Man, the amount of disdain people have for protesters in the comments to this story is really shocking. I do not exactly understand where it's coming from. Yanukovych is a corrupt petty thief and rapist, turned politician, who has very close ties with Russia, and is stealing from the Ukrainian people through corruption. He rigged an election in 2004 and only massive riots prevented him from coming into power then by forcing a new vote. In any civilized country any of these individual issues would have prevented him from being eligible to be president.
The basic political problem in Ukraine is that Russia still has lots of influence over it, and Russia sees it as its territory separated temporarily after the breakup of the USSR. Ukraine is dependent on Russia for things like natural gas, and thus cannot simply break away from the abusive relationship. Russia naturally has an interest in having a political puppet in power in Ukraine. Who better to do this than a convicted felon like Yanukovych? This is how the riots started this time around: to protest the sudden pro-Russian turn of the Yanukovych administration.
Ukraine has for some time now faced the tough choice: continue its abusive but familiar relationship with Russia or turn to Europe and risk everything to try to build a new relationship with the EU? IMO, until Ukraine grows a spine and does what's best for its people long term, it will continue getting into situations like this. Yanukovych, while completely corrupt, is not the ultimate evil. He is a lackey that will be replaced if he is ousted. The real issue here is Russia.
While I sympathize with the protesters, the disdain you speak of should surprise no one.
First, Yanukovich won the last election when his opponents were in power. I think this is a good enough indicator that he has lots of supporters.
Second, the Ukrainians went through all of this already in 2004 and apparently nothing particularly good came out of it. The country is in the same place it was 10 years ago and Yanukovich can hardly be held responsible for that.
Just to add a personal anecdote... I've met a random Ukrainian couple while vacationing recently. They didn't speak Russian at all, so most definitely not from the east or other pro-russia kind of Ukrainians. And when asked about this uprising they expressed complete and utter apathy. They had zero hopes for their lives to improve regardless of the outcome.
Just because he won does not mean that he has the license to abuse his people and steal from them. That is a flawed argument. He also should not have been eligible to run in the first place. Apply it to your country, imagine if it's current leader told you that you could not oppose the government in any meaningful way, have him/her profiteer off his/her position, then tell me if you feel apathy.
Anecdotes like yours are useless as well: I am a Ukrainian American from the eastern-most part of Ukraine. I do not support Yanukovych and do care about the protests in that I support the rioters. People that leave Ukraine often are apathetic about the fate of their countries because it does not impact them directly. Even people that live there sometimes can display this behavior. It does not legitimize anything that Yanukovych is doing.
Lastly, if he is ousted it does not magically mean that Ukraine will be better off. Ukraine will take 100 years (IMO) to find its identity and grow enough to become a proper democracy. But ousting a corrupt president sends a pretty clear message to any future leader and it is progress.
I think you misunderstood me. My argument was simply that there are many people who support Yanukovich and unsurprisingly feel disdain towards those trying to overthrow the president they've elected.
Thanks for clarifying. I understand people in his core regions and pro Russia Russians supporting him. I cannot understand the fairly progressive and very intelligent community here on HN supporting this wanna-be dictator.
No not at all. IMO that has nothing to do with intelligence/education. The issue is twofold. First, most voters in Ukraine have known the USSR and it does skew their views. The "good old times" seem too good to let go. The propaganda machine was strong back then and the idea that Russia could lead the entire region into its former glory does have some appeal.
Second, the people with ties to both Russia and Ukraine might actually believe that Ukraine is just a part of Russia and that its independence is a temporary thing. The two countries have a very long history that is full of intertwined interests, population mixing, etc. Remember that Kiev was a prospering city from where the ruling class moved to a tiny fortress up north called Moscow.
I do not buy "Ukraine is a Russian territory" mostly based on the treatment that the Ukrainian nationals in the USSR received: artificial feminine, oppression, active suppression of Ukrainian culture and language, etc. The biggest hurdle here IMO is that Ukraine has not been independent for very much of its existence and has only known democracy in the last 23 years. The people have no sense of how a democracy is supposed to look, feel, and work. I think that once people who lived in the USSR are replaced with the generations to follow things might improve slightly. For now this is all really a struggle to find the Ukrainian identity. To put this into perspective think of the US in 1800. Not exactly a stable or peaceful time, is it?
Ok. So they are rather brainwashed than stupid. In other words they strive for such irrational things like glory rather than better life conditions. Is the actual situation any better than it used to be in soviet times regarding unemployment, affordable healthcare, education?
To clarify, by "glory" really I mean both pride in the country and quality of life combined. Brainwashed might be a strong word. Mislead and misremembering is probably more accurate. This is as far as I'm concerned the same thing that happens in the US where Tea partiers talk about how great America was 50 years ago (it wasn't, unless you were a white male). This is the same nostalgia for things that weren't really there but seemed like they were.
As far as actual conditions, I cannot judge this well. I left Ukraine for the US about 14 years ago. I have family and friends there, but I cannot tell exactly if things are better or worse than pre-1990. I can say that they are definitely not good currently. Median income is low, prices are high, good jobs are scarce. Education is something I don't know much about.
The healthcare system there is technically state run but practically is what I would call "microcapitalism": you have to pay effectively a bribe to your physician and you have to buy all of his/her supplies for whatever procedure you need. It's almost a libertarian heaven: you negotiate what you need done and can shop around for any medication and supplies needed. If anything it's a case study for how a market solution like this means no quality control on the care you receive. If you cannot afford the "premium" care where you pay the doctor directly, you will just end up waiting weeks, months, or years for the government to pay for your treatment, by which point your condition is likely to get worse. There are no charities, etc. to step up and pay for you: the market does not want those. Even if it did, my gut feeling would be that the charities would simply fall prey to corruption and would become money laundering machines.
An example of this is my grandfather that about a year ago went for his physical and needed to have blood drawn and to get vaccinations. The doctor told him to go across the street to a pharmacy to buy needles and vaccines. My grandfather spent the next two hours waiting in line for service, and ended up paying a few pennies for all of this. The doctors cannot hold onto this stuff themselves since they or their staff will just sell it for cash out of the back door.
Another example is my other grandfather who passed away a few years ago of colon cancer. He could have been saved with a colonoscopy, except he had one about 10 years prior to that and the hospital did not have any anesthetic. Naturally he did not want to experience the same pain again, so he never went back, developed colon cancer and died in horrible pain. His nephew ended up going to a hospital, grabbing a random doctor off his shift, paying him about $1000 in cash to drive 50 miles away to help my grandfather with his pain in his last few days.
> I've met a random Ukrainian couple while vacationing recently. They didn't speak Russian at all, so most definitely not from the east or other pro-russia kind of Ukrainians. And when asked about this uprising they expressed complete and utter apathy.
If you are Russian-speaking, it is very likely they feigned apathy so as to not offend you or to get bogged down in an extended political argument.
They want Ukraine to join European union. and the fate of Ukraine will be pretty grim in that case. My (not only mine's, actually) conclusion is based on experience of former Baltic USSR republics and former states from the Socialist block, including Bulgaria, Slovakia, etc.
I come from one of your "former Baltic USSR republics" (actually a country with a long history before being occupied by soviet Russia).
I saw the changes from gaining freedom from Russian occupation and joining the EU with my own eyes.
We gained so much from EU, I don't know were to start.
Financially: we got a lot of our infrastructure built with EU funds (roads, etc.), if you see anything modernized even in the remote places of my country, you usually see a EU sign next to it.
Legally: there are always discussions about EU legislation, but a lot of it makes our lives better. Most recent example: smoked meat products will be allowed to be produced only with smoke, not chemicals.
Culturally: I used to be living in a land of grumpy cats interested only in themselves. To some extent it still is that way (see http://imgur.com/z5rYv). However the open borders policy has a big ongoing effect: most of the people have seen (or seen the effects on their friends) how people behave and communicate in the Western Europe. Majority of people have got more friendly, polite and positive about the future.
Citizen of a neighbour of "former Baltic USSR republic" here. We also gained so much from EU membership that it's hard to describe in full. But it's also hard to notice how every single piece of existing infrastructure was improved with EU money, and many new things were built - roads, transportation, as well as playgrounds and football fields.
Yes, we have a lot of complainers here, but they mostly blame EU for either what particular neighbour countries did to us before we were even a member state, or they blame EU for whatever anti-EU crap some British newspapers produces this month (Some newspapers in UK don't like EU, they write nonsense about legislations like the one with juices or water, the news spreads and people here believe it. Seen this many times).
TL;DR: this side of the world, joining EU is a Good Thing for the people.
EDIT: a reply made me realize that I'm not sure if it was The Guardian or another British paper that spins anti-EU nonsense, so I removed the name.
> whatever anti-EU crap The Guardian produces this month (Some newspapers in UK don't like EU, they write nonsense about legislation...
The point is a good one, but you may be confusing the Guardian with e.g. the Daily Mail or the Telegraph, both right-wing anti-EU papers. The Guardian is centre-left, and neutral/pro-EU.
Updated. I'm not 100% sure now if what I read was in The Guardian or another British paper; I tend to confuse them sometimes. I stand by the rest of my comment though.
Take a closer look to the conditions in which most people live from where you have come. Or at their prospects in life. Or prospects of economy. I think that will change your opinion slightly.
The number of Russians in Latvia increased significantly during the Soviet occupation of Latvia when the size of the community grew from 10.5% of the total population in 1935 (206,499) to 34.0% in 1989 (905,515). It started to decrease in size again after Latvia re-gained independence in 1991 falling to 26.9% (557,119) in 2011.
There's a point of time where Latvia went EU route, namely 1995. Nothing changed at that time. The trend started in 1991 (when USSR was split) continued until not very far past. The most important consequence of that trend is low fertility.
I also would like to comment on your question. From what I saw in my life, happy people are fertile people. The people who feels support from all directions are fertile people. And also happy ones.
Do you honestly believe in what you are implying? Just because population grew - therefore people were happy in USSR?
I was born in Lithuania, a country which was occupied at that time and even though I don't remember much there's lots of people to tell the story. A story no one in their right mind would chose to live in.
Stop thinking you know anything about how we live and what we want because you're just being an ignorant idiot.
FYI, Baltic states and ex-ussr-satellites are doing great in EU. Sure we still got a long way to go. But current state is good enough. Well, at least 10x better than Ukraine, Belorussia and other ex-ussr states that stayed together with Russia.
Many Russians/Ukrainians/Belorussians come to ex-ussr-now-eu for shopping and medical procedures. Why? Stuff is cheaper and better quality here in Lithuania. And salaries are higher too :)
I know a number of Belorussians, and they all want to move to the EU. They also regularly drive to Poland for shopping, because it's cheaper and more things are available there :)
Hell yes!
Folks from Saint Petersburg shop in Finland. They even order parcels to Finnish addresses next to the border because Russian mail sucks badly.
Once I was crossing from Finland to SPb and I was questioned by customs on whether I've bought my stuff in Finland. Apparently, everybody's doing that and they are trying to tax it.
Goods are unreasonably expensive in Russia. I was living in Netherlands which is not particularly cheap but Russian prices for the same stuff are 2x NL price normally. Incomes are lower and inequality is hellish.
The Russian mail "sucks" because there was a sudden horrifying jump in mail packages volume. Russian Postal Service wasn't prepared to that. It is doing progressively better as time goes.
1 I dislike very much the fact of being dragged into a discussion of this kind. Problems of Russian Mail are universally known.
2 Circa 2004 two my parcels arrived to different post offices late and cut open. There was no valuables inside (I wasn't that naive.) Ever since I used express services (DHL, TNT, PE)
3 I heard similar stories from other people (late&open)
4 Recently I received two packages by Russian Mail. They arrived late (1 month travel time) but were not open. An improvement.
5 Still I (we) use tracking to pick a parcel as local offices don't notify receivers. They let a package bounce silently. Forewarned is forearmed.
6 Lady at the post office was very kind.
7 Before receiving my parcels I was studying a vk.com official community for computeruniverse.ru clients, which is full of horror stories and detailed official 20-step instructions on how not to get screwed.
8 The same applies to letters, unfortunately. A local letter may travel for a month (even town hall officials complain about that).
9 A letter I sent from San Francisco arrived to Yekaterinburg in about three months. Just before I arrived myself.
1 You started that. They started not long time ago, you can see an onset of jokes about Russian Post Service on the popular jokes site bash.im (former bash.org.ru). This onset started about two or three years ago.
2 Me and my friends and relatives had not have problems at the same time.
7 I can cite you horror stories about everything. 20 steps to eat potato and not get screwed. I think you also heard about selection bias, do you?
10 I think you had to start with YMMV instead of ending with it. Because, you know, for every anecdote you tell I have another anecdote to tell you.
You should ask not only your friends and relatives, but all people all around, forming the proper representation. For example, you haven't asked farmers about changes that came to them. Or industrial workers. I almost certain about that.
I believe that yours gets dangerously close to Godwin's.
I had in mind that relying only to "statistics" from close friends and relatives skews one's view SO MUCH that one should not even apply that argument in almost any discussion.
You either try to get the whole picture of life or live in the sweet bubble.
The bubble had its own good properties - less mind energy expended, you can focus on what entertains you most. But that about all. To plan your journey through life you have to have the complete picture, or, at least, try to acquire it.
Please elaborate your Godwin accusation, and explain, in what way you believe that I lack a complete picture. I am fully aware, FYI, that there exists a 30-50% Russian minority in Ukraine (with exact percentage depending on whether you count by ethnicity or by native language).
In addition, please explain how it is that the "friends and family" whose opinions you so adamantly declare are irrelevant are also living in bubbles. Are millions of people living in bubbles? Thousands? Dozens? Just me? How many exactly? I would like to hear your answer.
Or is it, perhaps, only people you don't agree with who live in "bubbles"?
If people are not allowed to go abroad at all for 50+ years, they'll naturally flock in bigger numbers once borders are open.
To be fair, there's still a huge gap between post-ussr and western countries. But we're catching up. It takes time to fix what 50 years in ussr did. Some people want money & stuff fast, they go abroad. Other people prefer to work on rebuilding their country and/or see more business opportunities in developing market.
