Canada and the Saudis

[william.scherk]

Don't you just wish folks would toe the line, the most rational line -- with regard to Saudi reaction -- Canadian hypocrisy notwithstanding?

This is gross and disturbing but part of a greater senseless slaughter and blockade in Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen:

Spoiler

Saudi-led coalition airstrikes on Thursday killed dozens of people, including children travelling on a bus, in Yemen's Saada province, Yemeni medical sources and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.

The Western-backed alliance fighting the Iranian-aligned Houthi group in Yemen said the airstrikes targeted missile launchers used to attack the southern Saudi industrial city of Jizan, killing a Yemeni civilian there, a statement carried by the state news agency SPA said.

It accused the Houthis of using children as human shields.

"Today's attack in Saada was a legitimate military operation ... and was carried out in accordance with international humanitarian law," the Arabic-language statement said.

• Airstrikes in Yemen leave at least 28 dead

• Saudi royal palace was targeted in missile launch, Houthis of Yemen say

The ICRC said one attack hit the bus driving children in Dahyan market, in northern Saada, adding hospitals there had received dozens of dead and wounded.

"Our shops were open and shoppers were walking around as usual. All of those who died were residents, children and shop owners," witness Moussa Abdullah, who was being treated in hospital for wounds, told Reuters.

29 children pronounced dead at single hospital

The ICRC said on its Twitter account that its medical team at the ICRC-supported hospital in Saada had received the bodies of 29 children, all under 15 years old.

The hospital also received 48 wounded people, among them 30 children.

Abdul-Ghani Sareeh, from the Saada health department, told Reuters: "A bus carrying children was targeted today while they were coming from summer school, resulting in 43 martyrs and almost 63 wounded."

 

Edited August 9, 2018 by william.scherk
Added information on the horror-show school bus bombing. Is that terror?

[Jon Letendre]

The first step in grasping what is really going on is to grasp that no MSM outlet will ever come out and say what is really going on. Look at their behavior over decades - they are not neutral but are soldiers in a war,

Some people are only halfway through this step: they understand that the real answer will not come from MSM, but they still consume a lot of MSM and they subconsciously accept the constructs they consume. But the constructs are utterly false and their acceptance derails any chance at seeing the truth even if they happened upon it.

In this case the construct is that the Saudis and Canadians are disputing about Canadian human rights criticism of the Saudis. The Saudis can’t take criticism, so they are going berserk, throwing out diplomats and immediately going to nuclear trade war.

A simpleton readily accepts all the above construct because he has met such people. Cashiers at cheap stores, the popcorn guy at the movies  - “people like that are everywhere, I know because I’ve met many of them.” The simpleton accepts the construct and then the entire explanation provided. There is really nothing here to investigate or understand, he concludes, just some abusive tyrants who can’t take criticism and are choosing to wreck economies and international relations, instead.

The non-simpleton rejects the entire construct. The non-simpleton understands the Saud family have been in power in the most cutthroat part of the world for about one hundred years. They are among the most wealthy and powerful people on the planet. Criticism of them is constant, anyway. The chance that the construct reflects reality is precisely zero.

And yet the Saudis do seem to be going hard on the Canadians, as though something very big is happening - so what can we conclude?

Something very big is happening.

[william.scherk]

The plot pudding thickens ... ?

 

[caroljane]

1 hour ago, william.scherk said:

The plot pudding thickens ... ?

 

How does the reported dissension among the Emirates figure into the messy mix?  The destruction of Yemen can't please all of the Arabs, all of the time.

[Jon Letendre]

22 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

Canada is being liberated.

Trudeau is a puppet of the enemy and he is being taken down.

His master was also the master of the House of Saud - until the Saudi Purge last fall.

His master is desperately trying to keep him installed as PM, has threatened MBS with exposure of something probably mostly before his time of rule, but that would nevertheless be very inconvenient to the alliance as a whole.

Therefore, the alliance (Trump, Xi, Putin, MBS and many more) have moved up the takedown schedule.

