Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting | Hacker News Reader

Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting

theverge.com

146 pointsdoener136 comments

I'm reminded of how under in the UK a person was made to do community service after making a tweet.[1] Obviously not as steep of a sentencing, but a prosecution nonetheless. I only point that out because reading these headlines now doesn't make me feel protective of liberal democracy, it only makes me despair of a global trend.

1. https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/31/23004339/uk-twitter-user-...

Britain is famous for convicting a guy who got his dog to do the nazi salute. And they just don't stop, they arrested a tweeter the other day along with a guy who filmed the first arrest.

https://fee.org/articles/uk-man-arrested-for-malicious-commu...

Someone should report this guy to them https://images.thewest.com.au/publication/CD15E5C4C89CE4DA25...

They exiled him to Canada, no?

Kind of how they exiled King Edward VIII to the Bahamas.

The nazi dog was in Scotland, this is in England. they are different legal jurisdictions.

Edit: England, not Britain.

Scotland occupies the northern third of the island of Great Britain.

Solid pedantry attempt, but missed the mark.

Scotland is a part of Britain. Scotland is not part of England nor Wales, but Scotland, England, and Wales are all part of (Great) Britain.

Appreciate the gotcha, nearly as fun to post as pedantry. I only made the same mistake OP did, however.

The actual point still stands. If you're going to take a dig at a legal system, country, or culture, don't try to back up your point with an example from a different one.

Scotland is not England legally or culturally, and the scots will be the first to make that point clear.

Please explain how the difference in these legal systems is worth the pedantry.

Sure, although this does feel like it's becoming painfully drawn out. Let's use a simple parallel example: If someone's having a laugh at, say, Trump. Then they use that as an example of how those those silly Canadians are always electing daft politicians. You're probably going to point out that Trump was not in fact the president of Canada. That the example is not relevant.

Likewise, it is a mistake to lump the Nazi dog case in with the other case. One occurred under Scottish legal jurisdiction, the other under English legal jurisdiction. The example is not relevant.

In both cases the relevant law was Section 127 of the Communications Act of the United Kingdom.

That is a very fair point and rebuttal, thank you.

Ah, poor Wales. You'd have to murder your wife to sit on the throne there.

BBC government media used to have Monty Python doing satirical nazi salutes on prime time television. Shows how easily standards can change without constitutional protections.

> One of the officers says

> “Someone has been caused anxiety based on your social media post. And that is why you’re being arrested.”

I cannot believe I am reading this.

In Croatia, people have been fined for writing ACAB (on Twitter or Facebook), as well as "1312". One journalist has been arrested for publishing satirical song deemed to "insult the nation".

Many judges favorite pastime is extorting money from newspapers and journalists through the lawsuits on account of causing them "mental distress" with their articles.

And police will readily punch the phone out of your hands if you try to record them, citing GDPR.

Often times people on HN will proudly proclaim how Europe has a "different view on free speech" - really, you don't have to remind us.

Literally a 30+ year jail sentence vs fines. Like don't get me wrong, that seems bad, but not really on the same level

> but not really on the same level

It's not, of course. It wasn't my intention to portray it at such (which is why I didn't pile this on as a top level comment).

I did think it was interesting to bring up readily available examples that show we're not done with (pretty open) authoritarianism, even in EU countries. I guess it's similar reason why jfax commented about UK tweet jailings.

Fair, sorry for the sort of attacky reply. I think there's an urge sometimes when presented with human rights abuses in other countries to point to hypocrisies in the west, of which there are many in a way that seems like it's just aiming at making people throw up their hand and decide that there's no good guys so we can't complain about anything and I think I reacted to that type of opinion rather than anything you said in particular

Indeed. And contrary to the right of free speech in the US it is just backward, really underlining the old in the old continent. Quite modern legislation of the last century cannot even compete with the significantly older US constitution.

This speaks to the myth of decentralized <things>. Because the Internet was hailed as a great invention, with its decentralization bringing us to a sort of knowledge sharing and connectedness eutopia. But now, the Internet and associated technologies are the single greatest medium of centralized control ever.

