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Why so much Ukraine on HN? Protests are happening almost everyday in some european country. No Thailand protests covered here. Why the hysteria about Ukraine he

by kushti 13y ago

Why so much Ukraine on HN? Protests are happening almost everyday in some european country. No Thailand protests covered here. Why the hysteria about Ukraine here?

001sky 13y ago
Ukraine is geo-politically an important region, and has long history of being a part of the chess-board of empire building in Europe. It's not a value judgemnet, it's just more things are in play and the outcomes are more consequential. Thailand is a unique place, and is historically more self-contained, so the politics of Thailand don't have the ripple-effects, in terms of security implications for the region. Thailand, for example, was never conquered by a European power. So it lacks the baggage of post-colonialism, and whilst has its own intriques, they are more unique to the country iMHO. (You were probably asking a rhetorical question, but these are worth considering for those who are not aware of them.)
vonmoltke 13y ago
Thailand notwithstanding, are any of these other protests building improvised forts in the streets of a major city or taking over government buildings around the country? Edit: 001sky has the better, less flippant reason.
- saganus 13y ago
  Well, it might not be the same, but in Mexico there are so called self-defense groups, that try to fight against organized crime. They are armed groups of civilians that took control of entire towns and their surrounding areas, to stop the cartels from doing as they please. They have gunfights with cartels and when they successfully drive them away, they pickup armored vehicles, guns and money, and everything else the crime groups leave behind. The situation is so delicate that not even the army wants to try to fight these groups. They are negotiating and having meetings and all (I'm guessing the social cost of just obliterating these groups is too high; we are talking about 3 thousand armed people ready to get into action in 15 minutes, that's a lot of guns and civilians that you just can't bomb away with no repercusions. Not that the government can't, but it's too pollitically and socially costly), but the army nor the police or any other government authority have control of those areas. I believe that's a notch above improvised forts in the city's streets. So, my point is not to compare both conflicts as if one was "above" the other, both problems are nasty and very bad things that are happening right now, however like someone said in a similar story posted days ago, this is not a political forum to the extent where it has nothing to do with technology or hacking, in any sense of the word, unless you want to consider social protest as a form of "government hacking" or "societal hacking", but then not only one country's conflict should be posted, but conflicts from all over the world. I'm guessing part of this trend of having social and political issues popping up in technology news sites (HN, Slashdot, etc) is that, as would be expected, social unrest is highly tied to communication technologies such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc, and that overlap is what brings social unrest news to the frontpages of techonology-related sites. The most obvious example I can think of is the conflicts in Egypt and how they came to be. But alas, I think my point still stands in that Ukraine's conflicts are in no way (that I can see) more related to techonology news, than say Mexico's conflicts, and those haven't been covered in HN, so I fail to see what is so special about Ukraine that gets to be posted several times in the past few days. Maybe someone can enlighten me on this? I don't intend to underestimate what's happening there or to dismiss the conflicts, but I, like someone else already said, don't come to HN for political news, unless they are somehow related to technology (NSA antics, Wikileaks, etc)
  - IgorPartola 13y ago
    What you describe is going on in Mexico sounds fascinating. Where can I read more about it?
    - saganus 13y ago
      At the risk of putting yet more political news in HN, here are some news in English. I'm not sure how accurate these are as I just skimmed over them. [Edit: I don't know how accurate these are, but they are from 'reputable' sources I think, but I guess that depends on your personal opinion. It's not the HuffPo though.] I live in Mexico so I have access to news coverage and even YouTube videos of the self-defense group's leader himself, which I will link below, but it's in Spanish. Maybe if a couple of people ask for it I can do a transcription in English. So here: The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/28/mexico-drug-cartel-self-defence-groups-michoacan http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/28/mexico-drug-car... WaPo: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/in-the-hills-of-michoacan-self-defense-groups-battle-a-mexican-drug-cartel/2013/09/09/6947e47a-119f-11e3-a2b3-5e107edf9897_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/in-the-hill... WSJ: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304007504579347170924367970 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230400750... Interviews with one of the leaders of one of the groups, in Spanish. (there are different groups in differente cities/town which don't have any connection between them. They are all independent as far as I know, not organized toghether yet). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9S1FMJ6NX8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9S1FMJ6NX8 Here, the leader of the group in Tepalcatepec, Michoacan, Doctor Mireles (he's a surgeon) explains how things started getting so crazy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9S1FMJ6NX8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9S1FMJ6NX8 It's heart-breaking, but one of the most impressive and wicked things he says is, if you forward to minute 6:57, he explains how, even when the cartels where in the area since a lot of years already, civilians got fed up when this happened, and I'm quoting: "The problem blew up when they [cartel members] came to your house and told you 'I like your wife, I'll bring her back in a moment. But in the meanwhile go get your girl a bath [girl meaning your daughter, around 10 to 13 years old] because I will be taking her for several days' and then they would not return her to you until she was pregnant. THAT was the reason the situation exploted in Tepalcatepec". Some minutes before, at 4:28 he explains why he joined the movement. He says that in the month of December only (of 2012 I believe) 14 girls between the ages of 10 and 11 were raped. And all this on top of things like, for every cow that you sell, you had to pay X amount of pesos to the cartels. For every kilo of tortilla, same thing. Basically it was a form of cartel taxes. The thing is he says that even when they had that extorsion thing going on, things were relatively "in peace", meaning that executions and such were just happening between cartel members, and not with the civilian population. And then he explains the quote above, of what made everything blow to pieces... Now, this Mireles guy is just the leader of the groups in one of the municipalities, namely Tepalcatepec. But other groups are already active from other places as well. Also, you have to take into account that, at least Tepalcatepec, in 2005, it had around 22,000 people. So it's not a big city but it's definitely not just a collection of houses. That's why I said that things are also quite dark and siniter down here.
davidw 13y ago
They're all equally off-topic as per the guidelines.
viach 13y ago
From what i can see here - there is a lot of hackers among protesters. They do they day work and go throwing rocks in the police afterwards.
- IgorPartola 13y ago
  Case in point: https://github.com/fre5h/DoctrineEnumBundle/pull/12#issuecomment-33023169 https://github.com/fre5h/DoctrineEnumBundle/pull/12#issuecom...
  - angersock 13y ago
    bwahahahahah that's awesome: I will take a look later. Much much later. Because I'm Ukrainian and we have revolution right now. Sorry And then the supportive comments. <3 open sores software.
    - IgorPartola 13y ago
      Yeah, that comment also reminds me of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0WStLAYB9Q http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0WStLAYB9Q. OK, I'll stop redditing all over the place.
- dmytrish 13y ago
  Yes, Ukraine has one of the largest IT outsourcing economies in Europe. That may be far from the start-up world of Silicon Valley, but that somewhat affects the US IT industry.
tim333 13y ago
Looking at the HN guidelines: "On-Topic: ... anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon." I think you could categorise the Ukraine protests as an interesting new phenomenon in a way you can't most of the others.
- Lucy_karpova 13y ago
  Yeah, these medieval brutality scenes show how desperately the government wants power and this fact reveals that Ukraine is fighting not against Russia or supporting joining EU, but for their human rights. Apart from being obviously political it's also an anti-corruption revolution. The whole legislative body is corrupted to issue laws dated by Jan 16 2014. The whole judicial system is criminal to put people to jail for carrying a Maidan badge with them or wearing a helmet. There are no good words about local police and special troops who arrest, torture and kill the innocent. There are 2 main questions to ask: how did this massive criminalization happen? and is there a peaceful way out?
zzzcpan 13y ago
> Why so much Ukraine on HN? Maybe there are a lot of Ukrainians on HN. Considering that Ukraine has a lot of developers and internet access there is one of the fastest and cheapest in the world.

