Tech workers flee Belarus as IT haven takes authoritarian turn
bloombergquint.com
bloombergquint.com
Regular work permit for IT proffesional is also rubber stamp. Nothing compared to cruel H1B.
I guess same as after Ukraine revolution, a lot of Belarusians will end up in Poland.
In more concrete terms: 60-70k EUR is what you are looking at in Germany in good job markets, while in Poland the figure is 30-40k EUR. When you consider taxes, housing, and other costs, the difference is really not that great.
The big difference is in the savings. Even if you just make twice as much, your savings per month can be several times higher than in Poland, which makes a lot of difference if you want to go back to your country later on and buy a house etc.
Also, yes, a simple life means not to live like an American expat lol. You can have a social life without spending lots of money if you socialize with "like minded" people who also don't want to waste money. You can have friends over for dinner at home with a few beers from the supermarket, play cards or boardgames or video games, soccer or basketball outside, have a BBQ, watch a movie at home, etc.
But it's not like you'd have an American expat-like luxury life in the alternative scenario of staying in Eastern Europe either. The point is, by keeping down your lifestyle you can multiply your savings and escape the cycle of poverty and be able to afford a home in a few years, if you go back to your home country and can support your relatives back home in the meantime. This is a great deal for a lot of people even without the fancy expat-like money-burning lifestyle.
University towns only really make a difference if the hypothetical person moving there is college age and if there's a significant number of foreign students. Otherwise why would German college kids want to socialize with a late 20s foreigner?
Someone which moves to a new country will leave their entire social circle behind: family, friends, personal and professional acquaintances. It's an immense loss that will never really be recovered and the older you are the harder it is.
Now lets cut to the chase. With the exception of the top 40 cities in Germany every other city has a population of less than 200k people. Unless you go to those 40 places which represent roughly 25% of the population the rest of Germany is nothing but "small cities".
I have some friends living in what according to wikipedia one could call a half-town and looked at an apartment there out of curiosity. A 3 room apartment (newly built) was about 280.000 EUR and that's in a town where they have 1 hotel, 1 restaurant (or maybe 2) and 0 supermarkets. In my experience if one wants a 3 room apartment in a normal city, one would add another 100.000 EUR to that price.
I've made the opposite experience. Sure everything is 30% more expensive in Germany than in Poland but you also make twice as much money. The differences in cost of living are pretty insignificant but the salary is so much higher that it more than makes up the difference.
Yes, but things can go into the other direction too, if for example the EU takes over and their good old country turns into another failed state ala Ukraine...
PS: sometimes I'm a Chinese too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_National_Unity
FYI, I am Russian myself, I've been to Ukraine many times, and the only problem I spotted is proximity of Russian regime and Russian occupation. And of course, St.Petersburg Lahta workers like you.
>Nothing compared to cruel H1B.
H1B doesn't need your grandparents to be from USA.
The language itself uses a bastardized version of the Latin alphabet which is inferior to Cyrillic, and general pronunciation is the much more difficult compared to Ukrainian or Russian.
Many of the cities are cold and dark owing to latitude, and in winter filled with air pollution from out of control coal and trash burning in urban chimneys.
The main thing Poland has going for it is a massive flow of EU funds and no refugees from Africa or the Middle East, as well as a population with a generally Western mindset and work style.
VAT is higher than in Germany, but lower than in Sweden. Nothing that gets anyone going really. Real estate is quite cheap (dollar to dollar, not exactly for Poles) for a European country, though Warsaw does stand out as the capital.
There isn't anything "bastardized" or "inferior" about either the Polish or Belarusian alphabet, or really any alphabet for that matter. They just come from different backgrounds.
Poland is also largely south of Belarus, including Warsaw being south of Minsk, so not sure about cold or darkness.
IT has grown even more.
Uhm yeah, but they also have parents, siblings, girlfriends. Probably they might have some properties bought already. So as it may seem really advantageous to be in IT, one might not be able to move to another country just like that...
