Saudi Arabia and the "trillion dollar gambit"

[OttoVonBismarck]

Amnesty International has reported that Iran has carried out a staggeringly high number of executions in 2015. According to Amnesty the majority of those executed have been executed on drug charges.

I think we can only agree that "Iran is more sympathetic to liberal Westerners" I think because in the 1950s they elected a socialist leader that eeeevil United States saw removed from power and replaced with an evil dictatorial Shah. That somehow excuses the illiberal monsters that took over Iran in the Revolution. Whereas Saudi Arabia's regime is just a long continuation of a series of Arab monarchical leaders that have ran portions of the area for generations, so there is no linkage to an ignoble beginning that can be blamed on America and Britain so that means Saudi Arabia is somehow much worse. I'm not going to pretend to understand the logic, but much like Saudi Arabia Iran is a place where even minorities can get along fine if they follow the very strict rules. If they don't, they suffer horribly and injustly. ISIS controlled territories are places where minorities (depending on which type) are subject to summary execution, legalized sexual enslavement and etc. It's really not the same.

[dps]

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?

Criminality isn't about right or wrong, it's about what's criminalized or not.  So in Saudi Arabia now, or the UK of the 1960's, homosexuals are/were criminals.  Whether or not they had done nothing wrong is a moral question, not a legal one.

And Tyr didn't make an analogy, cretinous or otherwise..  He made 2 straight-forward statements.  He possibly could have worded them better, maybe something like this: 

Both Saudi Arabia and ISIS impose harsh penalties for breaking various laws, including laws which criminalize things we in the West feel should not be crimes in the first place.  The Saudi regime does not generally execute or deal out other criminal punishments to people who have not broken their laws;  ISIS does, on a large scale.

[grumbler]

I don't think I ever said anything about your death, or what I would do in the event of it.  Other than maybe in jest, as part of the age joke. 

No matter how unpleasant the person, it's in bad taste and bad karma to wish someone's death, not to mention it's plain dumb given that I post under my real name.

Now, if you find a post where I do do that, I will apologize.  If you don't, then maybe you ought to do that yourself.

If you are going to ride that high, high horse and attack me as having "something seriously, seriously wrong" because I point out that I know more about global oil markets than those who believe that Saudi Arabia is trying to "cripple... the US oil industry," then your silence in the matter of mongers and marti's glee at the prospect of a member's death says volumes.  Once you take up the mantle of forum nanny, you can't not act without giving tacit approval to all of the acts that you don't respond to.  If you to try to argue otherwise you are revealed as a hypocrite who was posting purely to attack me and not to enforce your own values.

Yeah, it sucks, but that's the price you pay for deciding to climb up on that horse.

[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?

Criminality isn't about right or wrong, it's about what's criminalized or not.  So in Saudi Arabia now, or the UK of the 1960's, homosexuals are/were criminals.  Whether or not they had done nothing wrong is a moral question, not a legal one.

And Tyr didn't make an analogy, cretinous or otherwise..  He made 2 straight-forward statements.  He possibly could have worded them better, maybe something like this: 

Both Saudi Arabia and ISIS impose harsh penalties for breaking various laws, including laws which criminalize things we in the West feel should not be crimes in the first place.  The Saudi regime does not generally execute or deal out other criminal punishments to people who have not broken their laws;  ISIS does, on a large scale.

Thank you for taking the time to spell that out.  Maybe DGuller will read this as well.

[DGuller]

I don't think I ever said anything about your death, or what I would do in the event of it.  Other than maybe in jest, as part of the age joke. 

No matter how unpleasant the person, it's in bad taste and bad karma to wish someone's death, not to mention it's plain dumb given that I post under my real name.

Now, if you find a post where I do do that, I will apologize.  If you don't, then maybe you ought to do that yourself.

