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Saudi woman jailed for 45 years for social media posts

191 points by RadixDLT 4y ago

VonGuard 4y ago
jmclnx 4y ago
And yet Countries who decry this still support that regime by buying Oil from them. Too bad the West does not have any backbone. Really it is time to stop Oil Subsidies and put all that money into alternative, including nuclear.
- PenguinCoder 4y ago
  Let me know when I can buy a nuclear car. No, electric cars aren't adequate. They don't do a damn thing but change the point of pollution so the driver can feel better about themselves. Electric power plants still mainly burning coal. Even if using a nuclear power plant for energy, still have the lithium and cobalt mining and then battery disposal. Also, wont fit my usecase of long haul towing and off road needs in frigid weather.
  - rascul 4y ago
    I've been wondering for awhile now if a small reactor to power a car would be feasible.
    - pjc50 4y ago
      The reactor is. The shielding is far too heavy to carry around.
      - rascul 4y ago
        How heavy would the shielding be? I'm clueless about this.
        ben_w 4y ago
        When I ran the numbers for a nuclear powered engine for launching the space shuttle, the shielding ended up massing about the same as the fuel in the actual space shuttle. A car engine is less powerful than a spaceship, but radiation is your enemy. It's not just "Oh we need some shielding, slap some lead around it!" kind of enemy, it's "if your body absorbs ten joules per kilogram of body weight, then you die, it take a few days, and it hurts the whole time. Your modern car engine produces around fifteen thousand joules per second (and that's when it's cruising, multiply that by ten if you're accelerating as hard as you can). If you are in a crash and the shielding is breached, you die and so does everyone else nearby." - https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/69576/practicality-of-a-thorium-powered-superheated-steam-car/69581#69581 https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/69576/prac... The thickness of shielding needed to turn that radiation into safe heat is a bit challenging to calculate, but can be approximated with the mean free path, which for gamma rays at this per-photon energy level is in the order of 1cm. You need to reduce it by 1000 to not die immediately, a million to survive going to the shops once, a billion to regularly commute, and probably quite a lot more before regulators are happy. As it's an exponential, those correspond to (10, 20, 30) centimetres, all multiplied by some fudge factor because I'm handwaving a lot by saying the mean free path is 1 cm without giving a lot more specifics. 30 centimetre thick shell surrounding a 1 meter cube has a volume of about 3 cubic meters, massing much more than your car regardless of what you make it from. If you made it from lead, it would mass 34 tons. Unfortunately, the radiation shielding also has to cope with neutron radiation, and the best materials for neutrons are the light elements while the best for gamma is the heavy elements; and even more annoyingly, absorbing neutron radiation causes the emission of gamma radiation. This is also why we won't get a Mr. Fusion powered electric DeLorean even if someone figures out One Weird Trick That Makes Farnsworth Fusors Useful: fusion reactors are even worse than fusion for the instantaneous radiation output per unit energy, the advantage in this regard is (IIRC) that the radioactive waste from fusion is easier to deal with than the waste from fission.
        rascul 4y ago
        Thank you. This was very informative.
  - galangalalgol 4y ago
    Lithium isn't really an issue is it? It is the cobolt and nickel. If we had solid recycling for those or found alternatives, and electricity was mostly or all clean in your area, would that be sufficient?
- mistermann 4y ago
  And the governments of some of those countries also imprison people who speak out about their actions. The amount of hypocrisy in Western culture is really quite amazing if you look carefully. Criticizing other people's regimes is fun, criticizing your own is not so much fun it seems.
- rascul 4y ago
  Getting off the Saudi oil supply seems like a good idea, as does alternative energy sources. I don't think it's feasible to drop Saudi oil in a very short timespan, though. It appears as if US oil production has been generally increasing over the last decade though so maybe that helps. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPUS1&f=M https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=M... Edit: Here's another link that seems to show a general decline in Saudi oil imports by the US over the last decade. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRIMUSSA2&f=M https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=M...
  - galangalalgol 4y ago
    Why does the us even import oil from SA? Between the US, Canada and Mexico isn't NA self sufficient for oil and gas? About neutral for consumption and production is what I read. Do we import, refine, and export?
    - ViViDboarder 4y ago
      We store lots of oil for our military. It would not be great to be dependent on Russian or Saudi oil for war.
    - rascul 4y ago
      I don't really know but I think that North America could maybe be self sufficient. I've also heard that it's incredibly difficult to open a new refinery in the US with the current laws and regulations, and supposedly has been that way for awhile.
bergenty 4y ago
I like authoritarian governments that enforce my outlook on life. This isn’t a throwaway comment, please try and think about what I said before you downvote it, you probably feel the same.
