12 ms·

Blood money

256 points by deegles 8y ago

thrower123 8y ago
Mark my words, this will blow over in a month or two and we'll forget all about it, like we always do. Softbank has a lot of sweet, sweet petro-dollars to wave around. If you are really opposed to the Saudi regime, I'd posit that the most effective thing you could do is create a bullshit startup and get them to invest, and then frivolously waste their money.
- ploxdontdox 8y ago
  Oh yes that sweet money.
- deadmetheny 8y ago
  >the most effective thing you could do is create a bullshit startup and get them to invest, and then frivolously waste their money Yeah, that sounds like a great idea to employ against a regime perfectly willing to violently murder people.
  - bryanrasmussen 8y ago
    well, you're already dead, Metheny. Anyway, levity aside regimes that will violently murder to silence critics might not to get even for bad business investments. As for me I'm hoping to get some investment on my new grocery list tracking app that uses machine learning on the blockchain to automatically buy what you want to eat before you know what it is!
    - throwaway413 8y ago
      but can it identify hotdogs?
      - mLuby 8y ago
        not hotdog! (but most other things)
    - deadmetheny 8y ago
      >regimes that will violently murder to silence critics might not to get even for bad business investments I don't really disagree with that but at the same time it doesn't really feel all that wise to whack a hornet's nest with a baseball bat. If anyone feels like taking the risk, then I wish them the best of luck in swindling them for as much as they can get away with, but playing stupid games can lead to winning stupid prizes.
  - notyourday 8y ago
    The most effective way to affect the change in KSA is to block KSA's citizens access to the non-KSA. It is that easy. The KSA is stable because its princess and princesses and its middle class enjoys unrestricted access to the West. For that they are willing to compromise with those that would stone women and cure homosexuality with whips. Block that and KSA will fall apart within months as having hundreds of thousands of dollars means nothing if there's no access to Gucci purses and houses in London.
    - mattmcknight 8y ago
      What replaces it if it loses stability or falls apart? Would it not be replaced by a government dominated by the people engaged in behavior you detest? It seems more likely that enacting more freedoms would instead result in civil war dominated by those who are more repressive, and likely the domination by the princes aligned with those perspectives. Instead, we see a slow progress which is painful, but may be the best that can be hoped for.
      - geow 8y ago
        Why would it lose stability and fall apart? Saudi Arabia is about as stable as bad places come, which is what makes it is so terrible. This is exactly the sort of country you should pressure to reform. Otherwise might as well just come out and say that it was all just an excuse to freely meddle with countries we don't like.
        deleted 8y ago
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        mattmcknight 8y ago
        I don't think it would, but that is what the parent comment suggested.
      - notyourday 8y ago
        I'm having a hard time figuring out what kind of olympic level mental gymnastics I need to engage in to be able to view a butchering of a US permanent resident who works for a major US newspaper in a consulate on a territory of a NATO country and lying about it being a "progress" but I'm probably just not understanding the delicate picture
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > this will blow over in a month or two and we'll forget all about it, like we always do We always don’t. That’s how some countries end up under sanctions. (In any case, this is a bad moral defense.)
  - matthewsharpe3 8y ago
    Its not clear that the sanctions have anything to do with the moral considerations, as opposed to the domestic and geo-political considerations, which actually dominate the decision making process. Sanctions on Russia after Ukraine had no more to do with the moral significance of their invasion than the absence of French/German sanctions on the UK/US after the invasion of Iraq. We only sanction bad behaviour when either geopolitics or domestic politics makes it convenient to do so.
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > We only sanction bad behaviour when either geopolitics or domestic politics makes it convenient to do so I'd say when both make it convenient to do so, or one makes it an overwhelming necessity.
  - joering2 8y ago
    I hate to be pulling this thread into politics on HN, but you mentioned sanctions so I believe you speak about political sanctions. All 19 hijackers of 911 attacks were Saudis. We have sanctioned many countries and murdered 100,000 innocent children and civils in last Iraq war that most americans still don’t know the reason we invaded, yet Suadis remain off the radar. Now the greencard holder got in altercation at the embassy and ended up treated with bonesaw, meanwhile POTUS tells we invested 1B in their contracts so we have to be careful what we say. On the top of that he has multiple private businesses at the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars at stake with Saudis. Tell me again about some sanctions against them, please?
- hliyan 8y ago
  > Mark my words, this will blow over in a month or two and we'll forget all about it, like we always do. Softbank has a lot of sweet, sweet petro-dollars to wave around. This type of cynical, defeatist attitude is part of the problem.
  - deleted 8y ago
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  - root_axis 8y ago
    Perhaps, but on an ordered list of contributing factors "a defeatist attitude" is pretty near the bottom.
- zxcvvcxz 8y ago
  Like those food delivery startups and ride sharing apps that all lose money? Saudi may kill my journalists, but at least they subsidize my lunch.
- prostoalex 8y ago
  > I'd posit that the most effective thing you could do is create a bullshit startup and get them to invest This sounds like a long-term con that would take years to implement - sovereign wealth funds are more into late-stage pre-IPO rounds and not as much into $5k AngelList syndicate rounds. For short-term reducing personal dependence on oil sounds like a good start.
- tomjen3 8y ago
  >this will blow over in a month or two and we'll forget all about it, like we always do >There are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen The house of saud can't be on the top of the throne forever. Their monopoly on oil is diminishing (as is the importance of oil) and they don't have anything else even remotely comparative. You could have predicted that nothing would happen to the Assyrians for 16 thousand years and you would only be wrong once, but that was the one time it did matter. You could have predicted it about the romans for a thousand years; about the soviets for 70 years; about the third reich for 15; iraq for 40. In the end they all fell. Now, I am not saying that this won't blow over in a month, just that it is really difficult to predict the future, especially in international relations.
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  If this were 2010 I'd agree with you, but technology is changing very quickly. We are very close to the ability to use bonds to pay for goods instead of cash. This allows you to buy things with "strings attached" so the bond becomes valueless under certain circumstances. E.g., I will buy your eggs, with a $8 bond which will lose its value if you are proved within my network of trust to have paid a worker less than a living wage. Of course this $8 bond is worth less than $8 in cash, but the eggs purchased with the bond are worth more to me than eggs purchased with cash. This will enable people to spend money and ensure that their revenues are reinvested according to their values. This is one of my candidates for a "killer app" for Ethereum. This is absolutely necessary as a key check on dirty money, since cryptocurrency has dramatically loosened up the ability for cash to flow between regulatory regimes.
