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  1. #301
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    Default Re: So what do you Brits make of Trump ?

    I wonder what the President's favourite films are -the ones not made by Playboy that is. This is beyond stupid, it may be that all that soda and junk food is indeed rotting his brain:

    According to The Daily Beast, the US president last year met with various heads of veterans’ organisations who were angered over the appointment of the now-sacked Omarosa Manigault-Newman to handle veterans’ affairs.

    They were reportedly joined in the March meeting by administration officials including Stephen Miller, Kellyanne Conway, former press secretary Sean Spicer and Ms Manigault-Newman herself.
    During discussions, Mr Trump allegedly angered and confused attendees by derailing a conversation about benefits for injured servicemen by getting into a lengthy argument about a scene from the iconic Vietnam War movie.
    Rick Weidman, co-founder of Vietnam Veterans for America, reportedly asked that a wider number of veterans injured by the herbicide Agent Orange receive payment from the government.
    Mr Trump claimed it was “taken care of”, according to sources who spoke to news site, puzzling attendees who informed the president there had not been nearly enough progress.
    Mr Trump responded by asking if Agent Orange was “that stuff from that movie”, which people in the room quickly came to understand was a reference to a scene in Apocalypse Now in which US attack helicopters assault a Vietnamese village.
    The Daily Beast reported various people informed the president the scene showed the US military using napalm, not Agent Orange.
    Mr Trump reportedly refused to accept he was wrong. “No, I think it’s that stuff from the movie,” he is quoted as saying. He then polled people in the room over which chemical weapon they thought the scene depicted.
    He finally asked for the thoughts of Mr Weidman, who assured him it was napalm, adding he thought the movie did a disservice to Vietnam veterans.
    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-a8496626.html



  2. #302
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    Default Re: So what do you Brits make of Trump ?

    A grisly game is being played out in the Middle East (where else?!) as Turkey releases information on the disappearance (alleged execution by Saudi Arabia) of Jamal Khashggi drip by drip to annoy the unelected butchers of Riyadh without taking any meaningful action to protest at a basic violation of the law, if that in itself does not sound too cynical given the manner in which President Erdoga operates in his own country.

    The US President has prevaricated, claiming that the $110 Billion dollar arms deal with Saudi Arabia should not be jeapordized by rumours for which there are so far no facts. Fair enough, only that 'arms deal' trumpeted with much zeal in 2017 and since is in reality 'letters of intent' that so far has not produced a single contract. When even the Brookings Institute can all it 'fake news' you know that window dressing is par for the course for the President.
    https://www.brookings.edu/blog/marka...-is-fake-news/

    As for Jamal Kashoggi, some of you may be old enough to remember his uncle Adnan Khashoggi, reputedly worth $4 billion in 1980, a man who used his family's historic connections to the founder of the kingdom, Abdul Aziz ibn Saud (originally Ottoman Turks the premier Khashoggi was ibn Saud's doctor) to become an arms dealer who may have been involved in the Iran-Contra scandal but was certainly known for his parties, not so much cocktail parties, as lots of cock, and lots of tail. Hardly surprising that Jamal knew the scion of that other family with ties to the butchers of Riyadh, the bin Laden's and their favourite son, Osama.

    Somewhere in this gruesome mess you will find the cherubic face of Jared Kushner, a man who seems to have been so dazzled by the seriously richer than he Arabs of the Gulf and the Peninsula to believe them when they talk of liberal reform, and how relaxed they are about Israel. That will be any reform that does nothing to undermine their wealth and authority, even as it funnels money for Kushner's absurd real estate empire and his daddy-in-law's 'business'.

    You have to wonder if there is any foreign policy coherence in any of this. At least when FDR made his deal with Ibn Saud in 1945 it was to give the US a competitive edge in the kingdom that became hugely important for the US oil industry. All we have at the moment is a US President soaked in Saudi money terrified of losing access to all dem dollars.

    After all, if it is proven beyond doubt that Khashoggi was killed and dismembered in the Embassy in Turkey and removed what is the US going to do about it?

    Background on the Khashoggi-
    https://www.voanews.com/a/who-is-jam...i/4610403.html
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamal_..._and_education
    https://www.dailysabah.com/investiga...-riyadh-critic
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_...#Personal_life



  3. #303
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    Default Re: So what do you Brits make of Trump ?

