The Political Lounge

[Knaldskalle]

Why are there elections in Belarus? I thought that was supposed to be the last legit dictatorship in Europe. My state education fails me again?

Most dictatorships have elections of some sort. It's a way for the regime to legitimize itself.

[Armoreska]

yeah, it works.
keeps the more feeble-minded docile.
and can sow confusion when nobody's sure who's actually got the majority.

[Pretentious Hipster]

[Pretentious Hipster]

https://globalnews.ca/news/7294181/cons ... e-ballots/

[Armoreska]

Ubisoft releases new Tom Clancy Game trailer showing Antifa and BLM inspired group as the Villains

[Armoreska]

[Pretentious Hipster]

[Pretentious Hipster]

[Armoreska]

[Pretentious Hipster]

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/ ... -in-france

[Armoreska]

[Armoreska]

[Knaldskalle]

Senior White House Advisor Stephen Miller has tested positive for Covid-19.

It's a bit puzzling to me, I thought ghouls were immune.

[Dolwphin]

David Rovics have made quite a few good songs, I remember listening to some a while back.

[Armoreska]

Yeah but that's way too satirical of vegan anarchists.

[Kublai Khan]

Yeah but that's way too satirical of vegan anarchists.

Goddamn nonconformist anarchists..

[Pretentious Hipster]

Morales party won anyways

[St. Gloede]

Incredible exit polls, winning with a 20 percentage point lead.

Let's hope there won't be any "funny business" from the US this time around.

I love that the person who undemocratically assumed power after the military coup was: "I congratulate the winners and ask them to govern thinking of Bolivia and of democracy"

Anyone close to the ground here? What will happen to those who participated in the coup?

[Pretentious Hipster]

Incredible exit polls, winning with a 20 percentage point lead.

Let's hope there won't be any "funny business" from the US this time around.

I love that the person who undemocratically assumed power after the military coup was: "I congratulate the winners and ask them to govern thinking of Bolivia and of democracy"

Anyone close to the ground here? What will happen to those who participated in the coup?

They are literally winning by a higher percentage than last year's "fake" election

[Armoreska]

what a nice popular video
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4546380/

[Armoreska]

I voted 2nd time in my life AMA.

It was horrible. No relevant info on site. Does this happen anywhere else?
Worker said I'm supposed to figure it out on the Internet (and no, quick info there is very poor too beyond some obvious stuff).
We're enslaved to oligarchs, their zombie base and the mass who give fuck all to elections.
It's a Russia offshoot.

[Pretentious Hipster]

[xianjiro]

Been reading about the bruhaha Macron's created with the Muslim world. UGH! What a mess.

My question: has anyone come across any particularly salient articles that discuss when free speech becomes hate speech or how free speech can exist alongside cultural/religious taboos in things like social media?

I must admit, while I can say some things are not hate speech and others are, is it hate speech to say "I don't like X people." where X = an identifiable group?

[PeacefulAnarchy]

I must admit, while I can say some things are not hate speech and others are, is it hate speech to say "I don't like X people." where X = an identifiable group?

Hate speech in a literal sense or hate speech in a legally actionable sense? No, saying that is not hate speech. A ton of clear unambiguous racist hate speech is still not legally actionable hate speech, even in Europe or Canada which have stronger restrictions on speech. Legally actionable hate speech requires some level of incitement to action.

You can say "group X are subhuman garbage and the world would be better if they were all dead" and that would still not be hate speech in most western countries in most contexts.

Whether your vile speech has social (and possibly economic) consequences is a completely different issue. A ton of socially disapproved speech has such consequences.

[xianjiro]

Well, as far as legally actionable, that's less what I'm trying to get my head around. After all, it's pretty hard for anything to qualify other than the rare case of Tom Metzger and his organization being held civilly liable in the death of Mulugeta Seraw, but that was also an Oregon case. (wikipedia entry) This was especially surprising because the conventional wisdom runs that Oregon constitutional protections around free expression, etc tend to be stronger than the federal Bill of Rights and court interpretation. I can discuss if anyone is specifically interested, but I want to avoid that tangent for now.