- pmoriarty 8y ago
  Nations that sincerely object to what happened have it within their power to pass something like the Magnitsky Act[1] against those involved. The act was signed in to law after the murder and torture of Sergei Magnitsky, who had uncovered Russian corruption.[2] The parallels in the two cases are striking. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act [2] - https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/death-sergei-magnitsky-bill-browder https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/death-sergei-magnitsky-bil...
jsonne 8y ago
I have very little sympathy for these companies getting called out. Many of them gleefully throw themselves into the political arena when they can capitalize on things like pride or international women's day for cheap progressive points and some marketing exposure yet shirk away from the conversation about where they get their investment money from. I would say this is a nice lesson for a lot of marketing departments. If you're going to interject yourself, as a company, into the political arena, you have to be all in otherwise you will get called out like this eventually.
- itsmenotyou 8y ago
  > If you're going to interject yourself, as a company, into the political arena, you have to be all in otherwise you will get called out like this eventually. A company selectively interjecting itself into the political arena highlights its hypocrisy, but any company having a significant public impact should be getting called out regardless of their actions in other spheres. Ethics are not an opt-in.
  - notyourday 8y ago
    How about American universities that educate people from KSA paid by KSA? Should they be called out for taking blood money? After all international students are basically the only ones that pay the full rack rate?
  - lmm 8y ago
    Making yourself an ethical arbiter is opt-in; deciding to pursue profit within the constraints of a particular legal regime (or indeed a particular religion ethical doctrine) but otherwise apolitically is entirely legitimate, and I suspect makes one more likely to act in a genuinely good way than chasing the hot-button issues of the day.
  - wowzap 8y ago
    Can't a company just do what's best for itself and it's shareholders? Why does every organization need a moral/ethical complex which caters to the issues of modern day?
mlinksva 8y ago
Blood money? Take it. Seize it. I wonder why, AFAICT, the Magnitsky Act allows for freezing, but not seizing assets? Surely mass murderers should get worse financial treatment than say people who happen to be near a drug deal.
- noarchy 8y ago
  Who is going to do the seizing, when the government itself is involved in the sales? The article specifically mentions arms deals to the Saudis, despite everyone knowing what those arms may be used for in the end.
  - mywittyname 8y ago
    This is what should be scaring people. SA is not giving the US money out of the goodness of their heart, they are playing a long game. They eventually want to be powerful/influential enough to control international politics, rather than being a by-standard. We know that their government has no respect or appreciation for Western values. Yet our companies and governments will gladly take their money and provide them with weapons and investment opportunities which increase their wealth, technological understanding, and military power; knowing that SA is aiming to turn on us when the opportunity arises.
- wefarrell 8y ago
  I don't think it's US policy to ever seize money from a state, or corrupt officials who embezzled it. Governments come and go but the state is a proxy for the people and when a regime changes we don't just wipe out their debts.
ploxdontdox 8y ago
Isn't blood money what makes the world go round? Seems like it at least when you look around.
rajekas 8y ago
Of course, foreign capital inflows are hardly unique to Silicon Valley tech. Dodgy capital finds its way wherever speculation and money laundering are to be had. Real estate is a huge example. We have known for a while that some of the priciest real estate in the world in cities such as New York and London is due to capital inflows from the Middle East, Russia, China, India and other places where people have made enormous fortunes through illegal or semi-legal means. But that's only the tip of the iceberg. There's a difference between selling drugs on the street and creating a narco-state. If you want to see the first narco-state of real estate, move to Vancouver, where Chinese capital has turned the city upside down. The fact is that dodgy capital inflows are central to every speculative bubble: real estate, bitcoin, Uber for X, you name it. Who else has the money to throw around? I feel like we are at the beginning of a sweatshop moment for finance. Way back when it became known that kids were slaving away to produce your shoes, there was a global outcry and enormous pressure put on companies such as Nike to improve their operations. Did that save the world? No it didn't, but it changed the way outsourcing was implemented. Similarly, we need to change the moral landscape of finance. I don't mean the radical solution of socializing investment or samizdats that people write in secret communist pamphlets. I mean raising the bar for the mainstream - making it impossible for otherwise profit minded people to take certain kinds of money.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > making it impossible for otherwise profit minded people to take certain kinds of money These are called sanctions. They are proper to consider, given the circumstances.
  - rajekas 8y ago
    True. In a just world, the UN would be sanctioning KSA for its war in Yemen, but what are the chances of that happening? A privatized version is a modest alternative - a pledge that companies sign and enforce about their sources of financing. Nowhere near as good as state backed sanctions but a start.
    - gowld 8y ago
mhsabbagh 8y ago
Funny having this read on my screen while I was also reading this: https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/mosul-moria-air-strike-killed-family-181021211409973.html https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/mosul-moria-air-s...
jessriedel 8y ago
When I find an article like this, what is supposed to convince me to spend the time to read it? The title communicates almost nothing and there's no subtitle. The author starts off with a (boring) vinette and knowingly teases the actual topic: "Needless to say this article is about Saudia Arabia." But there are thousands of journalist writing thousands of articles about Saudi Arabia right now. Is the idea that I would know the author's name and just trust them? (Surely no one loves everything TechCrunch puts out generally.) Or that I'd get linked to it on social media from someone who's taste I really trust? I'm just honestly confused why a column like this doesn't have such a bad bounce rate as to induce a different writing style.
- coldtea 8y ago
  If article titles were crafted to convey the topic and thus only attract people interested in the topic they'd be as good as useless. Instead they use bold, non detailed, titles to attract readers that might not even care about the particular subject (but will click to see what the "blood money" are about). Isn't that the whole idea behind clickbait titles? Bounce rate after reading some of the article shouldn't really concern them, as long as people click on the article and the banners have been displayed.
  - gowld 8y ago
    Adtech has some awareness of bounce rate -- page linger time is a factor in ad impression metrics. That's why so many sites have arbitrary videos at the bottom of articles, to inclease linger time on the page.