Take into account COVID-19 pandemic and it is not as easy to move somewhere just now.
They all speak Russian. Lithuania has a sizable minority of Russian speakers, and has historical ties to Belarus. Latvia is predominantly Russian-speaking. Ukraine as well.
Knowing Belarusian, they can pick up Polish rather quickly.
As a last resort, Russia is still freer than Belarus politically and better off economically. Smolensk is half an hour drive from the Belarusian border.
This seems to imply the majority of residents of Latvia speak Russian natively. That might have been correct had the USSR existed a bit longer, but history took a different turn.
"Most Latvian businesses, especially in the Riga area, will happily serve you in Russian." That would be a more neutral and correct statement appropriate for this context.
Also relevant would be how Latvian government is publicly angling for Belarussian businesses willing to relocate to Latvia [1].
Regarding native tongues in Latvia... Currently, over 30% of Latvian residents speak Russian, Belarussian or Ukrainian natively, versus 62.3% Latvian. In Riga, the number of Russian, Belorussian or Ukrainian native speakers rises to over 43% [0] versus 47.1% Latvian.
[0] http://data.csb.gov.lv/pxweb/en/iedz/iedz__iedzrakst/IRG080....
[1] https://eng.lsm.lv/article/economy/business/belarusian-busin...
Still, even those statistics admit that Riga is mostly Russian-speaking [1]. This is where the IT crowd would land, anyway.
[1] https://www.csb.gov.lv/en/statistics/statistics-by-theme/pop...
In Latvia, especially Riga, Russian is spoken, but younger generations of ethnic Latvians are less and less welcoming of using it. Again, English is expected. There has been a distinct rise in shops in Riga where it's basically "Speak Latvian or English to me or GTFO".
Source: I'm a Russian speaker who visits all three Baltic countries at least 2-3 times a year, most recently last week.
My experience is anyone 30 or over speaks fluent Russian, but many of those will not admit to it - those in the 30-40 range are highly distrustful of anything Russian - and reasonably so given the history of the country. Anyone under 30 barely speaks Russian unless they themselves are immigrants from Russia.
I'd agree that in Lithuania a software engineering candidate that spoke Russian and not at least a "very good" standard of English or fluent Lithuanian would struggle to find work.
Lithuania is 5.8% Russian with 39% speaking it as a foreign language.
Numbers from Wikipedia.
That's an arguable statement. Russia is also ruled by lifetime president, any protests are being brutally oppressed, opposition leaders are being assassinated or imprisoned, state TV airing anti-Western propaganda 24/7. Ukraine and Lithuania look much better choice by all measures.
> And it's naive to say that there's no borders. You have to be qualified for the visa requirements. You also have to renew this visa every year or so. You have to start all over. Of course everything is possible with some effort and money, but i'm tired of seeing this term "no borders for it engineers".
1. Qualification:
1.1 University degree, usually means a Western university degree, or a few top tier ones in your own country. Lots of people from the East choose Western education not because they think so highly of it, but because a Western degree contributes to their visa eligibility.
1.2 Even if you have a Western degree, your troubles don't end there. Eligibility criteria often cover the most trendy topics as usual, but may stumble at something dumb as a requirement for a verbatim match of the degree title: i.e. the most dumb on my memory was "Electronics Engineering" getting a pass, but "Microelectronics Engineering" not, while this very much being the originaly intended criteria. The inviting countries are obviously more than content with the amount of people they can cherry pick with the utmost capriciousness.
1.3 Your usual age, health, crime check, marriage status check, security check (telling them you are not a spy, and not alkayeda)
1.3.1 The last few former may involve waiting for completely idiotic paper on your side of your border. A fake crime check note costs 1000 roubles cash ($20) to get from every cop, but may take few months if you want to get it legally, especially if you are from a far away province.
1.3.1.1 A completely innocent note on the former, like being a witness in a court case, or a traffic ticket will subject you to months of pain, and if some countries 100% denial rate, after being flagged in every international rogue person database.
