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EU bans Belarusian airlines from European skies

bbc.com

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Re: EU bans Belarusian airlines from European skies

#251

Post by unixhero »

proxysna wrote: post #215
mcky wrote: post #145

Worth noting in all of this that Belarus recently closed their land borders to citizens [1], under the guise of COVID, but in reality to stop people leaving. The only way out was flying from Minsk, which is now even less of an option if there are no flights to the EU. As others have said these sanctions will likely do more to harm the repressed citizens of the regime than Lukashenko [1] https://www.bnt.eu/cs/zpravy/p…

People (me and friends) reroute their travel through Moscow to get to Minsk now. Annoying but still i believe that this is a right decision from eu side.

That transit in Moscow can be risky to some politically exposed persons.

Re: EU bans Belarusian airlines from European skies

#252

Post by alkonaut »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #123
intricatedetail wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How people are going to take responsibility if they are not going to feel consequences? Are they ever going to sort out their mess?

"Until you start a violent civil war to overthrow your government, we're going to make you, average citizen of Belarus, have a more difficult life."

That's effectively what happens. The problem with thee Russian border states is that the hope for strong external intervention isn't very high. But the closeness to russia is why the Annexation of Crimea ad the regime of Lukashenko and a few other dictators still exist.

To some extent you can target the elite and decisionmakers. But after a very short while, there is no easy way to separate "people" from the elite. Targeting businesses, exports and so on which is the next step - is always going to make the average citizen worse. But the argument works both ways: ensuring the wellbeing of the people helps the legitimacy and strength of the regime. I don't think anyone thinks it's a good idea to stop short of anything that makes the life of average belorussians worse.

Re: EU bans Belarusian airlines from European skies

#253

Post by johannes1234321 »

mjfisher wrote: post #172
johannes1234321 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's how the EU works. It's the case for every decision taken and law passed by the EU. Not exactly. It depends on the area of law one is in. For some areas of law the EU itself can create law in itself which immediately becomes law in the member states, overriding member state's laws (typically via EU Regulation) But this works only in areas where EU contracts give those powers to EU. Of course this then still d…

That's true - it's also worth explicitly noting that when the EU does make law directly, that is still done in a fully democratic way. The fact that that EU laws can override national laws does not mean that the EU Commission has unilaterally imposed law without consent. Law changes must first must be approved by the Council - comprising heads of state - and then by the EU parliament, consisting of directly elected r…

Right. I didn't want to elude in all of that.

It becomes quite complex, but any system, which tries to bring more than 400M oppionons together, while giving a voice to minorities and dealing with complicated issues is inherently complex.

Re: EU bans Belarusian airlines from European skies

#255

Post by EliRivers »

refactor_master wrote: post #183
londons_explore wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see a worldwide agreement that no country will ever stop a citizen from leaving, as long as they have permission to enter another country. Even if the person is in prison or debt, they can always leave with just themselves to another country willing to take them. If all nations agreed to that, we could stop worrying about most other human rights abuses, and country governance becomes more of a free market…

The free market has a pretty terrible track record when it comes to human rights, though. What would countries stand to gain from this, realistically? No country wants economic refugees.

How are you defining "economic refugee"? Lots of countries benefit from people coming to that country to work. In many cases, those people end up as net contributors to the public purse; the individual is better off, the recipient country is better off.

Re: EU bans Belarusian airlines from European skies

#256

Post by reissbaker »

Aeolun wrote: post #235

I don’t understand how any of this stuff is even ok. If any random person had done this, the police would be after them to arrest them for kidnapping, but because it’s a nation state doing this the only thing that happens is closed airspace? I feel like there should be something we can do that wouldn’t be a slap on the wrist.

Because this is a state actor, you can't just send the police after them: they have fighter jets (and it was a fighter jet that grounded the plane). You have to ask whether you're willing to go to war, or impose collective punishment on the people of Belarus via something like sanctions. The EU has already taken diplomatic steps for previous offenses like barring Lukashenko personally from the EU, and the US has banned loans to the Belarussian government in the past as well — and those bans remain in place today.

There are probably more diplomatic levers to pull, but TBH none of the existing ones have seemed to do anything. States are okay at enforcing laws within their borders without massive death or total economic destruction, but don't seem to be very effective at enforcing much inside of someone else's borders barring those options.

Re: EU bans Belarusian airlines from European skies

#257

Post by tchalla »

alkonaut wrote: post #241
tchalla wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plane was not forced to land, but landed due to technical malfunction Belarus also claims that the plane was landed due to a bomb threat. France and Spain apologised to Morales/Bolivia after that incident.

> Belarus also claims that the plane was landed due to a bomb threat. Yes. But the pilot doesn't.

I am sorry but this is a slightly frustrating conversation because we are losing the forests for the trees. In both cases, an aircraft was grounded based on a suspicion. In one case, the official reason was "technical reasons", in another it was due to "bomb threat". In both cases, the official reasons given were a ruse. That is the key focus here in both cases. The question of forcefully grounding an airplane for ulterior purposes with a different official reason. In one case, the scenario didn't achieve the end result because Snowden was not on the plane. In another case, it did play out because Protasevich was on the flight. Just because the results were different, doesn't mean both acts weren't egregious. In both cases, a country used their muscle to land a flight.

Re: EU bans Belarusian airlines from European skies

#258

Post by jaynetics »

proxysna wrote: post #215
mcky wrote: post #145

Worth noting in all of this that Belarus recently closed their land borders to citizens [1], under the guise of COVID, but in reality to stop people leaving. The only way out was flying from Minsk, which is now even less of an option if there are no flights to the EU. As others have said these sanctions will likely do more to harm the repressed citizens of the regime than Lukashenko [1] https://www.bnt.eu/cs/zpravy/p…

People (me and friends) reroute their travel through Moscow to get to Minsk now. Annoying but still i believe that this is a right decision from eu side.

just out of curiosity, are you worried that posts such as this one could land you in trouble at some point? or are you taking steps like using a VPN for this?

Re: EU bans Belarusian airlines from European skies

#259

Post by bob_roboto »

jonplackett wrote: post #220
ForHackernews wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like it would give carte blanche for criminals to flee the country to avoid justice.

*only if someone will take them

Maybe I'm cynical but I'd bet money on people being able to turn this into a business...

Re: EU bans Belarusian airlines from European skies

#260

Post by EliRivers »

londons_explore wrote: post #221
refactor_master wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The free market has a pretty terrible track record when it comes to human rights, though. What would countries stand to gain from this, realistically? No country wants economic refugees.

There are a few countries who will pretty much let anybody in. Migrants often bring with them skills that the locals don't have, and in any mass migration, those who migrate (vs stay where they are) tend to be the fitter, smarter, richer people. The main reason not to take migrants is you might see substantial economic losses as migrants send income back home to support family. You might alienate your existing popula…

you might see substantial economic losses as migrants send income back home to support family.

Is that a real problem? Assume they get paid in local currency (e.g. US dollars).

Option one; they buy a foreign currency with those US dollars, and send that foreign currency overseas. The dollars stay in the US and get spent.

Option two, they send those US dollars overseas; those US dollars ultimately either come back to the US to be spent (in which case the fact that they circled around the world matters as much as if they sat in a wallet in Utah for a year), or they never come back and the US is ahead on the deal, given that the worker did some work but US society will never need to hand over goods/services in exchange.

I guess my hypothesis is that either those US dollars get spent in the US, or they don't. If they do, it's just like a non-migrant worker. If they don't, US society got work done and didn't have to give back goods/services - bargain for US society.

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