The following article was written in 2012. MBS, Trump and Putin have enormous unreported idle production capacity, don’t believe a word you hear otherwise, all of this has been planned for years. What would happen if the above characters went around the world applying pressure and satisfying energy needs and soon, like next month, there were no customers at all for Canada’s product? (It would be good for the planet, right? Keep that carbon sequestered in the ground where Mother Nature intended, isn’t that what I have heard for the last thirty years?)

 

my bold

”In a bombshell report, the International Energy Agency now predicts that as early as 2017, the United States will surpass Saudi Arabia as the world’s biggest oil producer. That advance will be celebrated in the U.S. as a cornerstone of the energy independence Americans crave. But it raises huge questions for Canada, the Canadian economy and our ability to support the lifestyle to which we have become accustomed.

“Who will buy all the oil we have to sell when the Americans no longer need it, or at least so much? Can we do what is necessary to open up new markets before our sales to the U.S. plummet? And if we don’t find new markets, where will our governments get the billions of dollars that currently come from taxes on oil sales but will still be needed to run our hospitals, build our schools and fix our roads? Alberta’s oilpatch attracted $40 billion in investment last year alone. It is an engine that churns out new jobs and drives economic growth.

”But just think: Almost all of the oil that comes out of the Canadian ground is exported to the U.S. We are the biggest suppliers of oil by far to America. Right now, Canada supplies the U.S. with 2.4 million barrels of oil a day — almost 30 per cent of its net oil imports. But within a few years, the Americans will have ramped up their own oil production — thanks to new methods of extracting this resource — by three million barrels a day, even as they become better and better at conserving and efficiently using their energy.”

https://www.therecord.com/opinion-story/2621981-who-will-buy-canada-s-oil-/

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

13 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

His master was also the master of the House of Saud - until the Saudi Purge last fall.

Jon,

That is an interesting angle I had not thought about before.

After all, who thinks about Canadian politics in his daily life?

 

Michael

[Jon Letendre]

Some will resist the duly-elected President of the United States ‘till the very end. And that’s ok.

” "This crisis is created by America," she said.

And a crisis it is: prices are soaring as a result of the collapsing currency - which this year has lost more than 35% against the dollar, and has overtaken the Argentine Peso for the worst performing currency of 2018 - with food, rents and fuel prices in Turkey surging, and the country's pipeline operator raising the price of natural gas for electricity production by 50%.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-10/crisis-created-america-turks-blame-trump-economic-collapse

[Jon Letendre]

 

  https://mobile.twitter.com/realDonaldTrump

 

I have just authorized a doubling of Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum with respect to Turkey as their currency, the Turkish Lira, slides rapidly downward against our very strong Dollar! Aluminum will now be 20% and Steel 50%. Our relations with Turkey are not good at this time!

6:47 AM · Aug 10, 2018

[william.scherk]

On 8/9/2018 at 3:17 PM, caroljane said:

How does the reported dissension among the Emirates figure into the messy mix?  The destruction of Yemen can't please all of the Arabs, all of the time.

The crop of Western-friendly autocracies of the United Arab Emirates must support Saudi publicly, although a subtext of disgust is found in Arabic media, if anonymized. The off-side outsider and object of Saudi wrath is Qatar, who hasn't stood up on its hind legs to denounce anybody since Saudi confined Hariri and the crisis between Doha and Riyadh was on. Qatar and Canada are friendly.  The quietest of the emirates is host to Dubai, where East and West meet.

For a lot of (admittedly Western-influenced) Arabic and Middle Eastern sources I've consulted, there are a few items of interest. By way of a single example, this tweet by Iyad El-Baghdadi captures a facet.  From a certain point of view, Saudi is punishing itself, just as the awful tweet pointed out. They've compounded the ham-fisted autocratic pique with negative consequences for their own citizens making an encounter with the West ...

This is but a mid-point of Iyad on a roll, so if you want the full context, click through.  

What the hell, a couple more samples of opinion:

You may not be aware, but the actual oil trade between Saudi and the Royal Socialist Confederation will not be affected in any way. Saudi has a policy of never allowing politicking/diplomatic spats to get in the way of their oil trade. 

