Saudi Arabia and the "trillion dollar gambit"

[Martinus]

Saudi Arabia punishes gays with flogging.  It's pretty bad.

Daesh punishes gays by pushing them off of a ten story building.  It's unbelievably horrific.

Flogging is in practice death penalty in most cases.

[Martinus]

That is how they treat criminals.
Nothing about how they treat people who've done nothing wrong.

Seriously. The Saudis are bad. No doubt. But ISIS are a whole other level. It's like comparing Mussolini to Hitler.

Not really. It's like comparing Stalin to Hitler.

[Jacob]

That is how they treat criminals.
Nothing about how they treat people who've done nothing wrong.

There's plenty of human trafficking in Saudi Arabia, as I understand it. I don't think the victims have done anything wrong.

[Admiral Yi]

Not really. It's like comparing Stalin to Hitler.

[Josquius]

That is how they treat criminals.
Nothing about how they treat people who've done nothing wrong.

There's plenty of human trafficking in Saudi Arabia, as I understand it. I don't think the victims have done anything wrong.

Not to suggest Saudi Arabia treats everyone nicely.
But again, Daesh are on another level. They don't give a fuck what the world thinks and slaughter and enslave to their hearts content.

[grumbler]

There's plenty of human trafficking in Saudi Arabia, as I understand it. I don't think the victims have done anything wrong.

Legal human trafficking, as you understand it?  It is legal for Sunnis to enslave non-Sunnis in ISIS.

I mean, there's plenty of human trafficking in Britain.  Is Britain worse than ISIS, too?

[Berkut]

Saudi Arabia punishes gays with flogging.  It's pretty bad.

Daesh punishes gays by pushing them off of a ten story building.  It's unbelievably horrific.

Flogging is in practice death penalty in most cases.

Are we talking about "in practice" then?


"In practice" ISIS has murdered out of hand probably now into the tens of thousands of people over the last decade.

They as a matter of routine simply line people up near a handy ditch and machine gun them all down.

They kill wholesale. Saudi Arabia, at best, engages in retail killing under some bizarre and medieval code of law that at least provides some fig lead of due process.

ISIS simply defines their chaotic evil malevolence as "the law" and does whatever it likes, at a scale that is not matched anywhere right now.

In practice, there is zero comparison in any meaningful sense.

[mongers]

It's more a 150+ billion dollar gamble on their part, made up of around $80 billion of US arms* and $70 of Saudi foreign aid.

The gamble being can arming yourself to the teeth and exporting your ideology via 'foreign aid', much of that being promoting Wahhabi  islam, be a method of keeping things stable at home?

Or is it another rotten door waiting to be kicked in?


*goodness knows how much British, French, Canadian etc weapons bought, probably at least the US figure.

[grumbler]

I would disagree. They're about the same. See this list:


Not to mention Saudi Arabia has a history of demolishing historic sites (and not just Jewish ones either, we're talking demolishing the site of the Prophet Mohammeds home in Mecca). Also quite a few countries in recent history have done kangaroo courts, and operated on the basis of terror and fear. You could argue that Stalinist Russia was the worst example in modern history (certainly comparable to Saudi Arabia & ISIS). And people in Europe 20 years ago (former Yugoslavia) were massacring people like ISIS are doing now.

I'm not a moral relativist, but the horrors of ISIS compared to others in the region have been overplayed. The Syrians, Saudia Arabia, Iran have all been pretty horrible to their own people over the recent past. See for example the 'terrorist' executions in Saudi Arabia a few weeks ago.

Let's not use bumper stickers as evidence, okay?

Mohammed's home in Mecca wasn't destroyed (though his home in Medina was turned into a library).  Lots of places in Mecca have been paved over as the Saudi regime foolishly tried to exploit the Haj for commercial gain.  Destruction of historical sites in ISIS is done for religious reasons.

And to call the legal system of Stalin's Russia "comparable" to that of Saudi Arabia is like saying the Holocaust is "comparable" to 9/11.  It is a breathtakingly inaccurate comparison.  So is the breezy "comparison" of ISIS actions with the Balkan Wars of the 1990s.  Just saying shit to say shit doesn't persuade.  None of the horrific actions undertaken by thugs in the Balkans was legal according to any government there; the horrific actions of the thugs that run ISIS are legal and often obligatory.

Saying that the Saudi regime is worse than ISIS because "the Syrians, Saudia Arabia, Iran have all been pretty horrible to their own people over the recent past" is pretty much the definition of moral relativism, no matter how much you deny that you believe in it. 

[grumbler]

Flogging is in practice death penalty in most cases.

Not true. 

[Razgovory]

Flogging is in practice death penalty in most cases.

Not true.

Yeah, they tend to space out the floggings over the course of days or weeks so they don't kill the person.  Grumbler is right, ISIS and Saudi Arabia are not comparable (Stalin and Hitler aren't really comparable either).  ISIS is an expansionist, slave holding genocidal regime.  And Saudi Arabia is not.  Here's the big hint, there are 100,000 Westerners who freely work in Saudi Arabia.  I don't think there are any in ISIS.  It's the difference between working in some backward shit hole where you have to watch your back and play by stupid rules, and simply having your head sawed off on camera.

[Martinus]

Can we at least agree that when it comes to Western standards of human rights, Iran, warts and all, is still much much better than Saudi Arabia?

[Martinus]

Not really. It's like comparing Stalin to Hitler.

I think it's an apt analogy. Hitler, like ISIS, killed you just for being of a wrong ethnicity - there was nothing you could do. Stalin, like Saudis, was technically someone you could live with - as long as you lived in abject submission and fear. Both were monsters.

[Martinus]

That is how they treat criminals.
Nothing about how they treat people who've done nothing wrong.

So where do gays fall in your cretinous analogy? Criminals or people who have done nothing wrong?

[grumbler]

That is how they treat criminals.
Nothing about how they treat people who've done nothing wrong.

So where do gays fall in your cretinous analogy? Criminals or people who have done nothing wrong?

Your cretinous question assumes that one cannot be a criminal without doing something wrong.  Talk to a lawyer for some amusing stories of people or businesses that have broken laws while doing nothing wrong.