

The entire Middle East would be significantly better of than it is today if the "west" (mostly the UK, US, and France) had simply not invaded or significantly interfered with any middle eastern country from WWII onwards (so no coups, for starters).

Unfortunately it's a little too late for that, so we're left with the current clusterfuck of a situation.

or build at night

> They're actually importing Russian oil for domestic use to bail out Russia.

FTFY.

> Not sure calling your congressperson will have a lot of effect

It does because most people don’t do it. So you get aides tallying phone calls to help an elected take a position on a fringe issue (Saudi relations are fringe in most districts and states) possibly a day or two before the vote.

> Do everything you can to minimize your use of oil

This is harder and less effective. (You should still do it, for the environment.)

Maybe, it wouldn’t be guaranteed to be functional.

And why invest any effort and the considerable risk to change the situation? The US ruling class already has the best ally they could wish for.

That was the plan for Iraq. It turns out nation building is a lot harder than killing the bad guys.

> I feel like because the USA has made mistakes,...

The Iraq War was not a "mistake", as you suggest. The Bush administration launched a war that killed between 200,000 and 1 million-plus people (depending on whether you strictly count bodies, which tends to under-count the reality, or you extrapolate from random samples of the population). This war was based on the claim that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger, and this claim was based on a set of documents that were proven to be forgeries: "Mohamed ElBaradei, then head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the UN Security Council that his staff and independent experts concluded within hours that the documents were forged. They were printed, after all, on obsolete Iraqi and Niger letterheads citing officials who were no longer in power at agencies that had been disbanded. One letter, dated October 10, 2000, was reportedly signed with the name of Allele Habibou, a Niger Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, who left office in 1989." [1].

This wasn't a "mistake". This was either incompetence past the level of recklessness, or malice.

The most charitable explanation I've heard for why the US launched the 2003 Iraq War was that the Bush administration knew that steamrolling a weak adversary like the Taliban in Afghanistan wasn't a sufficient show-of-force to deter a well-equipped adversary from attempting another 9/11, and they needed to demonstrate the ability and willingness to attack a more powerful adversary (such as Iraq) to produce such deterrence. The least charitable explanation is the one we're all familiar with- that Bush, Cheney and Co. wanted to install a regime who would provide a steady stream of oil at friendly prices. The reality is probably a mix of both, as well as other explanations that we'll never be privy to.

Any way you slice it, the U.S. has proven itself incapable of delivering on its promises of regime change and nation-building since since at least the Vietnam War, yet keeps telling itself that "this time we'll get it right". The end result is that, trough our callous disregard for human life and the autonomy of others, we end up creating multiple terrorists for each one we kill.

> ...people jump to a defeatist attitude and take the position that literally anything we do is a mistake by definition.

This is a straw man argument; no serious person is taking the position that "literally anything we do is a mistake by definition". That said, if you're serious about winning people over, a good place to start might be the folks who were responsible for our "mistakes" giving even the faintest hint that, yes, we acknowledge those things we did were wrong. If we really want to go crazy, we could even (gasp!) commit to not repeating those "mistakes" again. But certain people in this country seem to believe that never admitting to a wrongdoing is the same as never having done wrong at all. Therefore the default posture seems to be "Often wrong, never in doubt". That's a recipe for flushing our reputation on the world stage down the toilet.

EDIT:

Lastly, just because the Marshall Plan was effective in Western Europe, doesn't mean it would be effective in Saudi Arabia or Venezuela. Please don't make the mistake of thinking all cultures respond to incentives in the same way. That's just wrong.

1. https://spyscape.com/article/saddam-husseins-fake-uranium

>As far as post-war governance, I suggest the Marshall plan. Japan and Germany are models for how to occupy a country with great results.

They tried something like that in Afghanistan, and it was a complete disaster. ~1945 Japan and Germany were completely different countries from Saudi Arabia or any other country you're proposing an invasion of; attempting to set up a friendly government in those places is likely to be about as successful as Afghanistan was.