1.4 Regulatory capture works in immigration too. This is they way Microsoft handwrote much of non-public selection criteria for professional evaluation in BC, Canada to unfairly gain advantage attracting foreign labour who are using MS stack.
2. Life situations:
2.1 Lots of Western countries outright deny family applicants, some on other hand given huge bonus.
2.2 Lots of Western countries use immigration programs to repopulate their dying, depopulating regions. Canada will happily settle any amount of Chinese, Indians, and Africans if they agree to live somewhere in New Brunswick
2.3 Lots of Western countries will never allow you to settle down, or pretend to say they will, but then repeatedly change the goalpost in their immigration programs: Canada, Australia.
2.4 Lots of Western countries will outright deny applicants older than forties to mid thirties
2.5 Lots of Western countries will outright deny applicants who are women
2.6 Lots of Western countries will outright deny applicants who are women with children
2.7 Lots of Western countries will outright deny applicants who are women who are single
2.8 Lots of Western countries will outright deny applicants who are women who are not single
2.9 Lots of Western countries will outright deny applicants with just any health condition
3. Incentives:
3.1 Prime majority of countries don't want any more of their own people, let alone strangers. In such, immigration programs are ran as a token sign to say "hey, we are so International, we are not bigots at all!"
3.2 The minority of countries who are actively soliciting immigration are not much better, and some times worse. They obviously have their own agendas. Very often have an interest to crush their own labour into submission, or serve a political agenda. Less frequently, outright exploitation: Gulf, much of East Asia.
3.3 Incentives often are a carrot on a stick, with this stick being constantly moved forward: you a just 1 month away from a permanent residency, a month passes... wham! now qualify for 1 more year for something else
3.4 Countries providing incentives often do so, when their industries don't do well. You will be moving to a country with an already present oversupply of professionals after a downturn. Some times problems will be structural, i.e. Singapore (negative selection, where best leave, and create more openings for cheaper helloworld webdevs to move it.)
3.4 Accordingly, countries that already do well, rarely invite.
3.5 Wages today vary much in between top employers, not so much localities. Earning post tax $10k USD a month somewhere in China, India, or Vietnam is INCOMPARABLY better deal than in the West.
3.6 Accordingly, top companies in the West are no longer eager to employ foreigners in hopes to get top talent anymore. Why hire them for $10k in USA with its unions, labour rights, sjw storm, when you can hire the same guy in your captive outsourcing centre in every major 3rd world country?
3.7 Moving internationally is still freaking expensive, for a person with an already established life, a move from the depth of a third world country to USA can take anywhere up to $40k. This alone may be one years' profit of that man/woman.
3.8 Following 3.7, top tier professionals have much better odds of further progression at home. I knew like 10 guys in China who worked on $10k+ USD jobs in Googles, Amazons, and others who managed to start their business after a single year savings from such jobs. Now, try opening a business yourself as an immigrant abroad.
3.9 A lot of immigration programs outright state that you are being prohibited from running any enterprise.
3.10 A lot of immigration programs for higher calibre talents wanting to setup their businesses in the country are an outright robbery, like a requirement for 51% local capital, waving your patents to inviting research institution, or specifically waving some of your shareholder rights.
Are you talking about properties bought as investments?
I moved out from my home country and in the place I live now people are nice, but I am never going to be one of them (so there are also not nice people, but it is easier to deal with not nice people from your own country).
Some people have it even worse, because I can go back to my own country and have my friends from school and family quite close by. There are people who are children of migrants that are still treated on the streets like they are not part of that society even though they grew up in that country. It gets even worse for them when they go to visit their parents country because they look familiar to people but when they speak they use English or broken local language which makes them foreign there as well. In the end they are not welcome in the place they grew up, they are not welcome in the place where they fit in by looks. They don't have a place in the entire world they can go and feel like home.
1. The US may become a white-minority country. Europe, not really. Whites are still the majority, and are going to remain so in the distant future. The "Great Replacement" isn't real.
