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magz
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03 Aug 2021, 11:08 am

I know news from Eastern Europe are rarely discussed in English-speaking media, but it's getting weirder and weirder.
https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/c909d02 ... ction-2020
After widespread protests following disputed vote, brutality and mass arrests, things went international when Minsk hijacked a Ryanair plane to arrest its passenger flying to Lithuania https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57219860
Now a Bealrussian activist (opposition activist, of course) in Ukraine was found dead in a park https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58065313
In the meantime, a sprinter got death threats for merely criticising organisational issues of her national representation, ending in her forcibly taken to the airport and ultimately aquiring a humanitarian visa from Poland https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58052144

Regimes become paranoid when their collapse gets near and this regime is clearly collapsing.
But it can collapse in two possible directions: East or West. Become practically a part of Russia or become another European (even if flawed) democracy.
I see what's happening now as some tipping point.


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Fnord
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03 Aug 2021, 11:55 am

magz wrote:
[...] Regimes become paranoid when their collapse gets near and this regime is clearly collapsing.  But it can collapse in two possible directions: East or West.  Become practically a part of Russia or become another European (even if flawed) democracy.  I see what's happening now as some tipping point.
Whatever it was before, it will become again; this time, only worse.


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magz
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03 Aug 2021, 12:11 pm

Fnord wrote:
magz wrote:
[...] Regimes become paranoid when their collapse gets near and this regime is clearly collapsing.  But it can collapse in two possible directions: East or West.  Become practically a part of Russia or become another European (even if flawed) democracy.  I see what's happening now as some tipping point.
Whatever it was before, it will become again; this time, only worse.

Not necessarily. I've lived through a transformation that improved a lot.


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Fnord
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03 Aug 2021, 12:13 pm

magz wrote:
Fnord wrote:
magz wrote:
[...] Regimes become paranoid when their collapse gets near and this regime is clearly collapsing.  But it can collapse in two possible directions: East or West.  Become practically a part of Russia or become another European (even if flawed) democracy.  I see what's happening now as some tipping point.
Whatever it was before, it will become again; this time, only worse.
Not necessarily. I've lived through a transformation that improved a lot.
I hope you are correct.  Belarus seems to be following a path that leads straight to a totalitarian government.


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magz
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03 Aug 2021, 12:29 pm

Fnord wrote:
I hope you are correct.  Belarus seems to be following a path that leads straight to a totalitarian government.
Belarus is already a totalitarian government. The question is what happens when the current one collapses.

Poland and Lithuania host pro-democratic, anti-Moscow Belarusian activists - which funnily mirrors the historical dependencies in the region. Belarus is the part of Ruthenia (Russian-speaking lands) that historically was controlled by Lithuania. Moscow wanted to conquer it for their claims of "all Russia" but they were extremely brutal from the very rise of Moscow, so local authorities in nowadays Belarus and Ukraine often chose to stay loyal to Poland-Lithuania against Moscow.

Now, the history is funnily repeating itself, as the sides of the struggle over Belarus and Ukraine are now EU (including Poland and Lithuania most actively supporting their pro-democratic movements) and Russia (claiming them with their standard methods).


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03 Aug 2021, 12:35 pm

I don’t know much about the region except they used to sell tractors made there here.Good ones.Nobody pronounced the name right.


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Fnord
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03 Aug 2021, 12:37 pm

magz wrote:
Fnord wrote:
I hope you are correct.  Belarus seems to be following a path that leads straight to a totalitarian government.
Belarus is already a totalitarian government. [...]
I was thinking of North Korea when I typed that.


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magz
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03 Aug 2021, 12:37 pm

Misslizard wrote:
I don’t know much about the region except they used to sell tractors made there here.Good ones.Nobody pronounced the name right.
MT3 pronounced "MTZ" :D

And my mother in law had her Minsk fridge up to last year :lol:


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magz
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03 Aug 2021, 12:44 pm

Fnord wrote:
magz wrote:
Fnord wrote:
I hope you are correct.  Belarus seems to be following a path that leads straight to a totalitarian government.
Belarus is already a totalitarian government. [...]
I was thinking of North Korea when I typed that.