By the way, it's not only ex-ussrs emigrating. I heard more and more Spaniards and Greeks come to Norway to earn more :)
USSR times factories were ineffective as hell. They went under simply because they couldn't stay afloat. Outdated technologies, R&D focused on specific parts of weapons, ineffective management, shitty environmental policies... USSR times factories were a complete disaster. All of that closed years before EU. And thanks god they closed. Now I can swim in a lake next to my hometown without worrying about allergies. You know how we could tell what colour carpets the factory is making that day? By looking at a lake next to it :)
Oh man. I cannot see how what you are saying makes sense.
First, joining the EU and trading with the EU are different things. We are talking about a very low level of commitment here for what originally started these riots. Please tell us how reducing corruption and creating a trade agreement with the EU a bad thing for Ukraine?
Second, what does burning tires have to do with anything about this political situation? What would you do if you living in Kiev right now? Reading more of these comments I am starting to think that most people who express this disdain are really just trolling for Russia.
I have something to say about your second point, though. Protesters are dumb ruining the city by burning the tires, regardless of the political situation. I am not living in Kiev, I planned a visit to it soon, I don't anymore. I don't know what to do. I am just saying that burning tires and cars is bad and stupid. Protesters have earned disdain at least from me by doing that.
The are not just trolling for Russia. LJ is really popular online platform for Putin's prpaganda, and a lot of people are getting paid for pro-Putin politic comments. Usually after third page the amount of such comments falls down considerably, probably they are being paid for with a lower rate.
No. If you were more familiar with the situation, you would understand that EU is only being used as a token signal (not goal) of the direction the country should be heading in. What the protesters really want is for the current government to resign and not to sign a (undoubtedly corrupt) deal with Russia that would effectively infringe on Ukraine's economic and political sovereignty.
The problem of course is that Ukraine has no economic sovereignty already.
It is utterly dependent on Russian gas for its energy needs. Even if Yanukovich steps down, next leader will have the exact same problem - where to get gas to power the country and you can bet your last grivna that the price of gas will go ballistic if Ukraine is to do something, anything to jeopardize the security of Russian borders. For example, align themselves with the EU. They are in a check-mate :-|
The vast majority of trade Ukraine does is with Russia, so souring that relationship will spell economic doom for Ukraine. Unless the EU is willing to purchase more products from Ukraine than Russia while at the same time providing them with loans and cheap gas I don't see how a trade agreement with the EU is a good thing.
It's not like Yushchenko was able to get anything beneficial from the EU, why does anyone think Yatsenyuk, Klitschko or Tyahnybok will do any better (assuming any of them could even get elected splitting the vote in the west)?
Note that I said "economic and political". At present, Ukraine is mostly politically sovereign. The deal with Russia would make it much worse, especially on political front.
Do you want to assert that Bulgaria, Slovakia would be better in Russian sphere of influence?
Do you suggest that benzopirenes are more harmful than a lot of tear gas being used against protesters?
Kiev is living its own life, re-read the Zyalt's post if you haven't read this yet.
Protesters are stupid? Ok, is it better to stay quiet when you have your president becoming a dictator? When police is more like bandits and courts are lawless? When peaceful protests are almost outlawed just because it annoys the dictator and its clique?
> Ok, is it better to stay quiet when you have your president becoming a dictator? When police is more like bandits and courts are lawless? When peaceful protests are almost outlawed just because it annoys the dictator and its clique?
Reminds me of one country that tends to drone strike everything that they can't spy on.
Please elaborate on this: "conclusion is based on experience of former Baltic USSR republics". I am from a former Baltic USSR republic and I have no idea how you came up with your, as you might say, stupid conclusion. It is just plain not true.
Let me respectfully disagree with what the real problem is. The real problem is not Russia. You are absolutely right that Russia wants influence in Ukraine. You are right that Yanukovych is a thief. But the real problem is people believing they need someone to reign over them. You think you can elect better politicians, who can put your interest in front of their own self-interest; who will not steal while chanting about EU integration? To me it's absurd how people in Eastern Europe look at west in admiration of their quality of life, yet fail to see how politicians in the west lie and steal and abuse their power.
Unfortunately, I can see how this Ukraine revolution can turn out. I believe the opposition will prevail and new leaders will be elected. Will they be able to remove all corrupt bureaucrats? No they won't. Those people will stay in their place, like the mafia. And they will corrupt everyone else around them. EU integration is just words to calm the public down. Real issues are never addressed by politicians.
The only true worthwhile revolution comes when people realize they don't need anyone to rule them. When the majority realizes that, no more revolutions and violence can follow.
> The only true worthwhile revolution comes when people realize they don't need anyone to rule them. When the majority realizes that, no more revolutions and violence can follow.
Indeed, in an anarchy, you don't have any regime to stage revolutions against. But violence? Oh, you'd get plenty of that. It would just be distributed, instead of organized: survival of the fittest.
States did a great job convincing people that anarchy == violence. Yet what is the evidence for that? If you look at history, an average state over the course of, say, 10 years, murdered more people than the bloodiest of all anarchists did over his lifetime.
And then you should also understand that anarchy doesn't mean no laws and policing. It means that people choose to live by the laws they want (and not by voting, but by becoming customers of different law firms) and people choose private protection agencies to pay to instead of being bitten by state police troopers if they disobey. If people decide they don't like the service, they stop paying and go to a competitor. Now try doing that with a state and taxation.
My law firm (also a protection service) has simple rules - in all conflicts with clients of other law firms our clients are right by default. We have the best security enforcers, so we can deliver on that rule, too.
We may be expansive, but having your home burned cause you signed with inferior security provider is far more expansive, right?
How exactly this situation differs from payign mafia for protection? At least with state there's just one mafia to pay off, and you can vote for the godfather every few years.
If that's the rule of your firm then it is going to go out of business pretty fast. Why? Because if you insist that your clients are always right then you will inevitably get into violent conflicts with other firms. Violence is expensive and since you can't really print money and raise taxes like governments do, you only have this limited amount of money from your customers. As a businessmen, you want to make money, not lose it. Thus, you'd have to really calculate whether it is better to lose a couple of your customers and money by not insisting they are right when they obviously are not, or lose a lot more money by getting into violent conflicts. Conflicts which, by the way, you will inevitably lose, because other firms don't have the rule you have and decide to resolve conflicts among themselves peacefully, while you, on the other hand, are at war with all of them.
Apply logic to your hypothetical situation instead of FUD and you will see how things will work. Governments are simply monopolies on power and law and we know very well monopolies do not work out good for customers.
So if other firms can decide to resolve conflicts among themselves peacefully, then they can also decide to band together into a federation that serves their interests. Monopolies form because they're efficient.
If you say that regular people will prevent that, then you're just back to having violent revolutions, except against monopolies, instead of governments.
Monopolies and cartels don't exist for long unless governments subsidize them or otherwise help by regulating the industry (and not allowing new players to disrupt the market). You will hardly find an example of a monopoly which was not supported by the government in one form or another.
In the free market cartels break down very fast, because one member eventually decides to defect or because another powerful player comes to the market and realizes he can make a lot of money by providing customers with a better and cheaper service than the cartel members.
Generally, if most people agree they don't want rulers, there will be no rulers. The only reason why governments keep their power is because the managed to convince people that the alternative is a complete chaos and destruction, while in reality it is only governments who create chaos and destruction on an unimaginable scale. Even the most oppressive government can't go for a long time using just force, it has to lie and convince people. If it can't, it is brought down.
And to that I'll respond by asking how many Amazons there are? If it isn't monopoly it's pretty close.
How about Google? Is there any real competition to ad words? Or google search? Does anybody use Bing without being forced? Duck Duck Go is nice, but it has worse results and will have worse results forever.
How about companies making desktop CPUs? Oligopoly isn't monopoly per se, but it's so close it doesn't matter. Nobody enforced that, it arised by itself.
Guess what - making processors in ever smaller process has huge upfront costs and small costs per unit. But that's just economic myth, right?
First of all, Google's been around for slightly more than a decade. I can totally see it losing its monopoly over time (same for Amazon). Also, are Google and Amazon doing a bad job? Are customers (e.g. those who place ads or buy books) unhappy? If a monopoly delivers I have no problem with it. Furthermore, Google doesn't prevent other players from entering the market, it doesn't lobby the government to regulate search and require all companies to acquire a search licence if they wish to get into this business. This is why you see businesses like DuckDuckGo taking their chance.
What I really insist on is that if a monopoly is doing a bad job and if there is no government to protect it, it will inevitably be challenged. How long did it take for Google to challenge Apple's iPhone? Not long. And they really had a huge advantage and were actually doing a pretty good job.
The only true monopoly is a government because even if you wanted to ever challenge it, you'd lose your money, freedom and possibly life. Governments have no respect for people at all because people are not their customers. They know that people have no choice but to pay.
The fact that monopolist doesn't need to play dirty doesn't mean it's not a monopoly. In fact it's the definition of natural monopoly. Same with the fact that customers are happy.
Yep, monopoly can fall, like everything else. Still the statement "natural monopoly is a myth" is false. Besides - states can fall just like companies. They are just bigger and fall slower than companies, but they eventually all fall.
But people do have a choice, at least in the well run countries. They are more like share owners than customers - they can vote on who will be on the board. And they can migrate if they doesn't like some policy. For example in EU you can always move to another country if you don't like your own. It's why I don't support global government or too close unification of EU. I prefer to have a choice.
Proposing to change states into system of companies is a risky experiment. We know how to organize states so they are quite just. Some people doesn't want to follow that schema because they want power, but we know how to do this if we want to. On the other hand we don't know how to separate power without a state and universal laws. It all sounds nice in theory, but in practice it probably would fail spectacularly. I don't want to be part of anarchism experiment - if you want to do sth like this please do it on volunteers.
BTW google started in 1997 IIRC. It's like the old movies that came out decade age = in nineties :) Makes me feel old.
> They are more like share owners than customers - they can vote on who will be on the board. And they can migrate if they doesn't like some policy.
I never understood this argument. If I don't like every company, I can start my own company and disrupt the market. But if I don't like every state in existence, I cannot start my own country and migrate to it.
It is more like slavery: you can choose your master, but you can never become fully free. Just like russian Yuriy's day( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri%27s_Day ): once a year russian peasants were granted the right to move to another master. "If you don't like your master, why don't you go to another?".
> if you want to do sth like this please do it on volunteers.
This is the exact problem with governments/states: people are not allowed to live however they like. It is not like anarchy is crazy social order that even anarchists are scared to try. Anarchists are simply not allowed to start their own country/city and live there.
> BTW google started in 1997 IIRC. It's like the old movies that came out decade age = in nineties
BTW, google is not a monopoly in many countries(including USA). It doesn't even have a majority market share in every country(e.g. Russia, China)
Well, you have to establish such protection agency first. You start your business, run advertising, etc. People come to you and pay for your services. Most people don't want to rob and kill other people, they want peace and protection, and they pay you for such things.
Now, what incentive do you have to blindly protect every robber who payed you? If you try to prevent punishment of a robber, your current(as well as potential) customers won't view your services as desirable, and simply won't pay you. Then you go out of business.
I think Murray Rothbard makes a better argument(while dissecting many common objections similar to yours). I recommend the chapter "Police, Law, and the Courts" from his book "For a new liberty: the libertarian manifesto" : http://mises.org/document/1010/For-a-New-Liberty-The-Liberta...
What you call anarchism is really a very specific subcategory called anarcho-capitalism.
In any case, it is similarly naive as other strands of anarchism. Power vacuums will inevitably be filled. The question is: What do you want them to be filled with.
Calling something naive doesn't make it so. Saying "Power vacuums will inevitably be filled" doesn't make it true because you say so. What if there is no power vacuums and people don't want to be ruled by anyone? Is there anything to be filled then? What I personally consider to be naive is the idea that governance is inevitable, but that's no logical argument against government, so I don't go around saying it.
Anarchism very explicitly calls for a power vacuum to be created. That's actually what the word means. Now, I can easily believe that a majority of people wouldn't want to be ruled by anyone, but what do you do about the minority who want to rule over the rest?
Society needs a response against this minority, and this response needs to be organized somehow. Somebody will be in a role of organizing the defense of society against those who would seek to rule over it. But now it sounds as if that somebody (or somebodies) are in a pretty powerful position, no?
This is why so many anarchists are so counter-productive. Of course the basic notions of allowing personal liberty and to be baseline-skeptical against authority are good. The thing is, you won't actually achieve personal liberty by just getting rid of any sort of government-like thing. It would be more productive to discuss what kind of government is best suited to protect personal personal liberty.
Note that none of this is a defense of governments as they exist today. It is more a reminder that those who most seek to overthrow what they perceive to be the current oppressors are the most likely to end up being the future oppressors. Or, in comic form: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3246#comic
> It is more a reminder that those who most seek to overthrow what they perceive to be the current oppressors are the most likely to end up being the future oppressors
Precisely. This is why I'm no fan of revolutions.
> Society needs a response against this minority, and this response needs to be organized somehow
If I hire a protection/defense agency to guard against those who wish to rule me, this agency only has a very limited amount of money and power. It cannot tax me indefinitely and it cannot print money. If I suspect it does something wrong with my money, I go to a competitor - and trust me, there will be plenty willing to have my money and do a better job.
Now, as I mentioned, this is only possible if people understand there need not be any force ruling them. If people think that they just need better rulers (like, I guess, they do in Ukraine, and like they do in Russia) then they are doomed to be enslaved by their rulers without regard for their interests. Thus, I agree with you that the vacuum has to be filled if it exists (if people believe they need a ruler), but if it doesn't exist then nothing can fill it. That's why I said the problem is in the people's minds, the problem is that they believe they need a better government.
"and trust me, there will be plenty willing to have my money and do a better job"
See this is the bit I don't understand, my understanding of market forces is that those that do the job better will grow if they are in anyway scalable. Now your in a position were small protection rings are unable to work against there large competitors. Similar to how you say you can't compete against government in the supply of defense of sovereignty these small firms can't compete against the large firms in defense of law.
So now you have a system were you have these large protection firms consolidating absorbing any small upstarts and focusing on specific territories (to become more efficient).
Soon you've carved up the protection by geographic region and these companies have carte blanche in their own regions with a few places having oligopolies. Now these groups were obviously very friendly during this time and obviously never abused their position because the market is good at incorporating moral values into the cost of what they buy... but you would have to admit that as they are now acting as the sole provider in a specific location then it makes sense for them to extort that region at an amount that is lower than the cost of leaving for those extorted.
