What is really happening in Ukraine | Hacker News Reader

What is really happening in Ukraine

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244 pointsDeusExMachina312 comments

What is really happening in Ukraine is that both sides of this conflict (pro-Euro and against) are absolutely corrupt and the people know it. The tragedy of this is that no one from the government or opposition represents the will of the people. The population of Ukraine really just wants an end to corruption and a better national identity, euro-integration was just the last straw, but not fundamental to this crisis (as much as we in the west would like to believe that).

Wait, aren't the people fighting in the streets?

Some people are fighting in the streets. Some other people support them, some other people oppose them, some other people are the police officers breaking their heads. What percentage of the population of Ukraine are actually out fighting in the streets?

I'm not many any point at all about who is or isn't in the right or wrong here, I'm not Ukrainian, don't know anyone Ukrainian and have minimal knowledge of the situation out there. But who you consider to be 'the people' is usually a matter of point of view.

For example I have been to Egypt, do know Egyptians and have a fair basic understanding of the situation out there which is complex and tragic. I had hopes the brothers would form a competent administration, but they didn't and now they I think deservedly got booted out. But take a popular chant 'The people and the Army are one hand'. Which people? The Muslim Brotherhood somehow aren't people? The only way you can ever know what 'the people' really think is in a free and fair election, but the results can often be surprising to outsiders.

Yes, you're right that Ukrainian opposition is still a part of the corrupt system, but there's a hope that Klichko (who lived in Europe for a long time) is a fresh blood here. Also, current Yanukovych's and Party of Regions corruption is outrageous even for Ukraine. This is the true reason of the revolution.

People fight with the state sincerely, I don't see much sane people who are sincerely supporting Yanukovych now.

Klichko doesn't strike me as an honest person, he's as corrupt as the next guy, but that's just MHO.

Correct, the people are not there to replace personalities, they are to destroy the whole political system making resurrection of successive corrupt governments impossible. So 'opposition leaders' are not really leaders of Maidan, people don't give much respect to them, it is more like Muslim Brothers who rode the protest wave in Egypt to come into power, not being protest leaders in the first place. Much like Lenin who didn't organize Russian Revolution either, only riding its wave into power. I hope this time will be different.

The people know that, and the reason they fight for Ukraine to at least in future join EU is because, as they say themselves, in EU at least the laws are valid. And that is true. It has been already stated that in order for Ukraine to join EU it will have to undergo a reform that will rise the transparency and bring it closer to EU standards.

Pretty naive belief.

Spain just practically outlawed demonstrations or to publicly criticize the government.

Hamburg in Germany has declared 'danger zones' in parts of their city that's, anti-demonstration laws that are even more strict than the ones Ukraine.

It's not a belief, it's just hope. Besides, demonstrations are not their goal. And if they will feel that something is seriously wrong, no laws will stop them from demonstrating anyway, as proved by the current events. And Germany can afford to have such strict laws, because it is little to protest for in Germany, so the protests tend to be more local and relevant to some minority more than the whole population, so getting them out of certain parts I think is reasonable. If German government would be doing something that 90% of population would strongly oppose, I'm pretty sure nobody would care of such laws when half million people come to the forbidden area.

That seems to be a common thing globally. All sides of most political conflicts are corrupt.

Exactly!

And how many of you have actually read the agreement that the EU presented to Yanukovich to sign. You will be surprised at the scope of the changes that Ukraine would have to implement. [http://eeas.europa.eu/ukraine/assoagreement/assoagreement-20...]

It is hard to believe that Ukrainian citizens are even aware of the details in this agreement. How can they decide whether or not it is a good deal if they do not even know the details?

Too many Ukrainians believe that this agreement would give them visa free travel to the EU (it would NOT) so that they could go there, get a job, save up the money and come home to buy a house and live a life of ease. This actually happened to a lot of Polish workers when Poland joined the EU, but the EU economy was in a different state back then. Since that time the EU has imposed strict rules around new members working in the EU so that Rumania and Bulgaria did not experience that same gold-paved road that the Poles experienced.

That has some elements of propaganda yes, but from my talks with many Ukrainians including several of my employees, this seem to be more or less fair depiction of the facts.

Nobody calls protesters Nazis, but Russian media view of the subject is indeed extremely biased.

What's worst of this is that the view of it from Eastern and Western sides of Ukraine is totally different, too (while both dislike Yanukovich strongly, which is a big difference from the state of things just 3 months ago). West dislikes him for being evil, East dislikes him from being stupid and not protecting their case strongly enough.

Re. Russian media: I wonder, why their view (extremely biased, no doubt) could be of any concern to HN readers who are predominantly English-speaking and get much of their information from Internet sources?

Because there are Russian-speaking HNers too. And Ukrainian topic certainly attracted more of them to this thread.

I also grew up in central Ukraine and have my close relatives there. As much as I despise the current government, I must say that this "beautifully done" presentation is completely one-sided, unbalanced, and manipulates with both real and made-up facts. And, this is always non-constructive and even dangerous. The situation is much more complicated. I am really afraid that this is going closer and closer towards a civil war and split of the country. Presentations like this one only work in favor of that.

I have to disagree with you. Care to elaborate on what facts are made-up?

> I must say that this "beautifully done" presentation is completely one-sided, unbalanced, and manipulates with both real and made-up facts.

OK... How?

I am always suspicious about a story where there are goodies and baddies.

I am biased against the Ukrainian government, but this entire thing reads as a propaganda piece so much I can't trust a single 'fact'. It uses lots of appeals to emotion with vague, subjective terms. To anyone biased to support the government, its not exactly persuasive is it?

Is there any evidence or confirmation by the press of 'dozens of unidentified dead bodies?'

Not that I am aware of.

It's very obvious that the presentation is one-sided, and should be taken with a grain of salt. However, if you claim that it makes things up, you should point those things out specifically.

It is definitely one sided and propaganda, but it's better than absolute lack of information I am seeing in the West. I think scenario you mention here will happen only if the rest of Europe chooses to ignore and waive their hands.

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"?

how would you? if a demonstration turning violent is "Civil War", they should take notice at the G8.

Protestors weren't taking over government buildings during G8 conferences.

That's a good point, but they would have, if they had lots of small unguarded municipal buildings. Not to be sarcastic, this is still just a few thousands of extremists being destructive. A Civil War is when you have armed forces on both sides, a big population willing to take arms. Most adult people want this to stop and get back to work.

You are correct from an historian's point of view. If one side is asymmetrically stronger than the other one, the powerful side simple destroys the other side and declare them terrorists (or extremists).

When you are in hell rather than a history textbook, however, what you care is whether your most basic rights are violated or not eg. torture, kidnap, murder. In that case you take whatever you have at hand go outside and do what you think is right. The majority may want to get back to work and that might be the sustainable/profitable/reasonable thing to do. The question is whether it is the right thing or not?

> this is still just a few thousands of extremists being destructive... Most adult people want this to stop and get back to work.

I'm not even going to ask you how exactly do you know this, because this is completely untrue. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Ukrainians who already actively expressed their support to current shift in Ukrainian political landscape and their distrust to corrupt politicians currently in charge of the country, call it a war or a revolution. Arguing that and calling them "few thousands of extremists" is laughable - just have a look at any of the livestreams. Also, most adult people are at work. Ukraine is a big country.

From your comments I conclude that they have some agenda behind them. You are either trolling, deliberately trying to misinform HN community, or doing both of those things.

I wonder if you are trolling, because your first claim a strawman argument based on conflation.

>There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Ukrainians who already actively expressed their support to current shift in Ukrainian political landscape and their distrust to corrupt politicians currently in charge of the country, call it a war or a revolution

Yes, of course, millions support a shift in Ukrainian political landscape and distrust to corrupt politicians. But I DON'T call that civil war and revolution. That is a civil process. These are not the people picking up stones and attacking police and government buildings right now. Like you, yourself, say, these people want to be at work.

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.

My prayer is that this would come to some sort of a peaceful conclusion.

I disagree. It is imperative to see how technology is used in a crisis situation. I find this extremely pertinent.

Are you calling it propaganda only because the authors used the term "civil war"? Or are you saying that the statements about the origin of the conflict, in the early slides, are untrue? If the latter, please say why you think so and what the actual facts are.

I call this propaganda because the authors used many emotionally charged terms and slogans, claim to speak for the people, claim authority on things that they not only don't source, they can't possibly know. In all, this is clearly a plea for emotional response in support of a particular side.

Lastly, it is the positive claim that needs facts. You can't prove a negative, even with facts.

Seems so obvious to us on HN but why do journalists in many Western countries miss this obvious issue with what is coming out of Ukraine? Is there no investigative journalism anymore?

Even when the protesters are throwing rocks and petrol bombs, the press still describes them as democratic protesters, and even sometimes still describes them as peaceful.

Someone really should ask, "Why are there so many angry young men in Ukraine?" That might lead to some real truth on what is going on. I have personal connections to Ukraine and I suspect that the real problem is hopelessness for the future caused by severe economic privation in the face of media depictions of wealth in other countries.

It is certainly biased, but >100 people think it is interesting and its also something that hasn't be reported on very well by other media.

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 from all Russian elements". Pretty scary shit, regarding that a lot of people in Ukraine has Russian as their main language.

The media has mainly filtered this out so far, because they favor anything that destabilize Ukraina in fear of Russia.

I wish that western media would stop feed a biased and false view of what's really happening in Ukraine. Right now their a fueling a fire that could get out of hand with disastrous results.

The current situation is in dire need of de-escalation.

Here are few rare articles that's shedding some light in to the situation:

Ukraine: far-right extremists at core of 'democracy' protest http://www.channel4.com/news/kiev-svoboda-far-right-protests...

Ukrainian far-right group claims to be co-ordinating violence in Kiev http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/23/ukrainian-far-r...

Far-right extremists staged a paramilitary funeral for shot Ukrainian protester (and the media didn't notice) http://imgur.com/a/LSvOk

EDIT: There is a lot of unfounded rumors about the government cracking down on the protestors in Ukraine on Twitter. There's also a lot of old images, videos and news that are being recirculated that does not reflect the current situation. Please, double or triple check facts and sources before retweeting any (dis)info.

EDIT2: No, I am not Ukranian, nor Russian. Also I don't support either side. I think either regime is equally corrupted.

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.

Would you dare to go to Lvov these days and speak Russian there, your native language?

Done that and (not surprisingly) nobody cared and nothing happened.

Certainly yes. There is no or very little aggression towards Russian speakers in Lvov.

I have been to Lviv and its perfectly OK to use Russian or any other language for that matter. You can often even hear Russian pop hits on the streets.

I think this misconception stems from the fact that Ukrainian speakers often reply in Ukrainian when spoken to in Russian, because they assume you know both languages, but they will switch to Russian if necessary. This freaks out Russian speakers from outside of Ukraine.