2. Most immigrants to EU countries are from other countries within the EU and white themselves.
3. Many people from outside the EU, even though they're not considered "white" by Westerners, look white from the outside (think of e.g. Arabs) and the differences are purely cultural. Within a few generations you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between them and "white" people.
4. One's ability to integrate and be welcomed depends far more on cultural differences than "looking" different. This is why people from former colonies immigrate to the country that colonized them - lasting vestigial ties and a common language help far more than sticking to people who share one's skin color.
The US government officially considers Arab people to be "white". [1] Some Arab Americans disagree with this and believe they are not "white", other Arab Americans identify with the "white" label and want to keep it. The former group have been lobbying the US government to create a separate category, e.g. "Middle Eastern and North African", thus far non-successfully.
Unlike the US, I don't believe most EU countries have a formally adopted definition of "white" (the EU as a whole certainly doesn't.) But, just like in the US, it would be wrong to think there would be a single viewpoint. So the statement that Arab people are "not considered 'white' by Westerners" is a bit dubious – some Westerners no doubt think that, other Westerners actually do think Arab people are "white", yet other Westerners just don't think about the concept "white" or its definition that much at all, or think that "white" is an arbitrary category which should not be used
[1] https://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html
And BLM demonstrations in europe... Sorry, but this is ridiculous. Those are more about protest against goverment ant police than BLM.
I am definitely not "super progressive".
As far as I know the religion has no effect on your skin color.
US culture is very focused on racial categories – who is and isn't "white". Most other Western cultures are not – European cultures, Australia, etc
I think in Israel, people think about who is Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, Beta Israel, Arab/Palestinian, Druze, Secular vs Religious Zionist vs Haredi, etc, not about whether or not they or others are "white". The question of "who is white" is very American, not one that has a lot of relevance for Israeli society
Regarding the US, that's a bit of a misleading statement. US Census Bureau projections have "white" people as a majority in the US until 2060, which is as far out as their projections go [1].
The claim that "whites" are going to become a minority soon is arrived at by redefining "white" to exclude white-identified Hispanic people. Indeed, "non-Hispanic whites" are projected to become a minority in the US by 2045. But "whites" overall are not going to become a minority in the foreseeable future.
In 2060, the US Census Bureau projects the US will be 68% white-identified (white-identified Hispanic people included). By comparison, their actual estimates for 2016 are that the US was 76% white-identified (again, Hispanic people included). Although their projections don't go out that far, it seems likely the US will still have a white-identified majority at the start of the next century.
[1] https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/popproj/tables/2017...
You can look at the numbers in your chart and see that basically all of the U.S. Hispanic population is found under this "white" category, 55 million Hispanics. Total Hispanic population in U.S. is at most a few million more. 90%+ of all U.S. Hispanics feel like they are part of a "white" majority? You must be joking.
So I don't think that "white identified majority" in the census numbers means what you think it does. The vast majority of Hispanics in it fully realize and are made to feel like they are part of a minority in the U.S.
> 90%+ of all U.S. Hispanics feel like they are part of a white majority?
I feel very hesitant in speculating about the feelings of tens of millions of people whom I don't know–and who of course are not all going to think or feel the same way, but who are going to have a very diverse range of feelings and opinions. Rather than speculating about their feelings, why not just go by what they voluntarily choose to put on their US Census forms?
> The vast majority of Hispanics in it fully realize and are made to feel like they are part of a minority in the U.S.
There are white minorities, so identifying as "white" doesn't necessarily make white-identified Hispanics non-minority. If an (ethnic majority) German or Russian or Finn moves to New York City, they are going to be an immigrant minority in their new home, but they and everyone else will see them as "white". A European-descended person who moves to New York City from Buenos Aires has Spanish as their native language instead of German or Russian or Finnish, but why would their experience be fundamentally different? The Spanish-speaking immigrant will be officially classified as "Hispanic", the German/Russian/Finnish-speaking immigrants wouldn't be, but they are all equally white ethnic minorities.
