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Saudi prosecutors seek death penalty for academic over social media use

theguardian.com

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Re: Saudi prosecutors seek death penalty for academic over social media use

#21

Post by rippercushions »

> the use of social media and other communications has been criminalised inside the kingdom since the beginning of Prince Mohammed’s reign.

I don't understand the harping on about "social media" here? It's not using social media that's illegal in Saudi Arabia, it's public dissent, and that's been the case since day one. Previously people were jailed or executed for spraying graffiti on overhead bridges, but the authorities were too clueless to care/understand about posting on the Internet. Now the dinosaurs have been replaced by MBS, who does care about the online world, so they've started applying the same old punishments to people posting the same sentiments online.

Re: Saudi prosecutors seek death penalty for academic over social media use

#22

Post by gallopingcomp »

josephcsible wrote: post #16
gallopingcomp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banning lead from gasoline (and paint, plumbing etc) is also governmentally-punished wrongthink, if you’ve built your whole identity and livelihood around being a salesman for leaded gasoline. Or. Could a certified driving instructor lose their license for telling their clients to drive aggressively, regardless of safety concerns? They might just become a brave martyr challenging the safety-obsessed culture that codd…

Wrongthink is inherently about expressing ideas. Contrast actually putting lead in things with saying that you wish you could put lead in things.

Hence the “salesman” part. The government is technically depriving you of your livelihood because your employer is out of business, or has moved to non-leaded gasoline, but you insist on only selling leaded gasoline, because you sincerely believe it is superior. Now you are out of a job. (Or rather: now there’s talk going around that you might be out of a job.)

Re: Saudi prosecutors seek death penalty for academic over social media use

#23

Post by nl »

josephcsible wrote: post #8
gallopingcomp wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s curious that you chose JP, as opposed to the much better example of Hamline University (or that stupid halloween costume thing from a couple of years back; etc, etc). Instead, we choose to entertain JP’s ever-escalating persecution complex. It’s “persecution” only when someone I like loses or suffers, it’s “consequences” when it’s someone I dislike/in the outgroup (never mind the actual circumstances of their be…

Lawyers should never get disbarred, and drivers should never lose their licenses, for doing anything that the Constitution gives them the right to do.

> Lawyers should never get disbarred,

This doesn't seem obvious to me at all.

Many (most?) professions have things you need to do that are outside of considerations of any country's constitution.

Re: Saudi prosecutors seek death penalty for academic over social media use

#24

Post by rippercushions »

nobodyandproud wrote: post #11

A long time ago, some Jewish coworkers told me about Saudi Arabia as very extreme (a lot of frank discussions about Israel’s issues, Palestinians, and the middle east). Naive as I was, I didn’t believe them at the time but time has proven them right.

It's a bit more complicated than that. MBS throwing the book at dissenters have very little to do with Palestine or Israel, and very much to do with MBS's increasing personal paranoia and lack of tolerance for even the mildest form of dissent. There are people getting jailed for completely non-political dissent like daring to advocate for female drivers before the government itself made a policy U-turn on that.

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a35090601/saudi-activist-p...

Saudi society itself is far from homogeneous. The largely Western-educated royalty is (was?) in a marriage of convenience with the Wahhabi Sunni extremists who lead the religious establishment, there's a growing middle class that's not particularly extreme in any way, oppressed native groups like the Shia, a huge population of completely powerless and frequently abused foreign workers keeping the kingdom running, etc etc.

Re: Saudi prosecutors seek death penalty for academic over social media use

#25

Post by gallopingcomp »

edgyquant wrote: post #18
gallopingcomp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s an extended discussion to be had about the merits and drawbacks of professional licensing as state-enforced gatekeeping, but equating this with political persecution doesn’t seem useful. Has it not occurred to you that professionals could lose their licenses for reasons that at are not solely political? Like professional malpractice, or advocating for quackery? (There’s a line to be drawn there, too, about wh…

Right it’s when they lose them for political beliefs that it is political persecution.

As opposed to professional beliefs.

Which might be a tricky distinction sometimes, especially in psychology, because (1) some beliefs and speech aren’t exactly object-level, but aren’t quite political either; (2) previously non-political, purely object-level issues (eg. treatment approaches for trans people) sometimes become seen as politicized (make no mistake, JP very much played a part in making it so), or conversely lose its previous political connotation.