> I think this misconception stems from the fact that Ukrainian speakers often reply in Ukrainian when spoken to in Russian, because they assume you know both languages, but they will switch to Russian if necessary. This freaks out Russian speakers from outside of Ukraine.

This is interesting way to think of it. Since I'm from Belarus and visited Ukraine a few times, I thought absolutely nothing of this. I even remember going to a Polish-owned cafe in Minsk where the owners spoke Polish, but customers spoke Russian. In Belarus children were taught Belarusian from kindergarten on and while Belarusian language, literature, and history classes were in Belarusian -- other classes were in Russian. Afaik, some of the Belarusian writers (can't remember if Yakub Kolas, Yanka Kupala or both...) even changed languages within their books: within the same story, some characters spoke Russian others spoke Belarusian. Of course Ukrainian speakers form a much larger part of population of Ukraine than Belarusian speakers in Belarus (Belarusian seems to be heading the way of Irish Gaelic, unfortunately).

It helps that the languages are in the same language group. In any case, other European countries deal with this all the time (Flemish and French are much further apart for example than Russian and Ukranian). I can't see how joining the EU would make this worse for anyone!

These protest are against Yankukovich and his regime. Not against Russians. A lot of activists on maidan speak Russian, including Klichko who speaks Russian better than Ukrainian. Plus Lvov is very popular among Russian tourists, still no one was hurt.

Not to mention Yuschenko (the former Yanukovich opponent) himself spoke Russian at home and was Orthodox.

Here are a couple of links that support your opinion. Unfortunately most people here might not be aware that western media is quite biased.

http://orientalreview.org/2014/01/24/coup-in-western-ukraine...

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2014/01/libya-syria-and-now-ukr...

Dear fellow hackers, media is "The Matrix" regardless it's from democratic western countries , or Russia, China, North Korea. Ironically most western people believe they have know more truth because their journalists are independent. It's quite deceptive.

Every media, as long as media is made by humans, will be biased. The only choice you have is to search the bias you know, so you can use your brain to fix the information you were fed.

Example: Every time I read something about left/right wing politics on HN I try to check if the commenter is from the US. If he is I apply a "mental filter" which allows me (as an European) to better understand him (what people from the US consider "central" falls under "right wing" policies in my mind). Without that filter political discussions on HN would be pretty useless for me (actually that was the case until I had read enough to understand this particular bias).

You have to do this with every source, otherwise you will always be fooled. Back to the current case: I am not able to distill your sources, because I have no idea what their bias is. At least with most western media I know that they usually tend do favor the "non-government" side in conflicts of people vs government.

Just a heads up for those not accustomed to Russian propaganda - in Russia and neighbor countries Russia wages a massive propaganda war against EU and currently it's largest target is EuroMaidan. Their purpose is to put as much dirt on the protesters as possible. The propaganda is especially active in internet comments and forums. They often make long and semi written in advance post with link to Russian government controlled sources to sound more legitimate.

Source: I am from a country neighbor to Russia.

Your sources don't support your narrative. What they are claiming is that you have a presence of violent right-wing elements among the protesters, in some non-determinate numbers, and that they are organized. Point taken. G8 demonstrations features Black Block elements with depressing regularity. Are G8 demonstrations also an attempt at a coup by Black Block supporters?

> No, I am not Ukranian, nor Russian. Also I don't support either side. I think either regime is equally corrupted.

I am sorry, but as an ethnically Jewish, Belarusian-born, Russian-speaker residing in US, I have to say what you're engaging in is the equivalent of "mansplaining" (EDIT: or "patronizing" if you prefer).

To wit, on my Facebook, the only person who is presently in Ukraine (who attended school and a university in US before moving back to Ukraine after graduation) is also Jewish, takes his Jewish roots far more seriously than I do (he had his icons set to the Israeli flag a multiple times), and is posting protest related pictures, and reposting _Russian language_ messages like "My dad was seized by Berkut. Are there any lawyers here that can help out?"

In terms of Ukrainian-Americans posting on this that I know none shown any signs of ultra nationalism and have plenty of Jewish, Russian, and other former-USSR friends in US, and in terms of religion happen to include agnostic, Orthodox (Western Ukraine has a larger Catholic presence as it was part of Poland and Austro-Hungarian Empire), and a Muslim.

Here's an article on this, by the way, about Jewish community's view of this: http://www.jta.org/2013/12/08/news-opinion/world/young-jews-...

(I tend to note that Passionate Americans That Know Everything Because They Read it On the Internet Somehow are going to likely 'splain this way with a Zionist conspiracy -- in a language very similar to what ultranationalists themselves use, ironically -- but Israel itself generally takes a "realpolitik" approach to these kinds of situations and the Israeli _government_ has made no statements).

My personal view of this is the extent to which the Western Media is under-reporting this story (and in my view they are: this has rarely, for example, come up on my Yahoo News pager which is generally syndicated from mainstream sources) is playing into the hands of ultra-nationalists. Keep in mind that Ukraine is far from the only country in Europe to have ultra-nationalist voted in as part genuine views and part protest votes: Golden Dawn in Greece had far greater electoral results and is far scarier, there's also Jobbik in Hungary, BNP in UK, National Front in France, and so on...

It is very much in Russia's interest to make sure ultra-nationalists become the dominant party in this: should the leader of Svoboda run against Yanukovich, the result would be a land-slide for Yanukovich. The best analogue for this is actually probably when David Duke (a KKK leader, anti-Semite, the full nine yards) ran for governor of Lousiana against a known crook (the bumper stickers were "vote for the crook, it's important"). He received many votes as a protest, but it would be insane to think his views represented the mainstream conservative US politics (he ran as a republican party candidate, but his opponent was endorsed by the republican party).

I should also note that generally in former USSR "right" doesn't mean what it means in US: the political spectrum there is best describes as a circle: mix of left-wing and right-wing liberals on one end (a spectrum between those who favour a Scandanvian-style welfare state and those leaning towards classical liberalism -- essentially the entire US/UK/Canada would simply be called "liberalism" in former USSR) and a "red-brown alliance" on the other.

I'd also add that Svoboda is actually very much anti-EU (again not much different from other far-right morons in Europe) and realistically speaking, should they come to power in any shape or form (they will never win a democratic election), they'll be overthrown far quicker than you can say "faster than Morsi/Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt". Since anti-Nazism is a very strong unifying theme between Russia and Western Europe, no one will actually tolerate a neo-Nazi state in Europe.

That JTA article is almsot 2 months old. A lot has changed since then. A lot has changed just in the last 5 days.

The politics here, however, is far older than two months. Participation by my Russian-speaking Jewish friend is current as of today and the Russian language message I mentioned is from January 23rd (four day old).

Can we please drop this 'mansplaining' bullshit? It's as offensive as referring to feelings of being othered as 'girlfeeling'. These kinds of sordid, petty, gendered derogations have no place on HN. There is literally no need for an insultingly sexist synonym for 'patronizing', when 'patronizing' already exists as a less offensive (and better understood) equivalent.

It's a shame really, because you've clearly taken the time to write a well structured and thoughtful response to the parent, and the use of that sexist slur in the first line sets a terrible tone for the rest of the comment.

I see what you're you're trying to say, but as a man (who was introduced to this term by a girlfriend who caught me 'splaining myself) I personally find the term to be both hilarious and -- most importantly to -- somewhat more explicit in what it is (explaining away while lacking context) as opposed to the term patronizing. Then again English is not my native language, so perhaps I'm reading the word "patronizing" too literally here.

I can see that you clearly meant no harm, but the problem with the term is that it creates divide between men and women where there need not be one. It attempts to gender the concept of being clueless and patronizing solely with men. For this reason, it is clearly sexist, and I'm uncomfortable with sexist language being bandied around.

I fail to see what good can ever come of using language that would cause division among people, when there are other ways of communicating the same concept just as effectively. Of course, speech should remain free and should you wish to use the word then that should be your right, but use it knowing that -- for people like me -- it not only offends, but immediately lessens your credibility.

EDIT: Sorry, that comes off as a little hostile, but that word pissed me off. Still, you don't deserve any particular rage since your explanation shows you clearly meant nothing by it and didn't realize it'd offend.

> It is very much in Russia's interest to make sure ultra-nationalists become the dominant party in this

Honest question: How is this in Russia's interest? The paramilitary UNA-UNSO helped fighting the Russian military in both the Abkhazian and the Chechnya conflicts, according to their own account.

For the same reason David Duke winning the Republican primary would be in Democrats' interest and for the same interest Russia's Duma includes very few liberals but lots of communists and "red-browns". Given a choice between corrupt pro-Russian parties and ultra-nationalists/un-reformed communists/fascists/etc..., vast majority of Ukranians would vote for pro-Russian parties ("lesser of the two evils").

Think logically: if you're a corrupt stooge, would you rather run a less corrupt stooge (I don't have any illusions here -- Yuschenko/Timoshenko/Klichko are no saints, they are just better than the alternative) or against an ultranationalist?

The black and red flags are symbols of OUN-UPA - a WWII era insurgent army that fought both the Nazis and the USSR. Many different groups, parties and individuals use these very general symbols. They represent the Ukrainian struggle for independence, not a racist or anti-semitic agenda.

OUN-UPA collaborated with the occupying nazi-Germany forces and are responsible for massacres and ethnic cleansing. That's a historical fact.

That is incorrect, OUN-UPA couldn't have collaborated with them because because it pronounced an independent Ukraine as soon as the Nazis invaded the USSR. The Nazis immediately arrested the members they could find and insurgency against them began immediately.

Please take a look at the flags at the bottom of this 40s UPA propaganda: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7e/UPA.jpg

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?

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 down to these two choices.

The choice you are making between different ways of dying has nothing do to with the point being made.

And the point being made has nothing to do with the protests in Ukraine.

> 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 sorry to say, no one on the ground is worried about a demeaning post made on HN, I happen to know a little about what it's like, as a lot of my family lives in and around Kyiv and several of them have been lucky to get out of the protests with non life-threatening injuries only. Others we can't get hold of. Feelings are a little irrelevant right now.

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

D9u's post was not about drone strikes in general, but Anwar Al Awlaki specifically ("U.S. citizen and his teenage son.")

My bad. Fair enough, then.

This would be much more effective if true. The son was not targeted.

No he was not, it was an spontaneous explosion

You think the son was also targeted?

The son died in a separate attack (ie: NOT with his dad, as some people think), he was sitting in a cafe, and a drone exploded him, and several other cafe patrons.

The first US position on the attack was: "We were targeting some Al Quaeda members, this guy was nearby and got himself killed for mingling with terrorists".

Recently there has been some conflicting positions about this (including admitting that the person was targeted, or claiming the person was hit by accident while another guy nearby was targeted, or that the whole thing was a accident).

