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Silicon Valley's Saudi Arabia Problem (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Somewhere in the United States, someone is getting into an Uber en route to a WeWork co-working space. Their dog is with a walker whom they hired through the app Wag. They will eat a lunch delivered by DoorDash, while participating in several chat conversations on Slack. And, for all of it, they have an unlikely benefactor to thank: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Long before the dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi vanished, the kingdom has sought influence in the West -- perhaps intended, in part, to make us forget what it is. A medieval theocracy that still beheads by sword, doubling as a modern nation with malls (including a planned mall offering indoor skiing), Saudi Arabia has been called "an ISIS that made it." Remarkably, the country has avoided pariah status in the United States thanks to our thirst for oil, Riyadh's carefully cultivated ties with Washington, its big arms purchases, and the two countries' shared interest in counterterrorism. But lately the Saudis have been growing their circle of American enablers, pouring billions into Silicon Valley technology companies.
While an earlier generation of Saudi leaders, like Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, invested billions of dollars in blue-chip companies in the United States, the kingdom's new crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has shifted Saudi Arabia's investment attention from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund has become one of Silicon Valley's biggest swinging checkbooks, working mostly through a $100 billion fund raised by SoftBank (a Japanese company), which has swashbuckled its way through the technology industry, often taking multibillion-dollar stakes in promising companies. The Public Investment Fund put $45 billion into SoftBank's first Vision Fund, and Bloomberg recently reported that the Saudi fund would invest another $45 billion into SoftBank's second Vision Fund. SoftBank, with the help of that Saudi money, is now said to be the largest shareholder in Uber. It has also put significant money into a long list of start-ups that includes Wag, DoorDash, WeWork, Plenty, Cruise, Katerra, Nvidia and Slack. As the world fills up car tanks with gas and climate change worsens, Saudi Arabia reaps enormous profits -- and some of that money shows up in the bank accounts of fast-growing companies that love to talk about "making the world a better place."
While an earlier generation of Saudi leaders, like Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, invested billions of dollars in blue-chip companies in the United States, the kingdom's new crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has shifted Saudi Arabia's investment attention from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund has become one of Silicon Valley's biggest swinging checkbooks, working mostly through a $100 billion fund raised by SoftBank (a Japanese company), which has swashbuckled its way through the technology industry, often taking multibillion-dollar stakes in promising companies. The Public Investment Fund put $45 billion into SoftBank's first Vision Fund, and Bloomberg recently reported that the Saudi fund would invest another $45 billion into SoftBank's second Vision Fund. SoftBank, with the help of that Saudi money, is now said to be the largest shareholder in Uber. It has also put significant money into a long list of start-ups that includes Wag, DoorDash, WeWork, Plenty, Cruise, Katerra, Nvidia and Slack. As the world fills up car tanks with gas and climate change worsens, Saudi Arabia reaps enormous profits -- and some of that money shows up in the bank accounts of fast-growing companies that love to talk about "making the world a better place."
The US gives the death penalty for murder and worse.
Saudi Arabia gives the death penalty (or tries to) for speaking out:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/saudi-arabia-seeks-unprecedented-death-penalty-woman-activist-n902771
They also apply the death penalty for things that aren't even crimes in civilized countries, like sodomy, blashpemy and witchcraft:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Saudi_Arabia#Other_offences
Also, the US is a Democracy, not a theocracy.
There might be a slight difference between executing (different than murder) someone who was themselves a mass murderer after they've sat in prison for decades and have had several rounds of appeals as opposed to executing someone for homosexuality, being a women's rights activist, or allegedly practicing sorcery. If you're lucky you might even be crucified.
Also, not all U.S. states have a death penalty, and of those that do, many don't use the electric chair. Wikipedia indicates that some states allow convicted criminals to choose it if they so want, but that there aren't a lot of states actually using it. Most of it is by lethal injection, and I'd say that there are probably more humane ways than that to kill a person if you're going to do it. Nitrous oxide asphyxiation seems like a pretty painless way to me, and probably a hell of a lot less expensive.
The US gets very little oil from the ME. We protect shipping routes mostly. Lefties still working from 1970s data.
We don't get much oil from Saudi Arabia, but they are an important counterweight to Iran. Iran is our enemy because ... umm, we need an enemy because ... well, we spend $610B a year on weapons and we need to justify that somehow.
Iran wants WAR
*sigh* And this in a time when one doesn't even have to go outside to get information and learn things.
USA have a variant of representative democracy where people elect leaders which in term can elect others (current example: supreme court judges). And that is one type of democracy. You may be thinking of direct democracy where people directly vote for different alternatives, or more likely of some variant of an anarchy (the political use of the word).
But really spend some hours, search and learn. It's interesting.
Can you even imagine America executing a Trump or Clinton?
Prior to 10 to 15 years ago, no. But at the rate things have been going, I can see it happening in the next 5 to 10 years. The wing nuts have been getting ever crazier and have gotten very efficient at stirring up more people than I would have ever thought possible. The media has also gotten very good at giving the masses just enough information to scare the shit out of them, but not enough to make an informed decision. Even the weather channel hypes anything they can.