Pretty sure every American administration has lacked a “moral compass” when it comes to that fun little place Saudi Arabia. Among other despotic vacation destinations.
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Can he possibly know just how stupid he looks in that picture? It looks like a bunch of jr high boys together in a photo booth at a county fair…He also secretly would like to dress up in the royal family drag routine. Goddamn idiot.
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Well a) the likely-dead man is a US resident, and b) this act is totally unprecedented, it’s so outrageous.
I have to wonder if the only reason the Saudis even thought about doing it is because Trump is president. There would be hell to pay with any other administration.
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Resident, yes, but Saudi National. Happened on foreign soil in a semi-stable nation.
The man barely functions on domestic issues. The fact this has been either ignored or not on his radar isn’t a surprise in the least.
As for unprecedented - Journalist die in the middle east on a semi-regular bases. Usually in war zones, but not always. And Russia has set the recent bar for journalist assassinations.
LOL. Yeah, right. Like how we invaded them after they sent over a bunch of terrorists to crash planes into buildings. Or their continual funding of extremist cells across the world. Oh yeah, good thing they killed a Saudi journalist in Turkey under Trumps watch. Bush or Obama would have been soooo mad. 
This story is important. But the framing of “Why hasn’t the Trump admin…” is just diverting it from the issue. Any other news story about “what the mainstream media isn’t talking about” quickly goes from commenting about the story, to just dog piling onto the premise that the main stream media isn’t paying attention to it. Same here - more talk about Trump vs the issue at hand.
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The day after the election, he fired his own team of people who were legally required to be available to be briefed on how the government works, and two years in, still has to appoint a ton of people.
The real “deep state” are the federal agencies and departments who are cowering and keeping a low profile in hopes that Trump continues to have no idea that they exist.
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I was going to say, “because they’re human garbage” but your reply is more nuanced than mine.
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I somehow missed the bit where the 911 hijackers were state agents…
Look, saying that they pull shit like this all the time doesn’t work, because this is unprecedented. Unprecedented not just for the Saudis (who may jail and even execute dissidents and protestors, but aren’t known for straight-up murdering journalists who have no charges against them), but for everyone, everywhere (a state killing someone in an embassy on foreign soil is just unknown). It DOES NOT HAPPEN. EVER. It’s an extra-special violation of the norms of international relations. It is very much A BIG FUCKING DEAL. This is so outside the norms of bad behavior even, that it normally would have warranted some sort of pushback. With Erdogan and especially Trump in power, the Saudis probably felt pretty emboldened. Even if Trump weren’t a journalist-hating authoritarian sociopath who is unable to understand the importance of international events, he’s so deeply compromised by the Saudis in multiple ways, they have him in their pocket.
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better talk civil defence as in say 50 billion for a line of the new F35…
We also like their oil and it helps our internal narrative about “Great” Britain to pretend that we still have some allies/influence in the region but otherwise I think you summed it up.
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Their money for our arms creates jobs (and turns trades unions into shills for the defence industry).
And it’s the one industry that won’t be harmed by Brexit.
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Are we sure Trump didn’t order the hit?
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I wouldn’t be so sure about that.
Distributed supply chains are as much a thing in the arms industry as they are in the automotive industry.
See for example this:
which is admittedly a smug piece by Thales trying to reassure investors that it will be fine because it (unlike its rivals/confederates) doesn’t have much trade flow between it’s UK and European sections of the group.
It’s the “unlike other groups” bit that’s relevant.
BAE itself will probably be fine although I expect UK defence spending will take more hits in real terms post Brexit. The UK arms industry as a whole though will have its own share of issues.
Take for example:
How is British involvement in that to work post-Brexit?
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I heard it yesterday on the news
And to believe it I refused
To hear the working man enthused
That more guns would be built.
And I remember thinking then
That wallet wins the heart again
And we will sing the old refrain
As further blood is spilt:
It takes a soldier to fire the gun
To make it you need a working man
To feed him the farmer will plough the land
It all goes hand in hand.
But to feed the soldier and the man
Who makes the gun, you need more land,
And to get more land of course
You need a soldier.
The circle is a vicious one,
It’s been like this since time began,
For after all is said and done
The soldier needs his bread.
But no one can explain to me
With all this land and all this sea
Why we don’t turn our soldiery
To farm and fish instead.
It takes a soldier to fire the gun
To make it you need a working man
To feed him the farmer will plough the land
It all goes hand in hand.
But to feed the soldier and the man
Who makes the gun, you need more land,
And to get more land of course
You need a soldier.
And I can almost hear you say
"the world has always been that way,
"for peace and freedom you must pay
“and nothing is for free”.
But vicious circles you can break,
'Tis but an easy step to take:
Just throw the guns into the lake
But keep just one for me;-)
It takes a soldier to fire the gun
To make it you need a working man
To feed him the farmer will plough the land
It all goes hand in hand.
But to feed the soldier and the man
Who makes the gun, you need more land,
And to get more land of course
You need a soldier.
If only we could understand
Before things spiral out of hand
It’s not supply, but our demand
That does the monster feed.
And still our leaders never cease
To manufacture enemies
It isn’t them that threaten peace,
The problem is our greed.
It takes a soldier to fire the gun
To make it you need a working man
To feed him the farmer will plough the land
It all goes hand in hand.
But to feed the soldier and the man
Who makes the gun, you need more land,
And to get more land of course
You need a soldier.
(George Papapveris, It takes a soldier)
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I’m sure if Trumpski were to speak his true feelings about the disappearance and probable murder of a WaPo journalist, he would say “it’s a good start.”
We invaded Afghanistan, even though they weren’t technically state agents. The Saudis have certainly sponsored more terrorism than any one other nation (probably, if someone finds out Iran is higher, mea culpa), just not through official means.
We don’t know the whole story. It is just as likely there was an attempt to arrest him, there was resistance, and he ends up dead. Happens every week in America. Like you said, there is a history of jailing, torture, and execution of dissidents. So if this guy decided to fight for his life and they ended up killing him, that doesn’t sound too far fetched and not “straight up murder”. They all ready have a system in place for murdering people by official means.
I agree the story is important. Just nothing is going to happen. There might be some finger wagging from the international community, but nothing is going to happen. The UK can finger wag about US police policies, and it will effect us just as much as the Saudis.
Not saying that is right, but that is the reality. You can’t really control what other sovereign nations do to their own people. Well, you can take drastic measures (often making things worse, see Kosovo). But the US for decades have left the Saudis to their own devices.
They are the most stable partner in the region. Period. And that fact makes us over look their human rights violations and has been the case long before Trump. Unless every US president for decades has also been compromised by the Saudis?
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Latest rumours are that the victim was dismembered with a bone saw that the killers brought for that purpose. Not really an “arrest” situation.
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I refuse to believe that any American administration would be willing to overlook misdeeds by the Saudis. Clinton, Bush, and Obama always held them responsible for their actions and were never willing to give them a pass for destructive behavior that undermined our interests or world stability, so why would they expect it now?
We ARE great!
Because we know where the bodies are buried, because we helped redraw the maps after we helped develop every colony we ever had into a success once we humbly shared our former global empire!!
Or it could be that we’re only great at shady diplomacy, international tax avoidance, military advice and global arms sales…
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Did you miss the /S there?
Asking for a friend…
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