  - jessriedel 8y ago
    I understand they want clicks and the general incentives for clickbait, and thus why the title might be a tease. But they also need to keep people on the site to view and click on the ads (especially near the bottom). So, for instance, why not tease more with a subtitle? Maybe the idea is that, empirically, the small fraction of people who will trudge through the article to find the mystery topic, for whatever reason, nevertheless stay for long enough that total ad exposure is higher. So the bounce rate is high but outweighed by these outliers. It still doesn't help me understand their motivation though. Like, there are a thousand news articles each day that begin with an intro thats indistinguishable (information-wise) from this one. Why read this one?
MentallyRetired 8y ago
Unfortunately, the reason why I didn't stick around on Vero despite liking the app.
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dawhizkid 8y ago
If you had an offer from Slack, would you seriously turn it down because they have Saudi money via Softbank if it was otherwise your top choice?
- iampims 8y ago
  Yes. These things matter.
  - leesec 8y ago
    I am all for standing up for your beliefs with your actions, I just hope we all realize this is a privileged position.
    - base698 8y ago
      It's a modern disease to confuse integrity with privilege.
    - yifanl 8y ago
      If you are in a position to do so, then what does it matter? Given the ability to pick between two things that are identical bar some moral aspect, it seems logically consistent to pick the option that aligns more with your morals.
    - tfehring 8y ago
      Sure, but the reason for that privilege is also the reason it matters so much. If you're considering whether to take a menial job in a warehouse or call center or something for a SoftBank-funded company, you're probably in a less privileged position in terms of your ability to turn down the best available job offer. But the ceiling on the value that you can create for those investors is much lower, which IMO significantly reduces the moral imperative to look elsewhere. Conversely, if you're an engineer for a SoftBank-funded startup, it's fairly likely that your contributions will create many millions of dollars' worth of wealth for Saudi investors.
    - realbarack 8y ago
ppeetteerr 8y ago
A rich title coming from an American. How many Iraqis died as a result of the US invasion? I'm not asking this to take away from the actions of the Saudi kingdom, but I hardly think that anyone in the US is just in claiming a higher position with regard to federal investment into research and startups. Should we question the origins of federally funded research into the internet on account of it coming from the DoD?
- wefarrell 8y ago
  He's a Canadian and that is some strong whataboutism.
  - ppeetteerr 8y ago
    I'm merely pointing out the hypocrisy of the title. My citizenship has little to do with history.
- CardenB 8y ago
  Not all Americans supported the Iraq invasion.
  - ppeetteerr 8y ago
    Not all Saudis support their government
    - dsr_ 8y ago
      All US citizens (in theory, not practice) get to vote to change their government's policies. In Saudi Arabia -- literally, the Arab lands belonging to the House of Saud -- the subjects don't have that power. They would have to have a revolution, first.
      - phakding 8y ago
        Not all. Felons don't, either in theory or in practice.
yumraj 8y ago
While we are finally beginning to call out Saudi money, shouldn't we start doing the same with the China money? As far as oppressive regimes go China isn't any better - just ask the Tibetans, the uighurs, controlled media etc.
- wowzap 8y ago
  Let's just call out all the money until we don't do business with anybody. So much for being global citizens.
  - exogeny 8y ago
    I hope at this point you're looking at the replies and realizing that your nihilistic, cynical viewpoint is in a very strong minority. You can take the money, but you can never say that nobody told you there would be repercussions.
    - wowzap 8y ago
      What's wrong with having a viewpoint that's in the minority?
- leesec 8y ago
  Why stop there? Should we really be taking American money either? Not exactly a spotless record.
- phakding 8y ago
  How about BP and their atrocities in Iran. How about United Fruit and banana republics? I could dig up more examples. There are very few ethical companies, if any.
FredNode 8y ago
Disappointed this article wasn't about actual money in blood. :(
projektfu 8y ago
I recognize that the author is using the term Blood Money like Blood Diamond, as a way of saying that the investment dollars are tainted by violence. But the term Blood Money already has a meaning in English, which is a payment to settle the feelings of a family for the loss of a loved one, and prevent revenge. It's not very common among northern Europeans, but is part of the culture of Arabs and, supposedly, Sicilian mafiosi. The US paid lots of blood money over the years to attempt to quell vengeance for collateral damage or incorrect targeting, and even in some cases for legitimate killings of battlefield opponents.
- dx87 8y ago
  FWIW, I've only ever heard Blood Money used the way it's used in the article. The first entry in the Merriam-Webster dictionary says "money obtained at the cost of another's life", the secondary definition is restitution like you mentioned.
  - projektfu 8y ago
    Interesting, I stand corrected. It is the first time I've heard the term used in my language like that.
- hprotagonist 8y ago
  "wergild" is the unambiguous term for "money paid in compensation for an injury".
- tareqak 8y ago
  I’ve heard of a few cases of murder in Saudi Arabia where the accused was found guilty and facing execution, but was set free after blood money was negotiated and transferred. Knowing that fact, I think the author intended the title of the article alludes to the practice with respect to recent events except with tech being recepients of said blood money. From Wikipedia: Diya (Arabic: دية‎; plural diyāt, Arabic: ديات‎) in Islamic law, is the financial compensation paid to the victim or heirs of a victim in the cases of murder, bodily harm or property damage. It is an alternative punishment to qisas (equal retaliation). In Arabic, the word means both blood money and ransom, and it is spelled sometimes as diyah or diyeh.[citation needed] It only applies when victim's family want to compromise with the guilty party; otherwise qisas applies. [0] The murder of Yvonne Gilford comes to mind [1]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diya_(Islam) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diya_(Islam) [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Yvonne_Gilford https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Yvonne_Gilford
dev_dull 8y ago
> This was before Russia was the democracy-manipulating enemy it is today Ugh. It’s like millennials woke up yesterday and said to themselves “Wait a minute. We have rival countries that don’t have our best intentions in mind??” Did our generation just skip world history classes in high school or something?
- headcanon 8y ago
  I had that initial reaction as well, but I think it was a reference to Russia being recently "in vogue" in the media for these actions - basically the "fake news/facebook/DNC" label applied post-2016.
- enraged_camel 8y ago
  I don't know what you're trying to say. While it is true that our rivals don't have our best interests in mind and have always acted to subvert our goals, their efforts to do so became brazen and blatant only very recently. Furthermore, this was (and still is) exacerbated by the continued denial and looking-the-other-way of our leaders currently in power. So it is a substantially different playing field today than it used to be.
- stevehawk 8y ago
