Protests in Ukraine | Hacker News Reader

Protests in Ukraine

ustream.tv

59 pointsnmbdesign46 comments

We have these kind of riots in Hungary (pretty close to Ukraine) as well. They are not really revolutions, but they are a good indicator that the people are extremely fed up with current government policies, which may lead to a revolution.

Exciting times to live in, hopefully the people will be able to get rid of the corrupt ruling class.

EDIT:

Just to give you bit of context on corruption... in the UK where I currently live, politicians are going into prisons for faking a couple of thousands of pounds as expense and profiting from that... A couple of thousands...

Compared to that, a couple of years ago, a guy called Bajnai Gordon was the prime minister in Hungary, who is well known by everyone for his act of destroying the whole agricultural economy of eastern Hungary. He did stole all the money from one of the largest companies at the time. Multiple farmers committed suicide, etc.

Years after that, he became a prime minister. Truly mind blowing. Those people are evil, and have cheeks, they deserve to spend the rest of their lives in prisons.

If you are interested about (the politically correct version of) the story, search for "Hajdu-Bet" here:

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

Yes, 100% agreed, we had the same here in Brazil from June to November:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_protests_in_Brazil

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/brazil-protests-expand-to-over-o...

People are waking up all over the world. I wish the best for your nation. Never give up.

Hopefully it will happen here in the USA as well.

I have high hopes for you Americans. "land of the free and the home of the brave"

I look forward to Clinton vs. Rice in 2016.

Ask the Arabs how that "waking up" is going for them. Instability is never a good in itself, especially if you don't have a clear alternative to slide in place.

Young people have a hard time learning this lesson from history. They just like to see change, but often live to regret it.

Exciting times to live in, hopefully the people will be able to get rid of the corrupt ruling class.

In democracies, the people typically do this by voting for someone else. Why isn't that an option in Hungary?

In "democracies" similar to the Hungarian one you can chose who robs you, there is no good option.

They are all the same, maybe one party called A the other B but the same people are behind all parties, and they form a strong inner circle.

They just give you an illusion of democracy, really.

And yet 64% of Hungary's voters still voted in the supposedly meaningless 2010 elections. Are they all suffering under this illusion? That seems like your first problem to fix.

(Not addressing the fact we have incredible amounts of cheating at elections)

People can get really dumb when 98% of their time is spent trying to survive on 200-300 USD a month.

Add these facts to that 200-300 USD:

- Food is generally more expensive than in the UK

- A litre of gasoline costs 2 USD

- Electricity and gas prices are more expensive then in the UK

- The VAT is 27%

etc...

>In democracies, the people typically do this by voting for someone else

No, the people think they do this, in reality the new boss is pretty much the same as the old boss.

In eastern-european democracies ( like mine in Bulgaria ) your voting options are limited to parties that has stable corruption background, which pay media and poor citizen to vote for them. In this sense there is no way honest people to get involve in the government affairs, because they lack resources ( money, connections, etc. ) that are needed for wining ( even partly ) elections.

You can delete words up to "Your voting options..." and you will have described the political situation in the USA.

What drinchev said, plus: a significant proportion of the electorate is controlled (probably 10-15%) and outright bought (another 10-15%). The elections are technically fair, but those who have been in power for most of the last 25 years come with a hard advantage of 20-25% over whatever the authentic outrage can channel into voting booths.

If you're young, Western-minded and willing to work, it's much, much easier to emigrate and leave the hoi paloi to rot under their perennial red overlords, than to stay and fight the system. So people emigrate, and the shit for the rest becomes deeper.

It's not much of an option (in the Ukraine) when the opposition leader is in jail:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yulia_Tymoshenko

To solve a problem by democratic means, you need a functioning democracy. I'd like to know by what definition a functioning democracy can possibly include a corrupt ruling class.

There are no democracies, only oligarchies.

corrupt ruling class

That's redundant.

They are at the moment, in an ideal world they should not be.

In an ideal world, there would be no ruling class.

That is a fair point and this question is deep enough to be out of scope for HN comments. However, I think there may be a legitimate reason for an existence of a ruling class, or more like "leading class": if that class is accepting people based on their merits, like human decency or intellectual capability.

Leaders in various contexts are fine, but the whole notion of "class" needs to go away. Classes are just constructs of culture, politics, and law that are contrived to keep the people with power in place so they can take advantage of their special status.

>in the UK where I currently live, politicians are going into prisons for faking a couple of thousands of pounds as expense and profiting from that.

Thats more of a distraction than anything else. For the juicy stuff, look into the spending obligations on PFI contracts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_finance_initiative#Dev...

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AtE8tc3zkyCLdFVBNWF...

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/datablog/2010/nov/19/pfi...

The UK does its corruption over the table.

I was under the impression that Viktor Orban and his government - while being critisized from abroad - is actually quite popular?

