8 ms·

Is anyone surprised considering the amount of saudi money flooding around traditional and social media? Now lets look into israel and their spying/influence in

Is anyone surprised considering the amount of saudi money flooding around traditional and social media? Now lets look into israel and their spying/influence in traditional and social media. It was amazing the amount of "news" and social media spam we got about russia ( We were always at war with eurasia ). It's amazing the amount of "news" and social media spam we are getting about china ( We were always at war with eastasia ). But one hardly ever hears a peep about israel or saudi arabia. Considering what is happening to the palestinians, yemenis, etc, you would think you'd hear a lot more "news" about them. Especially about saudi arabia from the feminist/lgbt traditional media considering the saudis probably treat women and the lgbt as badly as any nation on earth. How come the "news" industry isn't going apeshit over more than half of the state and the US house of senate pushing unconstitutional anti-BDS laws? https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/rights-protesters/new-israel-anti-boycott-act-still-unconstitutional https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/rights-protesters/new-... https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-house-overwhelmingly-passes-anti-bds-resolution/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-house-overwhelmingly-passes... A country founded on boycotts banning its corporations from boycotting a foreign country?

rumanator 7y ago
> Now lets look into israel and their spying/influence in traditional and social media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  If it isn't used to defend the action (spying), establish it as justified and therefore clear the offender from guilt, the fallacy doesn't really apply. The statement is bullshit on its own though.
  - rumanator 7y ago
    > If it isn't used to defend the action No, it's still a fallacy. Just because you feel the need to deflect attention towards your personal targets it doesn't mean your argument is sound.
jplayer01 7y ago
I take serious issue with this. I completely agree that Saudi Arabia and Israel are significant national security and geopolitical issues that aren't being dealt with appropriately. The Israelis are spying on US politicians and others inside the US. It's crazy. And pointing out that the Israelis are doing so, and most likely also directly influencing politicians to treat Israel more favourably, is regarded solely as racism and "anti-Israeli" - as if Israel doesn't and isn't doing despicable things as well. They aren't above reproach, but they absolutely treated like they are. Saudi Arabia is far worse, and they're treated the same way in US politics. But this doesn't mean Russia and China aren't doing bad things. This doesn't mean that they aren't bad actors that don't need to be dealt with. This is whataboutism, and it detracts from issues instead of productively extending the conversation. If one problem is mentioned, people like you jump out of the woodworks exclaiming, "NO, that's PROPAGANDA! listen to my favourite problem to talk about instead!". All of these countires. USA. Israel. Saudi Arabia. China. Russia. They're all bad in their own ways, doing bad shit for shitty reasons and they all need to be talked about. But just because one of them does something bad doesn't mean you can't talk about the other ones as well. It doesn't excuse any of them. That's just moral relativism and it's destroying public discourse.
- specialist 7y ago
  I don't mind everyone spying on each other. I do mind pretending it's not happening. I do mind that any one who points out the emperor is naked is shouted down, labeled a kook, gets eviscerated.
- 50656E6973 7y ago
  >This is whataboutism, and it detracts from issues instead of productively extending the conversation This is a self contradictory statement. Calling someone's argument "whataboutism" is itself a logical fallacy designed to prevent extension of the conversation into a larger context
papreclip 7y ago
It's been surprising to me to behold the hawkish rhetoric we get in the press re: Turkey and Iran lately. I don't believe it's coming from people who are genuinely concerned about the fate of the PKK
jimbob45 7y ago
We don't need to look into Israeli or Saudi Arabian money in US politics. It's there and we like it there. Those two countries are the most stable in the region by a mile and are willing to compromise with US interests to maintain the (fragile) stability. Like it or not, US interests are inextricably tied to those of the region. Don't believe me? Most scholars attribute Trump's election, at least in moderate part, to the massive influx of Syrian refugees to the many countries they went to. If we had done a better job stabilizing the region, perhaps Trump would have never even sniffed power.
- tsimionescu 7y ago
  These are the most stable countries in the region because they are the only countries in the region allowed to be stable. Iran is by almost any measure a better country to live in than Saudi Arabia, except that it does not do the bidding of the US, so it is getting illegal sanctions imposed upon it, almost officially recognized industrial sabotage, it is cut off from world banking etc. Note: I'm not claiming Iran is some tortured paradise. It is still a brutal regime, with horrible regressive views and which is acting tyranically towards its own population. It is much worse than Israel in that regard (though at least Iran is not waging a war of aggression on a neighbor sattelite state, and defying UN resolutions and international law in doing so). But it is still significantly better than Saudi Arabia in almost everything to do with human rights.
  - jblow 7y ago
    If one of your country’s official slogans is “Death to OtherCountry”, and so OtherCountry keeps not liking you ... it’s not that weird?!?
nautilus12 7y ago
I think saudi arabia won largerly from the arab spring, and that was powered by social media. I think they view it as an investment.
DSingularity 7y ago