Anyway, US should not be bombing countries it is not officially in war against, specially not in urban areas (like a crowded cafe), and killing its own citizens (does not matter if they might be terrorists or not) without trial also should not be done.

What the hell does that have to do with the current situation in Ukraine? Or did you just come here to troll with your anti-US bullshit?

Is there a name for the internet law that pretty much any discussion of a country doing something unseemly manages to drag the US into the discussion?

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

I appreciate perspective and, when more general discussions on government abuse are taking place, comparisons to other 'first-world' countries. You're being criticized because we should be able to have discussions about other parts of the world without changing the subject.

his/her point is that while it is hard to imagine, (sadly) this type of brutality/murder is carried out by our (assumed US) government as well.

Thanks, I'll tell this to my friends in Ukraine! This will make them feel very warm and fuzzy and reassured, that indeed, is US launching missiles from drones (which is a completely new fact to them and something they've never heard of before!).

Similarly, I was going to write my congress-critters to oppose NSA surveillance and drone strikes, but you've taught me wonderful logical insights: see, demonstrators are kidnapped and tortured in Ukraine, so that makes my point invalid and refutes any arguments I had against drone strikes and NSA surveillance.

What are you going on about? The person to whom you're replying was only explaining the point of another post, not criticizing or applauding it. You're arguing at the wind.

I think you took my comment the wrong way.

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.

"I have mild nerd autism and am easily trolled"

Dude. If you ever get a firm diagnosis or find a support group please let some of us others know. It's like an epidemic.

What about (4) trial in absentia? Is it possible under US laws?

A trial in absentia would have been preferable to a fiat killing, but the end result would have been the same. The US had no means of apprehending al-Awlaki because he had situated himself in a war zone controlled by AQAP. The trial would have concluded, and the US would have faced the same 3 choices.

You make a good point, but not one that fundamentally changed the options on the ground.

We can't be sure what the result of that hypothetical trial would be. Otherwise why have a trial in the first place?

It appears there was a lawsuit against U.S. It was brought by al-Awlaki father after U.S. put him on a kill list (while he was still alive).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki#Lawsuit_agains....

What hypothetical trial? The USG could not apprehend al-Awlaki without invading Yemen. No trial was possible.

He could have been trialed in absentia, get death penalty and then get killed by a drone. I don't know if this scenario was even possible, let alone probable.

It is not, because trials in absentia, particularly criminal trials, and specifically capital trials, are unconstitutional in the US.

Those options would then be OK to consider. Would you be OK with skipping trials for people here in the US if we were sure they'd be found guilty anyway, so the end result should be the same?

How is that not a silly question?

With all due respect Thomas, you have completely missed the point. The executive branch (Bush and Obama both) have taken unto themselves the roles of judge and jury. This doctrine says that president alone gets to decide the definition of "war", the location of the "war zone", and the guilt of the presumptive defendants. No trial needed. And the penalty is death.

That this particular case seems obvious to you, should not be reason enough for you to accept the whole doctrine.

And this was untrue of World War 2 how?

WW2 was a declared war, with uniformed soldiers, citizens of foreign nations. What does WW2 have to do with Al Awlaki?

Am I misunderstanding your question?

The war against al Qaeda was a declared war. al Qaeda is specifically called out in the 2001 AUMF. Nobody in al Qaeda wears a uniform; they deliberately avoid them, to maximize the probability that their opponents will kill innocent civilians. And, we killed Americans fighting for the Nazis during WW2.

I'm unaware of any U.S.-sponsored assassinations of non-uniformed American citizens outside the theater of war during WW2. I'd be interested to know what you're referring to.

Look, I understand you're trying to support your argument by drawing comparisons to another better-defined war, but your particular choice of wars is baffling. Most often, comparisons are made to the American civil war; Lincoln's explorations of executive power in the face of an existential threat to the republic are profoundly relevant to this debate. WW2... I'm at a loss.

The 2001 AUMF, for example, is as far removed from the US declaration of war against the axis as you can get. It's everything that a typical formal declaration of war isn't, with the vaguest possible definitions of who the enemy is and where the battle can be fought. It has no real limits of any kind, and has henceforth been used as a license for indefinite military action.

>"Nobody in al Qaeda wears a uniform; they deliberately avoid them, to maximize the probability that their opponents will kill innocent civilians."

I may be a bit slow, but honestly I already knew this :) Yes this conflict is very different from the canonical 20th century wars which naturally shape our views of what war "ought" to be. Our laws and treaties are inadequate, and leave us in troubling gray areas, and I'm not convinced there are any good ways out.

BUT...

I'm also pretty sure a good solution is NOT to simply give the president the license to do whatever he wants to whomever he labels a "terrorist", regardless of location or citizenship. This is precisely the license assumed by the Bush administration during John Yoo's tenure. It appears to be the basis of your own assertions as well; please tell me I'm wrong.

These aren't meaningful rebuttals.

The AUMF was a declaration of war. The Constitution doesn't lay out the specific form of a "declaration of war"; the Korean War, for instance, was fought under the aegis of a UN declaration. Wars fought under informal authorization by Congress date all the way back to Jefferson and the First Barbary War.

It's a popular myth that we're fighting an "undeclared" war against al Qaeda, but unfortunately, that's all it is. We really did declare war against al Qaeda, by name, in 2001, and because al Qaeda is a brand name and not a nation state, at war we will remain until Congress repeals the AUMF.

The comparison to WW2 is simple: during WW2, scores of German-Americans traveled to Europe to fight on behalf of the Nazis. We didn't read them their rights before we killed them. American citizenship did not shield them from the consequences of armed conflict. If al-Awlaki wanted to prosecute his cause using the mechanisms of due process, it was a decidedly stupid idea for him to take up residence in territory controlled by AQAP, where the only reasonable mechanism the US had available to it to stop him from killing innocent civilians was an airstrike.

Also, you're wrong about the President's authorization to kill whomever he labels a "terrorist". The President does not have a blanket authorization to use the military against "terrorists". He has authorization only to strike against al Qaeda and those persons and organizations who assisted in the attacks on 9/11. The President cannot authorize airstrikes against, say, Basque separatists, or the Tamil Tigers.

JSOC answers directly to the POTUS, and acts outside the normal channels of the US military.

So, yes, the POTUS can, and does, decide who JSOC will be going after next.

That's an irrelevant detail; the distinction between "JSOC" (when it's JSOC doing the dirty work) and POTUS isn't at issue. The issue is that the entire Executive Branch is limited in who it can target.

>"The AUMF was a declaration of war. "

I'm not really disputing that. I'm saying that using the AUMF to draw comparisons to WW2 is not helpful.

>"The comparison to WW2 is simple: during WW2, scores of German-Americans traveled to Europe to fight on behalf of the Nazis."

Yes, in uniforms, on the battlefield. We didn't, as far as I know, bomb a dude writing anti-american propaganda in a city far from the battlefield. This whole WW2 analogy of yours is really tortured, and I feel foolish even arguing about it.

>"The President does not have a blanket authorization to use the military against "terrorists". He has authorization only to strike against al Qaeda and those persons and organizations who assisted in the attacks on 9/11."

Not according to the current president. I'll let Eric Holder speak here:

It is entirely lawful – under both United States law and applicable law of war principles – to target specific senior operational leaders of al Qaeda and associated forces.

This is from his speech at Northwestern, wherein he uses the phrase "al Qaeda and associated forces" five times.

Guess who gets to decide what "associated" and "operational leader" mean.

I'm frustrated that I have to spell it out like this. This administration has made it perfectly clear that if you're an American citizen abroad, the president can have you killed based on an evaluation that he alone can make. The customary checks of the judicial branch can be waved at will if the president can link you to AQ in some way. Apparently, moving to Yemen and claiming to be a leader in AQ in some shitty youtube videos counts. The bar will possibly be lower in future administrations. Or not. The point is that the process is completely opaque and unchecked.

I don't understand your argument. If an American citizen wears a Nazi uniform while fighting for the Germans in Holland, it's OK that we kill him. But if an American citizen wears the garb of an al Qaeda terrorist while working for al Qaeda in lawless Shabwa Province, Yemen, the site of an ongoing armed conflict between AQAP and the government of Yemen, it's not OK that we kill him. Why not? What's the difference?

In reality, the guy in Shabwa is far, far more dangerous than the random lunatic fighting with the Nazis was in Holland. The lunatic wasn't about to coordinate the bombing of a commercial airliner filled with innocent people. But that's exactly what al-Awlaki was doing.

Meanwhile, your Holder quote doesn't rebut my argument. Holder is saying the administration can launch strikes against al Qaeda. You made a broader claim, the administration can designate people "terrorists" and kill them. You were incorrect. They cannot do that.

You also drastically oversimplify the charges against al-Awlaki. He wasn't designated a leader of al Qaeda because of "shitty Youtube videos", nor was he killed simply because he wrote articles advocating for al Qaeda. Similarly, Osama bin Laden wasn't targeted because he himself bombed an embassy in Tanzania, blew a giant hole in the USS Cole, or stabbed someone on an airplane with a box cutter.

>"Holder is saying the administration can launch strikes against al Qaeda."

He actually took great care not to say that. He is carefully not limiting the president to action only against AQ. The phrase "al Qaeda and associated forces" is deliberate. He is expressly reserving the power to decide who is "associated" to AQ and in a "leadership" position, and to take lethal action based on those decisions. All of these decisions are completely opaque and unchecked by any power outside of the executive.

The 2001 AUMF is a sideshow. Holder doesn't think he needs it. He has opined that congress has no authority over the president in this area anyway, and that includes military action on U.S. soil:

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/06/does_eric_holder_know_the_la...

I consider this a dangerous concentration of power that the president should reject. This appears to be the crux of our disagreement, yes?

No, it is not.

> We really did declare war against al Qaeda, by name, in 2001

No, we didn't. There are no named persons or organizations in the 2001 AUMF, it is literally a blank-check declaration of war that authorizes the President to write in names. Which is one of the many reasons that people (including Barack Obama -- as President -- have said it needs to be sunsetted.)

You're right, of course; it's not the 2001 AUMF that specifies al Qaeda by name, but rather the 2012 NDAA.

The 2001 AUMF authorized force against people and organizations "he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons". Which is al Qaeda and the Taliban, but yes, not by name!

And yes, of course, the 2001 AUMF is awful.

But to 'nate_meurer's point: the President does not have the authority to kill people simply because he has determined that they are terrorists. Nor does he consistently have the authority to kill people that are determined to be in al Qaeda; for instance, if they're on American soil and not actively engaging in violence, Holder has testified under oath that their killing would be unconstitutional.

>"...Holder has testified under oath that their killing would be unconstitutional."

