The Off Topic Topic

[Duque de Bragança]

It would stop migrants having to cross the channel to claim asylum in the UK. Sounds good.
...or we could just alter the law and get international agreement to let them do it at overseas British border posts.

Treaties of Le Touquet and Sandhurst already enable juxtaposed controls on the French side. Illegal migrants just don't watch (enough) Ken Loach movies. 

[Duque de Bragança]

Why does nobody like Romania?

Yeah, not liking Turkey is a given, thanks in no insignificant part to Erdogan.
I would say the PC newspeak term Roma backfired dramatically.

[garbon]

This weeks manufactured migrant crisis is ridiculous either way.

Yeah it was kind of disturbing. No mention of the Channel migrants for a year, then as if by a flick of a wand, all major TV stations are on boats dramatically envisioning an invasion while showing a lonely rubber boat with half a dozen poor bastards on empty waters.

I slightly blame left Twitter for this. Nigel Farage has been doing videos about these "invasions" for monthes. And they've had no traction - they weren't being shared. Their numbers were generally quite bad until people started sharing them to dunk on Farage (and maybe I did myself a little bit ). Then maybe a week ago about 95% of my Twitter feed was people (including journalists and lots of people journalists follow) being outraged at Farage and I remember at the time thinking, well this is probably a story now - this is going mainstream and isn't just a Twitter in-joke anymore. And within the last week it started being reported.

I feel like if we hadn't all done that, he would have carried on posting videos of his trips to the seaside with minimal traction. It's one of those things I think we've seen so often over recent years where actually hate-sharing actually just elevates what that person was saying and makes it more likely to go mainstream. I feel like we all should have learned and just stop hate-sharing content we don't like, even to dunk on it - you know, it's entirely why there's an entire industry of provocative hot-takes/bullshit that will get shared not just by people who read it or like it or agree with it, but is designed to be shared by people who hate it, who totally disagree with it, who think it's bullshit. We, I feel, have still not learned to just not engage.

Yes, there had also been that hashtag that started asking Dawn Butler to resign over her comments about the Met...but by the time I saw it was trending it was mostly people being outraged that the hashtag existed.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Mrs Thatcher understood this more than 30 years ago....... "And we must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend."

https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106096


Stop getting outraged with Farage, he's just a fucking drongo, don't waste any time even thinking about him.

[The Larch]

Again struck by how much Finland hate all Southern Europeans, by which they mean Europeans South of the Baltic.

And they barely tolerate Latvians. 

But yeah, Hungarians seem to be elite-level misanthropes.

[Josquius]

It would stop migrants having to cross the channel to claim asylum in the UK. Sounds good.
...or we could just alter the law and get international agreement to let them do it at overseas British border posts.

Treaties of Le Touquet and Sandhurst already enable juxtaposed controls on the French side. Illegal migrants just don't watch (enough) Ken Loach movies. 

They're there for standard immigration.
You can't apply for asylum there however. There's a campaign to change this

https://care4calais.org/news/asaferway-to-claim-asylum-in-uk/

Not getting the ken loach mention?
Did he do an asylum seeker one?

[Sheilbh]

Interesting comments from an academic in protests that the very brutal crackdown in Belarus seems to have backfired because the protests are now larger and more widespread than they were before the crackdown. Also early signs of junior defections from the state to the people. Also public figures are coming out to call for an end to the violence. Many major plants are now announcing strikes - following the large, prestigious state owned factory that I mentioned earlier (one thought I have is cross-class mobilisation seems different from the young, left-liberal protestors of the colour revolutions and EuroMaidan).

All of which feels like a turning point - either the regime will collapse/surrender like in Egypt, Argentina, Ukraine etc or it will need to escalate significantly more to survive and become something quite different than what it's been so far, like Syria or Venezuela. Obviously hoping for collapse.

[Tamas]

Interesting comments from an academic in protests that the very brutal crackdown in Belarus seems to have backfired because the protests are now larger and more widespread than they were before the crackdown. Also early signs of junior defections from the state to the people. Also public figures are coming out to call for an end to the violence. Many major plants are now announcing strikes - following the large, prestigious state owned factory that I mentioned earlier (one thought I have is cross-class mobilisation seems different from the young, left-liberal protestors of the colour revolutions and EuroMaidan).

All of which feels like a turning point - either the regime will collapse/surrender like in Egypt, Argentina, Ukraine etc or it will need to escalate significantly more to survive and become something quite different than what it's been so far, like Syria or Venezuela. Obviously hoping for collapse.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1292395572595392517

Footage of local election officials removing excess ballots on election day by climbing out on a bloody ladder 

[Duque de Bragança]

It would stop migrants having to cross the channel to claim asylum in the UK. Sounds good.
...or we could just alter the law and get international agreement to let them do it at overseas British border posts.

Treaties of Le Touquet and Sandhurst already enable juxtaposed controls on the French side. Illegal migrants just don't watch (enough) Ken Loach movies. 

They're there for standard immigration.
You can't apply for asylum there however. There's a campaign to change this

https://care4calais.org/news/asaferway-to-claim-asylum-in-uk/

Not getting the ken loach mention?
Did he do an asylum seeker one?

Asylum can a also be a way to bypass immigration laws, namely for those who would not be granted asylum.

We should fund a cinema for the jungle, playing nothing but the movies of Ken Loache and other such films that highlight Britain's general crappiness.

[Josquius]

Wow. That's an ancient quote.

And sure. There's a lot of invalid asylum claims. But if we make it easier to apply for asylum then we cut down on those who are just faking it and using it as an excuse for coming to the UK.
The big problem here, aside from the shittiness of the British government, is where they stay while things are being processed. I doubt France wants them staying there.

[Tonitrus]

Interesting comments from an academic in protests that the very brutal crackdown in Belarus seems to have backfired because the protests are now larger and more widespread than they were before the crackdown. Also early signs of junior defections from the state to the people. Also public figures are coming out to call for an end to the violence. Many major plants are now announcing strikes - following the large, prestigious state owned factory that I mentioned earlier (one thought I have is cross-class mobilisation seems different from the young, left-liberal protestors of the colour revolutions and EuroMaidan).

All of which feels like a turning point - either the regime will collapse/surrender like in Egypt, Argentina, Ukraine etc or it will need to escalate significantly more to survive and become something quite different than what it's been so far, like Syria or Venezuela. Obviously hoping for collapse.

Collapse might be nice...but that assuredly just means Russia come in "to restore stability" with reunification quickly to follow. 

[Sheilbh]

I mean doesn't state survives but needs to escalate massively likely mean Lukashenko would need to surrender his current levels of independence and get Russian backing as well?

[Tonitrus]

 I think Putin is relatively happy with either scenario.  He probably finds Lukashenko annoying, but useful/easy to deal with.  A collapsed Belarus with a risk of turning westward, ala Ukraine, I think he would see as simply unacceptable.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah. Although I do wonder how things will go in Belarus because, it's got twice the GDP per capita of Ukraine and is higher than most of the Western Balkans etc. It's a richer country that might be a little more resilient, maybe?

[DGuller]

My understanding is that its wealth to a large extent comes from Russia's subsidies, and those have been waning along with the strength of the economy.  It's not clear to what extent it can be independently rich.