I very distinctly recall the geography teacher asking the class clown to pronounce it when we were studying it, it went as expected, and she corrected him. She told us it was pronounced n-eye-jer, but it’s also been 30 years.
I’m someone who that word we thought the title said would be used against, and I had to double back to make sure somebody on Lemmy didn’t just lose their bigoted fuckin minds. 😂😂
The fuck is this article? What are the differences in ideologies between the military and the government? Is there any history of this conflict? How long has this president been in office? Most BBC readers probably have no idea about anything in Niger, myself included
Considering this is 16 minutes old and a currently happen situation, it’s very likely BBC doesn’t keep that information on hand, and likely has to go source that.
I doubt the soldiers put out a press release as the first thing they did detailing the ideological differences, and more focused on consolidating power right now.
Niger President Mohamed Bazoum has been held by troops from the presidential guard since early on Wednesday. ... Mr Bazoum is a key Western ally in the fight against Islamist militancy in West Africa.
There are only 3 actual sources of world news these days, the BBC is not one of them. They’re probably waiting on AP to send the details from boots on the ground.
In the geopolitical context of West Africa, this attempted coup highlights the recurrent destabilizing elements that persist in the region. The instability, primarily fueled by jihadist insurgencies, external powers, and internal grievances, significantly hinders democratic progress and socio-economic development. Niger, like its neighbors, Mali and Burkina Faso, finds itself in a precarious situation, walking a fine line between international alliances, internal political dynamics, and threats from non-state actors. This event calls for an in-depth academic exploration into the cyclical nature of power struggles in post-colonial states, specifically examining how external interventions, both past and present, intersect with domestic power dynamics.
So my question is: who is supporting it from the outside?
KSA or non-state Saudis are always the obvious choice. China doesn’t usually get that cozy with islamists. Russia is busy or they’d be the usual suspect. Iran is also busy, plus these guys look sunni.
It’s very possible this is wholly organic, but recent history makes that suspect.
It’s crucial to remember that Niger is a key western ally in the fight against Islamist militancy in West Africa. Therefore, direct involvement from countries such as the KSA, China, or Russia seems less likely, as it would conflict with their international relations and objectives.
While it’s conceivable that non-state actors could have a hand in the unrest, available information doesn’t provide concrete evidence for this claim. It’s also worth noting that jihadist groups in the region are not homogenous, and often have differing interests, making their involvement in political coups complicated and less probable.
However, you rightly point out that these situations are rarely as simple as they appear. The truth may well be a mix of local grievances and foreign influences, given the complex and interconnected nature of global politics. Until there’s more information, though, any assertions remain largely speculative.
I have to argue against your assessment that the ksa does not support Islamic militant movements, under Bandar bin sultan they had a strong policy for favoring such groups including isis, a successful policy which seems to have led to his removal. Otherwise they have a strong history of non-state support of islamists.
Russia supported the taliban: www.voanews.com/a/…/6192205.html and the taliban claims Chinese support as well which fits given post-us withdrawal activity.
The goal to extract the west from Africa fits well with both Russian and Chinese geopolitical goals, and ksa has had an agenda to “islamize” Africa for decades.
NONE of this is anything but baseless conjecture, but in my opinion Africa is the next geopolitical theater, much like the middle east was during the 2000s and eastern Europe and the pacific are now.
China would be well placed to make their maneuvers in areas where the west has fewer natural advantages and their arguments against colonialism bear weight, even the pacific seems less friendly to Chinese geopolitical aims than africa right now.
Your points are well-made, yet they lean heavily on historical precedent while missing recent dynamics. Although past foreign interference is notable, current geopolitics require fresh evidence to assert foreign involvement. Africa is indeed a growing geopolitical theatre, but the narrative isn’t solely about external actors - the agency of African states and citizens plays a crucial role. Dismissing them risks oversimplifying the complex reality.
I completely agree there is no evidence to support the claim of interference here.
We’ll see. I think the 2010s had a number of staged “coups” and perhaps we’re getting back to the era of organic political upheaval. Wouldn’t that be nice?
There needs to be trust in the justice system. Otherwise, there’s no point in having a justice system. If he’s cleared, then there wasn’t enough evidence and he should be considered innocent. That’s how our justice system works. Don’t break the social contract because of your vendetta against rich people.
The problem is that our society doesn’t encourage people to immediately report crimes nor provide sufficient support for people who have been abused.
Do you think OJ Simpson is innocent? Would you want your daughter or sister to marry him?
The are different standards for a reason. Society is perfectly capable of being aware that someone is a giant dickbag without there being enough evidence to justify using the power of the state to remove their freedom and incarcerate them. Those are two extraordinarily different things and you know it.
To suggest otherwise is to imply that the government is a perfect arbiter of dispute that we should all just blindly accept. Something tells me you wouldn't be so keen on that stance when it worked against your interests
I think we need to recognise the moral panic of the situation too. People are out there looking to cancel others, others are out to use the moment for financial gain, and then there is the legitimate ones too. We dont know which they are and for the most part, the judicial system is only OK at separating them.
If you can smear someone and that’s it their life is over, no matter the truth of it, then what justice is that?
What’s the truth here… not very many people know, clearly.
I think we could use a little more moral panic about the actual number of people who are actually raped every year and maybe worry a little less about your proposed miniscule hypothetical
Hahahaha, that's hilarious. Because I'm actually at extraordinarily high risk of that happening. I'm a nurse. That happens all the time to nurses.
Thorough investigations are done. And no, I don't worry about it. You know why? Because I'm not a fucking rapist sexual predator and everyone who knows me knows that.
You gotta wonder about people who are sooooooooooooo worried about being "falsely" accused of rape that they think false accusations are worthy of jail time. What exactly are you doing out there in the world that this is a major concern in your life? That you think it's even possible for your whole life to be ruined over a baseless accusation?
Because this is simply not something I worry about at all.
This is way too close to “if you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to hide” logic.
What exactly are you doing out there in the world that this is a major concern in your life?
Making terrible choices in friends, for one. Never been accused of SA, thank christ, but figured out too late that many people live in their own reality, and rewrite history once the friendship ends. Have also known people who have been in that situation, and even if no charges end up being pressed, it’s still a gut-wrenching situation to be in.
The issue of how to handle SA accusations is such a nightmare that it’s practically inevitable that we have both innocent people convicted, and guilty people acquitted at the same time. Most of the time we don’t have the kind of oversight and institutional procedure you would enjoy if accused.
You're being deliberately obtuse and conflating completely different situations, and I think you're doing it on purpose to muddy the waters. An accusation after a breakup that cause a fight among friends is a very different situation from a report to the police. Even a report to the police often doesn't trigger an investigation. And God knows it rarely triggers an actual prosecution. These are simply not things that you need to worry about, if you're not running around the world raping people. If it causes you anxiety that severe, get therapy.
Because it's not the giant boogeyman that internet apologists like to pretend it is, with data:
Because I'm sorry, but losing a few friends is not a terrible enough consequence for me to get worked up about. Shit happens, friends get in fights and stop being friends over all sorts of dumb shit. I see zero reason why that would cause someone to go through their lives in mortal fear that they might be "falsely" accused of a sex crime.
The issue of how to handle sexual assault accusations is not complicated. I told you, we handle them all the time in the medical field. You default to protecting the accuser, you do a thorough investigation, if the investigation turns up no evidence, you move on.
A "he said, she said" situation that never gets formally investigated, but causes the breakup of some friendships is not as terrible as being actually raped. It's just not.
People, for a whole host of reasons, can be and very much are in different situations than you. Some have very little defense against such allegations, and so it should not be very difficult to understand that they could have their lives destroyed in an instant by false accusations.
For instance, if they engage in non-normalized sexual relations (for their area or country, obviously), be that interracial, same sex, BDSM, etc., particularly if they are not “out”. It’s very easy to go from “he tied me up and we had a great time”, to “that guy did me wrong somehow so now I’m going to press charges and claim he tied me up against my will and raped me”. If you don’t think this happens you’re living in a dream land.
You're living in a dream land if you think going to the police with nothing more than "yes I went over to his house consensually and it turned bad from there" is likely to result in a legal prosecution.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but this has actually happened. The case I know of, personally, involved a bar owner. He was exonerated after a few years being dragged through the mud, but he ended up having to shut down his bar and move out of town to be left alone. This stuff happens.
Do I have a better alternative? No, it’s a complex issue and we definitely don’t want to victim blame, but we also don’t want to destroy people’s lives over just allegations. It’s a delicate balance. I think one thing we could do, at very least, is to actually stand by the innocent until proven guilty ideal and not publish the identity of the accused until a verdict comes out. This is the way it is in most of Europe and a “perp walk” happening like it does in the US would free highly illegal.
I’ve given a lot of thought to this issue in the past and I think it all boils down to one indisputable fact:
“You just believe her” is completely at odds with “innocent until proven guilty.”