Two or more big firms are better than having one violent monopoly. Furthermore, if people are well aware those are actually firms, it becomes very hard for those firms to bullshit people into obedience. Extortion wouldn't be called taxation, it would be called extortion and everyone will be able to see that. War wouldn't be called war, but would be called murder. And most likely people would rebel against that. So, if I was this businessman running a protection agency, what do you think would I do: risk losing my business and possibly being killed by an angry mob or steady profit and serving my customers well?
Truth is, governments are only able to run this charade because of the combination of power and brainwashing. Take one component away and it's gone.
Of course you might say "but people are so easily brainwashed, of course those firms are gonna be able to do it and convince people that them being de-facto government is a great thing". Well, ask yourself, these days, how many people can you convince that slavery is a good idea?
But you seem to be unhappy with the current system of the hundred or more big firms and are advocating disbanding these current governments and switching from this to even smaller firms. I'm confused because I believe this will naturally lead to these firms growing into larger firms with no oversight by the public at large and thus eventually give you even fewer options.
As to what it's called; the extortion would be called a compulsory service fee, war would be called large scale protective operations. What people call it privately isn't a problem until the point at which the extortion is costing them more than they think they can save by revolting.
As to why would the business do this? Because they can make more money doing this and it's not illegal because they are the law. They do not care about the good will of the customer, because the extra cost to the customer is not enough for the customer to act on. Prices are set to what the market will pay, in this case it's as close to revolt as the business can get away with.
I would also like to point out that I don't disagree with your assertion that their are negatives with a government controlled monopoly on law enforcement, I disagree with the idea that a free market system for it would not be subject to worse corruption/abuse.
Well, ask yourself, these days, how many people can you convince that bullying is a good idea? Just because an idea is not something that you would choose if you're enlightened, does not mean that people will not backslide into it.
> As to what it's called; the extortion would be called a compulsory service fee, war would be called large scale protective operations.
You're missing the point. Paying service fees is never taxation because the result of not paying for a service is denying that service, while the result of not paying taxes is forceful alienation of property and possibly imprisonment. I am yet to hear of a private company who threatened its customers with all that if they cancel their subscription. If this happens in the free market with the said protection agency, my point is that it will be called extortion and recognized for what it is. That's important because the threshold of compliance in people lowers when they recognize they are being robbed.
> Prices are set to what the market will pay, in this case it's as close to revolt as the business can get away with.
I don't understand this point. What prevents a competitor (say, a big investor) from entering the market and establishing another big protection firm with lower prices and better service? If you say "they all will form a cartel" then I will point out that cartels are always very unstable and someone deserts or another outsider disrupts the market, historically this has been true.
> I would also like to point out that I don't disagree with your assertion that their are negatives with a government controlled monopoly on law enforcement, I disagree with the idea that a free market system for it would not be subject to worse corruption/abuse.
What could be worse than conducting a theft from people calling it taxation, then be bribed by corporations and using those tax money to serve corporate interests? Simple math: a company bribes an official with $1, the official spends $10 of somebody else's stolen money (so it doesn't cost him anything) for that company interests and that makes the company $100. In the free market, companies at least deal with the money they actually made, so there's no "free" money for them and no one to bribe.
I didn't miss the point, I was being flippant in that they can call it what they like and there is little you can do about it, you can call it extortion among your friends but that doesn't change the outcome. I also think you're forgetting what service they're providing. If you aren't paying anyone for protection then anyone can rob you and no one will be enforcing consequences on them for you as you have no protection, anyone can break contract with you as you have no option to enforce the contract. Maybe you're rich enough to hire a personal bodyguard but the majority of people can not. The majority of people effectively have to pay this “service” fee or move or be insecure in their possessions.
Why doesn't another competitor enter the market? Well considering the market the competitor needs to be big enough to stand up to a literal attack by the incumbent. In the best case the incumbent and the newcomer both end up being about the same size and they compete. Alternatively as this hypothetical investor who has the capital to get about half of this large market I would do better spending the same investment on a smaller market were I can capture the whole market and force a higher percentage return on the investment. You can look at comcast/time warner to get an idea why these two big encumbents might not compete even without forming a cartel. If someone was to point me at google fiber as an example of how the market will be disrupted I'd point out the fact that the local companies are trying to use the legal system to thwart google fibers growth even within the city and if these companies were the enforcement of the legal system I don't particularly believe google would get a fair shake of the stick.
What could be worse? What could be worse than conducting a theft from people calling it a service fee, then be bribed by corporations and not delivering the service to serve a corporate interests? Simple math: a company pays (it's not a bribe it's legal) the protection company with $1, the protection company allows $10 of somebody's stolen property to be used (so it doesn't cost them anything) for that company and that makes the company $100. In a system with a democratic government, the official has to at least pay lip service to working for the public good and it's illegal to accept that payment.
I think all your assumptions come from the fact that you don't believe competition, specifically on the protection market, can work. If I could convince you that in fact it would, then it appears all other questions can be resolved. For example your hypothetical scenario in the last paragraph is absolutely impossible if people have a choice of whom to pay for what services. In fact, it is possible even if this firm is monopolistic: stolen property? how was it stolen? why did nobody care? why did customers thought it's okay to keep paying to that firm knowing that their property can be alienated at any point in the same way?
But anyhow, back to competition. First of all, for a competition to exist, it doesn't have to take 50% of the market. It only has to be sure that it is cheaper for the monopolist to compete with it fairly than to go to war using tactics such as predatory pricing or actual violence. In almost all cases fair competition is more profitable in the long term. It is established by many industry experts and economists that predatory pricing doesn't actually work. Only legislators seem to not grasp it and there's a good reason why: because their pay depends on the fact that they are supposedly protecting the public. I've read an awesome book about Airlines once (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000W6871G/) and at the time it was a big surprise for me to find that governments very often launched predatory pricing and anti-competitive cases against discounters, who tried to disrupt the market of big established carriers.
> In a system with a democratic government, the official has to at least pay lip service to working for the public good and it's illegal to accept that payment.
The difference is, in a democratic government official when elected knows almost definitely he's not going to lose his job for the next n years. He knows people will keep paying taxes. How does that create any incentive for him to work in the interests of the public? This kind of situation only creates incentives to accept bribes and use the position of power. If this official does this carefully, he will never face allegations, let alone jail time, because, of course, the judges and the police work in the same system with him and it is HIM who pays them, although not from his own money. The only people who go to jail are in the lower echelons of power and those are the ones who weren't careful enough to not piss off their masters. The Democratic system the west adores so much is just civilized and institutionalized corruption. It's a theatre pulled over the eyes of the people and it's so sad many people have this blind faith or at best acceptance of it.
Yes my main problem is I don't see how a free market system on protection would not devolve into a mafia-esque extortion scheme. I cover a bit more what powers I'd assume they effectively have in the other thread. Please correct me if I'm wrong on those assumptions (but please point out how they've been stopped from acquiring those powers).
So to sum up why you'd keep paying a protection monopoly even if it was abusive to you is because unless you have an effective alternative protection arrangement they have the power to do what they like to you and if you rock the boat you give them a reason to.
I'll have a look at that book and the premise that in free market competition these monopolies wouldn't form or would behave fairly to competitors if they did (Though normally I'd argue that you wouldn't have seen AT&T and Standard Oil stopping their practices without the oncoming threat of government intervention.) I will instead point out the question of “A rich merchant with a bag of gold, the king, the pope, and a man with a gun are alone in a room. Who is the most powerful?”. The answer is it depends on the man with the gun. The point being that while there are several different forms of power the ability to inflict violence is one of them and it's master is not necessarily market forces especially since it can shape the market. So how do you ensure a free market system?
There are several countries where you could visit and pay the local warlord money to ensure you're not harassed inside their territory. Whether they stick to the deal is somewhat questionable but several do, this does not mean I'd feel secure in their justice if one of their men decided to beat me, and I would be more than a fool to expect a refund if they did. Why would I pay the warlord instead of putting all my money toward bodyguards? Because the cost for the warlord if everyone does this is higher for him than losing men the first few times and then having a steady income. Why haven't all those who believe they will visit these countries to hire a large mercenary force to stabilize the region? Is it just more efficient to keep the local warlord? Similar abuses occurred with the mafia before an outside supplier of greater protection stepped in, unfortunately in the free market that outside supplier could just as easily be the more efficient yakuza.
I'd also like to point out that the demand to not be shot in the head is inelastic and a local provider of the service can manipulate the supply of not being shot in the head to reach a price to his liking.
Now if I grant you democracy is a more corrupt system would you still suggest to me that it is worse than what I conclude a system with a free market on protection would devolve into?
Also, note that firms cannot grow indefinitely, enormous corporations we see today are actually products of this governmental system, in which they bribe government for regulations and deny competitors opportunities.
A great example of a market force that prevented an entity from growing is a recent Bitcoin incident in which one hashing pool was close to 51% of hashing power, which would give it an ability to double spend or otherwise compromise the network. So people simply spread awareness and many withdrew from this pool, effectively lowering its market share. What makes you think this is impossible with other businesses?
I understand that they cannot grow indefinitely but being the sole survivor in a city is not far fetched. Ofcourse the higher income with less service in that city gives them additional funds to operate in other cities.
As to your second point nothing makes me think it's impossible when people are paying attention to the business. But I believe that apathy is a large factor. Not only that but in this unregulated world how would you even know that this business has enough of the market to be a threat. Why would you change to a worse service if you only suspect they're getting a bit big and it has real financial or service impacts for you. You in turn need to pass on to your customers these impacts making your business less appealing even though your competitor isn't.
If there's apathy it means people don't care. If they cared they would do something. For example, they would be paying a number of independent market research and consumer protection agencies to keep an eye on all other companies, so they wouldn't have to do it all by themselves. So, those companies would pretty much do the regulating/info function of a government, except that no one can force anybody else to use their service. That is, you DON'T HAVE to pay (as with taxes), but if you like, you CAN. That is the crucial difference.
Again, if people are apathetic about something, then what right on earth does a government have to extract money from them and teach them what's good and what's bad on this money, regardless of whether they agreed with that or not?
Why in the world would I pay these regulators? It's an extra cost and their service is provided even if I don't pay because somebody else will pay for it. Why should these protection firms cooperate. How do we know the regulators aren't influenced by whichever of the protection firms they buy from? Remember it's only illegal for these regulators to lie if your own protection company supports the particular laws that require this other company to be accurate.
If people are apathetic about the property rights of their neighbour what right does the government have to step in and stop them taking that property?
In fact how would that even work in this pay for protection system? The neighbour will buy into a protection firm that will take the property back and a fee? If they can't pay the fee they will be placed in a work camp to deter the same action from others? Unfortunately the cost for board is higher than what your paid in the work camp. Is this perfectly acceptable under your system? If not how is it prevented? Does that man buy protection from a second company that will go in and storm the workcamp? If you're too poor to buy protection from one of the companies how is it illegal for them to just be collected and put in work camps? I just can't see your system of pay for protection being less abusive than one with a government.
> Why in the world would I pay these regulators? It's an extra cost and their service is provided even if I don't pay because somebody else will pay for it.
You pay your taxes, don't you? Why wouldn't you pay private firms instead to do the same job more effectively? And then, of course, it's easy to imagine that such a regulator would only provide information to paying customers using a smartphone app, for example.
> How do we know the regulators aren't influenced by whichever of the protection firms they buy from?
How do you know your government regulator is not in bed with the company it regulates? In fact, you don't and in fact most of them are. You can only elect government officials (and not regulating agencies themselves) and then they stay in power for n years almost indefinitely.
On the free market, there's competition of regulators. If I suspect one regulator takes bribes, I switch to another. Or maybe I subscribe to both and compare their info. Or alternatively, if I saw they were all in bed with consumer businesses, I'd stop paying them completely, as would many people, and that means they'd go out of business.
> If people are apathetic about the property rights of their neighbour what right does the government have to step in and stop them taking that property?
This one I didn't understand. In fact your last paragraph looks very odd and I don't understand how you came to imagine such a scenario. One thing I can tell you is that the poor will be able to afford protection agencies, just like they can afford owning a car or a pair of jeans or a computer. A protection agency doesn't have to be expensive to be profitable and it doesn't mean having personal body guards. There are various segments on that market and each can be covered. The crucial difference is that the poor will now be customers of the protection agency, whereas in the current system, I guess you're not going to argue, it is the poor who most often become victims of police brutality and injustice - the reason is, they're not customers, the police and the judges will be paid indefinitely and they know it.
I'll provisionally agree that enough people could buy into regulatory information assuming it's useful enough. I'll even allow that it's not corrupted (though I have written a paragraph below on why I believe this wouldn't be the case). I'll allow that the regulators are able to discover who own the company above a protection firm all the way to the top. I'll allow that people will actively switch between companies to stop a local monopoly forming (though I've written another paragraph below saying why this might not be true). Is there any way you can stop an investor buying up all the competition in a small region at a price above market value for a competitive market and below market value if you had a monopoly and were willing to abuse it?
Ignore the next two paragraphs if you want as they're the ones referred to earlier:
I don't know that the regulators aren't in bed with the regulated in the public system. I do know that if people care about it enough they can effect the regulators. I believe it's easier for the regulators in a free market system to get in bed with the regulated because those most motivated in regulating a specific industry are those within the industry itself.
You may believe it's obvious that consumers will switch to the better option in the market but the vast majority don't because the majority of people can't pay attention to everything they spend money on all the time. If you look up the “What's my number” campaign in New Zealand you'll see that simply reminding people they could change electricity providers and giving them an easy way to compare them hugely increased switch overs. The point being in this protection market which would be a service you just pay every other month would be something to easily forget about until it's to late. Even given advertising by concerned parties how do I trust advertising anymore when there's no one regulating it, I could put out an advert saying I'm the official spokesperson for a company and what would be the consequence?
My last paragraph was admittedly a quick example without explaining the reasoning behind it. I'll explain my reasoning now. You say that protection and laws will be decided by what protection company you subscribe to. You obviously don't have a system outside these providers to enforce other laws except market forces.
These providers can decide what services they offer. One of these services will obviously be protection from theft. i.e. If I stole from you your protection service will take action against me in some form.