- lkrubner 4y ago
  Either you're simply trolling to get attention or you are advocating to take away other people's basic human rights, and either way, your behavior is immoral and therefore deserves to be downvoted.
- it_citizen 4y ago
  How could an authoritarian government enforces my outlook of life if it includes freedom of speech, separation of power with check and balances, popular participation, fundamental human rights, periodic elections and the rule of law?
  - mistermann 4y ago
    Do you conceptualize/imply the things you mention as spectrums, or as true/false binaries?
    - it_citizen 4y ago
      Good question! It probably depends on the concept? It is easier for me to picture separation of power or periodic elections as binary concepts than freedom of speech which in its most extreme form might cause severe problems. However, I think as long as a nation strives for those ideals and consider them when taking decisions, I think it is on the good path to not fall into authoritarianism.
      - mistermann 4y ago
        > It is easier for me to picture separation of power or periodic elections as binary concepts than freedom of speech which in its most extreme form might cause severe problems. There is what you "picture", and then there is what is. There is also what other people "picture", and then there is what is. And then there seems to be a sort of phenomenon whereby if enough people "picture" something a certain way, it ~effectively becomes what "is". Regardless: there is how ~power is described to the population of "democratic" (free, law-based...."all the memes") countries, and then there is what is actually true. In my experience, the vast majority of people not only believe in, but insist upon not-entirely-true narrative representations of what is going on, as opposed to considering what is actually going on. This phenomenon can easily be seen in others, particularly the members of one's outgroup members, but seeing it in oneself and one's ingroup members is...."not easy". > However, I think as long as a nation strives for those ideals and consider them when taking decisions, I think it is on the good path to not fall into authoritarianism. Do you think that "strives for", "those ideals", "consider" are true/false binaries, or spectrums? Do you consider most Western nations to objectively fall into a non-authoritarian bucket, on an absolute scale? (This one is tricky, it's like the "This is Water" meme about two young fish swimming, and an adult fish swims by and says "How's the water boys?" and they say "Water? What's water?".)
umeshunni 4y ago
(article from August)
rhema 4y ago
She may be getting off relatively easy. If she happened to be in an embassy, it might have cost her an arm and a leg, and another arm and another leg...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
bwb 4y ago
“Little is known about her other than that she criticised Saudi leaders.” Just wow
- mtgx 4y ago
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  And this is why freedom of speech has to be protected at all times, because even with minute changes over time, we could eventually reach the same end state as SA in terms of basic human rights.
  - dahfizz 4y ago
    The UK is nearly there. You can go to prison for social media posts the government finds "offensive".
    - PenguinCoder 4y ago
      And who decides what is offensive? The same party responsible for sending you to jail for it? Dystopian.
    - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
      Didn’t class-traitors arrest people who were against the monarchy during the mourning days of the last queen’s death?
      - a1369209993 4y ago
        No, because there's no legitimate expectation of loyalty to a 'class', so one can't be a traitor to it (see also "race-traitors" etc). Armed thugs arrested people who were against the monarchy. (Well, I guess I should say "allegedly", since I haven't personally confirmed it, but I don't see any particular cause for scepticism.)
      - 4y ago
qlkart 4y ago
Good that we have sanctions against a country that invades a neighbor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabian%E2%80%93led_intervention_in_Yemen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabian%E2%80%93led_inte...), kills journalists and imprisons people for social media posts.
- nathanaldensr 4y ago
  Follow the money.
  - fny 4y ago
    Follow the oil.
    - nathanaldensr 4y ago
      They might as well be effectively the same thing! Energy runs economies, as people are now finally beginning to discover.
      - joshspankit 4y ago
        Only as long as oil keeps it’s hold on the economy.
        galangalalgol 4y ago
        Also, why os this post already voted off the front page when it has more posts than first five?
        leereeves 4y ago
        Posts that get a lot of comments in a short time fall off the front page by design. I think it's meant to calm overheated discussions.
- ajross 4y ago
fareesh 4y ago
KSA are simply further along the same spectrum as other authoritarians. In the UK the police will arrest you for social media posts as well - i.e. "causing offense" or "hate speech". In the KSA insulting the monarchy is hate speech. Personally I dislike the concept, but there are many who don't see an equivalence.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- club_tropical 4y ago
  Exactly. The difference is that the speech rules in KSA are more formal. Every country also makes a public example of certain prosecutions, giving enormously harsh sentences, to intimidate others.
- gambiting 4y ago
