7 ms·

PR fluff piece. He's working 16 hours a day to make the world a better place? Gosh, what a saint ... I wonder how much the Saudi-Arabia's PR agency had to pay t

by mafribe 11y ago

PR fluff piece. He's working 16 hours a day to make the world a better place? Gosh, what a saint ... I wonder how much the Saudi-Arabia's PR agency had to pay to get it into a mainstream publication. See also: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html No meaningful questions of 'marginal' topics like the pointless the Yemen war, the support of ISIS and other unsavoury organisations. And exactly why does the interview accept him has head of state at all? Why should the House of Saud govern, and not be replaced by a democracy?

eric001 11y ago
"Why should the House of Saud govern, and not be replaced by a democracy?" That is a very, very naive question tho, don't you think?
- mafribe 11y ago
  Mandela: Why should we have apartheid, and not equality? eric001: That is a very, very naive question tho, don't you think?
  - nashashmi 11y ago
    Democracy is sown via stability. Stability is sown via dictatorship. Sometimes it takes a dictator to bring about democracy, simply because he dictates it that way.
- return0 11y ago
  You know the answer ?
  - mommylovesme 11y ago
    if he'd knew, he wouldn't ask.
tomp 11y ago
> Why should the House of Saud govern, and not be replaced by a democracy? How would that fix any of the issues that SA is facing right now?
- mafribe 11y ago
  I don't know. The population of Arabia is probably best placed to discuss this. (Note that calling it "Saudi Arabia" implicitly accepts the rule of the House of Saud.) Understanding the mechanisms the House of Saud uses to stay in power is probably a small first step in the transition to something better.
- Qwertious 11y ago
  Well fundamentally, its main reason for backwards laws (e.g. non-equality for women) is that the House of Saud derives its legitimacy from a rather orthodox religious sect, in exchange for enforcing said orthodox sect's backwards religious rules. Switching to a democracy would mean nobody need pander to the Wahhabi sect.
  - PKop 11y ago
    That assumes the people wouldn't vote for an orthodox religious government. I'm almost certain, for quite a while, they would. See: http://clarionproject.org/analysis/islamists-using-democracy-install-oppressive-sharia-law http://clarionproject.org/analysis/islamists-using-democracy...
  - tomp 11y ago
    Sure. That's exactly what happened in e.g. Egypt /s it didn't. We have to face the reality here; if the "religious sect" is so powerful that it can challenge the absulotist monarch, then it's definitely powerful enough to play divide-and-conquer with different democratic parties.
Criticism123 11y ago
Why should there be a democracy why not be replaced by X?
themartorana 11y ago
A toppled government in a fundamentalist region suffering economic fallout from the falling global demand for oil does nota democracy fuel. While I agree with everyone that sees SA as a terror-governed state, perhaps you've been around for some portion of the past 50 or so years and have witnessed what Western-exported democracy looks like in the Middle East right now. SA's problems are plenty, but it shares the entire region's SPOF economy. Tackling that shouldn't be dismissed because we don't like the government. Suffering the hardest happens to the least of people, so making the transition to a post-oil economy as smooth as possible - House of Saud in tact - still prevents an incredible amount of suffering.
- mafribe 11y ago
  I agree with you in many ways, and have been critical of military means that were marketed as "bringing democracy". Irak, Libya, and Syria come to mind as terrifying recent examples. Incidentally the House of Saud supported the military actions in all three cases. But yhere is a world of difference between a journalist asking critical questions, and bombing a country. It's a journalist's task to ask autocratic rulers critical questions. The Bloomberg piece does not do this, instead raving "how comfortable meeting him was". The target audience of this piece is the US population. The house of Saud invests a great deal of money in misleading the US population, so as to ensure that the US continues its support of the status quo, which is highly convenient for the House of Saud, but a disaster for just about anybody else. See e.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/04/20/saudi-government-has-vast-network-of-pr-lobby-firms-in-u-s/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/04/20/... The question how to engineer a peaceful transition away from the House of Saud to a meaningful democracy (or even a more enlightened dictatorship such as Dubai), is a deep and complex one, and I don't purport to have an answer. But it's good to understand how autocratic rulers such as the House of Saud manipulate public opinion.
  - themartorana 11y ago
    I agree with this. The piece itself is super fluffy. That said, I can understand, to a degree "comfort" netting him, etc. It is a head of state, but more importantly, the whole government/ruling family is quite mysterious. You have no idea how practical his ideas will be, especially at that scale. Still, though, you're right. Any amount of serious journalism here would have been welcome.
atmosx 11y ago
> PR fluff piece. That's what I thought when I saw the bloomberg cover. I wonder if he paid the article or bloomberg really cares if SA does this or that.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