What is the incentive for your provider to not offer varying plans that we find socially objectionable but say 5% of society is ok with. i.e. Plan A we imprison the perpetrator for these crimes. Plan B we cut off their hands for these crimes. Plan C (our platnium package) we shoot the guy for any crime against you. Plan D (our cheapest) we take the perpetrator to a work camp were he works off his debt to you. (Plan D is at a work camp were room and board costs more than what we pay the perpetrator). These providers also offer lower penalties i.e. no work camp penalty to those who are customers.
So obviously the next step is your provider comes up with a set of rules that limit what other providers can do to you without some form of retribution. What form of retribution is this? Is it a financial penalty? If so how do I stop a rich man from saying I'll double the cost of the penalty just get rid of this man. If it's physical retribution does that mean we accept people being beaten up in the street by the protection providers as part of our daily lives?
Let's say one provider has imprisonment as a penalty, why would I pay more for a provider that offers the same service but there prison is nicer that the alternative provider. Unless say the providers have a reciprocal agreement were they place their own customers in their own prison, which of course means the rich get to live in a country club for the duration of their sentence and the poor get whatever they can afford.
Finally the fact that everyone can afford a provider. While I do not agree that everyone will be able to afford a provider and there won't be any homeless who can't be preyed on with impunity, or that there are no poor that can't afford health insurance (sorry I meant protection) we'll ignore that. Instead consider what happens if for the sake of argument I forget my payment one month or I'm outside of my protection services city/village. Am I suddenly no longer protected and subject to others whims? Are there roaming fees for protection? If it's a sunday night and I need to drive to the other side of the country to get to my dieing mum am I able to be beaten up at any gas station along the way with no penalties for the offender, and possibly penalties for me if I fight back?
Assuming we surmount these regional justice issues and we also get a system were the providers effectively offer an equivalent and fair level of 'justice' no matter who you subscribe with how do you stop one growing on the basis of being the most efficient and then leveraging economies of scale to get into a monopoly position. When the monopoly is established how do you expect a new upstart in the region to be able to get a reciprocal 'justice' agreement with the monopoly when from a business point of view it is better to not have the competition.
Alright, you have a lot of good questions here. I won't be able to answer them all, since this would expand the discussion enormously, but I'll get through some of the points.
> I believe it's easier for the regulators in a free market system to get in bed with the regulated because those most motivated in regulating a specific industry are those within the industry itself.
You do know that ex-regulators and those closest to the political elite are usually hired by companies to serve as lobbyists (usually called something like "consultants" or "advisors")?
> You may believe it's obvious that consumers will switch to the better option in the market but the vast majority don't because the majority of people can't pay attention to everything they spend money on all the time.
Absence of a government doesn't mean people would need to waste more time tracking things. It means they would have a choice of who would track all these things for them. So, for instance, I subscribe to consumer protection agency A and it then simply drives my choices based on its research. People wouldn't need to choose everything by themselves.
Also, you can't excuse forcing people to do certain choices because they, allegedly, are not willing to make them on their own. It smells nanny state and unless you give people choice of experiencing why is it important to make choices and giving them time to make them, they will never learn. When slavery was abolished, many slave owners used to say that black people cannot survive on their own, they don't know how to work for money and how to spend it properly, so they would be much better off with their master. Indeed, in some cases that was true, because it's very difficult to learn to do things you never tried doing before. Eventually, they did learn.
> Instead consider what happens if for the sake of argument I forget my payment one month or I'm outside of my protection services city/village. Am I suddenly no longer protected and subject to others whims? Are there roaming fees for protection?
The way the market would work nobody can predict. What I can say is that it would find a way to provide you with what you need. One can imagine that when you go to a different territory you are protected by another company with which your company has a contract. If your company doesn't have a contract with another company or you are a poor person who can't afford protection, my guess is that you would still be able to count on some minimal level of protection: if people in my neighborhood are getting robbed, I as a paying customer of my protection agency would want them to prevent this happening regardless of whether the victim is their client or not, because next time it could be me.
Again, I think you have interesting questions, but I believe this discussion can go endlessly. At this point, I'd like to recommend you one book, it is called "The Machinery Of Freedom", written by David D. Friedman, who is an economist and a lawyer. In it, he thoroughly describes how a society without government would work. One of the most interesting chapters is about competing protection agencies and why they in fact wouldn't turn into de-facto government-like mafia. He also has some very interesting talks on YouTube which I recommend. I think this book would definitely be of interest to you. You may not be convinced by it, but it presents some great mental exercises and it would at least provoke you to look at the world from a different point of view. If it happens so that it does change your mind, please email me, I'd be very pleased to know that happened :)
Cheers, I've enjoyed the discussion. I'll have a look at that book, though I will admit that I would be surprised if he can surmount the issue of abuse of force with out setting up an external construct that is some form of compulsory governance on it's use.
First of all, you need to explain what your "Defense agency" does.
Actual defense is almost impossible if you want any mobility. Even US presidents get shot by determined citizens.
If someone is willing to give their life to kill someone else, it can be done.
With current technology, real defense is absurdly expense and still not effective.
So the way society currently works is on a system of retribution. You basically have a big paddle, and you whack people who get out of societal norms. You rely on people's (usually) occurring desire to not hurt themselves without enough reward to maintain a reasonable level of order.
So your "Defense agency", are you basically paying them to avenge you in case someone does you wrong? This has actually existed for thousands of years, it is known as "blood feuds" (except your family members do the avenging instead of a hired party).
What it leads to is different families killing one another for generations, some have lasted for multiple hundreds of years.
OK, but now in your system, it isn't families killing eachother but hired guns. Lets say now instead of 1 big paddle (the gubment), you now have 5 smaller paddles.
Human nature will have it that each of the owners of those paddles will threaten some people (usually where he lives) to give him money or else he will whack you. Now you don't freedom of choice. If you think you can funnel some more money to a different paddle to save you, that may work... until now that paddle is the biggest of the bunch and he controls your area as well. Human nature will... (look into what warlords are, read some history on the 1000-1500 years in Europe, Central Asia, Asia)
Listen buddy, humanity started with anarchism. What we have now for government is at least close to the best that we ever had before. If other forms of human cooperation were better, then they would have survived.
Human cooperation is a survival of the fittest, and currently in the world, people strive for western ideals. That means democracy, capitalism with a bit of socialism, is the best we have (and have had) so far.
That's a very abstract statement. What kind of dishes are we talking about? Also, I'm not talking collectivism here. As was pointed out by another user, I'm talking about a specific form of anarchy which is anarcho-capitalism or market-anarchism. In my opinion, it is only governments which usually don't give a crap about their citizens. Or at best, they do give a crap, but it's still much much worse than private businesses, because there is no feedback loop in the form of prices and business-customer relationship.
Think about how many things in our lives we do that governments don't control. We get married, we choose what to learn, what occupation to pick and what to work on, we choose whom to become friends with. All of those things are done in complete anarchy yet those are all very important things and decisions! No one in the western world who's in their right mind would suggest that it's a good idea for government to start controlling those things.
Now how come I can't choose what laws I can live by? I don't see people suggesting we all vote for one specific kind of car we are all going to drive for the next 4 years. Yet when it comes to laws it is considered normal that one group suffers because another, slightly more powerful group, wants them to live by their rules.
If you're talking about examples of societies with no government then there are a couple of those in history (Iceland and Ireland being two of them), but the more important point is that sometimes you don't have examples. If you went back to the 17-th century, would you find any example of a country where slavery was outlawed? Yet these days, it is gone almost completely and remains only in illegal forms.
Let's say I agree that regulation is a good thing. I agree that even though I myself may not care for my own safety and want to buy a purely assembled car, I should not be allowed to impose danger on other drivers on the road and this purely assembled car may as well present such danger.
Now the central question here is not whether regulations are a good idea or not, but whether it's a good idea to allow those regulations be issued by one central authority. What if you had like 2-3 agencies inspecting each car manufacturer, then presenting their reports to road companies, who would in turn decide whether or not to allow certain types of cars on their roads? Wouldn't you say that this kind of competition would, in fact, reduce the possibility of corruption? What you have now is a monopoly on regulations, which usually leads to governments abusing this power to prevent certain players from entering the market for their own benefit (bribes from lobbyists for companies that already are on the market).
Road companies seem like a great example of a problematic scenario for anarcho-capitalism:
A hypothetical company called Roads LLC owns a 20km strip of road that goes through a tunnel in a mountain. Due to the geography, all alternative routes require an extra 200km detour. Let's also say, for the sake of argument, that you can't just build another tunnel either, because the mountain would collapse.
Since there are no direct competitors, the company is well-aware of the leverage it has, so it constantly keeps the toll price well above what the maintenance costs are, making huge margins.
So, I assume that your position is that this situation (quite inefficient from the customer's perspective) is better overall than having a government that manages that road, due to all of the other evils you perceive it brings. Even if there was a legitimate mechanism (the democratic process) for changing a particular inefficient government.
I guess my response is that governments seem like they could be efficient in theory, although most are grossly inefficient in practice. In contrast, anarcho-capitalism seems inefficient even in theory.
First, what you forget is that roads are not the only means of transportation. Such a road company would not be able to raise prices indefinitely because customers would either switch to air travel, river transport, or, I don't know, hyperloops, or stop using the road completely. Now what it could do is find the equilibrium price at which customers are still willing to use the road and not switch to a competitor. That might seem like a problem, because the prices would still be higher, but then you have to think back to the time when this project was conceived.
Imagine you are an investor who wants to build that important tunnel. If there is a demand, obviously you wouldn't be the only one. So each of you, investors, would come up with offers for the potential customers for this road. The one who offers the best conditions - for instance, fixed low price for the next 10 years - gets the most customers and proceeds on building that tunnel. If that investor later decides to cheat and raises prices then he would have to deal with law firms of his customers, which would potentially be costly.
So here you see how this potentially difficult situation can be resolved without the need for any government whatsoever.
"n many parts of the world land use patterns mean that building two or more highways in parallel isn't practicable. Kroeger claims, "This would result in an incredibly inefficient use of land resources."[citation needed] When there is only one highway connecting points A and B, the main advantage of privatization, competition, disappears. In absence of regulation a private highway operator is likely to charge an exorbitant monopoly price, resulting in huge profit margins and few benefits for drivers."
Who will take care of the disabled and the elderly?
If your answer to that is to let it depend on the goodwill of the community/family (to do it themselves or pay syndicates to do it), you're setting things up for a large number of people to be left rotting in the streets.
Actually that's what I meant, indeed, so he was spot on. Anarchy means no rulers. It doesn't mean absence of law and order and violent gangs of rapists running on the streets with molotov cocktails and baseball bats. Law and order are provided not by a violent monopolist (government), but instead by the free market.
Yeah, ok, then you are jumping to the same conclusion, and my comment was completely orthogonal to the discussion.
Anyway, still offtopic, I'm quite eager for the reasons why you both discard democracy (no rulers, but government exist) without even a comment (am I missing something that obvious?).
I don't suggest governments should exist. I think you had mistaken law and order for government. Think of it this way: law and order are services. Government is just one way of providing those services.
This is an amazingly low tech revolution. The primary weapons of the protestors are: smoke, flammable liquid, rocks, shields and giant slingshots. These tools could have been used in the Peloponeasian War as easily as in 2014. It really says something about the character of the revolutionaries that they are willing to fight without modern weapons or equipment. I don't know enough about the Urkaine to asses the merit of their politics, but I am inclined to side with the group that has old women and children pitching in to help with logistics. There aren't just criminals and malcontents. Right or wrong, these people feel strongly about their cause.
The courage these activists are showing is going to do a lot to help accomplish their political goals. Every day that they hold out will increase the volume of their message. When I originally heard about this I thought it was more of a violent uprising. But the protestors are fighting with fireworks and laser pointers. This kind of aggressive non-violence will play better in the media once more people learn about the details. If the number of casualties remains low this could turn into an Eastern European Tahrir Square, with hopefully positive benefits for the whole region.
"The courage these activists are showing is going to do a lot to help accomplish their political goals."
What are their political goals? The author of this piece seems to say that there are none, other than being generally angry. Even if you know what you're fighting for, it's hard to accomplish; if you don't know what you want, it's rather unlikely you'll get it.
That entirely fails to even mention the ethnic angle, which is probably the main thing never-mind the current political details. The western part of the country speaks Ukranian, not Russian, and was historically aligned with the Polish empire.
There isn't an ethnic angle - although Russian-speaking, the majority of the population of the east is also of Ukrainian ethnicity. Even the language thing isn't that big of a deal, almost all Ukrainians use both languages to some extent.
The media both in Russia and West like to play up the East vs. West angle, which I believe is inaccurate. While there are foreign and cultural factors in Ukrainian politics, this is a much more boring story of corruption, mismanagement authoritarianism and human rights abuses of the current rule.
They seem to state that the only reason why euroassociation was cancelled is pressure from Russia.
Just wanted to note that there is another reason: he was afraid of damaging economy, especially economy of ukrainian east, which depends on manufacturing which will be disrupted by european goods flowing in.
Low tech? Partly, but its success, I think, will depend heavily on the night tech of the mobile phone and the internet. If those weren't available, those in power could probably have ended this days ago. And [nitpick], I don't think they had lasers in the Peloponnesian war.
Also: what's the rationale for having manholes locked from the inside in a government sector? I can see a reason for locking manhole covers to prevent people from getting out of them to attack nearby targets, but if the lock is on the inside, that wouldn't help, would it?
Some things you can do with manhole covers include: Stealing the covers or contents for metal scrap, smashing up whatever is inside to inconvenience people, attaching taps to telephone lines, putting remote control bombs beneath them to blow up the president's motorcade.
Locking manhole covers (or welding them shut) prevents assassins from easily placing bombs under them, and makes it harder for people to enter the sewers.
Also, manhole covers may be used as weapons or shields.
Aha! That bombs thing does make sense. It wouldn't be that hard to enter the sewers outside that 'government sector', and place a bomb under a manhole cover welded shut, but I guess would-be terrorists would not want to carry a few hundred pounds or so of explosives through the sewers.
You are aware of the fact that strict gun laws don't mean no guns? Your own link shows there are 3 million guns in Ukraine. If there's a need, some of them - probably hundreds of them - would find their way to the hostilities. But I'm not sure there is the will to escalate the situation this far. Because then the next step is using the army and heavy weaponry, and that means civil war and massive casualties. No one really wants that to happen.
I do not want to turn this into a gun control debate. You are right, it is best to avoid actual armed conflict.
