cars posted:rhizzone lf was built from a coalition of the superstars from the wddp thread on one side & the aesthetics brothers and the ex pats on the other, while i was part of neither group and rose to power among this group of Job havers through a relentless onslaught of paranoia and memes. so i'm the donald trump of the forum.
the aesthetics brothers
conec posted:i have decided to join the race
hey you with the pretty face, welcome to the (human) race
chickeon posted:that reads like a parody and i feel like there's a good chance it's straight fiction
i don't understand how anyone could hold this kind of sentiment and i could only conclude it's a result of having never spent any time around a republican in one's life, but then i remember that they broadcast their options 24/7, so there's got to be a willfully delusional component there as well. hint: when tonight Trump or Cruz or The Reasonable One advocated abolishing the EPA or torturing people, the thousands of people cheering weren't actors
Every time Cruz and Rubio try to hit Trump over the head with an Israel club and nothing happens, it is Israel’s weakness that is exposed. Every time Trump wins a party primary without challenge from his supporters, another nail is driven into the coffin of the unshakeable alliance between Israel and America’s deep right."
http://www.haaretz.com/world-news/u-s-election-2016/1.706970
le_nelson_mandela_face posted:i don't even know how to make a joke out of the Republican political establishment's acting aghast at the idea of waterboarding and war crimes now that it's trump saying it
Gosh Quagmire I feel bad about torturing those people.
Aw, don't feel bad, Peter!
Huh, I never thought of it like that!
getfiscal posted:i think if israel's pariah status extends deeper into core countries instead of just the consensus in most of the rest of the world, that will be significant and good, but it is mostly important for the outrageous situation it causes for its immediate neighbours and for palestinians. the idea that israel is the linchpin of american foreign policy seems like a myth designed by likudniks, the actual fact is that almost infinite realignment is possible. that's part of the danger of investing so much focus on, say, how bad saudi arabia is or whatever, because it is almost trivial for the US to shuffle things around a bit to change the subject.
this is my first instinct too but i also feel that there has been a lot of long-view u.s. material investment in israel as the free actor in the region, with aid to everyone else having been limited on purpose. maybe that's because of the perceived potential instability of the other governments the u.s. supports nearby, maybe it's historically arbitrary, but i feel as though the pivot you're proposing would take a decade or more and might well coincide with a series of internal collapses for whatever series of new best friends we chose as the prize pony in the region, in large part because of the impression that we were not going to be israel's big brother anymore when it came to their wackier schemes, which would make a lot of groups feel better about their long odds for seizing true regional power in a semi-permanent way. it wouldn't be disaster for the u.s. to make a shift but there are a lot of sunk costs. i think a lot of policymakers in the u.s. really do see it as israel on top or nothing at all. of course in extremis i'm sure they'd all cope.
cars posted:this is my first instinct too but i also feel that there has been a lot of long-view u.s. material investment in israel as the free actor in the region, with aid to everyone else having been limited on purpose.
I don't think that's true though. It's true Israel gets a lot of aid, but how it is structured is important. Most of it is, say, Israel agrees to buy American weaponry, and the US agrees to give loan guarantees, which often evolves into loan forgiveness. But much of this is because Israel has no independent capacity to pay for such things. Egypt gets a lot of aid in the same strategy and for similar reasons (because Egypt is mostly poor). I think aid to Egypt was roughly similar to Israel's in terms of value, although obviously with much different populations. Countries that can afford it more just buy things outright, like gulf states, although obviously as part of the same complex. The amount of equipment that the US ensures in the region is still enormous, not counting the American stores and bases in the region. That's part of why ISIS could comically steal more light vehicles from Iraq than Israel has total. There are also close relationships with important countries that get US aid from time to time just for those arms purchases, like Turkey (and Colombia). Part of Erdogan's stupid plans involve Turkey becoming a regional hegemon - someone told me he's even been sending aid to Uighurs as part of his supposed responsibility to all Turkic peoples, which is insanity. So I would say that US support has actually been quite wide to all its partners, but coordinated in such a way that they take on some of the costs involved if they can afford to.