I always point to Adam Curtis' All Watched Over by Machines of Ever Loving Grace documentary.

> But now, the Internet and associated technologies are the single greatest medium of centralized control ever.

I strongly disagree with this assessment. The internet currently facilitates enormous amounts of black market trading in virtually every country in the world. The internet facilitates the only information exchange that can provide privacy guarantees between parties, again in virtually any part of the world. The internet has facilitated coordinating terrorist attacks against the most well funded military powers in the world alongside facilitating sharing cat memes. You can trade digital goods with extreme convenience regardless of centralized sanctions that may otherwise prohibit such trades.

I think you're mistakenly looking at centralized powers utilizing the internet to further their reach to incorrectly surmise that people have less ability today to act outside of the will of centralized planners, which in my opinion, is undeniably, demonstrably false.

I couldn’t disagree more. The fact that the internet enables certain illicit decentralized activities doesn’t mean that it’s not a net tool towards the benefit / potential benefit of a centralized authority.

I was recently confused when a friend asked me how my vacation was, which was last minute and completely absent from my social media. I told nobody and shared nothing about this trip. Yet the friend I was vacationing with had posted a Story of us out on Snap/Insta, which I didn’t see, thus hundreds of people knew about my vacation with my friend. The internet centralized information through many channels, not only state authority but also cultural patterns and habits that become the new norm.

A man was given a suspended jail sentence in the UK for making a joke video about Grenfell. To (on the whole) great and uncritical applause from the media and general public.

Article for those who might be interest: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/apr/20/man-admits-p....

A 10 week jail sentence for a racist video making fun of a terrible tragedy doesn't bother me as much as locking up political opponents

A 10 week jail sentence for a racist video making fun of a terrible tragedy bothers me a whole lot.

Ok, I read the article. The defendant did not share the video publicly, he shared it with two whatsapp groups. He was also not the one to make the racist comment in the video. Was his video offensive? Sure. But being offensive should never be a crime.

But the thing we're comparing to is literally advocating for women to be allowed to drive. I categorically reject the notion that we have to ignore the content of the messages when comparing the cases. The slap on the wrist for making fun of victims is bad, but isn't comparable and any reader should know both that it was just a slap on the wrist and that it was for something that almost everyone would agree was wrong.

edit: also the article doesn't mention how large the groups were. There's every possibility one was quite large because you know it went viral

On what planet is 10 weeks imprisonment a slap on the wrist? Both of the rulings we’re comparing are utterly insane but I certainly agree that the Saudi one is far more insane.

In my opinion the size of the groups doesn’t matter when it comes to whether or not it should be a crime. Though I understand it may be a relevant factor as far as the law is concerned.

Does it bother you it was the ONLY jail sentence associated with this enormous disaster? You can kill 70 people, just dont say bad things about them, mkay?

Turns out the white wigs they wear are actually clown wigs.

I guess they're on to tweets now because they've rid the island of scissors, kitchen knives and pointy sticks.

Looking at the tweets in question linked from that article [1], many of those are statements of blowing up airports or making death/rape threats. I, for one, appreciate the idea that making death threats online have consequences. Often these are the only signs you get before mentally ill people act on them, and in most cases police can do nothing until an actual crime is committed...usually that crime is murder.

There's a difference between getting arrested for tweeting for social change and for, well, calling for deaths. There's certainly a grey area about "jokes" here, but you haven't been able to joke about "the bomb in your pants" in airport security lines for the entire history of airport security, so it's hardly a new global trend. It's also different when someone with millions of followers "jokes" about something. Before Twitter, this woman would've still been arrested for what she was advocating, and that's what makes her situation awful...not that she got arrested for tweeting.

We should be compassionate when applying the law and continue to figure it out, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

1: https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/7/22912054/uk-grossly-offens...

Well what I noticed was that the targets of the comments were an airport, soldiers, footballers and politicians. While most of the tweets were dumb, it’s also the case that it’s powerful people/institutions using the law to quash lower class folks.

In the US (still I hope) as none of these are calling for an immediate action against the targets, a non corrupt court here would have to let all of these go.

