191–200 of 332 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sanctions are almost always too weak. Any sanction that the government can withstand is too weak and will have the affect you describe. A strong sanction that says "release the prisoner immediately" will be short and not affect citizens long enough to create such a sentiment.
What kind of sanction do you have in mind?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Criticism is allowed unless you have ambitions to work in government. Critique of the government has become actually quite common in the Russian stand up comedy scene. There are some exceptions, like you cannot show any public disrespect to the Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov (you can google how people apologise to him). Edit (forgot to mention): also, participating in anti-government protests often resul…
> participating in anti-government protests often results in people losing their jobs or being expelled from the universities This is quickly becoming the situation in the US if you criticize popular political movements.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the Chinese you can tell when they cannot even refer to, say or admit certain things: e.g. massacres. But they would say "we are not being censored" For China and Russia, etc, it feels as if by mocking the hypocrisy of the West they are naively assuming that there's no such criticism from within the West. I think this is revealing but I might be wrong.
> For the Chinese you can tell when they cannot even refer to, say or admit certain things: e.g. massacres. But they would say "we are not being censored" It is exactly the same in Russia, you may not mention certain historical facts at all, e.g. Germany-USSR cooperation during 1939-1941
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> For the Chinese you can tell when they cannot even refer to, say or admit certain things: e.g. massacres. But they would say "we are not being censored" It is exactly the same in Russia, you may not mention certain historical facts at all, e.g. Germany-USSR cooperation during 1939-1941
Well, this is fine example of so-called "lie", plain and simple. You may mention it, and often it is being mentioned by all kinds of media. Things that really are frowned upon are highly controversial topics like alleged mass raping by the Red Army in Germany during WW2 . Other than that, no holds are barred, and things are discussed freely; I'd say hot topics are more frequent in Russian media than in the US one ; b…
This will likely have no consequences to the regime in Belarus, while increasing costs to these Baltic airlines. A policy that might achieve something would be if the Baltic states, together with Poland and Ukraine, would close their airspace to Belavia planes, until the detained passenger is delivered to his destination in Vilnius. This will increase costs to Belarusian airlines, which would be a problem to the regi…
>This will likely have no consequences to the regime in Belarus That's the problem with sanctions, at some point you run of of things to take away. From then on your target can pretty much do what ever they want, knowing that things can't really get any worse.
But also knowing that things can get better. The incentive to do the "right" thing doesn't disappear. It only can't be increased further.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is an important difference. The Bolivian plane was warned sufficiently in advance and had enough fuel to flight back to Russia at that point. The Ryanair flight was forced to land with a military jet leaving the pilots no choice but to comply. But I agree that what Western Europe did to Bolivian flight backfires now badly.
It's not like Morales told why he was being barred entry to four different countries' air spaces. In both cases the pilot was lied to to capture a dissident and in neither case were the passengers in danger. Lukashenko's propaganda will get a boost from this. Indeed, it's possibly what emboldened him to try it, safe in the knowledge that Europe and the US could only condemn it hypocritically. The West loses moral aut…
This is a whole different category and that's why the whataboutism isn't working this time and the standard "losing moral authority" talking points sound particularly shallow and unconvicing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Clearance to fly through and clearance to make an emergency landing due to doubts about the fuel gauge (we have the cockpit audio discussing the latter...) are not the same thing. If there was really a dastardly plot to capture the guy that wasn't even on the aircraft, they'd have gone for fighter jets, not "don't land in our country, land in the country you're flying over where a diplomat will be mildly undiplomatic…
One could argue that figher jets were not used at that time to keep the pretence of legitimacy of the entire episode. And that pretence is important, because when you publicly declare that the force is now the standard, the most unscrupulous bully wins over bullies with moral limits or political liabilities. Belarus, on the other hand, in its current political environment has no image to lose.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know that people can joke about the west in Russia but are people allowed to make jokes about their own government in Russia and in the associated eastern european states? Is it like China yet? I'm guessing not as there's no visible list of banned words and phrases, but we don't see (in HN) much criticism of Russia, Belarus from there, just attacks on the hypocrisy of the West. Do you see it headed towards China, w…
> are people allowed to make jokes about their own government in Russia and in the associated eastern european states? What "associated astern european states" do you mean?