    Not long ago the President looked a journalist in the eye and told him he was 'sleazy', and the rallies he attends are not just notorious for his attacks on the media, journalists are grouped together as if in a cage and often the target of the audience's vocal abuse. Now hear this:

    "There's a lot at stake. And, maybe especially so because this man was a reporter. There's something -- you'll be surprised to hear me say that, there's something really terrible and disgusting about that if that was the case so we're going to have to see. We're going to get to the bottom of it and there will be severe punishment."
    https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/13/m...ntl/index.html

    As information drips out of Turkey -a state that imprisons more journalists per capita than any other- it is claimed that Khashoggi first went to the Consulate in Istanbul (the Saudi Embassy is in Ankara) in September and was told his papers would be ready in a few weeks, and he thus returned to subsequently disappear. But, on the day, the Consulate staff were told not to return from their lunch-break and take the rest of the day off -and an hour or so later Khashoggi arrived.

    What happened next is not clear as one claim is that Khahoggi was murdered and dismembered, either in an office or in the underground car park, his body parts being buried in the garden of the Consul's residence; while another says his parts were taken back to Saudi Arabia and incinerated while a third version claims he was abducted to Saudi Arabia and is still alive, but they can't prove it as the abduction from the sovereign territory of Saudi Arabia in Turkey would be just as illegal and outrageous as a murder.

    Just to prove there are no moral victors in this, the Turks claim to have audio and video evidence of the murder in the Consulate, which means they had it bugged which raises the question -have they secret recording equipment in other Consulates and Embassies?

    Then there is the question -did the US know in advance either that Khashoggi was at risk or that 'an event' was planned for the Consulate which turned out to be the man's disappearance? That is the claim in this link, though it raises the other question, does the President ever read Intelligence briefings, does he act on them, or did someone in the Administration deliberately not release this intelligence to embarrass the President and the wonder-boy Kushner precisely because of their warm relationships with the Saudis and particularly Kushner's friendship with MSB?
    https://observer.com/2018/10/nsa-sou...shoggi-danger/

    Although the President will be most concerned to protect his financial interests, which is why he is President, the US is in an impossible position because Israel and Saudi Arabia are its two most powerful allies in the Middle East. Obama proved that it is possible for the US to create a working relationship with Iran, but they are not close to becoming allies again.

    The continuing mini-crisis which has seen the Kingdom, Egypt and the USA gang up on Qatar -which has relatively warm relations with Turkey and Iran- adds some spice to this dish, just as Turkey has released the Evangelical pastor -who has since gone down on his knees to ask God to reward the President, a moment almost as bizarre as the Rant of Kan- though he was due for release anyway.

    What can actually be done by the US to punish Saudi Arabia? At this stage it may just be holding back on any proposed contracts in the arms sale agreement of 2017, not sending people to the Davos in the Desert conference, maybe not going to their Washington parties, but in the longer term one expects this to have flared up and then die down, with Iran being pushed back into the centre to remind everyone who the 'real' enemy is.

    More on the event in Istabul here-
    https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusive-1433170798



  4. #304
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    Default Re: So what do you Brits make of Trump ?

    From the Guardian-
    Saudi Arabia has said it will retaliate against any sanctions imposed over the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, as the Riyadh stock market had its biggest fall in years.
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...a-to-cooperate

    But it did occur to me that we should at least consider the possibility that Khashoggi left the Consulate and was abducted by the Turks. It is not as if any of these states care if one person dies in the service of their political agenda. Thousands are dying in the Yemen every day, why should one dissident journalist matter in the conflict between Turkey and Saudi Arabia for a controlling influence in Northern Syria? And so far, it is Turkey 1, Saudi Arabia 0.



  5. #305
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    Default Re: So what do you Brits make of Trump ?

    I thought it was pretty much decided that Prince Mohammed bin Whatshisname, the one who locked up all his family members? ...I thought he's the guilty party. I think I heard he was surprised at the World Response. In Japan you can't be boss til you're 40, that's when you get WISDOM Turkey I have never figured out, they're on our side, right? Trump's General Buddies better sit him down and explain the facts of life, I guarantee you what we see is not the way it is. It was so nice before 9-11 when all we had to do was send them billions of oil dollars and they'd keep their terrorists over there.


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  6. #306
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    Default Re: So what do you Brits make of Trump ?

    Quote Originally Posted by buttslinger View Post
    I thought it was pretty much decided that Prince Mohammed bin Whatshisname, the one who locked up all his family members? ...I thought he's the guilty party. I think I heard he was surprised at the World Response. In Japan you can't be boss til you're 40, that's when you get WISDOM Turkey I have never figured out, they're on our side, right? Trump's General Buddies better sit him down and explain the facts of life, I guarantee you what we see is not the way it is. It was so nice before 9-11 when all we had to do was send them billions of oil dollars and they'd keep their terrorists over there.
    This morning the news is that Saudi Arabia may admit that Khashoggi died during an interrogation but was not murdered- it seems that King Salman is not as ga-ga as was thought and may be restricting his son's access to the media. It may be noteworthy that the US President says he talked to the King, not MSB and that Pompeo will meet Salman, though he might meet MSB.