If you have a citation for this I like to see it. Overall he doesn't seem too committed to this idea. Furthermore, he seems to think that the president is the only legitimate arbiter of the constitutionality of these actions. From http://www.salon.com/2013/03/06/does_eric_holder_know_the_la...:

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, asked Holder whether Congress could prohibit the targeted killing of Americans in America. “Do you believe Congress can pass a law prohibiting POTUS to use lethal force on U.S. soil?” he asked directly, explaining he meant the prohibition would apply only where a person did not present an imminent threat.

“I’m not sure that such a bill would be constitutional,” the attorney general responded. “It might run contrary to the Article II powers that the president has.” Article II is the section of the Constitution that lays out the president’s authority as commander in chief of the military.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/ted-cruz-goads-eric-holder-into-a...

I think I'm done with this argument now.

http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1987/01/18

How can you have a war without a clear definition on who the enemy is, what goals the war has, and at what point victory can be declared. Perpetual hostile activity is not a war, its a order of existence similar to that of an religion.

The time when the US declare peace will not be because of dead terrorists. It won't be because somewhere its more safer. It won't be because some goals has been achieved. It will be because sooner or later, people will get tired of war.

I can say this with 100% certainty based on a concept made two thousand years ago:

  The pinnacle of military deployment approaches the
  formless: if it is formless, then even the deepest spy
  cannot discern it nor the wise make plans against it."
  -- Sun Tzu, "The Art of War", Datalinks

So long the conflict itself remains formless, there will be no way to actually fight it and end it.

I agree entirely! You can't. The 2001 AUMF is scary.

You seem to totally miss the last sentence, so let me reiterate it.

  *The conflict is formless*

The foes in the conflict are not formless, but thats beyond the point. When you have killed 1 000 terrorist, has the war been won? 100 000? a million? 10 millions? The formlessness is the conflict itself, since no one, not even you can define it.

Thus the conflict itself can not be won, it can only be fought perpetually. The deepest spy cannot discern what is needed to be destroyed for victory, and the wise can not device a plan for it.

What part of "I agree totally" did you miss?

Sorry, I misunderstood you post. Thought you were talking ironically.

The fact that I disagree with a lot of HN reasoning about the "global war on terror" leads a lot of people to believe that I support the "global war on terror". While I'm not exactly outraged by the targeted killing of people who are trying to blow up passenger jets from a safe house in Yemen, I definitely don't support the overall effort. I think a "war" on what is essentially a brand name is an unbelievably bad idea, one I worry that history will probably pick out as one of our top 5 worst ideas.

The doctrine does not say that the President alone gets to decide the definition of war and the location of the war zone. What's war and what is crime can be fuzzy at the edges, but it's not something courts have hesitated to tackle, and at the end of the day is subject to a simple rule of thumb: if the attack originates from within, it's a crime, and if it originates from outside, it's an act of war.

Note the case of Nidal Malik Hasan, who was in contact with Al Awlaki before he killed 13 people at Fort Hood. The Department of Defense classified it as "workplace violence" rather than an act of terrorism, and it was absolutely the right call. The evidence showed that Hasan acted alone, and not at the direction of some external organization.

Worth noting that al-Awlaki himself took credit for Hassan's rampage.

Al Awlaki was tried in abstentia by Yemen in 2010. It is often suggested that a trial in abstentia by the U.S. would have been preferable for Al Awlaki, but to me, it's even scarier than the drone strike.

Legally, there are essentially two regimes: the domestic criminal regime, and the military regime. If you fall into the former bucket, there are lots of protections. Trials in abstentia, for example, are illegal and invalid: a defendant has a Constitutional right to appear at his trial. If you fall into the latter bucket, there aren't really any protections. When the U.S. fought Germany in WWII, German soldiers couldn't claim legal protections under U.S. laws.

Putting Al Awlaki into the "military aggressor" bucket is problematic, because of his citizenship, but not totally unprecedented. In World War II, it is almost certain that American citizens were killed by American forces while fighting for Hitler. Indeed, at least a dozen American POWs were killed in the Hiroshima bombing. It's morally troubling, but at least its encapsulated: you're in a war zone, a place without functioning rule of law, and pose a military threat, you're fair game.

Putting Al Awlaki into the domestic criminal regime, then trying him in abstentia, is REALLY problematic. If a terrorist is just a "really bad criminal," instead of a foreign soldier, then in what other cases of "really bad criminals" do Constitutional protections go out the window? It's not encapsulated, it's hard to cabin to the specific facts, and it amounts to an even bigger erosion of rights.

Your last few sentences have me very confused.

>"at least its encapsulated: you're in a war zone..."

Yemen is not a war zone in any sense of the word. There is no declared war on Yemeni soil. You could call it a "conflict zone", a term that could be applied to the vast majority of the developing world.

>"...a place without functioning rule of law, and pose a military threat, you're fair game."

According to John Yoo and Eric Holder maybe. There is plenty of dissent over this particular doctrine.

>"If a terrorist is just a "really bad criminal..."

Terrorists are really bad criminals. Are you able to draw a bright line between the two? If not, then what's the use of the distinction?

>"...instead of a foreign soldier..."

Al Awlaki was unambigously NOT a foreign soldier. He was never uniformed, he was not in a declared war zone, and he was not a citizen of a foreign nation. Unless I'm an idiot (always possible) there has never been any debate about this.

>"in what other cases of "really bad criminals" do Constitutional protections go out the window?"

None? A trial in absentia does not forcibly deprive the defendant of any rights if he is free to attend the trial, which Al Awlaki was. It would have been his choice whether to attend, and thus whether to take full advantage of his rights as a citizen.

Am I mistaken?

> Yemen is not a war zone in any sense of the word. There is no declared war on Yemeni soil. You could call it a "conflict zone", a term that could be applied to the vast majority of the developing world.

I don't understand this preoccupation with "declared wars." Who cares what you call it? The government simply does not have control over vast swaths of Yemen, and militant groups unaligned with the government are using it as a base of operations for attacks on people outside of Yemen. No, this does not characterize the vast majority of the developing world. Places like Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia are in a totally different situation.

> Terrorists are really bad criminals. Are you able to draw a bright line between the two? If not, then what's the use of the distinction?

The line doesn't have to be bright, but it's crucial to draw the line. There is crime, and there is war, and the two are not the same thing. The regime applicable to external threats versus internal threats is very different. Maintaining this distinction allows you to better preserve the protections applicable to domestic criminal prosecution. If you try to shoe-horn well-financed international terrorists armed with military grade weapons into the framework of domestic criminal law, you end up distorting that framework and militarizing the domestic law enforcement apparatus. That's bad.

> He was never uniformed, he was not in a declared war zone, and he was not a citizen of a foreign nation.

You're elevating formality over reality. Al Awlaki wasn't unambiguously a foreign soldier, but aside from his U.S. citizenship he essentially acted like one. If a state affiliated actor had done the same thing, it would be considered an act of war.

> Am I mistaken?

Some procedural rights cannot be waived, and a constitutionally valid trial cannot be conducted without meeting that requirement. The historical understanding in the U.S. has been that trials in abstentia are unconstitutional, at least for capital cases. To date, the Supreme Court hasn't directly addressed the Constitutional issue (though it strongly implied it in Diaz v. U.S. in 1912), but has held that a trial in which a defendant is not present in the beginning of trial is defective for violation of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 43 (Crosby v. U.S.)

From a practical viewpoint, trials in abstentia are a far more dangerous precedent than drone strikes. Sovereign countries already reserve the right to kill foreigners if they feel attacked by external threats. You can sugar-coat it with international agreements and treaties and whatnot, but fundamentally, every nation, as against external threats, embraces the sovereign right to kill people in other countries. That's the foundational basis for war.

The precedent for trials in abstentia in the context of domestic criminal prosecutions, however, is novel and scary in the U.S. and it's a stone better left unturned. It's better, for people back at home, to just say that people like Al Awlaki, through their long absence and actions abroad, simply relinquish their rights as U.S. citizens and can be treated as foreign enemies. Because you don't want the ramifications of the government figuring out how to deal with guys like him within the framework of domestic criminal enforcement.

You have faithfully channeled John Yoo, articulating the case for U.S. military action directed solely by the president, wherever and whenever he perceives a threat to Americans or American interests. It's bizarre to me that the failures of the Bush administration seem to have done little to damp the enthusiasm for this kind of thinking. You'll note, for example, the growing calls from various government officials to add drug cartels to the official list of terrorist organizations. Presumably to justify increased militarization of the War on Drugs.

I actually like John Yoo. I disagree with him, but I find no fault with those who don't. But I think it would be intellectually honest for you to admit that you've aligned yourself with a very contentious neo-conservative strain of political philosophy.

To be clear, I don't pretend to have any good answers here. I think I agree with you about trials in absentia. I don't agree that handing all the keys to whomever occupies the oval office is the best solution.

He's not channeling John Yoo. The President is acting under the express authorization of Congress, which authorization could be withdrawn, and with it the President's ability to drone strike people simply because they are on hostile soil working with al Qaeda. John Yoo's view of the authority of the "unitary executive" is far more expansive.

Of course, what you're actually doing here is invoking a bugbear (John Yoo is also notorious for conjuring quasi-legal justifications for abhorrent interrogation policies, including torture) to avoid engaging with what 'rayiner is actually saying.

Well Jeez, I really wasn't trying to invoke a bugbear. I'm reaching for a label. Yoo just happens to be the most prominent articulator (in my mind) of the ideas you guys are promoting. Do you disagree with that characterization? I didn't hear you protest the neo-conservative label, which I personally find much more pejorative.

As I say in my comment above, it seems that our fundamental disagreement is that I perceive a dangerous concentration of power in the executive, and you don't. If that's the case then we're likely at an impasse.

> I actually like John Yoo. I disagree with him, but I find no fault with those who don't. But I think it would be intellectually honest for you to admit that you've aligned yourself with a very contentious neo-conservative strain of political philosophy.

You're mixing up two related but distinct issues. Neo-conservatives believe that the authority to engage the military abroad is primarily invested in the President, and he can act to a great degree without interference from Congress. That is a controversial viewpoint. What is much less controversial is that, whatever the division of power may be between the President and Congress when it comes to exercising the sovereign powers of the United States abroad, there is no seat at that table for the judiciary. The idea that the courts are fundamentally domestic institutions, and may not infringe on the exercise of military power abroad except in the narrowest of cases is very broadly embraced.

The USG chose the option that killed the fewest innocent civilians.

That is an enormously presumptive statement that you're not qualified to assert. It's so big I'm fairly sure it's wrong; the probability is very much against it. Tens of thousands of innocent civilians have been killed in "preemptive" wars the US started post 9/11.

Even taking US air strikes alone, the kind of operations that the US has been engaged in radicalizes people, and they'll be motivated for decades to come.

