The Orb

[stefano]

Don't have time for a proper post right now but wanted to start this - this is just so RI. Crazy.

Among the dudes present: Idriss Deby of Chad and Faiez Serraj of Libya. Omar Al-Bashir was supposed to go - not sure if he did.

Very curious about the woman at bottom left, does anyone recognise her?

[seemslikeadream]

yes it is

maybe it is Sarah Huckabee Sanders

Josh Marshall‏Verified account
@joshtpm

One day yr bragging abt Gen Pershing &pigs blood bullets, next yr communing the orb of destiny with The Custodian of the Sacred Mosques

Just a conclave of powerful men laying hands on a fiery globe
This is normal

[stefano]

More angles:





Video here.

About this centre itself - could its actual purpose be promoting extremist ideology?

[seemslikeadream]

When you've accepted a necklace from a man, curtsied to him, touched his orb, and sold him 100 billion dollars of arms, you're basically married.

and the rumor that Melania filed for divorce before the swearing in ...so he might be available

He did claim to be exhausted

The orb drained off what little strength he had left.

Bow or Curtsy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QqJKuRU-v0

[JackRiddler]

Barracuda found a picture of it in its physical context, in front of the stage seating. This is the new Saudi anti-terror center. (Follow link, can't embed.)

download/file.php?id=1197

A silent tribute to the great Ken Adam?

Best shot:



"Kel mal tak Tauri!"

(A friend of mine said to the above.)

Sisi's embarrassed, Salman's doing that look when the big bad starts to draw too much power -- usually followed in the movies by no, no, noooooooo!!! -- Trump's a zombie. Beautiful lighting.

I honestly think it's better done than than this: http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/ ... bnailImage

It causes me to channel Foucault:

It's theater, like the flags and the pins and the slogans and the suits and the anthems and the swords, the guards marching and standing at attention, the assemblies and arrays, the flash-pops and salutes, the crowds both hired and jubilant, even the swinging of the billy clubs on the periphery and the earth-raising of the distant bombs. Power is a circuit, it requires the contact of performance and in this case the performance of contact. This present crew like to perform transparently, over the top, with form dominating all, preferably no pretense of content. It is a war display.

[seemslikeadream]

Barracuda found a picture of it in its physical context, in front of the stage seating. This is the new Saudi anti-terror center. (Follow link, can't embed.) Wink and a nod to the great Ken Adam?

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/ ... hp?id=1197

[JackRiddler]

Barracuda found a picture of it in its physical context, in front of the stage seating. This is the new Saudi anti-terror center. (Follow link, can't embed.) Wink and a nod to the great Ken Adam?

download/file.php?id=1197

Also, my mistake: in this picture you can actually see Trump and Salman and Sisi laying hands on the orb, which is at the photo bottom. The one at the top is another one, I guess. (You start the world destruction device at the first and then detonate at the second.)

"Destroy the people of Earth!"

[cptmarginal]

Thank you for the full uncropped image, amazing. Those other angles are very silly looking as well.

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/feature ... iyadh.html

- The center is established as a result of the international cooperation in facing the extreme ideology leading to terrorism, the world’s first common enemy.

- It was founded by a number of countries who chose Riyadh as its headquarters in confronting extreme ideologies by monitoring and analyzing it, to confront and prevent it, cooperate with the governments and organizations to prevail and promote a culture of moderation.

- The center was established on three basic pillars: confronting extremism by the latest intellectual, media and numerical methods and means

- The center has developed innovative techniques that can monitor, process and analyze extremists’ speeches with high accuracy, all phases of data processing and analysis are done in no more than six seconds once the data or comments are posted on the Internet, allowing unprecedented levels of facing extremist activities in the digital world.

- The Center works to refute the hate and extremist speech and promote concepts of moderation, accepting the other, and the production of media content that confront the content of the radical thoughts in order to defy it, and reveal its promotional propaganda.

- The center includes a number of international experts specialized and prominent in confronting extremist speech on all the traditional media means and electronic world.

- The center operates in the extremists’ most widely used languages and dialects. Advanced analytical models are being developed to locate digital media platforms, highlight extremist focal point, and secret sources of polarization and acquiring activities.

- The importance of establishing the center lies in that it is the first time that the world countries seriously come together to face the threat of extremism, which poses a threat to the communities and endanger them, therefore it is the center’s duty to fight together to win and to be able to protect people from its danger.

- The selection of the (12) representatives of the Board of Directors from states and organizations; reflects the independence of the center's work, which is characterized by a governance system that applies international management best practices of major international organizations, which allows neutrality, flexibility, efficiency and transparency to fulfill the Center's functions and achieve its objectives.

What a bunch of BS...