  You don't think people should be arrested for hate speech? If someone says "we need to kill all the Jews", that's fine? Police shouldn't at least investigate?
  - superkuh 4y ago
    Threats of violence are a different thing than "hate speech".
    - anonymousab 4y ago
      They are a different level of hate speech. As the poster up above said, they're "simply further along the same spectrum" of hate speech.
      - superkuh 4y ago
        No. Threats of violence are against the law. That is significantly different. Saying offensive things about protected classes (hate speech) is not against the law (in the USA). But we (apparently) need to ask ourselves why this distinction exists. ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_Stat... Hate speech, "further up the spectrum" is not against the law because it doesn't violate the rights or the volition of anyone nor defraud them or hurt them. It's just stupid and offensive. In some context enough to be fighting words, but not in all contexts. Why? Because things that are against the law invoke the use of violent force by the government. Invoking violent force to deprive a person of their volition is harm done far beyond some offensive speech. It is disproportionate and makes things worse. That's why things that are just speech are protected (from government use of force) in the USA by our constitution. Without this protection you end up with governments slowly drifting over to behave like the Saudis. It may take a while, but every nation state will get there without laws to prevent it.
res0nat0r 4y ago
Elon's main financier for his Twitter bid are from a Saudi prince: https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1577380706585542657?s=20 https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/15773807065855426... This doesn't bode will for Twitter spying which has already involved the Saudi government. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/09/twitter-saudi-arabia-dissident-spying https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/09/twitter-saud...
- nathanvanfleet 4y ago
  Elon is already notorious for hiring private investigators against his detractors. I kind of wonder if there were anonymous Elon detractors who were not looking forward to the acquisition
  - joering2 4y ago
    In my opinion you cannot make money off of Twitter, no matter what business model you implement. I also don't think Musk would spent that much money just to lower his tax burden when selling Tesla stock. Its quite possible he will make the cost of his purchase back by working with foreign governments. I can imagine for countries like Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan... the information that twitter harvest back stage regarding their citizens (the "rouge" ones) is most likely priceless.
    - joshspankit 4y ago
      At it’s core, Twitter is a very simple technology with minimal cost per user. If it were truly pared down to the essentials he could have zero business model and add it’s costs as a line item on a different balance sheet. However, he’s talked about making it a Wechat which means an opportunity to collect fees for transactions made through the platform. With minimal costs, no advertising, and a decent flow of transaction fees? That could be a business with healthy enough profit.
  - PM_me_your_math 4y ago
    "Elon is already notorious for hiring private investigators against his detractors." So like the Democratic National Convention? Everyone does it if they can afford it.
kornhole 4y ago
It seems that Mastodon or other fediverse projects could be quite popular in places like this. With minimal effort, it is easy to be anonymous in the fediverse. Many independent federated instances also makes it censorship resistant.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  Possibly. It's still a large risk that one must execute very careful opsec to protect oneself against.
  - kornhole 4y ago
    If you don't trust the administrator of your instance not to sell you out to the government, you simply use an anonymous email address at sign up and use a VPN or TOR to access the server. It is as simple as that since Mastodon is designed to know as little as possible about you.
    - _jal 4y ago
      That's a super dangerous way of thinking. Being anonymous online today is hard. Even operatives with nation-state resources behind them like Guccifer 2.0 screw up. You have to think through what you're doing, and then execute perfectly every time. Anyone who wants to try to be anonymous needs to start practicing their opsec well before relying on it, and keep in mind the risks they're running.
      - shadowgovt 4y ago
        Precisely. The important thing to remember is that the Internet isn't designed to keep you anonymous. If anything, its fundamental design is deeply collaborative, cooperative, open, and auditable. The pseudonymity most people enjoy is the lack of observation, not an intrinsic property of the medium. Everything from your final destination for traffic to the physical origin point to which you're connecting to the network is known by somebody who is by default under no obligation to keep it a secret (unless otherwise legally bound).
pearjuice 4y ago
Turns out, if you're the largest oil exporter in the world you can do whatever you want whenever you want. And every world leader happily shakes hands with them.
my_city 4y ago
The repression in China is getting out of hand, we need to invade and bomb this authori-- oh wait, nevermind.
photochemsyn 4y ago