The only way your statement approaches truth could be if you assume that only US civilians matter, but even then I don't think it'll be true in the long term.

Look at the options more carefully:

(1) Leave al-Awlaki alone, situated in the middle of AQAP home territory, and hope that he doesn't succeed in his evident ambitions to coordinate attacks against Europe, America, India, Russia, and Indonesia. This is the strategy Clinton employed against Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. You and I might debate it, but a realistic analysis of the circumstances of al-Awlaki has to acknowledge that the strategy was discredited. Consider carefully what the real differences between al-Awlaki and al-Zawahiri actually were.

(2) Kill al-Awlaki with an air strike. Here, we have the benefit of seeing the result of this strategy, since it's the option the US actually took. Result: 14 people dead: al-Zawahiri, his son, the editor of al Qaeda's English-language magazine, the day-to-day operational leader of AQAP, and 10 other people. Assume only al-Zawahiri, the editor, and al-Banna were actually meaningfully hostile to the US: that's a death toll of 11 innocent people.

(3) Invade Yemen. Hundreds or thousands of truly innocent people, people with no connection to AQAP or al-Zawahiri at all, would have been killed. Nothing the USG does is more damaging than sending ground troops.

Options (1) and (3) had potential death tolls in the thousands. Option (2) had a death toll in the low teens.

I think reasonable people can obviously disagree about which of these options was the most prudent. But I don't think it's reasonable to suggest that there wasn't a difficult decision here; that the President, whose foremost duty is to protect the people of the US, could casually have chosen to leave al-Awlaki to his own devices. I look at the situation and thank God I'm not the President, and can instead retain my humanity.

Are those seriously the only options? Ignore, kill a US citizen with a drone strike, or have a full-out invasion resulting in hundreds or thousands killed?

Citizenship can be revoked, but I'm pretty sure that matter needs to be decided by a judge, not the President. Am I incorrect?

What's the other option you're thinking about?

The US cannot unilaterally revoke citizenship.

I guess there's that whole extraordinary rendition / kidnapping deal, but that'd probably have a death toll in the twenties to two-hundred fifties, depending on the tactics used*

*uneducated guess, informed by video games, with no bearing on real life whatsoever

"Extraordinary rendition" in al-Awlaki's case would have involved an invasion. He was hiding in a lawless province of southern Yemen controlled by AQAP.

I agree with you that citizenship should not protect you from the consequences of your actions. Even so, I don't understand how a targeted drone strike in Yemen is an acceptable choice for the USG, regardless of who is killed.

Would it be okay for another country to conduct such drone strikes on US soil? If not, which countries are allowed do do such things, and where, and why?

How can you prove that lives were saved by the drone strike?

What does "OK" mean? Nations interact in the state of nature.

"OK" and "allowed" in this context practically refers to whether and what the host/target country will do about it. If that's "nothing" or very close thereto, then by Law Of The Jungle (which is the nature of military action) the answer is "yes". If that's "the perpetrators will be hunted down & killed, and the presiding government overthrown, and maybe another country's government will also get overthrown while we're at it", then the answer is "no".

The point of military action is that all other viable diplomatic options have been exhausted, and something must be done to stop an avowed enemy. We're not going to sit around waiting for known terrorists to carry out successful attacks on innocents before doing something to stop them. "Reflective contemplation is not required in the presence of an upraised knife." Once such military action is deemed necessary, the question then is whether a single drone destroying a few rooms and their occupants with zero direct risk to US troops is (or isn't) preferable to destroying several city blocks (at minimum) and their occupants with significant risk to our personnel. You demand proof, but only from a position of prejudiciously rejecting any given.

FWIW: The "upraised knife" quote is Oliver Wendell Holmes, in Brown v US, and goes "Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife." This is Holmes rejecting the idea that a defendant invoking self defense must carefully reason whether he can safely flee, rather than employing deadly force.

This is also the much-overlooked basis for "stand your ground" laws, which are not a license for citizens to kill, but are instead a reminder to the state that if deadly force is warranted then retreat is not a viable option to demand of the defendant.

>>> How about drone strikes which target and kill a US citizen

I'd use the term "citizen" pretty loosely here. Considering his passport was revoked six month before he was assassinated and the fact he had taken up arms against the US by fighting in another country's army, I'd say he wasn't exactly a "citizen".

It's only murky because the US government didn't officially revoke his citizenship.

How about the life of an American is not more valuable than an Ukrainian's?

It's somewhat disgusting to see the distinction between Americans and Others keep being made, as if spying on non-Americans was somehow less evil than spying on Americans, and so on. They're leveraging the nationalism they've programmed into your heads, to make the all-encompassing surveillance seem less ominous.

But if you believe they don't spy the fuck out of you Americans too, you're being naive. Controlling you specifically is the US government's primary objective because they're becoming a totalitarian regime. I can't imagine it being any more obvious than what's happening over there. Get out while you can.

Politics of foreign drone strikes (which I oppose, but don't equate to whole-sale domestic political repression) aside, this is a logical fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

In other words, it's not simply not a valid argument.

We had a similar situation in Republic of Moldova in 2009, an ex-USSR country near Ukraine, a so called twitter-revolution, one of the first of them. [1]

We are much smaller and less population but the tactics used in Ukraine reminds me of the events Moldova but on a bigger scale. So called "titushki" are the instigators that are infiltrating among peaceful protesting population with the intention to compromise the entire movement and to discredit the protest.

Students were tortured by the police for months after the protests begun. Students that participated in the protests were kidnapend from the dormitory. [2] Those slides of Ukraine are not at all surpising.

Protesters killed to death, at least 4. Valeriu Boboc, 23 year old who was also a father was killed after the protests ended http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Moldova_civil_unrest#Death...

I must say, the tactics of the instigators were very effective in our country. The result was burning of the house of parliament [3]. All the blame was on protesters, it basically discredited the protesters calling them vandals and thefts (as some of them have stolen some furniture). We believe that instigators and the police who gave up surprisingly easy were cooperating, and that they burned up and destroyed documents from parliament themselves.

I'm very glad that in Ukraine they are better prepared. I have very much sympathy with the protesters in Ukraine as the Russian influence in the region is still very much present. Russian is still defending it's interests and it makes us angry. You must understand that a country very rich in petrol and all kind of minerals have a great deal of influence when massively sponsoring parties of their interest and putting pressure with their own army in Transnistria that they left after collapse of USSR. [4]

* * *

There is also a big problem with russian population that stayed on our territory and continue to have the USSR values. And more of all, they continue to believe that they don't need to learn the local language. It's a mess. That's why it's so much fight between populations and shady people profiting of this situation.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Moldova_civil_unrest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Revolution

[2] http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/EUR59/003/2009/en/cf...

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/04/07/world/0407-MOLDO...

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria

Shame for Ukrainian media that these events has passed by me unnoticed. Thank you for this insight and good luck in fighting the USSR past!

This is not really sure that it was the government that kidnapped them. You have to take into account that there are more players there than just the government and the opposition.

That's actually a very well done summary. I have an acquaintance that is Ukrainian and I have been asking her about it. Pretty much what happened so far can be summed up as "The leadership betrayed the Ukrainian people to Russia under pressure from Putin" and both of generally agree that it's too late now to stop, and that the protesters have to be at least partially successful or else it is likely there will be more bloodshed.

Being self designated geopolitics guy though, my curiosity is "Where is the US?" We know they were involved in Georgia in 08, and we know the US has a vested interest in giving the Russians a black eye, so I would think they would be involved somehow, but have not seen as such.

I wonder what you'll think if you have another friend who is saying completely the opposite.

I can't help but notice you replying to basically everyone with how wrong they are without providing specifics. Can you either provide some substance or find something more constructive to do?

Point taken, but as a person who tries very hard to not let my filter bubble be too small, I am surprised at the lack of people talking about what I suppose could be considered the North Ukrainian point of view. I did see a few mentions that they would be more aligned to Russia, but haven't seen any in depth reporting from that perspective. Have you seen such?

Yes, the issue is, this is quiet majority. The subject is contentious enough that people who are not pro EU keep quiet about it, because they don't feel as strongly about it as the 'revolution' people. On one hand, you have people say "the problem is clear, hang Putin, hang Yanukovich! If we join EU we will be transported to Paris!". On the other hand you have people who just think that's unrealistic, but they can't put it in a slogan.

Can you link any of this, please? I am genuinely interested.

My guess is that, since Russia is no longer a top global power, this area is not a priority for the US now. Georgia lies in more strategically important (lots of oil around) and fragile region, while saving the Ukraine would be mostly a favor for Poland and rest of EU (not to mention Ukrainians).

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 current government

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...

The Law and Order (PiS) party is effectively about amping our influence in the region, in the spirit of old traditions. See the meddling in Georgia, bullshit acquisition of refinery in Latvia etc.

My observation is that only crazy people are seriously afraid of Russians, while the spirit of patronising Ukraine, Belarus and even Lithuania is pretty strong.

This is much more informative and complete than any Western media news report. (Disclosure: I grew up in Kiev)

Yanukovich refused to sign EU association in November. I am wondering if the EU association was approved by most of Ukrainian through voting (or other ways), and Yanukovich disobeyed the voting results.

Association pact is a purely economical agreement that is mediated by governments only. So no, he did not violate anything. However, 42% of the population supports European integration, while only 31% wants to join the Customs Union, seen as USSR v2.0

Don't forget the fact that Ukraine haven't declined signing, it was postponed. Government was just negotiating better terms for Ukraine. The thing they are responsible for.

As a Ukrainian living in London I'd say that nobody in sane mind in UK, and probably in EU will let Ukraine join EU. Mind Greece and Cyprus.

Check the numbers: http://atlas.media.mit.edu/country/ukr/ 25% of export and 36% of import are Russian goods, several times more than EU combined. Sign that agreement as EU pushes it - Ukraine would be isolated, poor and really unhappy.

Customs union is just customs union, like Mercosur or Andean community or European customs union. Union State[1] is more like USSR v2.0 but still very far from it.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_State

And that is the problem here. No side has a clear majority, and any decision is going to be tough. Forcing the decision, either one, in this moment can lead only to country wide divide, since both parties feel stronly about this topic, and no compromise is possible.

Whatever is my opinion is not important, but "huge majority" of 42% shouldn't be allowed to force their decision to "only" 31% minority. I think Janukovič got it right here, not wanting to side with any side and trying to just keep it as neutral as possible. It is not a good idea to decide about such a big topic like future of the whole country and which union to join based on such a small "majority".

In the long run, the best thing is to just do nothing right now, and try to reach some kind of compromise in a deeply divided country that is equally acceptable to both sides. Whatever that compromise might be, going west, or going east, or peacefully splitting the country in two/three parts, everything is better than inevitable escalation that this leads to.

