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What is really happening in Ukraine

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Re: What is really happening in Ukraine

#162

Wow, some this is some epic propaganda. Closer to truth is that this is more a coup-d'etat by the Ukrainian fascist paramilitary. The liberal Ukrainian opposition has been chased out of greater parts of the Maidan square and is now in control of "Right Sector", a loosely based umbrella coalition between various fascist and nazi organisations and parties. These extremist wants to ignite a civil war to "cleanse Ukraine…

As a Russian speaking Ukrainian, participating in protests, living in Kiev that considers this quote by Albert Einstein to be very true "Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind", you are so full of shit.

Re: What is really happening in Ukraine

#163

Simple question - if somebody is protesting for more than 2 month where does he/she get money from? Leaving us with 2 major groups - unemployed/homeless and students. Unemployed people are suffering in every country, but putting enthusiasm into looking for a job for 2.5 months would most likely solve their problem. Students are stupid, and gullible, I know, I've been one :)

Are you saying unemployed, homeless and students are better equipped to do without an income for two months of protesting than well-off people with savings? I can see prolonged protesting making people unemployed or homeless, though probably not into students...

Re: What is really happening in Ukraine

#164
I see this attempts to drum up support for protesters in Ukraine, even here on HackerNews and this is not the place.

Also I personally don't want to support civil way anywhere, which is what they are trying to create. One look at Syria should be enough for normal people to try to seek better solution.

So called protestors are no angels.

Re: What is really happening in Ukraine

#165
post #84

People being kidnapped from hospital beds and tortured by their own government. It's hard to imagine a more depraved situation.

How about drone strikes which target and kill a US citizen and his teenage son?

I shouldn't indulge these unproductive subthreads, but I have mild nerd autism and am easily trolled.

It's my experience that people who bring up Anwar al-Awlaki and his son --- particularly when using the term "US citizen" in the same breath --- rarely know anything specific about what actually happened.

To start with, al-Awlaki and his son Abdulrahman weren't killed together, but at separate times.

Abdulrahman was never targeted. He was killed a month later because he was for some reason in the same cafe as Ibrahim al-Banna, the day-to-day operational leader of AQAP. al-Banna was the target of the attack. The USG had no reason to know of Abdulrahman's presence in Shabwa, Yemen, which wasn't under the control of the Yemeni government and continues to be the site of bloody conflicts between militants and the Yemeni state. What was Abdulrahman doing there? Super-parent Anwar al-Awlaki brought him there, to an AQAP war zone that was hosting conflicts not just with the US but with its own host country.

Anwar al-Awlaki was targeted by the US. al-Awlaki was a US citizen. But, like the tens of Americans who left the US to fight for Hitler in World War 2, al-Awlaki deliberately placed himself outside the protections of his citizenship and from that vantage point tried to wage war on his home country. al-Awlaki built up a serial murderer's resume as a sponsor, planner, and coordinator of multiple attacks on civilians in the US and UK. The only reason anyone questions his role in those attacks is because they ususally failed --- the planes didn't blow up, the stab victims didn't die.

People have strange ideas of how "citizenship" works. The American government has no arrest powers in Shabwa and Anyan Province Yemen. There is no due process in that part of the world whatsoever. The USG had three options in al-Awlaki's case: (1) ignore him and hope that he didn't eventually manage actually blow up a passenger plane, (2) kill him with a targeted airstrike, or (3) invade Yemen to capture him. The USG chose the option that killed the fewest innocent civilians.

Re: What is really happening in Ukraine

#166

Frankly, this "presentation" feels like a 13-year old made it for his homework assignment. Poor language skills, not many details and unreliable evidence. I got to the 10th slide and gave up. This is definitely not something I would use to form an opinion on the current situation in Ukraine.

> Poor language skills

Or English is their second language? So Poor English language skills?

Re: What is really happening in Ukraine

#167
post #28

Very scary similarities with what has happened in Turkey. I have amazing respect for all those brave people risking their lives to say "No!" to tyranny. They are the modern day heroes.

The best part about a democracy is when the losers respect the electoral process, but this same logic seems to escape many liberals when in comes affairs of foreign countries, so they'll blindly bandwagon any rebel without a cause. Or, perhaps you aren't liberal and simply view civil strife as being good for western(American)interests - in which case you are a fit to work for the white house.

Re: What is really happening in Ukraine

#168

This is propaganda and has no place on Hacker News. Anything that says 'Civil War Has Been Ignited", when there is no civil war YET, is war mongering for some cause.

how would you define "Civil War"?

War: "Organized, large-scale, armed conflict between countries or between national, ethnic, or other sizeable groups, usually involving the engagement of military forces."

A standoff between protesters (lots of yelling, occasional rock-throwing and starting small isolated fires) vs. riot police pretty much just standing in lines, hardly constitutes a "war" (civil or otherwise). If fatalities are on the order of "one in a million", that (however tragic & objectionable it may be) is little more than statistical noise.

Re: What is really happening in Ukraine

#169
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You stood up for your country, then the government hurt you so bad, that you were taken to the hospital, the government then came to the hospital, took you from there, proceeded to undress and torture you. They then threw you out on a cold field to die (it's -14C there). That vs. Walking down the road, boom, a lot of me is missing, shock, I'm gonna die, ouch, ouch, dead. I know which way I'd prefer to go if it was do…

> Walking down the road, boom, a lot of me is missing, shock, I'm gonna die, ouch, ouch, dead. More like, hide out in Yemen for 10 years organizing violent jihad against the United States and protecting Al Qaeda members from the Yemeni government, then walking down the road... It's tremendously demeaning to political protestors in Ukraine to compare their situation to people like Al Awlaki.

I'm annoyed at myself for feeding this thread which has really nothing to do with the Ukrainian situation, but you make it sound like drone strikes only hit terrorists. I'm sorry, but you've been fed the wrong narrative. Take, for instance, this extract from [1]:

An estimated 286 to 890 civilians have been killed, including 168 to 197 children.

I'm not saying that it's done on purpose, and intent does matter when considering responsibility. But unfortunately, intent makes little difference to the dead.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_attacks_in_Pakistan

Re: What is really happening in Ukraine

#170
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For many polish people still remembering the war times, effectively sharing a border with Russia again would be a big issue. I haven't been following news in pl for a while, but I'm sure there's a lot of pro-eu-ukraine sentiment present. There was definitely a lot of it during the orange revolution some time ago. Edit: just checked, is not hard to find neutral articles, but all the others are pretty much against the…

Poland already shares a border with Russia, so it doesn't matter. The support for the revolution seems mostly to come from a sort of post-collonial thinking that Ukrainians will praise Poles as saviours and the former sea-to-sea glory of the Polish Empire will be reinstituted. How naive, sadly.

With one barely significant part - yes it does. In most conversations that border is basically ignored. I'm talking about what impression people have about the Ukraine situation.

Also, I've honestly never heard the idea of praise to the saviours before. Mostly it's just the memory of Russia and any government control they impose having terrible results. Noone seriously thinks about the Polish Empire anymore. Or at least I have never heard anyone seriously mention it for the last ~3 decades. Not sure where you got it...

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