    The President is desperate to protect his investments, but Salman too may be taking action as he was opposed to Saudi Arabia's support for the removal of the US Embassy in Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem, and will have got a right ear bashing from the relatives locked up by MSB who then had to pay billions to get released. As Frank Gardner in the BBC (disabled following a bomb attack in the Kingdom when he was a journalist there) has put it-

    Encouraged by the state-controlled media, many Saudis have been rallying round their leadership. There is even a popular rumour that what happened in Istanbul is all a plot by Qatar and Turkey to discredit the blameless Saudi kingdom.

    But privately, others are now questioning whether the 33-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, the man once hailed as a visionary saviour of Saudi Arabia, has gone too far.

    He has pitched his country into a costly and seemingly unwinnable war in Yemen. He is embroiled in a damaging dispute with neighbouring Qatar. He has quarrelled with Canada over human rights, and he has locked up dozens for peaceful protest while alienating many in royal and business circles.

    More conservative Saudis may well be hankering for quieter times.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-45871364

    The loser in all this would not just be MSB but the lad he says he has 'in his pocket' -Jared Kushner. If this is the man advising the President on Middle Eastern policy, then maybe it is time for the CEO to make a calculation -what does he value most, his money, or the advice of a juvenile? But who knows what will happen next?



  7. #307
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    Default Re: So what do you Brits make of Trump ?

    We're lucky Trump's in charge.


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  8. #308
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    Default Re: So what do you Brits make of Trump ?

    My memory is sketchy, but I seem to recall something about a lot of Saudis being put on airplanes back to the Middle East on the afternoon of 9-11. I also vaguely remember Dick Cheney hosting a meeting of all the top Oil Execs a month before gas prices went sky high. Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle aren't above getting rich while they govern, and it's very entertaining to see Trump try and pretend he's going to punish the Saudi Prince just because he killed some journalist. Anything Trump does has dual purposes, those you see and those you don't see. They just did a study that confirms my suspicions, in this world, it is much better to be born rich than naturally talented. In the real world, a Representative in the House couldn't shine the shoes of a Middle East Royal, there's only one business, the MONEY business. Hence, lots of MONKEY business. When you see Lindsey Graham get red in the face and scream injustice, some rich guys just got their way.
    This will go down the same way as when cops kill an innocent black guy, they'll put on a show and then in a few months it will be back to business as usual.
    Judging a Human Being is difficult, you never know what people are up against, or what people truly care about. But if you empty your pockets, any schoolboy can count the dollars, dimes, and pennies. If you're smart, you're rich.


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  9. #309
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    Default Re: So what do you Brits make of Trump ?

    Quote Originally Posted by buttslinger View Post
    My memory is sketchy, but I seem to recall something about a lot of Saudis being put on airplanes back to the Middle East on the afternoon of 9-11. I also vaguely remember Dick Cheney hosting a meeting of all the top Oil Execs a month before gas prices went sky high. Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle aren't above getting rich while they govern, and it's very entertaining to see Trump try and pretend he's going to punish the Saudi Prince just because he killed some journalist. Anything Trump does has dual purposes, those you see and those you don't see. They just did a study that confirms my suspicions, in this world, it is much better to be born rich than naturally talented. In the real world, a Representative in the House couldn't shine the shoes of a Middle East Royal, there's only one business, the MONEY business. Hence, lots of MONKEY business. When you see Lindsey Graham get red in the face and scream injustice, some rich guys just got their way.
    This will go down the same way as when cops kill an innocent black guy, they'll put on a show and then in a few months it will be back to business as usual.
    Judging a Human Being is difficult, you never know what people are up against, or what people truly care about. But if you empty your pockets, any schoolboy can count the dollars, dimes, and pennies. If you're smart, you're rich.
    The US has tended to view Saudi Arabia in terms of the regional balance of power in the Middle East, though the initial cause of the relationship was Ibn Saud's refusal to deal with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company which dominated oil exploration and production in Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and the Gulf, because it was owned by the British government. At the San Remo Conference in 1920 the British and the French excluded the Americans from entering the Iraqi market, so the Saudi's gave their first oil concession to Standard Oil of California in 1933, and the rest is history as far as Aramco goes.