  It's a new age where corporations are in it to make the world a better place and governments are here to serve the people. Or that seems to be what everyone on reddit under the age of 30 thinks.
i88y6 8y ago
> who predicted the collapse of Syria and its civil war before it happened, No way! He predicted it before it happened?
OnlyRepliesToBS 8y ago
morality wasn't an impediment before..
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loceng 8y ago
What's missing is the ability for people to easily know where the line is, and where people stand related to said line; they might be on the other side of the line simply due to ignorance or circumstances, they need the work to survive. We have to draw the line (and show who is on which side of the line), so people can choose/decide to hold that line with their actions - to hold the people in nations who are in control accountable, towards peace and for justice. Who's being accountable, and who isn't - who is purposefully not being accountable, who is espousing ignorance or laziness as justification? These organizations, the employees and leaders of these organizations - they certainly could take a stand and voice their concern, however why aren't they: looking at the story of a dead journalist is all you need to reason why they don't and how they don't want to end up themselves - so they've trapped themselves from action, at least publicly; whether they do anything privately that is significant or indirectly enough to support the cause of peace and justice, we may not be able to see or know.
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  We need a database of “lines”. The challenge is, Line Space is probably impossible to be adequately parameterized, with anything less than Turing complete parameters. So the database would have to be a database of code, which describes people’s “lines”. In order to put a front end on that you need to solve End User Programming (EUP) for some subset.
  - loceng 8y ago
    Interesting line of thinking.. I'm not sure the system needs to be perfect but almost-perfect. The importance is to track and manage the bigger systems and revenue systems. Sure, you're missing potential smaller transfers that that fund people to do abuse, however then you can have other mechanisms in place to manage that abuse.
    - erikpukinskis 8y ago
      I don’t think so, I think a simple federation, like the email system would suffice. I don’t believe any active management is needed at the system level. If anything you can just let people to do marketmaking around what are essentially structured ethical insights as a commodity.
cmurf 8y ago
The blood money isn't Saudi money in tech. That's oil money. The actual blood money is the Saudi money for American weapons that will be used to kill Yemenis (Yemenis today maybe Iranians tomorrow). And there's Trump telling us not being blood sucking arms merchants would be bad for the U.S. because we'd be giving up a lot of money! The right thing to do, per POTUS, is to take the money and ignore how the weapons are being used. There's the blood money. Money for the blood of Yemeni civilians.
mtw 8y ago
Saudi is powerful because of the reliance on fossil fuel. Any way to decrease dependancy on fossil fuels, both from governments and from individual citizens, will prevent situations like this.
_cs2017_ 8y ago
Does anyone have any guesses about what exactly the Saudi plan was when they killed Jamal Khashoggi? Surely they knew if they got blamed for the murder, it would cost them much more in damaged relationships than it could possibly gain in eliminating a critic. And surely they knew a disappearance of a journalist seen on camera entering their consulate won't be ignored. Sorry for a slightly off topic question.
- ozborn 8y ago
  I'm guessing the crown prince was upset with his journalism, I don't think a deeper reason needs to be found. From inside the bubble of absolute power (when you have already killed and tortured dissidents, rivals and potential threats) adding this journalist to the kill list probably didn't seem like such a big deal. He was apparently surprised by the reaction to the whole affair. https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/22/saudi-khashoggi-claims-fall-flat-riyadh-blindsided-bolton-in-moscow/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/22/saudi-khashoggi-claims-...
  - _cs2017_ 8y ago
    According to that article, MBS "[...] was really shocked that there was such a big reaction to it. He feels betrayed by the West. He said he would look elsewhere and he will never forget how people turned against him before evidence was produced". Indeed at this point the evidence against MBS is only circumstantial, so that would be a reasonable point to make in a court of law. But in the world of politics, there's no presumption of innocence because common folk don't much care for that, and politicians and activists need to build upon popular emotions while the issue is hot. Is MBS so naive as to genuinely expect the population of the West to ignore the very strong circumstantial evidence? Or for the politicians to ignore the popular opinion and wait for hard evidence (which may take months, years, or decades for all we know)? Or is he just leaking this message to create an impression of innocence? Also, the two parts of the statement are somewhat in conflict. Is he shocked by reaction or is he shocked of being accused without evidence? If he is shocked by reaction, it suggests he thinks the killing isn't a big deal, which implicates him even more. If MBS wasn't involved. I can imagine two scenarios. 1. There was a general guideline to reduce regime criticism by any means necessary. Some officials decided to follow that guideline by demonstrating to the critics that can be killed at any time (note that they didn't just secretly assassinate Khashoggi making it look like an accident; they did in a way as to set an example). Wouldn't be the first time nor the last. But if that was the case, why didn't Saudi authorities quickly identify those responsible, and try and execute them? They can explain to the world they punished them because of their horrible acts. Internally, to their loyal followers, they can explain that they were executed for being total idiots who acted in a way that caused SKA irreparable harm and undermined MBS reputation in the world. 2. The powerful enemies of MBS did that to undermine MBS, and MBS cannot do anything about it because his power is limited. That would be consistent with MBS being outside the palace, and the King giving him more authority over the ingelligence services. However, if that's the case, why wouldn't MBS just say precisely that? The only downside is that he would admit weakness, but it seems like he has nothing to lose at this point, if people in his inner cirlce are basically trying to destroy him.
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Kagerjay 8y ago
Unrelated, but I couldn't help but notice the new UX changes with techcrunch. Once you finish reading the page it adds a grey transition background color
lotophage 8y ago
For those curious, Saudi sovereign wealth investments include: * Magic Leap * Tesla * Lyft * Uber https://www.cbinsights.com/research/saudi-arabia-pif-tech-investments/ https://www.cbinsights.com/research/saudi-arabia-pif-tech-in...
nerder92 8y ago
I'll never ever understand the point of the "yes, but this" way of criticise on something. It always looks to me like when you are arguing with somebody that is thinking exactly like you, but you don't get each other because wording. In which way the fact that people are raising their voices as a consequence of the brutal murder of this journalist make Yemen people less important? And most of all is this really matters? I think this situation is slightly different and worth of notice, because is not just a murder, is a way for UAE to show off power and give a notice to all the other dissidents that they can reach them and get along without any consequences. This is a threat.

