The leader of the opposition was already in house arrest.

    • @incici@lemmy.mlOP
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      32 years ago

      Paul Joseph Watson

      Something doesn’t become wrong or disproven when it is said by someone I don’t like.

    • @Sarcasmo220@lemmy.ml
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      -22 years ago

      I never knew the name for it, but I always thought that if you go far enough in either direction you end up at the same place

  • @marmulak@lemmy.ml
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    62 years ago

    I would have to know why they did it, but if the party they banned is supporting Russian control of Ukraine while Russia is invading Ukraine and a war is actively going on, then yes obviously you have to fight not only the invaders but also anyone who helps them. Whether or not this is the real reason for the ban I don’t know, because I don’t know the details.

    Those on here complaining about democracy, NATO, etc., should remember that Ukraine comes first above all else. When Ukraine itself is at stake, democracy or no democracy doesn’t matter anymore.

  • @pingveno@lemmy.ml
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    32 years ago

    I would really like to see NATO clarify that they don’t want to be supporting Zelenskyy if he’s just going to turn Ukraine into a dictatorship. I get wanting to present a united front, but there’s a difference between a united front and suppressing all disagreement. Ukraine will hopefully in the future reunite including the Donbass and Crimea, but that will need a strongly pluralistic government. This is not encouraging.

  • d-RLY?
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    32 years ago

    Does anyone have a link to the original Facebook post the article leads with? I have been looking, but also don’t know Ukrainian so I wouldn’t know if I missed it on non-English posts.

    • @vitaminka@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago

      the ability to live peacefully, without being invaded shouldn’t be contingent on presence or absence of democracy either way 🤷‍♀️

      • @AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.mlM
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        2 years ago

        When did I say they don’t deserve the ability to live peacefully? I’m simply calling out the liberal narrative that one is definitely authoritarian and the other is definitely a democracy, and that this is a case of an authoritarian government specifically trying to destroy a democracy. Ukraine is hardly a democracy, contrary to popular belief.

        • @vitaminka@lemmy.ml
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          2 years ago

          ah, i see what you mean

          my reply comment wasn’t meant to run counter to your comment, rather, i meant to express that the the entire narrative of “attack on X is worse bc they’re democratic” or “attack on Y is more justified bc they’re less democratic” is absurd and cruel

      • @nachtigallA
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        62 years ago

        Merkel was also German chancellor for 16 years. Long terms do not mean less democracy and Putin is undoubtly very popular in Russia.

        • @pingveno@lemmy.ml
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          2 years ago

          Eh, I’m not so much for long reins in such roles as the president, chancellor, or PM. It’s too easy for someone to build up power around themselves, creating a quasi dictatorship. It can also leave a power vacuum whenever they go. Like with Putin, there are serious questions on what happens once he’s out of power. With a democracy that has regular turnover of the executive, everything just keeps humming along more or less the same because those mechanisms are regularly exercised. Of course there are some exceptions (fuck you Trump), but for the most part things go much smoother.

          • comfy
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            22 years ago

            Like all set-ups, there’s obvious pros and cons. Like you said, short terms normalize change so it’s more difficult to consolidate power against an opposition (not that they don’t try! See long-term examples in USA like gerrymandering and voter suppression). It also theoretically allows the peoples of a democracy to re-establish their choice of leadership more often in response to major changes, like a war or global pandemic. If you realize a mistake was made, like voting in a naive TV celebrity, then you have a reasonable guarantee that the state population can vote to remove them in a few years without needing a violent revolution. Obviously that’s great, and something many people living under malevolent dictatorships would literally die for.

            A big downside is that it creates instability and disincentivizes long-term planning. Many necessary changes take longer than 3-5 years to make, and many nations have a two-party dominant system (usually characterized as a dichotomy of conservative/progressive) where one party is in power for 4-8 years before the other takes power and undoes many of those changes and cancels their projects. Rinse and repeat. As an extreme example, you can see many people pointing to non-democratic nations as being efficient at making infrastructural and social change, China being a popular example for a long time. They can comfortably make 5 year plans because they’re still likely to be there in 10 or 20. Shanghai venture capitalist Eric Li hints at this: “I make the joke: in America you can change political parties, but you can’t change the policies. In China you cannot change the party, but you can change policies.” If you don’t like the main party’s basic world-view, you have no choice! That’s horrifying in itself. But if you do, there’s more capacity for major change than in the tug-of-war in a short-term western democracy.

            • @pingveno@lemmy.ml
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              2 years ago

              It used to be a lot worse in the US, with much of the government changing every few years. The introduction of the civil service brought a measure of stability, where political appointees ultimately are responsible for carrying out the vision of the president but the actual work is carried out by career employees that are often with agencies for decades. The establishment of similar institutions is a goal in less established governments to dial down the stakes on elections. It’s not uncommon to have governments where employment is tied to party, tribe, or ethnicity. Not only is merit a secondary concern so the government is run by ill suited employees, but each election is a high stakes battle for the employment status of a good chunk of the population. A healthy civil service sidesteps all of this.

      • comfy
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        12 years ago

        That’s not how democracy is defined in any theory I’m aware of. Especially since one of the regime changes occurred due to a coup in 2014.

        I don’t disagree that Ukraine, up until this recent development, had a system that is democratic in a similar way to western nations we label as democracies, but the logic you used is nonsense. Bullshit is bullshit

      • @basiliscos@lemmy.ml
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        02 years ago

        The populatiion of Ukraine is constantly and significally (comparing to other countries in the region) declining over the last 20y. Ppl are running out of the region, and don’t see future here.