In other words, the UK law referenced is bunk; to take your analogy, it’s like they kept the bathwater but threw out the baby - over exuberant enforcement will only lead to MORE resentment, not less.

> usually that crime is murder.

There aren't many blown up airports by people that stated such things on the internet, this is not a rational concern.

I think people in the UK got sentenced for having bad taste too where bad taste is a matter of perspective.

We completely revamped air port security specifically to provide a feeling of safety after 9/11.

“democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried”

Any time you read a headline like this, replace the innocuous-sounding non-crime (“tweeting”) with “upsetting people in power.”

Suddenly you’ll realise that the same kind of thing happens everywhere in the world.

E.g.: Julian Assange, who’s main crime was upsetting people in power.

Unless you think it’s a crime worthy of being hounded for over a decade by multiple nations’ security agencies for trying to — and failing — to reverse an NT hash.

Because that’s the “crime” they’re extraditing him for.

But the threshold for upsetting people in power varies. So this sed doesn’t give us any extra insight or predictive power. For example I can say “The Jewish people upset the Nazi party in Germany during WW2”

I don't understand the comparison. The Nazis weren't very subtle about how upset they were with Jewish people.

Not really. Tweeting your opinion is legal, leaking state secrets not so.

Not really. Leaking state secrets isn't a crime under US federal law for people who have no security clearance. Julian Assange is charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/wikileaks-founder-charg...

Yeah, I technically can't leak state secrets because I'm not privy to them. So if I have them, they're already leaked. I would be post-crime.

Assange is Australian

So if I leaked Saudi state secrets, should I be extradited to Saudi Arabia? Or is that only if I leaked the secrets of a state you consider a "good guy" state?

Yep, and actually I'm ok with that. We don't have to be blind to the fact that Saudi Arabia locked a bunch of people in a hotel until they agreed to give money and control to a dictator. We don't have to forget that they killed a journalist in one of their embassies for the crime of being one of their critics.

And it's not like Saudi Arabia, China, or certainly Russia would be very fast to extradite someone to the US anyway so this is just sort of the way it works.

Ah, so it is just how things work. Strange argument on context of womens liberation in my opinion.

Well the person I was replying to seemed to be implying that we can't be mad at people who hurt the US unless we'd also be mad if they hurt say Russia or Saudi Arabia, but that's just extreme rule brain taking over. We can totally say Saudi is bad and therefore leaking their secrets is ok and, in fact, that's how it's always worked. Rules don't have to be blind to values and probably shouldn't be

> Or is that only if I leaked the secrets of a state you consider a "good guy" state?

Of course. There’s a difference between good and evil, as much as you’re trying to pretend otherwise.

Have you considered that after seeing how the US handled Manning, handled Assange, handled Snowden, handled Ellsberg, handled Martin Luther King Jr, handled the Vietnam war, the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, Guantanamo Bay, and the countless other shit just in the last half century, I might have a hard time putting them squarely into the "good guys" bracket?

That isn't to relativize in any way what others are doing - which is often even worse, no argument there - but I'm not grading on a scale where you get a passing grade at 40% just because China and Putin - and others - are even worse. Being the lesser evil doesn't make you "good".

Also these countries are not monoliths. Some actions may be good and some evil. "good and evil" is for children's fairy tails and Star Wars. International politics is sociopathic game theory.

I'm not sure the criteria for being good is being perfect and "never making a mistake".

Are you talking about Assange? He is not being charged with leaking state secrets, because it's not against the law if you didn't steal them firsthand, especially for non-citizens outside of the country.

Strange, the US newspapers that wrote articles based on WikiLeaks leaks won prices.

And WikiLeaks isn't the leaker but the publisher of that leaks.

That's pretty arguable.

Assange is in chat logs with Manning who then passed Assange a password hash and with Assange saying he will attempt to get it cracked. The password would have given Manning admin privileges on SIPRNet, allowing her to pull more files to leak and better cover her tracks.

That's being pretty directly involved in leaks imo.

src: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/5816949/Julian-Assang...

Meanwhile Trump had top secret documents at his house while a private citizen that he wasn’t supposed to have there even while President.

What do you think his punishment will be? A decade in jail? Having to flee to another country and hide in an embassy to escape extradition and torture? No? Why not?

Upsetting people in power is a “crime” in every country, with the corollary that the reverse is not true: people in power can do whatever they want to the weak without fear of consequence.

If you think otherwise, come back in a few months and comment below about how many years in jail Trump got for actually doing something much worse than what Julian failed to do.

That claim is pretty arguable itself.

"Forensic expert questions US claims that Julian Assange conspired to crack military password"

"Manning already had legitimate access to all of the databases from which she downloaded data,” he said. “Logging into another user account would not have provided her with more access than she already possessed"

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252489645/Forensic-exper...

What the GP comment is saying is 100% true. Julian Assange is being persecuted because he published damning Truths about the people in power.

He was lauded as a hero when he published damning Truths about things like the War in Iraq, this did not hurt the people in power, but when he started publishing Truths about Hillary Clinton, that's when he started hurting the people in power.

He was persecuted well before Hillary. The only interesting thing the whole Hillary situation did was rearrange some of his supporters and detractors

If state secrets contain incriminating contents and are of interest to the public, leaking them is ethically mandatory. Very likely legal as well in any free country.

Anyone knows what she actually tweeted?

I've read it was 'finally!', in response to an official tweet about a launch of some public buses. This was in 2019, and it seems like she got some abuse from a guy in Saudi, who is believed to have reported her using some kind of Saudi app for doing this.

https://theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/17/saudi-arabia-snitc...

"Her Twitter profile showed she had 2,597 followers. Among tweets about Covid burnout and pictures of her young children, Shehab sometimes retweeted tweets by Saudi dissidents living in exile, which called for the release of political prisoners in the kingdom. She seemed to support the case of Loujain al-Hathloul, a prominent Saudi feminist activist who was previously imprisoned, is alleged to have been tortured for supporting driving rights for women"

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/16/saudi-woman-gi...

A totally insignificant opponent of the regime; probably most of us reading this thread have made comparable comments about either the Democratic or Republican Presidencies.

The crimes he is alleged to have committed are detailed here by DOJ (during the Trump administration) and do not match your assertions.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/wikileaks-founder-julian-assa...

I don't think you get the GP's point. The comment was meant to describe motivations. Obviously no one is literally charged with "upsetting people in power".

"Russia used Republican political operative Paul Manafort and the WikiLeaks website to try to help now-U.S. President Donald Trump win the 2016 election, a Republican-led Senate committee said in its final review of the matter on Tuesday."

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-senate/s...

“The superseding indictment alleges that Assange was complicit with Chelsea Manning”

If you go past the pages of repetitive legalise, you’ll find that the specific “aiding and abetting” was that Chelsea sent him an NT hash to try and crack. Julian tried and failed.

That’s the “crime”.

Keep in mind he’s an Australian citizen who committed alleged crimes against a country he wasn’t even present in at the time.

Oh sorry… allegedly aided and abetted a crime.

Yeah. Totally worth a decade-long multinational effort to extradite a guy for failing to successfully use hashcat. Which any idiot can download from GitHub.

Even here in Germany, a man was harassed and had his house raided by police for tweeting a pretty insignificant insult directed at a politician[0].

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/09/09/pimmelgate-g...

Not surprised. In germany its common practice for the police to monitor people based on ethnicity for instance, indiscriminately of wether they committed crime or not. A thing of the past one should think.

Despite heavily restricting speech in two dictatorships in just once century, people recently made the case that Nazis had too much freedom of speech. This is just embarrassing. People say denying the holocaust is offensive. This is pretty offensive too.

On the contrary, it may very well have been this anti-liberal stance that pushed them to an electoral victory. But sure, they just had too many liberties, that was the issue.

And worse, the state still remains a borderline control freak. Very, very little was learned from the mistakes of the past.

What an absolute human rights disaster Saudi Arabia is.

That the U.S. government continues to engage with and support that regime is all the evidence you need of our hypocrisy on the issue.