nsa posted:Netanyahu ... asserted that the tension has only been heightened by the absence of direct contact between himself and the U.S. President. ... Israeli officials, meanwhile, believed that this tiff goes far beyond merely the question of the construction plans, marking instead the lowest point in U.S.-Israeli relations in memory.
drwhat posted:according to wikileaks documents, israel has been complaining about the state of us-israel relations privately since at least 2010. though maybe they complain about them all the time. he never calls!! etc. they sound a little hyperbolic.
nsa posted:Netanyahu ... asserted that the tension has only been heightened by the absence of direct contact between himself and the U.S. President. ... Israeli officials, meanwhile, believed that this tiff goes far beyond merely the question of the construction plans, marking instead the lowest point in U.S.-Israeli relations in memory.
sever
getfiscal posted:there's also the fact that military aid isn't completely rational in itself. like israel has too much equipment. all the new junk that politicians approve in america just gets subsidized by giving a bunch to israel through elaborate schemes. like what does getting many dozens of new F-35s even benefit israel at this point. the cost is enormous and they don't need super-planes to bomb refugee camps.
yeah, this is a good point. it would be interesting to know the actual operating cost of various parts of the israeli military, just in materiel, vs what they could actually afford to deploy if aid was lowered. having a bunch of fancy weaponry is useless if no one in the ME will sell oil to you and you have a tiny tax base
getfiscal posted:Part of Erdogan's stupid plans involve Turkey becoming a regional hegemon - someone told me he's even been sending aid to Uighurs as part of his supposed responsibility to all Turkic peoples, which is insanity.
This reminds me of when babyfinland was running that politics game for a little while. i was the Republic of China (Taiwan) and some dude was al Qaeda or something and on the very first day i started paying him to foment unrest with the uighurs to fuck with China (PRC). i believe you were the Vatican and converted to Islam.
c_man posted:im not convinced that a trump presidency would be that much of a departure from any other presidency, globally speaking. i mean, its not like the material forces on the US world economy will change if trump gets elected. on the national scale the main difference i can see would be more overt and violent displays of white supremacy but i dont see where all of these supposed marxists are getting all this Hope for global policy Change from trump. it wont all of a sudden be in the interests of capital to scale down global confrontation and economic exploitation.
i don't expect much change but he seems like enough of a crazy person to maybe accomplish one thing. it may as well be randomly selected from his list of things he's said though. so maybe less foreign military aid to israel, maybe tighter border security, maybe all the non-whites get put in ovens, idk.
the real change would be that his existence would give licence to whatever state actors have been waiting for an opportunity to do whatever he is pushing. what they don't want to do will get ignored or sandbagged forever.
so the question becomes, what things would the american military-industrial complex actually like to do that are so beyond the pale that they can only do them with an openly fascist president? those are the things that will actually happen.
otoh liberals who thought they could control fascists for their own ends have a history of failure
otth he's not going to win
ilmdge posted:getfiscal posted:Part of Erdogan's stupid plans involve Turkey becoming a regional hegemon - someone told me he's even been sending aid to Uighurs as part of his supposed responsibility to all Turkic peoples, which is insanity.
This reminds me of when babyfinland was running that politics game for a little while. i was the Republic of China (Taiwan) and some dude was al Qaeda or something and on the very first day i started paying him to foment unrest with the uighurs to fuck with China (PRC). i believe you were the Vatican and converted to Islam.
whayt game??!
http://z13.invisionfree.com/eRegime/index.php?showtopic=5162&view=findpost&p=33819939
ilmdge posted:it was an eregime balance of power thing. i enver did oen before i don't know how it works but i just trolled china for liek a week and then i think the game died
http://z13.invisionfree.com/eRegime/index.php?showtopic=5162&view=findpost&p=33819939
sometimes i try to convince myself that posting and reading posts here is an intellectual process through which i grow, and other times i remember things like this happen. or i read a conec post