However, having roughly 6.6 guns per 100 people means that guns are rare enough not to be used all the time. In general, the slavic nations do not have a culture of guns and gun violence among civilians (thank goodness), and that's what we are seeing here. Guns being rare means that they are not the first thing you reach for in a riot.
By the way, Ukraine has mandatory draft, so most men (women are ineligible for draft) do know how to handle weapons.
Let me just say that being drafted in soviet-model army and knowing one's way around civilian firearms is not the same thing. But I'm sure even with 6 guns per 100 that means that there could be at least dozens of guns present in the scene. Yet so far we didn't hear any of them firing, which I don't attribute just to luck. But you're right, most of the protestors probably don't own a firearm, and those who may own it probably won't take it there.
In fact I would like someone to point me to a documented case where a riot officer has ever been killed from a molotov cocktail because I seriously do not think it has ever happened anywhere in the world.
True, I didn't mean to imply that there have been deadly casualties, but that's the goal of throwing Molotov cocktail on someone. Saying that the protesters aren't using violence is wrong.
None have been killed because they have firefighters and fire extinguishers with them, doesn't change the fact that throwing Molotov cocktail into someone's face can, and probably will, kill them.
We've had two months of peaceful protest at Maidan being ignored politically and assaulted with police. Many activists have been beaten, some of them are dead.
After two month of Yanukovych plainly ignoring protests and our opposition ("leaders" of the protest) being impotent, protesters were desperate, so the more radical part started to use the violence against police at Hrushevskogo street. Maidan is still a place for peaceful protest.
I don't want to excuse our radical protesters, but the situation was grieve and radical protests succeeded at Yanukovych admitting that he has to do something.
I don't think I've ever heard of a Molotov being directed at a person because that isn't what they are useful for. Not to mention the fact that unless you were to hit a shield/helmet you likely wouldn't break the bottle and ignite the contents.
They have been primarily used for disabling vehicles and making some ground impassable. It doesn't appear that the wiki even references their use against individuals so much as against vehicles.
A pencil can be used against someone but it is not the primary intention. A pistol can be used against a Tank but it is not the primary intention. A molotov cocktail is primarily intended for anti-vehicle use, as many instances throughout history (indicated on the wiki page), shows to be the case.
I'd never heard of it being used in an anti-personnel situation (you primarily hear about/see it in its intended capacity). But I guess it would be ridiculous to claim it never has been used against an individual.
It looks like they are being used more against Berkut holding shields; once they break against those, the flaming contents then flow over the shields' owners.
Much like in this short video (you will have to excuse the gallows-humor soundtrack, it's not my intention to make light of the scenario): http://coub.com/view/hgsj
Why do you hope that guy loses an eye? That's rather harsh, he's just taunting a little bit. You know the guys on the other side are having a hard time too right?
There is a time and place for everything and he clearly seems to be enjoying himself. I would not be surprised if half of these guys didn’t want to be there and wanted to join the people. So given the fact that he is clearly having a good time during all of this – yes I hope it is him vs. someone who is just there cause it’s their job.
The protesters absolutely have been a peaceful bunch. You when they turned violent? After the first video I posted. Had that never happened there would probably be no one on the street right now and he can continue raping the country as usual. After that day or two it goes back to being peaceful and a few weeks later he tried it again. Every single time this thing kind of starts fading out he goes in and fails at violently clearing it up then 2x the people join in.
Are there radicals? Sure. They are limited in number and are definitely not the majority or "uncontrollable" as the Russian media reports it.
Did you watch the first video until the end? They forcefully take the police shields, then, when the police are left standing defenseless, and actually surrender, they tell them to go through, and let them walk out of the building. There's no beating taking place, besides that required to break the police's stand. Even the guy with the fire hose is clearly going for the shield, not actively trying to injure the officer.
The guy with the firehose is clearly going for their heads. There would be no point banging on the shield anyway. If you're going to support this, you have to admit that eggs are going to be broken, and that the ultimate motives are far more important than the physical integrity of government actors. Can you do that?
These police are just standing there, shielding people who previously happily allowed the police to brutalize peacefully protesting civilians and even tried to poison political enemies. So no, they are not simply standing there.
Further, the protesters in the liveleak video only hit police armed with riot gear and once they're rid of that largely leave them alone. That is astonishing control.
By that logic, would you agree that police should use any force necessary(beatings, etc) to cut through peaceful demonstrators and arrest those who are not peaceful, throwing Molotov's and such, because after all these peaceful protesters are just protecting those who aren't?
Further, the police in the video only hit protesters and then leave them alone. That is astonishing control.
As someone not very familiar with the Turkish situation, would you mind sharing which specific Turkish protests you're referring to that remind you of this one? Thanks.
I feel like this kind of thing (the various Arab Spring uprisings, the Ukrainian revolution, &c) is very well served by the cacophony of amateur/citizen journalism that flows out of an individual event.
Sure, at the time, it's incredibly noisy, because there's so much primary source material being created, with such incredible depth and nuance. Once people start to be able to assemble a comprehensive understanding of what actually went down, however, it tends more accurately to reflect the reality of events, and makes it much harder for spin and propaganda to dictate the narrative. That's, I think, the ultimate goal of democratizing media.
But I'm also notoriously an optimist about this kind of thing, so, you know: cup of salt, please take with.
If you were to ask current mainstream american media sources they would claim it isn't journalism because they are 'activists'. Ala the treatment of anyone who is covering the Snowden leaks without being sympathetic to the US Gov.
True enough. But my extended social circle includes a number of people of Ukrainian nationality and/or descent. Everything I've heard from them (which is, granted, not a lot; I haven't been tracking these events terribly actively, let alone vis-à-vis their perspectives) tends to corroborate what I'm seeing in this blog post, at least.
I doubt the CIA could have plot the political decision of Ukraine to turn their back on Europe. This is the cause of this, as far as I know. Ukrainians hoped to be able to work in Europe like their neighbour countries and this has been denied to them. Obviously that political decision was strongly "influenced" by Russia. This is why so many people are taking part in these contests. Every single Ukrainian is concerned by this political choice and unhappy of it.
I don't think CIA could make such mass popular protest sprout and sustain in front of strong political resistance.
People just want to get away of misery. If Russia want to keep this country in its "federation" there is a very clear and "simple" thing to do. Keeping this country from joining europe by force is just delaying the final issue as it happened with Hungary and all these other countries. This Federation hold together by force will fall appart anyway soon or later unless Russia manages to offer equivalent job opportunities and salaries as Ukraininag could get in Europe.
The CIA is a poor example. The motivation isn't there, it's not really their style, and they are rather incompetent. More importantly, if it were an American plot of some kind, the US news media wouldn't be ignoring it, they'd be going on and on about a Ukrainian Democratic Revolution etc. etc. To orchestrate something like this and not hook it up with massive Western support would be futile.
There are certainly great pictures, but depth and nuance? You can't see people's ideology and in their faces. Pretty girls can still be crazy nationalists and fascists. Does age and gender really prove anything as the author seems to suggest?
He also says that the crowd is well organized. Who organizes them if they are so diverse? Who are the people who deny others access to some areas as he reports? There are very few answers in his report.
Yes, the pictures don't prove much, here you have to trust the author, he's spending quite some time in the heart of the events.
Pretty girls can still be crazy nationalists, that's true. The point is that if some crazy form of nationalism has taken so wide-spread popularity in Ukraine, it would be well-known abroad already. That's not the case, it seems that the only foreign force concerned with Ukrainian nationalists are Putin's medias.
Ukrainian nationalists are often overrated: their traditional message and goal is "Glory to Ukraine", anti-Moscow feeling is also strong (not surprisingly), and alas, some historical "domestic" antisemitism which almost never comes into real actions and sometimes is actively fought (Maidan now actively protects Jews from any assaults, our government has tried to speculate on this, Berkut are also mildly antisemitic - it's a common Slavic trait). What I have never seen is hate to others based on ethnicity or just being other.
From my little experience (I live in Kiev), people are organized informally and it's an amusing self-organization: a lot of my friends (including me) have been supporting peaceful Maidan with presence, money and food. Guys at Hrushevskogo do not have some formal organization, they deny access to interlocutors if they see you're unprepared for the hell at the front line.
If you have more questions, I'll be glad to answer.
I didn't mean to imply anything about the protesters one way or another. My point was purely about the reporting itself and perhaps about citizen journalism in general.
As a citizen of the European Union I am very much in favor of forming closer ties with Ukraine and eventually welcoming them into the EU.
But of course that can only happen if a solid majority of Ukrainians actually wants it. I'm unclear about whether or not they do and hence whether or not the protesters represent the will of the people.
> a solid majority of Ukrainians actually want it
- you're right, it's a tough question. European integration support is at least 50% of the population; just before Yanukovych decided not to sign the association agreement it was more than 70% according to polls. People also pay attention to the EU position: if it is welcoming and constructive, EU gains ~20% popularity. The decision of Yanukovych was a shock to a large part of the country.
Also I have to admit that for many people Europe is a symbol of lawful and wealthy life among rich and friendly cultures. But symbols often fail when confronted with harsh reality. At the same time there's a considerable (more well-to-do) part of population who actually saw Europe and know what they want.
But Maidan is now not just about EU, though EU support is relatively high (100 000 people was at the only true _Euro_maidan in Kiev on November 24). Our burning need is to get rid of the current regime. Four years of Yanukovych's rule have been time of creeping, steady and all-embracing corruption: economic, business, political, juridical, legislative, social. Nobody thought that this would go so far, even people who voted for Yanukovych.
Ambiguous phrasing, sorry; the depth and nuance is (usually) a consequence of the volume of reporting that citizen journalism enables, not of any one report — though it can and does sometimes emerge from one insightful and fortuitously situated perspective.
It's, in a sense, a corollary of the ESR quip that, "With enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." (Yes, that was Eric Raymond, not Linus.) With enough independent, and independently motivated people documenting a given historical event, a deeper, more subtly textured view of that event becomes possible.
Agreed. The first-hand accounts of people who are there, writing/streaming what they're witnessing as they witness it, with little time taken for editorializing and narrative-making, is some of the most honest source material possible.
Just remember that everything you read/see about Ukraine is propaganda published by someone who is trying to get you to agree with their point of view. They are careful to select their photos to not show the things that they don't want you to know about. For instance, these photos careful do not show the neo-nazi far right groups, the people with handguns, or the police being hit by flaming molotov cocktails or wounded by fireworks.
Of course the other side similarly delivers an edited message.
But the bottom line is that none of this is democracy. Whatever it is, it has to end sometime so that all the groups of people who live in Ukraine can sit down, discuss their differences, find compromises and live in peace. Only then will Ukraine really be a nation. Until then it is just a corner of the Soviet Union that has failed to catch up with the modern world.
Bullshit. The people cannot sit down with this criminal president and discuss anything. Ones that do end up in prison: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yulia_Tymoshenko. He is stealing from the people (http://m.spiegel.de/international/world/a-833127.html) and is actively suppressing all forms of the opposition. Apply your logic to the American revolution and see just how absurd it starts to sound. The please stop trolling.
Yes, I feel rather superior being a dual citizen of a NAFTA country which gets along with its neighbors, and an EU country which also gets along with its neighbors. I simply do not agree with any political movement that is based on demonizing a group of citizens of your own country or based on demonizing a country which is a neighbor. Given that Ukrainians seem to be doing both, I am quite smug and patronising about that fact. In the end they have to stop shouting, and vilifying. They have to start talking and be willing to find compromises. That's the only way that will work in the 21st century.
So far the protesters' actions have been targeting the government, not the citizens who support it. As to "demonizing a country which is a neighbor", the very fact you chose those words shows you are completely unfamiliar with the situation. Which makes your patronizing attitude not only needlessly arrogant, but also uninformed.
From what I heard from Ukrainian friends, the primary matter here is the corruption. President has criminal past, he did time for rape (!) and some petty theft, when he was younger. He was retroactively cleared of charges. Also, strangely enough, all people involved in those cases can longer be found. However he still has strong ties with the criminal world and under his rule and with his assistance existing businesses were routinely and forcibly taken over by an equivalent of mafia. All latest developments with criminalization of government critique, suppressing the right to protest, etc aren't really surprising to anyone there - it's a logical development of things going downhill in past few years.
Sure there's Russia' involvement and geopolitics, but it does appear to be a secondary matter.
A book that some believe influences Russia's strategy is "Osnovy geopolitiki: Geopoliticheskoe budushchee Rossii" (Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geo-political Future of Russia) by Alexander Dugin. It describes the path to an Eurasian Empire that says about Ukraine "with the exception of its three westernmost regions—Volhynia, Galicia, and Transcarpathia—Ukraine, like Belarus, constitutes an integral part of Russia-Eurasia". [1]
back in 2006 i started a bet with a friend, i wagered that within 10 years the russian army would enter ukrainian soil. the excuse being restoring order/peace.
it's a 100 eur bet.
i'd hate to win actually, but fuck, it's getting closer and closer. the eastern provinces are russian vs. the west, which is sort of european/polish. civil war is close.
Well, it's very popular in Ukraine and kinda nazist point of view, considering Russia as root of all problems. That's why so many nazists amongst "protestors" and why we can have nazi state in Europe if they will take power.
"The root of _all_ problems" is an emotional exaggeration (often used by Russians themselves to assess other peoples' opinion). But when you try to fought this bias, it is still amusing _how many_ problems are caused by this so-close, restless, authoritarian and violent neighbor with ambitions of creating the Russian Civilization.
So, I disapprove that point of view, but I have to admit that such neighborhood is a burden for anyone and a source of permanent headache (Pridnestrovye cut off from Moldova, Southern Abhazia separated from Georgia with Russian help, escalation of Armenian-Azerbaijan conflicts, etc). Moreover, Russia in its current Putinist form is a burden for its own people.
They're losing a lot of the political clout they held over their former puppets. The Baltic states have been making closer and closer ties to the eurozone as well, along with Romania, etc. The Ukraine feels very much like a last stand of Russia, which may explain why they're placing so much pressure on the heads of government there.
Did anyone else notice how refreshing this kind of reporting feels after being used to what the mainstream media feeds us?
This story is low-key, trying to present all aspects, trying to stay objective -- it's been a long time since I read something like this from a journalist.