There is no hypocrisy there, like everything in life, including startup life, everything comes down to money. And money is power. The US created the Saudi Arabian powerhouse we see today. We need them to keep our economic inertia moving forward at a pace acceptable for the populace. Is it a travesty? 100% But we made this bed.

Americans like to pretend that we fight for higher ideals than naked self interest or national interest.

Americans fight for ideals all the time. Individual Americans do, and this includes individuals in government.

It is true to say that much that is represented as being about ideals is really something else in disguise. And there is rampant corruption and so forth.

But it takes cynicism too far to say that ideals never factor in. There are many principled people with ideals having impact in the world every day, and there is nothing enlightened about deriding their efforts or pretending they don't exist.

I believe the thread was about the behaviour of governments, not individuals. Principled and idealistic individuals exist everywhere, including Saudi Arabia as the article shows.

> Americans fight for ideals all the time

The US government, post ww2, fights for Corporations in the NATO axis that benefit from a particular regime being in power in a particular country.

Sometimes these regimes are democratic, other times they are not. The ideals are kool aid to sell to the public to garner support for war.

For eg, US has toppled democracies in Haiti and Iran to support corporate interests. It supported dictatorship in Haiti, Saudi, Indonesia, Pakistan, Iran etc to promote the interests of NATO corporations.

It's neither all "freedom and democracy" nor all "ruthless greed". Your post feels like kool aid in "ruthless greed" direction.

Government decisions are made by human beings in positions of power. Being in a position of power, such as the president of the United States, is a balancing of owns personal beliefs/morality and the interests of the United States. The composition of those components and the position of the pendulum in that balance varies depending on who you are.

Your position supposes nobody with ideals becomes members of government or that members of government somehow compartmentalize American cultural ideals/identity. Plenty of hypocrisy abounds, no doubt, but your take is overly cynical.

> Your post feels like kool aid in "ruthless greed" direction.

I have cited several examples, you cant call it kool aid because it disagrees with your beliefs. Feel free to offer counter examples.

Counter examples I am looking for

1. American support for a democracy that is not conditioned on alignment with NATO.

2. Or equivalently displacement of a dictatorial regime that is aligned with NATO, with a democratic regime that is less or equally aligned with NATO.

I can easily predict with 100% accuracy which faction the US government and media will support from this simple principle of NATO alignment.

The most hilarious example of this was when US fought against ISIS in Iraq, while supporting ISIS in Syria - because they were fighting against Assad(who aligned with Russia). To prevent Americans from cognitive dissonance, ISIS factions in Syria were referred to in US media as "rebels". With US media highlighting and magnifying tweets from Syrian ISIS accounts, when Assad wrested control of Aleppo from ISIS and Al Qaeda affiliated "rebels"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleppo_offensive_(October%E2%8...

Check out the composition and history of the "rebel" groups.

Army of Conquest

Fatah Halab

Ansar al-Islam

Jabhat Ansar al-Din

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-alep...

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/world/middleeast/aleppo-t...

https://www.wired.com/2016/12/powerless-people-aleppo-tweeti...

Here US media amplifies and propagates evidence free ISIS propaganda in Syria. If these "rebels" were such great humanitarians, why weren't they welcome in Iraq?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/12/12/last-rebel...

However, when civilians fled the fled to "regime" (read Assad) controlled areas.

"Yesterday, some residents who couldn’t take the bombardment anymore fled toward regime controlled areas, according to Othman."

Amnesty internationals report directly contradicts US media reporting which blamed civilian casualties on Assad.

"Amnesty International stated that the "armed opposition groups have displayed a shocking disregard for civilian lives", deploying weapons "whose use in the vicinity of densely populated civilian areas flagrantly violates international humanitarian law". The organization called the rebel groups to "end all attacks that fail to distinguish between military targets and civilians"."

More honest reporting outside US media, where Obama and Kerry squirm at the optics of supporting Al Qaeda and ISIS against Assad.

https://www.mei.edu/publications/under-pressure-syrias-rebel...

