Hacker News Reader

Comment by Mikeb85 | Hacker News Reader

Are you for real? FFS...

Read the article, it's in there.

are you? real source not government propaganda.

Considering the article is trying to make the KZ government look bad, I'd say the part that appears less biased is relevant.

The whole point of HN is to comment on the article. BBC is obviously UK government propaganda, so the fact their headline is clickbait and the little data they do include doesn't support it is relevant.

Why should the UK-propaganda even have a stance on Kazakhstan? This sound like the usual russian troll approach of "Everyone does everything, so bad is relative" fog grenade.

Russia seems to be pretty run-down lately in the east. Especially with Chinese investments basically buying out the usual province robber barons and slowly replacing the owner-caste.

Kazakhstan's current government is a Russian ally. You surely have seen all the western hostility towards Russia in the news lately, right?

Do you have any basis for the claim that "Kazakhstan's current government is a Russian ally."? President Tokayev seems to mostly continue the course of carefully balancing Kazakhstans national independence with all their foreign relations, so one could as well claim that Kazakhstan current government a chinese ally or a european ally, given that they are not at war with either and those are the three largest trade partners of Kazakhstans. In order of export trade volume: EU, China, Russia and for import trade volume Russia, China, EU. Note that Kazhakstan exports five times more than it imports. (Source: oec.world and comtrade.un.org)

The Kazakh president literally asked Russia to send in troops... Pretty sure that qualifies. They're in trade and defense pacts with Russia.

I see how my comment was badly worded and misunderstandable, my point is to refute the strong undertone that a nation can only ever be allied with one side of a cold war bloc as outdated, overly simplistic and completely missing the actual reality of politics and economics in the region.

The data is included because there not much verifiable source to come by. Think about your logic -- BBC is UK propaganda who wants to make Kazakhstan look bad, yet they cited government's number and quoted the president, not anyone from the protesters? The government is a party of the conflict, yet you consider their reported number believable?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com