I don't think they could make another North Korea.
1. Different culture - my visit to South Korea made me realise how North Korea is possible;
2. They can't isolate that much in their location - landlocked, with long borders and vitally interested neighbours, they just can't close that way.
The more totalitarian scenario for Belarus would be complete dependency on Russia - and even that could probably be better than what they're having now - from the point of view of an average Belarussian.


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03 Aug 2021, 1:01 pm

magz wrote:
Fnord wrote:
magz wrote:
Fnord wrote:
I hope you are correct.  Belarus seems to be following a path that leads straight to a totalitarian government.
Belarus is already a totalitarian government. [...]
I was thinking of North Korea when I typed that.

I don't think they could make another North Korea.
1. Different culture - my visit to South Korea made me realise how North Korea is possible;
2. They can't isolate that much in their location - landlocked, with long borders and vitally interested neighbours, they just can't close that way.
The more totalitarian scenario for Belarus would be complete dependency on Russia - and even that could probably be better than what they're having now - from the point of view of an average Belarussian.


Exactly.

It will either go western- and start to fumble towards democracy. Or it will become a satellite of Putin's Russia (maybe even merge into Russia) and become an authoritarian vassal of Moscow. But even that would be a step up in freedom from the dictator they have now (widely branded as the last of the old school Stalin/Hitler type dictators in Europe).

But for exactly that reason - coming instability in the changeover- the country might become another flashpoint between Russia and the west. Just saw something on the Net browser news about how Japan is beefing up its missle defense on small islands threatened by China. Things are getting more confrontational on both sides of the Eurasian landmass.



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03 Aug 2021, 1:29 pm

magz wrote:
Misslizard wrote:
I don’t know much about the region except they used to sell tractors made there here.Good ones.Nobody pronounced the name right.
MT3 pronounced "MTZ" :D

And my mother in law had her Minsk fridge up to last year :lol:

People here pronounced Belarus, Bah- lair - us.I didn’t bother correcting them.I knew it was a lost cause.


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magz
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03 Aug 2021, 1:55 pm

Misslizard wrote:
People here pronounced Belarus, Bah- lair - us.I didn’t bother correcting them.I knew it was a lost cause.
:lol:

naturalplastic wrote:
Just saw something on the Net browser news about how Japan is beefing up its missle defense on small islands threatened by China. Things are getting more confrontational on both sides of the Eurasian landmass.
And in the middle - let's not forget Afghanistan.


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03 Aug 2021, 2:58 pm

Putin will do everything in his power to keep any new Byelorussian regime from allying itself with the west. Belarus would get the same treatment Ukraine is getting now: destabilization and violation of its territorial integrity with the flimsy justification of "protecting ethnic Russians". Belarus will become only as democratic as Putin allows.


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magz
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08 Nov 2021, 11:35 am

In the meantime, things are going very bad direction. Lukashenko acting as a mass human trafficker, using these people to make a "situation"...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59206685
I don't think Polish response is right, either.
Things are getting dense.


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08 Nov 2021, 3:22 pm

Belarus & Russia are creating a union state, some measures have already been implemented, most relevant being a united armed forces, preventing a similar breakaway event that happened in Ukraine.

If Belarus gov are overthrown Russians already have control over armed forces and a presence in the country unlike kiev 2013, when Russia had limited leavers apart from far east of country.

There`s also a bit of a conspiracy theory that Lukashenko expected to be president of Russia, but got Belarus causing a long term grudge between the two men.

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/putin-l ... e/2412346#


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08 Nov 2021, 6:20 pm

Interesting twist for Americans: it seems one of the fugitives from the Jan 6th capital breach has sought asylum in Belarus. For anyone to walk into that autocratic government situation in order to avoid what most likely would have been less than a year of jail time here in the US leaves me incredibly perplexed.


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