256 points by deegles 8y ago

Mark my words, this will blow over in a month or two and we'll forget all about it, like we always do. Softbank has a lot of sweet, sweet petro-dollars to wave around. If you are really opposed to the Saudi regime, I'd posit that the most effective thing you could do is create a bullshit startup and get them to invest, and then frivolously waste their money.

ploxdontdox 8y ago
Oh yes that sweet money.
deadmetheny 8y ago
>the most effective thing you could do is create a bullshit startup and get them to invest, and then frivolously waste their money Yeah, that sounds like a great idea to employ against a regime perfectly willing to violently murder people.
- bryanrasmussen 8y ago
  well, you're already dead, Metheny. Anyway, levity aside regimes that will violently murder to silence critics might not to get even for bad business investments. As for me I'm hoping to get some investment on my new grocery list tracking app that uses machine learning on the blockchain to automatically buy what you want to eat before you know what it is!
  - throwaway413 8y ago
    but can it identify hotdogs?
    - mLuby 8y ago
      not hotdog! (but most other things)
  - deadmetheny 8y ago
    >regimes that will violently murder to silence critics might not to get even for bad business investments I don't really disagree with that but at the same time it doesn't really feel all that wise to whack a hornet's nest with a baseball bat. If anyone feels like taking the risk, then I wish them the best of luck in swindling them for as much as they can get away with, but playing stupid games can lead to winning stupid prizes.
- notyourday 8y ago
  The most effective way to affect the change in KSA is to block KSA's citizens access to the non-KSA. It is that easy. The KSA is stable because its princess and princesses and its middle class enjoys unrestricted access to the West. For that they are willing to compromise with those that would stone women and cure homosexuality with whips. Block that and KSA will fall apart within months as having hundreds of thousands of dollars means nothing if there's no access to Gucci purses and houses in London.
  - mattmcknight 8y ago
    What replaces it if it loses stability or falls apart? Would it not be replaced by a government dominated by the people engaged in behavior you detest? It seems more likely that enacting more freedoms would instead result in civil war dominated by those who are more repressive, and likely the domination by the princes aligned with those perspectives. Instead, we see a slow progress which is painful, but may be the best that can be hoped for.
    - geow 8y ago
      Why would it lose stability and fall apart? Saudi Arabia is about as stable as bad places come, which is what makes it is so terrible. This is exactly the sort of country you should pressure to reform. Otherwise might as well just come out and say that it was all just an excuse to freely meddle with countries we don't like.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - mattmcknight 8y ago
        I don't think it would, but that is what the parent comment suggested.
    - notyourday 8y ago
      I'm having a hard time figuring out what kind of olympic level mental gymnastics I need to engage in to be able to view a butchering of a US permanent resident who works for a major US newspaper in a consulate on a territory of a NATO country and lying about it being a "progress" but I'm probably just not understanding the delicate picture
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> this will blow over in a month or two and we'll forget all about it, like we always do We always don’t. That’s how some countries end up under sanctions. (In any case, this is a bad moral defense.)
- matthewsharpe3 8y ago
  Its not clear that the sanctions have anything to do with the moral considerations, as opposed to the domestic and geo-political considerations, which actually dominate the decision making process. Sanctions on Russia after Ukraine had no more to do with the moral significance of their invasion than the absence of French/German sanctions on the UK/US after the invasion of Iraq. We only sanction bad behaviour when either geopolitics or domestic politics makes it convenient to do so.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > We only sanction bad behaviour when either geopolitics or domestic politics makes it convenient to do so I'd say when both make it convenient to do so, or one makes it an overwhelming necessity.
- joering2 8y ago
  I hate to be pulling this thread into politics on HN, but you mentioned sanctions so I believe you speak about political sanctions. All 19 hijackers of 911 attacks were Saudis. We have sanctioned many countries and murdered 100,000 innocent children and civils in last Iraq war that most americans still don’t know the reason we invaded, yet Suadis remain off the radar. Now the greencard holder got in altercation at the embassy and ended up treated with bonesaw, meanwhile POTUS tells we invested 1B in their contracts so we have to be careful what we say. On the top of that he has multiple private businesses at the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars at stake with Saudis. Tell me again about some sanctions against them, please?
hliyan 8y ago
> Mark my words, this will blow over in a month or two and we'll forget all about it, like we always do. Softbank has a lot of sweet, sweet petro-dollars to wave around. This type of cynical, defeatist attitude is part of the problem.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- root_axis 8y ago
  Perhaps, but on an ordered list of contributing factors "a defeatist attitude" is pretty near the bottom.
zxcvvcxz 8y ago
Like those food delivery startups and ride sharing apps that all lose money? Saudi may kill my journalists, but at least they subsidize my lunch.
prostoalex 8y ago
> I'd posit that the most effective thing you could do is create a bullshit startup and get them to invest This sounds like a long-term con that would take years to implement - sovereign wealth funds are more into late-stage pre-IPO rounds and not as much into $5k AngelList syndicate rounds. For short-term reducing personal dependence on oil sounds like a good start.
tomjen3 8y ago
>this will blow over in a month or two and we'll forget all about it, like we always do >There are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen The house of saud can't be on the top of the throne forever. Their monopoly on oil is diminishing (as is the importance of oil) and they don't have anything else even remotely comparative. You could have predicted that nothing would happen to the Assyrians for 16 thousand years and you would only be wrong once, but that was the one time it did matter. You could have predicted it about the romans for a thousand years; about the soviets for 70 years; about the third reich for 15; iraq for 40. In the end they all fell. Now, I am not saying that this won't blow over in a month, just that it is really difficult to predict the future, especially in international relations.
erikpukinskis 8y ago
If this were 2010 I'd agree with you, but technology is changing very quickly. We are very close to the ability to use bonds to pay for goods instead of cash. This allows you to buy things with "strings attached" so the bond becomes valueless under certain circumstances. E.g., I will buy your eggs, with a $8 bond which will lose its value if you are proved within my network of trust to have paid a worker less than a living wage. Of course this $8 bond is worth less than $8 in cash, but the eggs purchased with the bond are worth more to me than eggs purchased with cash. This will enable people to spend money and ensure that their revenues are reinvested according to their values. This is one of my candidates for a "killer app" for Ethereum. This is absolutely necessary as a key check on dirty money, since cryptocurrency has dramatically loosened up the ability for cash to flow between regulatory regimes.
pmoriarty 8y ago
Nations that sincerely object to what happened have it within their power to pass something like the Magnitsky Act[1] against those involved. The act was signed in to law after the murder and torture of Sergei Magnitsky, who had uncovered Russian corruption.[2] The parallels in the two cases are striking. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act [2] - https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/death-sergei-magnitsky-bill-browder https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/death-sergei-magnitsky-bil...

