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14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

tribuneindia.com

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Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#31

Post by tomrod »

cedws wrote: post #22
perihelions wrote: post #7

Hard-earned freedoms are wasted on societies who don't have memories of what it took to earn them. Freedom is a ratchet: slides easily and frictionlessly one way, and offers immense resistance in the other. This is all so disheartening.

I’m not aware of a single nation where the ratchet is loosening. It appears freedom is being eroded everywhere. The most disheartening thing is that nothing works to stop it. There are countries where millions of people have protested, but in time the protests always fizzle or are stamped out, and things continue on the same trajectory.

I fear that your observations speaks more to protest being an inefficient catalyst for regime change more than it speaks to the efforts and initiatives to preserve freedom.

The jetset class doesn't really care about a single nation. For good (trade binds fractious governments) or ill (neofeudalism), they try to separate themselves from the proles.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#32

Post by bhickey »

lionturtle wrote: post #10

It was absolutely not just social media ban, it was mostly youth protesting against the corrupt government and unfairness, social media ban was one element that was against the freedom of speech, but it was right around the time where everyone was documenting the rich politicians, their business connections and their families that have been living lavishly and just inheriting the election seats from generation to gen…

The corruption is simply incredible. About fifteen years ago I found myself in Kathmandu after getting altitude sickness. The team's fixer brought me to lunch with some government officials. The topic of discussion? How to steal from a hydroelectric project. One of his guests outright asked, "should we be talking about this in front of this guy?" The fixer shrugged it off saying "he's a Westerner, what is he going to do about it?" And, well, he was right. It wasn't like I could go report it to the police.

Years later the fixer was finally jailed for gold smuggling. https://english.khabarhub.com/2022/16/232667/

Edit: add link

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#33

Post by mothballed »

cedws wrote: post #22
perihelions wrote: post #7

Hard-earned freedoms are wasted on societies who don't have memories of what it took to earn them. Freedom is a ratchet: slides easily and frictionlessly one way, and offers immense resistance in the other. This is all so disheartening.

I’m not aware of a single nation where the ratchet is loosening. It appears freedom is being eroded everywhere. The most disheartening thing is that nothing works to stop it. There are countries where millions of people have protested, but in time the protests always fizzle or are stamped out, and things continue on the same trajectory.

Protests are rarely effectual, they serve more to gauge interest of others and provide connections.

In the end the state is a force of violence. Voting works in so much as it is roughly a tally of who would win if we all pulled knives on each other. Democracy was formed at a time when guns and knives were the most effectual tools the state had to fight against the populace. Now that the government has more asymmetric tools democracy is likely a weaker gauge of how to avoid violence, because the most practical thing voting does is bypass violence by ascertaining ahead of time who would win in a fight.

As this asymmetry becomes more profound, the bargaining power of the populace erodes, and voting becomes more of a rigged game. If the populace can't check the power of the elite, the elite has no carrot to respect the human rights of others.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#34

Post by [deleted] »

myrmidon wrote: post #28
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people in the West have been indoctrinated to trust their governments far too much to an unhealthy degree to actually think that maybe their government doesn't have their best interest at heart and to start protesting. And also because they're in the trap of a government provided cushy lifestyle which the government can terminate at will without violence (de-banking, de-pensioning, de-uneployment, de-social h…

> Because people in the West have been indoctrinated to trust their governments far too much to an unhealthy degree Can you give specific examples? I frequently find the US outlook to be exactly the reverse, where people pretend like "the government" is some conspiratorial shadow organisation undermining all the citizens at every step (which seems quite silly to me because it basically consists only of people that yo…

[deleted]

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#35

Post by dncornholio »

lionturtle wrote: post #10

It was absolutely not just social media ban, it was mostly youth protesting against the corrupt government and unfairness, social media ban was one element that was against the freedom of speech, but it was right around the time where everyone was documenting the rich politicians, their business connections and their families that have been living lavishly and just inheriting the election seats from generation to gen…

Don't get too caught on this. Even if you were only protesting because of the social media ban, you'd still receive support. Don't worry about it.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#36

Post by FirmwareBurner »

myrmidon wrote: post #28
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people in the West have been indoctrinated to trust their governments far too much to an unhealthy degree to actually think that maybe their government doesn't have their best interest at heart and to start protesting. And also because they're in the trap of a government provided cushy lifestyle which the government can terminate at will without violence (de-banking, de-pensioning, de-uneployment, de-social h…

> Because people in the West have been indoctrinated to trust their governments far too much to an unhealthy degree Can you give specific examples? I frequently find the US outlook to be exactly the reverse, where people pretend like "the government" is some conspiratorial shadow organisation undermining all the citizens at every step (which seems quite silly to me because it basically consists only of people that yo…

>Can you give specific examples?

Most rich western/northern European countries.

>which seems quite silly to me because it basically consists only of people that you directly or indirectly voted for

It's not silly when you consider that the candidates you can vote for, are all managed oppositions, each owned and supported by various mega-money interest groups. Why else did Bernie Sanders never got nominated as a presidential candidate even though many people supported him? Because he's not bought and paid for by the lobbyist groups. In every country it's like that.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#38

Post by BoxFour »

mothballed wrote: post #18
seer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a random tourist caught up in all of this in Nepal right now, but what I gathered was that corruption and anti-government sentiment was the reason, but the social networks ban tipped people over the edge to start protesting.

Nepal government made the classic mistake of not realizing if you let people scream into the ether on whatever the youth use as twitter, they won't meet up with their friends to scream on the street or even worse.

Social media has proven to be quite an effective tool for mobilizing protests and beyond. I get how the short-sighted might see it as a tactical move to "cripple logistics" by banning social media.

But, the reason I call it short-sighted is exactly what you said: Removing those earlier pressure-release valves doesn’t solve the underlying issue at all and just increases the risk of a more volatile outcome.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#40

Post by mothballed »

yieldcrv wrote: post #30
mothballed wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm totally ignorant of the human right situation in nepal. In the copy I found of their constitution, it only mentioned freedom of speech for the government. On their house floor. What was it like there in recent times? Much state repression for political thought or unapproved opinions?

Always have to look deeper either way The Chinese constitution guarantees free speech universally, another part of the constitution is used to control all facets of life in line with the state narrative, and that’s a charitable interpretation when we just pretend that the process of law matters at all, and distinguish when it is just procedural theatre or a real constraint on the state Conflicting parts of constituti…

Appreciate the analysis. Do you think this is the status quo continuing in Nepal, or is the human right situation degrading?
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