We have a similar problem with corruption and people being fed up here in the Czech Republic. Traditional parties suffered a big defeat in the last parlimentary elections and 3 new parties got into the parliament, so I'm carefully optimistic.

There are no riots. It's sad that this word is used to label what's happening here. No one is burning cars, smashing up stores etc.

Yeah I'm confused too, it kind of looks like a peacefull protest, at least right now while I'm watching.

The capitol is more on the west side of the country which has more people that are pro-west, and most people there didn't want the more Russian influenced leader Yanukovych become president in the first place. Now he's doing things to make people pretty upset (not signing the EU agreement). I'm guessing a good deal of the eastern (more pro-Russian) side of the country still supports him though.

The person that is live streaming said this is on street Bankova, I think this is it: https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!data=!1m8!1m3!1d3!2d30....

Someone who speaks the language or is there could please give us some context?

There's crowd of people who wants to enter president's administration building and 'berkut' police protects the building. Some fights were going on. I don't actually understand what exactly do those people want.

They want the Ukranian government to enter into an agreement of cooperation with the EU (a first step to becoming a full member).

Putin doesn't want Ukraine joining the EU since it would put "Europe" right on the Russian porch, whereas Putin would prefer to have a buffer of client-states who take their orders from the Kremlin. Ukraine gets most of its energy supplies from Russian natgas, which has been the main "stick" Putin has used to get the Ukraine to toe his line.

They think that best way to democracy is topple legitimately elected government.

Ukrainian government suspended the prepration for association agreement with EU. Citizens went to a permanent rally on Maidan (the central Kiev square). There was a violent crackdown on it last night. That provoked the current unrest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Ukraine_pro-European_Unio...

https://github.com/ministryofcrimeofukraine

That happend yesterday at 5a.m. police have bitten peacful protestors to clear main capital's square in order to set up christmas tree there. That lead to huge amount of people gather on streets of Kiev today. And small group of provoker tried to get into Presidet's Office as seen on different ustreams like this ones.

This country is pretty much fucked up, criminal as a president, lack of resources, poor people and also European Union bureaucrats are not really interested in Ukraine in its current state. Half of citizines do not speak ukraininan language, they identify themselves as Russians. The other part is only waiting for a moment to gtfo there.

> lack of resources

which kind of resources?

> Half of citizines do not speak ukraininan language, they identify themselves as Russians.

2/3 declared Ukrainian an their native, moreover there is distinct movement of Russian(!)-speaking anti-Russia(!) pro-Ukraine people. Source: living in Russian speaking Ukrainian city

>The other part is only waiting for a moment to gtfo there.

meh

This is my rough understanding of what's going on:

Ukraine wants to increase cooperation with Europe, and possibly join EU. This would undermine it's relationship with Russia.

The previous Ukranian president, Viktor Yushchenko, usually sided with the West, and current president, Viktor Yanukovych, wants to preserve friendship with Russia.

Russia obviously doesn't want to lose allies, so it threatened to stop trading, and impose strict sanctions on Ukraine if they agreed to partnership with Europe.

Some Ukrainians dislike Yanukovych for siding with Russia instead of Europe, thus causing protests.

If you have more knowledge about this situation, feel free to correct me if I err.

When you say "Ukraine wants to increase cooperation with Europe", who do you mean by "Ukraine"?

The president? The people in the west (i.e. the ones protesting here)? The people in the east who only speak Russian?

Everybody does! Here on east of Ukraine everybody wants freedom of speech, goverment w/o corruption, 3g internet.

You should also add that everybody wants to have well payed job. Question is "Which move would be better?". I think problem is that Ukrainians split in two roughly equal parts: pro-EU and pro-Russia (Yanukovych would not win recent election otherwise) and it's almost impossible to have consensus.

A mass protest is not a revolution.

I'm hopeful Eastern Europe will regrow the spine half a century of so called communism destroyed.

I'm not a Soviet apologist, but the state of eastern europe has roots that predate the 20th century. Bear in mind that even before communism, much of it had been part of Tsarist Russia in the 19th century or earlier.

It's inaccurate to think of pre-soviet europe as composed of western european style states.

I'm not implying pre-soviet era Eastern Europe had a western style. That would not have been possible, not locked between the west and a hard place. Looks like Ukraine is still there.

Geopolitically and historically this (I'm Romanian) has been one shitty place with a lot of influences: Tsarist Russia, Soviet Union, Ottoman Empire, the Huns, the Mongols, the Romans etc. You could not have developed a western style state in this environment.

I'm not implying western Europe had it easier, but just different and it benefited them by the looks of things.

However, from history lessons, at least in my own country things were starting to pick up and it's my belief the situation would've been much better without WWII and especially without the communists.

Please share with everyone and help Ukrainians get rid of this Russian rule

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