Didn't Dianne Feinstein try something similar against bloggers, only that instead of forcing them to register so they aren't anonymous, she wanted to completely exclude them from any sort of 1st amendment protection against the government?
Russia has always tried to control media, Putin (and comrades) launch conspiracies, and twist stories to fit their bill. Some examples are the 'failure' of the olympic games opening (they aired the rehearsal). And the airplane MH17 appearantly was shot down by the Ukrainian government, in a grand masterplan to make holland and asia turn agains Russia.
I don't think this will ever change until the citizens rize and overthrow the government.
There where too many bloody revolutions in russian history. And looking at Egypt, Syria, Ukraine, Lybia and many other countries after the revolution epidemia theres not much russians who thinks that overthrowing the government is a good idea. Even amongst those russians who think that mr Putin is a bad choice.
I am reading HN for over 1.5 years, not that much, but still. Yes, i've registered account only few hours ago when I understood that by upvoting the article I can save it in my account, so no need for bookmarking anymore.
It is sad that you jump to conclusions so fast.
Not everyone who disagrees with you on international politics is brainwashed.
Edit: no, really, it is possible for someone to reach different conclusions from you without being "brainwashed", paid, deluded, or a sockpuppet. People think differently about the world and are operating from different sets of knowledge and beliefs. And different levels of cynicism about international power politics.
True -- when the subject is Russia today, there are lots of paid people too.
(And if you think it is bad in English, be happy that you don't have to swim through the mangled comments in Swedish. But in the last 2-3 months they have gotten a bunch of people with better Swedish.)
Edit: Answer to the Edit. Of course I know that. I ALSO know that few well read people sincerely believe in that the whole world's [democratic] media are in a conspiracy against just Russia and the only truth is in Putin's controlled media. But yes, people do believe in conspiracy theories.
It amaze me how easy people accusing others of being pro-Putin activists and not having independent opinion.
Strictly speaking _everyone_ is influenced by what they read and by people they talk to in one way or another.
When I put Syria and Ukraine in the same line i mean:
1. I think that what is happening in eastern Ukraine right now is logical consequence of Kiev events. Having a few friends living in Kiev, some of them where on Maidan supporting the revolution and a few friends living in Donbass who supports pro-Russian forces I receive alot of controversial information from both sides. For me it is obvious: it is a civil war right now. Same in Syria.
2. Both countries are playground for major political forces.
3. Both countries are in a really bad state right now.
1. False. The events in Eastern Ukraine have been planned by Russia a decade ago (ie there are photos of Russians waving flags of 'Donetsk Republic' in the mid 2000's).
Same with annexation of Crimea - Russia just used the opportunity to execute the plan. Even the execution started before Yanukovich left the country (such as movement of troops, etc).
2. It's not a civil war and the forces in Eastern ukraine are not 'pro-Russian'.
They are Russian forces (do lookup its leaders - Girkin, Bezler, Antyufeyev, etc). They are all Russian and are members of various branches of Russian government - FSB, GRU, etc.
Your points 2 & 3 i won't even address as they are 'not even wrong'. Any conflict can be described as 'playground for political forces' and 'bad state'. That's why it's a conflict.
I don't want to support any side of conflict mostly because I personally know people from both camps.
Ukraine and Russia are connected to each other more then they want to and much more then ordinary person who reads western media knows. Connected in all aspects, cultural, family ties, friendship, buisness, ethnic. You may not believe me but current situation is like if Canada decided to have a trade/military treaty with Russia breaking any ties with US at the same time. So before this conflict waving russian flag was actually quite normal.
Theres alot of russians fighting in ranks of DNR/LNR forces, true. But theres alot of Ukrainians too. You may call this conflict anything you want, but if one group of citizens fight with the other it is civil war.
This conflict is supported by russian government only blind will say that LNR/DNR are on their own. The main thing is: LNR/DNR are possible only because they are supported by locals and because of actions of Kiev right after Maidan. Statements that where made by Kiev politics, law acts they enforced, there where alot of mistakes made by Kiev government that led to current situation.
I'm a Russian speaker myself, so am well aware of what is going on. And I won't let you call it civil war. All leaders are Russian soldiers, all weapons are from Russia, etc, etc. There probably are 20-30% locals, even less among the fighting forces. So please stop.
It sounds rather strange actually: "And I won't let you call it civil war" As I've said, you may call it whatever you want, it is civil war. I bet in every civil conflict people tend to think that the other side of conflict is some kind of rogues, bandits, terrorists, mercenaries, foreign agents(hello 1917). It still doesnt change anything.
I'll use public definitions: "Civil war is a violent conflict within a country fought by organized groups that aim to take power at the center or in a region, or to change government policies". Ring anything?
I'd love to see it as ice skating competition(or any other kind of sport event), means no weapons and deaths, unfortunately it is not. Trying to stay on a field of well known definitions not emotions.
Theres well documented cases when ukrainian representatives of law enforcment forces taking a LNR/DNR side. Not only ex-Berkut.
I don't particularly see "blind support" in his last couple of posts. He acknowledged that some don't support the regime as-is, didn't directly state support or not in his own part, and explained part of the situation that stops those people railing against it (the fear of history repeating badly), raising what could be an interesting discussion point if I had time to take that slightly off-topic detour right now.
You on the other hand seem to be blindly throwing around assumptions (you can't logically deduce "supports X" from "doesn't make a point of denouncing X") instead of taking the more mature opportunity of delving into the points mentioned.
Looks like people beyond the borders are misinformed about Russian internal politics. Putin is, no doubt, the evil, but the statement about revolutions is true. There's no point in converting ex-nuclear superpower to failed state just because current government sucks. Successful democratic revolution may happen when there are trusted new leaders who can take the power, transform the state and step back on next elections. State of the opposition in Russia is so pathetic, that, despite among these people there are some really smart guys, it won't be able to run the government. We have to wait until we'll see grassroot support for the young generation of politicians with crystal-clean record (Maria Gaidar, Luba Sobol etc) and good organization capable of fighting even on rigged elections. If revolution will overthrow Putin tomorrow, we'll see new NSDAP as a replacement. There's no point in replicating the Arab spring mess now.
So if a junta is brutal enough and keep the quality of the opposition down (Siberia, assassinations, etc) then you think it is wrong to try to overthrow the dictator?!
From 1984 "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever."
How can things change, then? An invasion is not better than a revolution. Economic pressures work for most countries today (not e.g. North Korea) but not for oil countries -- note that most problem states do live on resource exports (see resource curse).
I don't think so. I think that people of any country have to look at all existing opportunities. For North Korea, some African or Asian countries there's no point in waiting for good and revolution is the only way for changes. As for Russia (and, possibly, for China), we have the options. The political game is quite dangerous here and political institutions are imperfect but they still may evolve in time to something better. Putin, compared to the dictators in the rest of the world, is very soft and weak: his power is based on popular support and he is well-aware that he has to distribute wealth to the people, boosting economy and imitating western-style democracy. Either he will keep the wealth growing (and thus the country open - it's essential for Russian economy, so millenials will travel and get educated about the benefits of western life style), or the popular discontent will blow him out of Kremlin. We still hope that the first option will be the case. We need more educated people to build reliable and inclusive political system.
Thanks for a reasoned and informed opinion on this subject.
How do you think about this:
You should not help dictators based on natural resources economically. Countries built on industry will have to democratize when they reach a certain economic level. Countries who get their money from natural resources will just generate more money in Swiss banks if the prices increase.
Edit: pcj50, I doubt even the Saudi A king describes his country as democratic. The West is enough dependent on them that they get a free card. Realpolitik in a democracy means being nice when it isn't too expensive (or the voters back home cares). Dictators are even worse. In sum, there are only varying levels of grey, no black/white. But, well, you knew all this.
Russian economy is not based on natural resources, actually. Russia was industrialized in 3 waves (development of mountain manufacturing civilization in Urals in XVII-XVIII, in 1870-1913 and finally by Stalin) long time ago and now has visible post-industrial sector (8.5% of GNP is generated by Internet and IT companies). The patterns that apply to dictatorships of banana republics here don't work: it will not be able to replace import of iPhones, but it is capable of replacing the western technologies that are blocked by sanctions. It can sustain any sanctions by manufacturing luxury goods for elites and providing food and fun for ordinary people. Upper middle class in Moscow will suffer, of course, from the lack of iPhones, but they are hated by the rest of the country, anyway, so who cares.
The only way to push democracy to such a big and advanced country is to increase cultural exchange, encouraging tourism and supporting Russian education system.
Putin has built a very stable power structure, I'll give him that. And he's crazy popular in Russia, not least because of the fact that he controls all the media.
The only two ways I can see his regime could be defeated are:
* Turmoil within his ranks leading destabilizing his power structure
* Significant economic downturn (e.g. oil price falls or oil trading is hindered by sanctions)
One could argue that the growing discontent with Putin among the younger generation could lead to his demise, but I don't think it would work. They can protest all they want but as long as 90% of the population are successfully hypno-toaded, Putin can deal with the protesters in any way he wants.
Revolutions are bloody mess and do not usually bring in democracy. Quite the opposite. Plus, they tend to be successful only when overthrowing already weak government.
The ease with which some throw around rizing citizens and overthrown governments is mind boggling.
While I'd agree that revolutions are often a bloody mess there are a number of examples in recent history where that is not the case. (e.g. The Velvet Revolution[1])
France, UK & the USA all also had bloody revolutions that resulted in democracy (or at least the widely understood view of what democracy is).
Ten years after the French revolution the country was governed by Napoleon, who seized power in a coup d'etat...although he turned out to be substantially more liberal than the revolutionists.
I'm presuming that saying "a fig for the nation" wouldn't have necessarily sent you to the guillotine under Napoleon, as compared to the Jacobins shortly before him.
Abolished feudalism, supported religious liberty, established the Code Napoleon, promoting jury trials etc. He was dictatorial but in my view governed enormously more fairly than the Jacobin mob that took over France after the revolution and instituted the Terror.
I'm not sure if [citation needed] is appropriate. This is kind of rudimentary history. It's a cute thing we do on HN but if we did this every post would be a Wikipedia article in itself
yes, several hundred years ago when people had morals to build democradic societies with an obligation to the good of the people. now you just have money and weapons thrown around for the intention of power control.
Between "revolution" and "democracy" lies a lot more mess than people remember. There is quite frequently a counterrevolution or collapse followed by another revolution. The revolution necessarily interrupts services which may be keeping people alive.
The UK's civil war established a theocratic military dictatorship. The 'glorious revolution' installed not a republic but a constitutional monarchy with a Protestant king subject to the rule of Parliament. Electoral democracy followed later, piecemeal.
France and the US have more parallels: first revolution in late 1700s, delivering either incomplete or non-lasting freedom; eventually another revolution in the late 1800s, establishing more freedom; final formal abandonment of colonialism/slavery round about 1968. Hmm, that rather implies that the timetable for the next one is somewhere around 2070.
To be perfectly fair I think that, at least in the U.S., it's more fair to say that the "revolution" occurred even before the first British troops had landed, and was as nearly bloodless as it might be possible to be. The bloodshed came when British tried to regain control over a country already lost to the revolution.
And still might later as there are bills/amendments in motion that could if enacted and enforced result in the same level of control/monitoring/etc.
The fact that the US nearly did something (and might manage to by the back door at some point soon) does not affect whether that something is considered draconian. It just means that the US nearly wrote into law something that many consider draconian.
At least on this web site they need to work to have an old account, so your comment won't be at -10 quickly.
Edit: Here is a business idea to get round the voting problem by paying money from China, Russia, Microsoft (they stopped after the court cases?) and other astroturfers. A browser plugin you install where you configure the bank account and web sites you have accounts on. The plugin votes for you and a bit of money is put into your bank account. You could instead work on detectors and honey pot comments (to detect these users), before HN et al are destroyed.
Edit 2: It should be possible to hide the voting plugins better by voting up comments on sham accounts, which then are used for down voting. I see a whole new application for data mining to detect this. :-(
It is interesting, that as an argument of moral right to restrict basic civil rights or to start war in Ukraine or other shit, Putin's dolls use a thesis that the US or other countries did something similar like SOPA, war in Iraq, Guantanamo or shutting down of different protests.
Usually these guys (Putin's apologist not major players) don't know much details about the subject (as well as most other people/all of us) but they use these arguments to justify crimes of Putin's regime.
It is like to justify killing of innocent people in the USSR because Nazi Germany did this too.
Disclaimer: i don't compare the US or other countries with Nazi Germany but used this example as a hyperbole to show the issue.
At the same time the outrage from the west about Ukrainian separatists shooting down a civilian plane versus a totally different attitude when the US shot down an Iranian civilian plane does not sit right with me either.
These things should all be dealt with equally, no matter who the perpetrators are and who the victims.
These things should NOT all be dealt with equally! Because if you state this then you mean that the politics and the relationship between Russia and the west are not led by LAW but by "bad things" an opposite side did.
These things should be dealt by LAW and JUSTICE and you should not link one to another because if you do then you end up justifying the USSR crimes because Nazi Germany did this!
UPD: A crime should be a crime in all countries. The problem is that some countries use other's crimes as an argument.
I said "things should NOT all be dealt with equally" because the judgement should base not on what others think about this but what the moral and the law says.
The point is, that if something is illegal for one party, it's illegal for all. The point isn't that the USSR crimes are ok because Nazi Germany did it, it's that if it is a crime for the USSR then it must be a crime for Nazi Germany, or the UK, or the US.
This, of course, isn't how the world works. But if you believe it should be, it's hard to accept the Russians are the only ones who have crimes to answer for - they just seem to be the only ones being brought to account.
I am confused with your reply:
> But if you believe it should be - what you mean?
>The point is, that if something is illegal for one party, it's illegal for all.
- in some countries the law doesn't work and this country's elite don't act basing on the law and justice but use manipulation (like my example with USSR and Nazi Germany) to justify it's actions which results in more bad things.
Example USSR-Germany is a parallel to what some Russians are stating: like the current law on blogging is okay because the US initiated similar law too. Bloggers, free media and readers are in fact victims of this manipulation because the US has nothing to do with Russia's internal policy. And still some Russians use this argument as a justification of this law.
Also the Ukraine government accidentally shot down Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 in 2001.
Now I do believe that Russia probably supplied a missile system to Ukrainian separatists who then shot down an airliner, however I do not believe that they wanted to shoot down that airliner. It seems much more likely that they were paranoid idiots.
If you look at all the different political responses to airliners being downed by military recklessness, the one thing that seems consistent is the complete lack of consistency.
I remember those days and the world was outraged. How is that a different attitude?
But unlike MH17, the US took the downing of the Iranian airliner right on the chin and didn't try to deflect. They went to court (ICJ), paid the victims, and punished those responsible. It's too bad we don't see that with MH17. I wonder if we will ever see those responsible punished.
No formal apology was ever even issued, no liability was accepted, those responsible were decorated, not punished. The US paid the value of the Jet they shot down and some money per victim but never admitted any guilt.
I stand corrected. But I will note that Captain Rogers never commanded another ship after the Vincennes returned to the US in 1989.
My main point still stands though. The US acknowledged the mistake and took measures to make sure it didn't happen again. Will we ever see the same from MH17?
That's because no one person was directly responsible. Even for assholes like CAPT Rogers (who certainly did everything he could to get his ship into a bad situation [1]), no Navy commanding officer wakes up in the morning hoping to get to push the button on a civilian airliner. There was much more that went into Iran Air 655 than a rogue captain [2].
And while there's plenty of room for blame to go around (we could ask the same question of military officers in 1988 as we do of Russia today: Why did you have this advanced weapons system in the hands of people so seemingly untrained and aggressive?), simply lopping off heads because something horrible happened is no more just than mob rule. There's a reason we don't simply fire everyone involved with civil aviation crashes, for example.
The "decorations" you refer to were given as a standard element of completing a tour at a duty station. They are given to everybody who completes a tour at a duty station, with the type of decoration being dependent upon rank.
