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Tiny, Wealthy Qatar Goes Its Own Way, and Pays for It

nytimes.com

131–140 of 148 posts

Re: Tiny, Wealthy Qatar Goes Its Own Way, and Pays for It

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISTM it probably happened in 2011? The young prince wasn't in a position to do anything at that time, although one can imagine that Salman was bringing him around to listen to the various old dudes then, and the topic probably came up. He certainly hit the ground running in 2015.

Running is such an overstatement of what he's been up to though...

"Hit the ground running" is an English (well, actually American) idiom. It seems to have originated among the hobos, who judged it the best way to jump from a moving train. MbS might not physically be ready to run anywhere. Still, no one outside Saudi had heard of him four years ago. Since then, he seems to have been much more effective in pursuing his political goals than anyone else on the peninsula?

Re: Tiny, Wealthy Qatar Goes Its Own Way, and Pays for It

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except that at the time, Iraq was itself a highly unstable conflict zone. I fail to see how turning Syria into an unstable conflict zone would help.

Nobody set out to cause a long-lasting, destructive conflict in Syria. Those who were backing the opposition factions were no doubt hoping for a quick, orderly transition of power. But obviously it didn't work out that way.

Does it ever work out that way? This myth of USA military effectiveness isn't promoted in order to ensure transfers of power or [snicker, haha] natural gas in pipelines. It is promoted to ensure the continuing transfer of wealth from American taxpayers to armaments manufacturers and their sockpuppets in government and media.

Re: Tiny, Wealthy Qatar Goes Its Own Way, and Pays for It

#133
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be a conspiracy theory but we must not be naive usually the marketed reasons have nothing to do with the real geopolitical ones. Remember the Iraq invasion?

You say "usually" but you only give one single example. Not to say that you couldn't come up with others but I'm not sure I agree with the "usually". Being french this argument annoys me particularly because if you remember France was against this intervention because we thought the WMD menace was bullshit. Turns out that we were right. Then a few years ago France was saying "Assad is using chemical weapons against c…

You seem to be leaving something out, here. What was the French position on Libya? In the end, was it different than the position of BHL?

A public reticence to create further disasters, if indeed it existed, would be among the best possible long-term consequences of that foolish administration.

Re: Tiny, Wealthy Qatar Goes Its Own Way, and Pays for It

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Russian. And while I agree that we have a propaganda, I can't say that the situation is any better in the West. When I was living in UK for a while, I was amazed by how some really smart people have 100% level of trust to national media, so that they can't even perceive another point of view. All arguments were based on the fact that their media is historically old and never lies because it can't risk its reputat…

I agree with you that there are many people in the West who have (almost) 100% trust in national media, and that that level of trust is misplaced, but I don't agree at all that the situation is the same as in Russia (where I've been and where I know some people). The difference is that here in the West there are lots of agendas being pushed, but there are also lots of competing ones, lots of different points of view,…

Yes we have lots of agendas, but in my lifetime only one agenda has been constant through all the surface changes: spend more money fighting more wars. At least when the Russians fight a war, they win, sometimes. The lie about USA military/LEO effectiveness is so big you can't even see it as a proposition that could be true or false. It's like water to a fish.

Re: Tiny, Wealthy Qatar Goes Its Own Way, and Pays for It

#135
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From here, I can’t tell which is the conspiracy theory and which (if any) is the truth. (I wonder if my complete lack of clue about what is plausible in this context is a common theme amongst conspiracy theory believers?)

When someone writes about "a big alliance", which however is not evidenced by any public formal contracts of alliance, that is a fairly good indicator that a theory could be considered conspiratorial.

In this thread, both the conspiracist and the "conventional wisdom" rebuttalist seem to be talking about big alliances?

As anyone who has tried to get anything done on multiple continents knows, any complicated goal (e.g., build a multinational pipeline through remote and wildly insecure areas) will tend to lose out to the interests of locals. A necessary but insufficient condition for success of such goals is to spend enough to make locals' interests coincide with one's own. The difficulties faced by this hypothetical pipeline lead one to doubt its construction would profit in the long run.

The advantage of the USA military-industrial complex is that they actually DGAF what happens as a result of all of our profligate and evil war spending. The spending itself is the goal, and they're just as happy to siphon off a stream of resources supporting ISIS in Syria as off some other stream supporting Kurds in northern Iraq. That's why our international policy (and the media narrative carefully curated to provide cover for it) is so schizophrenic. We believe in democracy!/Down with Morsi!/We DGAF!/War! That is a big conspiracy, but nobody wants to talk about that.