joosters 11y ago
Do you know how well all the other attempts at installing democracies have gone in middle eastern countries? Iran, Syria, Iraq, Libya and so on... It's insanity to think that this time we could do it better.
- baltcode 11y ago
  How about letting the people take the lead in changing the system. It won't be what other countries would like to see, but it will probably be a lot better than the experiments you mention.
  - joosters 11y ago
    It's impossible to do that without favouring one side or another. You could say that 'the people' did take the lead when choosing the rulers of Saudi Arabia or any other country. It just so happens that some people had more money / weapons / power than the others. Is there a way to make things fairer? Well, you could try taking the money / weapons / power from different groups, but then you're making a choice and favouring certain groups to the detriment of others.
    - baltcode 11y ago
      It won't happen overnight and it won't happen in all countries in the short term. However, Al-Saud family was heavily financed and armed by the British during 1900 onwards. People's allegiences were divided among the Sharif of Mecca Hussain bin Ali, the House of Rashid, the Ottomans, and the Al Saud-Wahhabi alliance. It is not hard to imagine that these forces would have evolved in different ways during industrialization, post-Colonial and Cold War times. Besides, there have been external forces at play to further or curtail the direction Saudi affairs are going in during the times of King Saud and King Faisal respectively. So it is not as if the people have necessarily chosen the kingdom system of Saudi Arabia while the West has installed democracies. While not democratic, I think Sharif Hussain of Macca, the Ottomans, and to a lesser extent King Faisal of the Al-Saud would have moved things towards a more representative system. King Faisal's efforts brought women's education to Saudi Arabia and added a little (if only a trickle) to scientific education in some countries in Africa and Asia through student financial aid programs. So there are various contradictory forces at play locally and globally and nothing stays constant.
roymurdock 11y ago
Reposting an open challenge to the HN community from a week ago: Someone should make a plugin that counts the number of times a brand is mentioned in an "article" and uses ML/crowdsources votes to show a "sponsored content" or "submarine" score. Even if there is some interesting point to be made, I hate being manipulated into reading longform ads. Additionally I would love to see an investigation by "straight" or freelance journalists into the world of PR/submarines that includes the going rates for pieces like this, getting on the front cover of a magazine like Bloomberg business week, etc. As to the substance of the article: want to move off oil? You're going to need to start taxing your citizens. Now that will be an interesting transition to watch.
funkyy 11y ago
Oh yes, because democracy worked so well for Muslim countries in an US and EU sponsored experiments across Muslim world... Not all countries can handle democracy, its not a magic cure.
- u_me_him 11y ago
  What you are saying is factually true yet you are downvoted. You are in good company, galileo must've been downvoted a lot too. The truth is that you cannot bring democracy overnight to a place and expect it to stick. It seems that the people of said country have to fight for it tooth and nail before it sticks.
utku_karatas2 11y ago
> pointless the Yemen war, the support of ISIS and other unsavoury organisations Not pointless if you follow the politics of the region. Those are all done for breaking Iran's expanding sphere of terror.
rayiner 11y ago
Relevant: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/04/20/saudi-government-has-vast-network-of-pr-lobby-firms-in-u-s https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/04/20/... ("The Saudi government and its affiliates have spent millions of dollars on U.S. law, lobby and public relations firms to raise the country’s visibility in the United States and before the United Nations at a crucial time.")
danmaz74 11y ago
> He's working 16 hours a day to make the world a better place? Might be paid propaganda, but it looked like the guy was much more worried about Saudi Arabia's future than making "the World" a better place. That self-interest looks pretty credible to me.
CPLX 11y ago
> Why should the House of Saud govern, and not be replaced by a democracy? By whom, you?
vasilipupkin 11y ago
Well, its a story of one man working within constraints of a certain political system. Irrespective of your overall judgement of that system, the story conveys information about the direction this man claims to want to take inside the system. It's not a fluff piece in that sense. Those down voting: it's valuable information to know what people like that guy are thinking. You can put as much or as little weight on that information as you want but the optimal weight is unlikely to be zero
dorfsmay 11y ago
About journalists asking why shouldn't Saudi Arabia have a democracy, this is an interesting interview: https://amp.twimg.com/v/f72f7279-f0e4-4953-9549-d2243b49a20b https://amp.twimg.com/v/f72f7279-f0e4-4953-9549-d2243b49a20b
cloudjacker 11y ago
Saudi Arabia using its massive funding to build tech cities have nothing to do with it's foreign policy.