You're right that the actions of the U.S. remain unacceptable, but I think we would all be happier if we could get either the separatists and/or Russia's GRU to pay the families of the victims and pay Malaysian Airlines to replace the Boeing.
I mean, even the U.S. could be bothered to do that for a nation they had been literally fighting in the waters of the Persian Gulf! Last I checked Russia wasn't in armed conflict with the Netherlands or Malaysia.
> Last I checked Russia wasn't in armed conflict with the Netherlands or Malaysia.
Russia did not shoot down that jet, that's definitely not confirmed by anybody or even seriously suggested, it was most likely downed from Eastern Ukraine by separatists or by Russian troops operating under the 'republic of Donetsk' flag (in so far as such a thing actually exists).
The Ukraine is not Russia, but is very well possible that the unit was manned by Russian 'advisors' and/or that it was actually the property of the Russian state. This will hopefully all come out in time. If and when it does I hope that the results will not further de-stabilize the region.
In my opinion those responsible for the Iranian passenger jet affair should have been taken off-duty immediately and sacked without a pension. Essentially the US has sanctioned such behavior since there were no penalties.
You don't get ahead by comparing yourself with the likes of Russia and the GRU or the Separatists, you only get ahead by asking yourself what the right response should be to such actions. And as such I don't think the US has the moral high ground when it comes to incidents like these.
Putin is a bandit, his buddies are no better. But at least they're not fooling anybody (at least, so I hope). And Captain Rogers should have been discharged without honor, that would have sent two messages at once: to the rest of the service that the US does not tolerate such cowboy actions and to the rest of the world that they will punish those that perpetrate them.
That would have given the US some right to be harsh with Putin and/or the separatists.
As for giving advanced weapons systems in the hands of untrained and aggressive people: I note that captain Rogers was probably highly trained but also very aggressive and that he too made a similar call so the Russians are no better than the Americans about who they give their advanced weapons system to, separatists and highly trained commanders are all not immune to making very terrible errors of judgment.
I'm actually more hopeful about those responsible in the MH17 affair to be brought to justice than those in the Iranian passenger jet incident (if that were to happen one would think it would have happened by now).
> you only get ahead by asking yourself what the right response should be to such actions
How appropriate, as that is all the world has asked for from Putin. I mean, Obama could figure out why you don't give advanced weaponry to the "good guys" in Syria, what aneurysm did Putin have to give both SA-11 sets and the intensive training to use the same to a bunch of poorly-led and poorly-trained separatists?
We'll ignore for now the command links amongst separatist leaders reaching back to Russia, because even if those were completely absent the question would remain valid. "Moral high ground" or not...
It's fairly simple, but let me spell it out: Putin would like the Crimea area to be favorable to Russia and is scared by the apparent ease with which the Ukraine and the rest of Europe have been approaching each other.
This will cut Russia off from one of their strategically more important harbors. So from a geopolitical point of view stirring this up was a fairly dumb mistake, the EU (and Obama) figured they could slip this one by but Putin found a way to foment unrest in the Ukraine at the expense of lots of lives.
Stability: good, global silly chess games: bad.
Putin will hang himself and his buddies too given enough rope and enough time. Yank his chain and he'll react, and he'll gain local popularity because of the general publics non-interest in world affairs. So in my not so humble opinion this is all just dumb war mongering and a potential set-back for 30 years or so of slowly improving relations and it will likely take decades again to recover the lost ground if we don't get a nice little war in the Ukraine, Crimea and Moldova region before then.
Which would lead to a bunch more nationalism in Russia, potentially a new cold war and a whole lot of lives lost besides.
That region is a very bad hotspot and to start moving chess pieces around there is about as stupid as encouraging Taiwan to finally really break off from the Chinese, Backing either Pakistan or India against the other or by sending arms and money to Tibet.
I'm sure my elected leaders think they know what they're doing but I fear they are simply not capable of thinking ahead far enough when it comes to consequences of actions.
And that includes your elected leaders as well.
I'm fully going on the assumption here that the lines of command reach all the way back to Russia, and I'm also very sure that they never ever thought they were downing a passenger jet. The fall-out from this will have extremely serious consequences (as it should) but I fear that a lot more lives could be lost if this situation is not handled properly. I know people all over the world and Ukraine is not an exception. My friend Dima (Dmitry) there lives in one part of the country and has family in the other. Another friend of mine is married to a lady from there. This is a lot closer to home for me than it probably is for you and it bugs me that people here pretend that the Ukraine is far away and that this will not affect 'us'.
Of course it will affect us, and the response so far has been just this side of dumb. The EU structurally underestimates the still very formidable military might of the former USSR, is living with a wounded bear on its doorstep and has now kicked this bear in the proverbial testicles.
Lots of people have already died as a consequence (including those in that plane) and it starts to become harder and harder to see a path to de-escalation.
Putins end-game (if I'm any judge of affairs like these, which I'm probably not) is that he'll 'keep the peace' because Europe can't afford it, which will result in permanent Russian army presence in fairly large numbers in the eastern part of the country, which will be a military backed re-affirmation of the former status quo.
And then Europe will have to back away from their plans of annexing the Ukraine, which they likely will do but not easily (they can't for political / image reasons).
This will still have all kinds of risks but it will at least extinguish the fuse. As long as the Russians are playing proxy there is still a way out of this, as soon as the gloves come off and they roll a few divisions into the Ukraine all hope of resolving the situation without an all-out confrontation with Russia will be lost. I highly doubt Europe and the US are both capable and have the political stamina to pull off such a confrontation.
But they started massive campaign trying to blame Ukraine. Fabricated Spanish air dispatcher account and clueless theory that Ukraine tried to shoot Putin out of the sky were just a few examples.
However, the real jewel of this campaign was a briefing of Russian Ministry of Defense where their high brass officials openly spread a bunch of lies. That was kinda scary. I mean, North Korea scary.
In conversation I have on occasions defended Putin even though I dislike his policies. People seem to give their own countries the benefit of the doubt based on the context at the time,
For example, within the UK David Cameron championed laws in the 80s that made it illegal for goverment to publish material that could promote homosexuality. People shrug off resposibility for this by telling you that "it was a different time". Russia has introduced laws that are not dissimilar to widespread outrage. Whilst we are right to campaign against such things you cannot expect a country to modernise instantly overnight or welcome outside interference.
People should be reminded that all countries are following a path, and some countries are further along than others. The west does not have a monopoly on justice.
The gay laws that Putin has brought in seem to be about doing the minimum required to keep the Russian christian right happy while not actually making homosexuality illegal. I find this interesting, especially in light of Putin's many bare-chested photoshoots. I sometimes wonder if those laws might be partly a response to his advisers telling him that he was starting to get a bit of a gay following and that he needed to do something about it before the hardliners started suspecting his manliness.
It is funny how often that photoshoot come up, sometime as an ad hominem attack on him. Lets ignore the personality cult and massive nuclear arsenal to concentrate on his slighty chubby tummy. It is not interesting at all.
Cults of personality can be susceptible to those kind of attacks though. Is only interesting as much as it influences his cult of personality and I guess what I was getting at is how much of his actions are driven by genuine political beliefs and how much are purely for propagating his image. Because as he gets older, his image controls him, not the other way around. Keeping up a hard-man persona is difficult to do when you are a slightly prim aging bureaucrat.
This! I've gotten into a few debates recently, and like clockwork they use "well country x does it too herp derp". Sorry, but other's criminal behavior doesn't magically justify yours. You are adding to the problem instead of solving it.
I don't see EU implementing any sanctions against US for Guantanamo or Israel for slaughtering Palestinians.
If you punish one country for a crime - be consistent and do it for all of them.
Iran can't have peaceful nuclear tech, but Israel can have their Nukes.
Kosovo is a "special case" allowed by EU, but other parties can't do the same. Even enthnic cleansing argument doesn't cut it - look at Ukraine, same thing pretty much, but KFOR is good, and DNR/LNR are terrorists.
Guantanamo is (now, just) a military detainee facility, something which is permitted under international law for states undergoing armed conflict. In the U.S.'s case, they've been in a long running armed conflict with Al Qaeda and the Afghanistan Taliban.
The camp could just as well be in Kansas at this point for all that the law is concerned (just where we kept German POWs back in the day), the detainees wouldn't get any substantive additional rights.
Likewise, unless you can show that Israel is deliberately targeting Palestinian non-combatants then there's not going to be an international legal basis for sanctions. That certainly wouldn't stop individual countries from applying sanctions if they wish due to their own norms, but that's arguably a double standard as by that logic the world would have to sanction essentially everywhere but western Europe and maybe Canada.
Iran can have peaceful nuclear tech, it's explicitly permitted by the Nuclear non-proliferation Treaty. If you seriously think this whole thing is just about turning the lights on in Tehran you need to pay more attention to this issue.
Even the Western media doesn't refer to DNR/LNR as "terrorists", but as "separatists". They don't even simply call them Russian puppets either, they're always referred to as rebels or separatists of DNR or LNR, and only then possible ties to Russia mentioned. The one time I did see "terrorism" bandied about regarding either DNR or LNR, a Malaysian Airlines Boeing was burning on live TV...
Torture is not permitted under international law last time I checked, but US doesn't care and neither does EU.
And I love the argument that unless you can prove Israel is deliberately targeting Palestinians, they are innocent - that is extremely hard to prove, but very easy for Israel to tell that they "had intelligence". Obviously it is much easier to just blow up a building with a rocket if you've seen Hamas fighter entering it and noone seems to care if there are many civilians inside.
> Torture is not permitted under international law last time I checked, but US doesn't care and neither does EU.
That was the reason I said "(now, just)", is because it turns out the U.S. agrees with you that torture is not permitted, either at Guantanamo or anywhere else. That was also the reason I said the camp could just as well be in Kansas now, as torture is just as illegal in domestic U.S. prisons as it is in Guantanamo's prison camp.
> And I love the argument that unless you can prove Israel is deliberately targeting Palestinians, they are innocent
The argument applies both ways. If Hamas is shelling Israeli civilians then they are guilty of war crimes, full stop. Er, that is, unless they can make the claim that they were at least trying to aim for Israeli military targets and that their weapons just "missed" somehow.
> Obviously it is much easier to just blow up a building with a rocket if you've seen Hamas fighter entering it and noone seems to care if there are many civilians inside.
And if Israel has watched a Hamas fighter go into the building that's essentially affirmative evidence justifying the strike, as long as the proportionality requirement is still met.
Can you find buildings in Gaza holding concentrations of Hamas fighters and only Hamas fighters? If so let the IDF know, I'm sure they'd be quite happy to blow that one up instead of killing a bunch of Palestinian civilians.
But other than that it's easy to complain about the effects of a deliberate policy by Hamas to ensure civilians are co-located with all possible military targets. That's another war crime, by the way (violating the principle of distinction), but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for people to call for Hamas to be tried for war crimes against their own people.
Starting a debate by immediately framing anyone who disagrees with you as an apologist and their arguments as false equivalencies (you mean "equivalances" by the way) is neither helpful to good debate, nor going to persuade anyone.
You don't have to stretch out your reading very far to discover that lots of news sites, especially outside the USA, are flooded with comments from people who have been posting to them for years and yet are deeply skeptical about the current wave of anti-Russian stories being pumped by western media. This isn't being "pro Putin", it's about realising that our own governments are so deeply and nauseatingly hypocritical that anything they say can be safely assumed to be the opposite of the truth.
E.g. whilst the western media is busy trying to claim that only evil authoritarian Russians would be so draconian as to forbid anonymous blogging, the NSA is busy de-anonymizing any blogger or any other internet user they wish bypassing the systems of law and democracy entirely. Is that really a false equivalence, or is it just pointing out the painful and obvious truth?
Note that the democratic world's media are very heterogeneous. It isn't often they agree on much (see the Viernam war, Israel, Iraq war, etc in European media).
On this subject, most everyone do agree. Again note -- that is unusual. Maybe unique. And you claim that is a conspiracy, based on that there are lots of spin used on every subject by everyone with a finger in a pie?
That is exactly what Putin's media writes -- the whole [non dictatorial] world is in a conspiracy against Russia. Because they hate Russia!
(I can tell you how unanimous this is in Sweden: Most of the left wing extremists don't support Putin re Ukraine. These people in Sweden are USA haters which have never supported a democracy in a conflict with a democracy...)
Both Iraq and Israel are absolutely notorious for being subjects where all major western news outlets toe or toed the political line.
Whilst Israel is treated somewhat neutrally outside the USA, the puppy-like behaviour of American media is so extreme it is itself worthy of news articles:
The runup to the war in Iraq is widely considered to be one of the western media's biggest and most damaging failures, including by those outlets themselves:
With respect to your assertion that "most everyone do agree", did you read my comment? It's very much NOT the case that everyone agrees on this. Here's the Guardian's view:
Now go look at the comments section. Pick comments pointing out western hypocrisy and take a look at the posting history of those accounts. For instance, check out TheGreatRonRafferty. Posting on the site for years, thousands of comments. Many other views like his expressed there. If you think this is all the work of the FSB you're delusional, I don't know how else to say it.
There probably is an anti-Putin sentiment, but there are good reasons for that. In any case, the post you replied to wasn't even pro-Putin and hasn't been punished by any anti-Putin bias on HN.
Just because people don't like a particular person doesn't mean they are biased against them. Their dislike could be rooted strongly in the actions the person has committed.
By the way, its very difficult to prove bias against a single person as opposed to a group.
With a group, you can show bias easily by pointing out someones dislike for a member of the group who only shares superficial traits with the rest of the group (e.g. ethnicity/nationality/gender/etc.).
But for a person? Even if you're suspicious of every seemingly innocuous action of them, it can be justified by saying they have lost your trust due to actions in the past.
I personally enjoyed this comment and this type of humor in general. It was witty, critical and open about it's satirical nature, distinguishing it from a troll post (which would disguise itself as genuine extremist view). Unfortunately the community doesn't seem to enjoy it as much as I do. Quite the opposite actually.
The comment specifically touches the following issues.
* The community's overall pro-western tendency
* Pointing out that the parent comment has been one of the few moderate ones in a thread that has otherwise been rather 'emotionally charged'
As much as I enjoy the content and the discussions here, the lack of appreciation of satire has always puzzled me.
You are arguing -- hey all these cats are grey, so all are the same. All are grey, but there is a very large difference in how dark some are.
Let me discuss your examples:
Israel handled neutral in Europe?!
With all due respect, you have just a clue about English media? I can talk about Swedish media. There, Pallywood was never mentioned in the major news outlets. Torture between Palestinians was straight out censored, even when it was front page news on BBC/NY Times. Negative news for Israel was/are consistently front page.
(I can go check my bookmarks, there are lots of cases.)
There were lots of criticism in Swedish of the Iraq invasion. And especially after the occupation was so incredibly mismanaged.
Whichever, this was my point -- the Western media is heterogenous.
Was the Guardian article the most pro Putin on Ukraine you could find [in major English language media]? :-) It basically said: We can't get rid of Putin, let's try "Peace in our time" and be careful with sanctions, Russia is a smaller problem now than 1989.
That article specifically didn't discuss how nice Putin's regime is. What is the Guardian's position there? No link?
Do you think it is a western conspiracy that Russia is classified as authocratic these days by democracy indexes?
You don't see the irony of complaining about a "false equivalence" complaint in the same comment where you attempt to compare Russia, where bloggers will have to register with the state and are forbidden to use services outside the state's jurisdiction, with the US?
NSA's actions have been indefensible, but they aren't the same as Russia's. Your comparison is itself a textbook false equivalence.
No they are not the same as Russia's but are they any better?
Forced registration vs. forced de-anonymisation.
At least in Russia's case there is some input required from the blogger. With the NSA you just have to sit back and let them do all the hard work. Better customer service I guess.
