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Interestingly, people have been trying to flee Lithuania for the US when the USSR was still around, and not the other way around. I wonder if they might be ske

Interestingly, people have been trying to flee Lithuania for the US when the USSR was still around, and not the other way around. I wonder if they might be skeptical of another communist regime starting to interfere with the country. Worked so well the last time...

axiosgunnar 5y ago
? Lithuania has been capitalist for 20+ years and quality of life has increased by a lot ever since. the three baltic states are frontrunners in gov digitalization, for example
- dzhiurgis 5y ago
  Lithuania's gov digitalisation is a bit of a farce. To use it - you need to login via your bank or couple of other supremely inconvenient forms of homegrown federated login systems, none of which offer a simple U2F. Then you get a form that 99% of time doesn't work on mobile. When you do fill it, actual government clark picks it, reviews it and 4 weeks later you get a response - "you need to come to the office to verify your identity". Contrast it with NZ - I had to send my documents via post. In 6 years I NEVER had to visit ANY of government agency but I did receive visas and passports, just simply by post (if you have local drivers licence you do get to use local online services, which is a stupid barrier to begin with, but whatever).
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  > Lithuania has been capitalist for 20+ years and quality of life has increased by a lot ever since. That's what I said. Lithuania had it bad under communism (USSR). Maybe they are simply not interested in having an other communist regime (the CCP) meddle into it's internal affairs.
  - axiosgunnar 5y ago
    Ah yes, I agree completely with that
peoplefromibiza 5y ago
In hindsight we know that red scare was as bad as the thing they were fighting against As the Cold War intensified, the frenzy over the perceived threat posed by Communists in the U.S. became known as the Red Scare. The United States government responded by creating the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which was charged with identifying Communist threats to the United States. HUAC often pressured witnesses to surrender names and other information that could lead to the apprehension of Communists and Communist sympathizers. Committee members branded witnesses as “red” if they refused to comply or hesitated in answering committee questions. with the only exception that Americans could not flee from persecutions.
- therealcamino 5y ago
  "As bad as" is doing a lot of glossing over things there. HUAC and McCarthyism were reprehensible. That doesn't mean they were equivalent to abuses that occurred in the Soviet Union. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Sovi...
  - peoplefromibiza 5y ago
    > That doesn't mean they were equivalent to abuses that occurred in the Soviet Union According to Americans, of course. But according to large part of the rest of the World, it's wasn't different and it might even have been much worse. Ask Nicaragua or Chile or, more recently, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisoners. USSR didn't finance fascist bomb attacks that killed hundreds of innocent people in my country, but CIA did. Truth is "they were fleeing from USSR to USA because USA is a much better place" is actually a belief bias.
    - therealcamino 5y ago
      Well, those are not the comparisons that were being made that I was responding to.
fy20 5y ago
Earlier this year Lithuania authorized Taiwan to open an embassy-type office, and the relationship with China has (as somewhat expected) gone downhill since then. This report sounds like the result of what you would expect any reasonable government to do in that case - investigate what influence or security weaknesses said country may have. https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/09/22/china-lithuania-taiwan-eu-nato/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/09/22/china-lithuania-taiwan-...

axiosgunnar 5y ago

? Lithuania has been capitalist for 20+ years and quality of life has increased by a lot ever since. the three baltic states are frontrunners in gov digitalization, for example

dzhiurgis 5y ago
Lithuania's gov digitalisation is a bit of a farce. To use it - you need to login via your bank or couple of other supremely inconvenient forms of homegrown federated login systems, none of which offer a simple U2F. Then you get a form that 99% of time doesn't work on mobile. When you do fill it, actual government clark picks it, reviews it and 4 weeks later you get a response - "you need to come to the office to verify your identity". Contrast it with NZ - I had to send my documents via post. In 6 years I NEVER had to visit ANY of government agency but I did receive visas and passports, just simply by post (if you have local drivers licence you do get to use local online services, which is a stupid barrier to begin with, but whatever).
908B64B197 5y ago
> Lithuania has been capitalist for 20+ years and quality of life has increased by a lot ever since. That's what I said. Lithuania had it bad under communism (USSR). Maybe they are simply not interested in having an other communist regime (the CCP) meddle into it's internal affairs.
- axiosgunnar 5y ago
  Ah yes, I agree completely with that

peoplefromibiza 5y ago

In hindsight we know that red scare was as bad as the thing they were fighting against As the Cold War intensified, the frenzy over the perceived threat posed by Communists in the U.S. became known as the Red Scare. The United States government responded by creating the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which was charged with identifying Communist threats to the United States. HUAC often pressured witnesses to surrender names and other information that could lead to the apprehension of Communists and Communist sympathizers. Committee members branded witnesses as “red” if they refused to comply or hesitated in answering committee questions. with the only exception that Americans could not flee from persecutions.

therealcamino 5y ago
"As bad as" is doing a lot of glossing over things there. HUAC and McCarthyism were reprehensible. That doesn't mean they were equivalent to abuses that occurred in the Soviet Union. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Sovi...
- peoplefromibiza 5y ago
  > That doesn't mean they were equivalent to abuses that occurred in the Soviet Union According to Americans, of course. But according to large part of the rest of the World, it's wasn't different and it might even have been much worse. Ask Nicaragua or Chile or, more recently, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisoners. USSR didn't finance fascist bomb attacks that killed hundreds of innocent people in my country, but CIA did. Truth is "they were fleeing from USSR to USA because USA is a much better place" is actually a belief bias.
  - therealcamino 5y ago
    Well, those are not the comparisons that were being made that I was responding to.

fy20 5y ago

Earlier this year Lithuania authorized Taiwan to open an embassy-type office, and the relationship with China has (as somewhat expected) gone downhill since then. This report sounds like the result of what you would expect any reasonable government to do in that case - investigate what influence or security weaknesses said country may have. https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/09/22/china-lithuania-taiwan-eu-nato/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/09/22/china-lithuania-taiwan-...