jsonne 8y ago

I have very little sympathy for these companies getting called out. Many of them gleefully throw themselves into the political arena when they can capitalize on things like pride or international women's day for cheap progressive points and some marketing exposure yet shirk away from the conversation about where they get their investment money from. I would say this is a nice lesson for a lot of marketing departments. If you're going to interject yourself, as a company, into the political arena, you have to be all in otherwise you will get called out like this eventually.

itsmenotyou 8y ago
> If you're going to interject yourself, as a company, into the political arena, you have to be all in otherwise you will get called out like this eventually. A company selectively interjecting itself into the political arena highlights its hypocrisy, but any company having a significant public impact should be getting called out regardless of their actions in other spheres. Ethics are not an opt-in.
- notyourday 8y ago
  How about American universities that educate people from KSA paid by KSA? Should they be called out for taking blood money? After all international students are basically the only ones that pay the full rack rate?
- lmm 8y ago
  Making yourself an ethical arbiter is opt-in; deciding to pursue profit within the constraints of a particular legal regime (or indeed a particular religion ethical doctrine) but otherwise apolitically is entirely legitimate, and I suspect makes one more likely to act in a genuinely good way than chasing the hot-button issues of the day.
- wowzap 8y ago
  Can't a company just do what's best for itself and it's shareholders? Why does every organization need a moral/ethical complex which caters to the issues of modern day?

mlinksva 8y ago

Blood money? Take it. Seize it. I wonder why, AFAICT, the Magnitsky Act allows for freezing, but not seizing assets? Surely mass murderers should get worse financial treatment than say people who happen to be near a drug deal.

noarchy 8y ago
Who is going to do the seizing, when the government itself is involved in the sales? The article specifically mentions arms deals to the Saudis, despite everyone knowing what those arms may be used for in the end.
- mywittyname 8y ago
  This is what should be scaring people. SA is not giving the US money out of the goodness of their heart, they are playing a long game. They eventually want to be powerful/influential enough to control international politics, rather than being a by-standard. We know that their government has no respect or appreciation for Western values. Yet our companies and governments will gladly take their money and provide them with weapons and investment opportunities which increase their wealth, technological understanding, and military power; knowing that SA is aiming to turn on us when the opportunity arises.
wefarrell 8y ago
I don't think it's US policy to ever seize money from a state, or corrupt officials who embezzled it. Governments come and go but the state is a proxy for the people and when a regime changes we don't just wipe out their debts.

ploxdontdox 8y ago

Isn't blood money what makes the world go round? Seems like it at least when you look around.

rajekas 8y ago

Of course, foreign capital inflows are hardly unique to Silicon Valley tech. Dodgy capital finds its way wherever speculation and money laundering are to be had. Real estate is a huge example. We have known for a while that some of the priciest real estate in the world in cities such as New York and London is due to capital inflows from the Middle East, Russia, China, India and other places where people have made enormous fortunes through illegal or semi-legal means. But that's only the tip of the iceberg. There's a difference between selling drugs on the street and creating a narco-state. If you want to see the first narco-state of real estate, move to Vancouver, where Chinese capital has turned the city upside down. The fact is that dodgy capital inflows are central to every speculative bubble: real estate, bitcoin, Uber for X, you name it. Who else has the money to throw around? I feel like we are at the beginning of a sweatshop moment for finance. Way back when it became known that kids were slaving away to produce your shoes, there was a global outcry and enormous pressure put on companies such as Nike to improve their operations. Did that save the world? No it didn't, but it changed the way outsourcing was implemented. Similarly, we need to change the moral landscape of finance. I don't mean the radical solution of socializing investment or samizdats that people write in secret communist pamphlets. I mean raising the bar for the mainstream - making it impossible for otherwise profit minded people to take certain kinds of money.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> making it impossible for otherwise profit minded people to take certain kinds of money These are called sanctions. They are proper to consider, given the circumstances.
- rajekas 8y ago
  True. In a just world, the UN would be sanctioning KSA for its war in Yemen, but what are the chances of that happening? A privatized version is a modest alternative - a pledge that companies sign and enforce about their sources of financing. Nowhere near as good as state backed sanctions but a start.
  - gowld 8y ago

mhsabbagh 8y ago

Funny having this read on my screen while I was also reading this: https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/mosul-moria-air-strike-killed-family-181021211409973.html https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/mosul-moria-air-s...

jessriedel 8y ago

When I find an article like this, what is supposed to convince me to spend the time to read it? The title communicates almost nothing and there's no subtitle. The author starts off with a (boring) vinette and knowingly teases the actual topic: "Needless to say this article is about Saudia Arabia." But there are thousands of journalist writing thousands of articles about Saudi Arabia right now. Is the idea that I would know the author's name and just trust them? (Surely no one loves everything TechCrunch puts out generally.) Or that I'd get linked to it on social media from someone who's taste I really trust? I'm just honestly confused why a column like this doesn't have such a bad bounce rate as to induce a different writing style.

coldtea 8y ago
If article titles were crafted to convey the topic and thus only attract people interested in the topic they'd be as good as useless. Instead they use bold, non detailed, titles to attract readers that might not even care about the particular subject (but will click to see what the "blood money" are about). Isn't that the whole idea behind clickbait titles? Bounce rate after reading some of the article shouldn't really concern them, as long as people click on the article and the banners have been displayed.
- gowld 8y ago
  Adtech has some awareness of bounce rate -- page linger time is a factor in ad impression metrics. That's why so many sites have arbitrary videos at the bottom of articles, to inclease linger time on the page.
- jessriedel 8y ago
  I understand they want clicks and the general incentives for clickbait, and thus why the title might be a tease. But they also need to keep people on the site to view and click on the ads (especially near the bottom). So, for instance, why not tease more with a subtitle? Maybe the idea is that, empirically, the small fraction of people who will trudge through the article to find the mystery topic, for whatever reason, nevertheless stay for long enough that total ad exposure is higher. So the bounce rate is high but outweighed by these outliers. It still doesn't help me understand their motivation though. Like, there are a thousand news articles each day that begin with an intro thats indistinguishable (information-wise) from this one. Why read this one?