You chose to bring race into the discussion, when one can make the same point without any reference to race.
In Sydney, Australia, a woman wearing a niqab is still a rare sight, and she is likely to get starred at, a lot–even other Muslims are going to stare at her. Women wearing hijabs are a far more common sight, so they will get starred at a lot less, although I'm sure they will report being starred at sometimes too. But, a lot of Muslim women don't wear any head covering – like the women in my uncle's family – indeed, in Albanian Muslim culture, women rarely cover their heads, and a woman who starts wearing a hijab is likely to be suspected of religious fundamentalism, which is viewed about as negatively in their culture as in my own. Should my uncle's family be considered a "visible minority" then?
Sydney is over 20% Asian (including East Asian, Southeast Asian, and South Asian people in that term)–Asian Australians are a minority, and obviously a visible one–but do Asian people get starred at in Sydney solely on account of their race? You usually stare at the unusual, but in a city which is over 20% Asian, there is nothing unusual about seeing a Chinese/Indian/Japanese/Korean/Vietnamese/Filipino/etc person, you see them every day, you count them among your friends, classmates, coworkers, neighbours, etc.
I remember one time I ventured with a Finnish colleague to a working class bar in Bangalore, and we got a lot of stares there, because nobody was expecting to see people like us in such an establishment – by contrast, in the airport, hotel, offices, shopping centres, tourist sites, etc, nobody starred at us, because Indians are used to encountering foreigners in those places.
+ boyfriends, romantic partners
I agree with the motivation of your statement, just wanted to complete it to reduce the (likely unintentional on your part but implicit) hetero-male stereotype of software engineers.
The first step toward positive change is to change the way people think about these roles, and remove the automatic mental picture of a hetero male when people say "software engineer". That feeds back into the hiring loop and worsens the problem.
I have no intention to start a fuss, but I just think that it would be a nice gesture to make sure our language is as inclusive as possible, and so made a suggestion on a small change that would do that.
(Also, I'm surprised at all the downvotes, I thought HN was a better crowd of people than that. I mean if you don't want to upvote it that's fine, but I'm really surprised that many people actively downvoted my comment. How would it hurt you for the language to be more inclusive? By downvoting it, did you want to maintain that we only mention "girlfriends"? By downvoting, you are part of the problem in tech today.)
People may think that career choice is something special and magical when it is not.
Let's say you have become a successful developer. Now you want to work on a side project. There are so many choices and possibilities. Most of them are equally good. You choose something. Then you get stuck, bored or the rest of your life gets in the way. You scrap the old thing and do something new. Rinse and repeat. After 5 unfinished side projects you feel like you have accomplished nothing.
The reality is that you didn't actually care about any of the side projects. If you cared about them you would have stuck with them until completion. Making a choice and staying with it is difficult at any stage in your life. Unless... it is extremely obvious and necessary. Suddenly there is no question about it. You you know very little about electronics but think you absolutely need to design a custom PCB for this important project and you're not going to compromise on this at all. You read up on electronics theory for 3 whole weeks without even thinking a single thought about your final design, pick some components and feel lost reading the datasheet. Start up your EDA suite get mad and feel like everything is hopeless the first few days. Two weeks later you have finally designed a good enough schematic and then suddenly everything is easy in hindsight.
You didn't have the qualifications to finish this project but did so anyway, all you needed was a little motivation and dedication.
If there is a need, it will be met. If you think someone should do X, then give them a reason to do X. This applies to "software engineers" and all other professions equally.
The overlap between talented and motivated students exists for a reason. Talent is just motivation in disguise.
The common argument I hear is they prospered because of authoritarian rule. Belarus never had to deal with oligarchs created by a power vacuum like in Ukraine or other EE countries. As a result a large portion of outsourcing labor for other EE countries is technically done through Belarussian companies(EPAM).
There were a few attempts at hostile takeovers of IT companies by state actors, but the state could seize only used equipment. Staff moved on, clients fled.
