SHORTPOD (28):THE KHASSHOGI CASE AND ERDOGAN'S "NEO-OTTOMANISM"

Affirmative Right's Chief Editor Colin Liddell talks about the recent murder of journalist Jamal Khasshogi in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul and how it is being weaponised for geopolitical gain by President Erdogan of Turkey. He contends that what we are seeing here is a geopolitical struggle for hegemony in the Sunni Muslim World between a revanchist "Neo-Ottoman" Turkey and a medievalist Saudi Arabian monarchy that is attempting to use its oil billions to burnish its image with modern PR tactics and appeals to the West.

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THE EMPIRE HAS NO CLOTHES

by Bay Area Guy

Even as the plight of Syrians continues to make headlines, Yemenis being decimated by Saudi Arabia arouse no sympathy. Well, I shouldn’t say no sympathy. Just recently, liberal interventionist Samantha Power decried Saudi depredations. How noble!

Unfortunately, there’s one little problem: America is the chief enabler of the onslaught, which is why most of the world thinks Power is full of shit; they recognize that American foreign policy belies her moral rhetoric. Of course, it’s always been blindingly obvious that American elites are lying when they wax eloquent about “human rights” and “democracy.” Instead, imperial interests inform their decisions. Why else would they make such cozy deals with the devil Saudi Arabia (or for that matter, the various other dictatorships they’ve propped up)? Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to answer that one.

FULL-SPECTRUM CYNICISM

by Daniel Spaulding

Encapsulating his view of the essence of politics, Vladimir Lenin famously asked “who, whom,” that is to say, what matters in power relationships is who does what to whom. Under the elaborate trappings of abstract, supposedly universal morals, this brutal and obscene maxim has long been the West’s primary operating principle in international affairs.

This week’s Washington-backed Saudi attack on the country of Yemen is a reminder of this cynical practice. Saudi warplanes, supplied with US intelligence data, began bombing Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, in an effort to dislodge the Shiite Houthi militias from their positions. A few weeks earlier these tribal mountain fighters had ousted Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, Yemen’s puppet president, and seized control not only of the capital, but also of large swathes of the country.

“RUSSIA'S ORTHODOX JIHAD” AND THE REFLECTIONS OF AN AMERICAN LIVING IN RUSSIA

by Cainus Maxus

“United States of America was established as a state without traditions. It identified itself with a twisted conception of freedom and felt that its enormous power is due to its global mission. Which means nothing else than exporting its “values” to the world, whether or not it is needed. Since usually there was no demand for it, only the violence left of course hidden under the guise of such nice words as world peace, democracy, liberalism.” 

Gábor Vona of Jobbik, Hungarian traditionalist political party

The American Conservative recently published a blog post with the title "Russia’s ‘Orthodox Jihad'." While it is an interesting presentation of views that are rarely heard in the West regarding Russia, it contains a problematic theory, which states that the push-back against the West is bouyed by the idea that Putin is leading an "anti-W.E.I.R.D." coalition. This is an acronym that stands for "Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic."