| HN Mirror

#5 is definitely suspicious reasoning - no surprise it is being appealed in the courts. That said, having read a little about this colourful persona, I have to admit my thought was “good job, he deserved it” although I know I really shouldn’t think like that. :) This is really an example of cancel culture, just done by the government. The problem is that there’s not really a law against being an arse and bringing in such a law would do more harm than good, so they are doing “the wrong thing for the right reasons”.

The other 2 cases seem pretty clear-cut and less than 0 sympathy from me personally.

FWIW, based on my experience in living in both systems there are some fundamental differences in culture that may help to get a better perspective: group has priority over individual; responsibilities / duties of the individual rather than rights; the more people you reach with what you say the higher the expectation that you will be a role model and the greater the censure if you don’t (sadly corruption and cronyism often gets in the way); a very strong “us” vs “them” mentality. I see these all the time playing out in different ways.

As for applying “western standards” I actually had a law lecturer (I studied and live in UK) argue that this sort of thing is an example of “cultural imperialism”. I would just caution that a thorough understanding of historic, social, geographical (and other) challenges should be considered before trying to import patterns from elsewhere. Governance is what we would call in IT a “hard problem”.

I’ll stop before this becomes an essay. :)