So, at some point, the state just decided to let IT free at the effective tax rate of 9% (against 52% for the rest of the country).
I have worked with and managed outsourced engineers from Russia, India, and South America. The Russians were consistently the best: effective combo of smart + hard working. The only negatives were a reluctance to disclose bad news before SHTF, which was quite annoying, but I've always put that down to residual USSR culture.
In other words, I question the early appearance of the term "piracy" in the list of reasons of why Russians excel at software engineering.
> It's rare event to meet a dumb Russian in IT. I've never met one. I have worked with and managed outsourced engineers from Russia
Survivorship bias. There are a lot of dumb engineers here (in absolute numbers, the country is still 9th by population) mostly because of the IT industry growth in 2000s required more workforce, but they wouldn't be hired by the outsource companies since there is no shortage of better recruits (as of now).
You can not read English effectively. Work on it and stop with the ad homs.
It also seems like Belarus is killing the goose that laid the golden egg here, not that that’s surprising behavior from an authoritarian regime fighting for its life.
If some kind of deeper integration with Russia is on the horizon, as many have expected for years, then this might hardly matter. The overall Russian economy is so based on the export of natural resources, that the ruling stratum is hardly worried about other industries like the IT sector. All those Russians except for the ~10 million needed to run and support the oil and gas sector, have sometimes been described as "superfluous population" by commentators. Obviously this situation sucks for the ordinary citizen, but what can you do?
This is a tautology and the reason why many corrupt regimes suffer from the resource curse. The government blesses a few industries as the cash cow and keeps them under state control to finance the authoritarian regime. Other growing industries are seen to be disrupting the status quo and thereby undermine state control. Authoritarian governments would rather own 90% of a pile of crap than 30% of something valuable. Then those countries fall into poverty because the statesmen are billionaires no matter how they treat their people.
Hyperbole: Imagine a parallel world where Donald Trump had a "dayjob" where he earns enough money to pay for the military of the US on his own and can buy military equipment from other countries. He could easily suppress American citizens without any consequences. Losing votes doesn't matter because the military is on his side. Destroying or preventing civilian infrastructure doesn't impact military funding. One thing is certain. This would not be a world of prosperity.
No, the Germans’ delusion was that these many tens of millions of Soviet citizens were so unhappy with the regime, that they wouldn't rush to defend it.
Something like military bases they would try to hide, but if anything Soviet industrialization was oversold, in the sense that there was a huge fetish for certain production modes such as tons of steel produced, which overstated actual industrialization.
To say it another way, this is an example of Goodhart's Law:
"Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes."
So Soviet Planners decided that they would focus on these traditional indexes as targets, and so created massive overproduction of things like steel, reasoning that this would catapult their industrialization, as measured by the same indexes, upwards.
But that's not an apples to apples comparison to western nations measures of GDP, because a society needs many things: butter, milk, bread, steel, coal, clothes, shoes, etc. In a normal market society, these are all produced in rough proportions as people need them, millions of products are produced, so you can pick 100 of them as indexes to track overall economic output as there is no reason to think that the economy would bizarelly produce twice as much steel as it needed. Thus taking a handfull of goods and using them as proxies makes sense.
But if you take the same society, and instead of producing a million goods, you only produce 100 according to a plan rather than according to consumer demand, then you can have a situation in which the economy produces twice as much steel as it needs, and so steel production ceases being an accurate proxy for overall production.
Thus using western measures to track production of command economies is very challenging.
Which is not to say that Soviets didn't industrialize rapidly (at a terrible price in terms of human suffering) but that the bulk of the real gains happened as a result of World War 2 mobilization and the two decades after the end of the war, rather than in the period 1918-1940.
The pre-WW2 period saw a doubling of GDP per capita from the start of WW1 to the start of WW2, or a tripling of GDP/capita from the war ravaged state Russia was in after losing WW1 and and the end of the civil war to the start of WW2, but this gain in production was mostly due to shifting production away from agriculture and towards mass production -- sectoral shifts. But because production was planned, the increase in production did not result in a corresponding increase in sectoral productivity (productivity within a sector), which actually declined spectacularly due to collectivization, and so you had an economy in which some goods were massively overproduced even as millions were starving.