Either way, arguing over whose government is less tyrannical is probably not the conversation we should be having. But the OP certainly had a point when he stated that preemptively calling out "apologists" is a bad debate technique.
EDIT: Also he wasn't complaining about false equivalences (the post he was replying to was doing that). He was complaining about certain genuine equivalences routinely being called out as false.
>You don't see the irony of complaining about a "false equivalence" complaint
Complaining about "false equivalence" complaints that have yet to have been made, rather. Just like the PHP people who preemptively defend PHP in threads before it has been criticized.
The PHP people have an excuse though: they're punch drunk from being constantly attacked. Attacking Russia is attacking from the herd, and very easy to do. The last thing anyone who cares about truth should be doing is discouraging dissent from the herd.
I have to say that the tradition of accusing people of setting up false equivalences by daring to even compare any aspect of America the Incomparable to places like Iran, Russia, or China is a reprehensible one, too. The confidence in the tautological superiority of every aspect of the US to every aspect of every other country is why clearly broken things about the US can remain broken for decades (like health care, etc.)
It also exposes a sensitivity (thus a recognition) of the critique. In all forms of analysis that I'm aware of, the way you examine things that are broken or eccentric is to compare them to things that work correctly or in a straightforward manner through noting the differences. If you do that between the American and Russian media, you will quickly realize that you're working with two horribly broken systems, and it's about as worthwhile as comparing a kick in the nuts to a punch in the face.
This isn't responsive to my comment. I don't know that I disagree with this point. I just thought it was ironic that the other comment made the same point while at the same time setting up an overt false equivalence.
Of course NSA's actions aren't "the same" as Russia's. The question you should ask is if the NSA was somehow transplanted in the place of the Russian intelligence services in the Russian political environment, would they do the same things? I think it's likely they would.
If that's true, and if there is anything more morally reprehensible about on the one hand requiring bloggers to register with the state, and secretly de-anonymizing them, as you claim, then I think it follows that you can't give the NSA credit for being less morally reprehensible just because they happen to be constrained in that way.
> the NSA is busy de-anonymizing any blogger or any other internet user they wish bypassing the systems of law and democracy entirely.
Western governments routinely de-anonymize citizens. E.g. when a serial killer finally gets tracked down despite taking pains to remain anonymous, we normally consider that upholding justice, not subverting law and democracy.
So while the NSA has certainly done some horrible things, merely trying to de-anonymize reasonably suspicious actors isn't necessarily one of them.
And even if we assume the NSA were unreasonably de-anonymizing people as a matter of course, their job would certainly be a hell of a lot easier there if the U.S. could force bloggers to register after 3,000 hits!
No, this is nothing at all but a paltry false equivalence. Let's say the big bad NSA was all you they are ....
You've already lost this false equivalence.
In that case, what would the NSA do to a blogger, the answer because the US has something called the Constitution, and though you may cynically, the US couldn't throw someone in jail for whatever the NSA dredges up or whatever while in Russia, the same is not the case. There are not any real credible cases of people being poisoned for thought crime.
I see far more comments complaining about "apologists" and "brainwashed" than comments I think are actually Putin apologists.
"The US does bad things as well" is not Putin apologia but a sincere plea for the US to recognise the idea of universally applicable international human rights law.
As I wrote on another comment of yours -- Russia and China pay people to write comments [astroturf/50 cent army]. It was obvious in Swedish.
Edit: The astroturf was obvious in the Swedish language. Very shortly: People with very bad Swedish started posting pro Putin comments, some obviously using G Translate. They were unable to discuss certain things -- like that international democracy indexes class Russia as autocratic. (They'd probably be fired.) There were systematic down votes (10-100 down votes in a minute probably going through a bot net, so web admins couldn't automatically detect it). This spamming with very, very unusual opinions were systematically half of all comments on those web sites I read. (After a few months the Swedish of the posts got better, some halfway to idiomatic.)
Edit 2: Sprint, maybe. But not in the same volume in Swedish and not with that amount of fake votes.
I interpret that as BugBrother being Swedish and reading lots of Swedish-language discussion sites. While Sweden isn't adjacent to Russia like Finland is, it's obviously a looming neighbour.
It's the Swedish equivalent of "I think Putin is good. His reforms are improve life in Russia. Americans suffer from frogs wanting to get horseshoues".
I live in Russia and in the past have been running a website that criticizes Russian elites and Putin in particular for years, the one that fails under this law, BTW.
But why do I get outraged by the unsourced comments as yours even more than by this stupid law?
I personally challenge you: I will provide you with information that I'm a real person and my claim about running website criticizing Russian elites is real if you take time to explain why is it OK for the West to support regime that kills Ukrainian civilians en masse.
You keep churning unsourced "Russian shills everywhere" message, while ignoring two simple possibilities:
1. While there are Russian Government shills on the Internet, as well as Western ones, real Russian people can also be genuinely outraged by actions of the West.
2. The West may be in reality backing puppet regime that commits horrific crimes.
P.S.
It is ironic that I'm probably the single person in this thread that is really affected by this law and at the same time I am being modded down.
> why is it OK for the West to support regime that kills Ukrainian civilians en masse.
Why do you try to imply that identifying pro-Putin shills is equivalent to supporting "a [Ukrainian] regime that kills Ukrainian civilians en masse"?
Assuming your supposition is true for now, why do you not go further and think to imply that these civilians would not be getting killed en masse if Putin would withdraw forces of the Russian Federation from the sovereign territory [1] of Ukraine?
History shows that the truest way to harm civilians in conflict between groups that are not trying to kill civilians (either directly through systemic action or indirectly through things like famine) is to prolong the armed conflict by interceding on behalf of one side or the other.
But even if you're completely right and not involuntarily affected by propaganda yourself, just because someone tries to keep a comment board free of "shills" of all types doesn't mean someone is necessarily aligned with any side, which is an issue you appear to be conflating here.
> Why do you not go further and think to imply that these civilians would not be getting killed en masse if Putin would withdraw forces of the Russian Federation from the sovereign territory of Ukraine?
Because there are no forces of Russian federation, probably apart from some Spec Ops, logistics and reconnaissance units.
> History shows that the truest way to harm civilians in conflict between groups that are not trying to kill civilians (either directly through systemic action or indirectly through things like famine) is to prolong the armed conflict by interceding on behalf of one side or the other.
So you say that Russia should abandon support of people of Donetsk and Luhansk and leave them at the mercy of Kiev government, who is committing crimes against them? [1]
I actually watch Ukrainian mainstream television and recently one of the experts was openly talking about the need to "physically eliminate about 1.5 million of civilians of Donetsk and Luhansk regions that are not able to fit in Ukrainian Nation" [2]. And he didn't get fined or jailed for these words, or even challenged by the TV host. If this is not Fascism, I don't know what is.
Why don't you ask questions such as: who started this mess? What has Russia done to stop it? What has the West done to stop it?
You REALLY think that dead civilians are on the heads of those countries defending themselves from military takeovers by non-democratic juntas, like Putin's.
Ah wait!
You also claim that this about large Russian military support of the rebels is just another Western conspiracy.
After the Krim takeover, Putin thanked the responsible Russian army units for good work and handed out medals. Before the Krim takeover, Putin claimed that there were no Russian military involvement. An obvious lie.
It is ridiculous to even consider that there are "just volunteers" again. The similarities makes it look like excerpts out of some internal Russian play book of how to do military takeovers.
Especially since there are contradicting satellite pictures, recorded conversations, etc. From USA and Ukraine.
Edit 2: There are similar articles about the BUK anti air system (with varying explanations out of Moscow and interviews (/social media) with rebels). There have also been articles about satellite pictures showing Russian artillery firing on Ukraine military units. Google yourself. Then you have recorded discussions of Russian and rebel discussions, etc, etc. Again, this is mainstream over the last few weeks -- let me know if you really need me to Google for you. Here is the BBC with voice recordings etc. Denied (with demands not to lay blame!!) from Putin. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28357880
Edit 5: Is this your position? You seem to not argue against that Putin lied about military involvement before the Krim takeover. You claim that there aren't enough proofs (and/or that all Western media lies) that his junta is doing exactly the same thing now, just because it looks so similar in action/time? (I am sorry if this makes you sound stupid/dishonest, but...)
>Dead civilians are on the heads of those countries defending themselves from military takeovers by non-democratic juntas, like Putin's
There is no evidence that supports your argument about Russian military takeover of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. You are talking about something so significant that must have left some verifiable trace, right?
> (Karma 34 account.)
You don't provide a single footnote, and I actually provide sources to my claims.
I give you simple questions and you prefer to ignore them.
Yes, I rarely participate in internet discussions. Is appealing to my low karma your last and most powerful argument?
> Especially with satellite pictures, recorded conversations, etc.
1. Money quote from NATO statement from Reuters article that you've provided: "but where they came from is in dispute."
> There are similar articles about the BUK anti air system
2. There is no solid evidence for the claim that BUK came from Russia also. But let's assume that it did, just for the sake of not forking the discussion.
3. What's wrong with "therealnews" interviews with acclaimed experts which credentials you are free to check?
>You seem to not argue against that Putin lied about military involvement before the Krim takeover.
4. Yes, what I argue is that the current insurgency is supported by population of Donetsk and Luhansk regions and I've provided sources for that statement. Which means that Kiev Government is at war with (part of) it's own population.
5. What I also state is that reunification with Russia has had overwhelming support from the people of Crimea.
>You claim that there aren't enough proofs (and/or that all Western media lies) that his junta is doing exactly the same thing now, just because it looks so similar in action/time?
What "same thing" are you talking about? (I am asking this just to be sure that we are talking about the same thing).
> (I am sorry if this makes you sound stupid/dishonest, but...)
I's OK. I appreciate that you are assuming good faith on my part.
Money quote from the BBC article: "the US says it has evidence that Russia has fired artillery across the border targeting Ukrainian military positions".
The US has also said that pre-invasion Iraq has had WMD. And that Assad has used nerve gas.
TL;DR: I read two points. One is contradicted by multiple sources at Wikipedia, the other argues that everything pipy dislikes from USA can be ignored. I quit the discussion in disgust over wasted time. :-(
>>Yes, what I argue is that the current insurgency is supported by population of Donetsk and Luhansk regions and I've provided sources for that statement
(I don't bother to look up your references, since it certainly won't be from mainstream media or similar.)
In a poll [..] in the first half of February 2014, 33.2% of polled in Donetsk Oblast believed "Ukraine and Russia must unite into a single state".[27]
According to a poll [...] 66% of Donetsk residents view their future in a united Ukraine
A second poll conducted 26–29 March showed that 77% of residents condemned the takeover of administrative buildings, while 16% support such actions. Furthermore, 40.8% of Donetsk citizens support rallies for Ukraine's unity, while 26.5% support rallies which are pro-Russia
And so on.
>> Money quote from the BBC article: "the US says it has evidence that Russia has fired artillery across the border targeting Ukrainian military positions". [Etc.]
The first thing I check is contradicted by Wikipedia (that and its sources is a conspiracy too?).
The second "argument" I read is "We can ignore that, USA just lies". (It is hardly just USA that claimed Assad used nerve gas. Any proofs against? Never mind, you read it in Putin's media so it must be true.)
I appreciate that you took time to write an answer.
> (I don't bother to look up your references, since it certainly won't be from mainstream media or similar.)
Then how can you possibly have an informed opinion if you limit your sources of information to Westernmainstream media?
> You are contradicted by Wikipedia.
No, I am not, because I have provided quote about May polls, not February or March ones. February ones were made before overthrow of Yanukovich (Donetsk and Luhansk regions were one of the big electoral bases for Yanukovich), and March before the fight for federalization of Ukrainian State by the people of Donetsk and Luhansk regions was completely ignored by Kiev Government.
And it is very important difference from the sociological point of view, because it was also after the Odessa Massacre and Ukrainian Forces attack on Mariupol. BTW, the author of the quote, sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko is an author of The Guardian newspaper [1]. Is he not mainstream enough for you?
Which means that you've cross-checked one source and now erroneously claim that it is not credible.
> I have spent too much time on this. :-(
I can understand you. What is my point of view is that one should trust no single party or source of information to be credible and do research for oneself. And this is the only way to be free, as in Freedom.
> Any proofs against?
Food for thought:
"Possible Implications of Faulty US Technical Intelligence in the Damascus
Nerve Agent Attack of August 21, 2013" by Richard Lloyd, Former UN Weapons Inspector [2]
"Congress Members Who Have Seen Classified Evidence About Syria Say It Fails to Prove Anything" (has number of first-party sources). [3]
"UN Investigator Undercuts NYT on Syria" by Robert Parry, former Newsweek and AP reporter [4]:
The lead author of the UN report on the Aug. 21 incident has contradicted the much-touted “vectoring” claims of a New York Times front-page story and Human Rights Watch, which has been pushing for a U.S. military intervention in Syria.
The UN inspectors have voiced uncertainty about who carried out the attack. At the press conference, Sellstrom admitted, “I don’t have information that would stand in court.” He also told Wall Street Journal writer Joe Lauria that both sides in the conflict had the “opportunity” and the “capability” to carry out chemical weapons attacks.
This was not a waste of time after all, since I have seldom seen so hand picked sources.
You refuse to accept anything official from USA, and then quote conspiracy theories from a blogger!! :-)
About your claims about the Syrian chemical weapons attack:
The overheard communications (by Israelis and Americans) are lies, of course. And it is just more lies that the Syrian government shelled the attacked areas after the chemical attack to destroy the evidence!
Shameless liars about your Glorious Leader, those Westerners. :-) Uh, no... they hate Assad too! :-)
To be realistic, if there are state budget's involved, you can get any number of statements from individuals. Robert Parry might want to retire, who knows?
Here is a good source, with high credibility, about the second use of chemical weapons -- HRW (I assume the rebels had helicopters they used only for that bombing, then hid? :-) ):
group of pro-Russian separatists in possession of a 100,000 ballots already marked with a 'yes' vote for the referendum were captured
A campaign of intimidation, beatings, and hostage taking has forced many pro-Ukrainian activists and known opponents of secession to Russia to flee the region, leaving the referendum to take place without any dissent or opposing voices
And so on... More obvious lies!! :-)
So you claim a referendum whose result can't be verified [and after hunting of the opposition members!] is trustworthy and showed that all the opinions had totally changed in one month and resulted in a popular uprising... (No Russian military this time. Honest!)
Thanks for a good laugh. (My poor stomach. :-( )
Let me guess -- Wikipedia and its sources are just lies, you KNOW that the May vote was dependable because there is some blogger that support this, here too? You saw that on Putin's own media?
1. Chief UN investigator states that he doesn't have information that would stand in court, on record.
2. Many US Congressmen that were given access to US secret proof have stated that it is dubious, on record.
Are these sources wrong or hand-picked? Which ones did I hand-pick, US Congressmen, or UN investigators, or, perhaps, both?
It was not enough evidence to stand in court, but apparently, there was enough evidence for the West to bomb Syria and cause immanent civilian deaths.
Wittingly or not, you are trying to change subject, twist the narrative and so on. It occurs to me that you Sir are not trying to be objective at all. Looks like here I'm the fool who's banging his head against the wall.
>>It occurs to me that you Sir are not trying to be objective at all.
1. You use bloggers as references while shrugging at serious references.
2. A single minute's check on wikipedia showed that your claims about the May vote is garbage.
Why should anyone takes you seriously after that?!
(I am a bit disappointed that you ignored this subject and didn't explain the conspiracies and lies about your Glorious Leader?)
-----
About Syrian chemical weapons:
Of course there weren't much physical proofs remaining, the Assad government shelled the target area a lot, to remove them...
The rebel side didn't have the type of artillery used, no one overheard any communications from them about this -- and the rebels didn't use that artillery on their enemy afterwards.
But if the rebels seems so unlikely, maybe it wasn't the Assads either but a third party. Elves? :-)
[I am repeating myself and my references here.]
