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About Ukraine

washingtonpost.com

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Re: About Ukraine

#41

Post by IgorPartola »

marcosdumay wrote: post #40
11001 wrote: post #20

Here is an ELI5 version of what's going on in Ukraine: Ukraine doesn't have any money, it needs to borrow it. It can ask the west, but the west gives back a list of conditions to be satisfied (human rights, economical, etc) that are incredibly hard for the governmnet to achieve given deeply rooted corruption on all levels. There is another source for the money: Russia (which, despite some westerners' beliefs, is a ve…

> Ukraine doesn't have any money, it needs to borrow it. Most of the places where something like that's said, it's disingenious. Are people there starving? (From the news, it does not look like so.) If they are not, they have no such need to borrow. Of course, even if they don't need it, it might actualy be a godd idea to borrow some money. But looks like the people don't think it is.

Do you suggest that if people are not starving but the country has no money to maintain the infrastructure (which in turn is what allows businesses to grow, and creates jobs) they should be made to give up their personal money before any money is borrowed from elsewhere? That's a pretty socialistic approach.

Re: About Ukraine

#42

Post by shitgoose »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #37
aaron351 wrote: post #11

>8. Why haven't the U.S. or Europe fixed this? Seriously?

Obama's administration has been getting hammered for getting involved in these types of conflicts. Not sure he wants to stretch the US resources any further and is already hesitant to involve US military resources.See Egypt as exhibit A. Also, it's pretty frustrating when you see countries crying for help, then when we finally send in military and financial aid, they're called "occupiers" and told to leave the countr…

I agree with you, except "countries crying for help" part. Did Afghanistan cry for help? Or Iraq?

Re: About Ukraine

#43

Post by skylan_q »

marcosdumay wrote: post #40
11001 wrote: post #20

Here is an ELI5 version of what's going on in Ukraine: Ukraine doesn't have any money, it needs to borrow it. It can ask the west, but the west gives back a list of conditions to be satisfied (human rights, economical, etc) that are incredibly hard for the governmnet to achieve given deeply rooted corruption on all levels. There is another source for the money: Russia (which, despite some westerners' beliefs, is a ve…

> Ukraine doesn't have any money, it needs to borrow it. Most of the places where something like that's said, it's disingenious. Are people there starving? (From the news, it does not look like so.) If they are not, they have no such need to borrow. Of course, even if they don't need it, it might actualy be a godd idea to borrow some money. But looks like the people don't think it is.

One of the conditions for joining the EU are reforms that require Ukraine to borrow $150 billion from the IMF to "re-structure" the country. Conditions on that include austerity and freezing wages. It's no surprise support for joining the EU is only in the 40-45% range.

Re: About Ukraine

#44

Post by IgorPartola »

viach wrote: post #38
kushti wrote: post #23

Why so much Ukraine on HN? Protests are happening almost everyday in some european country. No Thailand protests covered here. Why the hysteria about Ukraine here?

From what i can see here - there is a lot of hackers among protesters. They do they day work and go throwing rocks in the police afterwards.

Case in point: https://github.com/fre5h/DoctrineEnumBundle/pull/12#issuecom...

Re: About Ukraine

#45

Post by robbiep »

The fact that his article has made it so high on HN is interesting to me

1) is it a sad reflection on society today, and an early sign of monetisation of the WP, that a 'distractify/mashable/tweetable' title makes it up the ranks

2) is it scary that a east-west divide story makes it higher than a 'Syria torn in half' story?

3) ... Why am I afraid that intellectually vacuous titles such as ELI5 actually get upvoted?

Re: About Ukraine

#46

Post by skylan_q »

Even if Putin can't bring Ukraine in, he'd like to keep it out of the European Union, which he sees as an extension of a century-old Western conspiracy against Russia.

It's no secret that U.S. foreign policy is guided by The Grand Chessboard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Chessboard

U.S. control over Ukraine would be a checkmate in controlling Europe and the middle east.

I hate to use the old adage, but this crisis presents a real opportunity. Russia and the EU could work together to sort this out instead of remaining divided. I don't see why the US has a say in the destiny of a country that's divided between Russia and the rest of Europe.