Not as zany as an Adrenochrome Cabal, but hey ...

 

[Jules Troy]

On 8/8/2018 at 12:07 PM, Jonathan said:

OMG, I'm really scared that Canadians are going to start killing Muslims in the streets. We have to stop talking about this right now. Let it fade from the headlines. The more attention that we give it, the more that Canadians will be encouraged to take out their racist anger and intolerance of Islam on poor, innocent immigrants. Canadians are fucking Nazis, and they look for any excuse to be violent. Let's not give them that excuse. Don't talk bad about any Saudis. That'll trigger them. Instead, let's consider what Canada can do better in its relationships with others.

J

You sound like a high school valley girl.

[Jonathan]

31 minutes ago, Jules Troy said:

You sound like a high school valley girl.

Yeah, that's about right. The lefty resist crowd has a lot of similarities to valley girls, so it would make sense my imitation of them would too.

J

[Jules Troy]

You can’t seriously be calling ME a leftist Jonathan....I suppose I am an anomaly.  I am Canadian, but despise everything our government has become.  Well not evvvverythingggg.  Some things they do I just don’t give a shit about(like 31 genders did make me laugh!)

Edit:  Why imitate them here?  I mean how many of them would actually come to an Objectivist site and actually see you mocking them.

You would probably have more fun doing so on Twitter where you could ambush their feeds right?

[Jonathan]

18 hours ago, Jules Troy said:

You can’t seriously be calling ME a leftist Jonathan....

Correct.

[Jules Troy]

That thar is right funny right thar yup yup.

[william.scherk]

On 8/8/2018 at 7:49 AM, Jonathan said:

Have the Saudi's yet release any info on specifically why Badawi was arrested?

That isn't quite how it works. The Saudi system has no regularized machinery to inform the public about such detentions (certainly not in English) ... but if we take the time to research (including in Arabic-language media), we discover that the Badawi arrest was part of a wave of detentions of female 'human rights defenders.'  The very women who had campaigned for the right to drive, and the right to live outside of the guardianship system.  

You may or may not be aware of the more recent (2017) Saudi additions to their "anti-terror" measures.  One can find a variety of sources on the law and its impact.  This brief story at the Guardian can help readers grasp the aims of some aspects of the measures decreed by the Royals:

UN sounds the alarm over Saudi human rights crackdown after two more arrests

The Regional Coalition for Women Human Rights Defenders in the Middle East and North Africa said the country’s recent reforms were designed only to improve its international reputation, not to improve women’s rights.

“Saudi Arabia has responded to the world’s call to free jailed women human rights defenders and women’s rights activists by arresting more,” said the coalition’s Islam al-Khatib.

“Reforms that are tightly managed and limited from the top are hardly reforms at all.”

More than 30 human rights groups have warned of a growing climate of fear among female campaigners in both Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

On 8/8/2018 at 9:41 AM, Jonathan said:

Yeah, and I can't stop imagining how the left would be screeching if Trump would have tweeted what the Canadian Foreign Ministry did.

One could take off the clown mask and imagine how the Jonathan Smith Party  would be screeching reacting to that Trump tweet.

On 8/8/2018 at 7:05 PM, Jon Letendre said:

Canada is being liberated.

Trudeau is a puppet of the enemy and he is being taken down.

Justin Trudeau  was elected to the House of Commons from the riding (electoral constituency) of Papineau in Montreal in 2008.  Under the government of Stephen Harper, some limits were placed on the ability of the Prime Minister to 'drop the writs' ... meaning the life of a Parliament should be regularized at no more than five years. Trudeau thus is bound to call our 43rd federal election on or before October 21, 2019.  He is, according to wrong polls, set to fail to elect a majority of Liberals in the House of Commons.

In other words, the Trudeau government will likely be voted out of office next year, without an application of Q-folly lard.  Or, his government could collapse -- or as we put it "fall" -- at any time were it to fail a 'confidence motion.'  The fall of a government means a new election must be called ... the PM of the day goes to the Governor-General, who 'drops the writs.'