(And bombing the Assads: Because of internal politics, Obama has left hundreds of thousands of Syrians to be killed by Russian weapons. It is an outrage.)
> 1. You use bloggers as references while shrugging at serious references.
These have back-references to official sources that you try to ignore.
> 2. A single minute's check on Wikipedia showed that your claims about the May vote is garbage.
No, it didn't, and I have already explained why in previous posts. The words about May polls come from respected sociologist and author of The Guardian.
The same goes to your reference to Wikipedia page about Crimean referendum, in particular, the data about previous polling [1]. Previous polls were taken before the overthrowing of Yanukovich and before new Kiev Government has issued statement about revocation of Russian language law.
About Syria:
Here are the words of lead investigator, Ake Sellstrom from official UN press-conference, pinpointed to minutes and seconds: [2]
Congressman Alan Grayson on NYT: [3]
As about your links to HRW, first one [4] is about different attack, that was not used as a pretext to possible Western bombardments, so I would rather not discuss it to prevent "topic creep". The second one [5] is contradicted by the conclusions of UN investigators, because they report that rocket bust have had much smaller range: 2 km [6] instead of "3.8 to 9.8" reported by HRW article [5], which makes HRW narrative fall apart.
So, this means, that in Syria, just like with Iraq in 2003, the West has used at best dubious evidence as a political pretext for possible war. This, and previous history with accidents like the one in The Gulf of Tonkin [7], we have every right to be skeptical about western claims that are not supported by strong evidence.
>>No, it didn't, and I have already explained why in previous posts. The words about May polls come from respected sociologist and author of The Guardian.
So prove your conspiracy theory that shows Wikipedia, BBC et al wrong and the votes really were 96+%(!).
Post exact links and quotes that show the May poll was correct.
Sorry, it already took me too much time to watch UN press-conference in it's entirety to provide proper timed youtube links (which you've ignored) and pin-point other faults in your arguments that you also seem to ignore.
It is easy to promise that for people which don't "argue" by dismissing Wikipedia, BBC etc -- because they have posted a youtube link somewhere where they interpret what someone said as different.
That is arguably ruder.
[Edit: pipy changed opinion because of arguments in another place when he wrote crazy stuff. He is not a troll, just upset. I stand corrected.]
> Because there are no forces of Russian federation, probably apart from some Spec Ops, logistics and reconnaissance units.
Or in other words, Russian military forces have invaded a neighboring nation, unless there is permission from Kiev for such uniformed armed forces to be on the sovereign territory of Ukraine?....
As far as I can tell, your link [1] implies that the only reason Kiev is using air strikes or artillery is because of the presence of hostile military forces in their sovereign territory.
So, yes, I would suggest Russia should "abandon" the people of Donetsk and Luhansk (and for that matter, Crimea), return to its own sovereign territory, and then the fighting will stop as there will quickly be no hostile forces to launch artillery or air strikes against.
You implied with that link [1] that Russia intervened only after Kiev started committing atrocities against people in Donetsk and Luhansk, but the order appears to be completely opposite.
> I actually watch Ukrainian mainstream television and recently one of the experts was openly talking about the need to "physically eliminate about 1.5 million of civilians of Donetsk and Luhansk regions that are not able to fit in Ukrainian Nation" [2].
> And he didn't get fined or jailed for this words, or even challenged by the TV host.
He wouldn't be fined or jailed in the U.S. either, due to the First Amendment (although maybe you could make a good case that it's "hate speech"). Does that make the U.S. "fascist"?
Maybe the TV host didn't challenge him because his comments are already so backward and idiotic as to not need further emphasis.
And either way, are you trying to imply that some random asshole on T.V. spouting their stupid backward opinion about a million people he's never met, is justification enough to invade the sovereign territory of another nation. I mean, even Bush 43 tried to put a better case together than that when he went off to disaster in Iraq...
> As far as I can tell, your link [1] implies that the only reason Kiev is using air strikes or artillery is because of the presence of hostile military forces in their sovereign territory.
No, it doesn't. Because there is no evidence of massive Russian troop presence, not to my knowledge. This is why you cannot attribute the sheer scale of Ukrainian Government actions to this issue.
I will quote the article for your convenience:
Poroshenko’s “peace plan” and June 21 cease-fire may have seemed such an opportunity, except for their two core conditions: fighters in the southeast first had to “lay down their arms,” and he alone would decide with whom to negotiate peace. The terms seemed more akin to conditions of surrender, and were probably the real reason Poroshenko unilaterally ended the cease-fire on July 1 and intensified Kiev’s assault on eastern cities, initially on the smaller towns of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, which their defenders abandoned—to prevent more civilian casualities, they said—on July 5–6. [1]
The fact that there is a genuine insurgency by the Eastern Ukrainians that is not attributable to Russian influence has been supported by multiple experts from different countries. [2]
Even the sociologist that gets his money from US State Department says that:
"And the polls which were done in the first half of [May--and?] it means after massacre in Odessa and after very brutal attack on Mariupol by Ukrainian forces, they were showing that at least even in Donbass there are various--some sort of support for the claims of separatists, and the people in Donbas saw their seizure of governmental buildings as people's [incompr.] not as a terrorist act, not as a Russian intervention. But this were the public opinion in Donbass." [3]
>He wouldn't be fined or jailed in the U.S. either, due to the First Amendment (although maybe you could make a good case that it's "hate speech"). Does that make the U.S. "fascist"?
OK, for me it was too emotional to claim this and to talk about this TV show.
I don't doubt that there are people in Ukraine actually supportive of, and legitimately participating in, that separatist movement.
But that is not, by itself, justification for Russia to intervene, especially unilaterally. It's not, never will be.
Think of the logic: If there were a group of 5,000 Americans living in Russia (who had been forced to move there 50 years earlier during a period of American rule in Russia), and they rebelled against Moscow (after lengthy exhortations and propaganda from D.C.), would you really be OK with America sending military forces to intervene on behalf of those separatists? Would you be OK with America providing very advanced weaponry, passports, military support, intelligence support, international top cover and more, all to support this separatist movement?
Or would you say that it was an internal matter for Russians to resolve amongst themselves, and that other states should stay out of the sovereign territory of the Russian Federation? I can tell you the U.S. certainly didn't want outside intervention during our own civil war.
See, this isn't two states playing covert war games in a third state, this is Ukraine fighting for its sovereignty against a separatist movement (however many legitimate aspects it might contain), with Ukraine's bordering neighbor deliberately intervening to tilt the scales as they wish.
> I can tell you the U.S. certainly didn't want outside intervention during our own civil war.
So, you say that US has the right to support one side, including an anti-constitutional coup against democratically elected president, and Russia has no right to support the other side? I beg to disagree.
In fact, Kiev has been Washington’s military proxy against Russia and its “compatriots” in eastern Ukraine for months. Since the political crisis began, Secretary of State John Kerry, CIA Director John Brennan and Vice President Joseph Biden (twice) have been in Kiev, followed by “senior US defense officials,” American military equipment and financial aid. Still more, a top US Defense Department official informed a Senate committee that the department’s “advisers” are now “embedded” in the Ukrainian defense ministry. [1]
> This isn't two states playing covert war games in a third state, this is Ukraine fighting for its sovereignty against a separatist movement.
This is one way to see it. Hopefully, I gave you enough information to explain how it is possible to view the issue from completely different point of view.
> So, you say that US has the right to support one side, including an anti-constitutional coup against democratically elected president, and Russia has no right to support the other side?
All outside parties have the right to be supportive of whichever side they wish.
The ways in which that support is expressed are not all allowable under international law, however. For instance, Obama supports the "moderate Syrian opposition", yet the U.S. has not invaded parts of Syria and annexed it, and then sent further military forces into the remainder of Syria to fight against Assad.
> Hopefully, I gave you enough information to explain how it is possible to view the issue from completely different point of view.
You didn't need to remind me that there are alternate POVs. I'm sure that Russia has interests in Ukraine that are much different that the E.U., or the U.S., or NATO, or even Ukraine itself.
But having interests is no right to do whatever you wish. I've already expressed Obama's interest in the situation in Syria, yet you don't see him breaking down in a teary-eyed fit in international media about how Assad simply won't listen to him.
Obama is doing what he thinks he can and the situation will either resolve itself in the U.S.'s favor or it won't. But even if it doesn't go the U.S.'s way, he still won't invade. We used to be able to say the same of Putin, until Crimea (something he did finally admit to lying about, after the fact).
"Covert" action is one thing. Sending weapons and money is one thing. These are all things that are generally understood to be allowable ways for outside parties to aid (or not) belligerents. But even the things that are allowed come at the price of responsibility, which is why Obama won't give all the Super Ray Guns to Syrian moderates.
Some things, however, are never allowed, such as sending military forces to invade and annex the sovereign territory of another nation. Russia supported the rest of the world in stopping the last time a tinpot dictator tried that exercise, in Kuwait. But now Russia is the aggressor itself...
Another way to view it, is that the West is waging a proxy war against Russia.
One might say that confrontation started with the West instigating a coup against democratically elected president of Ukraine and installing a pro-Western, pro-NATO regime. Another might say that it started when the West has methodically sabotaged all Russian actions to find peaceful solutions to the crisis in Eastern Ukraine and instead pushed for military options [1]. But these are technicalities.
There are two steps left before the possible direct military confrontation between the West and Russia. One step is the West officially sending troops to Ukraine, and another is Russia officially sending troops to Ukraine. Most probably, neither of them would be taken, but the situation is already dangerous enough.
Many say, that after we have left our military bases in Eastern Germany in exchange of the failed promise of NATO non-expansion, after many other actions of good will by USSR and then Russia, the West has been methodically showing us that it doesn't accept Russia as a peaceful partner.
By sanctioning Russia, by turning the blind eye on atrocities carried out by Kiev government, the West is waging the war against Russians, not only against Putin.
I do not know, how this crisis would end, but it is for sure going to set back our relations with the West for decades to come. And this is not all Putin's fault.
> Some things, however, are never allowed, such as sending military forces to invade and annex the sovereign territory of another nation.
Before the Russian actions in Crimea, there was a popular uprising against coup government.
The main powerhouse of the uprising was the city of Sevastopol, which was home for Russian military bases for hundreds of years. The residents of the city have in 20+ years never been allowed to have democratic elections of the mayor, because all Ukrainian governments felt that they would elect pro-Russian mayor. Instead, for 20+ years, they got mayors appointed from Kiev, some anti-Russian.
Crimea has de facto not been under the coup government control even before the Russian actions and was lost by Ukraine before it was gained by Russia, just after the coup government has started to pass one of it's first laws, the one that revoked the rights of the Russian-speaking regions to use Russian as second official language.
Personally, I don't like how Russia used it's military in Crimea and think that people of Crimea should have been allowed to fight for the independence themselves, possibly with some help. This was important technical issue and Russia has most probably got it wrong.
The situation is complicated by the fact that in reality there are different parts of Ukraine with completely different mindsets, preferences and interests.
But it is the Western Ukraine that has invaded Eastern Ukraine (with the help of US), not the other way around. This is the core point. This is why the people of Eastern Ukraine have the moral high ground in their fight. This is why Russia is not an aggressor.
P.S.
The coup government has also been waging war against the population of Crimea [2], "it's own population". And it also doesn't allow for every citizen from Crimea to freely enter Ukraine, some of them are sent back home [3] [4].
[1] Great article by Stephen Cohen (professor emeritus at New York University and Princeton University), which more or less summarizes not only my personal POW, but POW of many Russians and Ukrainians as well:
http://www.thenation.com/article/180466/silence-american-haw...
> West instigating a coup against democratically elected president of Ukraine and installing a pro-Western, pro-NATO regime
You're ly... wrong. There was no 'west instigation' and government was elected by Ukrainian people, not by 'West'.
>West has methodically sabotaged all Russian actions to find peaceful solutions to the crisis in Eastern Ukraine
Tell me about these actions? Sending mercenaries and military equipment to Ukraine? Shelling Ukrainian forces across the border? Spreading lies about Ukraine on state TV?
What other 'peaceful solutions' did I forgot? Oh, violating WTO principles by initiating a little trade war with Ukraine? More peaceful, than sending tanks to Ukraine, I must agree with that.
> after we have left our military bases in Eastern Germany in exchange of the failed promise of NATO non-expansion
You're wrong. There was no such promise, and there was no 'exchange'.
> The main powerhouse of the uprising was the city of Sevastopol, which was home for Russian military bases for hundreds of years.
Do you understand how silly it sounds? Cuba was Spanish military base for hundred of years, do you think they mad enough to take it back on a such false premise?
>The residents of the city have in 20+ years never been allowed to have democratic elections of the mayor, because all Ukrainian governments felt that they would elect pro-Russian mayor. Instead, for 20+ years, they got mayors appointed from Kiev, some anti-Russian.
So, in your beloved Russia, governors was not elected for 10 years, so you will blame Putin?
> Crimea has de facto not been under the coup government control even before the Russian actions and was lost by Ukraine before it was gained by Russia.
You're wrong again. Using Latin will not bring more credibility to this statement.
> But it is the Western Ukraine that has invaded Eastern Ukraine (with the help of US), not the other way around.
This is so good fantasy, you can try to sell it as a movie script.
I'm not even sure that I need to debunk this particular myth.
> This is the core point. This is why the people of Eastern Ukraine have the moral high ground in their fight. This is why Russia is not an aggressor.
So you're trying to tell us, that if false statements are propagated in the russian media, then you could hide the facts of Russian mercenaries fighting against Ukrainian forces, Russian tanks and APCs flow across border and FSB/KGB crooks in Ukraine in charge of terrorists?
Do you honestly believe this could be hidden just because it was not shown on kremlin TV?
> The coup government has also been waging war against the population of Crimea [2], "it's own population".
Really? This is considered a 'war' right now?
Ok, in this case Russia is waging war against Ukraine right now, by cutting it's gas supply.
> And it also doesn't allow for every citizen from Crimea to freely enter Ukraine, some of them are sent back home
Yes. It's called 'customs', are you aware what this means?
> real reason Poroshenko unilaterally ended the cease-fire on July 1
Real reason was that pro-russian bandits continue to fire on Ukrainian forces despite all the arrangements.
And as for "would decide with whom to negotiate peace" this is absolutely acceptable, because there are a lot of bandit leaders in play and it's hard to understand who's responsible for peace negotiating.
Maybe the TV host didn't challenge him because his comments are already so backward and idiotic as to not need further emphasis.
I'll give you a better explanation: the TV host didn't challenge him because it never happened. The "expert" (another journalist, in fact) never suggested to "physically eliminate about 1.5 million of civilians of Donetsk and Luhansk regions that are not able to fit in Ukrainian Nation" or anything close to it.
The expert is a journalist, from a newspaper «Тиждень». [1]
Here are the qoutes:
Донбасс – это не просто депрессивный регион. Там дикое количество ненужных людей. Я абсолютно осознанно об этом говорю. В Донецкой области примерно 4 миллиона жителей. И не менее 1,5 миллионов лишних. Нам не надо понимать Донбасс. Нам надо понимать украинский национальный интерес. А Донбасс нужно использовать как ресурс.
[...]
В отношении Донбасса: я не знаю рецепта, как это сделать быстро. Однако наиглавнейшее, что нужно сделать: есть люди, которых необходимо просто убить.
Which means that there is an "excess of 1.5 millions of people" in Donetsk Region, that "[people of] Donetsk Region mustn't be undestood [by the people from the rest of Ukraine], and Donetsk Region [and it's people] must be used as a resource instead" and "I don't know how to solve that problem [to remove excessive civilians], but the main thing is that some people must be physically eliminated".
So:
1. There are 1.5 millions of civilians of Donetsk region that are excessive.
2. People of Donetsk region mustn't be understood by the rest of Ukraine. Which literally means that they do not fit in Ukrainian Nation, they are not part of it.