[0_0]

and the rumor that Melania filed for divorce before the swearing in ...so he might be available

https://gfycat.com/SpecificEsteemedFlies

[cptmarginal]

The design reminds me of:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0613/p20s01-ussc.html

Did Disney really help design the center?

"We don't discuss our contractual relationships," said Wesley, our latest tour guide. (For security's sake, he asked that his last name not be used. Turns out, even his neighbors don't know what he does.) Even so, a quick Google search confirms that, sure enough, Walt Disney "Imagineers" were tapped to help configure the operations center, presumably because they know something about building workspaces that foster creativity and man-machine interaction, not because of their expertise with Snow White.

[stefano]

Some of the other big guys on the photo: Macky Sall of Senegal, Alpha Conde of Guinea, Beji Caid Essebsi of Tunisia, and Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz of Mauritania. The woman in front seems to have come in with Sisi, can't really tell. A few other heads of State were at the summit but apparently not at this thing.

I hadn't noticed on the video, only when you posted the screenshot, Jack, that the thing is actually manned. Missed it because they're all dressed alike. So, what are those guys actually doing? It must at least partly be a make-work thing by the Saudis, but why are only Saudis working there? Then again maybe those are just actors who came in for the event. If they aren't though, I'd suspect the purpose of the thing is actually to be the Global Centre for Promoting Extremism. The fucking Saudis have been the world's main promoters of Wahhabist ideology for 50 years, a shiny new call centre for pushing crazies over the edge would be a good investment for them. Handy for use by Western intelligence services as well.

But the formalism of the thing is just so very RI. Three authoritarian men, with many tier-two contenders smiling and nodding behind them, lay their hands on a glowing orb that represents the Earth to inaugurate an espionage office.

It's theater, like the flags and the pins and the slogans and the suits and the anthems and the swords, the guards marching and standing at attention, the assemblies and arrays, the flash-pops and salutes, the crowds both hired and jubilant, even the swinging of the billy clubs on the periphery and the earth-raising of the distant bombs. Power is a circuit, it requires the contact of performance and in this case the performance of contact. This present crew like to perform transparently, over the top, with form dominating all, preferably no pretense of content. It is a war display.

It is pretty blatant, especially given Trump's base at home. First visit abroad is to Saudi Arabia, where his daughter accepts a bribe, he does an arms deal, lectures the Iranians on human rights and funding terror, then pops over to Israel. Crazy trip. Other highlights: Melania swatting away his hand while they walk, and Wilbur Ross being happy about the lack of protests in Riyadh.

[stefano]

The futuristic look of the darkened room may have helped to fire observers’ imaginations.

It was filled with computer terminals. At one end was a wall of monitors displaying feeds from news networks. Employees of the center were segregated by gender, as is common in Saudi Arabia.

The design felt to a pool reporter who was present like a hybrid of a game-show set and a television thriller’s idea of a counterterrorism operations control room.

Among the many dignitaries at the event were Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, and the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Nayef.

The globe did not appear to have any magical powers, but when the king and Mr. Trump touched it, background music of the kind that might accompany a reality show’s elimination sequence or introduce a cable news program soared and pulsed. The screens glowed with statistical displays and videos about fighting terrorism. An unnamed official who narrated the features of the new control center said the displays used artificial intelligence to track, in real time, news reports and online statements.

So, maybe more theatre than anything else.

[JackRiddler]

It hardly need be said how thoroughly the movies influence everything in the world, or that this center is a direct product of movie set designs.

[seemslikeadream]

I'm putting this here...if I started another trump thread it would be way too much for Jack to take


Trump starts fucking with mystical orbs and the next day a sinkhole opens in front of Mar-a-Lago. He has no idea what he's unleashed.

Sinkhole Opens Up In Front Of Mar-A-Lago
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By ESME CRIBB Published MAY 22, 2017 1:55 PM
A sinkhole opened Monday in front of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, and the reaction was full of bad jokes.

The 4′ by 4′ sinkhole “appears to be in the vicinity of the newly installed water main,” according to an alert on the town’s website asking drivers to “please pay attention to signs.”

Observers on Twitter joked that the sudden subsidence might be another kind of sign entirely.http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/m ... n-to-signs

twitter comments

A sinkhole opened in front of Mar-a-Lago. You know it's bad when Florida's like, 'Get the fuck out of here, you're a complete embarrassment'

Actions have consequences, people.

Isn't Mar-a-lago sinkhole redundant?


I think the orb was cursed.....

Trump made a point in Israel today of blurting out additional classified details to the public, while he was trying to make the case that it wasn’t so bad when he blurted out classified information last week to the Russians in private.

[seemslikeadream]

Shahak Shapira‏Verified account @ShahakShapira 8h8 hours ago

I PHOTOSHOPPED SARUMAN INTO TRUMP'S ORB PICTURE AND IT'S NOT EVEN WEIRD