It's not that different how the media in my home country (The Netherlands, e.g. 'Nieuwsuur') have been reporting in Syria and are starting to report Ukraine - in the trenches, literally on the fronts, following and interviewing people on both sides.
Of course, everyone already knew that CNN and others are garbage. If the reality doesn't align with their great capitalism fairytale where Bono is the pinnacle of humanism, they will make it fit ;).
Reading the report, I can't say it's objective - on the contrary it's rather biased, but it doesn't try to conceal it.
That alone made it more useful reporting for me than many other things I've read about the situation recently where I had to try to figure out what the hidden bias is (and account for it appropriately).
Keep in mind that it is a combination of the last few posts he's made in Russian, each one trying to deliver an impartial message of what is going on in Kiev.
His previous post was even entitled, "Maidan through the eyes of the police and Berkut" so he is trying to be as impartial as he can: http://zyalt.livejournal.com/984379.html
This. So much this. The article is not trying to drum dramatics or hype or anything that western media is brainwashed to do with everything. It's just simple, honest and very brutal.
Note, he wrote story in English to make it repostable in western internets, so to influence public opinion in necessary way, namely, "people came out against Yanukovich".
You know, kinda push our western friends to intervene.
I follow Varlamov's elucidation of the events and I must say that his blog is very influential in Russian segment of the internet and it deserves this. So he published the translation after multiple requests.
This situation is really frightening to me. I so hope that the Ukraine can get out from underneath her oppressors (yes I mean Yanukovitch and Putin) without descending any further into chaos.
Ukraine isn't under oppression from Yanukovitch and Russia. Current president of Ukraine won last elections being in opposition, after revolution of 2004 showed that nothing changed. But as last government could do any good, current is also considered bad (by people). The core problem is Ukraine consists of two parts - East and West. Both parts are about the same size and population. West part gravitates to west and east part gravitates to Russia. That's understandable, east part has many ties with Russia, because it's almost the same people (same history till 1350-1400 CE) with hundreds years living near. There's families divided by border, they often go to visit each other, there's economical ties etc. Of course Russia wants to see Ukraine as a friend. Imagine Canada would decide to go into union with China and shut down it's border for USA. That's kinda similar.
Anyway, Ukraine stays being two-headed and I don't know how all that will end, but I hope they will find good solution.
You know, that kind of stuff does not happen at all when people are not under oppression.
No population want to go over the police and fight. No big group of people want to kill their neighbours just beause they are in uniforms, neither want to die fighting them. Whatever place and culture they have.
I'm a bit uninformed; is there any recent precedent for a revolt like this succeeding? Honestly I'm a little skeptical that a revolution of this sort could ultimately defeat a vastly better-funded power without overwhelming popular support.
Consider this - Yushchenko let the people decide. Do you really think Yanukovych will do the same in next elections? Will Yanukovych just let the people vote him out of the office?
He has no chance to win again in honest elections, and he already faked the elections before orange revolution. He was in prison twice for theft, he is a criminal. How do you think people can trust him to do the right thing? His family become very rich very quickly. He jailed opposition candidate. He changed constitution to make it harder to protest.
The EU partnership thing was just the last straw. People don't want to be stuck with Yanukovych forever, and now is last chance to get rid of him.
One thing really stood out to me about this protest, and that is how isolated and targeted it is against government. The writer mentioned how no shopkeepers are affected, and that protesting is specifically barricaded around the government district.
Irrespective of the violence and damage taking place, that there is no collateral means that we can't detract from the focus of the issue.
That is very hard to believe :) and naive assertion, all reports point out to very aggressive 'protesters' that attack security forces to provoke their reaction and that whole nature of protest is changing towards violence and aggression.
He said it is targeted at the government and not that there was no violence at all. I personally don't have any problem with them attacking security forces when it is the security forces that initiated the violence to begin with.
This is your second post that disputes this blog but you offer no evidence to support your claims. The photos of intact shops and first hand accounts are supplies in the blog post. What is your involvement or interest? The story offered here is pretty compelling I thought.
People who never had to protect their constitutional freedoms or human rights against a real, brutal, force, who were simply lucky enough to be born in places with long and established traditions of democracy (something their ancestors actually did have to struggle for), smugly judging people who risk their lives standing up for their values in place where human rights meant nothing for centuries.
"OMG people are so easy to manipulate", "This smoke is damn unpleasant, is it really necessary?", "Can't they just talk to each other like normal people"...
I can't upvote this enough. People do indeed believe in revolutions, and thinks by burning stuff that wealth will be made.
3 years later (Tunisian here), we found out that it's not a revolution. The dictator might have been ousted by external agencies. While the protests are legit, the outcome is not.
This made me a new opinion: You can have power over another entity by using damage (burning, and crashing stuff). But this won't create power, let alone structure or wealth.
A good example is Libya, where the situation is moving fast into Somalia despite having large oil reserves.
Welcome to reality my Tunisian friend. I'm sorry its not more positive because I'm sure you were promised much better.
Yes my country had a "revolution" like this too. I myself was in the streets banging pots and pans and standing up to cordons of riot police. When it was all over, and "real democracy" took over, the country was sold to German banks company by company, factory by factory. Its still in the process of being sold in exchange for the glimmer of hope that we might one day join the glorious EU and its "reasonable" interest rates. That revolution that I really believed would bring about change? It turns out it cost about 100,000 USD to promote it and organize buses to truck people in and equip them to burn a bunch of stuff.
Who talks about wealth? Where did you get the idea that people in Ukraine expect to get wealthy by burning tires? Or do you simply need a straw man to express your wisdom?
When the peaceful protests started in November, the main motive had at least something to do with economics (association with EU). Nowadays it's totally different. By taking a number of violent actions and unconstitutional moves, the government took this up to a completely another level. It is no longer about trade laws, but about basic human rights and the total corruption of power. We know that the economical situation will suffer, but we are prepared for it.
Ukrainians got burned enough with revolution in 2004, and we had lost our fair share of illusions. So there had to be a very good reason for us to try it again. And this government managed to provoke it.
Well, it's not that revolutions work - they don't. But the threat of a revolution is the only trick that works, and you need powerfull people to belive that it's a real threat.
The protesters are manipulated into thinking that joining EU and getting rid of Yanukovich is somehow the first step to prosperity... And the blogosphere is manipulated into buying this as some kind of completely spontaneous grass roots movement. Sure people want change.. But this is bankrolled elsewhere.. I bet it wasn't that expensive either.
>Joining the common European market would be a great step towards prosperity, sure, with mutual benefits for everyone, as well as increased security, stability and peace. Having a large common market you can buy from and sell to is pretty awesome, actually. Add the pretty great more human benefits (freedom of movement, freedom of labor) and it’s a pretty great perspective.
LOL, just ask the Spanish, Portuguese, Italians, Greeks, Hungarians, and co. Here's how this "freedom of labor" works in practice:
"""Humiliating wages, inhuman working conditions and coercion in a country that has declared itself the leader of the EU,” writes Jurnalul National in the wake of an investigation on working conditions of east Europeans in Germany, published by Munich daily Süddeutsche Zeitung and aired on German public television channel ARD. The probe revealed the existence of a mafia-like organisation, which recruits Romanian workers for German companies, and then confiscates their identity papers and threatens them with death if they go to court to have their employment contracts enforced."""
And it's not just some isolated "mafia like organisation" -- the same things happen to migrant workers from all countries and accross tons of fields.
The "common European market" is a lure for smaller countries to become Germany's satellites and for Brussels bureaucrats to rule over the will of the seperate nation-states.
Imagine a Washington tens times more in bed with big corporations and Wall Street, ten times more bureaucratic, and favoring a few states while fucking over the majority of the others. Oh, and with bodies that nobody voted for in power.
Aside: you can reply to a comment before its "reply" link has appeared by following the "link" link in the comment's header (next to its score and age/timestamp and such), instead of replying to its parent and breaking the conversation's flow.
> And the blogosphere is manipulated into buying this as some kind of completely spontaneous grass roots movement
Completely absurd. All my extended family in Ukraine (plus all my former friends, classmates, and teachers) support the protests. Some were involved in parties such as Klitschko's Udar and Tymoshenko's Batkivshchyna. Please keep listening to Radio Moscow.
The protests are not about prosperity or even about joining the EU. They are about preventing Russian-controlled mafia from running the country.
Joining the common European market would be a great step towards prosperity, sure, with mutual benefits for everyone, as well as increased security, stability and peace. Having a large common market you can buy from and sell to is pretty awesome, actually. Add the pretty great more human benefits (freedom of movement, freedom of labor) and it’s a pretty great perspective.
As it stands, however, the Ukraine is probably decades away from that – but I can’t see how that could possibly be a bad thing to work towards.
But this joining would be one direction, Ukraine would not be allowed to export into EU thanks to various regulations.
Also Ukraine already has common market with Russia, and this would have to close.
From typical Ukrainian POV EU is just better place to live and it is all about long term plans. Sure, Ukraine will have difficult time during adoption of EU rules and regulation, but in the end they will have better living.
Joining the common European market would be a great step towards prosperity, sure, with mutual benefits for everyone, as well as increased security, stability and peace.
Big claims need big justifications, I guess. The EU experience wasn't all that good for Greece, for example.
> The EU experience wasn't all that good for Greece, for example.
Greece got itself into a bloody mess by overspending, and while low interest rates due to Eurozone membership may have made that easier, it is in no way the fault of the EU that the Greek people elected an inept government. OTOH, EU membership now helps them get out of this mess with billions and billions of euros.
Manipulated is the right word. Turkey has been trying to get into the EU for 30 years and it is still waiting. If Ukraine had signed that agreement, their politicians would right now be churning out new laws every week and the country would likely to be even more up in arms about the vastness of the changes. And they still would have the same strict visa requirements to get into the EU to work because those don't even have to change when a country is an official member. Rumania and Bulgaria learned this when they became EU members and many countries implemented strict visa quotas that prevented these new Europeans from working in other EU countries.
Anytime you read about a nationalist movement or an independence movement, someone is being manipulated. Independent nations are no longer possible in the modern world. Every country is now dependent on, and must cooperate with its neighbors. For Ukraine, that means its largest trading partner, Russia. Even the other EU countries are busy coming to all kinds of agreements, accords and treaties with Russia.
Seen from Russia, there is a power struggle between EU and Russia about border drawing between their respective empires. Thinking in "empires" is popular in Russia. So seen from Russia, it is beyond doubt that the Kiev uprising is bankrolled by EU.
Seen from EU, EU hasn't really enough coherence to deal effectively with its internal problems, much less participate in any international power struggles. And the population is deeply tired of expansion. The only empires in the minds of EU are the ghosts of the British and French colonial empires. So EU has neither the will nor the capability to do something like this.
It could even have been bankrolled from Russia. Even though I speak Russian and some Ukrainian, and I have followed current events in both countries for years, I can't figure out what is actually going on here. Yes, it could be another dumb move by the Americans who have a real habit of foot in mouth internationally, but it could just as well be part of a clever complex multi-year gambit by the Russians who have a strong tradition of playing chess, not just around a table with wooden game pieces, but in international politics as well.
Yeah right, that's John Kerry (under orders from Barack Obama) who is orchestrating Ukrainian revolution. That's one of the funniest theories about that whole mess I ever read.
>>> but it could just as well be part of a clever complex multi-year gambit by the Russians who have a strong tradition of playing chess
You realize that not all Russian are the same, not all of them drink vodka, are chess grandmasters, wear ushankas with red stars, play balalaykas and dance with bears on the streets? Traditions of chess have absolutely nothing to do with modern Russian politics (actually The Godfather would be much more instructive there than The Luzhin Defense), though of course Russia meddles with Ukrainian affairs - it's a huge country neighboring them and having centuries-old ties, along with the little fact that it also carries a lot of Russia's gas lines. But that is a trivial conclusion, not very illuminating.
I have been to Russia more than once. And I speak Russian well enough to travel there on my own, with no support from any travel agencies or guides. On one occasion a couple of guys wanted to steal my suitcase, because I foolishly left the airline stickers on it so they knew it had to contain something worth stealing. But they didn't grab it. They didn't pull out a weapon. Instead they smiled and laughed and try to talk me into going with them to some place nearby. It was like a game of cat and mouse. Or chess. I have heard of other people who ran into similar thieves. Rather than using force they try to outwit you. If you don't fall for their tricks, then you are free. That is how chess works. So I think that the multilevel strategic and tactical thinking of chess is more widespread in Russian society than you claim.
Yes, you've been to Russia a couple of times and you've encountered a couple of Russian con men. That makes you an expert in all things Russian and gives you deep insight into Russian soul and Russian politics. And gives you the right to tell people who grew up there how it really is. I get it.
I agree (see my other post in this thread). But I don't know much about Ukraine. It would be great if you would post a detailed analysis as a top level post.
>Bankrolled by who? EU? US? Who? And do you have any evidence?
It's naive to ask for evidence in such issues. As if they put out official statements and bank account transactions. These kind of things are exposed years or even decades after the fact.
That said, we do have evidence and hard facts for similar sponsoring of other "orange revolutions" and under-the-table deals in the past 2 decades. It's a constant presence in the history of lesser states, when the interests of superpowers collide with theirs, a practice as old as the "Voice of America".
In practice, when you see sponsored foreign "organisations" working in some place to help "bring democracy", just think "change the regime to some puppet who will do us favours". Superpowers don't do such things out of the goodness of their heart. That's why you only see them in places like Ukraine and Iraq, and not, say, Arabia or Latin America dictatorships [1]
>BTW-Do you get your news from RT?
I don't know about him, but I get "my news" from studying the political climate and being in the middle of decades of European and Eastern European history. And I'm not even Russian/Ukraine, I'm from EU.
Now, don't get me wrong, the protesters are genuinely believing that they are doing the right thing and fighting for change etc. It's just that that's a feeling that's very easy to create and manipulate in people, selling them "change" and "hope" and offering them the same shit in a different package.
Quite like people thought this Obama guy was the "Hope" that would change everything once he gets elected, only to get mostly same-old, same-old.
[1] From Wikipedia:
Activists in each of these movements were funded and trained in tactics of political organization and nonviolent resistance by a coalition of Western pollsters and professional consultants who were partly funded by a range of Western government and non-government agencies but received most of their funding from domestic sources.[nb 2][2] According to The Guardian, the foreign donors included the U.S. State Department and USAID along with the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the International Republican Institute, the NGO Freedom House and George Soros's Open Society Institute.[34] The National Endowment for Democracy, a foundation supported by the U.S. government, has supported non-governmental democracy-building efforts in Ukraine since 1988.