More information can be found here: https://voxeu.org/article/stalin-and-soviet-industrialisatio...
It's a mistake we've seen made through out history time and again (e.g. bay of pigs, CIA adownplaying Castro's popular support, etc.)
They were not only wrong on how long it would take for the Russians to mobilize, they also overestimated their chances of knocking out France early.
Meh. Belarus economy is heavy machinery and agriculture (mostly exported to russia).
IT for Belarus is as important as expensive watches industry for US economy.
"The IT sector in Belarus. The total production and sales revenue of the IT sector was $3.1 billion in 2018. In 2018 IT accounted for 5.7% of Belarus's GDP, which is comparable with agriculture and forestry (6.4%), construction (5.4%), and transport (5.8%). By 2022, IT's share of GDP will have increased to 10%."
URL: https://minskdialogue.by/en/research/memorable-notes/how-can...
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-belarus-election-tech-idUK...
https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/europe/belarus-it-w...
https://icotalknews.com/business/tech-workers-flee-belarus-a...
P.P.S This was one of things I used to use the now defunct 'Web' button for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23762479
This is a slippery slope of course and that's why it's important to retain term limits, ensure elections are fair and untampered with, and impeach a leader when they stray toward dictatorship policies and procedures, even if you agree with those policies and procedures. It takes a lot courage to impeach a leader you agree with.
Well, I mean, if you ignore the country that takes up 39% (maybe a little more de facto after recent unilateral border alterations) of Europe, sure.
Also, you could probably argue that Russia is Asian, or that turkey is European, its not like there's a clear historical or geographic border, so there's some flexibility in how many dictatorships or authoritarian leaning countries you include
How many entrepreneurs and companies fell for the "law and order" discourse every authoritarian uses to gain power?
"IT haven takes authoritarian turn". Really? Isn't the so called IT haven exists under the exactly same government? What changed?
What changed is the situation of foreign instigated chaos intended to weaken a key Russian ally with the additional benefit that when many Belarussian workers leave the country they will serv someone's else economy. The competition of Belarussian IT industry will also be eliminated.
That's what I believed happened in the US. I wonder if a similar process happened in Belarus.
Sure, newsrooms can sway public opinion, but they’re also basically the only reason we know about those problems to begin with. Blaming them seems akin to treating a symptom, not the cause.
Not trying to disagree. I do think journalists today are partially responsible for our current situation - especially White House correspondents, whom are wholly ineffective at challenging any statements from the president or calling out outright lies.
I'm not alleging fraud but neglect and passive collusion. That is, journalists are allowing certain US Gov misdeeds to go largely unreported while amplifying US Gov voices w/o ever vetting if official claims are true.
It's because the primary power to oust corrupt officials rests with the public. Likewise for the power to push broad policy change.
US Gov agencies have been accumulating inappropriate power and commit atrocities (esp post 2001), largely w/o any pushback or coverage from news orgs.
It hasn't been zero coverage. For example, Edward Snowden dragged reluctant news outlets into doing their jobs for a little while. But the vast, vast bulk of Gov misdeeds that are right out in the open, rarely get even a nod - while a small selection of stories get huge parallel coverage, from coast to coast.
He is still insulting war dead, threatening the validity of election, not even interested in solving COVID, and much more that I'm sure that you're already aware of. His approval ratings are at about 40%, that's not good but 40% is almost saint-like by (say) french standards. That's despite journalists reporting on this near constantly.
I think a lot of that is just party loyalty at the moment, and party loyalty is a MUCH bigger deal in the US than in most European countries.
..when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything.Here are her words, verbatim:
“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s
supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?”
“The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it.
