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Saudi Arabia, an ISIS That Has Made It

nytimes.com

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Re: Saudi Arabia, an ISIS That Has Made It

#151

Post by cloakandswagger »

gwbas1c wrote: post #138

From: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." Is this article really appropriate for Hacker News?

Those guidelines are pretty silly. The site's content should be controlled only by the voting system (i.e., its users), not some mandated list of approved topics.

Re: Saudi Arabia, an ISIS That Has Made It

#152

Post by jacquesm »

lotux wrote: post #92
DominikR wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I agree, the Iranians are on a different level regarding education, academia and culture. They will eventually transform into a relatively free society if we don't interfere.

We don't need your freedom, we are free, you are slave of your credit card company and bank, mind your own business. -- An Iranian

That's an interesting point you raise there. People in Western societies see themselves as 'at the pinnacle of civilization' but there is plenty that other countries have, even if their governments are not arrived at through the same mechanisms that we have and by our yardstick are 'less free' whereas we are by their yardstick 'less free'.

As for being a slave to credit card companies and banks: that's optional where I live.

Re: Saudi Arabia, an ISIS That Has Made It

#155

Post by jacquesm »

natrius wrote: post #150
jacquesm wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the US/Iran resentment goes back a bit further, roughly to the time that Iran took a whole pile of US hostages that were held for more than a year. That's not the sort of thing that is easily forgotten and it is one of the cornerstones of West/Islam conflict. After that it was mostly a downward spiral, with some recent relaxation on both sides of the line.

That was a while after we deposed their democratically elected leader. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

Yes, I'm aware of that. But for the US that was not a reason to hate Iran (then Persia). (Of course it may not have helped the other side of the balance)

Re: Saudi Arabia, an ISIS That Has Made It

#156

Post by johnsea »

NiftyFifty wrote: post #106

The major problem I have with this opinion piece is not the perspective, but the writer - Kamel Daoud. One of his major influences is a cross-section of experience between living in Algeria and being bifurcated with the west. His bleed out on the screen, seems more jaded than informative. At the very least he's sloppy in respecting certain parts of the Saudi national, with terms like Wahhabi which by all accounts is…

> Saudi Arabia is by all measures secular and demands it be

hu, secular???

It seems very plausible to me, that he is spot on with the article. Should be plastered all over the billboards and newspapers. Good to read some 'straight talk'.

Re: Saudi Arabia, an ISIS That Has Made It

#157

Post by intopieces »

Cyph0n wrote: post #113
she_moves_on wrote: post #40

One frustrating thing that the author gets wrong is labelling Iran the "Gray Daesh." Iran has geopolitical conflict with the West, but it's a false equivalent of Saudi Arabia. Iran is a theocracy trying to control a population that growingly wants to be secular. Women in Iran go to university at higher rates than men, can drive, hold office, and vote. Life in Iran for a women is not perfect but is heaven compared to…

Ah yes, but you fail to mention Iran's extremely aggressive agenda in the region. The Ahwazi Arabs (Sunni, coincidentally) are stripped of nearly all basic human rights, enclosed in their own state essentially within Iran's borders [1]. Even the Shia in Saudi Arabia are treated better than how Iran handles the Ahwaz region. Further, Iran loves fighting wars by proxy for some reason. Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Gu…

I don't presume that anyone on this board would make such a mistake, but thank you for sublty reminding us that Iranians are not Arabs. Such obfuscations make it difficult for us to parse the active conflicts in the region.

Re: Saudi Arabia, an ISIS That Has Made It

#158

Post by jacquesm »

lotux wrote: post #104
maelito wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the colors for the author denote only the degree of geopolitical conflict

Author got paid to paint Saudi's black ( they are certainly blackish in terms of things that they do [I am not racist] with US approval) and Iran as Gray (not very true, Iran is way more whiter than US, EU and KSA), such a moron. at the end every country is a different shade of Gray.

> Iran is way more whiter than US, EU and KSA

What is your reasoning behind this claim?

Re: Saudi Arabia, an ISIS That Has Made It

#159

Post by hackuser »

jacquesm wrote: post #126
nickff wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the perspective of a Western government, Iran's international relations are the problem.[1] The fact that Iran's society is relatively advanced does little to console the families of the 1100 American soldiers killed by Iranian proxies in Iraq; nor does it console the families of the hundreds (if not thousands) of Israeli civilians killed by (Iranian government supported) Hamas. State support for the Assad regim…

I think the US/Iran resentment goes back a bit further, roughly to the time that Iran took a whole pile of US hostages that were held for more than a year. That's not the sort of thing that is easily forgotten and it is one of the cornerstones of West/Islam conflict. After that it was mostly a downward spiral, with some recent relaxation on both sides of the line.

> I think the US/Iran resentment goes back a bit further, roughly to the time that Iran took a whole pile of US hostages that were held for more than a year.

But that didn't happen in a vacuum either. The U.S. engineered or facilitated the overthrow of a mostly democratic Iranian leader in 1953, and put in his place a mini-dynasty of dictators who brutally oppresssed Iranians, with U.S. support, until that day in 1979. I'm not saying the Iranians should have taken those innocent Americans hostage but they didn't pick the American embassy and take hostages in a random act of violence.

... and I'm sure the 1953 coup didn't happen in a vacuum either.

Re: Saudi Arabia, an ISIS That Has Made It

#160

Post by lobster_johnson »

nickbauman wrote: post #69
Animats wrote: post #12

The author has a point. Most of the 9/11 attackers were Saudis. Bin Laden was a Saudi. Saudi Arabia is a dysfunctional country propped up by oil money. It's even more insular than it used to be. Saudis used to send their kids to the US to go to college, with Government funding. Now Saudi Arabia has enough educational institutions that they don't do that. Years ago, I met a Saudi girl finishing Stanford who mentioned…

As someone pointed out to me earlier this week here on HN, Seymour Hersh's article on the Bin Ladin assassination, the real story of Al Qe'da is that the Saudis funded it tacitly. And as a result Saudi government is partially responsible for 9/11. The sooner we figure out how to make petroleum irrelevant, the sooner places like Saudi lose their influence. Gas == War.

The US only imports about 15% of crud oil and related products (such as gas) from Saudi Arabia. 70% is non-OPEC, and 40% is from Canada [1]. At the same time, the US produces roughly the same amount that it imports [2]. So at this point in time, the US no longer needs the Middle East for oil.

[1] http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_...

[2] http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MC...

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