Former president Leonid Kravchuk accused Russian oligarch, Boris Berezovsky, of financing Yushchenko's campaign on 14 September 2005.[36][nb 3] Yushchenko denied Berezovsky financed his election campaign.[36] Financing of election campaigns by foreign citizens is illegal in Ukraine.[37] At first Berezovsky refused to confirm or deny Kravchuk's allegations, but in November 2005 he did claim that indeed he had heavily financed the Orange Revolution.[38][nb 4]
You seem to be reluctant for changes. Ok, protesters against Yanukovych try to at least _revert_ the situation back to the one before Yanukovych.
People have democratically elected Yanukovch in hope that he will be the next "Kouchma" (second president of Ukraine), who grew up Yanukovych politically. But the difference between Kouchma and Yanukovuch started to frighten people with every new Yanukovych step from the moment of his inauguration. The part of Ukraine that voted for Yanukovych is now also shocked. It is Yanukovych who changed the situation and brought awful changes.
The Revolution Business, 2011 - Consultants are helping people countries like Ukraine and Egypt build a foundation of knowledge in order to start revolutions.
No, I am fairly certain that we see similar things (you can never mean exactly same) and we understand each other.
These pictures represent violence and this is somehow reported as peaceful protest. I don't think people are 'sheep' but there is a lot of wishful thinking that we will accept this as reported and not try to reason ourselves.
Have you read the captions? All of them? There are images of elderly people facing off against the 'police' (heavily militarized is an understatement as far as I can tell). How do you suggest people get the political changes they want?
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/press-club <- the live coverage is spotty, but do look for "olya" in the sidebar (you have to click "more" for them to show up) for some guided tours around maidan and interviews with protesters by an english speaking journalist. Highly recommended.
There are of course many more feeds and videos, but you will find them all in the above subreddit (in /r/europe and /r/worldnews, too)
Who remembers 'Chernobyl Gal? The biker who takes solitary rides through the Chernobyl closed zone, and publishes photo journals of them. These are her sites.
> When darkness falls on Kyiv, unidentified groups of “people in civilian clothes” roam the city, hunting for the young people, especially those who wear the symbols of the Maidan or the European Union. They kidnap them and take them out into forests, where they are stripped and tortured in fiercely cold weather. For some strange reason the victims of such actions are overwhelmingly young artists: actors, painters, poets. One feels that some strange “death squadrons” have been released in the country with an assignment to wipe out all that is best in it.
And while the upvotes for the story climb, the story itself drops slowly but surely off the front page, because a killswitch has been toggled, because "HN is not for politics", not even a revolution with unprecedented live coverage on the internet. i.e. a new development.
When some guy in the tech scene -- not an engineer or hacker or anything, a marketing guy for a tech firm -- dies, the story being completely unrelated to technology, that's okay, the discussion may take it's course, going off a billion tangents because otherwise there would be nothing to talk about. He's "one of us", after all. Are those young people not also of us? Is one single frontpage slot, out of thirty, too much to ask, for people to discuss and share information?
Two things that especially amaze about the actual 'street part' of Ukrainian revolution are complete absence of plundering or looting of local shops and that no firearms have been used by protesters.
I think mostly because the protest are very localized. Apart from that street, the city( and country ) is operating as usual. Shops and businesses are operating and civilians are going to work. The protest are mostly after work activity. That is why the largest fights take place in the evening and night.
Legend:
Red means regional administration buildings are under control of protestors.
Pinkish are regions where protestors block the administration buildings of were unsuccessful at capturing them.
Brownish? means mass protests are occurring.
^^ This comment is misinformation. You didn't post any proof, so you see, anyone can do that.
According to you, half of the country is involved in the protest and not going to work( >20 million !!), I highly doubt that the whole country is at halt. I have only seen and read about protest in the very center of Kiev. Around of the Independence Square, Hrushevsky Street and its neighboring streets. All I stated was posted in the foreign media and blogs( truthful or not ), unfortunately I don't have the time to backtrack and search to provide the necessary links.
I would love to hear some reliable information to confirm any statements.
I wonder if somebody actually read EU treaty (reason for all this protests). Signing it would pretty much kill industry and criple agriculture at Ukraine.
None of the people protesting have any illusion as to how long it would take to join EU or that it would be painless. Moreover, joining (or not joining the EU) is not even the main point of the protests. The point of the protests is preventing a Russian-controlled mafia government from taking over the country's future.
Oh, great. Those treaties that "kill" industry and agriculture are normaly the best things that can happen for the economy of a country. Just beware the ones that "protect" them.
For all groups on the net, this one should understand quite well the meaning of "creative destruction", and "stale business".
For start Ukraine treaty does not handle subsidies. So France and other countries would be able to 'dump' their subsidized agricaltural product on Ukranien market. Ukraine farmers do not get subsidy, they have higher prices and would eventually bankrupt.
Industry is concetrated on east and exports/imports mainly to Russia. EU would make it very hard to trade with Russia. Factories could not sell product and could not import materials.
Joining EU is long process which takes years of negotiation. Poland is good example. But just signing whatever EU throws your direction is very bad deal.
> For start Ukraine treaty does not handle subsidies.
Article 32.1 states: "Upon entry into force of this Agreement, no Party shall maintain, introduce or reintroduce export subsidies or other measures with equivalent effect on agricultural goods destined for the territory of the other Party." And then it relegates the finer details to WTO treaties, which Ukraine already signed.
> EU would make it very hard to trade with Russia.
Which part of the agreement would make it difficult?
| For start Ukraine treaty does not handle subsidies. So France and other countries would be able to 'dump' their subsidized agricaltural product on Ukranien market. Ukraine farmers do not get subsidy, they have higher prices and would eventually bankrupt.
That's great news! It means cheaper products and new entrepreneurs (with better ideas and better funding) taking control of the horribly outdated agriculture industry.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - John F. Kennedy
You'd think oppressive leaders would learn that lesson by now. But no, it seems we're more likely doomed to repeat it in cycles, over and over again. I wonder what those politicians who come up with the idea of "hey, let's make protesting virtually impossible. That will all our problems!".
They need to understand that protesting is that an effect of a cause. If the cause isn't fixed, those issues and frustrations the people have won't just go away. They will build up, until they explode.
I don't mean to get personal, but your post is surprisingly content-free. Everyone in the pro-government party understands what this protest is about. Yanukovich may be portrayed as non-intellectual, but he has read his Machiavelli and knows how to maneuver. In addition, he has an equally ardent, albeit much less vociferous voter base as the opposition, plus a network of government-connected oligarchs who run the show from behind the scenes. In this case, the future of the country has a clear schism. You cannot simultaneously sign a pact with Russia while opening the door to European market. It's one or the other, black or white, as made clear by Mr. Putin.
There are two forces clashing. US supported groups (That basically want Ukraine to be part of the EU) and Pro Russian groups (supported by good ol' Putin). Let's hope it all ends well.
It's an (somewhat distorted) oversimplification to call this a Cold-War style chess game. Both groups are authentic, i.e. people in Western Ukraine genuinely feel closer to the West while people in Eastern Ukraine genuinely do feel closer to Russia. The US influence is nearly non-existent (if you discount Hollywood movies of course) while Russia exerts very significant influence by placing economic pressure (such as banning imports from "misbehaving" countries that were formerly a part of the USSR), providing PR expertise to Russian-supporting political parties, and so on.
I agree that Ukraine is a divided country. This being said: Just recently a newspaper in Beijing had a comic showing the Ukraine as a car. Uncle Sam was shown trying to stir the stirring wheel. This gives you an idea.
Trust me, the US has a strong strong interest of the Ukraine breaking away from US influence.
> the US has a strong strong interest of the Ukraine breaking away from US influence
Sure it does. However, don't you understand that all runner-up or would-be superpowers (China, Russia, etc) have a vested interest in portraying US influence as being the driving force behind anything bad happening anywhere?
> Just recently a newspaper in Beijing had a comic showing the Ukraine as a car. Uncle Sam was shown trying to stir the stirring wheel. This gives you an idea.
So that's where you get your news from? How about you learn some Ukrainian and find out what the actual situation is on the ground?
Wow. That photography is mind blowing, as is the entire situation. I hope the small number of casualties remains low as it has. Also, props to them for not looting the businesses on the front line, usually that seems to be what happens! But this seems different, somehow.
It's different because, unlike OWS, this is not an "eat the rich" protest. This is a protest against an authoritarian foreign power imposing its will on what (briefly) has been an independent country.
What I see here is large scale destruction of presumably their city by it's citizens. I don't see how anything good can come out of mass hysteria and destruction.
Edit... I don't believe for a moment and based on numerous other reports in the media, that assertions about peacefulness of this protest are true or represent anything but something that poster would like to be. Doesn't sound likely and no-one else is reporting it, so most likely is wishful thinking.
Tire burning is not really large scale destruction. From the livejournal entry:
1."They destroyed the whole city"
Not true. All of the action you see in the pictures are happening on a small square near the entrance to a Dinamo stadium. This is a government sector, there is no intereference in peaceful life outside of this area. If you make an analogy with Moscow, imagine that the barricades are someone in the area of Ilinka or Varvarka, near the president's administration. Sure, it's the center, but regular Moscovites wouldn't notice. There is dark smoke and fire on all pictures: those are mostly burning tires. There is not tangible damage to the buildings. Unfortunately one store burned down last night near the barricades, resulted from a poorly thrown molotov cocktail. Even the statue of Lobanovsky, located in the epicenter of fighting has been covered with cloth to prevent damage. Overall, the protesters are very careful regarding property. They've take apart fences and benches, but no windows are broken, noone is vandalizing, and all looters are caught and beaten. So the picture is pretty apocalyptic, but things are not so bad.
3. "The entire Kiev is paralyzed, there is no peaceful life for the regular people."
Kiev is living its own life. All stores and cafes are working, people are going to work, study in universities, get married, divorce and even die their own death. Most of the Kiev populace are not inconvenienced. Imagine if Navalny took over the Red Square and set up his camp there. What would change for you, Moscovites? Nothing. So the only people who are inconvenienced are toruists. A few stores and cafes had to close down in the very center. Also, those living in the center have troubles with logistics. But the entire Kiev is not paralyzed.
3. "The entire Kiev is paralyzed, there is no peaceful life for the regular people."
Kiev is living its own life. All stores and cafes are working, people are going to work, study in universities, get married, divorce and even die their own death. Most of the Kiev populace are not inconvenienced. Imagine if Navalny took over the Red Square and set up his camp there. What would change for you, Moscovites? Nothing. So the only people who are inconvenienced are toruists. A few stores and cafes had to close down in the very center. Also, those living in the center have troubles with logistics. But the entire Kiev is not paralyzed.
So, no, the city isn't being destroyed. (At least not yet.)
In addition to the quotes above, please note Kiev is a huge city (3M+ people), and the hostilities are concentrated in relatively small area. Indeed, the harm done to the area seems to be substantial, but not irreparable (some cleaning up, repaving and repainting would probably cost a lot, but nothing seems to be irreversibly destroyed). So there's no large scale destruction of the city by its citizens.
The key is that there is little to no destruction. Destruction looks like [0], what you see on the pictures from Kiev is a minor annoyance and can be fixed within a few days. Burning old car tires might not be the ecologically best way to dispose of them, but as long as it is limited to a short period of time, it likely does less harm than a single day of people commuting to work by car in a given metropolitan area.
Oh, and regarding your apparently main point that destruction cannot bring wealth: If destruction results in large-scale investments in the right areas (think Marshall Plan), it can bring an enormous amount of wealth in a very short time.
Marshall Plan is the exception, not the rule. Otherwise, they usually burn tyres which have little economic value. However, these pictures terrorizes investment and the people. This can result in a bad economic season which start a roller-coaster effect. Unemployment -> more unrest -> more unemployment...
Ukraine has been historically divided into pro-West Ukraine in the west and pro-Russia Ukraine in the east. I think the only peaceful resolution to this conflict is having two independent states.
Actually there is (or at least use to be) an idea of "progress". The hope was that people in the predominantly Russian-speaking Eastern regions would eventually "convert" politically to a pro-European direction because a primary driver of the pro-Russian leanings (other than cultural factors) was a positive memory of industrialization by the USSR which brought them jobs and a better way of life. The idea was that the older generation who remembered the glory of the USSR would eventually become replaced with a less Russia-centric one. Unfortunately this hasn't exactly played out to the extent it was hoped for.
- The fascist element - one of the opposition leaders, Oleh Tyahnybok, leads a fascist party (Svoboda) and has openly spread anti-Semitic rhetoric, and aligned itself with extremist groups. Fairly common knowledge to anyone in the know... You can see the fascist and neo-nazi symbols on many of the protesters. http://en.ria.ru/images/18519/41/185194148.jpg The flags with 3 fingers are Svoboda's symbol, the red and black ones are UPA flags, which are the symbol of a group that collaborated with the Nazis, and are used by fascist groups in Ukraine.
- The protesters have been the most violent force during the protests. In what country do police stand by when Molotov cocktails and fireworks are fired at them? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h22oHs3eiLg
- And finally, Yanukovych was not only democratically elected, but because of the split amongst the opposition factions, the PoR will likely win any election that is devoid of outside interference... After the 'Orange Revolution' the opposition united with Yushchenko, now there's 3 large opposition groups (Fatherland, 'Punch', and Svoboda). Considering half the country firmly supports the Party of Regions, the opposition are unlikely to win anything.
These are the words of Oleh Tyahnybok: "They did not fear, but took up their automatic rifles, going into the woods to fight Muscovites, Germans, Jewry and other filth which wanted to take away our Ukrainian nationhood. It’s time to give Ukraine to the Ukrainians. Like them, you are most feared by the Moscow-Jewish mafia which today runs Ukraine"
Mike, this "second view" of yours is oh so close to propaganda of Russian TV. Calling everyone a fascist and hiding the inconvinient facts. There is no second view within humam rights framework.
- Yanukovych's power-sharing offer is a sham. It is not true power sharing until he is a president - he controls everything.
- Just looks at the definintion of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism. Yes, there is a nationalistic element in Svoboda party. It isn't pretty itself as well, but it is far, far, far from fascism. Nobody besides Yanukovych is authoritarian here.