The Saudi government is continually getting up to some atrocity or other, be it in Yemen or within the areas under its control. Mostly this goes unmentioned in US media because the Saudis bank the majority of their oil profits into various secretive Wall Street funds (aka petrodollar recycling). For example (two weeks ago): https://dawnmena.org/the-jeddah-demolitions-forced-evictions-and-neighborhood-destructions-put-more-than-a-million-residents-at-risk/ https://dawnmena.org/the-jeddah-demolitions-forced-evictions... > "In October 2021, Saudi authorities began to demolish thousands of homes throughout numerous neighborhoods in south Jeddah as part of the plan to redevelop the area as part of the Jeddah Central Project. While public criticism of the Saudi government is rare and scarcely tolerated, Saudi citizens nonetheless demonstrated on various dates in February 2022 against these demolitions and forced evictions, which occurred predominantly in densely-populated neighborhoods including several working-class neighborhoods Saudi officials consider slums." Even the 'political left' in the US ignores this behavior by the House of Saud (widespread in eastern Shia zones of Saudi Arabia, with similar tensions among the southern tribal groups bordering Yemen), although if it was the Israelis doing a similar scale demolition in Gaza it'd likely be at least something news outlets mentioned. It certainly makes American claims about being a global supporter of human rights and democracy pretty laughable.
- Swenrekcah 4y ago
  The answer to this is more support for democracy everywhere, more support for democratic institutions, more support for free media, more support for green energy and more opposition to those that seek to divide and spread disinterest and cynicism.
  - yucky 4y ago
    - Swenrekcah 4y ago
      That approach is misguided in my opinion and only leads I believe to a different kind of discrimination and resentment. However my experience is also that relatively few people actually want this, and it's played up a bit by those that benefit from fear and division.
tomp 4y ago
I would like to wish good luck to Saudi Arabia with their ambitious projects of Neom and The Line. You'll need it.
- RadixDLT 4y ago
  you'll just have to imagine "the line" will be a huge prison, people will not be allowed to leave
mhoad 4y ago
Didn’t the Saudis just become the second largest shareholders in Twitter?
- qull 4y ago
  but with zero voting power
  - mhoad 4y ago
    On paper. However, I would put it to you that they didn’t just drop billions on this because it was a good financial investment.
josephcsible 4y ago
This is why I don't understand the opposition to domestic oil drilling. As long as we're still using oil, all that happens by not drilling ourselves is that we enrich and enable the Saudi government instead.
- hamandcheese 4y ago
  We can also stop enriching the Saudi government by reducing dependence on oil in general.
  - throw_nbvc1234 4y ago
    Yes but why not both? It's this same logic that lead to German dependence on Russian natural gas.
    - yakak 4y ago
      The more domestic profit there is on oil the more impossible it will be to stop before all the profit opportunity is gone.
  - zo1 4y ago
    We could just invade the whole region and take over all the oil fields.
    - mcphage 4y ago
      > We could just invade the whole region Yes, we could. > and take over all the oil fields. No, we couldn't.
      - arthurcolle 4y ago
        I don't agree with the premise of the comment you replied to but why couldn't we take over the oil fields? Are you referring to them sabotaging wells in anticipation of a potential takeover? Obviously stealing a country's resources is frowned upon, just wondering if you meant anything specific
ss108 4y ago
This is the sort of thing that represents what it's like to actually not have freedom of speech. Not "everyone thinks you're wrong or an asshole, so they use their own speech to call you out" or "oh no, I can't spread misinformation about covid or the election on a private company's platform".
begueradj 4y ago
USA never invaded Saudia Arabia to free its people and spread democracy as they did in Irak, Afghanistan & Co.
- spaceheater 4y ago
friend_and_foe 4y ago
The UK does the same thing, although they hand out shorter sentences. I'm not excusing anyone, this is absolutely terrible, and Saudi prison is no joke, but it's a bit rich coming from the BBC.
diimdeep 4y ago
I am pretty sure there are cases of jail time across Europe and U.S. for social media posts coupled with sensitive social and political activity in context of said countries. I do not see difference here, except excessive jail time verdict for this Saudi citizen. Furthermore, I wasn't able to find what she posted, and no media mentions content of her tweets, maybe there is some extremely sensitive content there that is not in the interest of western media to shine light upon. Just theory, IDK.
- lostmsu 4y ago
  Name 1 in the US.
dukeofdoom 4y ago
Large section wants this in the US too, let's be honest. Many people wanted this to happen to Alex Jones. Calling for it on twitter ... after the billion dollar fine for saying things. A verdict in a trial in which he wasn't allowed to say he is innocent to the jury. In Canada you can be jailed for questioning holocaust numbers under a new law. And many want that for Kanye now too for saying Jews own and run US media companies. Free speech is under attack all the time here too. People were denied mobility rights here during covid. Speech can be taken away too, just need a "crisis" to do it. I'm not really convinced constituonal protections are worth anything, when the government can easily suspend them (the way they did in Canada over a trucker protest.)