MentallyRetired 8y ago

Unfortunately, the reason why I didn't stick around on Vero despite liking the app.

deleted 8y ago

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dawhizkid 8y ago

If you had an offer from Slack, would you seriously turn it down because they have Saudi money via Softbank if it was otherwise your top choice?

iampims 8y ago
Yes. These things matter.
- leesec 8y ago
  I am all for standing up for your beliefs with your actions, I just hope we all realize this is a privileged position.
  - base698 8y ago
    It's a modern disease to confuse integrity with privilege.
  - yifanl 8y ago
    If you are in a position to do so, then what does it matter? Given the ability to pick between two things that are identical bar some moral aspect, it seems logically consistent to pick the option that aligns more with your morals.
  - tfehring 8y ago
    Sure, but the reason for that privilege is also the reason it matters so much. If you're considering whether to take a menial job in a warehouse or call center or something for a SoftBank-funded company, you're probably in a less privileged position in terms of your ability to turn down the best available job offer. But the ceiling on the value that you can create for those investors is much lower, which IMO significantly reduces the moral imperative to look elsewhere. Conversely, if you're an engineer for a SoftBank-funded startup, it's fairly likely that your contributions will create many millions of dollars' worth of wealth for Saudi investors.
  - realbarack 8y ago

ppeetteerr 8y ago

A rich title coming from an American. How many Iraqis died as a result of the US invasion? I'm not asking this to take away from the actions of the Saudi kingdom, but I hardly think that anyone in the US is just in claiming a higher position with regard to federal investment into research and startups. Should we question the origins of federally funded research into the internet on account of it coming from the DoD?

wefarrell 8y ago
He's a Canadian and that is some strong whataboutism.
- ppeetteerr 8y ago
  I'm merely pointing out the hypocrisy of the title. My citizenship has little to do with history.
CardenB 8y ago
Not all Americans supported the Iraq invasion.
- ppeetteerr 8y ago
  Not all Saudis support their government
  - dsr_ 8y ago
    All US citizens (in theory, not practice) get to vote to change their government's policies. In Saudi Arabia -- literally, the Arab lands belonging to the House of Saud -- the subjects don't have that power. They would have to have a revolution, first.
    - phakding 8y ago
      Not all. Felons don't, either in theory or in practice.

yumraj 8y ago

While we are finally beginning to call out Saudi money, shouldn't we start doing the same with the China money? As far as oppressive regimes go China isn't any better - just ask the Tibetans, the uighurs, controlled media etc.

wowzap 8y ago
Let's just call out all the money until we don't do business with anybody. So much for being global citizens.
- exogeny 8y ago
  I hope at this point you're looking at the replies and realizing that your nihilistic, cynical viewpoint is in a very strong minority. You can take the money, but you can never say that nobody told you there would be repercussions.
  - wowzap 8y ago
    What's wrong with having a viewpoint that's in the minority?
leesec 8y ago
Why stop there? Should we really be taking American money either? Not exactly a spotless record.
phakding 8y ago
How about BP and their atrocities in Iran. How about United Fruit and banana republics? I could dig up more examples. There are very few ethical companies, if any.

FredNode 8y ago

Disappointed this article wasn't about actual money in blood. :(

projektfu 8y ago

I recognize that the author is using the term Blood Money like Blood Diamond, as a way of saying that the investment dollars are tainted by violence. But the term Blood Money already has a meaning in English, which is a payment to settle the feelings of a family for the loss of a loved one, and prevent revenge. It's not very common among northern Europeans, but is part of the culture of Arabs and, supposedly, Sicilian mafiosi. The US paid lots of blood money over the years to attempt to quell vengeance for collateral damage or incorrect targeting, and even in some cases for legitimate killings of battlefield opponents.

dx87 8y ago
FWIW, I've only ever heard Blood Money used the way it's used in the article. The first entry in the Merriam-Webster dictionary says "money obtained at the cost of another's life", the secondary definition is restitution like you mentioned.
- projektfu 8y ago
  Interesting, I stand corrected. It is the first time I've heard the term used in my language like that.
hprotagonist 8y ago
"wergild" is the unambiguous term for "money paid in compensation for an injury".
tareqak 8y ago
I’ve heard of a few cases of murder in Saudi Arabia where the accused was found guilty and facing execution, but was set free after blood money was negotiated and transferred. Knowing that fact, I think the author intended the title of the article alludes to the practice with respect to recent events except with tech being recepients of said blood money. From Wikipedia: Diya (Arabic: دية‎; plural diyāt, Arabic: ديات‎) in Islamic law, is the financial compensation paid to the victim or heirs of a victim in the cases of murder, bodily harm or property damage. It is an alternative punishment to qisas (equal retaliation). In Arabic, the word means both blood money and ransom, and it is spelled sometimes as diyah or diyeh.[citation needed] It only applies when victim's family want to compromise with the guilty party; otherwise qisas applies. [0] The murder of Yvonne Gilford comes to mind [1]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diya_(Islam) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diya_(Islam) [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Yvonne_Gilford https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Yvonne_Gilford

dev_dull 8y ago

> This was before Russia was the democracy-manipulating enemy it is today Ugh. It’s like millennials woke up yesterday and said to themselves “Wait a minute. We have rival countries that don’t have our best intentions in mind??” Did our generation just skip world history classes in high school or something?

headcanon 8y ago
I had that initial reaction as well, but I think it was a reference to Russia being recently "in vogue" in the media for these actions - basically the "fake news/facebook/DNC" label applied post-2016.
enraged_camel 8y ago
I don't know what you're trying to say. While it is true that our rivals don't have our best interests in mind and have always acted to subvert our goals, their efforts to do so became brazen and blatant only very recently. Furthermore, this was (and still is) exacerbated by the continued denial and looking-the-other-way of our leaders currently in power. So it is a substantially different playing field today than it used to be.
stevehawk 8y ago
It's a new age where corporations are in it to make the world a better place and governments are here to serve the people. Or that seems to be what everyone on reddit under the age of 30 thinks.

i88y6 8y ago

> who predicted the collapse of Syria and its civil war before it happened, No way! He predicted it before it happened?