Its the way of the world. The Palestinians were weak so they got bullied around and Israel was born. They remained weak and Israel continues. This is the way of the world. Strong eat the weak. Whether its monopolizing tech companies or nation states. They can abuse their power. Once established, they can then rewrite history. Look how now Microsoft has become such a champion for open-source. Tomorrow the champion of privacy will be Facebook. Tomorrow the champion for human rights will be the Saudis and the Israelis.
- malandrew 7y ago
  > Look how now Microsoft has become such a champion for open-source. to be fair, they didn't just doctor history, they actually changed their ways.
  - justinclift 7y ago
    Let me know when telemetry in Windows can meaningfully be turned off fully, and permanently. Everything else they've done is pretty much PR management.
    - dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
      I don't understand why you're being downvoted. Yes, there are valid technical reasons to use telemetry, but the tricks Microsoft is playing to get these data against the wishes of their users can't be considered fair.
      - mixmastamyk 7y ago
        It’s part of the campaign.
  - Jedi72 7y ago
    Am I out of the loop, what have Microsoft done to support open-source? Made linux containers easy to use on Azure? Wrote a code editor so that they extend and extinguish developer mindshare and get them onto Azure? Im being serious, what have MS actually done to claim they have supported open-source (and of course, open-source != free software)
product50 7y ago
Where is Israel coming here into your argument? Just because you don't like Israel and what they are doing doesn't mean you should treat them the same as Saudi Arabia and create a narrative around them together.
- twchjop 7y ago
  NSO (Israel) hacked Jamal Kashoggi's contact via WhatsApp & passed whereabouts of Kashoggi to Saudi Arabia which eventually led to his death. If we cannot hold Saudi for human rights violations & let the enabler like Israel go scott free.
  - pms 7y ago
    Is this true? Why nobody talks about this?
    - papreclip 7y ago
      Apparently because it gets your post nuked, whatever it was
      - the-dude 7y ago
        You can turn on show-dead in your profile and it is un-nuked.
- L_Rahman 7y ago
  They're both prominent US allies; they're states with some religious identity fundamental to their existence; they're integrated into American civic society - Saudi money in the US economy, academic partnerships between US and Israeli universities; they disenfranchise their own citizens to varying degrees; they buy American weapons and count on American military support to maintain geopolitical relations. Oh, and they both use the strength of their relationship with the US to make certain parts of the world unlivable for people they don't like.
  - 7y ago
throwGuardian 7y ago
Inserting Israel into a completely irrelevant thread is .... totally not anti semetic. Especially this bit: > US house of senate pushing unconstitutional anti-BDS laws?
- coolso 7y ago
  Don't like someone's narrative? Just call it racist/sexist/anti-semitic. For shame.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - QuesnayJr 7y ago
    Here's an actual news story about spying by Saudi Arabia. What motivates someone to turn it into a thread about Israel? This is Hacker News. If there's a new story about Israel you want to draw to our attention, you can submit it just like everyone else.
- fiblye 7y ago
  It’s a topic about espionage and exerting power and cash to silence critics, two subject that Israel is globally known to excel at. That has nothing to do with Judaism. Most people don’t claim it does.
- tsimionescu 7y ago
  Are you implying that the BDS movement is anti-semitic? That would be an extreme claim, which would require some kind of evidence. Being against Israel's actions towards Palestine, which is far and away the most important topic covered by the BDS movement, is in no way an anti-semitic sentiment.
  - nostrebored 7y ago
    What are you against? Two state solutions have been offered multiple times. What you're really claiming is that Jews should evacuate the land that they're living on after fleeing consistent mass murders and persecutions throughout history. What you're really claiming is that Jews should either exit to countries that have empirically turned hostile to them over time or be unprosperous.
knowaveragejoe 7y ago
I can't stand these kind of takes that are based purely in anecdote. On what basis are you claiming we "hardly ever hear a peep about israel or saudi arabia"? How do you even measure that?
- s_dev 7y ago
  > How do you even measure that? All this sort of stuff is claimed under Manufacturing Consent. Chomsky's point is often why don't we hear about these other incidents .. because the news isn't balanced and the government is trying to fashion a narrative and they use the media to do this by selectivly choosing what we hear and see.
  - tsimionescu 7y ago
    One of the points of Manufacturing Consent is that it's not necessarily the government directly choosing a narrative (that sometimes does happen, especially through selective leaks) but that the news media itself and the people who end up doing editorial policy are largely aligned with the government to begin with.
    - enraged_camel 7y ago
      It's not that they are aligned with the government, necessarily. Rather, they are aligned with large advertisers, and those tend to be powerful companies and conglomerates with global interests. Essentially, if you're a media outlet, you'll try hard to not piss off the hand that is feeding you, and Chomsky's assertion is that this is how the media manufactures consent (for all the horrible things the government does to defend the interests of those advertisers abroad).
      - tsimionescu 7y ago
        That is one aspect, but there is even more: in general, people who rise in positions of power, such as editorial positions on major media outlets, or political power, or capital, tend to have similar beliefs and interests. This is because of things like common education institution and social bonds. Essentially, if your opinions are significantly different from those of most politicians (on the important topics), you're unlikely to rise up through the ranks in most major institutions.
odiroot 7y ago
I didn't know the Arab world has their own "wumao"s.
- yread 7y ago
  Israel has wumao since before wumao https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-students-social-media/2651715/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-...