by kushti 13y ago

Why so much Ukraine on HN? Protests are happening almost everyday in some european country. No Thailand protests covered here. Why the hysteria about Ukraine here?

001sky 13y ago

Ukraine is geo-politically an important region, and has long history of being a part of the chess-board of empire building in Europe. It's not a value judgemnet, it's just more things are in play and the outcomes are more consequential. Thailand is a unique place, and is historically more self-contained, so the politics of Thailand don't have the ripple-effects, in terms of security implications for the region. Thailand, for example, was never conquered by a European power. So it lacks the baggage of post-colonialism, and whilst has its own intriques, they are more unique to the country iMHO. (You were probably asking a rhetorical question, but these are worth considering for those who are not aware of them.)

vonmoltke 13y ago

Thailand notwithstanding, are any of these other protests building improvised forts in the streets of a major city or taking over government buildings around the country? Edit: 001sky has the better, less flippant reason.

saganus 13y ago
Well, it might not be the same, but in Mexico there are so called self-defense groups, that try to fight against organized crime. They are armed groups of civilians that took control of entire towns and their surrounding areas, to stop the cartels from doing as they please. They have gunfights with cartels and when they successfully drive them away, they pickup armored vehicles, guns and money, and everything else the crime groups leave behind. The situation is so delicate that not even the army wants to try to fight these groups. They are negotiating and having meetings and all (I'm guessing the social cost of just obliterating these groups is too high; we are talking about 3 thousand armed people ready to get into action in 15 minutes, that's a lot of guns and civilians that you just can't bomb away with no repercusions. Not that the government can't, but it's too pollitically and socially costly), but the army nor the police or any other government authority have control of those areas. I believe that's a notch above improvised forts in the city's streets. So, my point is not to compare both conflicts as if one was "above" the other, both problems are nasty and very bad things that are happening right now, however like someone said in a similar story posted days ago, this is not a political forum to the extent where it has nothing to do with technology or hacking, in any sense of the word, unless you want to consider social protest as a form of "government hacking" or "societal hacking", but then not only one country's conflict should be posted, but conflicts from all over the world. I'm guessing part of this trend of having social and political issues popping up in technology news sites (HN, Slashdot, etc) is that, as would be expected, social unrest is highly tied to communication technologies such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc, and that overlap is what brings social unrest news to the frontpages of techonology-related sites. The most obvious example I can think of is the conflicts in Egypt and how they came to be. But alas, I think my point still stands in that Ukraine's conflicts are in no way (that I can see) more related to techonology news, than say Mexico's conflicts, and those haven't been covered in HN, so I fail to see what is so special about Ukraine that gets to be posted several times in the past few days. Maybe someone can enlighten me on this? I don't intend to underestimate what's happening there or to dismiss the conflicts, but I, like someone else already said, don't come to HN for political news, unless they are somehow related to technology (NSA antics, Wikileaks, etc)
- IgorPartola 13y ago
  What you describe is going on in Mexico sounds fascinating. Where can I read more about it?
  - saganus 13y ago
    At the risk of putting yet more political news in HN, here are some news in English. I'm not sure how accurate these are as I just skimmed over them. [Edit: I don't know how accurate these are, but they are from 'reputable' sources I think, but I guess that depends on your personal opinion. It's not the HuffPo though.] I live in Mexico so I have access to news coverage and even YouTube videos of the self-defense group's leader himself, which I will link below, but it's in Spanish. Maybe if a couple of people ask for it I can do a transcription in English. So here: The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/28/mexico-drug-cartel-self-defence-groups-michoacan http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/28/mexico-drug-car... WaPo: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/in-the-hills-of-michoacan-self-defense-groups-battle-a-mexican-drug-cartel/2013/09/09/6947e47a-119f-11e3-a2b3-5e107edf9897_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/in-the-hill... WSJ: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304007504579347170924367970 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230400750... Interviews with one of the leaders of one of the groups, in Spanish. (there are different groups in differente cities/town which don't have any connection between them. They are all independent as far as I know, not organized toghether yet). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9S1FMJ6NX8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9S1FMJ6NX8 Here, the leader of the group in Tepalcatepec, Michoacan, Doctor Mireles (he's a surgeon) explains how things started getting so crazy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9S1FMJ6NX8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9S1FMJ6NX8 It's heart-breaking, but one of the most impressive and wicked things he says is, if you forward to minute 6:57, he explains how, even when the cartels where in the area since a lot of years already, civilians got fed up when this happened, and I'm quoting: "The problem blew up when they [cartel members] came to your house and told you 'I like your wife, I'll bring her back in a moment. But in the meanwhile go get your girl a bath [girl meaning your daughter, around 10 to 13 years old] because I will be taking her for several days' and then they would not return her to you until she was pregnant. THAT was the reason the situation exploted in Tepalcatepec". Some minutes before, at 4:28 he explains why he joined the movement. He says that in the month of December only (of 2012 I believe) 14 girls between the ages of 10 and 11 were raped. And all this on top of things like, for every cow that you sell, you had to pay X amount of pesos to the cartels. For every kilo of tortilla, same thing. Basically it was a form of cartel taxes. The thing is he says that even when they had that extorsion thing going on, things were relatively "in peace", meaning that executions and such were just happening between cartel members, and not with the civilian population. And then he explains the quote above, of what made everything blow to pieces... Now, this Mireles guy is just the leader of the groups in one of the municipalities, namely Tepalcatepec. But other groups are already active from other places as well. Also, you have to take into account that, at least Tepalcatepec, in 2005, it had around 22,000 people. So it's not a big city but it's definitely not just a collection of houses. That's why I said that things are also quite dark and siniter down here.

davidw 13y ago

They're all equally off-topic as per the guidelines.

viach 13y ago

From what i can see here - there is a lot of hackers among protesters. They do they day work and go throwing rocks in the police afterwards.

IgorPartola 13y ago
Case in point: https://github.com/fre5h/DoctrineEnumBundle/pull/12#issuecomment-33023169 https://github.com/fre5h/DoctrineEnumBundle/pull/12#issuecom...
- angersock 13y ago
  bwahahahahah that's awesome: I will take a look later. Much much later. Because I'm Ukrainian and we have revolution right now. Sorry And then the supportive comments. <3 open sores software.
  - IgorPartola 13y ago
    Yeah, that comment also reminds me of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0WStLAYB9Q http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0WStLAYB9Q. OK, I'll stop redditing all over the place.
dmytrish 13y ago
Yes, Ukraine has one of the largest IT outsourcing economies in Europe. That may be far from the start-up world of Silicon Valley, but that somewhat affects the US IT industry.

tim333 13y ago

Looking at the HN guidelines: "On-Topic: ... anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon." I think you could categorise the Ukraine protests as an interesting new phenomenon in a way you can't most of the others.

Lucy_karpova 13y ago
Yeah, these medieval brutality scenes show how desperately the government wants power and this fact reveals that Ukraine is fighting not against Russia or supporting joining EU, but for their human rights. Apart from being obviously political it's also an anti-corruption revolution. The whole legislative body is corrupted to issue laws dated by Jan 16 2014. The whole judicial system is criminal to put people to jail for carrying a Maidan badge with them or wearing a helmet. There are no good words about local police and special troops who arrest, torture and kill the innocent. There are 2 main questions to ask: how did this massive criminalization happen? and is there a peaceful way out?

zzzcpan 13y ago

> Why so much Ukraine on HN? Maybe there are a lot of Ukrainians on HN. Considering that Ukraine has a lot of developers and internet access there is one of the fastest and cheapest in the world.