3. He doesn't know the recipe how to remove the excessive civilians, but some people must be physically eliminated.
In the context of the whole TV show he is talking about elimination of excessive civilians. One could argue if he considers possible to physically eliminate 1.5 million of them, or only part of them and drive others by away by force or by economical means, etc.
> The "expert" (another journalist, in fact) never suggested to "physically eliminate about 1.5 million of civilians of Donetsk and Luhansk regions that are not able to fit in Ukrainian Nation" or anything close to it.
So, even though I have already claimed that it was too emotional for me to mention this TV show, I consider myself to have provided reasonable translation of his words.
P.S.
I've actually used pyyaml parser. :)
Edit: here is the relevant part of the show for you to check: [2]
Which means that there is an "excess of 1.5 millions of people" in Donetsk Region, that "[people of] Donetsk Region mustn't be undestood [by the people from the rest of Ukraine], and Donetsk Region [and it's people] must be used as a resource instead" and "I don't know how to solve that problem [to remove excessive civilians], but the main thing is that some people must be physically eliminated".
Wow, this is truly creative editing. None of your insertions are implied from the context and the quotes you picked up are several minutes apart. In particular, he talks about 1.5 millions of people lacking meaningful job prospects as one of the causes of the unrest (which is true). A few minutes later, when he talks about about killing people, nowhere he implies millions of civilians, in fact, it's obvious he means armed militants.
Good to see that you can take facts pipy -- and thanks xi for doing better than I did in discussing.
I -- and probably most people -- have been in the situation where we lost contact with reality, because we have read too much spin, even if the subjects are serious problems.
It is not easy. Good luck pipy. (And good luck to Russia and Ukraine -- they both deserve a break after the last century.)
How wonderful of you to provide link [2] to a real interview, but trying to support kremlin fakes with that link.
TL;DR - he didn't said "physically eliminate about 1.5 million of civilians of Donetsk and Luhansk regions that are not able to fit in Ukrainian Nation"
>Why do you try to imply that identifying pro-Putin shills
Identifying pro-Putin shills is not what's being done here. This is just accusing people that don't agree with everything said about Russia and the depiction in the US media of the current conflict in Ukraine of being Russian shills.
I remember when people who questioned the Iraq war had to constantly defend themselves from accusations of being terrorist shills. This has the exact same chilling effect.
edit: I am honestly interested in evidence of shill posting. I enjoy the detective work. If your evidence of shilling is that you think that the opinions people hold could only be held by shills, you're just stifling dissent in the traditional way that it has always been done. It's no more noble or complex than that.
1. You can provide me with your disposable one-time Gmail address (needed for GA).
2. I will send you my real name, give you temporary access to Google Analytics account for the website and some selected Google-translated pages from it. Possibly provide more information if needed.
3. You can support that I am not a shill in this discussion and that my claim about the law in OP affecting me is true.
I don't think in any way that you are a shill. And if you were, it wouldn't affect the validity of your arguments in any way. Shills only rise to the level of concern to me if they drown out all discussion that disagrees with them - and people who do that don't even have to be paid for me to consider them shills.
i.e I already support that you aren't a shill, and people who are interested in journalism or the protection of freedom of expression would do well by listening to your own experience in your own country under your own country's laws rather than poisoning the well with accusations (and no evidence.)
At the time I posted every top-level commend was trying to defend this ridiculous law by bringing up examples of other countries' laws that didn't even pass.
It means bloggers with more than 3,000 daily readers must register with the mass media regulator, Roskomnadzor, and conform to the regulations that govern the country's larger media outlets.
We have a simillar law in Poland, good old communist legacy. Formally, you need to register every media outlet with the court. Whether this applies to blogs is unclear, and it's generally not enforced.
But it could be. Which is a situation bureaucrats love.
I'm guessing that this is how it will work in Russia. No one will get in trouble for praising Putin on their unregistered website.
Yes, the old system loved registration of everything. In theory you're still supposed to also notify of the new place you live at if you spend there over 3 days. In practice nobody cares.
It's pretty much how business law already works over there. The tax system is set up in such way that it's impossible for a business to pay all taxes and still turn in a profit.
So all businesses cheat on their taxes. Majority of business deals are made with a huge cash component - if a contract is for 100K, it's written for 30K and 70K is paid in cash under the table. Until they run afoul of the government, it's considered to be ok and nobody gets in trouble.
However, the minute government wants to acquire or close that business, they accuse the business of tax fraud, hit them with huge fines, close them down, throw the founders in jail, etc.
They don't report your temporary living location to the government though. At least not in majority of Europe as far as I know. It's definitely not the case in the UK for example.
It is the UK that is the expection, most of the EU has mandatory registration at Melderegister or the local equivalent. In D/A/CH, it goes back for centuries.
I don't know if i'm getting downvoted because I haven't posted the source for the info or something else, but here is the link to an interview:
http://lenta.ru/articles/2014/07/22/rkn/
You'll have to google translate it, which is the reason I haven't included it to begin with.
There is a worldwide crisis of truth and journalism as a whole has been usurped by those that wish to control the message. You see it in every format and in every country. You see countries acting desperately in the face of a changing world. People are getting more information from around the globe thanks to the Internet. And it scares the living crap out of them. Because the truth scares them.
Be prepared for more astro-turfing, more main stream media bias, more placed articles, more leaked information, and more chaos in the message.
167 comments
[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 104 ms ] threadhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130807/13153224102/sen-f...
I don't think this will ever change until the citizens rize and overthrow the government.
If not by Channel 1 - then by the paid bloggers that dominate Livejournal top pos list these days.
Edit: no, really, it is possible for someone to reach different conclusions from you without being "brainwashed", paid, deluded, or a sockpuppet. People think differently about the world and are operating from different sets of knowledge and beliefs. And different levels of cynicism about international power politics.
(And if you think it is bad in English, be happy that you don't have to swim through the mangled comments in Swedish. But in the last 2-3 months they have gotten a bunch of people with better Swedish.)
Edit: Answer to the Edit. Of course I know that. I ALSO know that few well read people sincerely believe in that the whole world's [democratic] media are in a conspiracy against just Russia and the only truth is in Putin's controlled media. But yes, people do believe in conspiracy theories.
Strictly speaking _everyone_ is influenced by what they read and by people they talk to in one way or another.
When I put Syria and Ukraine in the same line i mean:
1. I think that what is happening in eastern Ukraine right now is logical consequence of Kiev events. Having a few friends living in Kiev, some of them where on Maidan supporting the revolution and a few friends living in Donbass who supports pro-Russian forces I receive alot of controversial information from both sides. For me it is obvious: it is a civil war right now. Same in Syria.
2. Both countries are playground for major political forces.
3. Both countries are in a really bad state right now.
Same with annexation of Crimea - Russia just used the opportunity to execute the plan. Even the execution started before Yanukovich left the country (such as movement of troops, etc).
2. It's not a civil war and the forces in Eastern ukraine are not 'pro-Russian'.
They are Russian forces (do lookup its leaders - Girkin, Bezler, Antyufeyev, etc). They are all Russian and are members of various branches of Russian government - FSB, GRU, etc.
Your points 2 & 3 i won't even address as they are 'not even wrong'. Any conflict can be described as 'playground for political forces' and 'bad state'. That's why it's a conflict.
Theres alot of russians fighting in ranks of DNR/LNR forces, true. But theres alot of Ukrainians too. You may call this conflict anything you want, but if one group of citizens fight with the other it is civil war. This conflict is supported by russian government only blind will say that LNR/DNR are on their own. The main thing is: LNR/DNR are possible only because they are supported by locals and because of actions of Kiev right after Maidan. Statements that where made by Kiev politics, law acts they enforced, there where alot of mistakes made by Kiev government that led to current situation.
Some information to consider: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislation_on_languages_in_Ukr...
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:2001_U... (red color is for people who pose themselves as ethnically russians)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Ukrainian_revolution#Prote... (just to understand what actions of new government caused so much protest)
Theres alot of information in russian internet but you probably dismiss it as being propaganda and me being brain-washed again.
As far as information in the Russian internet, I will provide one story for the Western readers so they have an idea of what kind of shit cesspool russian media have become: http://www.stopfake.org/en/the-crucifixion-of-a-3-year-old-t...
I'll use public definitions: "Civil war is a violent conflict within a country fought by organized groups that aim to take power at the center or in a region, or to change government policies". Ring anything?
Instead - can you name 5 people who are at the top of the LNR / DNR with their respective citizenships.
I'll give you a little help:
1. Girkin 2. Bezler 3. Borodai 4. Bolotov
Theres well documented cases when ukrainian representatives of law enforcment forces taking a LNR/DNR side. Not only ex-Berkut.
No personal attacks on Hacker News, please.
You on the other hand seem to be blindly throwing around assumptions (you can't logically deduce "supports X" from "doesn't make a point of denouncing X") instead of taking the more mature opportunity of delving into the points mentioned.
From 1984 "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever."
How can things change, then? An invasion is not better than a revolution. Economic pressures work for most countries today (not e.g. North Korea) but not for oil countries -- note that most problem states do live on resource exports (see resource curse).
How do you think about this:
You should not help dictators based on natural resources economically. Countries built on industry will have to democratize when they reach a certain economic level. Countries who get their money from natural resources will just generate more money in Swiss banks if the prices increase.
Edit: pcj50, I doubt even the Saudi A king describes his country as democratic. The West is enough dependent on them that they get a free card. Realpolitik in a democracy means being nice when it isn't too expensive (or the voters back home cares). Dictators are even worse. In sum, there are only varying levels of grey, no black/white. But, well, you knew all this.
The only way to push democracy to such a big and advanced country is to increase cultural exchange, encouraging tourism and supporting Russian education system.
The only two ways I can see his regime could be defeated are:
* Turmoil within his ranks leading destabilizing his power structure
* Significant economic downturn (e.g. oil price falls or oil trading is hindered by sanctions)
One could argue that the growing discontent with Putin among the younger generation could lead to his demise, but I don't think it would work. They can protest all they want but as long as 90% of the population are successfully hypno-toaded, Putin can deal with the protesters in any way he wants.
The ease with which some throw around rizing citizens and overthrown governments is mind boggling.
While I'd agree that revolutions are often a bloody mess there are a number of examples in recent history where that is not the case. (e.g. The Velvet Revolution[1])
France, UK & the USA all also had bloody revolutions that resulted in democracy (or at least the widely understood view of what democracy is).
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvet_Revolution
[citation needed] - or at least an explanation of what you mean by "liberal" here.
The UK's civil war established a theocratic military dictatorship. The 'glorious revolution' installed not a republic but a constitutional monarchy with a Protestant king subject to the rule of Parliament. Electoral democracy followed later, piecemeal.
France and the US have more parallels: first revolution in late 1700s, delivering either incomplete or non-lasting freedom; eventually another revolution in the late 1800s, establishing more freedom; final formal abandonment of colonialism/slavery round about 1968. Hmm, that rather implies that the timetable for the next one is somewhere around 2070.
http://www.revolutionspodcast.com/
The fact that the US nearly did something (and might manage to by the back door at some point soon) does not affect whether that something is considered draconian. It just means that the US nearly wrote into law something that many consider draconian.
This, as I understand it, is now law.
Edit: Here is a business idea to get round the voting problem by paying money from China, Russia, Microsoft (they stopped after the court cases?) and other astroturfers. A browser plugin you install where you configure the bank account and web sites you have accounts on. The plugin votes for you and a bit of money is put into your bank account. You could instead work on detectors and honey pot comments (to detect these users), before HN et al are destroyed.
Edit 2: It should be possible to hide the voting plugins better by voting up comments on sham accounts, which then are used for down voting. I see a whole new application for data mining to detect this. :-(
Usually these guys (Putin's apologist not major players) don't know much details about the subject (as well as most other people/all of us) but they use these arguments to justify crimes of Putin's regime.
It is like to justify killing of innocent people in the USSR because Nazi Germany did this too.
Disclaimer: i don't compare the US or other countries with Nazi Germany but used this example as a hyperbole to show the issue.
Not "Your country also did something almost similar in other circumstances".
But "A third party did something almost similar in other circumstances".
As I've written multiple times in Swedish -- you must update your argument templates for the local environment!
These things should all be dealt with equally, no matter who the perpetrators are and who the victims.
These things should be dealt by LAW and JUSTICE and you should not link one to another because if you do then you end up justifying the USSR crimes because Nazi Germany did this!
UPD: A crime should be a crime in all countries. The problem is that some countries use other's crimes as an argument. I said "things should NOT all be dealt with equally" because the judgement should base not on what others think about this but what the moral and the law says.
This, of course, isn't how the world works. But if you believe it should be, it's hard to accept the Russians are the only ones who have crimes to answer for - they just seem to be the only ones being brought to account.
>The point is, that if something is illegal for one party, it's illegal for all. - in some countries the law doesn't work and this country's elite don't act basing on the law and justice but use manipulation (like my example with USSR and Nazi Germany) to justify it's actions which results in more bad things.
Example USSR-Germany is a parallel to what some Russians are stating: like the current law on blogging is okay because the US initiated similar law too. Bloggers, free media and readers are in fact victims of this manipulation because the US has nothing to do with Russia's internal policy. And still some Russians use this argument as a justification of this law.
Please read my previous comment thoroughly.
Now I do believe that Russia probably supplied a missile system to Ukrainian separatists who then shot down an airliner, however I do not believe that they wanted to shoot down that airliner. It seems much more likely that they were paranoid idiots.
If you look at all the different political responses to airliners being downed by military recklessness, the one thing that seems consistent is the complete lack of consistency.
It was shot down during joint Russian-Ukrainian trainings, missile was sent from Russian base... but somehow Ukraine got all the blame?
But unlike MH17, the US took the downing of the Iranian airliner right on the chin and didn't try to deflect. They went to court (ICJ), paid the victims, and punished those responsible. It's too bad we don't see that with MH17. I wonder if we will ever see those responsible punished.
No formal apology was ever even issued, no liability was accepted, those responsible were decorated, not punished. The US paid the value of the Jet they shot down and some money per victim but never admitted any guilt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
My main point still stands though. The US acknowledged the mistake and took measures to make sure it didn't happen again. Will we ever see the same from MH17?
That's because no one person was directly responsible. Even for assholes like CAPT Rogers (who certainly did everything he could to get his ship into a bad situation [1]), no Navy commanding officer wakes up in the morning hoping to get to push the button on a civilian airliner. There was much more that went into Iran Air 655 than a rogue captain [2].
And while there's plenty of room for blame to go around (we could ask the same question of military officers in 1988 as we do of Russia today: Why did you have this advanced weapons system in the hands of people so seemingly untrained and aggressive?), simply lopping off heads because something horrible happened is no more just than mob rule. There's a reason we don't simply fire everyone involved with civil aviation crashes, for example.
The "decorations" you refer to were given as a standard element of completing a tour at a duty station. They are given to everybody who completes a tour at a duty station, with the type of decoration being dependent upon rank.
You're right that the actions of the U.S. remain unacceptable, but I think we would all be happier if we could get either the separatists and/or Russia's GRU to pay the families of the victims and pay Malaysian Airlines to replace the Boeing.
I mean, even the U.S. could be bothered to do that for a nation they had been literally fighting in the waters of the Persian Gulf! Last I checked Russia wasn't in armed conflict with the Netherlands or Malaysia.
[1] http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1993-08/vincennes-... (Don't be fooled by USNI here, this piece is damning of CAPT Rogers) [2] http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/aeronautics-and-astronautics/16-4...
Russia did not shoot down that jet, that's definitely not confirmed by anybody or even seriously suggested, it was most likely downed from Eastern Ukraine by separatists or by Russian troops operating under the 'republic of Donetsk' flag (in so far as such a thing actually exists).
The Ukraine is not Russia, but is very well possible that the unit was manned by Russian 'advisors' and/or that it was actually the property of the Russian state. This will hopefully all come out in time. If and when it does I hope that the results will not further de-stabilize the region.
