It's a bit more interesting wrt. most 9/11 hijackers being Saudis: I think it's pretty much confirmed at this point that it was a deliberate choice by al Qaida, attempting to deteriorate US-Saudi relations.

But as long as Saudis are omitted from this regulation, it's pretty ineffective. Then again, how much of "terrorism legislation" is actually preventing terrorism, as opposed to extending the powers of police and prosecution, or just being populist "I'm doing something"?

>It's a bit more interesting wrt. most 9/11 hijackers being Saudis: I think it's pretty much confirmed at this point that it was a deliberate choice by al Qaida, attempting to deteriorate US-Saudi relations.

Saudis have a looooong history of funding all kinds of terrorist groups across the whole muslim world.

Sure. They basically created and funded al Qaida in the 1980s to counter the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Then bin Laden came back to Saudi Arabia and offered to help against Saddam when he invaded Kuwait, and the Saudis told him to go away. After that they became more enemies than friends, but with the weird twist that the Saudi government wants to appear ideologically relatively aligned with al Qaida, such that al Qaida has little support for overthrowing the house of Saud.

It's not just Qaida though, they sponsor all kinds of Sunni extremists all over the globe.

Regardless of the hijackers motives, Saudi Arabia is by far the worst country when it comes to exporting and supporting terror. Iran is an island of sanity by comparison, and there are no Shia terrorist organizations nowadays (Hezbollah are not terrorists - they don't blow up random civilians).

I suppose Rafic Hariri isn't "random" as he was after all Lebanon's democratically elect Prime Minister when Hezbollah assassinated him, but how about the 21 people who also died in that bombing?

I personally know a man who lost his wife (mother of their 3 kids) when Hezbollah bombed the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires. 85 civilians were killed, but then again mostly Jewish so not exactly "random" either.

It always amazes me how many Western activists approach the world like a Hollywood movie. If Saudis are bad, and Trump is bad, then obviously their Shia rivals must be good!

That is true but 21 to thousands that just die in Yemen or by Isis is not even considerable. I think we should compare them and not going to say that one is not bad at all. They are both are fundamentally against human freedom and liberal ideas, but one is so far worst.

Although I think if only west could stop buying their oils then they both will suffocate. There is not a single country with rich oil in the Middle-east that uses the money from oil for their people. They all have first and second class citizens.

Saeed Malekpour is still in prison, that alone for me makes Iran a no-go country. http://thenextweb.com/me/2012/01/19/death-sentence-for-irani...

Iran is horrible. It's a nightmare to live but it's much much better than Saudi

As an Iranian, I have to say it's mostly boring. This article, originally written about Malaysia, hits close to home:

https://tompepinsky.com/2017/01/06/everyday-authoritarianism...

What you hear in the news about Iran is not its everyday life. Imagine if you lived in a country where the only news you saw in the media about the US was violence and police brutality and just all the bad stuff. How would you have imagined it would be like to do something mundane, for example go down the street to buy some milk? You would have imagined that you would get mugged for sure, maybe shot during mugging, then tased by the police that decided to arrest you when you called 911 for an ambulance, and handed a million dollar bill for the hospital stay, and then you have to spend the next 30 years in a for-profit prison as a slave getting constantly sexually assaulted.

The interesting thing is Iranian media portrays the US in the same caricaturistic ‎manner that the US media portrays Iran. My family were legitimately concerned about my safety when I announced my intention to go to Texas for a PhD. Probably as worried as you would be if you had to move to Iran.

(I ended up going to Canada instead, so it's all good.)

I completely understand your point. It is boring and OK for average citizens but when we talk about states like Iran and Saudi, the context is more about your rights if you speak up against the governments, are some kind of activist or are part of a religious/ethnic minority. Life for that subgroup of people is not exactly the same as for the majority in such states. North Korea is an extreme example of this and India/Pakistan are mild examples. Iran and Saudi are somewhere in between.

this is so true. simple fact in face of all those years of propaganda against iran.

by no means are they some altruistic peace lovers, but considering other countries in the region, US could get much more if they would be allies since technically there are no obstacles (apart from 1979 US embassy issue, but nobody got killed, all released eventually... worse things happen, ie Behgazi and nobody cares if it serves some agenda).