191 points by RadixDLT 4y ago

And yet Countries who decry this still support that regime by buying Oil from them. Too bad the West does not have any backbone. Really it is time to stop Oil Subsidies and put all that money into alternative, including nuclear.

PenguinCoder 4y ago
Let me know when I can buy a nuclear car. No, electric cars aren't adequate. They don't do a damn thing but change the point of pollution so the driver can feel better about themselves. Electric power plants still mainly burning coal. Even if using a nuclear power plant for energy, still have the lithium and cobalt mining and then battery disposal. Also, wont fit my usecase of long haul towing and off road needs in frigid weather.
- rascul 4y ago
  I've been wondering for awhile now if a small reactor to power a car would be feasible.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    The reactor is. The shielding is far too heavy to carry around.
    - rascul 4y ago
      How heavy would the shielding be? I'm clueless about this.
      - ben_w 4y ago
        When I ran the numbers for a nuclear powered engine for launching the space shuttle, the shielding ended up massing about the same as the fuel in the actual space shuttle. A car engine is less powerful than a spaceship, but radiation is your enemy. It's not just "Oh we need some shielding, slap some lead around it!" kind of enemy, it's "if your body absorbs ten joules per kilogram of body weight, then you die, it take a few days, and it hurts the whole time. Your modern car engine produces around fifteen thousand joules per second (and that's when it's cruising, multiply that by ten if you're accelerating as hard as you can). If you are in a crash and the shielding is breached, you die and so does everyone else nearby." - https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/69576/practicality-of-a-thorium-powered-superheated-steam-car/69581#69581 https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/69576/prac... The thickness of shielding needed to turn that radiation into safe heat is a bit challenging to calculate, but can be approximated with the mean free path, which for gamma rays at this per-photon energy level is in the order of 1cm. You need to reduce it by 1000 to not die immediately, a million to survive going to the shops once, a billion to regularly commute, and probably quite a lot more before regulators are happy. As it's an exponential, those correspond to (10, 20, 30) centimetres, all multiplied by some fudge factor because I'm handwaving a lot by saying the mean free path is 1 cm without giving a lot more specifics. 30 centimetre thick shell surrounding a 1 meter cube has a volume of about 3 cubic meters, massing much more than your car regardless of what you make it from. If you made it from lead, it would mass 34 tons. Unfortunately, the radiation shielding also has to cope with neutron radiation, and the best materials for neutrons are the light elements while the best for gamma is the heavy elements; and even more annoyingly, absorbing neutron radiation causes the emission of gamma radiation. This is also why we won't get a Mr. Fusion powered electric DeLorean even if someone figures out One Weird Trick That Makes Farnsworth Fusors Useful: fusion reactors are even worse than fusion for the instantaneous radiation output per unit energy, the advantage in this regard is (IIRC) that the radioactive waste from fusion is easier to deal with than the waste from fission.
        rascul 4y ago
        Thank you. This was very informative.
- galangalalgol 4y ago
  Lithium isn't really an issue is it? It is the cobolt and nickel. If we had solid recycling for those or found alternatives, and electricity was mostly or all clean in your area, would that be sufficient?
mistermann 4y ago
And the governments of some of those countries also imprison people who speak out about their actions. The amount of hypocrisy in Western culture is really quite amazing if you look carefully. Criticizing other people's regimes is fun, criticizing your own is not so much fun it seems.
rascul 4y ago
Getting off the Saudi oil supply seems like a good idea, as does alternative energy sources. I don't think it's feasible to drop Saudi oil in a very short timespan, though. It appears as if US oil production has been generally increasing over the last decade though so maybe that helps. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPUS1&f=M https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=M... Edit: Here's another link that seems to show a general decline in Saudi oil imports by the US over the last decade. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRIMUSSA2&f=M https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=M...
- galangalalgol 4y ago
  Why does the us even import oil from SA? Between the US, Canada and Mexico isn't NA self sufficient for oil and gas? About neutral for consumption and production is what I read. Do we import, refine, and export?
  - ViViDboarder 4y ago
    We store lots of oil for our military. It would not be great to be dependent on Russian or Saudi oil for war.
  - rascul 4y ago
    I don't really know but I think that North America could maybe be self sufficient. I've also heard that it's incredibly difficult to open a new refinery in the US with the current laws and regulations, and supposedly has been that way for awhile.

bergenty 4y ago

I like authoritarian governments that enforce my outlook on life. This isn’t a throwaway comment, please try and think about what I said before you downvote it, you probably feel the same.