Re: Tiny, Wealthy Qatar Goes Its Own Way, and Pays for It

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the end none of us are on the ground and so we're left to rely on the integrity of the individuals and organizations that are reporting on issues. If you would rather rely on Vox, WaPo, Buzzfeed, and increasingly even the NYT for in depth and critical analysis then that's certainly your prerogative. At the same time, hailing them as beacons of integrity and truth is unreasonable. They increasingly routinely print…

I am not sure where I said anything about "beacons of integrity and truth," but I will take institutions that routinely call themselves out for their mistakes over Hersh who appears to stand by all of his reporting despite serious flaws in his stories. I get my news from the sources you mentioned along with many others. I was taking issue with your disposal of babies with bathwater. If you are discounting information…

The sites do not routinely call themselves out. Rather they acknowledge to creating fake stories once overwhelming evidence of such is presented and spread to the point that it can no longer be ignored. And of course such acknowledgements invariably come with appeals to plausible deniability in their own culpability -- which I think should become decreasingly plausible to anybody of the slightest bit of objectivty, given the regularity of such 'errors.' The only reason it might seem routine is that the sites you've named have all put out an increasingly large number of false stories.

However, we're not in "deep doo-doo" just because you happen to think these organizations have value. When we would be in "deep doo-doo" is if we became monolithic in thought. It's great that you think Seymour Hersh has no credibility. It's great that I think your preferred sources have no credibility. It ensures we remain a critical audience which helps work as a safeguard against falsehoods. As your preferred sources are regularly outted, it is in large part thanks to people like me. And should Seymour indeed be shown to be generating fake news, it will be largely be thanks to people like you.

The only thing that's really changed in society is this fear of conflict. Disagreement, or the belief that 'others' are being misled by fake information, is hardly a novel thing. It's the self righteousness and fear of disagreement, arguably driven by social media echo chambers, that is the novel thing -- and that is the thing that, if anything, might leave us in "deep doo-doo."

Re: Tiny, Wealthy Qatar Goes Its Own Way, and Pays for It

#137
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're interested, I regularly read what some of Putin's supporter I know post on Reddit (mostly coming from RT and Sputnik). This way, I keep up on that kind of propaganda without having to read all the Russian media agencies directly. To anticipate your next point: is there propaganda in the West? Yes, absolutely. Is it the same level BS as Putin's propaganda? No way - in the West there are just so many more ind…

Most people in the west don't try and find impartial information or counter arguments as generally people don't like having their opinion challenged. Worse still, many of the most popular news networks are also the the worst for political bias (Fox News, News UK (Sun), The Daily Mail, etc.) Let's also not forget just how many people get their news from untrusted sources posted on social media and other similar commun…

Re people how downvoted me. I appreciate this is an opinion so others will differ but it would be nice to have a counterargument so I can understand why you disagree

Re: Tiny, Wealthy Qatar Goes Its Own Way, and Pays for It

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except that at the time, Iraq was itself a highly unstable conflict zone. I fail to see how turning Syria into an unstable conflict zone would help.

Nobody set out to cause a long-lasting, destructive conflict in Syria. Those who were backing the opposition factions were no doubt hoping for a quick, orderly transition of power. But obviously it didn't work out that way.

> Nobody set out to cause a long-lasting, destructive conflict in Syria.

That's precisely the point. Nobody set out to cause long-lasting, destructive conflict in Iraq as well.

Furthermore, in Iraq there was a multinational coallition allocating hefty amounts of resourses to ensure a clean politically advantgeous outcome, while the war in Syria would be, according to that conspiracy theory, at best a covert operation leading to a drawn out conflict.

Re: Tiny, Wealthy Qatar Goes Its Own Way, and Pays for It

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree, but they certainly won't support the kurds' efforts against a NATO member. Don't misunderstand that I think this is a) a good idea, or b) ultimately going to work out the way Turkey wants it to work out. I don't think the kurds will choose to live and die by Afrin.

Yes, NATO as an organisation will hardly support Kurds either, but I can see that individual NATO members as well as other countries will start giving more and more moral and possibly economical support.

What the Kurds would need is surface to air missile, so they don't get slaughter from the air.

Is it even "likely" that you can shoot down a jet with an manually operated anti aircraft gun? Sure it's "possible"

Re: Tiny, Wealthy Qatar Goes Its Own Way, and Pays for It

#140
post #5

Here is my question for HN readers: do you trust this article? Because it tries to fool us. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Europe, US and Turkey was the big alliance which tried to take down Syria. Please check the records western news channels in 2013, it was full of joyful propaganda about Free Syrian Army fighting for democracy in Syria. The actual goal was of course had nothing to do with democracy and Arab spring was tota…

> That was also the time FSA split into bunch of groups; Wahabist ISIS and socialist YPG Well that's completely wrong. The idea that ISIS and YPG would ever fight together is so stupid it's hilarious. Maybe read less RT. YPG has always been independent, they're Kurds, you idiot. ISIS has always been its own group, but started turning on everyone else at the end of 2014. The FSA is a mix of radical to less radical Ara…

> you idiot

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