“We should believe women” is a laudable phrase, and it makes us feel good to say it, but men are victims as well, especially trans men. “We should believe victims” would be better, but it is a begging-the-question fallacy, it assumes the victimhood is true. The people who made that not possible are specifically the people who have made false allegations in the past.
It is far, far more common for women who allege to be completely ignored, ridiculed, dragged through the mud should they choose to pursue charges. That's a simple fact of the world. RAPE IS A BIGGER PROBLEM THAN FALSE RAPE ACCUSATIONS.
I also express little sympathy for people who worry more about the side effects of the Covid vaccine than they do about the negative effects of actual Covid. Because one of those things is an actual serious problem, and the other is a boogeyman used for political purposes.
Supported by data. You know, kind of like the difference between false accusations of rape and ACTUAL RAPE.
The people who have made false allegations in the past are exactly the reason we can’t just believe every victim that comes forward without proof. They are why we can’t have nice things. It’s not about the odds and ratios either, the state putting a completely innocent person in jail is a travesty of the system. The travesties of what we do to each other are the realities of living on a planet with other humans, we are terrible to one another regularly. We must do the absolute best we can to support victims of sexual assault…untested rape kits are a fucking abomination for instance and I’d be fine with tar and feathers for whoever let that happen. But we still must stop short of allowing even one innocent person to be put in jail.
I recommend watching “The People vs OJ Simpson” on this. It doesn’t really get into guilty vs not guilty, but just showcases just how complicated things got in that case.
The government performing arbitration is a power that society has vested in them. The solution to a flawed system is to fix the system, not vigilantism.
The lack of trust in the judiciary is a failure of government and a failure of society.
NO! That is how the court system, and therefore the state sees him in regards to punishment and treatment. That does not mean, and has never ever ever ever meant, that being declared not guilty means they are proven to be innocent. Just that there’s wasn’t evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.
A new justice system? Might as well overthrow the government and start over then, because the common law system is literally the foundation of society.
That’s exactly what we want, yes. And we’ll end up getting it too, with climate collapse, so trying to intimidate me into submitting to a system that is inherently biased and abusive and has done nothing but hurt myself and everyone I know and love personally will get you nowhere.
I will NOT change my mind on this and you can’t make me.
WE will not change our minds on this and you can’t make us.
We can and will make something better and there’s nothing you can do to stop us.
Wow. Reading through those Descriptions is rough. Many of them involve the cop lying with verbal testimony not matching bodycam footage. One I saw was after the guy was already restrained, he bit the cop’s finger, so the cop shot him. Others show that they are looking for (or will make up) any excuse to shoot: one person had a lighter in their hand which caused the cop to shoot and kill them. It’s honestly disgusting that people will go out of their way to defend this system. I guess that’s a level of privelege that I just don’t understand; how can you possibly be sure you’ll never be in such a situation with a lying, murderous police officer?
Huh, looks like this is talking about cops, of which there are millions of in America, and cops lying in reports, and not a about a court of law ruling a lynching was okay.
You’re taking an overly specific definition of lynching and framing the situation wrong, and coming to a bad conclusion.
A court’s refusal to punish it, in nearly every case, is tacit support. They aren’t saying “please, lynch!” but they’re saying they won’t punish lynching.
This also easily fits any definition of lynching that’s not so restricted so as to only include “hanging black people from trees in town squares”.
Obviously, no one should be convicted if evidence is insufficient. The issue that I have is that it’s difficult to believe someone is innocent when multiple people have alleged similar complaints. Does that make him guilty? No. But it increases my suspicion. And I’ll never be able to shake that suspicion. It doesn’t mean I want him locked up. It only means that I’m not comfortable with his art going forward. Which is a shame, because he’s one of the best actors of our time.
I’m not saying to blindly trust the judiciary, but that not trusting the judiciary is an inherent failure in society. We need to fix that, not focus on individual cases that will keep happening if our judicial system is morally and ethically compromised.
Innocence is VERY SPECIFICALLY NOT WHAT COURTS declare. They only ever declare that there wasn’t enough evidence presented to proof guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Right, so the only thing the court states is that innocence could not be disproven. Incidentally that’s similar to how statistical hypotheses are being proven - by showing that it’s unlikely to be false.
The presumption of innocence doesn’t preclude the fact that criminal courts don’t find someone innocent, rather they find someone not guilty.
