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Comment by ck2 | Hacker News Reader

You need to tune into our RNC and DNC conventions every 4 years. These are the two political parties that vote themselves millions of taxpayer funded "security" spending for their conventions in congress.

Protesters are beaten and locked up almost immediately, huge "pens" are made to coral them like animals, and recently the new tactic is to make "safe zones" where people are not even allowed near the events anymore.

If there was even a hint of weapons being used, our police are heavily militarized now and would not hesitate to shoot someone even holding a smartphone if they thought they could get away with it. Virtually no police are prosecuted in any given year for shooting unarmed people in the USA, happens every week.

However what you have in the Ukraine is something I am jealous of, people actually care.

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With the notable exception of 1968 Democratic National Convention[1] I'm having trouble finding any news coverage of multiple injuries at a RNC or DNC. Care to provide references?

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Democratic_National_Conven...

I didn't mean to imply it was as bad as the Ukraine, but for such a "free country" they don't let people even protest anymore so it never can escalate. There are probably better examples like New Orleans that escape me right now.

Also, no-one is allowed near the conventions anymore. So much for freedom of speech unless you want to protest a poor woman going into a health center for an abortion, then be as close as you want.

Oh here you go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Republican_National_Conven...

Note the pre-emptive arrests a week before the convention. I think we were criticizing China for that behavior.

> I didn't mean to imply it was as bad as the Ukraine

Then why did you write this, implying that it's worse in the US:

>If this happened in the USA, every single protester (and innocent bystander) would be in jail or dead by now.

This is exactly the kind of bullshit hyperbole that makes political discussions on sites like this such a waste of time.

You are confusing two points of mine, or I didn't explain properly.

In the US if it got to that level, everyone would be in jail or dead.

In the US they would never let it get to that level. Police would not just stand by a peaceful protest without permits. They sure as hell would never let people occupy a government building, even peacefully. They would insert people to make it violent and then start arresting people, at the first sign of weapons, you'd start seeing some massive escalation. If fires were being set on that level the national guard would come in fully armed.

So we are fortunate in that it has not escalated like the Ukraine. But if it did, make no mistake, the US would be giving other countries lessons in brutality.

Our police are completely militarized. They even have tanks now decommissioned from overseas wars. People just do not realize this, or they do not care. But what is really scary is you do not sit on that kind of weapons and not use them, it would be like giving a police officer a taser or gallons of pepper spray and being surprised when they constantly use it.

I don't quite have it, but I think there's an Internet Law in here somewhere.

For every political discussion, there is always a guy who A) drags the US into it, and B) tries to draw the conclusion that the US is actually worse than whatever is being discussed.

There are millions of guns in the US. Consider it a power keg if any of this events you see overseas ever happened here.

Hence the police know they better be even better armed than the civilians and shoot to kill first. This is why we have police officers that kill kids holding phones or game console controllers.

I cannot say the US is worse than elsewhere as is, I am saying it could be worse than elsewhere if the events you see elsewhere happened here. It would be a wasteland. We kind of got a mini-preview of that after New Orleans flooded, there was some seriously criminal police behavior.

>Then why did you write this

Because he knew it would be massively up voted. The maturity level on this site, at least with political stuff, is very low.

My friends were eating at Mickey's Diner (in downtown St. Paul, MN) when the protests were broken up by police.

They heard the calls to disperse but wanted to finish eating, so they stayed a few minutes extra figuring that they weren't a part of the protests anyway so they'd be fine. A few minutes later they exited the restaurant and got the full treatment: tear-gassed, tackled, handcuffed, and taken to jail. They saw someone who was running away get hit in the head with a tear gas canister.

To protect and serve [them and their political masters.]

More than 10 people were shot today by snipers. Nothing to be jealous about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DxkDiAcSF8

In all these sniper events, they are all too tricky. Sniper shoots people, people enrage and kill police, snipers kills police, police defends and kills people.

Most of the times I am inclined that snipers are 3rd party working for the benefit of pushing around people/police/media.

As far as I heard, the sniper was from the opposition, and he shot police officers, no?

What? No! Here are people who died from sniper http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaMbkoJT2uY

Here's a medical worker who had been shot https://twitter.com/HromadskeTV/status/436445556664066048/ph...

Here's a video of sniper shooting at people: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=570573343039007&set=vb....

Why do people on video wear non-military boots, yellow identification stripes, use outdated weapons and can't hold a gun right? I mean with left hand, there are no left-handed versions, especially so old, used rounds will hit user's face. And that "sniper" actually doesn't shoot at all. And leaves only _after_ everybody moved back, leaving him exposed. That's ridiculous.

UPD: that girl just died :( https://twitter.com/avramchuk_katya/status/43648282472023654...

I've read corrections that she underwent surgery and is still alive.

http://espreso.tv/new/2014/02/20/poranena_v_shyyu_volonterka... (in Ukrainian)

Yes, just saw that. Best wishes to her.

Opposition doesn't have any kind of weapon or warriors at all! People are not with opposition, and opposition leaders lost their voice now, noone listens to them. People are too angry.

Are you sure?

From yesterday's news:

According to [Ukrainian Security Service head] Yakimenko, “over the last day more than 1,500 firearms and 100,000 rounds of ammunition have come into the hands of criminals.”

...

Meanwhile in Ivano-Frankovsk, rioters have seized 268 pistols, 2 rifles, 3 light machine guns, 92 grenades and 15,000 ammunition rounds, the deputy head of the Security Service, Vladimir Porodko, has said, adding that the police are searching for the stolen arms.

Sorry for being not clear enough. I'm not saying protestors don't have weapon. I'm just saying that we shouldn't call them "opposition". Opposition are bunch of politicians that want to do everything peaceful and were never radical. Protestors are separate from opposition.

Sure. Ukrainian Security Service hired criminals and led criminals out of jail, gave them weapons and so they went shooting at the protesters. World news (i.e. US, UK and some other state sponsored news services) are still behind Yanukovich, so I wouldn't trust how they are spinning the events.

Uh, what? As far as I can tell, the vast majority of commentary in the Western press is pretty anti-Yanukovich (e.g. the NYTimes editorial today: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/20/opinion/ukraines-deadly-tu...).

Are you really quoting the a source that's obviously biased?

no, of course not, I mean, the government is just saying that the weapons have been stolen, so that when they 'massacre' the peaceful protestors, they can point the finger and say, 'but it wasn't us, weapons were stolen'. Seriously.... you watch too much CSI.

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