If you are going to ride that high, high horse and attack me as having "something seriously, seriously wrong" because I point out that I know more about global oil markets than those who believe that Saudi Arabia is trying to "cripple... the US oil industry," then your silence in the matter of mongers and marti's glee at the prospect of a member's death says volumes.  Once you take up the mantle of forum nanny, you can't not act without giving tacit approval to all of the acts that you don't respond to.  If you to try to argue otherwise you are revealed as a hypocrite who was posting purely to attack me and not to enforce your own values.

Yeah, it sucks, but that's the price you pay for deciding to climb up on that horse.

Search results didn't yield anything?

[Josquius]

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?

Jesus you're dumb sometimes

[DGuller]

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?

Jesus you're dumb sometimes

I do not approve of this behavior. 

[Razgovory]

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.

It's a good thing you are in this together with Tyr and Raz. It's like the trifecta of Languish idiots.

I didn't say anything that wasn't true.

[Tonitrus]

Kangaroo court...not courting kangaroos.

[Martinus]

Both Saudi Arabia and ISIS impose harsh penalties for breaking various laws, including laws which criminalize things we in the West feel should not be crimes in the first place.  The Saudi regime does not generally execute or deal out other criminal punishments to people who have not broken their laws;  ISIS does, on a large scale.

But that's like saying Nazis would not send innocent people to death camps - only those that were declared outlaws/criminals by their laws. This kind of reasoning is a highly offensive case of moral equivalency to me.

For the record, I don't think ISIS is executing people who have not broken their laws either. They simply say they are following the law of sharia, that allows them to execute, say, war prisoners or unbelievers.

That is why, ultimately, legal positivism/legalism is a moral and philosophical dead end - if you consider some act of authority more acceptable, only because it is sanctioned by law (and you completely ignore what the law actually says) you end up with nazism or fundamentalism. You need to introduce the concept of natural law, which means that there are cases where the statute law is so far beyond the pale, it can no longer be considered lawful and ceases to have any intrinsic value. Both Saudi Arabia and nazi Germany are examples of regimes where this is the case.

Edit: And I also dispute the last sentence of your post - if you actually follow what Saudi Arabia does, there are many cases where they sentence, imprison and execute, for things like "witchcraft" or "blasphemy", people who are in fact just engaging in public debate on politics or religion, or protests that are not themselves criminalised.

[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?

My read is that Saudi is worse on the vice stuff and Iran is worse on the political repression stuff.

Saudis are crucifying people who participate in anti-government protests. Still worse in my book than whatever Iran does.

[Martinus]

Ok let me put it in a way you nerds will understand: Saudi Arabia is Lawful Evil, ISIS is Chaotic Evil. I know some neckbeards like you sometimes had a boner for Lawful Evil, but to me both are just as evil.

[Eddie Teach]

And Iran is lawful evil, yet you're willing to recognize differences in degree there.

[grumbler]

But that's like saying Nazis would not send innocent people to death camps - only those that were declared outlaws/criminals by their laws. This kind of reasoning is a highly offensive case of moral equivalency to me. 

I don't see how you can make this horrific analogy when it flies in the face of known historical details; that the Nazis did not pretend that the Jews, Gypsies, etc were criminals who had done something wrong; they sent them to the camps because of who they were.  In the same way, ISIS persecutes jews, Yezidis, etc because of who they are, without the slightest pretense that they have violated the law.

For the record, I don't think ISIS is executing people who have not broken their laws either. They simply say they are following the law of sharia, that allows them to execute, say, war prisoners or unbelievers.

For the record, you think poorly.  Sharia "allows" none of these things.

[grumbler]

Saudis are crucifying people who participate in anti-government protests. Still worse in my book than whatever Iran does.

They've sentenced one person* to crucifixion (and that's crucifixion following decapitation, so not the same as Roman/Christian crucifixion).  That's pretty barbaric, but its a penalty in Iran, too.  It's just that Iran, like SA, commutes the sentence before it is carried out.

* (though there is evidence that SA has, in fact, crucified the corpses of the perps of a recent robbery/murder).