The protests are not about the deal with the EU or Russia. The protests are against the current corrupt government in general and its brutal response to the initially peaceful protests. Having spoken to Ukrainians who have been participating in the protests, they told me that they would not care whether or not the EU nor the Russian deal is signed, they just want to get rid of the current government either way.

Those numbers show a divided country (on this issue). 42% is nothing to sneeze at but it shows the majority is either ambivalent or against. Given those circumstances, it's reasonable for a government to choose not to sign the pact.

How could anyone understand the implications of all of this well enough to make any kind of approval decision, for or against?

[http://eeas.europa.eu/ukraine/assoagreement/assoagreement-20...]

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuO53xeZkm8

Does this look like brave people risking their lives to say "No!" to tyranny, or like a bunch of young energetic people who have no idea about whats going on in politics throwing molotov cocktails at police?

I cannot account for what's happening in Ukraine but last time a video like this one released in Istanbul during protests, it was undercover police throwing molotov cocktails to armoured police vehicles. It was the only video shown by all the news agencies [0].

It is quite funny that a community of skeptics being pedantic on silliest social networking apps takes what they see in a video for granted and makes harsh judgements about people.

EDIT after citation request:

So this is the famous video. The masks they are wearing are identified to be standard police issue. They are also holding radio transmitters similar to used by police but that would not prove anything.

However, this is the only instance where the police have not heavily "interfered" to the event. The pressure they use on these guys is one tenth of what they use against unarmed civilians. There are quite few videos showing how they shoot people with water canon and literally threw them away. These plus the fact that this is literally the only video shown by all news agencies clearly indicate that the whole thing is staged.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxuOmnQpu8E

This is a video of something NO ONE is disputing. People just say "revolution" and "saying NO to tyranny", but what do you think that means in practice? What ELSE could there be on the video? It's people making molotov cocktails, stones, and throwing them at police. That's how it looks like, regardless if it was staged or not, which, to me, it seems obvious it's not. The crowds shown are huge, and the acting would be Oscar winning.

Exact same thing happened during protests in Canada. Government-hired people were caught trying to incite violence several times.

`undercover police throwing molotov cocktails` -> citation needed.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/riot-police-throw-petrol-bombs-duri...

You didn't answer the question - mathetic was asking about the Istanbul protest. (And the police in your photo aren't undercover.)

Here you go: http://www.policymic.com/articles/79771/this-photo-is-going-...

What do you expect it to look like?

I don't expect it to look like anything else. I think this violence is terrible, and counterproductive to any non-anarchist cause, such as joining EU. I want these people to go home...

So does the criminal president. What a coincedence!

Hm, I wonder if we also both like air. Two coincidences?! No one is that gullible!!!

You can't protest from your home... There is a reason all demonstration happen in public. That is because if everyone is in house they aren't sure if the other people are satisfied or poltrons or ready to cause a change.

Also don't tell me you can protest with your vote when government is ready to falsify those.

I'm only against violence and attacking police, not peaceful protests or civil disobedience. At this point, going home is the only way to get out of a situation that turned violent.

Yeah, except peaceful protests are banned and civil disobedience is useless. If you gather in the square the police has the right to beat you and arrest you, and they are fighting to oppose that. If you do nothing, you are silently accepting laws against protests and freedoms as just and fair. Between those choices, the only solution is violence, to show that state isn't strong enough to suppress you.

    A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than 
    a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.
    -- Gandhi

Ahhhh the American way to protest. Of course.

Has there ever been a war that wasn't predominantly fought with energetic young people?

Look at the channel this comes from: https://www.youtube.com/user/dzgmvs?feature=watch

It looks like a ministry or something is releasing these videos.

I live in Quebec and in August 2007 one branch of our police force did a false flag operation to discredit protesters and legitimize the use of force on civilians. They got caught by pacifist protesters who noticed the boots of the undercover cops were wearing the same boots as the police force: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St1-WTc1kow

The police force then mistranslated the events by saying that the president we see in here asking the cops to "drop the rocks" saying that the president and others were asking them to "throw the rocks". I have no trust in anything coming from my government anymore.

You know who got reprimanded for using provocateurs? No one!

Similar techniques were used at the G20 and the media is playing right into the government's hands.

I don't have time to watch at work, but did anyone in those videos actually get their face burned off?

This guy http://imgur.com/a/lnawg#157

Similar thing happened in at least one case in Portugal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS8ak6zQzc4

You can see a cop with a hoodie in the middle of the other policemen beating a reporter. It was showed in all news reports, they even interviewed the ministry about it but nothing happened. It is believed this happens in a lot more situations but it's really hard to proove.

Yes, that is exactly what it looks like.

Does this look like a responsible police force maintaining order?

http://www.policymic.com/articles/79771/this-photo-is-going-...

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.

Why don't you guys split Ukraine into two parts? The western part (pre-WW2's part of Poland) is pro-western, speaking Ukrainian, the eastern part is mostly inhabited by Russians that gravitate towards Moscow. Why nobody suggests this solution?

"Why nobody suggests this solution?" - I don't know what your definition of "nobody" is, but eg. Dmytro Tabachnyk did suggest that

Why don't Americans split the USA into two parts, the red one and the blue one?

It was attempted once before.

The divide between "red" and "blue" is not geographically consistent. The general political views of both groups are similar. They're not in active conflict at the moment.

Here's one way to split the US into two (mostly) contiguous regions.

United States of Canada vs. Jesusland: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesusland_map

More than 2 parts:

http://www.clevelandleader.com/files/splitus.JPG

Wow. A provocative diagram. Here's the source: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB123051100709638419

Why “Alaska goes to Russia” instead of “Alaska goes to Canada”?

Probably because it was drawn by a Russian?

Alaska used to be Russian territory, sold to US in 1867.

The Confederacy you mean? I seem to recall there was a bit of a problem with that...

There are more realistic borders along which the United States might reorganize:

http://rocs.hu-berlin.de/projects/borders

Only realistic if you don't actually live in the United States. These European projections on how the US could devolve are pretty funny though, and say more about European bias than anything else.

I'm not sure which part of tracking the physical location of dollar bills you think has a European bias, but if means that much to you the project was completed at Northwestern University. The professor only later moved to a university in Europe. Please use your gray matter a little more before dispatching the fingers.

>>gray matter a little more before dispatching the fingers

Yet you linked not to the original work but to a German site. I would also point out that assigning physical-proximity as a cultural marker due to the movement of currency is a terrible stand-in for actual cultural similarities. And cultural similarities are what we are concerned with here, if we're discussing the devolution of America based on cultural lines.

For instance, the map you provide has Colorado lumped in with Oklahoma, Kansas, and the rest of the Midwest. While these states are proximate physically, the culture between these states is completely different, which is why Colorado has legalized cannabis and OK has a monument on government property to the 10 Commandments. To lump Colorado in with the Midwest just shows how poor the methodology and modeling are.

How's that for some gray matter? Is it enough, or do I need more?

Yet you linked not to the original work but to a German site.

Don't be ridiculous, one links to the currently maintained version of a project.

While these states are proximate physically, the culture between these states is completely different

Citation needed. I lived in Colorado for a couple of years, and in my experience there is more similarity than difference between those places.

How's that for some gray matter? Is it enough, or do I need more?

It's better than commenting on a domain name, but there is no upper bound on insight.

This map was discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5566582 (70 points, 248 days ago, 41 comments). I’ll quote the second comment by julespitt: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5566911

> Ahem... http://www.federalreserve.gov/otherfrb.htm .

> Cash is managed through the regional branches of the Federal Reserve, and while there are some boundaries on that map that don't line up, it mostly seems to be governed by these particular administrative regions.

> As a New Yorker from Connecticut, the gigantic barrier between New York and New England would have to be nearly completely explained by the Fed.

There is certainly influence, but the Federal Reserve regions map doesn't align especially well with the study map.

As a New Yorker from Connecticut, the gigantic barrier between New York and New England would have to be nearly completely explained by the Fed.

Having also grown up in Connecticut, New Englanders aren't as likely to go to New York as one would expect from the proximity. Young folks, especially in Connecticut, tend to go back and forth, but people in the city only tend to visit New England in the fall, and people in New England only visit the city on special occasion. In fact, the line between New York and New England is the only place I have ever seen a road sign for "New England" and not an actual state name. It is a very culturally polarized region where city folk like the city, country folk the country. There's also very little in up-state New York (which is mostly park land) that would cause lots of travel there from Vermont... If you're from the area it isn't as weird as it looks on a map.

If the Federal Reserve regions were actually causing the currency movements, why do regions 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 12, and Louisiana not line up?

I agree that the alignment is not perfect.

Previous previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5457329 (115 points, 304 days ago, 44 comments).

For #12, I think that the correct explanation is in the comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5459260 (by skwirl):

> I can do no more than guess, but I think you are right about the San Francisco district. It is a large district and the notes have to be physically carted back and forth to some distribution center, so it looks like they created three locations to do this - one in San Francisco, one in Seattle, and one in Salt Lake City.

My guess is that the other discrepancies are caused by strong economical and population integration of the areas and perhaps more subdistricts.

> Why don't Americans split the USA into two parts, the red one and the blue one?

Because the "red" and "blue" states are artifacts of winner take all election, most of the country (by states) is actually a pretty similar shade of "purple" (at a lower level, like counties, you've got intensely "red" areas in "blue" states, and vice versa), and also because the partisan leanings aren't all that consistent over time.

Was that the intended analogy for the situation in the Ukraine?

If you look at the red/blue split on election precinct levels, you'll see exactly why: the division is very distinct & consistent at the boundary between urban and rural. There is no single clear line (we tried that in the 1860s, didn't go very well), and the geographic (as contrasted with populous) bulk of the so-marked areas sharply disagree with the portrayal. Example: New York is a "dark blue" state, but something like 90% of the land votes "red", noting that the bulk of the population is highly concentrated in a half-dozen cities; Georgia is a "bright red" state, with the city of Atlanta strongly disagreeing. The sharp red/blue division is a waterline surrounding islands of high population; rural folk often do smile at the notion of separating from "blue" areas, but the latter would soon find that severely problematic and will do anything to prevent it.

That's a great idea! In addition, we could also put good guys in charge of everything, and send bad guys to the jail. Also, raise salaries and lower prices. I sense the solution to the Ukrainian crisis is starting to shape!

This worked so great with Germany...

What would be the alternative in this case? Leaving the country on its own with lots of angry people outside and with embargoes on most trade as a punishment? If that country was going to fail and start an upraising, someone would move in quickly to take it over completely.

Sure, it sucked for the east part. West part was doing quite well and still is.

Because the issue is not west vs east. Ukraine spent lots of time divided this way over the centuries and no it does not work any better than splitting the US into red and blue states.

-- Why don't you guys split Ukraine into two parts?

It won't blend then.