rumanator 7y ago

> Now lets look into israel and their spying/influence in traditional and social media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

raxxorrax 7y ago
If it isn't used to defend the action (spying), establish it as justified and therefore clear the offender from guilt, the fallacy doesn't really apply. The statement is bullshit on its own though.
- rumanator 7y ago
  > If it isn't used to defend the action No, it's still a fallacy. Just because you feel the need to deflect attention towards your personal targets it doesn't mean your argument is sound.

jplayer01 7y ago

I take serious issue with this. I completely agree that Saudi Arabia and Israel are significant national security and geopolitical issues that aren't being dealt with appropriately. The Israelis are spying on US politicians and others inside the US. It's crazy. And pointing out that the Israelis are doing so, and most likely also directly influencing politicians to treat Israel more favourably, is regarded solely as racism and "anti-Israeli" - as if Israel doesn't and isn't doing despicable things as well. They aren't above reproach, but they absolutely treated like they are. Saudi Arabia is far worse, and they're treated the same way in US politics. But this doesn't mean Russia and China aren't doing bad things. This doesn't mean that they aren't bad actors that don't need to be dealt with. This is whataboutism, and it detracts from issues instead of productively extending the conversation. If one problem is mentioned, people like you jump out of the woodworks exclaiming, "NO, that's PROPAGANDA! listen to my favourite problem to talk about instead!". All of these countires. USA. Israel. Saudi Arabia. China. Russia. They're all bad in their own ways, doing bad shit for shitty reasons and they all need to be talked about. But just because one of them does something bad doesn't mean you can't talk about the other ones as well. It doesn't excuse any of them. That's just moral relativism and it's destroying public discourse.