The two things I'm interested in are the Charlie Hedbo comics situation and of course how that's blowing up. I've read Macron's speech (couldn't find an official translation, but felt I got the idea quite well from Google Translate) and also the reporting on Erdoğan's fairly inflammatory rhetoric, Khan's more measured response, and then the coverage of protests throughout the Islamic world. In this situation, while I'm absolutely supportive of the French concepts of free expression and "laïcité", it does seem that Macron is pandering to the right somewhat in the lead up to his running for reelection and while he was addressing the French nation, it rather felt like he thought he was in a French bubble.

So I'm always looking to find balance between free speech (expression) and respecting the sensibilities of others, especially minority communities.

The second thing is what I'll call the policing of speech on social media. A good example is the immediate response to the story about the (Hunter Biden) "Hard Drive from Hell" and the salacious material it is said to contain. While I do have concerns about the spreading of fake news and think this situation highly suspect for various reasons, I'm also concerned that it's not really being addressed in the public sphere (to the end of validation or discreditation) and certainly blocking links and mentions on social media plays right in the hands of those arguing "left-wing media bias". Of course Wednesday's (Senate?) hearings about changing big tech's responsibilities on policing content is going to be telling.

So, on social media - which is controlled by a corporation and either not or somewhat lightly regulated depending on the jurisdiction - how do we arrive at what is free speech and what is hate speech? What I'm currently seeing is that general statements (Hate speech isn't allowed.) are problematic, so now they are starting to enumerate, so for example, Holocaust denial is flat-out prohibited on some platforms, but would arguing against established body counts be problematic?

I realize this is a really, really grey area, that's why I asked if anyone has come across particularly salient discussions on the topic elsewhere. I'm much less interested in the politics of this in the present, but am trying to establish my own set of beliefs on where free speech ends and hate speech begins.

[Dolwphin]

FREE SPEECH. VOTE!

[Pretentious Hipster]

[Cocoa]

The UK Labour party suspends Corbyn over his response to a report about the antisemitism that occurred during his time as leader of the Labour Party.


https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... sm-inquiry

The Labour party broke equalities law including harassment and discrimination over antisemitism in the party, an investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has found.

In a long-awaited report, the EHRC said there were “serious failings in the Labour party leadership in addressing antisemitism and an inadequate process for handling antisemitism complaints”.

It said Labour under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn was responsible for three breaches of the Equality Act, connected to harassment, political interference in antisemitism complaints and inadequate training for those handling the complaints.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/li ... tisemitism

Jeremy Corbyn said he did not accept all of the EHRC’s findings and that the scale of the antisemitism problem in Labour was “dramatically overstated” for political reasons.

A Labour party spokesman said: “In light of his comments made today and his failure to retract them subsequently, the Labour Party has suspended Jeremy Corbyn pending investigation.”

[Onderhond]

Any news on how Brexit is going btw?

[brokenface]

Any news on how Brexit is going btw?

Apparently Johnson is waiting to see if Trump wins before deciding whether to backtrack on an EU deal (fear being that if Biden wins, chances of quick US deal are over)

Contingency plan for Jan 1st chaos is to turn Kent into an independent nation of lorry parks. This is what the people voted for

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cityam ... ivers/amp/

Most likely at this point they just hoping that they can blame the impending economic collapse entirely on covid.

[Onderhond]

I read the UK made a deal with Japan, which is good I guess. Keep the whiskey trade going!
Apart from that there's just no news about Brexit here, and it's just two more months. I'm guessing it'll be a no-deal scenario then.

[brokenface]

I read the UK made a deal with Japan, which is good I guess. Keep the whiskey trade going!
Apart from that there's just no news about Brexit here, and it's just two more months. I'm guessing it'll be a no-deal scenario then.

It's gone quiet here too, Covid and US election rather dominating news unsurprisingly.

Some people are saying it's still quite likely Johnson will backtrack in same way he did last year and do some crappy basic EU deal which they'll try to present as some great negotiating victory. Possibly with another transition period, rebranded as something else (implementation period). Depends just how nervous they are about how bad it'll be at the border in January without a deal.

Might just be lining up for a perfect storm of lockdown over Christmas followed by cold reality of no-deal Brexit finally hitting in January. Everyone miserably locked in at home while miles of lorry queues build up and shop shelves empty. Not going to be a good combo for a wannabe-populist government.

[Onderhond]

That's dire alright.

It's a terrible thing to hope for of course, but in a way I think it'd be good in the long run when these populist governments start failing bad and visibly. Of course the short-term consequences would be horrible and not something you'd wish on another human being, but so far they've always had it easy because they were always opposition/never really in control. It would kind of proof the argument that it's populist nonsense and nothing more.