I upvoted this comment due to its honesty, but I disagree that Ukraine needs dividing.

Let me bring up some points:

* Why should apolitical people have their country divided?

* Ukraine isn't divided by language, practically everyone can use both to a different extent and there is no miscommunication. The language that you use most of the time doesn't have to match your politics and often doesn't.

* ~80% percent of the population identifies as simply as Ukrainian with majorities in both parts of the country.

* No part of the country is "mostly inhabited by Russians that gravitate towards Moscow". Even in the Crimea the self-identifying Russians don't have 50% of the population.

* The Yes vote in 1991 for Ukrainian independence from the USSR: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ukr_Referendum_1991.png

* 55% of ethnic Russians supported independence from Russia and they remember, are around 17% of the population.

* With the return of Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians from other parts of the USSR and withdrawal of Soviet troops if there was a confirming referendum today if anything the percentage would be bigger.

* Otherwise the culture is pretty much common to all Ukrainians.

* Religion isn't that different - people actually self-identify as Christian or East Orthodox and the traditions are the same all over the country. Even the Greek-Catholics (10% of population) are really much more Orthodox than Catholic.

I agree with all your points with a minor exception: Crimea does have more than 50% Russians[0] - it's the only region that has more Russians than Ukrainians.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea#Demographics

Point taken, it appears that in Crimea 58% percent is Russian according to the 2001 census.

Indeed. What I see happening is young and liberal Ukrainians (whethers Russian, Ukranian, Tatar, and others) simply want their state to be like many other European countries: free, prosperous, democratic, but still multi-ethnic. In fact, they're actually asking for surrender of some aspects of national sovereignty by joining the EU.

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.

I'm sorry that there is not enough angelic protesters in Ukraine to conform to your high standards. Not only that, but apparently Ukrainians don't even qualify as "normal people", since no matter how many times we look at Syria it doesn't become obvious that the "better solution" is to yield to the government and abandon our constitutional rights.

Why do some keep calling it a civil war instead of a revolution? Sure, the government has hired/collaborated with non-government people to cause trouble/beat up the protesters, but which tyrannical government doesn't do that during a revolution? They all do it.

It's a civil war because a lot of Ukrainians speaks Russian and want a "Russian" Ukraine.

It's not so much about whether they speak Russian or not. Eastern Ukraine is just generally closer ideologically to Russia whereas Western Ukraine prefers to maintain close ties with Europe.

You can see that reflected quite clearly in the split between west and east in where the protests are.

In general the president is supported by the eastern part of Ukraine, but is also a convicted criminal who sent the previous president to jail on trumped up charges (which is what's blocking their entry into the EU.)

FWIW, the linked presentation gives a pretty good overview of the dynamics at play at the moment... from the perspective of the protesters of course.

> who sent the previous president to jail

Not a previous president, but his political opponent.

>who sent the previous president to jail on trumped up charges

Previous Prime Minister.

And I'm not 100% sure the charges are totally trumped up.

Not that it changes anything.

Yes, Tymoshenko is not an angel by any means, but her conviction was clearly a political act to frighten other possible rivals with selective justice. Also, this was a great deal to gain some Putin's favor.

There is little connection if any between people speaking Russian and those wanting a "Russian" Ukraine. I come from russian-speaking part of Ukraine myself and hardly anyone here supports current government.

Seconded. Russian is my first language. I do not support this government.

Most Ukranians speak Russian due to eastern/southern parts larger than the western part. A lot of Ukranians speak "surjik" which is a mix between Russian and Ukranian and Western Ukranians speek a mix of Polish and Ukranian. I'd say there aren't many people that speak perfect Ukranian. Do you count people speaking "surjik" as Russian or Ukranian speakers?

There is no civil war, if it was a civil war the western part wouldn't survive a day. Nor the Russian speaking Ukranians want "Russian" Ukraine.

This is a very simplified point of view.

The eastern part is mostly Russian-speaking but that does not mean all they want to speak Russian, it is just a convention there that slowly breaks up. Ethnic Russians are only 17% of the population and mostly live in Crimea and Donetsk/Lugansk oblasts. Most of people in Kharkov, Dnipropetrovsk, Odessa are still Ukrainians under heavy influence of Russian media and culture. "Russian Ukraine" is more of Crimea myth. People from all regions are ok with the existing Ukrainian state as far as they don't feel they are discriminated or demonized for other parts (it's a part of grudge between West Ukraine and Donetsk Ukraine, they often fault each other, Russia helps the latter much to do that, depicting evil Westerners as unbridled Nazi nationalists).

Is there a significant difference between a civil war and a revolution without respect to the outcome?

Yes. In a revolution, the population is more or less united against the government. In a civil war, there are two opposing sides, both made up of the general population fighting against each other. One of the factions in a civil war can also be supported by the government, but the point is there are civilians fighting on both sides, whereas in a revolution there are civilians only on one side.

Or more broadly, civilians vs. people in power, whether they're a part of the government or not. (E.g. the French revolution which targeted the aristocracy.)

I think there is often mass support for the government during a revolution. There were Americans loyal to the crown during the American revolution, and no shortage of people at least opposed to the revolutionaries during the French revolution (War in the Vendée and so on).

I would suggest the dual of your definition: in a revolution, there are established political actors only one side, whereas in a civil war, they are on both sides. The English civil war looks very much like a revolution (people vs king and nobility), but the fact that parliament was on the people's side makes it a civil war. The American civil war pitted various states against the United States.

The length is more important than the outcome, IMO

Because the descendands of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lviv_pogroms perpetrators will want an ethnically pure Ukraine. And East/South of Ukraine will not allow it. US state department is interested in the break up and pushing west ukr down the throat of EU(Germany) which really is not interested in that right now (EU is going down with PIIGS, but US needs even weaker EU with +50mil dirt poor Ukrainians with extremely corrupt political system ). Russia probably wants the split too, east ukr will be easier to control and they get rid of western ultra-right/nazi/Bandera followers.

There's no evidence the US wants a "weaker EU" and I doubt you personally have access to classified state department documents, and nothing of this sort was in any of the documents leaked by Manning. A weak EU is not in America's interest with a rising China and waning influence. The US has continuously asked allies to increase their military spending, so you are just spouting off run-of-the-mill incredulous and unthoughtful anti-american cynicism.

This is not correct. I don't know any influential Ukrainian nationalists who want ethnic purity to rule them all. Even Stepan Bandera welcomed Russians and Jews (!) who aren't enemies of Ukrainian state.

Please stop this crazy Nazi bias and fear mongering. Yes, there were some parts of nationalist movements during WWII who tried to use Nazi force to establish Independent Ukraine, but this union was situational, tense and fragile (and I am not proud of it).

From the videos I saw and from what I tried to read on the subject, large portion of the black clad youth on the square belongs to ultra right "Svoboda" party ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svoboda_(political_party)#Ideol... ) and others . These are not your regular tired of corruption ukrainians but highly trained defacto militia.

I just constantly compare it with Egypt's revolution and the people on the street looked very different from Maidan . It was more popular, spontaneous uprising , in ukraine it looks extremely organized and professional. The whole things smells heavy of outside intervention, just my personal opinion

Svoboda had to give up much of its "radical" appeal to gain real popularity. Now its target audience is not marginal skinheads and radical nationalists, Svoboda has attracted a lot, a lot of people (10% of votes in Ukraine in 2012) who don't want to vote for the old corrupted opposition (Tymoshenko's "Batkivshchyna", Socialist Party of Ukraine, Green Movement, etc) and don't trust their hollow "patriotism". Yes, you can find old videos where Tyagnybok says all kind of far right things, but he's too much of a politic, he says what gains popularity in his target audience and he's a hostage of the strongly patriotic crowd now. Far right radicals are now out of Svoboda making Right Sector, which is partly responsible for Hrushevskogo actions.

> it looks extremely organized and professional - you haven't seen the first days of Maidan when it was chaotic and crystallizing before our eyes. I'd ascribe its amusing (but not supernatural) self-organization to powerful social networking and Orange Revolution experience.

Constantly burning car tires, large-scale production of Molotov cocktails, great skills at building barricades, lots of people wearing body protection ... This does not look like self-organization at all. Surely, someone has been seriously training for this.

> Constantly burning car tires - that does not require any training and was invented after few days of inhaling police tear gas.

> large-scale production of Molotov cocktails - please see the previous HN post (by a russian blogger, Zyalt) where you can see _poorly_ made "cocktails" that often ignite the thrower. They're made in a hurry by women behind the front line. The large slingshot is also quite a masterpiece of preparation (irony)!

> Body protection - is essential to be protected from police assaults later. I saw those protesters in the first day when they were completely unprotected.

> great skills at building barricades - sure, peaceful guards of Maidan had a great opportunity to learn how to do that during several police assaults at nights long before the violent resistance began (there were 2 months of peaceful protests at Maidan before radicals started violent actions on Hrushevskogo street - and Maidan is still a place for peaceful protest). Large barricades appeared after a police raid at night on December 11 when police tried to disassemble fences around Maidan using tear gas, sticks and physical pressure. Nobody used explicit violence at that time, but that was a great lesson how to defense.

I don't understand why you think giving EU even more of an advantage in population will make EU weaker.

In the long term, that will absolutely not be the case. They might be poor now, but will get richer as time goes.

This is ridiculous... Except of few crazy people no one wants ethnically pure Ukraine. I grew up in western Ukraine and I have never seen single person discriminated for being Russian. I don't know why would you post that wiki link, WW2 situation was complex, but 100 years passed and it has nothing to do with current situation.

That's what Ukrainian lefties write:

"One of the major forces at Euromaidan is the far-right xenophobic party ‘Svoboda’ (‘Freedom’). They are dominant among the volunteering guards of the protest camp and are the vanguard of the most radical street actions such as the occupation of the administrative buildings in the center of Kiev. Before 2004 ‘Svoboda’ was called Social-National Party of Ukraine and used Nazi ‘Wolfsangel’ symbol. The party leader Oleh Tiahnybok is still known for his anti-Semitic speech. Even after its re-branding, Svoboda is establishing cooperation with Neo-Nazi and neofascist European parties such as National Democratic Party of Germany and Forza nuova of Italy. Its rank-and-file militants are frequently involved in street violence and hate crimes against migrants and political opponents". [1]

[1] http://commons.com.ua/?p=16967

You should have also cited some Russian news... But there's some truth in this - 'Svoboda' is indeed far-right party, but it definitely doesn't have trained militants and I don't recall any "hate crimes against migrants and political opponents". 'Svoboda' is only one of the forces, having or not having Svoboda there doesn't change anything.

> You should have also cited some Russian news...

I do investigate my sources of information and, when discussing anything, I always try to use sources that are legitimate to all discussing parties.