lkrubner 4y ago
Either you're simply trolling to get attention or you are advocating to take away other people's basic human rights, and either way, your behavior is immoral and therefore deserves to be downvoted.
it_citizen 4y ago
How could an authoritarian government enforces my outlook of life if it includes freedom of speech, separation of power with check and balances, popular participation, fundamental human rights, periodic elections and the rule of law?
- mistermann 4y ago
  Do you conceptualize/imply the things you mention as spectrums, or as true/false binaries?
  - it_citizen 4y ago
    Good question! It probably depends on the concept? It is easier for me to picture separation of power or periodic elections as binary concepts than freedom of speech which in its most extreme form might cause severe problems. However, I think as long as a nation strives for those ideals and consider them when taking decisions, I think it is on the good path to not fall into authoritarianism.
    - mistermann 4y ago
      > It is easier for me to picture separation of power or periodic elections as binary concepts than freedom of speech which in its most extreme form might cause severe problems. There is what you "picture", and then there is what is. There is also what other people "picture", and then there is what is. And then there seems to be a sort of phenomenon whereby if enough people "picture" something a certain way, it ~effectively becomes what "is". Regardless: there is how ~power is described to the population of "democratic" (free, law-based...."all the memes") countries, and then there is what is actually true. In my experience, the vast majority of people not only believe in, but insist upon not-entirely-true narrative representations of what is going on, as opposed to considering what is actually going on. This phenomenon can easily be seen in others, particularly the members of one's outgroup members, but seeing it in oneself and one's ingroup members is...."not easy". > However, I think as long as a nation strives for those ideals and consider them when taking decisions, I think it is on the good path to not fall into authoritarianism. Do you think that "strives for", "those ideals", "consider" are true/false binaries, or spectrums? Do you consider most Western nations to objectively fall into a non-authoritarian bucket, on an absolute scale? (This one is tricky, it's like the "This is Water" meme about two young fish swimming, and an adult fish swims by and says "How's the water boys?" and they say "Water? What's water?".)

umeshunni 4y ago

(article from August)

rhema 4y ago

She may be getting off relatively easy. If she happened to be in an embassy, it might have cost her an arm and a leg, and another arm and another leg...

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

bwb 4y ago

“Little is known about her other than that she criticised Saudi leaders.” Just wow

mtgx 4y ago
A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
And this is why freedom of speech has to be protected at all times, because even with minute changes over time, we could eventually reach the same end state as SA in terms of basic human rights.
- dahfizz 4y ago
  The UK is nearly there. You can go to prison for social media posts the government finds "offensive".
  - PenguinCoder 4y ago
    And who decides what is offensive? The same party responsible for sending you to jail for it? Dystopian.
  - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
    Didn’t class-traitors arrest people who were against the monarchy during the mourning days of the last queen’s death?
    - a1369209993 4y ago
      No, because there's no legitimate expectation of loyalty to a 'class', so one can't be a traitor to it (see also "race-traitors" etc). Armed thugs arrested people who were against the monarchy. (Well, I guess I should say "allegedly", since I haven't personally confirmed it, but I don't see any particular cause for scepticism.)
    - 4y ago

qlkart 4y ago

Good that we have sanctions against a country that invades a neighbor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabian%E2%80%93led_intervention_in_Yemen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabian%E2%80%93led_inte...), kills journalists and imprisons people for social media posts.

nathanaldensr 4y ago
Follow the money.
- fny 4y ago
  Follow the oil.
  - nathanaldensr 4y ago
    They might as well be effectively the same thing! Energy runs economies, as people are now finally beginning to discover.
    - joshspankit 4y ago
      Only as long as oil keeps it’s hold on the economy.
      - galangalalgol 4y ago
        Also, why os this post already voted off the front page when it has more posts than first five?
        leereeves 4y ago
        Posts that get a lot of comments in a short time fall off the front page by design. I think it's meant to calm overheated discussions.
ajross 4y ago