In my opinion those responsible for the Iranian passenger jet affair should have been taken off-duty immediately and sacked without a pension. Essentially the US has sanctioned such behavior since there were no penalties.
You don't get ahead by comparing yourself with the likes of Russia and the GRU or the Separatists, you only get ahead by asking yourself what the right response should be to such actions. And as such I don't think the US has the moral high ground when it comes to incidents like these.
Putin is a bandit, his buddies are no better. But at least they're not fooling anybody (at least, so I hope). And Captain Rogers should have been discharged without honor, that would have sent two messages at once: to the rest of the service that the US does not tolerate such cowboy actions and to the rest of the world that they will punish those that perpetrate them.
That would have given the US some right to be harsh with Putin and/or the separatists.
As for giving advanced weapons systems in the hands of untrained and aggressive people: I note that captain Rogers was probably highly trained but also very aggressive and that he too made a similar call so the Russians are no better than the Americans about who they give their advanced weapons system to, separatists and highly trained commanders are all not immune to making very terrible errors of judgment.
I'm actually more hopeful about those responsible in the MH17 affair to be brought to justice than those in the Iranian passenger jet incident (if that were to happen one would think it would have happened by now).
How appropriate, as that is all the world has asked for from Putin. I mean, Obama could figure out why you don't give advanced weaponry to the "good guys" in Syria, what aneurysm did Putin have to give both SA-11 sets and the intensive training to use the same to a bunch of poorly-led and poorly-trained separatists?
We'll ignore for now the command links amongst separatist leaders reaching back to Russia, because even if those were completely absent the question would remain valid. "Moral high ground" or not...
This will cut Russia off from one of their strategically more important harbors. So from a geopolitical point of view stirring this up was a fairly dumb mistake, the EU (and Obama) figured they could slip this one by but Putin found a way to foment unrest in the Ukraine at the expense of lots of lives.
Stability: good, global silly chess games: bad.
Putin will hang himself and his buddies too given enough rope and enough time. Yank his chain and he'll react, and he'll gain local popularity because of the general publics non-interest in world affairs. So in my not so humble opinion this is all just dumb war mongering and a potential set-back for 30 years or so of slowly improving relations and it will likely take decades again to recover the lost ground if we don't get a nice little war in the Ukraine, Crimea and Moldova region before then.
Which would lead to a bunch more nationalism in Russia, potentially a new cold war and a whole lot of lives lost besides.
That region is a very bad hotspot and to start moving chess pieces around there is about as stupid as encouraging Taiwan to finally really break off from the Chinese, Backing either Pakistan or India against the other or by sending arms and money to Tibet.
I'm sure my elected leaders think they know what they're doing but I fear they are simply not capable of thinking ahead far enough when it comes to consequences of actions.
And that includes your elected leaders as well.
I'm fully going on the assumption here that the lines of command reach all the way back to Russia, and I'm also very sure that they never ever thought they were downing a passenger jet. The fall-out from this will have extremely serious consequences (as it should) but I fear that a lot more lives could be lost if this situation is not handled properly. I know people all over the world and Ukraine is not an exception. My friend Dima (Dmitry) there lives in one part of the country and has family in the other. Another friend of mine is married to a lady from there. This is a lot closer to home for me than it probably is for you and it bugs me that people here pretend that the Ukraine is far away and that this will not affect 'us'.
Of course it will affect us, and the response so far has been just this side of dumb. The EU structurally underestimates the still very formidable military might of the former USSR, is living with a wounded bear on its doorstep and has now kicked this bear in the proverbial testicles.
Lots of people have already died as a consequence (including those in that plane) and it starts to become harder and harder to see a path to de-escalation.
Putins end-game (if I'm any judge of affairs like these, which I'm probably not) is that he'll 'keep the peace' because Europe can't afford it, which will result in permanent Russian army presence in fairly large numbers in the eastern part of the country, which will be a military backed re-affirmation of the former status quo.
And then Europe will have to back away from their plans of annexing the Ukraine, which they likely will do but not easily (they can't for political / image reasons).
This will still have all kinds of risks but it will at least extinguish the fuse. As long as the Russians are playing proxy there is still a way out of this, as soon as the gloves come off and they roll a few divisions into the Ukraine all hope of resolving the situation without an all-out confrontation with Russia will be lost. I highly doubt Europe and the US are both capable and have the political stamina to pull off such a confrontation.
Kids playing with fire.
But they started massive campaign trying to blame Ukraine. Fabricated Spanish air dispatcher account and clueless theory that Ukraine tried to shoot Putin out of the sky were just a few examples.
However, the real jewel of this campaign was a briefing of Russian Ministry of Defense where their high brass officials openly spread a bunch of lies. That was kinda scary. I mean, North Korea scary.
They were definitely in another reality.
For example, within the UK David Cameron championed laws in the 80s that made it illegal for goverment to publish material that could promote homosexuality. People shrug off resposibility for this by telling you that "it was a different time". Russia has introduced laws that are not dissimilar to widespread outrage. Whilst we are right to campaign against such things you cannot expect a country to modernise instantly overnight or welcome outside interference.
People should be reminded that all countries are following a path, and some countries are further along than others. The west does not have a monopoly on justice.
I mean, really. - http://38.media.tumblr.com/880d58b9b6c9abf8ecc9fdbe4da497e0/...
Same exact thing with religious debates.
Iran can't have peaceful nuclear tech, but Israel can have their Nukes.
Kosovo is a "special case" allowed by EU, but other parties can't do the same. Even enthnic cleansing argument doesn't cut it - look at Ukraine, same thing pretty much, but KFOR is good, and DNR/LNR are terrorists.
The camp could just as well be in Kansas at this point for all that the law is concerned (just where we kept German POWs back in the day), the detainees wouldn't get any substantive additional rights.
Likewise, unless you can show that Israel is deliberately targeting Palestinian non-combatants then there's not going to be an international legal basis for sanctions. That certainly wouldn't stop individual countries from applying sanctions if they wish due to their own norms, but that's arguably a double standard as by that logic the world would have to sanction essentially everywhere but western Europe and maybe Canada.
Iran can have peaceful nuclear tech, it's explicitly permitted by the Nuclear non-proliferation Treaty. If you seriously think this whole thing is just about turning the lights on in Tehran you need to pay more attention to this issue.
Even the Western media doesn't refer to DNR/LNR as "terrorists", but as "separatists". They don't even simply call them Russian puppets either, they're always referred to as rebels or separatists of DNR or LNR, and only then possible ties to Russia mentioned. The one time I did see "terrorism" bandied about regarding either DNR or LNR, a Malaysian Airlines Boeing was burning on live TV...
Where is "ethnic cleansing" going on in Ukraine?
And I love the argument that unless you can prove Israel is deliberately targeting Palestinians, they are innocent - that is extremely hard to prove, but very easy for Israel to tell that they "had intelligence". Obviously it is much easier to just blow up a building with a rocket if you've seen Hamas fighter entering it and noone seems to care if there are many civilians inside.
That was the reason I said "(now, just)", is because it turns out the U.S. agrees with you that torture is not permitted, either at Guantanamo or anywhere else. That was also the reason I said the camp could just as well be in Kansas now, as torture is just as illegal in domestic U.S. prisons as it is in Guantanamo's prison camp.
> And I love the argument that unless you can prove Israel is deliberately targeting Palestinians, they are innocent
The argument applies both ways. If Hamas is shelling Israeli civilians then they are guilty of war crimes, full stop. Er, that is, unless they can make the claim that they were at least trying to aim for Israeli military targets and that their weapons just "missed" somehow.
> Obviously it is much easier to just blow up a building with a rocket if you've seen Hamas fighter entering it and noone seems to care if there are many civilians inside.
And if Israel has watched a Hamas fighter go into the building that's essentially affirmative evidence justifying the strike, as long as the proportionality requirement is still met.
Can you find buildings in Gaza holding concentrations of Hamas fighters and only Hamas fighters? If so let the IDF know, I'm sure they'd be quite happy to blow that one up instead of killing a bunch of Palestinian civilians.
But other than that it's easy to complain about the effects of a deliberate policy by Hamas to ensure civilians are co-located with all possible military targets. That's another war crime, by the way (violating the principle of distinction), but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for people to call for Hamas to be tried for war crimes against their own people.
You don't have to stretch out your reading very far to discover that lots of news sites, especially outside the USA, are flooded with comments from people who have been posting to them for years and yet are deeply skeptical about the current wave of anti-Russian stories being pumped by western media. This isn't being "pro Putin", it's about realising that our own governments are so deeply and nauseatingly hypocritical that anything they say can be safely assumed to be the opposite of the truth.
E.g. whilst the western media is busy trying to claim that only evil authoritarian Russians would be so draconian as to forbid anonymous blogging, the NSA is busy de-anonymizing any blogger or any other internet user they wish bypassing the systems of law and democracy entirely. Is that really a false equivalence, or is it just pointing out the painful and obvious truth?
On this subject, most everyone do agree. Again note -- that is unusual. Maybe unique. And you claim that is a conspiracy, based on that there are lots of spin used on every subject by everyone with a finger in a pie?
That is exactly what Putin's media writes -- the whole [non dictatorial] world is in a conspiracy against Russia. Because they hate Russia!
(I can tell you how unanimous this is in Sweden: Most of the left wing extremists don't support Putin re Ukraine. These people in Sweden are USA haters which have never supported a democracy in a conflict with a democracy...)
Whilst Israel is treated somewhat neutrally outside the USA, the puppy-like behaviour of American media is so extreme it is itself worthy of news articles:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/31/america...
The runup to the war in Iraq is widely considered to be one of the western media's biggest and most damaging failures, including by those outlets themselves:
http://www.salon.com/2007/04/10/media_failure/ http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/may/27/media.iraq http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_the_Iraq_War
With respect to your assertion that "most everyone do agree", did you read my comment? It's very much NOT the case that everyone agrees on this. Here's the Guardian's view:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/30/guardia...
Hardly a ringing endorsement of sanctions.
Now go look at the comments section. Pick comments pointing out western hypocrisy and take a look at the posting history of those accounts. For instance, check out TheGreatRonRafferty. Posting on the site for years, thousands of comments. Many other views like his expressed there. If you think this is all the work of the FSB you're delusional, I don't know how else to say it.
By the way, its very difficult to prove bias against a single person as opposed to a group.
With a group, you can show bias easily by pointing out someones dislike for a member of the group who only shares superficial traits with the rest of the group (e.g. ethnicity/nationality/gender/etc.).
But for a person? Even if you're suspicious of every seemingly innocuous action of them, it can be justified by saying they have lost your trust due to actions in the past.
The comment specifically touches the following issues.
* The community's overall pro-western tendency
* Pointing out that the parent comment has been one of the few moderate ones in a thread that has otherwise been rather 'emotionally charged'
As much as I enjoy the content and the discussions here, the lack of appreciation of satire has always puzzled me.
Let me discuss your examples:
Israel handled neutral in Europe?!
With all due respect, you have just a clue about English media? I can talk about Swedish media. There, Pallywood was never mentioned in the major news outlets. Torture between Palestinians was straight out censored, even when it was front page news on BBC/NY Times. Negative news for Israel was/are consistently front page.
(I can go check my bookmarks, there are lots of cases.)
There were lots of criticism in Swedish of the Iraq invasion. And especially after the occupation was so incredibly mismanaged.
Whichever, this was my point -- the Western media is heterogenous.
Was the Guardian article the most pro Putin on Ukraine you could find [in major English language media]? :-) It basically said: We can't get rid of Putin, let's try "Peace in our time" and be careful with sanctions, Russia is a smaller problem now than 1989.
That article specifically didn't discuss how nice Putin's regime is. What is the Guardian's position there? No link?
Do you think it is a western conspiracy that Russia is classified as authocratic these days by democracy indexes?
And so on.
NSA's actions have been indefensible, but they aren't the same as Russia's. Your comparison is itself a textbook false equivalence.
Forced registration vs. forced de-anonymisation.
At least in Russia's case there is some input required from the blogger. With the NSA you just have to sit back and let them do all the hard work. Better customer service I guess.
Either way, arguing over whose government is less tyrannical is probably not the conversation we should be having. But the OP certainly had a point when he stated that preemptively calling out "apologists" is a bad debate technique.
EDIT: Also he wasn't complaining about false equivalences (the post he was replying to was doing that). He was complaining about certain genuine equivalences routinely being called out as false.
It's always a treat to see the resilience of subjective convictions on display.
Complaining about "false equivalence" complaints that have yet to have been made, rather. Just like the PHP people who preemptively defend PHP in threads before it has been criticized.
The PHP people have an excuse though: they're punch drunk from being constantly attacked. Attacking Russia is attacking from the herd, and very easy to do. The last thing anyone who cares about truth should be doing is discouraging dissent from the herd.
I have to say that the tradition of accusing people of setting up false equivalences by daring to even compare any aspect of America the Incomparable to places like Iran, Russia, or China is a reprehensible one, too. The confidence in the tautological superiority of every aspect of the US to every aspect of every other country is why clearly broken things about the US can remain broken for decades (like health care, etc.)
It also exposes a sensitivity (thus a recognition) of the critique. In all forms of analysis that I'm aware of, the way you examine things that are broken or eccentric is to compare them to things that work correctly or in a straightforward manner through noting the differences. If you do that between the American and Russian media, you will quickly realize that you're working with two horribly broken systems, and it's about as worthwhile as comparing a kick in the nuts to a punch in the face.
If that's true, and if there is anything more morally reprehensible about on the one hand requiring bloggers to register with the state, and secretly de-anonymizing them, as you claim, then I think it follows that you can't give the NSA credit for being less morally reprehensible just because they happen to be constrained in that way.
Western governments routinely de-anonymize citizens. E.g. when a serial killer finally gets tracked down despite taking pains to remain anonymous, we normally consider that upholding justice, not subverting law and democracy.
So while the NSA has certainly done some horrible things, merely trying to de-anonymize reasonably suspicious actors isn't necessarily one of them.
And even if we assume the NSA were unreasonably de-anonymizing people as a matter of course, their job would certainly be a hell of a lot easier there if the U.S. could force bloggers to register after 3,000 hits!
You've already lost this false equivalence.
In that case, what would the NSA do to a blogger, the answer because the US has something called the Constitution, and though you may cynically, the US couldn't throw someone in jail for whatever the NSA dredges up or whatever while in Russia, the same is not the case. There are not any real credible cases of people being poisoned for thought crime.
"The US does bad things as well" is not Putin apologia but a sincere plea for the US to recognise the idea of universally applicable international human rights law.
Edit: The astroturf was obvious in the Swedish language. Very shortly: People with very bad Swedish started posting pro Putin comments, some obviously using G Translate. They were unable to discuss certain things -- like that international democracy indexes class Russia as autocratic. (They'd probably be fired.) There were systematic down votes (10-100 down votes in a minute probably going through a bot net, so web admins couldn't automatically detect it). This spamming with very, very unusual opinions were systematically half of all comments on those web sites I read. (After a few months the Swedish of the posts got better, some halfway to idiomatic.)
Edit 2: Sprint, maybe. But not in the same volume in Swedish and not with that amount of fake votes.
But why do I get outraged by the unsourced comments as yours even more than by this stupid law?
I personally challenge you: I will provide you with information that I'm a real person and my claim about running website criticizing Russian elites is real if you take time to explain why is it OK for the West to support regime that kills Ukrainian civilians en masse.
You keep churning unsourced "Russian shills everywhere" message, while ignoring two simple possibilities:
1. While there are Russian Government shills on the Internet, as well as Western ones, real Russian people can also be genuinely outraged by actions of the West.
2. The West may be in reality backing puppet regime that commits horrific crimes.
P.S. It is ironic that I'm probably the single person in this thread that is really affected by this law and at the same time I am being modded down.
Why do you try to imply that identifying pro-Putin shills is equivalent to supporting "a [Ukrainian] regime that kills Ukrainian civilians en masse"?