Non US media reports that Kerry acknowledged that US has been supporting "terrorists"

"As the unthinkable was becoming a reality in Aleppo, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry held a day of talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow and agreed to a series of undetermined terms for bilateral cooperation against terrorism in Syria"

All I meant to say is that it is not an either/or situation. I acknowledge the United States engages in plenty of realpolitik that is hypocritical and runs counter to its supposed ideals. I think we should acknowledge that it is a topic whose breadth and complexity cannot be captured by a couple of forum posts.

I know great people, far better than myself, that have dedicated themselves to these ideals. I feel that it is a disservice to them and those ideals to write them off or discount their existence because of instances of hypocrisy in US policy. That is all I wished to communicate.

Like I said, I don't know of a single instance where US lent support to a faction that would not increase alignment with NATO corporations, post FDR. I am all ears, if there are any counter examples. My tool of choice is Occams razor and it has served me well so far.

I, personally, am not aware of a single counter example. FDR had started to deviate by establishing friendly relations with Stalin's Russia. The possibility of a president deviating from the agenda was put firmly to death by making it illegal for a president to have more than 2 terms, after FDRs death.

As much as I hate Trump and Putin, Trump was the only President to deviate from the NATO consensus on various issues. It was a bad idea and grift by Trump and I didn't support it.

> I know great people, far better than myself, that have dedicated themselves to these ideals.

I 100% believe that. I believe Obama was well intentioned as well. For example, he tried to reduce tensions with non NATO countries like Cuba and Iran. However, when push came to shove- he supported ISIS in Syria.

Even Bidens price cap on insulin was written so that insurance Corporations profits are completely unaffected, the costs will simply be spread out to all insurance customers.

As for the folks you know, they could be working with the US Government on providing humanitarian relief to Palestinians and Syrian refugees, while another arm of the government is fucking them over.

The point is - the overall structure of the US government is built to primarily advance the objectives of NATO corporations. There will be thousands of individuals doing good work within the government. I know several of them myself. However, these are secondary- not primary objectives of the state

Another example, George Bush removing democracy in Haiti and installing a dictator

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-mar-02-fg-usrol...

If it was Obama, he probably would have left Haiti alone. Haiti is strategically meaningless to USA. But Bush had to execute a coup.So, yes, the people in the government matter. But the singular thrust of US Foreign policy is alignment with NATO. It's as clear as daylight.

Based on your criteria I would consider the US support for a post-Hosni Mubarak government in Egypt perhaps counter-productive for US interests for the sake of democracy.

https://www.france24.com/en/20120715-egypt-clinton-urges-us-... https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/world/middleeast/egyptian...

I would also consider the continued humanitarian support of Afghanistan as not aligned with NATO corporate interests, broadly speaking. EDIT: As compared with the continued occupation of the country.

https://www.usaid.gov/news-information/press-releases/jun-28...

Double edit: Also as far as know European members of NATO hated the backtracking of American policy on Iran due to business interests. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-france-busin...

Funnily enough, Morsi is now dead. And the United states was active against Morsi, irrespective of the public posture. The optics of being seen as reversing the Arab spring was not good, as was supporting Al Qaeda in Syria.

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2013/7/10/exclusive-us-ba...

As for humanitarian support, I have already stated with examples of Syria and Palestine that these secondary activities happen- however, they do not change the primary thrust of US foreign policy. Afghanistan is no different. When I say that primary objective of the United states is supporting the goals of NATO corporations it does not mean that secondary goals such as social security, unemployment reduction and Medicare don't exist.

As for Iran, I already stated that Obama moved to normalize relationship with non NATO Iran and Cuba by allowing other countries to trade with them etc.

I also explained how Trump is the only president who went off-script by engaging with Russia, ruining the TPP and also harming French/NATO business interests that were developing in Iran. Your edit refers to actions by Trump.

The previous president to do that was FDR. This led to the 2 term limit on presidency as he 1. Introduced social security 2. Normalized relationships with Russia 3. Raised taxes

There was a plot to assassinate fdr as soon as he was elected. Surprisingly enough, nobody was prosecuted

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot

"Roosevelt's election was upsetting for many conservative businessmen of the time, as his "campaign promise that the government would provide jobs for all the unemployed had the perverse effect of creating a new wave of unemployment by businessmen frightened by fears of socialism and reckless government spending "

> The US government, post ww2, fights for Corporations in the NATO axis that benefit from a particular regime being in power in a particular country.

