51–60 of 204 posts
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The US protests are being sabotaged with violence from outsiders to delegitimize them.
Agreed, this is why portland protesters are demanding these outsiders (the national guard) leave.
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Usually(last 50y) US and EU would initiate sanctions, if it doesn't collide too greatly with their own interests, that would put pressure on respective government by putting their economy in peril. Lately US has stepped down from that role, and openly started diplomatic hostilities towards the EU. EU isn't powerful enough alone, plus they deal with their own economic and social issues which make them not stable enoug…
I'm not sure how the US has stepped down from that role: https://www.state.gov/ukraine-and-russia-sanctions/ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-belarus-election-usa-sanc... And if you mean "diplomatic hostiles" in that the US is angry at the EU for not cooperating with the sanction process against targeted countries or meeting their military obligations so that they qualify to vote in international politics, then I g…
This is not a real thing. Voting at the UN is not contingent on military power in any way.
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I'm not sure how the US has stepped down from that role: https://www.state.gov/ukraine-and-russia-sanctions/ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-belarus-election-usa-sanc... And if you mean "diplomatic hostiles" in that the US is angry at the EU for not cooperating with the sanction process against targeted countries or meeting their military obligations so that they qualify to vote in international politics, then I g…
You're not sure? How about Trump fighting against new sanctions and actively pursuing removal of existing ones? https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-administration-battles-n... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/27/us-lifts-sanct...
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Is your comment insightful?
It is. It calls out the fact that trying to say witty remarks to get "upvoted" to the top is going to drag down HN, just how it dragged down Reddit. Why not explain why Lukashenko is a bad person to somebody who doesn't know? That's too much effort. Might as well make a quick joke and get validation from peers.
It was your original comment and the later ones trying to defend said comment are the low-effort comments you are complaining about.
And if you really don't know about Lukashenko a quick google will suffice,or the, idk hundreds of comments between this post and the last?
And finally, it seems to me at least that if anyone here is pandering for worthless internet points, it is you.
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Possibly heading for a civil war stoked by the country's president in both cases (one trying to paint his trickster self as a man of law and order, one trying to hold on to power after yet-another mock election). Though the parts of the protests we get to see from Belarus look far more civilized than the pictures coming in from the US.
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Blocking websites thanks to silicon valley network co. Sandvine![0] They were also used to censor the web in Egypt but nobody on the US end seems to give a shit that local companies are facilitating dictators [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-28/belarusia...
nobody on the US end seems to give a shit that local companies are facilitating dictators Slightly fewer than half the electorate in the US is excited to vote for an authoritarian president in their own country who has repeatedly talked about not giving up power due to term limits [0] or election results [1], a guy who praised Xi for just naming himself president for life and said he'd like to give it a shot [2]. It…
We're in a really bad situation when a simple statement like "Presidents shouldn't talk about extending term limits and suspending elections" gets any reaction other than strong universal condemnation from all sides of the political spectrum.
When we see that nations are hostages of their criminal governments - what real mechanisms are there for helping those nations? e.g. what would be the outcome of targeting specifically Lukashenko, Putin, Kim Jong-un along with their inner circles respectively?
As an ordinary person, solidarity is important. It may seem wishy washy, but history has shown many times that solidarity can matter. If we could replicate the same solidarity European cities saw in support of the George Floyd protests, it would put some wind behind Belarusian democrats.
In terms of government/official action... I think the priority should be to discourage Russian intervention with any diplomatic clout available. The UK and France are in the most important position, IMO. France primarily, as a member of the EU which borders Belarus.
Vladimir Putin recently wrote an article about the importance of the Security council. To put this in his own (kinda) words, Russian security intervention on behalf of Lukashenko is entirely not acceptable to three council members. In the interest of world peace, keep your troops inside your own borders.
That is not to say Russia should be treated as an enemy. They are a party, and their concerns need to be heard too.
Ideally, Russia and the EU (not NATO, imo) should negotiate a framework for peaceful transition.
This is tangential.. As a European, I feel that we are too disconnected from this affair. Just as with the Ukrainian civil war and Crimean annexation, a big part of this conflict is a conservative, repressive, Russia/Putin sponsored regime at odds with a population that identifies more with European/EU values... especially younger people. Russia see the dignity, prosperity and freedom of several nations as trivial re…
source: Current and previous gfs were Belarrusian and we had these discussions a lot (both before and after this whole thing)
edit: And both parents of both women voted for lukashenko btw, as well as some of their friends (not saying he won or anything, but it isn't also like 100% are opposed to him)
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Please don't compare protests like this, it never looks good.
RoW thinks Portland is borderline civil war anyway. Only a true American could conceive of hundreds of masked, rifle-bearing men marching around and clashing with other groups as a protest.
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Possibly heading for a civil war stoked by the country's president in both cases (one trying to paint his trickster self as a man of law and order, one trying to hold on to power after yet-another mock election). Though the parts of the protests we get to see from Belarus look far more civilized than the pictures coming in from the US.
The underlying cause is a mistake of our founding fathers. Because of the winner-take-all structure of our elections, our political parties are forced to be forkophobic. The fact that we can't have a real Tea Party, to say nothing of the Greens and Libertarians, causes our civil war proclivities.
A first step is a proportional House. In this proposal, every state stops drawing House districts, which also kills gerrymandering (although gerrymandering by itself does not cause our civil war problems). Instead, parties must register with the state with a list of N names, people in the state vote for the party rather than an individual, and after the election we first off exclude any parties who have not gotten at least 4% of the vote, then allocate the rest by the Webster method that we already use to allocate House seats among the different states. So a party has 10% popularity in California, that means they receive about five California seats, so the top five names off their pre-published California list go on to the House. Forking a political party is now possible, politicians have spines again at least in the House, and Washington starts working again, hopefully.
This probably does not require a constitutional amendment, just a federal law.