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US senate votes to stop giving aid to sauds
| Not a USA resident but I'd assume the vote would pretty closely follow party lines. Still, good to see people realize how fucked our trade relationship is. I just hope Republicans don't try to blame the economy tanking on this and anything Democrats do (they totally fucking will)
| >>493570
Ofc. because dems are (mostly) progressive, while repubs are conservatives. Conservatives in western countries have a hard struggle with islamists. Because on one side they need their image as "outer enemy", on the other side they always were politically allied with them, which is not even too much a surprise since they are ideological similar (=against anything that is considered to be "progressive").
| >>493574
The Saudis aren't really Islamists, at least not in the same sense as the Taliban or Daesh. Wahhabism is the state religion of Saudi Arabia, & the House of Saud has always played a paramount role in promoting it, but the former examples are more like religious organizations with their own states.
That aside, I'm sure this step back is only temporary. The US has too much of a vested interest in opposing Iran in the Sunni-Shiite conflicts.
| >>493679
You're wrong. Saudi Arabia is the international accepted IS/Daesh. Just look at their human rights situation and at their terror in jemen. Without the british the sauds would still be some unimportant nomad tribe. It was all to counter german efforts of supporting islamists in french and british colonies under the umbrella of their fragile ottoman ally. 20th century Islamism is mostly a creation of western foreign policy.
| >>494840
Sadly western reactionists did a good job in making people forget that it were exactly the same type of reactionists that make islamism a big thing again. The regions that are now plagued by islamists already once were ruled by popular, secular or even laizist governments. They were (and still are) just considered to be "on the wrong side".
| >>494840
No there's a very important functional difference between a state which supports its state religion through sometimes violent means & a militant religious organization that happens to have its own state. The former sees that supporting the religion is in the interest of the state, the latter will act against reason & plunge any state into turmoil for the sake of its religion.
| Trying to crush the will of an enemy nation (in this case allied to their regional & religious rival) is quite different than going out of your way to terrorize civilians of distant & irrelevant nations. The former was pioneered in the US Civil War by General Sherman, & carried out or encouraged, in varrying degrees, by the allies in both world wars. The latter is a reckless & immediately self-defeating sowing of conflict, which more resembles Nazi warmongering than anything.
| >>494854
>there's a very important functional difference
Not to me and the victims of this backwarded douchebags. This difference is only "very important" for the global players and their shitty powergames. For me and all the victims of this madness it doesn't matter. ISIS/Daish, the Sauds, the CIA - I don't care about their "functional differences". To me they're all criminals that need to be thrown away on historys junkyard.
| >>494875 while you are corect in the absolute short term, and while yes both are heinous attrocities that shouldnt happen, to deny a "functional difference" between the two is foolish. Yes, the immediate result to the direct victims of these crimes is the same, however the mid- and long-term effects and consequences are very distinct. Not only to the "global players" but at the regional and local levels as well. 1/?
| >>494892 now this is not to say that one is better or worse than the other, but rather that each has distinct factors and consequences. To put it this way, someone chopping off your hand or foot is terrible either way, but their are very different consequnces that arise from each. Not a perfect example, but I feel it expresses my point. Now, the former is an established State that supports its State Religion through "sometimes violent means". 2/?
| >>494923 They key part of this one is that the atrocities, while commited in the name of religion, have the end goal of protecting the State, which can only exist within some form of order. Terrorism by State sponsors generally follow the logical idea that the act must benefit the State in some way. Smart leaders will look to lomg term gains, impulsive leaders will look to short term gains. But the end result is that they usually only act when it benefits them. 3/?
| >>494924 The second type, a "militant religious organization", generally holds little regard for the preservation of the State. Rather than acting to protect the State, militant groups often use terrorism not for their own gain, but rather for their enemies loss. Even when nothing is gained, as long as their enemy hurts, they may act. Thus, these attacks are often far more indiscriminate and unpredictable, with little regard to long term consequences. 4/?
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| The united states senate has passed a resolution to stop giving aid to the sauds as they commit war crimes in yemen.
The Bernie Sanders Rand Paul proposal passed with 63-37 votes.
A source but there are others.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/after-inadequate-briefing-saudi-arabia-senate-advances-bill-end-u-n941386