If you go there nowadays, all the signs are in 2 languages - Farsi and English. Everybody speaks at least a bit English. Compared to say France :)

>US could get much more if they would be allies since technically there are no obstacles

It's weird, it's almost like pioneering and supplying technology (VBIED's) to kill American troops, and founding terrorist organizations to kill American allies somehow sours the relationships between the two countries.

Sadr's death squads and Houthis.

If blowing up random civilians is the definition of terror then I'm sure the Syrian government would qualify.

"It's a bit more interesting wrt. most 9/11 hijackers being Saudis: I think it's pretty much confirmed at this point that it was a deliberate choice by al Qaida, attempting to deteriorate US-Saudi relations."

I think that Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest problem in the world. In fact, I wish Trump would have banned them too or even suggested a regime change:

1. http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2015/02...

2. http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2015/01...

For Iran I have high hopes. They started the fundamentalist bullshit and I have the impression they may be the first to get rid of it. In fact, there are first signs (German link, try google translate): https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...

> For Iran I have high hopes. They started the fundamentalist bullshit

Please try to learn even the slightest thing about this subject before you make statements so confidently. Wahhabism started in Saudi Arabia in the early 20th century and spread due to Saudi oil money in the 30's and 40's. Meanwhile Iran was a pluralistic society right up until 1979.

Please try to learn even the slightest thing about this subject before you make statements so confidently.

While there is a tiny bit of truth in your statement, Saudi Arabia changed a lot in 1979 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Mosque_seizure

Saudi King Khaled however, did not react to the upheaval by cracking down on religious puritans in general, but by giving the ulama and religious conservatives more power over the next decade. He is thought to have believed that "the solution to the religious upheaval was simple -- more religion." First, photographs of women in newspapers were banned, then women on television. Cinemas and music shops were shut down. School curriculum was changed to provide many more hours of religious studies, eliminating classes on subjects like non-Islamic history. Gender segregation was extended "to the humblest coffee shop". The religious police became more assertive.[

So it is up to debate, if Wahhabism really predates Islam extremism so far or at all. But regarding for Saudi Arabia I have little to no hope at all.

Again, to use your wording, Please try to learn even the slightest thing about this subject before you make statements so confidently.

So America shouldn't support a progressive Saudi monarchy attempting to break the control of their religious bloc, but instead support an Iranian regime dedicated to export their religious revolution. Makes sense.

So he is banning, among others, Syrians and Somalians?

Need a passport? Just pick up a Somali passport on the street for a few bucks. They are not biometric: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3704127.stm

Syrian passports, real and fake, are for Sale in Syria. The ISIS has its hands on real documents in occupied countries.

Sounds like a very reasonable decision for me. Should have banned Saudi Arabia, the cradle of Wahabist terrorism. too.

Not everybody has to go nuts like Merkel and open the borders for millions of illegal (by law!) immigrants.

Merkel was acting on what she believed to be a moral imperative: that those fleeing danger have a right to asylum. All her decisions follow logically if you accept that premise. I. e. it would make no sense to make such a right dependent on the total number of refugees.

In the specific moment you're alluding to she made the decision to suspend the Dublin rules because they were clearly failing (i. e. refugees were clearly being mistreated by the Hungary regime, and the situation in Greece was deteriorating to the point where both the country and the refugees urgently needed relief). At that point, the basic right outlined above and the Dublin rules were in conflict, and human rights generally trump implementation specifics such as Dublin in these circumstances.

In any case, the Dublin convention governs the burden-sharing between nations and does not impact an individual's relation with these states, or their basic rights. That's comparable to, for example, medical care in an emergency: your insurance company may have all sorts of debt with the hospital, but the doctors are still required to treat your compound fracture.

"In the specific moment you're alluding to she made the decision to suspend the Dublin rules because they were clearly failing"

The problem with "making the decision" is that there is no executive order for the German chancellor, as apposed to the US president in the German constitution. Ruling by chancellor decree had fallen out of favor in Germany in the last 70 years. Ms. Merkel with her dubious past with East German state security ("IM Erika") does not need to be re-elected. She needs to stand in front of a judge!

I'll probably be unable to convince you with legal arguments, so maybe you should file a criminal complaint (which is easy and free) and let actual legal professionals make that determination.