OnlyRepliesToBS 8y ago

morality wasn't an impediment before..

deleted 8y ago

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loceng 8y ago

What's missing is the ability for people to easily know where the line is, and where people stand related to said line; they might be on the other side of the line simply due to ignorance or circumstances, they need the work to survive. We have to draw the line (and show who is on which side of the line), so people can choose/decide to hold that line with their actions - to hold the people in nations who are in control accountable, towards peace and for justice. Who's being accountable, and who isn't - who is purposefully not being accountable, who is espousing ignorance or laziness as justification? These organizations, the employees and leaders of these organizations - they certainly could take a stand and voice their concern, however why aren't they: looking at the story of a dead journalist is all you need to reason why they don't and how they don't want to end up themselves - so they've trapped themselves from action, at least publicly; whether they do anything privately that is significant or indirectly enough to support the cause of peace and justice, we may not be able to see or know.

erikpukinskis 8y ago
We need a database of “lines”. The challenge is, Line Space is probably impossible to be adequately parameterized, with anything less than Turing complete parameters. So the database would have to be a database of code, which describes people’s “lines”. In order to put a front end on that you need to solve End User Programming (EUP) for some subset.
- loceng 8y ago
  Interesting line of thinking.. I'm not sure the system needs to be perfect but almost-perfect. The importance is to track and manage the bigger systems and revenue systems. Sure, you're missing potential smaller transfers that that fund people to do abuse, however then you can have other mechanisms in place to manage that abuse.
  - erikpukinskis 8y ago
    I don’t think so, I think a simple federation, like the email system would suffice. I don’t believe any active management is needed at the system level. If anything you can just let people to do marketmaking around what are essentially structured ethical insights as a commodity.

cmurf 8y ago

The blood money isn't Saudi money in tech. That's oil money. The actual blood money is the Saudi money for American weapons that will be used to kill Yemenis (Yemenis today maybe Iranians tomorrow). And there's Trump telling us not being blood sucking arms merchants would be bad for the U.S. because we'd be giving up a lot of money! The right thing to do, per POTUS, is to take the money and ignore how the weapons are being used. There's the blood money. Money for the blood of Yemeni civilians.

mtw 8y ago

Saudi is powerful because of the reliance on fossil fuel. Any way to decrease dependancy on fossil fuels, both from governments and from individual citizens, will prevent situations like this.

_cs2017_ 8y ago

Does anyone have any guesses about what exactly the Saudi plan was when they killed Jamal Khashoggi? Surely they knew if they got blamed for the murder, it would cost them much more in damaged relationships than it could possibly gain in eliminating a critic. And surely they knew a disappearance of a journalist seen on camera entering their consulate won't be ignored. Sorry for a slightly off topic question.

ozborn 8y ago
I'm guessing the crown prince was upset with his journalism, I don't think a deeper reason needs to be found. From inside the bubble of absolute power (when you have already killed and tortured dissidents, rivals and potential threats) adding this journalist to the kill list probably didn't seem like such a big deal. He was apparently surprised by the reaction to the whole affair. https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/22/saudi-khashoggi-claims-fall-flat-riyadh-blindsided-bolton-in-moscow/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/22/saudi-khashoggi-claims-...
- _cs2017_ 8y ago
  According to that article, MBS "[...] was really shocked that there was such a big reaction to it. He feels betrayed by the West. He said he would look elsewhere and he will never forget how people turned against him before evidence was produced". Indeed at this point the evidence against MBS is only circumstantial, so that would be a reasonable point to make in a court of law. But in the world of politics, there's no presumption of innocence because common folk don't much care for that, and politicians and activists need to build upon popular emotions while the issue is hot. Is MBS so naive as to genuinely expect the population of the West to ignore the very strong circumstantial evidence? Or for the politicians to ignore the popular opinion and wait for hard evidence (which may take months, years, or decades for all we know)? Or is he just leaking this message to create an impression of innocence? Also, the two parts of the statement are somewhat in conflict. Is he shocked by reaction or is he shocked of being accused without evidence? If he is shocked by reaction, it suggests he thinks the killing isn't a big deal, which implicates him even more. If MBS wasn't involved. I can imagine two scenarios. 1. There was a general guideline to reduce regime criticism by any means necessary. Some officials decided to follow that guideline by demonstrating to the critics that can be killed at any time (note that they didn't just secretly assassinate Khashoggi making it look like an accident; they did in a way as to set an example). Wouldn't be the first time nor the last. But if that was the case, why didn't Saudi authorities quickly identify those responsible, and try and execute them? They can explain to the world they punished them because of their horrible acts. Internally, to their loyal followers, they can explain that they were executed for being total idiots who acted in a way that caused SKA irreparable harm and undermined MBS reputation in the world. 2. The powerful enemies of MBS did that to undermine MBS, and MBS cannot do anything about it because his power is limited. That would be consistent with MBS being outside the palace, and the King giving him more authority over the ingelligence services. However, if that's the case, why wouldn't MBS just say precisely that? The only downside is that he would admit weakness, but it seems like he has nothing to lose at this point, if people in his inner cirlce are basically trying to destroy him.

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Kagerjay 8y ago

Unrelated, but I couldn't help but notice the new UX changes with techcrunch. Once you finish reading the page it adds a grey transition background color

lotophage 8y ago

For those curious, Saudi sovereign wealth investments include: * Magic Leap * Tesla * Lyft * Uber https://www.cbinsights.com/research/saudi-arabia-pif-tech-investments/ https://www.cbinsights.com/research/saudi-arabia-pif-tech-in...

nerder92 8y ago

I'll never ever understand the point of the "yes, but this" way of criticise on something. It always looks to me like when you are arguing with somebody that is thinking exactly like you, but you don't get each other because wording. In which way the fact that people are raising their voices as a consequence of the brutal murder of this journalist make Yemen people less important? And most of all is this really matters? I think this situation is slightly different and worth of notice, because is not just a murder, is a way for UAE to show off power and give a notice to all the other dissidents that they can reach them and get along without any consequences. This is a threat.