I agree that the word 'sponsorship' has been quite diluted, as you point out, but it should mean something more than 'be a customer of'. Do I sponsor my local sports team when I buy tickets to a game? Am I sponsoring Netflix by subscribing? Do I sponsor my local government by paying property taxes? On the flip side, does my government sponsor me by granting a driver's license?
It's used throughout the comments and the topic generally. I don't call it out (for meaning a state with borders aligned with an ethnicity) because I get the point being made.
As for sponsorship, states sponsor their industries by providing labor trained at public expense, promoting them abroad through trade agreements, access to trade representation etc. so there is the technical definition of sponsorship met.
The revolving door between Unit 8200 and surveillance startups is documented as is Israel's courting of KSA and the UAE with access to intelligence sharing and capabilities as a bargaining chip. And why wouldn't they? It's good for the state and its industry. Just sucks for everyone else.
The definition of sponsorship doesn't matter when it is met in every sense of the word.
Because that's worked out so well until now. So may as well make a little cash on the side of it, eh?
Do you think the path to end tyranny was so smooth in developed countries? Think back through Western revolutionary history and now immediately forget the name of every leader the moment you think of them - because that's what's happening, right now, in these countries at this exact stage of their political development. The technology now exists to make effective popular resistance impossible. Every possible rebellion strangled at birth. Every potential leader, every sympathetic journalist, religious or opposition figure, immediately identified, located and silenced.
And apparently that's worth a comfortable 6 figure salary to a lot of engineers and managers in comfortable, developed countries.
Do you really think you'd be in the position you're in if your ancestors never had the chance to remove their despotic king/emperor/dear leader? If you don't think it would be another North Korea, maybe it's because of some ahistorical belief that your culture is inherently more civilised. So you probably don't see the racism that's implicit in your statement.
From my experience in the Middle East, seeing people march for an end to corruption, for justice, for a chance for their kids, I realise I hardly know anyone back home as brave, as prepared to risk everything for their political and civil rights. They aren't marching for another ruler. They deserve a chance.
I don't care about NSO at all, they can shut down tomorrow for all I care.
I'm just saying if the alternative is between something like the Islamic Revolution of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood type movements - to something like the military regime Egypt has now or whatever the Saudis came up with, I take the latter. What you said about resistance being impossible - it won't get any better under a radical Islamic rule as we are seeing in Iran.
All I am saying it can get way worse. it CAN become North Korea. What we have now in several areas there may be the best we can get for now.
And a big part of how I feel about this is about self survival - the Iranian regime hates the West (and especially the U.S but not only) in very deep ways that Saudi Arabia/UAE/Egypt/etc do not. That's how it is. As long as it is what it is selling stuff to Saudi Arabia doesn't sound super terrible.
They don't just use sales to oppose the Muslim Brotherhood! They are bombing innocent Yemenis who have ZERO connection to Iran. They backed Salafis, like Al-Qaeda for decades (forgotten about those guys?) They use them to jail journalists for reporting on corruption, women rights activists for driving. People just trying to make their countries a bit better.
You say "if the alternative is between...", and then proceed to just accept the false choice that it's either tyranny or anarchy, using that reasoning to give a pass to the scum making a buck from some of the most disgusting regimes on the planet. Western countries took generations of incremental improvements to arrive here, all while tyrants always used that argument to try stay on top.
You're uncritically buying the line that Iran or the Muslim Brotherhood are the worst (which could be argued) but the other less so, because they are on "our side". If you prioritise human rights, that lives on both sides are equally valuable (and I suspect from this thread that you don't) then such a distinction is meaningless.
It's a fear-driven siege mentality and terribly short sighted to think that in the region that brought us Gadhafi, Saddam, Daesh and the Mujahaddin, somehow KSA, Egypt or the UAE will magically always align with however your interests evolve.
Thanks to NSO they ARE a step closer to North Korea and destabilising the region in the long term with repression and misery. But you're only interested in short term outcomes for Israel/Western countries, kicking the can down the road when the consequences of such sales will have unknown impacts for decades.
