Yet another of so many reasons to get off the oil teat: Sometimes, Afghanistan looks positively civilized. Saudi Arabia is so ripe for another Arab Spring and some of those Salafist barbarians getting a taste of their own medicine. But, won't happen. The west, thirsty for oil, would help them quell any rebellion quicker than you can say 'fuckadoodle-doo'
And yet Obama is branded a "commie" for his commitment to renewable energy by the same people who call him a Muslim terrorist sympathizer because....well I really don't know...
No, no it doesn't. However I agree that we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. And not just the US but the entire global economy. We personally don't use much Saudi oil, the majority goes to Europe and China. But since we're all tied together, until oil isn't a cornerstone of our interconnected economy the US will have to maintain it's role as protector of the global economy.
My problem is if there is an uprising in Saudi it would almost certainly end up as an Islamic fundamentalist regime.
Oh! Oh! I know the answer to this one! He's branded a commie because he was raised around commies, his mama was a commie, his grandparents were commies and his policies reflect his raising. That's why he's a commie. He's a Muslim terrorist sympathizer because, with our economy still in the toilet, he keeps sending them half a billion dollars at a time. Clear on that now?
Unfortunately, there is the herp derp squad that lacks the ability to understand the macro impact of the micro event. I give you the JC post above as a prime example.
Obama's grandma was a bank executive. His grandfather was a Sergeant in WWII (he volunteered, he wasn't drafted), is related to no less than 6 other presidents, and owned several successful furniture stores and had an earlier job as a salesman. His mom was an athropology major who ended up doing what? Microfinance - yes, his mom helped people raise capital for their own cottage industries. You guys don't even know what the fuck COMMUNIST means. Its a generic term for 'someone I don't like' or 'someone who has thoughts I can't understand.' You and Muad and your ilk are fucking jokes. With a really bad punch line.
Yeah, the House of Saud used Wahhabiism as their hitch to rise them to prominence in the Arabian peninsula, and then keep them there. If they go down, there isn't a viable replacement. In this case the situation is far worse than say Egypt, who has a strong Islamist movement but at least has a large number of secular Egyptians and a military that's opposed to religious domination. Our best bet as repgunant as it seems is to keep the Saudis engaged with the west and let the culture war rage there. Yes, it will mean violence and shit like this, but it won't automatically devolve into a horrendous civil war with the potential rise of a real Islamic Caliphate. Control of the major holy sites of Islam along with a huge oil income would make an Islamist Arabia a real threat to the entire region.
What's interesting is how willing they are to act like a bunch of idiots to advance some sort of agenda. To make their agenda credible, they need to argue it's favorable points (if any exist), but instead they prefer to appear like fearful simpletons, in the hope that people might take them seriously if only to make them shut up.
No. It literally never does. The West - especially the USA - is having less and less to do with Saudi Arabia now thanks to fracking technology elsewhere in the world and the emergence of shale energy supplies. Deposits that were untouchable years ago are now being tapped. Canada and Mexico are now the two biggest oil suppliers to America. Saudi Arabia sees this and are already talking about diversifying their oil export based economy. Personally I think this is fantastic. I've always said we should pay the Middle East fairly for its oil, suck their resources dry and then get the hell out and leave them alone to turn on one another. This may only speed up the process.
Yes! We should fence off the whole region and sell tickets to the ME nations fighting it out to the death.
Syria is an example of why just letting them fight it out is a bad idea though as their revolution started quite liberal with liberals wanting to set up a real western style democracy however the liberals didn't get support from the west and they couldn't deliver guns, food, or money so now the Islamists have stepped in and pretty much elipsed the moderates. So at this point the only real options are the forces of the vile dictator or the forces of raving religious extremists as the moderates & liberals have all been sidelined for failing to deliver. If the west had jumped in early like we did in Libya there would likely be at least some semblance of a secular democracy there now but, sadly, given how hypocritical Republicans jumped on the administration for intervening in Libya after originally demanding the administration intervene the US wasn't going to go in again while the EU states were too preoccupied with their own troubles to want another foreign adventure. We essentially just gave up and let the Islamists take over the opposition there.
I don't care. Only my country's interests are important. If my government being friendly with the government of some other country can provide benefits to my nation, then what that other country does internally is irrelevant. They can serve up live human babies in their restaurants, they can publically flog grannies for being too slow to cross the road, they can ritually lower fluffy kittens slowly into acid in their religious ceremonies. It doesn't matter. If alliance with them can benefit my country, that's the one and only bottom line, under any and all circumstances. Anyone who says otherwise is an unpatriotic citizen!
This is directly related to the right wing tards calling everyone communists, socialists, and fascists (normally all three not even aware they're contradicting themselves). Next Generation Science Standards In Kentucky Draw Hostility From Religious Groups Calling people communists, socialists, and fascists is apparently how the dullards now say "I don't like what that person said even if it is completely factually correct". Thus we now have idiots in Kentucky claiming science is "fascist" and "socialism". You just can't make this shit up.
The single largest source of foreign oil comes to us from those dirty heathens to the North. About twice as much as what is imported from Saudi Arabia. Link
No, it's how prospective marks point out the con artists and refuse to be conned. And as we've seen in this thread, as is seen everywhere else, it sends the con artists into frothing conniptions.
