the_dunk_tank @hexbear.net VILenin [he/him] @hexbear.net 10 mo. ago

Thank god I live in the freedom west, where it’s legal to try to overthrow the government

Edit: By “overthrow” I mean an actual attempt to topple the government, not wandering around aimlessly in a building for 4 hours stealing furniture.

If you actually oppose power you would almost certainly be FBI’d long before you could ever get to a position where you could conceivably stage a coup.

Being barred from election is a very quaint punishment for leading a failed coup.

39 comments

Our democratic banning of an opposition leader from eligibility vs their antidemocratic banning of an opposition leader from eligibility
- Funny because US presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution, have always had it, but when other countries set their laws up the same way it's dystopian.
  
  Ah but have you considered when the US does it, it’s democratic?
  
  In my country, the constitution explicitly makes the monarch immune from any kind of criminal prosecution whatsoever. A still-valid part of the 17th century constitution for the then absolute monarchy excempts "princes of the blood" from being prosecuted before any court but the monarch personally, leading to such absurdities as the current heir apparent having received speeding tickets from his mom, the queen.
  
  As for the actual day to day rulers, the elected politicians and government ministers, they are immune to criminal prosecution unless a majority in parliament decides to allow the prosecution. If government ministers are too be made responsible for anything they do as ministers, this has to happen before a special court of impeachment staffed by political appointees and charges can only be raised by a majority in parliament. As a result, only two ministers has been brought to justice on this side of WWII. Instead, an absurd system of "not even slaps on the wrist" are used to "punish" crimes committed in office. This "punishment" is called a "nose" and literally consists of nothing more than a parliamentary committee passing a resolution to "raise critique" of a minister. The media treats this parish of accountability as big as really big and important news.
  
  But yeah, the rulers of BadCountry™ are not accountable before the law and I should be very concerned about this.
in the civilized west we simply have the current porky-in-chief pardon the previous porky-in-chief
nah we don't need to support this one. no one should have the power to give themselves legal immunity.
- I would advise you to not take this at face value. Belarus is an enemy of the west, a bit of a black mark on their record as it is the former Soviet country with the most remaining socialist infrastructure. So the west will try to interpret everything from there as unfavorably as possible. Anything Lukashenko says will always be framed by the west as "authoritarian dictator doing evil authoritarian dictator things" and this just looks like more of that.
  
  in the guardian, which is also incredibly biased against him but we can extract some of these
  
  According to the text of the new law, Lukashenko, were he to leave power, “cannot be held accountable for actions committed in connection with exercising his presidential powers”.
  
  The law also says the president and members of his family will be provided with lifelong state protection, medical care, and life and health insurance. After resigning, the president would also become a permanent lifelong member of the upper house of parliament.
  
  i'm still going with "nah". i would be completely shocked if they didn't already have the basic "you can't sue the cops for kidnapping you when it's a lawful arrest" kind of exception any hierarchy has for its administrators. having dinosaurs in power is bad regardless of who's doing it. Like one of the big reasons the soviet union collapsed was all those old fuckers.
  
  critical support for his opposition to western hegemony, not for riding power to the grave.
- While I agree with you that there is no need to support Lukashenko uncritically, the crucial context that both you and the outraged west are missing that such immunities are pretty much standard in in most western and liberal countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_immunity#Immunity_of_government_leaders
  
  parliamentary immunity being a bad idea that western nations do doesn't mean everybody else should do it too. It just means the critique shouldn't come from the state department.
  
  i'd also be very surprised if they didn't already have a basic version of it, but i'm not a belarussian lawyer
- Yeah but what he’s doing here doesn’t seem any more unique than existing laws in any country.
  
  the lifelong parliament seat is kinda different and pretty wack
- i simply take it for granted that no state is worthy of support. Having done so, I can proceed to adequately criticize the propaganda my own government feeds me about other governments.
That so-called insurrection was a joke even to the state media the day it happened and for several days afterward. Then about 2 weeks later or so they tried to spin it into some horrible tragedy that almost plunged the US into an autocratic dictatorship.

The cops openly invited people in. That's not at all how it would go if there was any threat whatsoever.
Inventing a computer virus that zaps liberals every time they use the word "authoritarian".
No one is immune to ~~propaganda~~ the law
Nixon went to prison /s
- no, in the US we don't need to do this because the next guy just says "we tortured some folks" and we move on.
  
  we gotta look forward not backward!
Aren't all world leaders essentially barred from criminal prosecution while sitting? Does this extend to after the term of a Belarus leader at all?

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