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Soriek  1yr ago (text post)   1138 thread views

Transnational Thursdays 24

This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum lives in or might be interested in. Feel free to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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I was just about to link the Scott post myself. It's amazing how much bullshit nigh limitless wealth lets you get away with, and the Venezuelans make the Saudis look competent, which is rare enough.

The Saudis are competent, it’s just that their goals are unconventional for a modern state, although in a way that makes sense for them.

Under which goals stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Line%2C_Saudi_Arabia is a good use of money? (note that this article badly underdescribes how stupid this project is)

Every time I look at The Line I get this mix of awe and horror. The inevitable collapse will be something to behold.

I wonder how far this will go. Note that it is supposed to be 170 kilometre long and 500m high. I never seen buzzword-driven development going so far.

Yeah I think I underappreciated how much of the Chavez Era was just outlandish incompetence / having no plan at all rather than a concerted socialist effort failing on pure economic terms. I'm not sure why but I had an impression of Chavez as a pretty smart guy.

Probably just the fact your diet of Chavez was from neutral commentators who ignored his theatrics to focus on the substance of his policy, something they took for granted. And leftist commentators who deliberately ignored his craziness; because, any alternative to capitalism is something to be lauded, no matter how terrible.

Anyone who actually pointed out the absurdities was written off as a bourgeoisie stooge or an American imperialist.

The whole current Saudi Arabia situation is very interesting to me because they clearly want to pivot away from oil dependency and avoid the same trap as Venezuela but it's not clear they really know what they're doing. I'd be interested in reading a high-effort evaluation of what's going on in there.

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