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Tricking a [EDIT: thanks 'spyspy!] WaPo journalist into visiting a consulate and then chopping him into pieces with a saw while he screamed and cursed you? Drop

Tricking a [EDIT: thanks 'spyspy!] WaPo journalist into visiting a consulate and then chopping him into pieces with a saw while he screamed and cursed you? Dropping bombs to kill hundreds of thousands of Yemeni children? Making the people of Saudi Arabia somehow less free? Those things were pretty bad sir! But now you've gone too far! How dare you peep on our first trillionaire while he's courting outside his marriage?!? At long last, have you no shame?!??

pc86 6y ago
> In Comments > Be kind. Don't be snarky...Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jessaustin 6y ago
  You're going to have to spell this one out for me. To my (admittedly poor) judgment, the above comment does not violate the guidelines. I provide relevant examples of behavior that reasonable people would consider far worse than hacking some rich dude's iPhone.
  - pc86 6y ago
    Sure. To the first point, I think it's pretty evident the comment is snarky (even if it has a good point in there). I'm guilty of that too, more often than I'd like and I do get called out on it occasionally. And I don't think that alone is an excuse to just flippantly toss the guidelines at someone, which admittedly is basically what I did. To the second point, however, I do think you took the worst possible interpretation of swyx's comment, which was basically "nobody cares that the person in question is a murderous tyrant, but he hacked Bezos's phone and so is a bad person now." I don't think that's what he was saying at all, especially given the end about "more than he already is." Whether we like it or not, one of the primary reasons that Saudi Arabia is tolerated in the West is their economic importance, and their connections to the elite, almost entirely because of their wealth. That starts to crack if they go after the elites directly. So I took the comment as basically saying that it didn't seem to serve MBS at all to hack Bezos directly, as it would only (further) delegitimize him interntionally.
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      I'm glad that some light snarking is still somewhat tolerated. It's one of the things that makes life bearable for me. To more seriously address the various possible interpretations of the comment in question... yours is a reasonable interpretation, but I don't think I was unresponsive to that interpretation. Of course ethical people object to MbS's previous evil deeds. Still, those are his deeds. If global opprobrium didn't sway him before, there's no reason to believe it did so more recently. If there is evidence that some electronic communication that appeared to come from MbS contained malware, that evidence should be analyzed in itself. It shouldn't be dismissed by vague unsupported perceptions of MbS's interests and motivations. It's not as though Bezos is universally adored, even among other satanically wealthy reptiles.
spyspy 6y ago
Nitpick: Khashoggi was a writer for WaPo, not NYT.
stanfordkid 6y ago
All whilst being propped up for decades by the USA for geopolitical objectives??! It's not an accident that one of the stupidest, most theocratic countries in the middle east receives the most weapons and support from the USA. We don't want a strong middle east. This is why countries like Iran, Lebanon, Syria are labelled as "terrorist".
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- yyyk 6y ago
  That's exactly the same hypocrisy the OP is complaining about, just from the other direction. One faction of the West ignores Saudi's role in killing Yemenis; The other faction ignores Iran's role in killing Syrians. One faction ignores domestic repression in Saudi Arabia; the other ignores domestic repression in Iran. One ignores theocracy in Saudi, the other ignores theocracy in Iran. Both countries and both rulers of said countries should be international pariahs.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    Assuming I'm "OP" to whom you refer... I reject this false equivalence. That isn't to say that the government of Iran is perfect; no government is. However, it is entirely the fault of USA that Iran's government takes the form that it does currently. We should have left Mosaddegh alone. We shouldn't have helped the Shah kill religious and democracy protesters. We should not have sold Saddam weapons of mass destruction (and lots of other weapons too) with which to war with Iran. We should not shoot down their civilian airliners. We should abide by our treaties with Iran. We should not assassinate their diplomats while those diplomats are on diplomatic missions to nations we claim as allies. We especially shouldn't do that when the diplomat in question was the single human being most responsible for defeating ISIS, which was the actual threat to Syrian people. Iranian women have never lost their rights to drive, to appear in public, to have lives of their own. Iranian women and men both vote in elections to select their leaders. Iran has only fought defensive wars with its neighbors. Kingdom of Saudi compares very poorly in all these categories.