After seeing how it's played out, it's just exhausting to see this kind of mentality after all these years, lost lives and lessons apparently unlearned. Along with greed, this mentality is why the mercenary surveillance industry exists. For the sake of everyones kids both need to end.
> They are bombing innocent Yemenis who have ZERO connection to Iran
The Houthis are an extremely well armed group supported by Iran, please read about the topic you are uninformed. I am not saying what's going on there isn't tragic but it's far from "good guys vs bad guys". Iran had a role in what happened in Yemen as it had a role in what happened in Syria.
Saudi Arabia is as far from liberalism as Iran, I acknowledge that. But they have much less of a will to export "the revolution" to other places - unlike Iran. They kinda mind their own business most of the time.
> You're uncritically buying the line that Iran or the Muslim Brotherhood are the worst (which could be argued) but the other less so, because they are on "our side".
You are being uncritical as well. If you have any info that suggests otherwise you can share it, otherwise don't just contradict me and call me uncritical.
> If you prioritise human rights, that lives on both sides are equally valuable
I prioritise human rights within reason. Since the Arab Spring we've seen the whole area can in fact get much worse for humans very quickly. "Democratizing" a place like Egypt probably means bringing a hostile (to the West and to freedom in general) Islamic Caliphate of some sort, which I don't like.
Yeah yeah, I read the news too. I'm not going to go into my personal experience, but from my time there knowing political actors, I followed the Houthi rebellion and southern secession movement, and the Iran connection very closely. The link had always been tenuous and was cynically and successfully played up by Saleh to gather billions in Saudi and US financial and military aid, before he switched sides and was killed before he could switch back. Until that point the evidence pointed to the Houthis purchasing weapons from a corrupt Yemeni military. Saleh was Zaydi, a fact conveniently overlooked by the media in an attempt to lazily drive a Shia vs. Sunni narrative that people ate up bought. There is only evidence of Iran getting involved after the Houthis took Sana'a, where as KSA had been destabilising the Houthi border region, funding Salafists and building extremist madrassas for decades before then. That's not even in dispute.
"But (KSA) have much less of a will to export "the revolution" to other places - unlike Iran. They kinda mind their own business most of the time." This is laughably ill informed. They've built over 10,000 new Hanbali, Salafist Wahabi madrassas in Pakistan over the past 50 years. Sent extremist imams everywhere from the Philippines, Indonesia, Mali, Bosnia, UK, the Netherlands. Backing the Janjaweed and ISIS affiliated groups around the world. You don't like an Islamic Caliphate? ISIS's principle enemy was not the US, not Israel but Iran which fought them with existential zeal in Iraq. Ignore the posturing, check the last time Iran actually invaded a country. Educate yourself. Stop just repeating the news.
Soo just how is the statement "They are bombing innocent Yemenis who have ZERO connection to Iran" contradicted by anything you've added? It's just a fact, as is the fact that KSA also bomb militants, using them and Iran as the pretext to do whatever they want, including using economic warfare against one of the poorest, hungriest populations in the world.
It's the standard 'but they're killing the bad guys' guilt-by-association, collective punishment line you seem strangely prepared to toe as a justification for brushing off the well documented bombing of innocent civilians. That mindset is probably the single biggest perpetuator of human rights violations on all sides in the Middle East. The casual cruelty of that and the ignorance are bad enough, but to then actively say "As long as it is what it is selling stuff to Saudi Arabia doesn't sound super terrible.", brushing off criticism of both the KSA and those making a buck off the situation, is abhorrent.
You'll happily buy the old, and false, pick-your-poison, brutal dictator vs. extremist Islamism dichotomy that lets you overlook human rights by "our sons of bitches", even while knowing how obviously bad that has worked out until today. But sure, you're "prioritising it within reason". Please. That's just the easy way out.
I don't want to be harsh but you don't seem to be well informed, reasoned or particularly concerned with ethical choices on this issue. Don't think I have much more to add.
you get my point?