Post: #26

(03-17-2015 03:47 AM)Cheetah Wrote:  ^^^^

Is there anyone cheering the Swedish feminist? No, apart from some of her colleagues telling her 'you go grrrl'.

This forum is everyday writing thread after thread about the decline of western women. What country is the opposite to this? Don't tell me that Saudi arabia hasn't done anything right.

There are a lot of things in Arab traditional culture which are great, like the strength of male leadership and the hospitality. But the type of Islam promoted by the Saudis fucks that up, too, by imposing extreme isolation of females and violence as the solution for every woman problem.

The Iraqis, Sunni and Shia, had to fight back a Wahabi invasion in the early 19th century. I know you can't calibrate a perfect society, there are only more or less fucked-up societies. I prefer the West with its ability to self-correct over time to fixed despotisms based on inflexible religious doctrines. The Hanbali school of Islam closed any access to independent reasoning and analogy (ijtihad) centuries ago. At least feminism can be moderated over time by reaction in the democratic West (which is what is happening now).

One of the principal characteristics of Saudi and other strict Islamic societies is hypocrisy. You can look at the Tag the Sponsor thread for some examples.

The other example is all of the homo bum-blasting and boy-raping Saudis and others of that type do to each other. Think about the batcha bazi in Afghanistan.

Post: #27

No hypocrisy in Sweden? Have you read about 'captain skirt'? The article is rather long but still worth a read.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/au...rime-palme

The article doesn't refer to just statutory and procuring sex of minors and some other stuff, some of the cases were real rape.

I don't know what happened in the beginning of the 19th century in Saudi. You shouldn't discard history, you can learn alot from it, but what we have now in the west is far far from an utopia.

If I ever decide that I want to marry and have children I would like to do so with an innocent teenage girl who is traditional, wouldn't mind to be a stay at home mom and isn't shamed by society for doing so. The funny thing is that now in the west you really need to look long and hard to find any such girl and if you do she would be shamed for her choices. I don't call that a preferred society.

Post: #28

SP5 dropping serious truths in this thread.

I like to mock Swedish extremist leftist idiocy as much as any other person here but I would still prefer that to Arab despotism any day.

Post: #29

According to declassified UK government files the US was considering invading Saudi Arabia in 1973. I wonder if things would have turned out for the better?

UK feared Americans would invade Gulf during 1973 oil crisis

Quote:Ted Heath's government feared - at the height of the 1973 oil crisis - that the White House was planning to invade Saudi Arabia and the Gulf to secure fuel supplies, according to Downing Street files released today.

Suspicions about Richard Nixon's administration as it struggled to shake free from the Watergate scandal, the documents show, were reinforced when the prime minister was only belatedly informed of a worldwide nuclear alert declared by the US.

The files, handed over to the National Archive in Kew under the 30-year rule, expose a disturbing and acrimonious episode in "the special relationship" between London and Washington.

In the aftermath of the Yom Kippur war, America blamed Britain for failing to open its military bases. The defeated Arab nations then imposed an oil embargo on the west.

The US defence secretary, James Schlesinger, told Britain's ambassador in Washington, Lord Cromer, "it was no longer obvious to him that the US could not use force".

Schlesinger had already clashed with Lord Carrington, the British defence secretary. The ambassador's interview was no more amicable. "Couthness is not Schlesinger's strong point," he said in a cable to London. "One or two of his remarks bordered on the offensive."

But it was the substance of Schlesinger's remarks which set alarm bells ringing. "[One] outcome of the Middle East crisis," he told Lord Cromer, "was the [sight] of industrialised nations being continuously submitted to [the] whims of under-populated, under-developed countries, particularly [those in the] Middle East.

"Schlesinger did not draw any specific conclusion from this but the unspoken assumption came through ... that it might not ... be possible to rule out a more direct application of military force".

A week later, in mid-November, Henry Kissinger, the US secretary of state, warned that if the Arab oil embargo continued unreasonably and in definitely, America would have to decide what counter-measures were necessary.

In the grip of an international security crisis, Heath commissioned a report - titled Middle East: Possible Use of Force by the United States - from Percy Cradock of the joint intelligence committee.

The 22-page survey, delivered to the prime minister in December, warned that the most likely US military action was the seizure of oil-producing areas. Such a move might be triggered by a resumption of the Arab/Israeli war and protracted oil sanctions.

"The United States might consider it could not tolerate a situation in which the US and its allies were at the mercy of a small group of unreasonable countries. We believe the American preference would be for a rapid operation conducted by themselves to seize oilfields ... The force required for the initial operation would be of the order of two brigades, one for Saudi operation, one for Kuwait and possibly a third for Abu Dhabi.

"The build-up would require the presence of a substantial US naval force in the Indian Ocean, considerably more than the present force. After the initial assaults ... two [extra] divisions could be flown in from the USA."

British bases such as that at Diego Garcia would probably have to be used, Cradock observed. The Russians might well fly troops into the region to defend the Arabs. US/Soviet confrontations were unlikely but could not be ruled out.

"The greatest risk of such confrontations in the Gulf would probably arise in Kuwait where the Iraqis, with Soviet backing, might be tempted to intervene." Nato allies, including Britain, would be pressed to provide political and military support.

During the Yom Kippur war, in October 1973, Schlesinger had told Carrington that: "The Americans had paid £14m for facilities in Diego Garcia and might be expected to be allowed to use them."