specialist 7y ago
I don't mind everyone spying on each other. I do mind pretending it's not happening. I do mind that any one who points out the emperor is naked is shouted down, labeled a kook, gets eviscerated.
50656E6973 7y ago
>This is whataboutism, and it detracts from issues instead of productively extending the conversation This is a self contradictory statement. Calling someone's argument "whataboutism" is itself a logical fallacy designed to prevent extension of the conversation into a larger context

papreclip 7y ago

It's been surprising to me to behold the hawkish rhetoric we get in the press re: Turkey and Iran lately. I don't believe it's coming from people who are genuinely concerned about the fate of the PKK

jimbob45 7y ago

We don't need to look into Israeli or Saudi Arabian money in US politics. It's there and we like it there. Those two countries are the most stable in the region by a mile and are willing to compromise with US interests to maintain the (fragile) stability. Like it or not, US interests are inextricably tied to those of the region. Don't believe me? Most scholars attribute Trump's election, at least in moderate part, to the massive influx of Syrian refugees to the many countries they went to. If we had done a better job stabilizing the region, perhaps Trump would have never even sniffed power.

tsimionescu 7y ago
These are the most stable countries in the region because they are the only countries in the region allowed to be stable. Iran is by almost any measure a better country to live in than Saudi Arabia, except that it does not do the bidding of the US, so it is getting illegal sanctions imposed upon it, almost officially recognized industrial sabotage, it is cut off from world banking etc. Note: I'm not claiming Iran is some tortured paradise. It is still a brutal regime, with horrible regressive views and which is acting tyranically towards its own population. It is much worse than Israel in that regard (though at least Iran is not waging a war of aggression on a neighbor sattelite state, and defying UN resolutions and international law in doing so). But it is still significantly better than Saudi Arabia in almost everything to do with human rights.
- jblow 7y ago
  If one of your country’s official slogans is “Death to OtherCountry”, and so OtherCountry keeps not liking you ... it’s not that weird?!?

nautilus12 7y ago

I think saudi arabia won largerly from the arab spring, and that was powered by social media. I think they view it as an investment.

DSingularity 7y ago

Its the way of the world. The Palestinians were weak so they got bullied around and Israel was born. They remained weak and Israel continues. This is the way of the world. Strong eat the weak. Whether its monopolizing tech companies or nation states. They can abuse their power. Once established, they can then rewrite history. Look how now Microsoft has become such a champion for open-source. Tomorrow the champion of privacy will be Facebook. Tomorrow the champion for human rights will be the Saudis and the Israelis.

malandrew 7y ago
> Look how now Microsoft has become such a champion for open-source. to be fair, they didn't just doctor history, they actually changed their ways.
- justinclift 7y ago
  Let me know when telemetry in Windows can meaningfully be turned off fully, and permanently. Everything else they've done is pretty much PR management.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
    I don't understand why you're being downvoted. Yes, there are valid technical reasons to use telemetry, but the tricks Microsoft is playing to get these data against the wishes of their users can't be considered fair.
    - mixmastamyk 7y ago
      It’s part of the campaign.
- Jedi72 7y ago
  Am I out of the loop, what have Microsoft done to support open-source? Made linux containers easy to use on Azure? Wrote a code editor so that they extend and extinguish developer mindshare and get them onto Azure? Im being serious, what have MS actually done to claim they have supported open-source (and of course, open-source != free software)

product50 7y ago

Where is Israel coming here into your argument? Just because you don't like Israel and what they are doing doesn't mean you should treat them the same as Saudi Arabia and create a narrative around them together.