fareesh 4y ago

KSA are simply further along the same spectrum as other authoritarians. In the UK the police will arrest you for social media posts as well - i.e. "causing offense" or "hate speech". In the KSA insulting the monarchy is hate speech. Personally I dislike the concept, but there are many who don't see an equivalence.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
club_tropical 4y ago
Exactly. The difference is that the speech rules in KSA are more formal. Every country also makes a public example of certain prosecutions, giving enormously harsh sentences, to intimidate others.
gambiting 4y ago
You don't think people should be arrested for hate speech? If someone says "we need to kill all the Jews", that's fine? Police shouldn't at least investigate?
- superkuh 4y ago
  Threats of violence are a different thing than "hate speech".
  - anonymousab 4y ago
    They are a different level of hate speech. As the poster up above said, they're "simply further along the same spectrum" of hate speech.
    - superkuh 4y ago
      No. Threats of violence are against the law. That is significantly different. Saying offensive things about protected classes (hate speech) is not against the law (in the USA). But we (apparently) need to ask ourselves why this distinction exists. ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_Stat... Hate speech, "further up the spectrum" is not against the law because it doesn't violate the rights or the volition of anyone nor defraud them or hurt them. It's just stupid and offensive. In some context enough to be fighting words, but not in all contexts. Why? Because things that are against the law invoke the use of violent force by the government. Invoking violent force to deprive a person of their volition is harm done far beyond some offensive speech. It is disproportionate and makes things worse. That's why things that are just speech are protected (from government use of force) in the USA by our constitution. Without this protection you end up with governments slowly drifting over to behave like the Saudis. It may take a while, but every nation state will get there without laws to prevent it.

res0nat0r 4y ago

Elon's main financier for his Twitter bid are from a Saudi prince: https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1577380706585542657?s=20 https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/15773807065855426... This doesn't bode will for Twitter spying which has already involved the Saudi government. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/09/twitter-saudi-arabia-dissident-spying https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/09/twitter-saud...

nathanvanfleet 4y ago
Elon is already notorious for hiring private investigators against his detractors. I kind of wonder if there were anonymous Elon detractors who were not looking forward to the acquisition
- joering2 4y ago
  In my opinion you cannot make money off of Twitter, no matter what business model you implement. I also don't think Musk would spent that much money just to lower his tax burden when selling Tesla stock. Its quite possible he will make the cost of his purchase back by working with foreign governments. I can imagine for countries like Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan... the information that twitter harvest back stage regarding their citizens (the "rouge" ones) is most likely priceless.
  - joshspankit 4y ago
    At it’s core, Twitter is a very simple technology with minimal cost per user. If it were truly pared down to the essentials he could have zero business model and add it’s costs as a line item on a different balance sheet. However, he’s talked about making it a Wechat which means an opportunity to collect fees for transactions made through the platform. With minimal costs, no advertising, and a decent flow of transaction fees? That could be a business with healthy enough profit.
- PM_me_your_math 4y ago
  "Elon is already notorious for hiring private investigators against his detractors." So like the Democratic National Convention? Everyone does it if they can afford it.

kornhole 4y ago

It seems that Mastodon or other fediverse projects could be quite popular in places like this. With minimal effort, it is easy to be anonymous in the fediverse. Many independent federated instances also makes it censorship resistant.

shadowgovt 4y ago
Possibly. It's still a large risk that one must execute very careful opsec to protect oneself against.
- kornhole 4y ago
  If you don't trust the administrator of your instance not to sell you out to the government, you simply use an anonymous email address at sign up and use a VPN or TOR to access the server. It is as simple as that since Mastodon is designed to know as little as possible about you.
  - _jal 4y ago
    That's a super dangerous way of thinking. Being anonymous online today is hard. Even operatives with nation-state resources behind them like Guccifer 2.0 screw up. You have to think through what you're doing, and then execute perfectly every time. Anyone who wants to try to be anonymous needs to start practicing their opsec well before relying on it, and keep in mind the risks they're running.
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      Precisely. The important thing to remember is that the Internet isn't designed to keep you anonymous. If anything, its fundamental design is deeply collaborative, cooperative, open, and auditable. The pseudonymity most people enjoy is the lack of observation, not an intrinsic property of the medium. Everything from your final destination for traffic to the physical origin point to which you're connecting to the network is known by somebody who is by default under no obligation to keep it a secret (unless otherwise legally bound).

pearjuice 4y ago

Turns out, if you're the largest oil exporter in the world you can do whatever you want whenever you want. And every world leader happily shakes hands with them.

my_city 4y ago

The repression in China is getting out of hand, we need to invade and bomb this authori-- oh wait, nevermind.