So, please, don't invent stuff. This information source is not sympathetic to Russia. Also, it supports the Ukrainian protests. I have yet to read a single article from Cпільне that is pro-Russia in even the slightest way.

> Having or not having Svoboda there doesn't change anything.

Back in the autumn on one of the Moscow suburban electric train stations I've spoken to a man from Ukraine that has said that the economic situation in the country is terrible and it is on the brink of the civil war.

I wish Ukrainians all the best in their struggle for freedom and better life, but the main players of Ukrainian opposition might be much better off not allying itself with Nazi sympathizers. If they won't do it, they might alienate Eastern Ukrainians that also hate Yanukovych to the point that they might have an armed internal conflict.

Just my 2 cents.

I'm not familiar with the source, but abstract you cited is manipulation. There's no trained militants, nazi, etc. Such texts are used to divide East/West Ukraine, so current regime can survive (classic divide and conquer).

"I grew up in western Ukraine and I have never seen single person discriminated for being Russian."

You must have been very shielded as a child.

I'm serious, I lived 25 years in Western Ukraine and I don't remember single person having issues because of being Russian. A lot of my friends are Russian and they freely spoke Russian as their everyday language (not just at home).

A revolution would have been over more quickly.

I wish those underlined words were links to sources or any kind of data. I haven't been following very closely and although I'm not putting in doubt what's on the slides (people on here seem to be more or less corroborating the data), there are lots of claims I'd like to read up on. Maybe a slide at the end with more info?

This is your data. Yeah, the quality of this data is rather poor. This is not a time when you can count on balanced, slow research. That will be something historians will hopefully eventually do, but meanwhile people have act on what they have. Because there is no such thing as „inaction”.

I'm not talking about a peer-reviewed report here - I'd appreciate just a link to a shitty youtube video, an audio clip of an interview, raw chat log, etc. - anything else than the claim itself. This slideshow isn't data, it's a report of "what's really going on". As I said earlier I'm not really familiar with the events, those numbers could have a few more trailing zeroes and I wouldn't know the difference until I see something that gives me an order of magnitude.

Well, there are no links because a lot these claims can not be verified.

"Journalists are asked to watch closely the airports for possible Russian police coming to Ukraine and changing into Ukrainian police."

Oh, c'mon... Why are these speculations on HN?

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 ...

Poor English skills. However, there's a good chance that the writer is not a native English speaker.

> Poor language skills

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

Yes, they are probably not native English speakers. But then again, this is a major topic so I would expect that anyone who presents it to a broad audience at least makes the effort to do it properly. The language used here is just one of many things that give the impression that the person who made it has no idea what he/she is talking about.

did you check the declaration of independence for errors as well? jefferson spelt british with two TTs in there.

the US constitution? "pensylvania".

so complete bullshit then as well, right? your horse is so high you shit into space.

For God's sake, how is this piece of propaganda relevant to hacker news? This is not reddit.

All of this while the EU transforms into an EUDSSR where unelected bureaucrats decide everything (EU commission). Good luck...

The European Elections are in May 2014 so make your voice heard.

I can not elect the european commission. If the european parliament decides something, this may happen:

> The European Commission said Wednesday it will not suspend the safe harbor data privacy agreement with the U.S. despite calls from the European Parliament.

Like the king and his parliament in the uk, there will one day be a reckoning between the eu parliament and the commission. The reality today of course is that the commission holds all the power, but that balance is shifting.

Not another piece of news that makes the protesters seem like pure white knights that peacefully protest... Can we have some news about Ukraine that isn't totally biased, please?

You can find tons of alternative views, with little effort. But let me save you some time and present the brief summary here: the protesters are, in fact, not all white knights.

Moreover, it is by now rather clear that they don't all smell like roses and talk like fairies. More than one breach of gentlemanly conduct have been reported by independent sources, and I think it is now safe to say that each and every of them has some kind of agenda and personal goals.

Now what? Does it mean that they have no right to protest? Or that they should stop fighting and go home until they reach perfect enlightenment? What does being or not being white knights have to do with the matter?

Heh, thanks, but I already knew that. That's why I'm disappointed to see so biased 'article' at the top of HN today. As for the last line: It matters because most popular media I've seen portray them as peaceful activists that are beaten by vicious police commandos armed with assault rifles and grenades. And I'll resent violence no matter who it comes from, but I guess it's the easiest way to get attention, huh? Not paying taxes could take a while to get through. It's the bias what annoys me. What's happening there is another thing (though there is a nice video of it http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=959_1390672028 ). If both sides weren't corrupt as hell, they'd make open transparent referendum for the whole thing and be done with it.

Edit: The top comment right now (people being kidnapped) is a nice example. There is no proof of that as far as I know and people already talk about it as facts...

When the government controls all the power, including judicial system, refuses to acknowledge peaceful demonstrations for months, and then swiftly passes the law which pretty much outlaws protest (including, by the way, over the internet), how exactly are you going to arrange that "open transparent referendum" you are talking about?

I used third conditional for a reason.

Look at it, at many angles as possible, don't be a ram. http://zyalt.livejournal.com/984735.html

Exactly: http://zyalt.livejournal.com/985632.html

What do we have governments for again?

Mostly to protect us from other governments.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_National_Assembly_%E2... Nazis are all over the barricades. Ukrainian riot police is more than capable of doing European G8 style riot control but is ordered not to do so because of the huge pressure from EU and USA. Finally, imagine Ukrainian or Russian officials going into crowds of Occupy Wall Street or Paris protests urging to overthrow the government and giving their support to protests.

Could you please explain, how you exactly base your argument on the link above? Please, show us your reasoning.

1) .. far-right party... 2) The party maintains a close relationship with the National Democratic Party of Germany which is considered to be a promoter of a neo-Nazi ideology by some. UNA-UNSO has been widely considered to have employed neo-Fascist and neo-Nazi methods and ideologies.[23][24][25] 3) And easy guess - concealed swastika as a logo

Everyone is over the barricades now, left, right, centrists, politically unaffiliated.

Not true. The barricades are guarded by the "Right Sector", who will only let their own ranks come near it to, quote, "[not] to prevent them from interfering with work."

Stop posting this stuff. This is not reddit.

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 :)

This is the first time I've heard jobs mentioned about the protest.

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...

OK, lets also discuss Iran, Syria, Israel vs Palestine and all other bloody conflicts here. Is this political forum or what? With regard to Ukraine, I have a message to "protesters". Lads, instead of getting 30EUR per day of "protest", do some real coding for the benefit of your society.

I challenge everyone to read your past comments and reflect this one with the fact that you're Russian.

Now it would be a good time to stop your nationalistic dishonesty, when politics and people as human beings are against your views.

Dude, I am Soviet engineer. I remember times when we called each other brothers. Kiev is mother of Russian urban culture. Do not mix politics with code and you will be all right.

Can't watch any of the videos linked because youtube asks me to sign in to prove my age. And to sign up, it asks for cell phone number to send an SMS to verify. Perhaps because I use tor. Anyone have a usable source?

If you have the viewtube greasemonkey plugin, you can download the video from youtube and upload it somewhere else (e.g mediafire, zippyshare). Would be good if someone does that.

Replace the "/watch?=$id" with "/v/$id" in the URL and it should work.

I tried and it just asks me to download a .SWF file:

www.youtube.com/v/z0zD3pOG-Tk

I tried your link and it works as expected. Chrome 33 on OS X.

Oh, it's probably because you have flash...

/embed/$id will give you HTML5

that worked. thanks!

In the video link, where it says www.youtube.com/blahblahblha just replace the youtube.com part with pwnyoutube.com and leave the rest of the link the same. So this new link will be www.pwnyoutube.com/blahblahblha From there there's a few links to watch the video without logging in - clean viewer or loop or full page or to download the video.

Oh, I used to use that site until it needed Java. Now it has alternatives so I can use it again, thanks!

I heard that there are a lot of nukes in Ukraine and the last thing the world wants is those split off into separate hands. I would harbor a guess that the US would rather have those nukes in the hands of Russia, who is a known evil but rational, vs someone else entirely new.

I read on Stratfor that Russia does not want Ukraine to become independent because it's basically the "soft underbelly" leading into Russia. It's basically the equivalent of letting Texas become independent. With Putin in control, there's no way he's letting Ukraine go free, especially given all the nukes, its strategic location, etc.

You heard wrong: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Ukraine. There are no nukes in Ukraine.

Uhm, Ukraine is an independent, sovereign country. Comparing Ukraine to Texas makes no sense.

Some Texans wouldn't agree with you :)

Ukraine has no nukes. They were disarmed in exchange for security assurances from both Russia and USA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Ukraine

Nukes were transferred from soviet republics to Russia exactly because western world didn't trust newly founded random goverments.

I'm curious as to what you mean when you say Russia is a "known evil." Are you alluding to real life? Movies? The Cold War? It would seem that true rationality and evil have little to do with one another.

'Murica

Ukrainian here.

Ukraine gave up on its nukes in nineties in exchange for military guarantees from US, NATO and Russia. No warheads, no enriched uranium (has been given away by the current president in exchange of nice handshakes with US at the beginning of his term).

Russian leaders are trying to restore its Soviet era, where Ukraine used to be the second most populated country after Russia itself. Clearly, this is a big deal for them. Location wise is not that important, all Baltic countries are way closer to Moscow.

> I heard that there are a lot of nukes in Ukraine

You should re-evaluate how you acquire information and which sources do you trust. You could have found out that this is not true by spending 10 seconds looking it up. Ukraine had nukes, but gave them back to Russia due to US and Russian influence.

How many other things do you believe that are flatly not true?

Technically there may be some Russian nuclear weapons in the Russian naval base on the Black Sea, which is leased from Ukraine, but they would be under Russian control.

All nukes went from Ukraine to Russia (same in other former Soviet republics) after the Soviet Union broke apart. It all was regulated by proper treaties. You should not listen to rumors.

Regarding your next statement, Russia is not interfering in what is happening in Ukraine AT ALL. As opposed to EU and US who send their emissaries to Ukraine very often. The only "interference" from Russia is giving to Ukraine a huge credit and pushing down the gas prices which I guess is more help than interference. Also, this is not about Putin or anybody else. Most of Ukraine is culturally and historically extremely close to Russia. They are pretty much the same people. This may not be true regarding a couple of the most Western regions of the country. Those guys, I believe, have their full right on "independence" but that effectively would mean the split of the country which is the hardest thing to do.

Please be careful with selectively picked information. It's not constructive and not helpful.

There are multiple rumors about Russian forces disguised as Berkut, there are some evidences about Russian snipers here, there are videos of some military forces of non-Ukrainian origin in Southern Ukraine, etc. I don't give this full credibility (usual rumors in time of unrest, perhaps), but still there's no smoke without fire.

Whoops, I guess I heard wrong about the nukes in Ukraine. Thanks for the information!

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