twchjop 7y ago
NSO (Israel) hacked Jamal Kashoggi's contact via WhatsApp & passed whereabouts of Kashoggi to Saudi Arabia which eventually led to his death. If we cannot hold Saudi for human rights violations & let the enabler like Israel go scott free.
- pms 7y ago
  Is this true? Why nobody talks about this?
  - papreclip 7y ago
    Apparently because it gets your post nuked, whatever it was
    - the-dude 7y ago
      You can turn on show-dead in your profile and it is un-nuked.
L_Rahman 7y ago
They're both prominent US allies; they're states with some religious identity fundamental to their existence; they're integrated into American civic society - Saudi money in the US economy, academic partnerships between US and Israeli universities; they disenfranchise their own citizens to varying degrees; they buy American weapons and count on American military support to maintain geopolitical relations. Oh, and they both use the strength of their relationship with the US to make certain parts of the world unlivable for people they don't like.
- 7y ago

throwGuardian 7y ago

Inserting Israel into a completely irrelevant thread is .... totally not anti semetic. Especially this bit: > US house of senate pushing unconstitutional anti-BDS laws?

coolso 7y ago
Don't like someone's narrative? Just call it racist/sexist/anti-semitic. For shame.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- QuesnayJr 7y ago
  Here's an actual news story about spying by Saudi Arabia. What motivates someone to turn it into a thread about Israel? This is Hacker News. If there's a new story about Israel you want to draw to our attention, you can submit it just like everyone else.
fiblye 7y ago
It’s a topic about espionage and exerting power and cash to silence critics, two subject that Israel is globally known to excel at. That has nothing to do with Judaism. Most people don’t claim it does.
tsimionescu 7y ago
Are you implying that the BDS movement is anti-semitic? That would be an extreme claim, which would require some kind of evidence. Being against Israel's actions towards Palestine, which is far and away the most important topic covered by the BDS movement, is in no way an anti-semitic sentiment.
- nostrebored 7y ago
  What are you against? Two state solutions have been offered multiple times. What you're really claiming is that Jews should evacuate the land that they're living on after fleeing consistent mass murders and persecutions throughout history. What you're really claiming is that Jews should either exit to countries that have empirically turned hostile to them over time or be unprosperous.

knowaveragejoe 7y ago

I can't stand these kind of takes that are based purely in anecdote. On what basis are you claiming we "hardly ever hear a peep about israel or saudi arabia"? How do you even measure that?

s_dev 7y ago
> How do you even measure that? All this sort of stuff is claimed under Manufacturing Consent. Chomsky's point is often why don't we hear about these other incidents .. because the news isn't balanced and the government is trying to fashion a narrative and they use the media to do this by selectivly choosing what we hear and see.
- tsimionescu 7y ago
  One of the points of Manufacturing Consent is that it's not necessarily the government directly choosing a narrative (that sometimes does happen, especially through selective leaks) but that the news media itself and the people who end up doing editorial policy are largely aligned with the government to begin with.
  - enraged_camel 7y ago
    It's not that they are aligned with the government, necessarily. Rather, they are aligned with large advertisers, and those tend to be powerful companies and conglomerates with global interests. Essentially, if you're a media outlet, you'll try hard to not piss off the hand that is feeding you, and Chomsky's assertion is that this is how the media manufactures consent (for all the horrible things the government does to defend the interests of those advertisers abroad).
    - tsimionescu 7y ago
      That is one aspect, but there is even more: in general, people who rise in positions of power, such as editorial positions on major media outlets, or political power, or capital, tend to have similar beliefs and interests. This is because of things like common education institution and social bonds. Essentially, if your opinions are significantly different from those of most politicians (on the important topics), you're unlikely to rise up through the ranks in most major institutions.

odiroot 7y ago

I didn't know the Arab world has their own "wumao"s.

yread 7y ago
Israel has wumao since before wumao https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-students-social-media/2651715/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-...