by mafribe 11y ago

eric001 11y ago

"Why should the House of Saud govern, and not be replaced by a democracy?" That is a very, very naive question tho, don't you think?

mafribe 11y ago
Mandela: Why should we have apartheid, and not equality? eric001: That is a very, very naive question tho, don't you think?
- nashashmi 11y ago
  Democracy is sown via stability. Stability is sown via dictatorship. Sometimes it takes a dictator to bring about democracy, simply because he dictates it that way.
return0 11y ago
You know the answer ?
- mommylovesme 11y ago
  if he'd knew, he wouldn't ask.

tomp 11y ago

> Why should the House of Saud govern, and not be replaced by a democracy? How would that fix any of the issues that SA is facing right now?

mafribe 11y ago
I don't know. The population of Arabia is probably best placed to discuss this. (Note that calling it "Saudi Arabia" implicitly accepts the rule of the House of Saud.) Understanding the mechanisms the House of Saud uses to stay in power is probably a small first step in the transition to something better.
Qwertious 11y ago
Well fundamentally, its main reason for backwards laws (e.g. non-equality for women) is that the House of Saud derives its legitimacy from a rather orthodox religious sect, in exchange for enforcing said orthodox sect's backwards religious rules. Switching to a democracy would mean nobody need pander to the Wahhabi sect.
- PKop 11y ago
  That assumes the people wouldn't vote for an orthodox religious government. I'm almost certain, for quite a while, they would. See: http://clarionproject.org/analysis/islamists-using-democracy-install-oppressive-sharia-law http://clarionproject.org/analysis/islamists-using-democracy...
- tomp 11y ago
  Sure. That's exactly what happened in e.g. Egypt /s it didn't. We have to face the reality here; if the "religious sect" is so powerful that it can challenge the absulotist monarch, then it's definitely powerful enough to play divide-and-conquer with different democratic parties.

Criticism123 11y ago

Why should there be a democracy why not be replaced by X?

themartorana 11y ago

A toppled government in a fundamentalist region suffering economic fallout from the falling global demand for oil does nota democracy fuel. While I agree with everyone that sees SA as a terror-governed state, perhaps you've been around for some portion of the past 50 or so years and have witnessed what Western-exported democracy looks like in the Middle East right now. SA's problems are plenty, but it shares the entire region's SPOF economy. Tackling that shouldn't be dismissed because we don't like the government. Suffering the hardest happens to the least of people, so making the transition to a post-oil economy as smooth as possible - House of Saud in tact - still prevents an incredible amount of suffering.

mafribe 11y ago
I agree with you in many ways, and have been critical of military means that were marketed as "bringing democracy". Irak, Libya, and Syria come to mind as terrifying recent examples. Incidentally the House of Saud supported the military actions in all three cases. But yhere is a world of difference between a journalist asking critical questions, and bombing a country. It's a journalist's task to ask autocratic rulers critical questions. The Bloomberg piece does not do this, instead raving "how comfortable meeting him was". The target audience of this piece is the US population. The house of Saud invests a great deal of money in misleading the US population, so as to ensure that the US continues its support of the status quo, which is highly convenient for the House of Saud, but a disaster for just about anybody else. See e.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/04/20/saudi-government-has-vast-network-of-pr-lobby-firms-in-u-s/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/04/20/... The question how to engineer a peaceful transition away from the House of Saud to a meaningful democracy (or even a more enlightened dictatorship such as Dubai), is a deep and complex one, and I don't purport to have an answer. But it's good to understand how autocratic rulers such as the House of Saud manipulate public opinion.
- themartorana 11y ago
  I agree with this. The piece itself is super fluffy. That said, I can understand, to a degree "comfort" netting him, etc. It is a head of state, but more importantly, the whole government/ruling family is quite mysterious. You have no idea how practical his ideas will be, especially at that scale. Still, though, you're right. Any amount of serious journalism here would have been welcome.

atmosx 11y ago

> PR fluff piece. That's what I thought when I saw the bloomberg cover. I wonder if he paid the article or bloomberg really cares if SA does this or that.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

joosters 11y ago

Do you know how well all the other attempts at installing democracies have gone in middle eastern countries? Iran, Syria, Iraq, Libya and so on... It's insanity to think that this time we could do it better.