But it was the full-scale nuclear alert - declared on October 25 that year, supposedly in response to Soviet fleet movements in the eastern Mediterranean - which most infuriated Ted Heath.

The prime minister, the documents reveal, only learnt about it from news agency reports while in the Commons.

"Personally," he told his private secretary Lord Bridges, "I fail to see how any initiative, threatened or real, by the Soviet leadership required such a worldwide nuclear alert.

"We have to face the fact that the American action has done immense harm, both to this country and worldwide."

If this had happened, Iraq may have fought the US to stop it invading Kuwait and Saudi Arabia - the deputy PM of Iraq at the time was Saddam Hussein!

Post: #30

Is the Saudi military any good today?

Post: #31

Quote:Is the Saudi military any good today?

The Saudis purchase top-end hardware from Europe and the U.S. (thank Germany for offering them what is considered the worlds best tank) but lack the technology infrastructure for large scale, coordinated operations. Not an incredibly large military, but they do benefit from Pakistani/Western training in fighting insurgencies.

Training in the Alps with the French. Gear look familiar?


On the political/structural side of things, the article below was written in 1990 but is still accurate today in explaining their underlying weakness: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1990-...udi-arabia

Quote:But the problem is more basic and deep-rooted than that. The main inhibition to an effective national defense is the royal family's abiding fear of an independent military establishment. "In this part of the world, the military often does things other than defend the external boundaries," said the diplomat. "The Saudi royal family looks at what happened in Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Syria-and it`s a disconcerting set of history." In each of those nations, the monarchy was toppled by a military coup.

The Saudi royal family has tried to keep a tight rein on the military by limiting its size, placing trusted family members in key command positions and carefully balancing each branch of the armed forces against another.

Post: #32

Well, sp5, the Saudis may end up destroying themselves.
Correct me if I am wrong but they are trying to foment radical jihadi groups by giving them funding BUT ALSO want to keep them outside of the Kingdom.
They can't have it both ways forever, especially if they get a sufficiently weak and short sighted monarch.

Post: #33

(03-18-2015 03:34 AM)GeroMeroHero Wrote:  Correct me if I am wrong but they are trying to foment radical jihadi groups by giving them funding BUT ALSO want to keep them outside of the Kingdom.

That is exactly what the Saudis have been doing for years.

Post: #34

(03-17-2015 05:28 PM)Blick Mang Wrote:  

Quote:Is the Saudi military any good today?

The Saudis purchase top-end hardware from Europe and the U.S. (thank Germany for offering them what is considered the worlds best tank) but lack the technology infrastructure for large scale, coordinated operations. Not an incredibly large military, but they do benefit from Pakistani/Western training in fighting insurgencies.

Training in the Alps with the French. Gear look familiar?


On the political/structural side of things, the article below was written in 1990 but is still accurate today in explaining their underlying weakness: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1990-...udi-arabia

Quote:But the problem is more basic and deep-rooted than that. The main inhibition to an effective national defense is the royal family's abiding fear of an independent military establishment. "In this part of the world, the military often does things other than defend the external boundaries," said the diplomat. "The Saudi royal family looks at what happened in Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Syria-and it`s a disconcerting set of history." In each of those nations, the monarchy was toppled by a military coup.

The Saudi royal family has tried to keep a tight rein on the military by limiting its size, placing trusted family members in key command positions and carefully balancing each branch of the armed forces against another.

Saudi Arabia, like most of the Middle Eastern armies with the exception of Israel, have one very serious problem. There is an almost total disconnect between the officers and the enlisted men, socially as well as culturally. To those who follow such affairs, this is old news but to people who wonder on the role of the various regional militaries in recent events, it can be somewhat of a big surprise finding out just how iffy those lines can be.
http://www.meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars

Post: #35

I am glad the articles about Middle Eastern armies lacking communal trust and certain sexual habits developing from the intense gender isolation are going around.

I don't care for sex positivist activists but the premise that repression of sexuality leads to extreme expressions of it does have truth to it.

Post: #36

I swear, Sweden is like bizarro land at this point. While they're doing, there are fucking Muslim rape gangs prowling the streets of Stockholm at night and the government absolutely refuse to do anything about it. You know that means? That means they only care about Islam's mistreatment of women when it ISN'T happening inside their own borders. In other words, the one fucking place they should care that it's happening.

Post: #37

Those outside the UK will need a proxy but Bitter Lake shows how Saudi Arabia has exported Islamic lunacy overseas just to keep it from compromising the rule of the House of Saud.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02...itter-lake

Post: #38

(03-18-2015 09:09 AM)JustlookingForAGoodTime Wrote:  But the problem is more basic and deep-rooted than that. The main inhibition to an effective national defense is the royal family's abiding fear of an independent military establishment. "In this part of the world, the military often does things other than defend the external boundaries," said the diplomat. "The Saudi royal family looks at what happened in Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Syria-and it`s a disconcerting set of history." In each of those nations, the monarchy was toppled by a military coup.

The Saudi royal family has tried to keep a tight rein on the military by limiting its size, placing trusted family members in key command positions and carefully balancing each branch of the armed forces against another.

The Saudi Arabian National Guard (SANG) is the praetorian guard for the House of Saud. It is greater in number than today's British Army and crucially, more numerous and better equipped than the regular Saudi army. The civilian population of Saudi Arabia is only circa 28 million.