photochemsyn 4y ago

The Saudi government is continually getting up to some atrocity or other, be it in Yemen or within the areas under its control. Mostly this goes unmentioned in US media because the Saudis bank the majority of their oil profits into various secretive Wall Street funds (aka petrodollar recycling). For example (two weeks ago): https://dawnmena.org/the-jeddah-demolitions-forced-evictions-and-neighborhood-destructions-put-more-than-a-million-residents-at-risk/ https://dawnmena.org/the-jeddah-demolitions-forced-evictions... > "In October 2021, Saudi authorities began to demolish thousands of homes throughout numerous neighborhoods in south Jeddah as part of the plan to redevelop the area as part of the Jeddah Central Project. While public criticism of the Saudi government is rare and scarcely tolerated, Saudi citizens nonetheless demonstrated on various dates in February 2022 against these demolitions and forced evictions, which occurred predominantly in densely-populated neighborhoods including several working-class neighborhoods Saudi officials consider slums." Even the 'political left' in the US ignores this behavior by the House of Saud (widespread in eastern Shia zones of Saudi Arabia, with similar tensions among the southern tribal groups bordering Yemen), although if it was the Israelis doing a similar scale demolition in Gaza it'd likely be at least something news outlets mentioned. It certainly makes American claims about being a global supporter of human rights and democracy pretty laughable.

Swenrekcah 4y ago
The answer to this is more support for democracy everywhere, more support for democratic institutions, more support for free media, more support for green energy and more opposition to those that seek to divide and spread disinterest and cynicism.
- yucky 4y ago
  - Swenrekcah 4y ago
    That approach is misguided in my opinion and only leads I believe to a different kind of discrimination and resentment. However my experience is also that relatively few people actually want this, and it's played up a bit by those that benefit from fear and division.

tomp 4y ago

I would like to wish good luck to Saudi Arabia with their ambitious projects of Neom and The Line. You'll need it.

RadixDLT 4y ago
you'll just have to imagine "the line" will be a huge prison, people will not be allowed to leave

mhoad 4y ago

Didn’t the Saudis just become the second largest shareholders in Twitter?

qull 4y ago
but with zero voting power
- mhoad 4y ago
  On paper. However, I would put it to you that they didn’t just drop billions on this because it was a good financial investment.

josephcsible 4y ago

This is why I don't understand the opposition to domestic oil drilling. As long as we're still using oil, all that happens by not drilling ourselves is that we enrich and enable the Saudi government instead.

hamandcheese 4y ago
We can also stop enriching the Saudi government by reducing dependence on oil in general.
- throw_nbvc1234 4y ago
  Yes but why not both? It's this same logic that lead to German dependence on Russian natural gas.
  - yakak 4y ago
    The more domestic profit there is on oil the more impossible it will be to stop before all the profit opportunity is gone.
- zo1 4y ago
  We could just invade the whole region and take over all the oil fields.
  - mcphage 4y ago
    > We could just invade the whole region Yes, we could. > and take over all the oil fields. No, we couldn't.
    - arthurcolle 4y ago
      I don't agree with the premise of the comment you replied to but why couldn't we take over the oil fields? Are you referring to them sabotaging wells in anticipation of a potential takeover? Obviously stealing a country's resources is frowned upon, just wondering if you meant anything specific

ss108 4y ago

This is the sort of thing that represents what it's like to actually not have freedom of speech. Not "everyone thinks you're wrong or an asshole, so they use their own speech to call you out" or "oh no, I can't spread misinformation about covid or the election on a private company's platform".

begueradj 4y ago

USA never invaded Saudia Arabia to free its people and spread democracy as they did in Irak, Afghanistan & Co.

spaceheater 4y ago

friend_and_foe 4y ago

The UK does the same thing, although they hand out shorter sentences. I'm not excusing anyone, this is absolutely terrible, and Saudi prison is no joke, but it's a bit rich coming from the BBC.

diimdeep 4y ago

I am pretty sure there are cases of jail time across Europe and U.S. for social media posts coupled with sensitive social and political activity in context of said countries. I do not see difference here, except excessive jail time verdict for this Saudi citizen. Furthermore, I wasn't able to find what she posted, and no media mentions content of her tweets, maybe there is some extremely sensitive content there that is not in the interest of western media to shine light upon. Just theory, IDK.

lostmsu 4y ago
Name 1 in the US.

dukeofdoom 4y ago

Large section wants this in the US too, let's be honest. Many people wanted this to happen to Alex Jones. Calling for it on twitter ... after the billion dollar fine for saying things. A verdict in a trial in which he wasn't allowed to say he is innocent to the jury. In Canada you can be jailed for questioning holocaust numbers under a new law. And many want that for Kanye now too for saying Jews own and run US media companies. Free speech is under attack all the time here too. People were denied mobility rights here during covid. Speech can be taken away too, just need a "crisis" to do it. I'm not really convinced constituonal protections are worth anything, when the government can easily suspend them (the way they did in Canada over a trucker protest.)