Assuming your supposition is true for now, why do you not go further and think to imply that these civilians would not be getting killed en masse if Putin would withdraw forces of the Russian Federation from the sovereign territory [1] of Ukraine?
History shows that the truest way to harm civilians in conflict between groups that are not trying to kill civilians (either directly through systemic action or indirectly through things like famine) is to prolong the armed conflict by interceding on behalf of one side or the other.
But even if you're completely right and not involuntarily affected by propaganda yourself, just because someone tries to keep a comment board free of "shills" of all types doesn't mean someone is necessarily aligned with any side, which is an issue you appear to be conflating here.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereignty
Because there are no forces of Russian federation, probably apart from some Spec Ops, logistics and reconnaissance units.
> History shows that the truest way to harm civilians in conflict between groups that are not trying to kill civilians (either directly through systemic action or indirectly through things like famine) is to prolong the armed conflict by interceding on behalf of one side or the other.
So you say that Russia should abandon support of people of Donetsk and Luhansk and leave them at the mercy of Kiev government, who is committing crimes against them? [1]
I actually watch Ukrainian mainstream television and recently one of the experts was openly talking about the need to "physically eliminate about 1.5 million of civilians of Donetsk and Luhansk regions that are not able to fit in Ukrainian Nation" [2]. And he didn't get fined or jailed for these words, or even challenged by the TV host. If this is not Fascism, I don't know what is.
Why don't you ask questions such as: who started this mess? What has Russia done to stop it? What has the West done to stop it?
[1] http://www.thenation.com/article/180466/silence-american-haw...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCD4RS9LsTI
You mean Ukraine when it militarily destabilized and took over Krim?
Oh, wait... :-)
How many people have died in Crimea?
I can only see that comment as this argument:
You REALLY think that dead civilians are on the heads of those countries defending themselves from military takeovers by non-democratic juntas, like Putin's.
Ah wait!
You also claim that this about large Russian military support of the rebels is just another Western conspiracy.
After the Krim takeover, Putin thanked the responsible Russian army units for good work and handed out medals. Before the Krim takeover, Putin claimed that there were no Russian military involvement. An obvious lie.
It is ridiculous to even consider that there are "just volunteers" again. The similarities makes it look like excerpts out of some internal Russian play book of how to do military takeovers.
Especially since there are contradicting satellite pictures, recorded conversations, etc. From USA and Ukraine.
Edit: Mainstream news references, not "therealnews", of moved tanks. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/14/us-ukraine-crisis-...
Edit 2: There are similar articles about the BUK anti air system (with varying explanations out of Moscow and interviews (/social media) with rebels). There have also been articles about satellite pictures showing Russian artillery firing on Ukraine military units. Google yourself. Then you have recorded discussions of Russian and rebel discussions, etc, etc. Again, this is mainstream over the last few weeks -- let me know if you really need me to Google for you. Here is the BBC with voice recordings etc. Denied (with demands not to lay blame!!) from Putin. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28357880
Edit 3: Russia shot artillery at Ukraine (just more lies, of course): http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28476153
Edit 4: Anything else I should Google for you?
Edit 5: Is this your position? You seem to not argue against that Putin lied about military involvement before the Krim takeover. You claim that there aren't enough proofs (and/or that all Western media lies) that his junta is doing exactly the same thing now, just because it looks so similar in action/time? (I am sorry if this makes you sound stupid/dishonest, but...)
There is no evidence that supports your argument about Russian military takeover of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. You are talking about something so significant that must have left some verifiable trace, right?
> (Karma 34 account.)
You don't provide a single footnote, and I actually provide sources to my claims.
I give you simple questions and you prefer to ignore them.
Yes, I rarely participate in internet discussions. Is appealing to my low karma your last and most powerful argument?
> Especially with satellite pictures, recorded conversations, etc.
So, let's bring these to the table?
Edit:
>Edit: Mainstream news references, not "therealnews", of moved tanks. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/14/us-ukraine-crisis-....
1. Money quote from NATO statement from Reuters article that you've provided: "but where they came from is in dispute."
> There are similar articles about the BUK anti air system
2. There is no solid evidence for the claim that BUK came from Russia also. But let's assume that it did, just for the sake of not forking the discussion.
3. What's wrong with "therealnews" interviews with acclaimed experts which credentials you are free to check?
>You seem to not argue against that Putin lied about military involvement before the Krim takeover.
4. Yes, what I argue is that the current insurgency is supported by population of Donetsk and Luhansk regions and I've provided sources for that statement. Which means that Kiev Government is at war with (part of) it's own population.
5. What I also state is that reunification with Russia has had overwhelming support from the people of Crimea.
>You claim that there aren't enough proofs (and/or that all Western media lies) that his junta is doing exactly the same thing now, just because it looks so similar in action/time?
What "same thing" are you talking about? (I am asking this just to be sure that we are talking about the same thing).
> (I am sorry if this makes you sound stupid/dishonest, but...)
I's OK. I appreciate that you are assuming good faith on my part.
Edit 2:
>Edit 3: Russia shot artillery at Ukraine (just more lies, of course): http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28476153
Money quote from the BBC article: "the US says it has evidence that Russia has fired artillery across the border targeting Ukrainian military positions".
The US has also said that pre-invasion Iraq has had WMD. And that Assad has used nerve gas.
>>Yes, what I argue is that the current insurgency is supported by population of Donetsk and Luhansk regions and I've provided sources for that statement
(I don't bother to look up your references, since it certainly won't be from mainstream media or similar.)
You are contradicted by Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donetsk_People%27s_Republic#Pub...
In a poll [..] in the first half of February 2014, 33.2% of polled in Donetsk Oblast believed "Ukraine and Russia must unite into a single state".[27]
According to a poll [...] 66% of Donetsk residents view their future in a united Ukraine
A second poll conducted 26–29 March showed that 77% of residents condemned the takeover of administrative buildings, while 16% support such actions. Furthermore, 40.8% of Donetsk citizens support rallies for Ukraine's unity, while 26.5% support rallies which are pro-Russia
And so on.
>> Money quote from the BBC article: "the US says it has evidence that Russia has fired artillery across the border targeting Ukrainian military positions". [Etc.]
The first thing I check is contradicted by Wikipedia (that and its sources is a conspiracy too?).
The second "argument" I read is "We can ignore that, USA just lies". (It is hardly just USA that claimed Assad used nerve gas. Any proofs against? Never mind, you read it in Putin's media so it must be true.)
Seriously? That is what you have?
I have spent too much time on this. :-(
> (I don't bother to look up your references, since it certainly won't be from mainstream media or similar.)
Then how can you possibly have an informed opinion if you limit your sources of information to Western mainstream media?
> You are contradicted by Wikipedia.
No, I am not, because I have provided quote about May polls, not February or March ones. February ones were made before overthrow of Yanukovich (Donetsk and Luhansk regions were one of the big electoral bases for Yanukovich), and March before the fight for federalization of Ukrainian State by the people of Donetsk and Luhansk regions was completely ignored by Kiev Government.
And it is very important difference from the sociological point of view, because it was also after the Odessa Massacre and Ukrainian Forces attack on Mariupol. BTW, the author of the quote, sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko is an author of The Guardian newspaper [1]. Is he not mainstream enough for you?
Which means that you've cross-checked one source and now erroneously claim that it is not credible.
> I have spent too much time on this. :-(
I can understand you. What is my point of view is that one should trust no single party or source of information to be credible and do research for oneself. And this is the only way to be free, as in Freedom.
> Any proofs against?
Food for thought:
"Possible Implications of Faulty US Technical Intelligence in the Damascus Nerve Agent Attack of August 21, 2013" by Richard Lloyd, Former UN Weapons Inspector [2]
"Congress Members Who Have Seen Classified Evidence About Syria Say It Fails to Prove Anything" (has number of first-party sources). [3]
"UN Investigator Undercuts NYT on Syria" by Robert Parry, former Newsweek and AP reporter [4]:
The lead author of the UN report on the Aug. 21 incident has contradicted the much-touted “vectoring” claims of a New York Times front-page story and Human Rights Watch, which has been pushing for a U.S. military intervention in Syria.
The UN inspectors have voiced uncertainty about who carried out the attack. At the press conference, Sellstrom admitted, “I don’t have information that would stand in court.” He also told Wall Street Journal writer Joe Lauria that both sides in the conflict had the “opportunity” and the “capability” to carry out chemical weapons attacks.
Etc. Wish you good luck!
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/profile/volodymyr-ishchenko
[2] https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1006...
[3] http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/09/classified-intelligen...
[4] http://consortiumnews.com/2013/12/23/un-investigator-undercu...
You refuse to accept anything official from USA, and then quote conspiracy theories from a blogger!! :-)
About your claims about the Syrian chemical weapons attack:
The overheard communications (by Israelis and Americans) are lies, of course. And it is just more lies that the Syrian government shelled the attacked areas after the chemical attack to destroy the evidence!
Shameless liars about your Glorious Leader, those Westerners. :-) Uh, no... they hate Assad too! :-)
To be realistic, if there are state budget's involved, you can get any number of statements from individuals. Robert Parry might want to retire, who knows?
Here is a good source, with high credibility, about the second use of chemical weapons -- HRW (I assume the rebels had helicopters they used only for that bombing, then hid? :-) ):
http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/05/13/syria-strong-evidence-gov...
And about the most well known attack:
http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/09/10/syria-government-likely-c...
It is easy to find similar from Amnesty and others.
(But HRW is just another part of the Western conspiracy against Rus.. Syria, only independent bloggers are dependable of course. Oh, wait...)
----------------
But the Syria claims was nothing.
A few minutes with Wikipedia made my day when I checked your claim that the referendum in May was dependable.
>>No, I am not, because I have provided quote about May polls, not February or March ones.
From my previous comment -- the opinions were totally different just ONE month earlier.
The relevant wikipedia page on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donetsk_status_referendum,_2014...
Money quote:
These results could not be independently verified.[29][63]
<My stomach hurts from laughing.>
I am certain you have read some blogger than knows better than the liars at BBC and PewResearch. :-)
Then we have:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donetsk_status_referendum,_2014...
group of pro-Russian separatists in possession of a 100,000 ballots already marked with a 'yes' vote for the referendum were captured
A campaign of intimidation, beatings, and hostage taking has forced many pro-Ukrainian activists and known opponents of secession to Russia to flee the region, leaving the referendum to take place without any dissent or opposing voices
And so on... More obvious lies!! :-)
So you claim a referendum whose result can't be verified [and after hunting of the opposition members!] is trustworthy and showed that all the opinions had totally changed in one month and resulted in a popular uprising... (No Russian military this time. Honest!)
Thanks for a good laugh. (My poor stomach. :-( )
Let me guess -- Wikipedia and its sources are just lies, you KNOW that the May vote was dependable because there is some blogger that support this, here too? You saw that on Putin's own media?
(I removed quotes about the previous poll faked by Putin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_status_referendum,_2014 since that is just more democratic lies about your Glorious Leader? :-) )
2. Many US Congressmen that were given access to US secret proof have stated that it is dubious, on record.
Are these sources wrong or hand-picked? Which ones did I hand-pick, US Congressmen, or UN investigators, or, perhaps, both?
It was not enough evidence to stand in court, but apparently, there was enough evidence for the West to bomb Syria and cause immanent civilian deaths.
Wittingly or not, you are trying to change subject, twist the narrative and so on. It occurs to me that you Sir are not trying to be objective at all. Looks like here I'm the fool who's banging his head against the wall.
1. You use bloggers as references while shrugging at serious references.
2. A single minute's check on wikipedia showed that your claims about the May vote is garbage.
Why should anyone takes you seriously after that?!
(I am a bit disappointed that you ignored this subject and didn't explain the conspiracies and lies about your Glorious Leader?)
-----
About Syrian chemical weapons:
Of course there weren't much physical proofs remaining, the Assad government shelled the target area a lot, to remove them...
The rebel side didn't have the type of artillery used, no one overheard any communications from them about this -- and the rebels didn't use that artillery on their enemy afterwards.
But if the rebels seems so unlikely, maybe it wasn't the Assads either but a third party. Elves? :-)
[I am repeating myself and my references here.]
(And bombing the Assads: Because of internal politics, Obama has left hundreds of thousands of Syrians to be killed by Russian weapons. It is an outrage.)
These have back-references to official sources that you try to ignore.
> 2. A single minute's check on Wikipedia showed that your claims about the May vote is garbage.
No, it didn't, and I have already explained why in previous posts. The words about May polls come from respected sociologist and author of The Guardian.
The same goes to your reference to Wikipedia page about Crimean referendum, in particular, the data about previous polling [1]. Previous polls were taken before the overthrowing of Yanukovich and before new Kiev Government has issued statement about revocation of Russian language law.
About Syria:
Here are the words of lead investigator, Ake Sellstrom from official UN press-conference, pinpointed to minutes and seconds: [2]
Congressman Alan Grayson on NYT: [3]
As about your links to HRW, first one [4] is about different attack, that was not used as a pretext to possible Western bombardments, so I would rather not discuss it to prevent "topic creep". The second one [5] is contradicted by the conclusions of UN investigators, because they report that rocket bust have had much smaller range: 2 km [6] instead of "3.8 to 9.8" reported by HRW article [5], which makes HRW narrative fall apart.
So, this means, that in Syria, just like with Iraq in 2003, the West has used at best dubious evidence as a political pretext for possible war. This, and previous history with accidents like the one in The Gulf of Tonkin [7], we have every right to be skeptical about western claims that are not supported by strong evidence.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_status_referendum,_201...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CFn9pWNKeI#t=39m10s
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/07/opinion/on-syria-vote-trus...
[4] http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/05/13/syria-strong-evidence-gov...
[5] http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/09/10/syria-government-likely-c...
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CFn9pWNKeI#t=16m10s
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident#Distor...
So prove your conspiracy theory that shows Wikipedia, BBC et al wrong and the votes really were 96+%(!).
Post exact links and quotes that show the May poll was correct.
Well, that is almost as good a source as when you linked to a blogger. :-)
(So if I link to the criticism on Wikipedia of the Crimean election, you "disprove" that with another Youtube link? :-) )
[Thanks for another good laugh.]
That is arguably ruder.
[Edit: pipy changed opinion because of arguments in another place when he wrote crazy stuff. He is not a troll, just upset. I stand corrected.]
Or in other words, Russian military forces have invaded a neighboring nation, unless there is permission from Kiev for such uniformed armed forces to be on the sovereign territory of Ukraine?....
As far as I can tell, your link [1] implies that the only reason Kiev is using air strikes or artillery is because of the presence of hostile military forces in their sovereign territory.
So, yes, I would suggest Russia should "abandon" the people of Donetsk and Luhansk (and for that matter, Crimea), return to its own sovereign territory, and then the fighting will stop as there will quickly be no hostile forces to launch artillery or air strikes against.
You implied with that link [1] that Russia intervened only after Kiev started committing atrocities against people in Donetsk and Luhansk, but the order appears to be completely opposite.
> I actually watch Ukrainian mainstream television and recently one of the experts was openly talking about the need to "physically eliminate about 1.5 million of civilians of Donetsk and Luhansk regions that are not able to fit in Ukrainian Nation" [2].
> And he didn't get fined or jailed for this words, or even challenged by the TV host.
He wouldn't be fined or jailed in the U.S. either, due to the First Amendment (although maybe you could make a good case that it's "hate speech"). Does that make the U.S. "fascist"?
Maybe the TV host didn't challenge him because his comments are already so backward and idiotic as to not need further emphasis.
And either way, are you trying to imply that some random asshole on T.V. spouting their stupid backward opinion about a million people he's never met, is justification enough to invade the sovereign territory of another nation. I mean, even Bush 43 tried to put a better case together than that when he went off to disaster in Iraq...