The same way you kinda wanted Trump and Bolsonaro to get really, really ill from COVID (like Johnson in fact).

[brokenface]

That's dire alright.

It's a terrible thing to hope for of course, but in a way I think it'd be good in the long run when these populist governments start failing bad and visibly. Of course the short-term consequences would be horrible and not something you'd wish on another human being, but so far they've always had it easy because they were always opposition/never really in control. It would kind of proof the argument that it's populist nonsense and nothing more.

The same way you kinda wanted Trump and Bolsonaro to get really, really ill from COVID (like Johnson in fact).

Yeah I can see what you mean in a way, for sure. I'm very much hoping a Trump defeat next week can be the first major turning point against the populists. But I'm trying not to be hopeful as there's still a lot can go wrong there, even with polls looking good.

Johnson's generally a lot of bluster followed by backtracking/u-turns so I think it is still quite likely he chickens out. The biggest danger to that I see is that they think they may think they can cover up all the bad effects by absorbing it into Covid. It'll be exactly as shit as everyone's always predicted but they'll manage to slither away from the blame because something even shitter happened at the same time.

[Onderhond]

Yeah, COVID is the perfect excuse for everything and everyone nowadays.

[xianjiro]

My understanding is negotiations continue with one week someone warning that it's not looking good and the next someone else says progress is being made - but no one announcing closing in on agreement. It does clearly look to be a down-to-the-wire thing, but that's been the case with much the Johnson government has done.

I'm not sure I'm quite as pessimistic as @brokenface - partly since I just don't know what to expect come 2021 (on so many levels) and partly because I remember all the dire warnings in December 1999 about planes falling out of the sky and people trapped in elevators by toasters that went Y2k crazy. (Hint: nothing happened, we'd patched our way to a safe new millennium as it turned out).

My guess is if they can't come to some agreement in time, some things will be problematic, but likely it will be something no one expects to be a problem. Again, that's been my life experience with 'big shit' like Brexit.

Still, it's interesting that the government is holding off in any way due to the election next week: that's something I hadn't thought about and have no idea what Biden thinks about the EU or Brexit. On some levels, other than whatever agreements might be made going forward, it shouldn't really be an issue. I don't see a normal US government wanting to take sides in such a situation as we need to get along with pretty much everyone due to trade ties and NATO etc. But I can see where Johnson might feel continued kakistani administration might allow more favorable terms. It's surprising they haven't tried to reach some deal before the election, but then again, Johnson's got his hands full and I'm unclear how the final negotiated deal with the EU will affect a deal with the US.

I just wonder if I'll live long enough to see the UK ask to be let back in.

[Pretentious Hipster]

[Pretentious Hipster]

[brokenface]

Still, it's interesting that the government is holding off in any way due to the election next week: that's something I hadn't thought about and have no idea what Biden thinks about the EU or Brexit. On some levels, other than whatever agreements might be made going forward, it shouldn't really be an issue. I don't see a normal US government wanting to take sides in such a situation as we need to get along with pretty much everyone due to trade ties and NATO etc. But I can see where Johnson might feel continued kakistani administration might allow more favorable terms. It's surprising they haven't tried to reach some deal before the election, but then again, Johnson's got his hands full and I'm unclear how the final negotiated deal with the EU will affect a deal with the US.

The thing with Biden/democrats is strong tie to Ireland - they ain't going to do a trade deal with UK that screws Ireland.

No deal = v messy with Irish border. Always been the biggest practical problem with brexit and noone has a solution.

[xianjiro]

No deal = v messy with Irish border. Always been the biggest practical problem with brexit and noone has a solution.

Yeah, this part I get. And I can see how some can feel Dems want to protect Ireland though I'm not really certain I believe that. Of course the current administration is only on the outlook for what will benefit them and what they can spin to make the base happy.

If Biden does win, then I won't be surprised if they don't try to work some sort of deal in December. Who knows, wouldn't be at all surprised if one of the lil trumplins has been negotiating quietly for months. No doubt they'd love to say they've got the deal of the century in hand (again). Could it be BoJo's team that's holding things up? I mean seriously, this US administration doesn't give a fig what the EU thinks, so I can't imagine they are saying, "We can't do a deal until you've got one with the EU."