On 8/9/2018 at 11:17 AM, Jon Letendre said:

In this case the construct is that the Saudis and Canadians are disputing about Canadian human rights criticism of the Saudis.

[...]The chance that the construct reflects reality is precisely zero.

And yet the Saudis do seem to be going hard on the Canadians, as though something very big is happening - so what can we conclude?

It is an interesting opinion, if based on nothing tangible or shareable.   Something big is a vastly vague term, as is "the enemy."  In any case, in your universe of Cabal and Satanists and Hidden Truths and Q and entailments of Whoopee, we would never even know if something big had happened, right?

I do recommend to you a read of Brotherton's Suspicious Minds.  A central theme in the book is that They (Them), Those with so-called "conspiracy-ideation" are Us.  In other words, belief in conspiracies is not hemmed in by political ideology (ie,  'leftist' moonbat 9/11 Truthers), intelligence or social strata.

From HRW  on the revised Saudi 'Anti-Terror' law of 2017:

Quote

(New York) – Saudi Arabia’s new counterterrorism law includes vague and overly broad definitions of acts of terrorism, in some cases punishable by death, Human Rights Watch said today.

The law replaces a widely criticized counterterrorism law promulgated in 2014, adding definitions of specific acts of terrorism and their corresponding sentencing guidelines. It includes criminal penalties of 5 to 10 years in prison for portraying the king or crown prince, directly or indirectly, “in a manner that brings religion or justice into disrepute,” and criminalizes a wide range of peaceful acts that bear no relation to terrorism.

“Saudi authorities are already methodically silencing and locking away peaceful critics on spurious charges,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Instead of improving abusive legislation, Saudi authorities are doubling down with the ludicrous proposition that criticism of the crown prince is an act of terrorism.”

The Penal Law for Crimes of Terrorism and its Financing, published on November 1, 2017, strips away extensive powers from the Interior Ministry, which Saudi authorities reorganized in 2017, and transfers them to the newly established Public Prosecution and Presidency of the State Security, both bodies that report directly to the king.

The new law carries an overly broad definition of terrorism similar to the previous law. Unlike the previous definition, the new one includes a specific reference to violence with the clause “harm an individual or result in their death, when the purpose – by its nature or its context – is to terrorize people or force a government or international organization to carry out or prevent it from carrying out an action.”

The new law, however, does not restrict the definition of terrorism to violent acts. Other conduct it defines as terrorism includes “disturbing public order,” “shaking the security of the community and the stability of the State,” “exposing its national unity to danger,” and “suspending the basic laws of governance,” all of which are vague and have been used by Saudi authorities to punish peaceful dissidents and activists. Prominent human rights activists Abdullah al-Hamid and Mohammed al-Qahtani are serving 11-year and 10-year sentences respectively, based on charges that contain similar language. Human rights activist Essam Koshak is currently on trial on similar charges.

For me, among the shittiest things about the House of Saud is that it is accountable only to itself, which leads to arbitrary and unwarranted acts against its citizens.  

"Toast rack urbanism" is the descriptor of  planned Mecca developments, from the Guardian.

Edited August 14, 2018 by william.scherk
Tone, minor grammatical fixes; added paragraphs from HRW; added image of planned development in Mecca

[Jonathan]

15 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

That isn't quite how it works. The Saudi system has no regularized machinery to inform the public about such detentions...

Yeah, I wasn't asking if they had regularized machinery to inform the public. The fact that they don't have such regularized machinery doesn't mean that they've never offered up a reason or excuse for detaining someone. I merely asked if anyone was aware of the Saudis releasing any info on the arrest.

 

20 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

One could take off the clown mask and imagine how the Jonathan Smith Party  would be screeching reacting to that Trump tweet.

How would I react to Trump's tweeting against Saudis (or any other nations') abusing women activists, or anyone else? I'd applaud it. And I'd applaud Obama or Hillary if either were to tweet the same.

J