appropriating victimhood appears to have become a favourite tactic of the far-right in recent years. Donald Trump’s successful presidential campaign was heavily premised on precisely this. The idea that his refusal to be “politically correct” represented speaking truth to power. The notion that a self-proclaimed billionaire businessman was somehow an “anti-establishment” candidate.
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He wants something from the Saudi’s.
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A Chanel guillotine. That is like … peak irony.
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I’ve been wondering if we’re supposed to believe the Turkish press. Could be true, could be not.
People on NPR ATC this afternoon were hypothesizing that what Erdogan wants is to weaken MBS. Why? I didn’t catch that.
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Turkey and Saudi are regional rivals. He doesn’t want something from the Saudis. He wants something at the expense of them.
A better relative relationship with the US is a good starter for 10 here. Erdogan’s shenanigans over the past couple of years have tarnished Turkey’s reputation, and had diplomatic consequences. Meanwhile the Saudis have been the golden children since - at least - 1990 and the invasion of Kuwait. This might be useful to Turkey is redressing that a bit.
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My guess with SA is always oil. Russia, Turkey, SA and oil is a pipeline of trouble.
Edit:
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Appropriating victimhood? Works for me.
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- Trump
- Pompeo
- Mattis
- Jared
- Ivanka
- Melania
- Gritty
0
voters
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I know, right? After Trump and his family were so polite as to totally compromise themselves with the Saudis, the Prince then had to go and do this to them…
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The truth of this makes me weep.
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You can say a hyperbole, but saying it doesn’t mean it is true.
(ketchup on hotdogs is gross, it’s all sweet and doesn’t match with the flavors of a sausage at all. Save the ketchup for the tater tots, if you must)
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Post of the day, yo. And yes, probably quite literally accurate. And too soon, but way to stay a-head of the dark humor angle. 
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I’m glad Melania is doing OK in your poll (I voted for her). In this fucking batshit shit-show of an alternate universe gone amok, I think we all know it’s going to turn out to be her running the whole show. Ya, dahlink?
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Erdogan is supportive of the rival Muslim Brotherhood, going so far as to shelter MB exiles from Egypt. The KSA is threatened by the MB, since the MB has been broadly pan-Islamist, while the KSA is kept in place in part by interests who are afraid that pan-Islamist sentiment is destabilizing to the region. Contrary to what a lot of people believe w.r.t. “Wahhabism” and “Salafism” being very similar and very close Saudi inventions (the former yes, the latter, less so) the reality is that Saudi Arabia plays a very narrow game with religious fundamentalism that is difficult to fully understand, because the old Saudi regime (which MbS is gradually replacing) managed an oligarchal consensus on the issue.
My understanding of how it has traditionally worked is that more religiously motivated princes would pull the Saudi’s into funding various groups that would align with their values and simultaneously further Saudi interests, one of those interests being that the United States and Europe supports the Saudi regime as long as the looming specter of Islamic fundamentalism makes having authoritarians in charge more palatable. The great fear is that the region will decide democratically, and wrongly, how to interact with the west.
That’s the democratic and popular American and European consensus on this issue, by the way–if you look at how commenters on this very blog often reacted to Arab Spring events using the search feature, even very educated and supposedly “woke” people do take this view, even as they condemn the murder of Khashoggi. It’s the association between the KSA regime and the current administration that really has people upset, despite that association never truly wavering across administrations regardless of the letter after the president’s name. In two years (please, lord have mercy) when the clock strikes midnight and Trump’s stagecoach at long last turns into the rotting orange pumpkin it always was, we won’t really remember this unpleasantness.
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This is a euphemism for “bad for foreign business owners,” right?
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If all you want to do is kill off a pesky journalist, Putin can show you a dozen more subtle methods than sending your thugs to go all Joe Pesci on some 60-yr. old guy.
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That’s generally a good sign that the Trump administration is hiding something even bigger.
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Phone calls? What about social media?
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