Belarus forces Ryanair flight down to arrest reporter critical of government

boing
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The increased specificity is appreciated. Because your initial question was rather more vague.

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So what you’re saying is that no country (or citizens thereof) that has ever done anything bad before can rightfully criticize any other country for doing something similar? Are US citizens allowed to criticize our own government, or is that off limits too? Oh, wait, you are saying that because we are US (or French or Spanish?) citizens, we must have supported what our government did at the time. Makes sense.

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That is a false equivalence of course. Let’s count the ways…

  1. A private plain is not a commercial line
  2. No (fake,) bomb scare was used
  3. There was an actual grounded warrant for arrest
  4. There was no EU involvement or decision. Only France, Spain, and Austria were involved

It was still a debatable thing to, don’t get me wrong, but not the same.

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good luck with that

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I think there’s a legitimate case to be made pointing out the specific hypocrisy if and when governments apply a double-standard, as in the case earlier in the thread of the EU condemning a crime two of it’s member-states themselves have engaged in.

But that’s a far remove from @Hellokitty’s initial vague rhetorical question in this thread which neither replied to the other comments reporting on the EU’s stance nor made attempt to distinguish that it was not directly generally at criticism of the Belarusian government’s own abduction of a journalist or Rob’s post which comments in this thread are nominally about unless otherwise directed and which did not report the EU’s stance. In light of that, I’m skeptical that @Hellokitty was not intentionally generalizing at least to begin with.

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46

so somebody linked to that outrage but now that’s not good enough

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Ah, so they have. I missed @anon73430903’s comment. She was more patient than I. That’s what I get for not catching up on the full intervening thread before replying to @Hellokitty’s reply back to me. Mea culpa.

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So now it’s not about the missing outrage, which was actually plentiful

Instead it’s about how everybody in America needs to STFU

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Gee, what a coincidence.

Hope the useful idiots who tried to smear him and excuse his abduction are proud of themselves. /s

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It was here. I therefore feel entitled to be outraged now. US and EU governments are, of course, hypocrites. But in this case they are not wrong.

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O’Leary is just sorry he’s not allowed do it to passengers who don’t pay upgrades.

Dicking hell, it’s not like it’s a risky stand for them here to be outraged on behalf of their passengers. There really isn’t much to be lost, outside of geopolitics they are a private entity which has been injured here.

But they never lose an opportunity to disappoint.

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They changed their tune yesterday.

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“Here at Ryanair we condemn air piracy, eventually, when it starts to threaten our bottom line.” /s

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Yeah, I feel genuinely bad for the Belarusian people, but I don’t blame the airlines for staying the fuck out of their airspace one iota.

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Yeah, I mean I’m fond of blaming the airlines for lots of shit that they actually do, but they are dead right here.

Michael O’Leary is still a slab of festering shite though and once he finishes up at Ryanair (either they grow their way out of his accounting deviousness or the industry collapses) he will pivot into an anti immigration far right politician so quick you’ll get dizzy.

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I hear he has a taxi. /s

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