14 Killed in Anti-Government Protests in Nepal

> 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 you directly or indirectly voted for).

My view is that if you have incompetent, selfish administrators in a western democracy, then just don't vote for them next time; if they keep getting elected, then maybe your countries actual problem are the idiot voters instead (or possibly not-actually-independent mass media, the importance of which can not be overstated).

Hey, Belgian here. Our government cannot just de-bank, de-pension or de- anything else you are suggesting, and definitely not by the "crime" of protesting (what a ridiculous statement!)

We protest here too by the way, this weekend about 100k in Brussels.

That you make these claims is just plain up ridiculous.

News to me that the French, for example, trust their government and do not protest.

Of course they log in, I never said otherwise, but only if they want to write about stuff that is pretty much inconsequential to their lives, such as sports or celebrity culture.

>>the UK also bans threats to people who aren't the president

It also bans non-specific jokey threats and arrests you with five armed police officers.

> And who has the last word on what's moral?

The standard assumption in business is that you follow local laws and customs as they are a proxy for the moral system of the local people.

Are you operating a business or promoting western ideas?

Did you read the next sentence?

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.

> “No movement of people, demonstration, meeting, gathering or sit-in will be allowed in the restricted zone,” Chief District Officer Chhabi Lal Rijal said in a notice.

This is what I'll never understand about neolib governments sliding towards authoritarianism: why push back so hard? Evacuate the parliamentary buildings, don't meet the protestors with police, and let them have the run of the place. Record every face on CCTV, and then spend the next couple months vanishing them. The USSR understood this and it's that kind of forward-thinking that lets the likes of Putin maintain authority all the way from his career as a KGB agent through to now.

These governments responding to protests with tear gas and batons fail not only at effective authoritarianism, but also at being good liberal democracies where people can safely protest - which is possible, Taiwan has had two record sized protests in my life and at neither of them did the police advance with batons and beat the shit out of people.

That's a huge leap from directly instigating genocide that actually happened to "We must limit speech that advocates limiting the freedoms of people to live as independent and equal citizens." which is severe censorship of all sorts of political ideas, including ones which we already enact and most people agree with. There's a lot of widely-accepted government-enforced inequality (foreigners, prisoners, convicts, children, inherited rights, etc.) which just shows how overly broad the restrictions you say we must impose are. Even yourself saying that could be interpreted as a violation of your own rule! You also advocated for restraining orders! You're your own enemy. Your opinion could really benefit from some back and forth with other people to refine it into something more sensible. Hopefully I'm contributing a little to that.

> 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.

While absolute free speech remains unattainable in practice due to inevitable societal boundaries, it should serve as an aspirational ideal toward which we continually strive, minimizing deviations rather than expanding them. Speech restrictions often and quickly devolve into subjectivity, fostering environments where only dominant ideologies prevail.

So, of course, by all means, restrict speech that harms children, incites violence, etc., but be very careful to not open that door too widely.

To be fair the people who care about a single nation, to the detriment of all other nations, are freaks

Hilton is their passport.

> 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 privileges, including a controversial $3,000 housing allowance, in a bid to ease public fury after nationwide protests” [3].

[1] https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr/publications/35-rul...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_Revolution_(Bangladesh)

[3-] https://apnews.com/article/indonesia-protests-subianto-privi...

The new tools are largely tools of surveilance and censorship, etc.

Essentially they are tools that affect democratic coordination more so than fighting. If you can still coordinate despite them, then the amtal rule applies.

> It's why I'm here - it's one of the only countries on earth for which I'm politically optimistic.

My curiosity is piqued by this. Do you mean to say you've moved there from somewhere place? And what do you mean, why is it the only country for which you're politically optimistic?

I don't mean to pry, and have no ulterior motive or point in asking. It just seems like a strong statement, and I cannot guess what you mean, or if I'm missing some cultural insinuation here or something. Taiwan does sound like a very interesting place to me, generally, though.

Lucky you! Taiwan is such a great place, I hope it will thrive in spite of its bullies.

A bit of brainwashing through some media owned by billionaires and there we go for another round. My parents' generation is voting en masse for a party that was literally funded by a former Waffen-SS leader after WW2, while thinking "the left" is antisemitic.

> fall into death hears

Maybe I'm missing a pun somewhere, but the phrase is 'fall onto deaf ears'!

>How short the memory of folks can be, especially with my parents and grand parents generations still around

A good thing to remember is that shitloads of people didn't learn from those kinds of events.

The young adults who threw rocks at black girls going to white schools in the southern USA are still alive and still voting and still hold a grudge.