    Thus FDR when he met Ibn Saud on the USS Quincy in 1945 was meeting an important source of US support in the Middle East, even though they disagreed about the Palestinians and the Jews. When Truman and Saud agreed the Point Four programme in 1951 to modernize Saudi Arabia's defence forces an Air Training mission was sent, with the stipulation that it not contain any Jews, and that any Christians would not be allowed to hold any kind of relgious service in the Kingdom. When Eisenhower was President and Ibn Saud first went to the US, in 1957 the US was mostly concerned to limit the influence of Egypt's President Gamal Abdul Nasser (with whom Saudi Arabia would eventually go to war in the Yemen in 1962, a war they lost). Saudi Arabia was lukewarm on Nasser's attempts to create what became in 1958 the 'United Arab Repubic' with Syria, Jordan having rejected it at the same time Saudi took American advice and did likewise.

    When he arrived in New York, the Mayor, Robert F. Wagner refused to meet him on the basis of the Kingdom's open abuse of Jews, and the existence of slavery in the Kingdom (not offiicially outlawed until the 1960s). Ibn Saud and his flock occupied seven floors (!) of the Waldorf-Astoria with the initial intention that the King's son Mashur, who had Polio, be treated at a Jewish endowed hospital in the city. To avoid any embarrassment should this leak out, the son was treated at the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington DC. (In 1985 he spent two weeks in prison in the UK for smuggling cocaine into our blessed land).

    Relations with JFK were not good, as the US tried to placate both Egypt, leaning at that time toward the USSR but in receipt of substantial US aid (this has to be one of the least explored and most expensive waste of tax dollars in US foreign policy) and Saudi Arabia over the Yemen, but in 1962 Kennedy decided to recognise the Republican government in Sana'a much to Ibn Saud's disgust, and the war carried on regardless. LBJ showed no interest in the Kingdom whereas Nixon had to deal with the first phase of the crisis that followed the war of 1973 at a time when he was in his own Watergate inspired crisis. A threatening letter sent to King Feisal at the time of the Arab boycott -signed by Nixon, written by Kissinger, was reviewed by Embassy staff in Riyadh who sent it back to be re-written.

    Carter was in Saudi Arabia at the end of 1977 at a time when he was trying to persuade them to support Egypt's Anwar Sadat's peace negotiations with Israel but may be noteworthy for the agreement to sell the Kingdom the same F-15 fighter jets that Israel was buying, though not as many. After some hostility in Congress the sale was agreed, but this as with the Truman era underlines the extent to which the US-Saudi Arabian relationship has been one determined by the balance of power in the Middle East -Saudi Arabia as the reliable anti-Communist ally- and the Kingdom's lavish spending on armaments. In all of these cases, the domestic politics of Saudi Arabia has been set aside on the basis it is not the USA's business to interfere in their politics, in spite of the moral qualms many Americans have had about dealing with brutal a family business which, in its religious, Wahabi operations is openly abusive of Jews in the literature which it provides for Saudi funded Madrasas around the world, from Venezuela to Afghanistan.

    One could go on at length on the relations as they developed during the 1980s when the US and Saudi Arabia joined forces in Afghanistan in a pact that has to my mind been catastrophic for both the US and Afghanistan, much as that lawless land was for the British who fought three wars between 1839 and 1919 and lost all of them. The fact is that the US is terrified of an implosion in Saudi Arabia where there is no civil society worthy of the name and where, in the absence of any organized opposition to the family the prospects for chaos on the Syrian level are all to bleak to contemplate.

    Basically, you are stuck with them, Jew-hating, head chopping crooks that they are. But it was never more about the money than it is now, because the President has been soaked in it for so long, and because he loves it, however much he tries to re-write history:


    • President Donald Trump said Tuesday that "I have no financial interests in Saudi Arabia" — but in fact he has boasted in the past that "I make a lot of money with them."
    • Trump has sold apartments and a yacht for millions of dollars to Saudis, and recent decreases in bookings in his New York and Chicago properties since he has been president have been offset, to some extent, by business from Saudi customers.
    • Trump's tweet denying a financial stake in Saudi Arabia comes amid a growing furor over suspicions that the country's rulers ordered the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.




    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/16/trum...kes-money.html


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  10. #310
    filghy2 Silver Poster
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    Default Re: So what do you Brits make of Trump ?

    The Saudis have also been the principal supporters of extreme fundamentalist Islam around the world.
    https://www.salon.com/2016/01/06/sau...cratic_nation/
    https://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-yo...b_6501916.html

    Supporting them for the sake of their help in combating terrorism is like recruiting arsonists to the fire brigade.



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