5 ms·
Saudi Arabia beheads man for sending messages about protests when aged 16
- salex89 7y agoBut you won't see Saudi Arabia bombed or invaded because of human rights violations...
- astrodust 7y agoTo save your hide have either a lot of nuclear weapons or deep political ties to those that might invade you.
- devoply 7y agoThere are no real ties, it's pretty much a relationship where the Saudi give American/Western companies fat contracts in return for being left alone. The whole country is pretty much built by American corporations. Even like Aramco was an American company until the Saudis bought it from them. Like for instance from Wikipedia: > In the backlash against Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism (after 9/11), the Saudi government was portrayed in the media, Senate hearings, and elsewhere as > a sort of oily heart of darkness, the wellspring of a bleak, hostile value system that is the very antithesis of our own. America's seventy-year alliance with the kingdom has been reappraised as a ghastly mistake, a selling of the soul, a gas-addicted alliance with death.[60] > There was even a proposal at the Defense Policy Board, (an arm of Department of Defense) to consider `taking Saudi out of Arabia` by forcibly seizing control of the oil fields, giving the Hijaz back to the Hashemites, and delegating control of Medina and Mecca to a multinational committee of moderate, non-Wahhabi Muslims.
- astrodust 7y agoYou say there's no real ties, then you go on to describe several real ties.
- devoply 7y agoI would not consider converging economic interests ties. As those can change at any moment. I guess the whole war racketeering thing is the same thing, you destroy a country to rebuild it. If they are already doing that, letting you build it then what's the point of destroying it.
- AckSyn 7y ago> I would not consider converging economic interests ties. This seems to be exactly what 'ties' are, here.
- chillacy 7y agoI had assumed that in geopolitics the order goes: 1. Security interests 2. Economic interests 3. Shared values
- hedora 7y agoYou forgot: 0. Personal gain (At least until they start enforcing anti-bribery laws against the first family.)
- gremlinsinc 7y agoWhen did we start zero-indexing numbered lists?
- 0-_-0 7y agoYou must be a Pascal programmer
- obhmt 7y agoThey are friends with Israel so...
- salex89 7y agoI'm not really sure that Israel is the main force keeping Saudi Arabian regime out of harm's way, to be honest, even with the cooperation between them.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- charlesism 7y agoYou can't think of a more likely reason why Saudi Arabia has influence? Wow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
- ShorsHammer 7y agoAt this point even some sanctions and trade boycotts is a pipe dream. The West has completely given up on any pretence of caring about human rights in the Middle East.
- aaomidi 7y agoThe US never cared. It was all a sham to get the public to support various interventionst measures.
- cmurf 7y agoNope, you'll see the U.S. president, with pleasure, talk about how many jobs we get from all the Saudi Arabian blood money pouring into the country by selling them arms to blow up Yemeni children. Etc.
- pauljurczak 7y ago"They may be bastards, but they're our bastards." - statement attributed to some presidents, not only of U.S.
- brianpgordon 7y agoLooks like the article says that he was 16 when he sent the messages, not when he was executed. He was executed at 21. Still unconscionable but sensationalizing doesn't help anything.
- draw_down 7y agoThe age is not really the sensational part but thanks for fact checking
- GoodJokes 7y agoYou admit that the age doesn’t matter in your comment. Your comment is worthless.
- kome 7y agothat's not sensationalizing.
- colejohnson66 7y agoTrue, but the headline is slightly inaccurate so as to make it seem, I would guess, worse.
- brianpgordon 7y agoSlightly inaccurate? The headline is grossly incorrect. Beheading a 16-year-old is materially different from beheading a 21-year-old. The appalling possibility of a kid being executed is what made me click on the story in the first place. And now my comment calling out the OP for creating a misleading headline is at -4 points. If HN is going to be a Facebook-like shithole of clickbait now, that's fine, but in that case I would appreciate it if someone could send me a lobste.rs invite so that I can keep ahead of the expanding event horizon of stupidity.
- ceejayoz 7y agoThe headline is slightly inaccurate, but the point remains the same. It's a travesty that someone's being beheaded for non-violent actions they performed as a child.
- aaron695 7y agoThe USA executes people. The USA executes juveniles, as SA has done. (https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/execution-juveniles-us-and-other-countries https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/execution-juveniles-us-and-othe...) Let's not throw stones. The terrorist cell had killed people, he did more than send a WhatsApp message, but it's very murky how much more. If they didn't have the death penalty or didn't kill juveniles then this might have been fixable, so perhaps we should put our own house in order first.
- rahuldottech 7y agoFuck man. This stuff doesn't belong on a tech site like this.
- RenRav 7y agoI see some relevance for the online methods being used to organize protests. I wish it was framed more as a cry for better encrypted communication methods, or anything that would help prevent this. Just reading the facts of them dying is unpleasant.
- fred_dev 7y agoI thank you for posting this. Not all the people read or know what's going on in the world! I met a guy from Arabia, when I asked him do you agree with what the King/prince is doing?! The answer was shocking, he reminded me that it's a monarchy, and they have no voting system! They have no right to protest. Whatever the king says is the law. If they stand against king the will die... Those people are stuck there, just because they born in a wrong location. Beside discussing the death penalty, think about how you can help those youth that want to protest. This guy died because he wanted to make a movement, please don't let this happen again anywhere else in the world. Be their voice, think about other people who are still alive and are in pain. Arabia is just an example, many countries have the same situation. What killed this guy was WhatsApp! If any hacker pass by this post. Please, they need an app which doesn't kill. Messaging in an anonymous mode, Non-interceptive even by God. But protects the users from malicious ones. Free, robust, unbreakable. Easy to use. Never ask for phone number which most national telcos has power over it. I'm sure there are some small unnoticed git projects that needs you to contribute. You might don't need to start from zero.
- Alexander473 7y agoWell, Pavel Durov once said that WhatsApp sucks. That's why Telegram was invented.
- Data_Junkie 7y agoSaudi Arabia sends message to subjects by terrorizing people.