12 hours ago, 26 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32493735
Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting
81–90 of 153 posts
Re: Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Appreciate the gotcha, nearly as fun to post as pedantry. I only made the same mistake OP did, however. The actual point still stands. If you're going to take a dig at a legal system, country, or culture, don't try to back up your point with an example from a different one. Scotland is not England legally or culturally, and the scots will be the first to make that point clear.
Please explain how the difference in these legal systems is worth the pedantry.
Sure, although this does feel like it's becoming painfully drawn out. Let's use a simple parallel example: If someone's having a laugh at, say, Trump. Then they use that as an example of how those those silly Canadians are always electing daft politicians. You're probably going to point out that Trump was not in fact the president of Canada. That the example is not relevant.
Likewise, it is a mistake to lump the Nazi dog case in with the other case. One occurred under Scottish legal jurisdiction, the other under English legal jurisdiction. The example is not relevant.
Re: Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
We don't throw people in prison for 3 decades over social media posts.
Austria nearly does. Mr. Bond. I see little difference between tweets and political parody songs.
Mr. Bond was a notorious neo-nazi rapper, calling it "political parody songs" is pretty misleading. For context: he was convicted of "Wiederbetätigung" (= glorification of national-socialism) which is a distinct criminal offence in Germany and Austria
Re: Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting
#84Any time you read a headline like this, replace the innocuous-sounding non-crime (“tweeting”) with “upsetting people in power.” Suddenly you’ll realise that the same kind of thing happens everywhere in the world. E.g.: Julian Assange, who’s main crime was upsetting people in power . Unless you think it’s a crime worthy of being hounded for over a decade by multiple nations’ security agencies for trying to — and faili…
The crimes he is alleged to have committed are detailed here by DOJ (during the Trump administration) and do not match your assertions. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/wikileaks-founder-julian-assa...
“The superseding indictment alleges that Assange was complicit with Chelsea Manning”
If you go past the pages of repetitive legalise, you’ll find that the specific “aiding and abetting” was that Chelsea sent him an NT hash to try and crack. Julian tried and failed.
That’s the “crime”.
Keep in mind he’s an Australian citizen who committed alleged crimes against a country he wasn’t even present in at the time.
Oh sorry… allegedly aided and abetted a crime.
Yeah. Totally worth a decade-long multinational effort to extradite a guy for failing to successfully use hashcat. Which any idiot can download from GitHub.
Re: Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Croatia, people have been fined for writing ACAB (on Twitter or Facebook), as well as "1312". One journalist has been arrested for publishing satirical song deemed to "insult the nation". Many judges favorite pastime is extorting money from newspapers and journalists through the lawsuits on account of causing them "mental distress" with their articles. And police will readily punch the phone out of your hands if y…
Literally a 30+ year jail sentence vs fines. Like don't get me wrong, that seems bad, but not really on the same level
> but not really on the same level
It's not, of course. It wasn't my intention to portray it at such (which is why I didn't pile this on as a top level comment).
I did think it was interesting to bring up readily available examples that show we're not done with (pretty open) authoritarianism, even in EU countries. I guess it's similar reason why jfax commented about UK tweet jailings.
Re: Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
We don't throw people in prison for 3 decades over social media posts.
Austria nearly does. Mr. Bond. I see little difference between tweets and political parody songs.
It does appear to me that America and the rest of the West are diverging on this issue. We do not criminally prosecute people for political speech. Even speech most of us find abhorrent. We draw the line at inciting violence.
Re: Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting
#87What an absolute human rights disaster Saudi Arabia is. That the U.S. government continues to engage with and support that regime is all the evidence you need of our hypocrisy on the issue.
If you drive a car, fly on a plane, have trucks in your supply chain, use plastic anywhere in your life- you support that engagement. Sucks but they're built in now.
The US, due to fracking, is now a net exporter of oil most years. Hopefully with more electric cars in the fleet each year oil use will also decline dramatically. We should use that opportunity to distance ourselves from Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately I think one factor driving US engagement that is not often discussed is the tens of billions Saudi Arabia spends on US weapon systems each year, not just oil interest.
Re: Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Strange, the US newspapers that wrote articles based on WikiLeaks leaks won prices. And WikiLeaks isn't the leaker but the publisher of that leaks.
That's pretty arguable. Assange is in chat logs with Manning who then passed Assange a password hash and with Assange saying he will attempt to get it cracked. The password would have given Manning admin privileges on SIPRNet, allowing her to pull more files to leak and better cover her tracks. That's being pretty directly involved in leaks imo. src: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/5816949/Julian-Assang...
Meanwhile Trump had top secret documents at his house while a private citizen that he wasn’t supposed to have there even while President.
What do you think his punishment will be? A decade in jail? Having to flee to another country and hide in an embassy to escape extradition and torture? No? Why not?
Upsetting people in power is a “crime” in every country, with the corollary that the reverse is not true: people in power can do whatever they want to the weak without fear of consequence.
If you think otherwise, come back in a few months and comment below about how many years in jail Trump got for actually doing something much worse than what Julian failed to do.
Re: Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting
#89Kill a man, chop into pieces and shipped away. Fine now. Jail a woman … Do you think they think it is not good from the outside world?
Do you think they care? Everybody's lining up to buy their oil and won't stop any time soon. We even sell them weapons.
They're an evil empire, we're a bunch of selfish hypocrites enabling it. I don't know who's worse.
Re: Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting
#90No post body was provided.