pc86 6y ago

> In Comments > Be kind. Don't be snarky...Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

jessaustin 6y ago
You're going to have to spell this one out for me. To my (admittedly poor) judgment, the above comment does not violate the guidelines. I provide relevant examples of behavior that reasonable people would consider far worse than hacking some rich dude's iPhone.
- pc86 6y ago
  Sure. To the first point, I think it's pretty evident the comment is snarky (even if it has a good point in there). I'm guilty of that too, more often than I'd like and I do get called out on it occasionally. And I don't think that alone is an excuse to just flippantly toss the guidelines at someone, which admittedly is basically what I did. To the second point, however, I do think you took the worst possible interpretation of swyx's comment, which was basically "nobody cares that the person in question is a murderous tyrant, but he hacked Bezos's phone and so is a bad person now." I don't think that's what he was saying at all, especially given the end about "more than he already is." Whether we like it or not, one of the primary reasons that Saudi Arabia is tolerated in the West is their economic importance, and their connections to the elite, almost entirely because of their wealth. That starts to crack if they go after the elites directly. So I took the comment as basically saying that it didn't seem to serve MBS at all to hack Bezos directly, as it would only (further) delegitimize him interntionally.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    I'm glad that some light snarking is still somewhat tolerated. It's one of the things that makes life bearable for me. To more seriously address the various possible interpretations of the comment in question... yours is a reasonable interpretation, but I don't think I was unresponsive to that interpretation. Of course ethical people object to MbS's previous evil deeds. Still, those are his deeds. If global opprobrium didn't sway him before, there's no reason to believe it did so more recently. If there is evidence that some electronic communication that appeared to come from MbS contained malware, that evidence should be analyzed in itself. It shouldn't be dismissed by vague unsupported perceptions of MbS's interests and motivations. It's not as though Bezos is universally adored, even among other satanically wealthy reptiles.

spyspy 6y ago

Nitpick: Khashoggi was a writer for WaPo, not NYT.

stanfordkid 6y ago

All whilst being propped up for decades by the USA for geopolitical objectives??! It's not an accident that one of the stupidest, most theocratic countries in the middle east receives the most weapons and support from the USA. We don't want a strong middle east. This is why countries like Iran, Lebanon, Syria are labelled as "terrorist".

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
yyyk 6y ago
That's exactly the same hypocrisy the OP is complaining about, just from the other direction. One faction of the West ignores Saudi's role in killing Yemenis; The other faction ignores Iran's role in killing Syrians. One faction ignores domestic repression in Saudi Arabia; the other ignores domestic repression in Iran. One ignores theocracy in Saudi, the other ignores theocracy in Iran. Both countries and both rulers of said countries should be international pariahs.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  Assuming I'm "OP" to whom you refer... I reject this false equivalence. That isn't to say that the government of Iran is perfect; no government is. However, it is entirely the fault of USA that Iran's government takes the form that it does currently. We should have left Mosaddegh alone. We shouldn't have helped the Shah kill religious and democracy protesters. We should not have sold Saddam weapons of mass destruction (and lots of other weapons too) with which to war with Iran. We should not shoot down their civilian airliners. We should abide by our treaties with Iran. We should not assassinate their diplomats while those diplomats are on diplomatic missions to nations we claim as allies. We especially shouldn't do that when the diplomat in question was the single human being most responsible for defeating ISIS, which was the actual threat to Syrian people. Iranian women have never lost their rights to drive, to appear in public, to have lives of their own. Iranian women and men both vote in elections to select their leaders. Iran has only fought defensive wars with its neighbors. Kingdom of Saudi compares very poorly in all these categories.