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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

#251

Post by niteshpant »

andrepd wrote: post #189
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.

Even the memories are no antidote. In the Philippines the memory of Marcos didn't stop autocrats from rising to power. Even in Europe, countries with relatively recent memories of autocracy and fascism, such as Portugal and Spain, have far-right parties with >20% seats in Parliament, just like in France or Germany. What is to be done?

It is not a question of what, but a question of why.

Why do autocrats rise to power? Why are far-right parties rising in power in Germany, France, Spain and Portugal?

I've come to see this as a fundamental human nature one can't go against. Some people are, just evil. Humans will always love self more than others. This love of self can turn into a hatred of others, or easily be turned into a hatred of others.

Acceptance that evil forces and opportunitists and populists will always be around us is the first step in asnwering what is to be done

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#252

Post by tacitusarc »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #156
bhickey wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think its quite something that we all waste our time over divisions like left/right, capitalism/socialism, woke/not-woke when in practice; this is the only division that matters. Those who are trying to follow the rules and make the nation better, and those that are only active for their self-interest.

There’s an interesting book “What is Wong with the World”, which points out that despite everyone agreeing that things are broken and people should unite to fix them, there are many competing visions for what “fixed” looks like, and this is been the source of much of the contention.

It was written in the early 1900s.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#254

Post by rpac0 »

Every major global news outlet is portraying Nepal’s protest as being against a “social media ban.” That is misleading. Even most large local media houses are pushing the same narrative—which is not surprising, since many of them serve as PRs agents for political parties.

A bit about Nepal—the government here is run by a bunch of old farts. They are deeply corrupt and will do anything, legal or not, to protect their positions and continue embezzling the national budget. They lack accountability because they know they can/and have gotten away with anything. Example of a recent one [1]. Their children live lavishly, flexing their designer bags and watches, while the commoners struggle working tough jobs overseas just to survive.

They know that by controlling social media—as they already did with TikTok—they can censor any news about their corruption (which is a norm here) easily and keep the people in dark and in their favor. Now, they want Meta and Google to comply with their agenda and with the election coming, they need this bad!

This protest was never about a “social media ban.” It was against years and years of corruption, embezzlement and censorship. It was supposed to be peaceful. But politics here is a dirty game, and these veterans are seasoned pros. They hired goons to infiltrate the peaceful crowds, cause chaos and damage public property—a very old tactic here. That is how the demonstration spiraled out of control.

If you want to hear the voices of real people, look at r/Nepal and r/NepalSocial on Reddit.

And ask yourself—do you really think people are ready to risk their lives just for social media?

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/NepalSocial/comments/1n9ra2q/hit_an...

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#255

Post by darkwater »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #230
uncircle wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because all rules have been created for your own good, so you must follow without ever questioning them. The world is more nuanced than your silly black-and-white duality, unless it's a Twitter argument and it's all about dividing the world in convenient us-vs-them boxes.

I think you're misunderstanding my point. Either you believe in the society you live in, or you don't. The story specifically speaks of people high up within that society that do not believe in it and are using their position to undermine that society in order to benefit themselves.. That, for me, is the #1 problematic archetype of person. Its not just about the rules and if you follow them or not, its about the beli…

> Either you believe in the society you live in, or you don't.

This makes GP even more correct. One can believe (and like) part of the society one lives in but not like other parts, or plainly think they are wrong and should be changed at all costs.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#256

Post by myrmidon »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #73
myrmidon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Trump is "managed" by whom, then? Musk? The Koch brothers? George Soros?

I don't see why you would ever want some mercurial populist in power if you are rich and established; risks to wealth/investments wastly outweight any potential gains from billionaire-friendly tax policy (and you could lobby for such tax policy elsewhere, as well).

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#257

Post by logicchains »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #156
bhickey wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think its quite something that we all waste our time over divisions like left/right, capitalism/socialism, woke/not-woke when in practice; this is the only division that matters. Those who are trying to follow the rules and make the nation better, and those that are only active for their self-interest.

Exactly. The problems with both governments and corporations come from when individuals working for them are able to act "above the law", and get away with things that if done by a solitary, poor person would land that person in jail. In a truly just society nobody would be above the law.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#258

Post by mothballed »

niteshpant wrote: post #246
somenameforme wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think when people, particularly in America, think "protest", they think of people walking around with placards and other such relatively low effort involvement. That article is talking about incidents where you have 3.5% of people (that would be 12 million people in the US) engaging in things like organized and real boycotts (as opposed to 'Yeah I'm boycotting [this place I've never even heard of, let alone shopped…

> I think when people, particularly in America, think "protest", they think of people walking around with placards and other such relatively low effort involvement. Growing up in Nepal and witnessing some large non-violent and violent protests, I was frankly, baffled to see people standing on the sides of the streets and holding sign boards as protests Where's the rallies? Where is the mass involvement needed for a s…

The USA has an astonishly effective machine at stomping out protests for anything more than holding up a sign. BLM in Minneapolis was allowed to go on because the politician agreed with it. (Tim Walz's wife famously noted how much she enjoyed the smell of the burning tires.) []

When I was young and still under the illusion protests did anything, I recall going to a protest during the 'occupy' days. Obama was coming into town and we wanted him to be able to hear us chanting or see our signs.

My memory is pretty bad at this point on the context, but roughly how I remember it going was he was going to some sort of convention center. We started walking there, and about halfway there this mysterious but incredibly confident and authoritative person with a megaphone showed up and told us we had succeeded and the protest was over. About 90% of people actually believed that and left. The 10% of us that were like "who the hell is this lady and why would anyone listen to her" kept going. Then the police surrounded us and beat the shit out of anyone they could get to. We never got anywhere close to Obama's route.

[] https://nypost.com/2024/08/07/us-news/gwen-walz-said-she-kep...

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#259

Post by screye »

zahlman wrote: post #235
screye wrote: post #190

Nepal is an interesting nation. Compared to nearby poor nations, Nepal is safe and its people are perceived to be welcoming. It's the only serious candidate for being a ski-nation in all of mainland Asia. If Nepal wanted, it could transform itself into a Bali style tourist destination and ascend towards being a middle economy. Unlike India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, which have to solve 1-billion-people scale problems,…

> But, economic liberalization can sometimes look like colonization, and this hurts the ego of proud global-south nations. As an aside, this categorization ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_North_and_Global_South ) has always seemed problematic to me. > The Global South classification, as used by governmental and developmental organizations, was first introduced as a more open and value-free alternative to Third…

It's called the global south because it is poor. These terms (3rd world, developing world) are associated with poverty because they are a cluster of poor nations. The countries are poor because they're badly run. Their institutions are corrupt. Their population is under-educated and under-productive.

It can't value free, because there will always be a value judgement here.

It hurts. Yes, colonialism and a history of foreign exploitation has meant that global south nations have been dealt worse cards. But, the present is what it is. I'm sick of poor nations (like my own) feeding their delusions about the current state of their nation. The people have to learn to separate their identity as proud successors of a rich historic culture and their current state of disrepair. The inability to do so, keeps us poor and susceptible to further exploitation by local power brokers.

Just because twitter influencers use more offensive terms for these nations, doesn't mean that civil forums should overcompensate with euphemisms that hides the obvious judgement inherent to such groupings.

Re: 14 Killed in anti-government protests in Nepal

#260

Post by isk517 »

screye wrote: post #196
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.

I've found it to be the other war around. Protests succeed, and they crown (usually conservative) authoritarians as the new king. Arab spring & Bangladesh are the 2 recent examples.

George Washington's single greatest feat was not making the office of the president just another way of saying 'king'.
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