Re: About Ukraine

#47

Post by shitgoose »

cLeEOGPw wrote: post #13

One thing that wasn't mentioned in the article was about the reasoning behind Putin's customs union. Putin is very pro-Soviet Union. He wants to make customs union to make it resemble Soviet Union with Russia as the leader country and others (such as Belarus), former Soviet Union members as satellite countries. He also sees it, as mentioned in the article, as a counterweight to EU, which he views as a threat. So his…

Putin's longing for USSR is overrated. I don't believe he gives a rat's ass about USSR.

Customs Union is a block on countries that have deeply integrated economies, common language (unofficially it is Russian) and common background. CU is just as natural and logical as, for example, European Coal and Steel Community formed after 2nd World War. Whether CU will evolve into political union, like EU is trying to do, is unknown. Probably not. So there is no reason to freak out and fantasize about menace of USSR2.

Re: About Ukraine

#48

Post by saganus »

vonmoltke wrote: post #28
kushti wrote: post #23

Why so much Ukraine on HN? Protests are happening almost everyday in some european country. No Thailand protests covered here. Why the hysteria about Ukraine here?

Thailand notwithstanding, are any of these other protests building improvised forts in the streets of a major city or taking over government buildings around the country? Edit: 001sky has the better, less flippant reason.

Well, it might not be the same, but in Mexico there are so called self-defense groups, that try to fight against organized crime. They are armed groups of civilians that took control of entire towns and their surrounding areas, to stop the cartels from doing as they please.

They have gunfights with cartels and when they successfully drive them away, they pickup armored vehicles, guns and money, and everything else the crime groups leave behind.

The situation is so delicate that not even the army wants to try to fight these groups. They are negotiating and having meetings and all (I'm guessing the social cost of just obliterating these groups is too high; we are talking about 3 thousand armed people ready to get into action in 15 minutes, that's a lot of guns and civilians that you just can't bomb away with no repercusions. Not that the government can't, but it's too pollitically and socially costly), but the army nor the police or any other government authority have control of those areas. I believe that's a notch above improvised forts in the city's streets.

So, my point is not to compare both conflicts as if one was "above" the other, both problems are nasty and very bad things that are happening right now, however like someone said in a similar story posted days ago, this is not a political forum to the extent where it has nothing to do with technology or hacking, in any sense of the word, unless you want to consider social protest as a form of "government hacking" or "societal hacking", but then not only one country's conflict should be posted, but conflicts from all over the world.

I'm guessing part of this trend of having social and political issues popping up in technology news sites (HN, Slashdot, etc) is that, as would be expected, social unrest is highly tied to communication technologies such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc, and that overlap is what brings social unrest news to the frontpages of techonology-related sites. The most obvious example I can think of is the conflicts in Egypt and how they came to be.

But alas, I think my point still stands in that Ukraine's conflicts are in no way (that I can see) more related to techonology news, than say Mexico's conflicts, and those haven't been covered in HN, so I fail to see what is so special about Ukraine that gets to be posted several times in the past few days.

Maybe someone can enlighten me on this? I don't intend to underestimate what's happening there or to dismiss the conflicts, but I, like someone else already said, don't come to HN for political news, unless they are somehow related to technology (NSA antics, Wikileaks, etc)

Re: About Ukraine

#49

Post by gerbal »

marcosdumay wrote: post #40
11001 wrote: post #20

Here is an ELI5 version of what's going on in Ukraine: Ukraine doesn't have any money, it needs to borrow it. It can ask the west, but the west gives back a list of conditions to be satisfied (human rights, economical, etc) that are incredibly hard for the governmnet to achieve given deeply rooted corruption on all levels. There is another source for the money: Russia (which, despite some westerners' beliefs, is a ve…

> Ukraine doesn't have any money, it needs to borrow it. Most of the places where something like that's said, it's disingenious. Are people there starving? (From the news, it does not look like so.) If they are not, they have no such need to borrow. Of course, even if they don't need it, it might actualy be a godd idea to borrow some money. But looks like the people don't think it is.

The government of Ukraine doesn't have enough money to pay its debts. It needs to borrow money to pay its debts or default.

Re: About Ukraine

#50

Post by tim333 »

kushti wrote: post #23

Why so much Ukraine on HN? Protests are happening almost everyday in some european country. No Thailand protests covered here. Why the hysteria about Ukraine here?

Looking at the HN guidelines: "On-Topic: ... anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon."

I think you could categorise the Ukraine protests as an interesting new phenomenon in a way you can't most of the others.

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