This is for the simple fact that it’s neigh impossible to establish someone’s innocence, whereas it’s easier to establish that there isn’t enough evidence to consider someone guilty.
This case is, and sexual assault cases in general are, a great example why we can’t expect criminal courts to establish innocence.
These are often cases with little evidence available either which way, because often there are no other witnesses. Even if there would be physical evidence of a sexual act, it’s still challenging to prove under what circumstances those acts have occurred, specifically on the matter of consent.
To expect a court to be able to say with certainty that something hasn’t occurred is unreasonable.
That is not to say that it isn’t good that we have these high standards before we impose punishment onto someone, but it is important to recognize what it means when a court comes to a decision.
Additionally the presumption of innocence is just that, a presumption to establish who has the onus to prove something, there is no additional meaning attributed to it in the legal principle beyond establishing who has the onus to prove the facts at hand.
In that regard it’s rather unfortunately named, as it would’ve been more apt to name it “the presumption of not guilty” but I suppose that doesn’t roll as nicely off the tongue
To add to that, that the presumption is specifically a principle that only has meaning in criminal court, because the burden of proof is generally higher than in civil court.
People can be, and have been, found liable in civil court for the very thing a criminal court has found them “not guilty” on, on the very basis that criminal court can’t establish innocence and that the bar that needs to be met in civil court is generally lower than in criminal court.
As such to bring up the presumption of innocence in a vacuum is kind of like bringing up the generally recognized human right of freedom of speech when a social media company bans someone and removes their post.
Yes, the concept exists, but it’s irrelevant because it doesn’t apply to the topic at hand, because the concept aims to govern a very specific circumstance that isn’t applicable here and withholding the important context surrounding it (i.e. the role it plays in criminal court for the presumption and the fact that it only limits governments for the freedom of speech) masks the limitations of said concept.
None of the above aims to reflect my opinion on Spacey’s innocence (or lack thereof), rather it aims to provide the necessary details to put things into context.
no, we are not part of the government. same reason the 1st amendment does not apply to private property. it protects speech from censorship from the government.
Considered innocent, by the state organs. Considered innocent, in how the state treats them. NOT EVER AT ALL PROVEN innocent by the courts.
Courts are not and have never been concerned about proving innocence. All they care about is guilty or not guilty. Not guilty could mean innocent, but again, the courts don’t care about that.
Considered innocent, by the state organs. Considered innocent, in how the state treats them. NOT EVER AT ALL PROVEN innocent by the courts.
Courts are not and have never been concerned about proving innocence. All they care about is guilty or not guilty. Not guilty could mean innocent, but again, the courts don’t care about that.
What I’m saying is that the basic social contract used to be that you would be considered innocent until proven guilty by your peers. If we abandon we mess with the foundations of society at our own peril.
Fellow newsian Your title might not match the title of the article you linked! Could you please double check, and edit your post title if it indeed does not match? article title: “Niger coup attempt: President Mohamed Bazoum held” (Similairity: ~44%).
FLIP FLOP this action was performed semi-automatically by a bot (:
And now, many of the remaining accusers seem to be reluctant to push forward. Almost like the christmas was a coded message to people he has dirt on, but Hollywood’s never associated with people with delusions of spy novels. Clearly all those people were clout chasers.
…it’s from a odd technicality where on ol’ blighty, a male can’t be “raped” because of how the laws are written. Call it a peculiarity of their system or sexism, but it results in oddly sounding charges like what you see reported at least.
I know it’s incredibly difficult, but if you are ever sexually assaulted, it’s crucial to report it as soon as possible.
Time erodes facts, witnesses, memory, and only hurts a victim’s chance to seek justice. Prosecuting a sexual predator early also ensures that no one else can be victimized.
100% this. I wish I had… I’m only confronting it psychologically now, 20 years later, and I have to face the fact there’s no chance of getting justice.
I don’t know if it helps or not for me to point this out (I hope it’s something that gives you some solace), but depending on the circumstances it’s also very difficult to go through an investigation and trial. Maybe things are better now, but 20 or 30 years back it was an ordeal for the victim. The “what were you wearing?” mentality was very prevalent within the male-dominated judiciary and they made it so hard on the victims that they often felt like they were on trial - and in many cases they still didn’t get justice either, despite their personal lives being dissected in front of a room full of strangers, some of whom were intent on falsely portraying them as promiscuous. After seeing this happen to a friend, I lost faith in the system to deliver justice. I don’t have a solution, but an adversarial system just doesn’t seem ideal for this kind of prosecution.
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