And before WW2, it was for it's own corporations. "I was a gangster for capitalism" is an interesting read.

I like to think of it as, collectively our ideals are a compass. We keep heading North but it doesn't mean we don't get lost walking in circles. It also doesn't preclude that sometimes when we think we're heading North we're actually heading South. Making a mockery of our ideals is like making fun of someone for carrying a compass or dating to shoot an azimuth. Unfortunately a good amount of people inside the US and out like to do that.

Political independence is desirable. Absolute independence is unlikely and possibly unwise as well in a multi party system. However more choices means less power consolidated by any small number of potentially disagreeable actors.

Say Yes to all sorts of energy. Solar, Wind, even modern Nuclear designed to be safe and with 'waste reduction' steps in mind for partly spent fuel that needs to be processed again at carefully controlled military guarded sites (since these processes can also make weapons).

If you drive a car, fly on a plane, have trucks in your supply chain, use plastic anywhere in your life- you support that engagement. Sucks but they're built in now.

We seem to be able to be hostile to Russia and China while depending om them for oil and manufacturing.

Extending the same courtesy to Saudi Arabia should be straightforward. Except, of course, Saudis align with NATO, Russia and China don't.

They also contribute a lot to VC funds iirc

Bunch of that is our money coming back under their ownership, though.

The US, due to fracking, is now a net exporter of oil most years. Hopefully with more electric cars in the fleet each year oil use will also decline dramatically. We should use that opportunity to distance ourselves from Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately I think one factor driving US engagement that is not often discussed is the tens of billions Saudi Arabia spends on US weapon systems each year, not just oil interest.

> is now a net exporter of oil most years

There are different kinds of oil and they aren't equivalent.

Hypocrisy or realpolitik, depending on how nuanced your worldview is.

It is realpolitik. Absolutely.

We ruthlessly engage in it, but whenever anyone else on Earth tries it, we whip out the "freedom, democracy, human rights" rhetoric.

We shouldn't be surprised when that rings hollow elsewhere in the world.

And still Saudi Arabia is treated as an ally of the western world.

"ally" in this case means something like "marriage of convenience"...

more like desperation

not for long. Once the dependency on oil is gone, the entire gulf is obsolete

12 hours ago, 26 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32493735

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtcaIA9SU7o

Kill a man, chop into pieces and shipped away. Fine now.

Jail a woman …

Do you think they think it is not good from the outside world?

Do you think they care? Everybody's lining up to buy their oil and won't stop any time soon. We even sell them weapons.

They're an evil empire, we're a bunch of selfish hypocrites enabling it. I don't know who's worse.

> Kill a man, chop into pieces and shipped away. Fine now.

What? Who said that was fine?\

This is evidence of what happens when religion is allowed to control social policy.

Coming to America as well - look up Ricky Vaughn. Trial run on a deplorable, your ticket will get called eventually.

OK, I did. He told people they could legally vote by posting hashtags to twitter for specific candidates. That's an unethical thing to do even if you aren't a Nazi. Should it be against the law? Well, you might look up the reason these laws exist. Hint: probably won't make Nazis too happy.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1360816/downl...

> conspired to injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate persons in the free exercise of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States, to wit, the right to vote, in violation of…

Setting aside the fact that 100% of the air has been let out of that accusation and nobody takes it seriously anymore and that's probably dangerous, whether or not he's a Nazi, which I doubt very much that he is, is immaterial. Disinformation is basically the stock-in-trade for politicians, it is not illegal. This will likely be and certainly should be an acquittal on first amendment grounds. It is political persecution, just like Saudi Arabia imprisoning someone advocating for women's rights.

How people don't see where this kind of thing is leading is beyond me.

As stupid as it is, there are legitimate legal complaints against him, namely advertising that votes could be texted to a certain phone number.

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