Look when the civil rights act passed, and look how hard the south went republican after that.

>Maybe when they start getting visits from the eventually new state protection police, they will understand, then it will be too late.

A lot of genuine Nazi believers went to "political" camps during the Nazi regime and they did not change their tune. They eventually got out, and just kept being Nazis, because they were Nazis because they genuinely believe the ideology. People who were literally sidelined by stupid Nazis infighting continued to advance the goals of the Nazis regime. Getting targeted and harmed by their very own regime did not change their opinion of it.

The same happened in Soviet Russia to all sorts of genuine communists who got gulag'd anyway, and still strongly held communist (stalinist even) beliefs (if they survived)

Tribalism is one of the strongest buttons humans have. We should be less surprised that it works so effectively

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

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

The Chinese, North Korean, and old USSR constitutions all contain(ed) strong language "guaranteeing" universal freedom of speech.

It's a bit like that Game of Thrones scene where Sean Bean brings a slip of paper into the throne room.

Agreed but if the right doesn't exist on paper it's not likely the government is going to respect it in practice. Although there are exceptions (most Somalia has de facto right to bear arms despite it being super illegal).

> long periods of political instability make people quite happy to trade freedoms for peace

To be fair, the Romans traded long periods of recurring civil wars for peace. We’re nowhere close to that in America.

Calling people who hold beliefs you find wrong "evil" is, IMO, counter-productive and will lead not only to conflict but to worse outcomes for yourself (even if your side "wins"). The root of cultural differences (both within and between societies and sub-cultures) are differing beliefs of what is right and wrong; what is morally good and morally bad.

What you view as hateful, others will view as loving. And what you view as loving, others can view as hateful. Painting the opposition in simplistic terms like "evil" and refusing to even try to see why they feel they way they feel solves nothing and empowers extremists. And when groups led by such people "win", the majority still lose.

IMO, any side of any belief, be it individualism vs collectivism, atheism vs religion, sexual openness vs sexual restraint, free speech vs censorship, capitalism vs socialism, etc, etc. can easily morph into something harmful. You may have discovered "evil", but after many decades, I've come to see that most people's hearts are in the right place. But there are always a significant fraction on any side of any issue that, for whatever reason, cannot regulate their emotions and seem to need to strive for the extremes.

Compromise can happen if you reject extremists. Solutions can be found if you understand that the extremists on your own side are as much the opposition as the other side of an issue. Purity of belief always seems attractive on the surface. But moderation is not a cop out, it's pragmatism. Moderation is the practical philosophy through which solutions can be found. Fundamentalism, extremism, dogmatism, are approaches that lead to worse outcomes. Moderation leads to better outcomes. History has shown this again and again.

If the closest you can get to understanding populists is “some humans are just evil and selfish”, a large part of humanity will remain mysterious and unreachable to you.

I think everyone understands tribalism to some extent. You would probably expend more effort to protect your child than you would a stranger. Populism just turns up the knob on this instinct.

It's not terribly unusual to end up with random government officials if you're a white guy going into a non-touristy part of the 3rd world. I went to a village in Paraguay, first thing locals did was take me to some government project creating an industrial cow milking operation where I was promptly offered an engineering job.

Low-level 3rd world officials love showing off whatever they're doing to whoever will listen. They usually don't have much else to do. It is best to accept their offer and drink the tea with them or whatever, get on their good side and talk about how modern their little village is, and get on their good graces.

One of my college friends is a documentary filmmaker. He dragged me along as he followed a group of glaciologists up to a high-risk melt lake in the Himalayas. Somewhere above 16,000 feet I got altitude sickness and headed back to Kathmandu ahead of the group.

I got stuck in the city for two or three days waiting for my flight, under the supervision of the team's local fixer. This guy had his finger in every pie: tourism, automobile importing, etc. I wound up at lunch with him because his assistant wasn't available to play tour guide.

Edit: I'll add that I got lucky getting sick. Shortly after my flight out a large earthquake struck, stranding the rest of the group in the Khumbu for nearly a week.

I mean, it's not an uncommon job. Hasn't everyone hung out with a "government official" at some point? Even the people who work the counter at the DMV are government officials, technically. (And are perfectly capable of engaging in corruption, if there is insufficient oversight.)

It doesn't sound like the parent commenter was having lunch with the president. Just some random bureaucrats overseeing a construction project.

I don’t quite see how this is indicative of corruption

Honestly that’s kind of polite in a strange way.

They could have just bumped anyone when they needed a ticket.

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