Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/09/28/boy-in-saudi-arabia-arrested-f.html
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Oh, look, it’s America’s ally petrol supplier. So glad we’re helping prop up these fascist hereditary dictators. /s
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So tired of my taxes being used to prop up these backward hicks.
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Well you must admit she is a shameless infidel who bares her face to the entire world…
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Sure, it’s brutal and backwards, but if they didn’t crack down on this and make him an example, his heinous act could lead to other people making this world a little brighter and more joyous!
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“unethical behaviour"
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Yikes. I hadn’t realized it was possible to enter the uncanny valley from the other direction.
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And arms buyer and Yemen bomber.
But they’re not fascists. They are a theocracy with an hereditary ruling family, the result of a contract between Wahabism and the Saud family which took the obscure sect of Wahabism to a state religion and the Sauds to the control of vast amounts of money. Iran is a semi-fascist theocracy; the revolutionary guards can acquire all the companies and get rich from them so long as they don’t challenge the mullahs.
Saudi has been destabilised by a change at the top to a more aggressive posture, like N Korea. In fact, you can see Saudi as being North Korea with a different religion and an awful lot more money.
The way theocracies make their point is by persecuting someone periodically, whether it’s Salem or Saudi. Expect this to get worse before it gets better.
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I know this subject is getting very tedious, but are you the only person in the developed world not to have noticed Trump’s hair already?
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I am getting sick and tired of religious assholes trying to ensure a global case of blue balls!
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Fundamentalist: (n.) One who harbors the deep suspicion and dread that somewhere, somehow, someone is experiencing joy.
Poor kid.
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The other direction? Hell, I just got dropped into the uncanny valley in a barrel a la Niagara Falls
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We should leverage our relationship with Saudi Arabia to send them some goddamn feminism, because they are clearly in dire fekkin’ need.
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Arresting people for unethical behavior? Okay, but they have a lot of work to do to clean up their own house. Then, after that’s done, and after they have completely solved the problems of crime and economic inequality, then maybe they can send their religious cops against a teen boy for videochatting with a cute girl.*
*If I learned nothing else from reading sci fi, it’s that a utopia is never really a utopia, so even utopian Saudi Arabia would have backwards religious cops.
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Your average Saudi citizen can spend hours looking at Islamicist videos of people being executed and tortured without worry about arrest. But a little playful online flirting with an attractive woman gets a guy locked up for 3 years. Seriously?
As if I didn’t already have a million other reasons to tell the Saudi government to go fuck themselves.
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They should be renamed Damentalists, in fact, because the fun has been removed.
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Damentalist makes me think of dawizard
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Well, not for much longer, really, given how oil prices and increasingly cheap solar are impacting things. Take away the dynamics of oil and it all falls apart.
That’s way too fake looking to qualify for any part of the uncanny valley though.
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It’s a goddamned shithole of a country run by assholes of the highest order - but they have a lot of what a lot of people want under their sand.
On a side note, it will be interesting to see how the entire universe of petroleum changes in the coming decades.
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