BS: Saudi Arabia: Nice people to do business with

Subject: BS: Nice people to do business with
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Apr 19 - 03:11 PM

From The Guardian.

"Saudi Arabia executes 37 citizens over alleged terrorism offences

Published: 17:48 Tuesday, 23 April 2019

Saudi Arabia has executed 37 citizens across the country for alleged terrorism-related crimes, publicly pinning one of their headless bodies to a pole as a warning.

The mass execution on Tuesday was the biggest in a single day in Saudi Arabia since January 2016, when 47 people were killed, including a prominent Shia cleric whose death prompted protests in Iran and the ransacking of the Saudi embassy in Tehran...

...The Saudi interior ministry said the killings were carried out in accordance with Islamic law, using language that indicated they were all beheadings. The body of one of the men, Khaled bin Abdel Karim al-Tuwaijri, was attached to a pole for several hours. The display is not typical of the kingdom and was seen as controversial. The ministry did not say where this took place.

The government defends executions as a powerful deterrent...

...The mass execution was ratified by a royal decree. Such actions are traditionally carried out after midday prayers."

My comment is the thread title.

Subject: RE: BS: Nice people to do business with
From: Iains
Date: 23 Apr 19 - 03:41 PM

"Saudi Arabia executes 37 citizens over alleged terrorism offences

The individuals were found guilty of attacking security installations with explosives, killing a number of security officers, and cooperating with "enemy organisations" against the interests of the country, the interior ministry said in a statement.

Terrorist offences in the US resulting in deaths also can carry the death penalty.

Subject: RE: BS: Nice people to do business with
From: Donuel
Date: 23 Apr 19 - 03:50 PM

I have seen private clandestine films of red Chinese mass executions

There were so many I could not count but it was between 500 to 1,000 people.

Subject: RE: BS: Nice people to do business with
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 23 Apr 19 - 04:04 PM

There are people who would reintroduce capital punishment to our statute books. its not so long ago people were executed in this country - we've nothing to be smug about.

theres been a series on telly in the morning - people asking for posthumous pardons for their relatives, many of whom who seem to have been executed in very dubious circumstances.

very sad. we need to sort out our country.

as for doing business. that's why its called business, and not doing deals with your mates and people you like.

china, saudi Arabia... just thank fuck you don't live there.

Subject: RE: BS: Nice people to do business with
From: Jack Campin
Date: 23 Apr 19 - 05:20 PM

I very much doubt Iains's rehash of the Saudi government's spin, but given the genocidal war they're waging against the Shia of Yemen, armed resistance is entirely justified and it's a great pity it didn't actually happen.

Subject: RE: BS: Saudi Arabia: Nice people to do business with
From: Rapparee
Date: 23 Apr 19 - 09:37 PM

On 2 January 2016, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia carried out a mass execution of 47 imprisoned civilians convicted for terrorism in 12 different provinces in the country. Forty-three were beheaded and four were executed by firing squads. Among the 47 people killed was Shia Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. The execution was the largest carried out in the kingdom since 1980. (from Wikipedia)

Beheading is a legal punishment in Oman and Yemen as well as Saudi Arabia. It has been practiced in the last 30 or so years by extragovernmental groups in the Congo, Pakistan, Bosnia, Herzegovina,
Iraq, and Syria.

Subject: RE: BS: Saudi Arabia: Nice people to do business with
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 24 Apr 19 - 02:55 AM

Britain sold thirty fighter jets to fight in Yemen - she will now, no doubt, refuse entry to the Yemeni refugees from that destruction.
It needs to be remembered that David Cameron went to pay homage to the father of the resent Saudi regime at the same time as a journalist was being administered 10000 lashes for speaking out of turn
When the Arab people were peacefully protesting for improved rights in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, Cameron's first act was to host a massive arms fair - the main target being Saudi Arabia
As Al says, we have nothing to be smug about - our Government is up to its bloody elbows in atrocities
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Saudi Arabia: Nice people to do business with
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 24 Apr 19 - 04:10 AM

Very interesting....will the Saudis still have us by the balls economically when we're all driving electric cars.

Subject: RE: BS: Saudi Arabia: Nice people to do business with
From: Thompson
Date: 24 Apr 19 - 04:27 AM

Probably, Big Al. Electric cars still have to be fuelled - the power stations have to be fuelled, and this need will grow exponentially. The start of a solution is to stop driving around all aloney-o, and introduce things like BlaBlaCar, the French-originated ride-sharing app used in many countries - it works something like AirBnB, in the sense that driver and drivee have profiles you can inspect on the website; the person getting a lift pays a fee to cover fuel, part of which goes to the website hosting the service. I first heard of this a few years ago when a friend was going from (if I remember right) Brittany to Lyon and had picked up a lift on the site.

And of course all cities need a safe and protected network of cycling infrastructure so that people can ride bikes for the shorter journeys - under, say, 8km, which takes slow me about three-quarters of an hour of pleasant pootling along, stopping to pick up a bit of shopping and chat to a friend or to admire the swans on the canal, or to share remarks on the weather with other people at traffic lights. So different from the fraught, lonely, tense car commute.

Subject: RE: BS: Saudi Arabia: Nice people to do business with
From: Mr Red
Date: 24 Apr 19 - 04:38 AM

Very interesting....will the Saudis still have us by the balls economically when we're all driving electric cars.

A minor point, but technologically not impossible, when you have the money at the moment to make it happen. So..............

they also have a lot of sun. and let us face it, all the energy we can garner comes / came from the sun. And sand, and by far the most dominant PV is silicon, and what do the Arab states also have lots of?

Keep 'em sweet, but keep an eye on them.

