Social parasites speak up
Belarus has defended the mass arrests on Saturday during protests against a tax on those seen as under-employed.
Hundreds were arrested and some beaten up as thousands took to the streets of the capital, Minsk, and other cities.
The foreign ministry said the demonstrations were not peaceful as “petrol bombs and arms-laden cars” were found near the Minsk protest.
How near? A few hundred miles perhaps?
Defending the government, foreign ministry spokesman Dzmitryy Mironchyk said the “actions of law enforcement agencies were completely appropriate” on Saturday.
He said the rallies had been unauthorised, which “bears specific consequence in any country of the world”, and noted that no tear gas or water cannons were used.
Not true about the consequence actually. For instance in the US:
In some cases, government can require a permit as a condition of protest on public property. For example, government often can require a permit for parades in the streets, given the impact on vehicle traffic. Likewise, government often can require a permit for large protests in public parks and plazas, in order to ensure fairness among the various groups seeking to use the site.
On the other hand, the First Amendment generally bars government from requiring a permit when one person or a small group protest in a park, or when a group of any size protest on a public sidewalk in a manner that does not burden pedestrian or vehicle traffic.
There’s a big difference between requiring a permit for disrupting traffic and requiring one for expressing dissent in public. The state can of course claim to be doing the first while really doing the second, but that can backfire.
The authorities are reported to have jailed more than 100 opposition supporters for terms of between three and 15 days in the lead-up to Saturday’s demonstration.
The weekend’s events follow weeks of sporadic protests against a $230 (£185) levy on those unemployed for six months, dubbed a “social parasites” tax.
Isn’t that lovely? Fining people for being unemployed. Nobody tell Trump, he’ll want to do it too.
Pshah! Trump has already cornered the market on social parasitism.
Hell, just this weekend, I did a stint as a greeter at Planned Parenthood. The protestors (most of whom are regulars) actually stand in the privately owned access road (not owned by PP, but rather by whoever owns the lot the local supermarket is on), not quite blocking the entrance. (Their goal is a bit more subtle–force drivers to slow down so they can try to flag them down before they’re in the parking lot.) And they walk across the empty lot with ‘no trespassing’ signs across the street to get there. All of this is tacitly permitted by the LEOs who come by every once in awhile to keep the peace, because they don’t want a 1st Amendment complaint.
What the everloving fuck? Fines for not being able to find a job?