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14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

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Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#71

Post by nirava »

MangoToupe wrote: post #6
netsharc wrote: post #3

So where's the donkey and where's the cart. It reads like: citizens have been protesting the government using social media, government desperate to curb dissent bans social media, dissent is now on the streets.. Or maybe it's as straightforward as the media has been reporting.

It also seems reasonable that companies have to follow local laws to operate there. Corporations superseding states seems just as dystopian as state repression of dissent. Granted, there is either confusion or misrepresentation as Mastodon is also banned. The reporting seems pretty meagre; even strictly with these events, how are so many dying from batons and rubber bullets? Sure these can kill, but fourteen people?

- Local law meant to censor heavily any dissent - several pro corruption measures passed in the last few years - the people have been angry for long - social media just meant people now have to come on the streets

lazily pasting one of my comments from yesterday

"So after sacking the wildly (and deservingly) popular Chairman of the National Electricity Authority, after allowing ministers to set arbitrary and uncapped salaries for themselves and their workers, after obstructing and undermining the wildly (and deservingly) popular mayor of the Capital, and after doing like 15 of these really major, objectively anti-nation things, and getting called out for it in Social Media by the commoners, the 73 year old Prime Minister (in many ways a Trump-like figure; immune to shame or criticism) moves to ban social media in the country. "

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#72

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

jay-barronville wrote: post #19
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.

Hard agree. I’m always trying to get my fellow young Americans to understand this and it seems to go right over their heads a lot of times. My parents lived through multiple oppressive dictatorships before emigrating to America. Once I understood everything that they and their families experienced ( e.g. , family members being kidnapped, disappeared, and eventually murdered simply due their political views), I gained…

I actually don’t know if I agree with the last part. A chunk of the Rwandan genocide was a radio station instigating and advocating for the mass slaughter of a people. Atrocities in Myanmar also were originally advocated for in Facebook. On more personal levels, domestic abuse is also psychological torture and the wearing down of a person with words and it should be in someone’s right to file a restraining order to stop being contacted by their abuser even if the abuser doesn’t perform physical violence.

That is to say I broadly agree with the notion that speech should be relatively unfettered, but I do believe there must be exceptions for speech that actively aims to fetter people. We must limit speech that advocates limiting the freedoms of people to live as independent and equal citizens.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#73

Post by FirmwareBurner »

myrmidon wrote: post #65
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 presi…

I'm not disputing that there is gonna be some degree of plutocracy when political funding is uncontrolled and media presence can be bought for cheap. But I think "managed opposition is the best you can get as voter" is incorrect; Trump is in my view neither managed nor "pro-establishment" in any way, and if everything was actually under "capitalist" control, then people like Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez or Tim Walz would n…

>Trump is in my view neither managed

Bruh.

> Italy where they are in power

Melloni only pretended to be anti establishment to win elections, but isn't. She campaigned on deporting illegals, and then gave them residency and right to work lol. Tell me a bigger rug pull. Trump is the same, he campaigned on a lot of things(Epstein list anyone?), but not actually executed on them or only did it only as a show (DOGE).

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#74

Post by x187463 »

canadiantim wrote: post #64
cedws wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

Not even close. Sure, the cancel-culture of the left twitter-verse has weakened, but that was not a government enforced restriction. Meanwhile, the current administration is literally removing signage and museum exhibits which offend their sensibilities. They are removing funding from institutions, kicking people out of the country, and manufacturing 'investigations' into anybody who opposes them. They took over the damn Kennedy Center for honoring people they don't like. You've lost all manner of sense thinking this is improving free-speech. Listen to the tech bros and any other official sitting at the white house glazing the president to his face and tell me that's due to increased free-speech.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#75

Post by whimsicalism »

asib wrote: post #17

> The demonstration turned violent when some protesters entered the Parliament complex, prompting police to resort to baton charges, tear gas shells and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd, eyewitnesses said. 14 people dead from so-called "non-lethal" means. How do 14 people end up dead without the police coming with intent to do harm?

i mean it’s certainly possible with crowds, police have been implicated in causing crowd crush incidents with 5x death count compared to this

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#76

Post by padjo »

canadiantim wrote: post #64
cedws wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

Please provide an example?

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#77

Post by mcny »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #48
checker659 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids died today. Not jholays.

Had to "phone a friend" on that one: "In Nepal, “jhola” (bag) turned into “jholay” is slang. It usually refers to people—often students, activists, or intellectual types—who carry a cloth bag (jhola) and are associated with being overly “bookish,” pseudo-intellectual, leftist, or idealistic. Depending on tone, it can be affectionate, neutral, or dismissive (like calling someone a “hippie” or “armchair intellectual” i…

My understanding is a jholey is a sycophant who does not have their own political principles but are "carrying the bag" for someone else. Closer to paid thugs than idealistic activists. Might want to consider a different phone a friend.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#78

Post by amulyabaral »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #48
checker659 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids died today. Not jholays.

Had to "phone a friend" on that one: "In Nepal, “jhola” (bag) turned into “jholay” is slang. It usually refers to people—often students, activists, or intellectual types—who carry a cloth bag (jhola) and are associated with being overly “bookish,” pseudo-intellectual, leftist, or idealistic. Depending on tone, it can be affectionate, neutral, or dismissive (like calling someone a “hippie” or “armchair intellectual” i…

Nepali here. In this context, a jholey is a party foot soldier. An unquestioning party worker who would literally carry their leader's bag, follow them everywhere, and do any menial task in hopes of gaining political favor.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#79

Post by JumpCrisscross »

BoxFour wrote: post #38
mothballed wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Social media has proven to be quite an effective tool for mobilizing protests

Gatherings, yes. Effective protest, I’m less convinced.

Effective protests “have clear strategic goals, use protest to broaden coalitions, seek to enlist more powerful individuals in their cause, and connect expressions of discontent to broader political and electoral mobilization” [1].

Social media helps enlist the elite. But it absolutely trashes clarity of goals and coalition broadening, often degrading into no true Scotsman contests. If a protest is well planned, social media can help it organize. But if a movement is developing, social media will as often keep it in a leaderless, undisciplined and thus ineffective state.

[1] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-power-of-protest-in-t...

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#80

Post by [deleted] »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #57
mothballed wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Protests are rarely effectual False “Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change” [1]. Exhibit A: the same region, literally last month. First protesters in Bangladesh lead “to the ouster of the then-prime minister, Sheikh Hasina” [2]. Then Indonesia “pledged to revoke lawmakers’ perks and pr…

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