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Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
At what point does the narrative about their investments on the larger stage become less pejorative?
Even for Britain, France, Germany, the countries with the biggest far right/reactionary political groups, where there are legitimate chances for them to end up in power, none of them are religious. Or even that socially reactionary for that matter.
I think that's what they meant by "moved westernly".
Maybe the narrative changes when their approaches towards human rights does?
Remember when the current leader of Saudi Arabia lured a Washington Post journalist into a Saudi consulate, had him tortured to death, and cut into pieces to dispose of the evidence? What a bunch of merry pranksters. We really should lighten up.
Awful people run the world.
Clo$e. The narrative change$ whenever the $audi$ decide that they want it to. U$ually, thi$ involve$ $omething, but I can't figure quite what that "it" could be.
Another murder last month, this one they killed for the crimes of attending protests and funerals: https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde23/0239/2025/en/
Two years ago they sentenced this man to death because he tweeted something they didn't like to less than ten followers: https://www.uscirf.gov/religious-prisoners-conscience/forb-v...
Ironic in the most morbid of ways.
My man, they can kill you for drawing a stick figure.
Let that sink in.
SA is still a single-export economy, and those who are smart enough to get out of SA, do so. From personally having very close relationships with a few folks who worked on the NEOM project, the Saudi locals are not prepared to do any work at all, just spend money and export the work to consultants. It's about posturing, not rolling up their sleeves.
Before anyone thinks I'm Islamophobic, I equally detest and mock all religion.
I do find it funny that if there is an afterlife, Abraham is there, and absolutely befuddled as to why all of his disciples seem to hate each other and want to kill each other.
We all have skin in the game when there's an actor on the world stage that kills its critics buying up huge orgs in our society.