And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”
Now one can argue that she was wrong about the fraction of Trump's supporters who fit this archetype, but she did also call her own comment "grossly generalistic," so she wasn't trying to be precise and make a statement about literally 50% of Trump supporters.
The only way someone can interpret this as referring to the entire working class is if, 1) they simply drink the Trumpist Kool-Aid without bothering to research because Screechy Woman Bad, or 2) they believe the entire working class comprises about half of Trump supporters, all of whom are racist, sexist, homophobic and xenophobic.
And Biden being boring shouldn't be a negative. The Presidency isn't supposed to be entertainment, it's a political office in a bureaucracy.
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/4433
"On Apr 19, 2015, at 4:20 PM, John Podesta <john.podesta@gmail.com> wrote:
I know she has begun to hate everyday Americans, but I think we should use it once the first time she says I'm running for president because you and everyday Americans need a champion.
I think if she doesn't say it once, people will notice and say we false started in Iowa."
Context and thinking about things- they're important! You really don't need to rely on this stuff to criticize Hillary Clinton, of all people, for being out of touch. Honestly, it almost comes off as downright malicious sometimes.
Trump is totally amoral, whereas Biden has experienced loss in a way that few can imagine. He's not perfect, but he knows how to play the congressional game and when he reaches out to people looking for change in the police who have lost a loved one you know he isn't lying.
The alternative was also Bernie, which I just cannot see ending well.
When in congress, Biden pushed for the harsh sentencing that we had, with the 1994 crime bill. Trump supported and then signed the First Step Act, which is legislation to undo some of that.
"Unless we do something about this, my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle" -- Biden, in 1977
Trump has no concept of morality or loss - you realise why he wasn't invited to John McCain's funeral, right?
John McCain's funeral was a political event.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_miscondu...
I’m not trying to compare Biden and Trump in this, but you seem to imply in your post that dems should have dumped Biden because of that accusation. Why should Biden be treated differently than Trump?
As for the misconduct claims on Wikipedia, a lot of them look doubtful.
She made an allegation, and more specifically said she filed a complaint. The Biden team tried to publicly confirm its existence (i.e. they don't think it does), but the senate cannot publish it without Reade's permission. She later said she actually didn't publish a complaint.
I would be inclined to believe her if she could keep her story straight and generally not seem a bit unreliable.
Holds no water? That doesn't seem to be accounted for in "I believe women" when Biden et al were warring with Republicans in general, not just Trump.
Compare and contrast Reade & Biden with Christine Bleakley Ford & Kavanaugh, which quite a few publications have already.
1) Greater duty to family, what are you going to tell your wife when she asks you how is she meant to feed the kids and keep a roof while you serve a 20 year sentence for protesting? Or worse yet if you are maimed or killed.
2) This isn't like a 'normal' war, the course of action is not clear. Should I take up arms and attack government buildings, or would that backfire in terms of public support? Should I protest peacefully, or does that just give the dictator more time to prepare? If I already live outside, should I return to Belarus and put my body on the like, or would I be more effective donating cash that I am privileged to earn?
Working in tech now is fraught with peril, especially if one says anything outside of the overton window. I wouldn't be surprised if this starts happening in America as well in a few years.
And the owners of these places want to extract profit from these places, they on one hand like the money, but they reasonably must police their places. Virtually millions of people can shout at the same time at the same place. Bullying, doxxing, harassment, SWATing, spam, scam, porn, gore, really fucked up ideologies, racism/xenophobia, and whatnot are cropping up.
And it's clear that people are not really interested in going back to the typewriter and mailing letters to various publications.
This large scale "politicing" is likely truly unprecedented. Bored and angry people can comment, like, upvote, downvote whatever anyone wrote/posted/created/asked.
> Working in tech now is fraught with peril, especially if one says anything outside of the overton window.
That's "fake news" - because the base rate is low, even if there are clear examples of it. (Eg Google firing Damore who pointed out that Google's diversity group/effort is very inefficient because it's unscientific, so inadvertently exposed it as a simple PR effort.)