And before you accuse the system of justice of just being part of some sort of conspiracy, I'll add that there are plenty of examples of courts disagreeing with the administrations. Most recent examples I can think of is the failed bid to ban the right-wing NPD, and their verdict regarding the ban of muslim headdresses.

No, actually you are right. You CANT convince me. Before I appreciate the legal opinion on some poster on ycombinator I prefer the opinion of a former German supreme court judge: https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article150947586/Mer...

What exactly in the article are you referring to? He -- a former supreme court judge of one of the German states, not of Germany -- doesn't outright claim anything illegal was done.

He sort of, fairly timidly, questions it, with the flimsiest of legal analogies: the legislature has to agree to military missions, e.g. participation in UN missions, and thus (?!) something something Merkel. It's a complete non-sequitur.

That link is just a copy of this original article: http://info.kopp-verlag.de/hintergruende/deutschland/udo-ulf....

Now if you look into this Kopp Verlag, you will find that the Verfassungsschutz is keeping an eye on them because they might be spreading right-wing ideology which seeks to overthrow the constitutional structure of Germany.

Interesting source for claims of unconstitutional behavior by Merkel ^^.

Now I'm not saying that any of this necessarily makes what they say untrue, but I guess your choice of sources makes one thing clear: Nobody here will be able to convince you.

Well, you found an actual federal judge that wrote an actual paper, even if you linked to some third rate news source instead.

Here's the paper: http://bayern.de/Gutachten_Prof_Di_Fabio

Here's a rebuttal: http://verfassungsblog.de/dem-freistaat-zum-gefallen-ueber-u...

Neither of those passports makes you exempt from the visa requirement to travel to the US.

Can't mess with the Saudis. But we sure can ban the people they are bombing to hell, you know the Yemenis with British made bombs no less. And ban all the other people whose countries we helped destroy, you know just to add insult to injury. Really the best way to make people think we the vanguards of freedom. I am sure though Trump has some business dealing with the Saudis, I think there is a Trump hotel in Dubai.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/306990-trum...

Dubai is not in Saudi Arabia. It's in the UAE. However his family have expressed interest in building hotels in Saudi Arabia.

My guess though was the omission has more to do with energy price stability and/or arms exports.

Yeah, as this fiasco unfolds, the last thing we need is people lumping countries together while complaining about other people lumping countries together.

Dubai is a city in a different country. Same peninsula, but there's like seven countries dividing up that chunk of land.

The US gets only 8.1% of its oil from Saudi Arabia now, and that's dropping each year. The US is at last in a position to tell Saudi Arabia where to get off.

US and Britain sell the Saudis over 100 billion dollars in arms. You can't get Saudis off your back with just no longer needing their oil. They still got money. And the military industrial complex needs to eat.

Saudi is a big buyer of US weapons. Considering how hard Trump tries to please and borrow influence from military, I doubt he is going to do anything about it.

Race and religion matters, if you are not in the league, you better make sure you have power or money, or something to offer. At least to me, that is what Trump believes.

Why would the US military care about selling weapons? They are made by private companies.

The US military can sometimes get their weapons cheaper, if there are a lot of foreign buyers to share the cost in various ways.

If Lockheed is successful and able to fund itself well, fund new weapons programs, the military is happier for obvious reasons. Not to mention the crossover between the public and private spheres when it comes to careers.

There is also a follow on effect. If other countries have F-15s, the US needs to have something better. Today we are friends, but that could change (e.g. Iran and the F-14)

It's about jobs, jobs. Programs building weapons that other countries buy keep jobs. And the Saudi's buy a ton of weapons.

Race and religion are for the masses. It's a tool to divide and conquer them. The elite only speak the language of power and money. The Saudis make their people follow archaic Islamic laws with sexual repression while their princes are sexually abusing Americans in America and their royals have harems filled with Americans prostitutes. It's ridiculous.

Isn't it true, that the second US tells Saudi Arabia where they can stick their oil, they will become best friends with Russia? And isn't this the reason why US tries to keep good relations with them,despite the whole country being a cancer of humanity?

A whole country a cancer to humanity?

I suspect this sort of generalization is what caused the student visa problem in the first place.

It's a political thing. Oil is a fungible resource. Saudi Arabia helps control the market. US doesn't want to lose that power by pissing them off.

As oil goes, so goes the world.

US fracking pissed Saudi Arabia off big time. The gov't didn't seem to mind.