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Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting

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Re: Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A man was given a suspended jail sentence in the UK for making a joke video about Grenfell. To (on the whole) great and uncritical applause from the media and general public.

Article for those who might be interest: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/apr/20/man-admits-p... . A 10 week jail sentence for a racist video making fun of a terrible tragedy doesn't bother me as much as locking up political opponents

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Re: Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A man was given a suspended jail sentence in the UK for making a joke video about Grenfell. To (on the whole) great and uncritical applause from the media and general public.

Article for those who might be interest: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/apr/20/man-admits-p... . A 10 week jail sentence for a racist video making fun of a terrible tragedy doesn't bother me as much as locking up political opponents

A 10 week jail sentence for a racist video making fun of a terrible tragedy bothers me a whole lot.

Re: Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fair, sorry for the sort of attacky reply. I think there's an urge sometimes when presented with human rights abuses in other countries to point to hypocrisies in the west, of which there are many in a way that seems like it's just aiming at making people throw up their hand and decide that there's no good guys so we can't complain about anything and I think I reacted to that type of opinion rather than anything you said in particular

Re: Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A man was given a suspended jail sentence in the UK for making a joke video about Grenfell. To (on the whole) great and uncritical applause from the media and general public.

Article for those who might be interest: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/apr/20/man-admits-p... . A 10 week jail sentence for a racist video making fun of a terrible tragedy doesn't bother me as much as locking up political opponents

Ok, I read the article. The defendant did not share the video publicly, he shared it with two whatsapp groups. He was also not the one to make the racist comment in the video. Was his video offensive? Sure. But being offensive should never be a crime.

Re: Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting

#95
post #11

Any 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…

Not really. Tweeting your opinion is legal, leaking state secrets not so.

What the GP comment is saying is 100% true. Julian Assange is being persecuted because he published damning Truths about the people in power.

He was lauded as a hero when he published damning Truths about things like the War in Iraq, this did not hurt the people in power, but when he started publishing Truths about Hillary Clinton, that's when he started hurting the people in power.

Re: Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Article for those who might be interest: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/apr/20/man-admits-p... . A 10 week jail sentence for a racist video making fun of a terrible tragedy doesn't bother me as much as locking up political opponents

Ok, I read the article. The defendant did not share the video publicly, he shared it with two whatsapp groups. He was also not the one to make the racist comment in the video. Was his video offensive? Sure. But being offensive should never be a crime.

But the thing we're comparing to is literally advocating for women to be allowed to drive. I categorically reject the notion that we have to ignore the content of the messages when comparing the cases. The slap on the wrist for making fun of victims is bad, but isn't comparable and any reader should know both that it was just a slap on the wrist and that it was for something that almost everyone would agree was wrong.

edit: also the article doesn't mention how large the groups were. There's every possibility one was quite large because you know it went viral

Re: Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting

#97
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Tweeting your opinion is legal, leaking state secrets not so.

What the GP comment is saying is 100% true. Julian Assange is being persecuted because he published damning Truths about the people in power. He was lauded as a hero when he published damning Truths about things like the War in Iraq, this did not hurt the people in power, but when he started publishing Truths about Hillary Clinton, that's when he started hurting the people in power.

He was persecuted well before Hillary. The only interesting thing the whole Hillary situation did was rearrange some of his supporters and detractors

Re: Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting

#98
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Tweeting your opinion is legal, leaking state secrets not so.

So if I leaked Saudi state secrets, should I be extradited to Saudi Arabia? Or is that only if I leaked the secrets of a state you consider a "good guy" state?

Yep, and actually I'm ok with that. We don't have to be blind to the fact that Saudi Arabia locked a bunch of people in a hotel until they agreed to give money and control to a dictator. We don't have to forget that they killed a journalist in one of their embassies for the crime of being one of their critics.

And it's not like Saudi Arabia, China, or certainly Russia would be very fast to extradite someone to the US anyway so this is just sort of the way it works.

Re: Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting

#99
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Every country on earth has diplomatic relations with Saudia Arabia except Belize, the Holy See, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Nepal, North Korea, Papua New Guinea, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Taiwan, Western Sahara, and a few Pacific micronations. Obviously the House of Saud is evil, but it's largely impossible to have a modern society without their oil.

So? I didn't say there were any good countries on earth.

Re: Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I read the article. The defendant did not share the video publicly, he shared it with two whatsapp groups. He was also not the one to make the racist comment in the video. Was his video offensive? Sure. But being offensive should never be a crime.

But the thing we're comparing to is literally advocating for women to be allowed to drive. I categorically reject the notion that we have to ignore the content of the messages when comparing the cases. The slap on the wrist for making fun of victims is bad, but isn't comparable and any reader should know both that it was just a slap on the wrist and that it was for something that almost everyone would agree was wrong…

On what planet is 10 weeks imprisonment a slap on the wrist? Both of the rulings we’re comparing are utterly insane but I certainly agree that the Saudi one is far more insane.

In my opinion the size of the groups doesn’t matter when it comes to whether or not it should be a crime. Though I understand it may be a relevant factor as far as the law is concerned.

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