Yes, Yes, there is nuclear energy but remember where uranium was made - in another sun. And it exploded!

Subject: RE: BS: Saudi Arabia: Nice people to do business with
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 24 Apr 19 - 08:19 AM

"Keep 'em sweet, but keep an eye on them."
You mean make the slaughter of Yemeni tribesmen a spectator sport ?
I'd rather watch a hare being torn apart by dogs - I've only done that once - won't go there again
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Saudi Arabia: Nice people to do business with
From: bobad
Date: 24 Apr 19 - 08:25 AM

Saudi Arabia beheads 37 people, including minors, without due process.

It pinned one body and severed head to a pole as a warning.

Reaction by UN Human Rights Council:
0 Resolutions
0 Urgent sessions
0 Commissions of inquiry

Saudi Arabia sits on UNHRC.

Subject: RE: BS: Saudi Arabia: Nice people to do business with
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 24 Apr 19 - 08:56 AM

That's the whole point, we don't experience what those shiny aeroplanes achieve. not the smells, and the screams...

lets hope we never do.

Subject: RE: BS: Saudi Arabia: Nice people to do business with
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 24 Apr 19 - 11:09 AM

"Reaction by UN Human Rights Council:"
Israel has been persistently 'condemned' bu UNHRC for land seziiurs and Human Rights violations
Over the last year it has slaughtered three times the number of peaceful demonstrators as were murdered at Sharpville, yet the UN has failed to take action against any atrocities, mainly due to the protection of United States vetoes   
It seems that political influence supersedes human rights in the UN
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Saudi Arabia: Nice people to do business with
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 24 Apr 19 - 11:38 AM

I imagine it was the 18th century we did away with judicial beheadings in this country.

in france and germany , they were using the guillotine up the last century - and of course we were outraged at having our soldiers beheaded by the japanese in WW2,.

deapitation seems to exercise more horror than other methods - lethal injection, electrocution - even hanging.

And yet probably there have been more films about the beheaded people in our history - Thomas More, Thomas cromwell, mary Queen of Scots, Charles I , Anne boleyn, Catherine howard - than anyone else.

It seems to trigger some sort of sensual thrill.

About five years ago they were digging up the Ridgeway outside Weymouth and they come across a mass burial site where the Vikings had been defeated in a long forgotten, totally unrecorded battle. The prisoners - all two hundred or so had all been decapitated.

Subject: RE: BS: Saudi Arabia: Nice people to do business with
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 24 Apr 19 - 11:48 AM

"and of course we were outraged at having our soldiers beheaded by the japanese in WW2,."
Again - we have no room for smugness
My uncle - my father's brother - as a regular soldier, was disciplined for refusing to train fascist troops in Greece during the Civil War - he took his decision when he saw photographs of British 'Tommies' holding up the heads of captured Greek guerrilla fighters
Jim

Subject: RE: BS: Saudi Arabia: Nice people to do business with
From: Mr Red
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 03:50 AM

Lets face it - the human race is a brutal cohort. And you can't change their minds by shouting at them. You have to talk to them. And as we found in 2016 - they can be swayed by propaganda.

Funny old beings are homo sapiens.

Now if I criticised you - would you retrench into justification taking the hurt victims' role -
or agree with me? (Only in a post-ironic mode fer sure).

Countries are the same only moreso!

Subject: RE: BS: Saudi Arabia: Nice people to do business with
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 03:54 AM

"Lets face it - the human race is a brutal cohort."
It's far to easy to blame humanity as a whole
Most humans don't plant bombs or kill people - it takes organisations to do that
Humanity is the victim in these things, not the cause - if that were not true we'd never have got this far in evolution
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Saudi Arabia: Nice people to do business with
From: robomatic
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 08:43 PM

As far as evolution goes, I'll quote one of my favorite lines from Inherit the Wind

"Darwin was wrong! Man's still an ape!"

Extra points if you can identify the unlikely actor who got to say that line without looking it up.

Subject: RE: BS: Saudi Arabia: Nice people to do business with
From: Rapparee
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 09:50 PM

Wikipedia: Historically, beheading was typically used for noblemen, while commoners would be hanged; eventually, hanging was adopted as the standard means of non-military executions. The last actual execution by beheading was of Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat on 9 April 1747, while a number of convicts (typically traitors sentenced to drawing and quartering, a method which had already been discontinued) were beheaded posthumously up to the early 19th century. Beheading was degraded to a secondary means of execution, including for treason, with the abolition of drawing and quartering in 1870 and finally abolished by at the monarch's discretion in 1973.

Abolished in 1973....

Subject: RE: BS: Saudi Arabia: Nice people to do business with
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 10:10 PM

'Abolished in 1973....'

though it had fallen out of use. then this advert for Head and Shoulders shampoo brought it to mind.

Get out the Wincarniss Mary! I've this wonderful idea for a piece of legislation, said Harold Wilson.

Subject: RE: BS: Saudi Arabia: Nice people to do business with
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Apr 19 - 06:17 AM

""Darwin was wrong! Man's still an ape!"
Must have been Spencer Tracy - Fredrick March would never say such a thing (didn't look it up, honest - one of my favourite books and films)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Saudi Arabia: Nice people to do business with
From: robomatic
Date: 28 Apr 19 - 08:22 PM

JC:
Nice Try No Cigar, I did say 'unlikely'!

Subject: RE: BS: Saudi Arabia: Nice people to do business with
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 29 Apr 19 - 03:25 AM

"Nice Try No Cigar, I did say 'unlikely'!"
I cheated and looked it up - I'd forgotten Gene Kelly could act as well as dance
Jim