Re: Saudi prosecutors seek death penalty for academic over social media use

#26

Post by josephcsible »

rippercushions wrote: post #21

> the use of social media and other communications has been criminalised inside the kingdom since the beginning of Prince Mohammed’s reign. I don't understand the harping on about "social media" here? It's not using social media that's illegal in Saudi Arabia, it's public dissent , and that's been the case since day one. Previously people were jailed or executed for spraying graffiti on overhead bridges, but the auth…

When it was spraying graffiti, at least that's actually bad and universally recognized as a crime, so it was just a really disproportionate punishment for it. Posting on social media isn't supposed to be a crime at all.

Re: Saudi prosecutors seek death penalty for academic over social media use

#27

Post by gallopingcomp »

sn0w_crash wrote: post #5
BaculumMeumEst wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cutting off a one means of income from a wealthy, controversial influencer is not comparable to being put to death, no. that’s incredibly callous.

“Cutting off a means of income” should not be looked on so callously either. It is only a few ideological hops away from “terminating someone’s life.”

The solution is that society shouldn’t make people dependent on any single means of income for survival, not that no one gets rejected/disbarred from any occupation ever. Ultimately any negativity towards a person lies along a spectrum, and it’s important not to lose sight of the degree of harm involved.

The revoking of professional licenses is not (and should not be) intended as punishment of the individual in question, but rather limiting the damage to society of their recklessness.

That can sometimes be a slippery slope of its own, but I will argue that it’s a somewhat different slope (the “for the greater good” slope) from the “totalitarian government hates nonconformity” slope. Sometimes they intersect though.

Re: Saudi prosecutors seek death penalty for academic over social media use

#28

Post by defrost »

josephcsible wrote: post #20
alistairSH wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Canada” here being a quasi-governmental professional organization tasked with ensuring the safety of patients and professionalism of practitioners. Not remotely the same as the government-proper arresting him and threatening him with death.

If the government passes a law saying "you can only be a psychologist if you have a license from the College of Psychologists", and the College of Psychologists will only let you have a license if you go to a re-education camp, why should we look upon that any differently than if the government passes a law saying "you can only be a psychologist if you go to a re-education camp" directly? If you choose to delegate yo…

It's different for many reasons;

* Second hand biased reporting makes it unclear what the official statement from the the College of Psychologists of Ontario actually is and whether they can pull his licence if he ignores them.

* The Government does not auto-kneejerk magically back the College and Peterson has a right of appeal, he's already publicaly grandstanding on the issue and claiming to have preemptively filed application for judicial review with the Ontario Divisional Court.

Going by past performative peak Peterson this is likely a mountain of outrage in response to a molehill of criticism .. and far removed from the spectacle of beiong dragged away and beheaded w/out appeal.

Re: Saudi prosecutors seek death penalty for academic over social media use

#29

Post by gallopingcomp »

sn0w_crash wrote: post #4
tomohawk wrote: post #2

[flagged]

People supporting any form of “Re-education camps” or course do not end up on the right side of history. If you are in support of the forced “re education” of an individual, under threat of revoking their livelihood, no matter your ideological leanings, I would encourage you to think on this.

Yes.

Back to the matter at hand: There’s a difference between (potentially) losing your professional license for beliefs and practices related to your professional practice, and being put in a re-education camp. The former isn’t always right either (and can sometimes be weaponzied for political reasons), but they’re not the same thing.

(Speaking as someone from an authoritarian/totalitarian country that puts people in re-education camps, and sometimes weaponizes professional licensing for political reasons. JP’s case looks more like an unfortunate coincidence than that.)

Re: Saudi prosecutors seek death penalty for academic over social media use

#30

Post by jacooper »

edgyquant wrote: post #17
nobodyandproud wrote: post #11

A long time ago, some Jewish coworkers told me about Saudi Arabia as very extreme (a lot of frank discussions about Israel’s issues, Palestinians, and the middle east). Naive as I was, I didn’t believe them at the time but time has proven them right.

Well this was because you were completely ignorant of Saudi Arabia and the peninsula in general then. No one has ever mistook the Saudis for non-extremists and they’re liberal compared to the population they govern.

Not anymore, certainly not since MBS arrived. Its getting closer and closer to Dubai there.
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