baltcode 11y ago
How about letting the people take the lead in changing the system. It won't be what other countries would like to see, but it will probably be a lot better than the experiments you mention.
- joosters 11y ago
  It's impossible to do that without favouring one side or another. You could say that 'the people' did take the lead when choosing the rulers of Saudi Arabia or any other country. It just so happens that some people had more money / weapons / power than the others. Is there a way to make things fairer? Well, you could try taking the money / weapons / power from different groups, but then you're making a choice and favouring certain groups to the detriment of others.
  - baltcode 11y ago
    It won't happen overnight and it won't happen in all countries in the short term. However, Al-Saud family was heavily financed and armed by the British during 1900 onwards. People's allegiences were divided among the Sharif of Mecca Hussain bin Ali, the House of Rashid, the Ottomans, and the Al Saud-Wahhabi alliance. It is not hard to imagine that these forces would have evolved in different ways during industrialization, post-Colonial and Cold War times. Besides, there have been external forces at play to further or curtail the direction Saudi affairs are going in during the times of King Saud and King Faisal respectively. So it is not as if the people have necessarily chosen the kingdom system of Saudi Arabia while the West has installed democracies. While not democratic, I think Sharif Hussain of Macca, the Ottomans, and to a lesser extent King Faisal of the Al-Saud would have moved things towards a more representative system. King Faisal's efforts brought women's education to Saudi Arabia and added a little (if only a trickle) to scientific education in some countries in Africa and Asia through student financial aid programs. So there are various contradictory forces at play locally and globally and nothing stays constant.

roymurdock 11y ago

Reposting an open challenge to the HN community from a week ago: Someone should make a plugin that counts the number of times a brand is mentioned in an "article" and uses ML/crowdsources votes to show a "sponsored content" or "submarine" score. Even if there is some interesting point to be made, I hate being manipulated into reading longform ads. Additionally I would love to see an investigation by "straight" or freelance journalists into the world of PR/submarines that includes the going rates for pieces like this, getting on the front cover of a magazine like Bloomberg business week, etc. As to the substance of the article: want to move off oil? You're going to need to start taxing your citizens. Now that will be an interesting transition to watch.

funkyy 11y ago

Oh yes, because democracy worked so well for Muslim countries in an US and EU sponsored experiments across Muslim world... Not all countries can handle democracy, its not a magic cure.

u_me_him 11y ago
What you are saying is factually true yet you are downvoted. You are in good company, galileo must've been downvoted a lot too. The truth is that you cannot bring democracy overnight to a place and expect it to stick. It seems that the people of said country have to fight for it tooth and nail before it sticks.

utku_karatas2 11y ago

> pointless the Yemen war, the support of ISIS and other unsavoury organisations Not pointless if you follow the politics of the region. Those are all done for breaking Iran's expanding sphere of terror.

rayiner 11y ago

Relevant: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/04/20/saudi-government-has-vast-network-of-pr-lobby-firms-in-u-s https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/04/20/... ("The Saudi government and its affiliates have spent millions of dollars on U.S. law, lobby and public relations firms to raise the country’s visibility in the United States and before the United Nations at a crucial time.")

danmaz74 11y ago

> He's working 16 hours a day to make the world a better place? Might be paid propaganda, but it looked like the guy was much more worried about Saudi Arabia's future than making "the World" a better place. That self-interest looks pretty credible to me.

CPLX 11y ago

> Why should the House of Saud govern, and not be replaced by a democracy? By whom, you?

vasilipupkin 11y ago

Well, its a story of one man working within constraints of a certain political system. Irrespective of your overall judgement of that system, the story conveys information about the direction this man claims to want to take inside the system. It's not a fluff piece in that sense. Those down voting: it's valuable information to know what people like that guy are thinking. You can put as much or as little weight on that information as you want but the optimal weight is unlikely to be zero

dorfsmay 11y ago

About journalists asking why shouldn't Saudi Arabia have a democracy, this is an interesting interview: https://amp.twimg.com/v/f72f7279-f0e4-4953-9549-d2243b49a20b https://amp.twimg.com/v/f72f7279-f0e4-4953-9549-d2243b49a20b

cloudjacker 11y ago

Saudi Arabia using its massive funding to build tech cities have nothing to do with it's foreign policy.