No, it doesn't. Because there is no evidence of massive Russian troop presence, not to my knowledge. This is why you cannot attribute the sheer scale of Ukrainian Government actions to this issue.
I will quote the article for your convenience:
Poroshenko’s “peace plan” and June 21 cease-fire may have seemed such an opportunity, except for their two core conditions: fighters in the southeast first had to “lay down their arms,” and he alone would decide with whom to negotiate peace. The terms seemed more akin to conditions of surrender, and were probably the real reason Poroshenko unilaterally ended the cease-fire on July 1 and intensified Kiev’s assault on eastern cities, initially on the smaller towns of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, which their defenders abandoned—to prevent more civilian casualities, they said—on July 5–6. [1]
The fact that there is a genuine insurgency by the Eastern Ukrainians that is not attributable to Russian influence has been supported by multiple experts from different countries. [2]
Even the sociologist that gets his money from US State Department says that:
"And the polls which were done in the first half of [May--and?] it means after massacre in Odessa and after very brutal attack on Mariupol by Ukrainian forces, they were showing that at least even in Donbass there are various--some sort of support for the claims of separatists, and the people in Donbas saw their seizure of governmental buildings as people's [incompr.] not as a terrorist act, not as a Russian intervention. But this were the public opinion in Donbass." [3]
>He wouldn't be fined or jailed in the U.S. either, due to the First Amendment (although maybe you could make a good case that it's "hate speech"). Does that make the U.S. "fascist"?
OK, for me it was too emotional to claim this and to talk about this TV show.
[1] http://www.thenation.com/article/180466/silence-american-haw...
[2] http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=...
[3] http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=...
But that is not, by itself, justification for Russia to intervene, especially unilaterally. It's not, never will be.
Think of the logic: If there were a group of 5,000 Americans living in Russia (who had been forced to move there 50 years earlier during a period of American rule in Russia), and they rebelled against Moscow (after lengthy exhortations and propaganda from D.C.), would you really be OK with America sending military forces to intervene on behalf of those separatists? Would you be OK with America providing very advanced weaponry, passports, military support, intelligence support, international top cover and more, all to support this separatist movement?
Or would you say that it was an internal matter for Russians to resolve amongst themselves, and that other states should stay out of the sovereign territory of the Russian Federation? I can tell you the U.S. certainly didn't want outside intervention during our own civil war.
See, this isn't two states playing covert war games in a third state, this is Ukraine fighting for its sovereignty against a separatist movement (however many legitimate aspects it might contain), with Ukraine's bordering neighbor deliberately intervening to tilt the scales as they wish.
So, you say that US has the right to support one side, including an anti-constitutional coup against democratically elected president, and Russia has no right to support the other side? I beg to disagree.
In fact, Kiev has been Washington’s military proxy against Russia and its “compatriots” in eastern Ukraine for months. Since the political crisis began, Secretary of State John Kerry, CIA Director John Brennan and Vice President Joseph Biden (twice) have been in Kiev, followed by “senior US defense officials,” American military equipment and financial aid. Still more, a top US Defense Department official informed a Senate committee that the department’s “advisers” are now “embedded” in the Ukrainian defense ministry. [1]
> This isn't two states playing covert war games in a third state, this is Ukraine fighting for its sovereignty against a separatist movement.
This is one way to see it. Hopefully, I gave you enough information to explain how it is possible to view the issue from completely different point of view.
[1] http://www.thenation.com/article/180825/why-washington-riski...
All outside parties have the right to be supportive of whichever side they wish.
The ways in which that support is expressed are not all allowable under international law, however. For instance, Obama supports the "moderate Syrian opposition", yet the U.S. has not invaded parts of Syria and annexed it, and then sent further military forces into the remainder of Syria to fight against Assad.
> Hopefully, I gave you enough information to explain how it is possible to view the issue from completely different point of view.
You didn't need to remind me that there are alternate POVs. I'm sure that Russia has interests in Ukraine that are much different that the E.U., or the U.S., or NATO, or even Ukraine itself.
But having interests is no right to do whatever you wish. I've already expressed Obama's interest in the situation in Syria, yet you don't see him breaking down in a teary-eyed fit in international media about how Assad simply won't listen to him.
Obama is doing what he thinks he can and the situation will either resolve itself in the U.S.'s favor or it won't. But even if it doesn't go the U.S.'s way, he still won't invade. We used to be able to say the same of Putin, until Crimea (something he did finally admit to lying about, after the fact).
"Covert" action is one thing. Sending weapons and money is one thing. These are all things that are generally understood to be allowable ways for outside parties to aid (or not) belligerents. But even the things that are allowed come at the price of responsibility, which is why Obama won't give all the Super Ray Guns to Syrian moderates.
Some things, however, are never allowed, such as sending military forces to invade and annex the sovereign territory of another nation. Russia supported the rest of the world in stopping the last time a tinpot dictator tried that exercise, in Kuwait. But now Russia is the aggressor itself...
Another way to view it, is that the West is waging a proxy war against Russia.
One might say that confrontation started with the West instigating a coup against democratically elected president of Ukraine and installing a pro-Western, pro-NATO regime. Another might say that it started when the West has methodically sabotaged all Russian actions to find peaceful solutions to the crisis in Eastern Ukraine and instead pushed for military options [1]. But these are technicalities.
There are two steps left before the possible direct military confrontation between the West and Russia. One step is the West officially sending troops to Ukraine, and another is Russia officially sending troops to Ukraine. Most probably, neither of them would be taken, but the situation is already dangerous enough.
Many say, that after we have left our military bases in Eastern Germany in exchange of the failed promise of NATO non-expansion, after many other actions of good will by USSR and then Russia, the West has been methodically showing us that it doesn't accept Russia as a peaceful partner.
By sanctioning Russia, by turning the blind eye on atrocities carried out by Kiev government, the West is waging the war against Russians, not only against Putin.
I do not know, how this crisis would end, but it is for sure going to set back our relations with the West for decades to come. And this is not all Putin's fault.
> Some things, however, are never allowed, such as sending military forces to invade and annex the sovereign territory of another nation.
Before the Russian actions in Crimea, there was a popular uprising against coup government.
The main powerhouse of the uprising was the city of Sevastopol, which was home for Russian military bases for hundreds of years. The residents of the city have in 20+ years never been allowed to have democratic elections of the mayor, because all Ukrainian governments felt that they would elect pro-Russian mayor. Instead, for 20+ years, they got mayors appointed from Kiev, some anti-Russian.
Crimea has de facto not been under the coup government control even before the Russian actions and was lost by Ukraine before it was gained by Russia, just after the coup government has started to pass one of it's first laws, the one that revoked the rights of the Russian-speaking regions to use Russian as second official language.
Personally, I don't like how Russia used it's military in Crimea and think that people of Crimea should have been allowed to fight for the independence themselves, possibly with some help. This was important technical issue and Russia has most probably got it wrong.
The situation is complicated by the fact that in reality there are different parts of Ukraine with completely different mindsets, preferences and interests.
But it is the Western Ukraine that has invaded Eastern Ukraine (with the help of US), not the other way around. This is the core point. This is why the people of Eastern Ukraine have the moral high ground in their fight. This is why Russia is not an aggressor.
P.S.
The coup government has also been waging war against the population of Crimea [2], "it's own population". And it also doesn't allow for every citizen from Crimea to freely enter Ukraine, some of them are sent back home [3] [4].
[1] Great article by Stephen Cohen (professor emeritus at New York University and Princeton University), which more or less summarizes not only my personal POW, but POW of many Russians and Ukrainians as well: http://www.thenation.com/article/180466/silence-american-haw...
[2] http://en.itar-tass.com/world/729666
[3] http://www...
So, let's start debunking your li... er, myths.
> West instigating a coup against democratically elected president of Ukraine and installing a pro-Western, pro-NATO regime
You're ly... wrong. There was no 'west instigation' and government was elected by Ukrainian people, not by 'West'.
>West has methodically sabotaged all Russian actions to find peaceful solutions to the crisis in Eastern Ukraine
Tell me about these actions? Sending mercenaries and military equipment to Ukraine? Shelling Ukrainian forces across the border? Spreading lies about Ukraine on state TV?
What other 'peaceful solutions' did I forgot? Oh, violating WTO principles by initiating a little trade war with Ukraine? More peaceful, than sending tanks to Ukraine, I must agree with that.
> after we have left our military bases in Eastern Germany in exchange of the failed promise of NATO non-expansion
You're wrong. There was no such promise, and there was no 'exchange'.
> The main powerhouse of the uprising was the city of Sevastopol, which was home for Russian military bases for hundreds of years.
Do you understand how silly it sounds? Cuba was Spanish military base for hundred of years, do you think they mad enough to take it back on a such false premise?
>The residents of the city have in 20+ years never been allowed to have democratic elections of the mayor, because all Ukrainian governments felt that they would elect pro-Russian mayor. Instead, for 20+ years, they got mayors appointed from Kiev, some anti-Russian.
So, in your beloved Russia, governors was not elected for 10 years, so you will blame Putin?
> Crimea has de facto not been under the coup government control even before the Russian actions and was lost by Ukraine before it was gained by Russia.
You're wrong again. Using Latin will not bring more credibility to this statement.
> But it is the Western Ukraine that has invaded Eastern Ukraine (with the help of US), not the other way around.
This is so good fantasy, you can try to sell it as a movie script. I'm not even sure that I need to debunk this particular myth.
> This is the core point. This is why the people of Eastern Ukraine have the moral high ground in their fight. This is why Russia is not an aggressor.
So you're trying to tell us, that if false statements are propagated in the russian media, then you could hide the facts of Russian mercenaries fighting against Ukrainian forces, Russian tanks and APCs flow across border and FSB/KGB crooks in Ukraine in charge of terrorists?
Do you honestly believe this could be hidden just because it was not shown on kremlin TV?
> The coup government has also been waging war against the population of Crimea [2], "it's own population".
Really? This is considered a 'war' right now?
Ok, in this case Russia is waging war against Ukraine right now, by cutting it's gas supply.
> And it also doesn't allow for every citizen from Crimea to freely enter Ukraine, some of them are sent back home
Yes. It's called 'customs', are you aware what this means?
Real reason was that pro-russian bandits continue to fire on Ukrainian forces despite all the arrangements.
And as for "would decide with whom to negotiate peace" this is absolutely acceptable, because there are a lot of bandit leaders in play and it's hard to understand who's responsible for peace negotiating.
I'll give you a better explanation: the TV host didn't challenge him because it never happened. The "expert" (another journalist, in fact) never suggested to "physically eliminate about 1.5 million of civilians of Donetsk and Luhansk regions that are not able to fit in Ukrainian Nation" or anything close to it.
The expert is a journalist, from a newspaper «Тиждень». [1]
Here are the qoutes:
Донбасс – это не просто депрессивный регион. Там дикое количество ненужных людей. Я абсолютно осознанно об этом говорю. В Донецкой области примерно 4 миллиона жителей. И не менее 1,5 миллионов лишних. Нам не надо понимать Донбасс. Нам надо понимать украинский национальный интерес. А Донбасс нужно использовать как ресурс. [...] В отношении Донбасса: я не знаю рецепта, как это сделать быстро. Однако наиглавнейшее, что нужно сделать: есть люди, которых необходимо просто убить.
Which means that there is an "excess of 1.5 millions of people" in Donetsk Region, that "[people of] Donetsk Region mustn't be undestood [by the people from the rest of Ukraine], and Donetsk Region [and it's people] must be used as a resource instead" and "I don't know how to solve that problem [to remove excessive civilians], but the main thing is that some people must be physically eliminated".
So:
1. There are 1.5 millions of civilians of Donetsk region that are excessive.
2. People of Donetsk region mustn't be understood by the rest of Ukraine. Which literally means that they do not fit in Ukrainian Nation, they are not part of it.
3. He doesn't know the recipe how to remove the excessive civilians, but some people must be physically eliminated.
In the context of the whole TV show he is talking about elimination of excessive civilians. One could argue if he considers possible to physically eliminate 1.5 million of them, or only part of them and drive others by away by force or by economical means, etc.
> The "expert" (another journalist, in fact) never suggested to "physically eliminate about 1.5 million of civilians of Donetsk and Luhansk regions that are not able to fit in Ukrainian Nation" or anything close to it.
So, even though I have already claimed that it was too emotional for me to mention this TV show, I consider myself to have provided reasonable translation of his words.
P.S.
I've actually used pyyaml parser. :)
Edit: here is the relevant part of the show for you to check: [2]
[1] http://tyzhden.ua/Author/76/Publications/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhYyj5l9Lx0
Wow, this is truly creative editing. None of your insertions are implied from the context and the quotes you picked up are several minutes apart. In particular, he talks about 1.5 millions of people lacking meaningful job prospects as one of the causes of the unrest (which is true). A few minutes later, when he talks about about killing people, nowhere he implies millions of civilians, in fact, it's obvious he means armed militants.
I have people that I know on both sides of Ukraine and everything that is going on creeps me out completely.
I -- and probably most people -- have been in the situation where we lost contact with reality, because we have read too much spin, even if the subjects are serious problems.
It is not easy. Good luck pipy. (And good luck to Russia and Ukraine -- they both deserve a break after the last century.)
Thank you. And you and your compatriots too.
If you mean the Swedes, they should be OK (except for the grief they create themselves). Sweden is probably not on Putin's top 10 list... :-) :-(
Or do you mean Emacs/Perl/JavaScript guys? :-)
TL;DR - he didn't said "physically eliminate about 1.5 million of civilians of Donetsk and Luhansk regions that are not able to fit in Ukrainian Nation"
Identifying pro-Putin shills is not what's being done here. This is just accusing people that don't agree with everything said about Russia and the depiction in the US media of the current conflict in Ukraine of being Russian shills.
I remember when people who questioned the Iraq war had to constantly defend themselves from accusations of being terrorist shills. This has the exact same chilling effect.
edit: I am honestly interested in evidence of shill posting. I enjoy the detective work. If your evidence of shilling is that you think that the opinions people hold could only be held by shills, you're just stifling dissent in the traditional way that it has always been done. It's no more noble or complex than that.
1. You can provide me with your disposable one-time Gmail address (needed for GA).
2. I will send you my real name, give you temporary access to Google Analytics account for the website and some selected Google-translated pages from it. Possibly provide more information if needed.
3. You can support that I am not a shill in this discussion and that my claim about the law in OP affecting me is true.
i.e I already support that you aren't a shill, and people who are interested in journalism or the protection of freedom of expression would do well by listening to your own experience in your own country under your own country's laws rather than poisoning the well with accusations (and no evidence.)
The insurgents are also accused of using grads, but this whole thing is far from being one sided.
That's what that law was created for, to control the opposition. And more of that is coming.
This is your blog, correct? Then I understand why you wouldn't see any problem with this new law.
And yes, I am more worried about the NSA than the FSB: I don't live in Russia.
We have a simillar law in Poland, good old communist legacy. Formally, you need to register every media outlet with the court. Whether this applies to blogs is unclear, and it's generally not enforced.
But it could be. Which is a situation bureaucrats love.
I'm guessing that this is how it will work in Russia. No one will get in trouble for praising Putin on their unregistered website.
> “One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.” -- Ayn You-Know-Who
So all businesses cheat on their taxes. Majority of business deals are made with a huge cash component - if a contract is for 100K, it's written for 30K and 70K is paid in cash under the table. Until they run afoul of the government, it's considered to be ok and nobody gets in trouble.
However, the minute government wants to acquire or close that business, they accuse the business of tax fraud, hit them with huge fines, close them down, throw the founders in jail, etc.
Wow. This is a perfect place for "[citation needed]". Same for the rest of the message really.
Hotels, B&Bs and other accommodation facilities do that for you (that's why they want your ID).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_mud_horse
You'll have to google translate it, which is the reason I haven't included it to begin with.
Be prepared for more astro-turfing, more main stream media bias, more placed articles, more leaked information, and more chaos in the message.