- protesters were beaten up for 2 months, but didn't fight back. Only when Yanukovych decided to forbid peaceful protest in general the aggression from protesters started. I don't think police should be just standing under Molotov cocktails, but their reaction SHOULD NOT be shooting from a sniper riffles, killing 5 people, violently beating up protesters, kidnapping protesters from hospitals (!) beeting them up again (!) and taking them far into the fields and leaving there to die on -10°C (14°F) (!).
- Yanukovych has indeed been elected through democratical elections. That is true. And what has he done since then? Jailed his main opponent Yulia Tymoshenko. Changed the constitution to have full power in his hands. There is not a chance now that the next election under him will be fair. And you can state whatever you want but Party of Regions did loos a lot of electorate now. It is not half of coutry now at all, as you've stated.
The peaceful Euromaidan protesters were attacked and beaten by police force on November 30. Even after this the protests were peaceful up until January 19, when the president signed laws that severely limit freedom of expression and gathering. Dissatisfied people went to Hrushevskoho and met police forces there. The opposition lost control of the events from that point. See:
During the first days of fights journalists were clearly and openly targeted by government militia forces (~40 of them suffered injuries, arrested, etc.)
Considering fascist bullshit: yes there are some radicals in the crowd. It is very easy to point a finger at some guy and shout: "look a neonazi". The truth is that the crowds are a very diverse group of people. Go read this:
The party that is a significant force behind the protests is definitely ultra-nationalist. You could see it from the statements about Russians and Jews, and from ethno- and language centric political program. If this party wins (and it has up to 40% in western regions of Ukraine), it will mean that Ethnic Russians in the east and other minorities will become second-class citizens.
He rigged an election before and got caught. He is a convicted felon and a puppet controlled by Russia. There is no reality distortion field here: he is bad for Ukraine.
Remember, Ukraine does not have a separate judicial system to undo unjust laws. Therefore the people have a responsibility to directly protest these unjust laws (such as the law disallowing protests).
I am not defending violence, but saying that Yanukovych is somehow doing anything on the up and up is false, end of story.
They can, into political criminals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych#Criminal_conv... does not give a lot of detail but practically he was actually convicted of sexual assault. His occupation at 17 was assaulting women late at night by hitting them over the head and stealing their valuables, including overcoats, then leaving them bleeding in the snow.
I don't believe he rigged the second election, but he would not have to be in power to do it. Ukraine uses popular vote, and the original rigged election was simply done by falsifying voting records in a few regions where he had lots of local support.
Power-sharing is a sham. It would demoralize and disband protests while allowing the government to shift blame for the governments actions onto the protesters (who would then nominally be responsible for the governments actions), and give the protesters no real meaningful power. The governments proposal is intended to do nothing more than to have protesters abandon their position and allow the government to use the protesters as scapegoats. The concerns of the protesters would not be addressed.
It doesn't matter if he was democratically elected as soon as he lost the consent of the governed. That's the difference between elections and revolutions - for the first, regular election process is enough, the second takes place when citizens lost their trust in the ability of power structures to support that process. And this loss happened in part because Yanukovich consistently escalated the situation - first by tryng to forcefully disperse initially tame and non-violent protest, second by pushing through unprecedented package of laws which violate basic rights of citizens. Of course, after that trying to buy off opposition leaders with deputy positions within existing power structures couldn't go very well.
Yanukovich obviously lost control of the situation and lost consent of his citizens, and failed as a leader of the country - having a popular protest this massive and violent in the middle of the capital and now spreading to other places is not a result of the successful leadership by any measure. He needs to go. Who would win the next elections is the question for the citizens of Ukraine, which they will decide once Yanukovich is gone.
> Who would win the next elections is the question for the citizens of Ukraine, which they will decide once Yanukovich is gone.
The problem is that whoever leads the Party of Regions would likely win the next election, which is why these protests are happening. The opposition knows they can't win.
The link you showed shows the polls pre-hostilities, up to October 2013. These data are useless now - once it started, everything changed. Also, even there PoR has 20% of the votes. Not exactly the winning position.
Protesters want Yanukovych to go away. They do not want to stay him as president. Power-sharing agreement is a bluff.
I do not understand your connection of neo-nazi symbols with Oleh Tyahnybok and Svoboda party. If someone wears something why do you apply it to this party?
Also UPA never collaborated with Nazis. They fought against communists and nazis at the same time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Insurgent_Army. They fought will middle 50s.
These are the words of Oleh Tyahnybok: "They did not fear, but took up their automatic rifles, going into the woods to fight Muscovites, Germans, Jewry and other filth which wanted to take away our Ukrainian nationhood. It’s time to give Ukraine to the Ukrainians. Like them, you are most feared by the Moscow-Jewish mafia which today runs Ukraine"
"In autumn 1943 some detachments of the UPA attempted to find rapprochement with the Germans. Although doing so was condemned by an OUN/UPA order from November 25, 1943, these actions did not end.[58] In early 1944 UPA forces in several Western regions engaged in cooperation with the German Wehrmacht, Waffen SS, SiPo and SD."
> The peak of the massacres took place in July and August 1943 when a senior UPA commander, Dmytro Klyachkivsky, ordered the liquidation of the entire male Polish population between 16 and 60 years of age.[7][8][9] Despite this, most of the victims were women and children.
That's one reason Poles (while we fully support independent democratic Ukraine and it's partnership with EU) feel very uncomfortable supporting people that call themselves UPA continuators. Ukrainians have the right to choose their heroes, and Poles want Ukraine to be independent (geopoliticaly we like the fact that we have very small border Russia very much, also Ukrainians have similiar culture and language). But if they want people to support them fully they could do well abandoning the UPA symoblism.
I appreciate this alternative viewpoint! Thank you!
From the outside, it's hard to know what to believe. I'm not just going to take your word for it, but it's at least nice to see someone making the point that it's not as black-and-white as it seems.
So the protesters have been more violent? Then why are there more of them dead than there are police and why are there more of them injured than police?
Lets be honest, if your stupid enough to throw rocks at armed policemen and military, let alone malatov's your asking for it. The issue I am curious about verifying is supposed disappearances from hospitals.
Violent resistance will get that in return, to claim moral superiority for one side over another is reaching.
How far does your disapproval of violent resistance go? Do you disapprove of the Polish Resistance's Operation Heads?
Violence is the only option these people have. Their democracy is not functional, and their courts are powerless to correct these problems. Non-violent protests are made impossible by the government.
Im not sure what your video is supposed to show. It is not like the police haven't done the exact same thing to protesters and the protestors are not as well geared as the police forces.
There has been a single policeman killed that is unknown whether it has any connection to the protests as he was off duty and not in the area of the protests. There have been 6-9 protestors killed and thousands more injured. So again which side is more violent?
This is an impressively ignorant comment. Few hundred thousand people are standing on the street for weeks (months!) and what does the government do? Create new oppressive laws! How do you react to that when your peaceful demonstration is declared illegal?
Power-sharing, hah. Who cares about power-sharing with opposition? Opposition is weak and not respected, nobody will be satisfied if they would go with this proposition and they perfectly understand that. What would you do if you knew that if you accept premier minister seat, but people will still stand on the streets? They are afraid to accept that proposition and rightfully so.
Tyahnybok is as fascist as anybody else. His rhetorics is just rhetorics, and he's allied with Yatsenyuk right now, who is widely regarded being Jewish.
Whatever. That is not a valid viewport, but a bunch of bullshit.
I am sorry, but this isn't a revolution! The protesters are a minority. Democracy works differently - at least there are free elections in Ukraine! Joining the EU or not should be decided by a referendum, not by a few criminals destroying the the city and turning it into a shithole! I only wonder why Europe is excited to welcome barbarians and neo-nazis who beat up and set police officers on fire! Well, it's easy to play a man when you know the police officers are ordered not to carry guns and not to respond to provocations! Also, a lot of people don't know that George Soros is fueling this along with the US - they don't even shy away of hiding this fact! The video with the arrested naked guy that has circulated also hides an important detail - the guy poured flammable liquid on himself and wanted to set himself on fire, yet, the journos are saving these details and only let you see what works best for them! I am really disgusted by seeing this shortly after Syria, where the US is, again and again, on the wrong side! Why didn't the US condemned Turkey's actions against the protesters there? Well, Turkey is an ally! Why isn't US condemning the way gay people are treated in Saudi Arabia? Well, Saudi Arabia is an ally! Yeah, make a boxer a president, and good luck, Ukraine! Or good luck joining the sinking ship of the EU! When Euroscepticism is becoming more stronger of a movement by every day passing and some are considering leaving the EU, others want to join! Again, good luck!
I'm very sorry that our slavic neighbours behave so badly. It is not a revolution, it's the rampage of anarchy and laziness.
Just another approval of the 95% rule. Ukraine has no strong elite. People who come to power are just short-sighted beggars. They see the golden antelope and ask her for gold, more gold[1]. And finish like the greedy raja. That's obvious and predictable.
It's the greatest diplomatic failure to push dumb poor people to power. Hi there, western polittechnology! Look at Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Ukraine(so-called "orange revo" in 2004 and now - just the same) Promote quasi-democracy and push the weak leader to power. You'll get unstabilized entity, unable to produce any decent products or services and... just.. repeat when it seems to get a little stronger than needed?!
If you want a real success story, read the fucking history of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Revolution
Well that's the real deal.
Just this for instance: "The Russian Empire, which had withdrawn from the war in 1917 after the October Revolution, lost much of its western frontier as the newly independent nations of Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland were carved from it. Romania took control of Bessarabia in April 1918."
Here in India, we have also witnessed a series of street agitations against a corrupt political system that runs most of the country.
Though, It hasn't crossed the line, yet, and turned into violent protests like Kiev.
There are many things which have happened in the 21st century, but the rise of frequent civilian protests around the world is certainly the one that stands out. I am not a student of history, but this is the first time I am becoming more and more aware of such restlessness in the citizens of the world.
I guess, this is a kind of cycle. Political systems rise, become stable and stay for some time and then slowly the rot begins, which when reaches a certain tipping point, forces the masses to rise to make correction and then the cycles repeats.
The only difference being the timeline of the cycle, which seems to differ from region to region and from country to country.
I am sure there must be some literature/research dedicated to this phenomena.
Regardless who is in the right here, I don't understand why all the protesters keep going to that square where all the cops are. One of those Molotov cocktails they keep throwing could probably be used more efficiently anywhere else in the city with so many cops in that one square. I am sure there must be plenty of worthwhile targets that pretty much have their pants down right now. Police stations, buildings associated with Yanukovich and his party... I am sure there is any number of places where a few guys with molotovs could be used better than at that battlefield of a square.
I've been thinking about this all day. How could we, as hackers, build tools that allow for such activist groups to organize online, but yet keep these plans safe from the government?
I know both kinds. What would you personally choose: a corrupt government or a revolt that was designed by someone outside of your country with their own agenda?
How do you know it was designed by someone outside? And why does it matter anyway? Do you seriosuly thing all these people protesting were paid by CIA? For 3 months? Some of them - I agree. Just like some of them were paid by Russia to make the protesters look bad. That's how politics go. In the end the biggest group is still the people that came there cause they wanted to protest. And don't you think they have valid reasons to protest?
Do you think what Yanukovych did is good or bad for Ukraine? I mean the whole set of anti-demonstration and anti-press laws. It's almost martial law. Is it OK with you? Better alternative to what exactly? Do you think he will let go of the power by himself? Or are you ok with benevolent dictator for life? It's how it always been in USSR, right? No point in leaving important matters to people.
I was 6 when Poland become independent in 1989. I don't remember much, just empty shelves gray people and standing with my mother in queues forever. But my parents and the whole family do. Nineties was hard but in the end it all worked out OK. Poland is much better place now. Do I care who started the protests - nope. Do I think there were some foreign agencies and conspiracies in this? Probably there were. Both Soviet and American. In the end regular people decided. Soviets had the whole country, the army, press, censorship, party, everything. Americans had radio free Europe and Hollywood movies to "brainwash" us. And Russians were brainwashing us every bit as hard as Americans, with schools, media, holidays, incentives to be a party memeber, everything. Still couldn't hide the fact that system was broken by design and worked worse every year.
People decided the revolution, not secret agencies.
I would like to point to another perspective on what is happening. Like most, i hope, i try to make my views fit to the events that have/are happening rather than them being defined by my views.
It seems that the protestors have no other clear goal in mind except joining the EU, this is very hard for a country like Ukraine where many people daily cross the border on their way to work, what happens to them does not concern the protestors.
I wonder if there are Russians living in the west part of Ukraine, how violently would the protestors deal with them. Because it seems that the protestors are driven by their hatred towards not-signing the deal with Russia instead of EU.
Also the current government of Ukraine has support, it is not like the whole of Ukraine has risen against it. But it is interesting that the ones who did in their lines have nazi supporters. Still one thing is clear, Russia EVIL/BAD, EU GOOD.
Since these protestors are a bit on the violent side, what would happen to a Russian or an Ukrainian who supports the government in the protestors control area? They would probably feel their hatred on their own bodies.
This is not the first time that something like this is happening.And the EU/USA always support the more radical parts of the society(with media, weapon support etc..) often leading to ethnic cleansing, and suppression of rights of some group of people. As in case with many countries where the west supported someone. Iraq, the radicals are taking how many lives per year? Libya, how many are suffering now since the intervention? Turkey and Kurds.Syria, somehow the people who eat their enemies hearts got supported by the USA/UK/GERMANY/TURKEY etc, and then they did not go in because of being outsmarted by the Chinese and Russians, but somehow the media already twisted it to seem that USA did not go to war because of Obama.
The nations that have lived under sanctions placed by your politicians, under governments who pushed for your interests and promised growth and progress... The only thing that grows is the hatred.
If EU really practices what it speak, as it obviously does not, and neither once are/were part of societies supported by the west tolerant towards their fellow human,even if many years have passed. Are the 'evil' that had to be fought against. One only needs to check on the rights of Serbs who are outside their ghettos our country. Who do not even have the right for their written language.
The only thing EU needs is workforce, destroy Ukraine so they can get more workforce/consumers who are capable of sustaining their own economy.
Some mention Baltic states as progress, because russians come and buy there since it is cheaper. But if it really helped so much, why did you lose so much of your population because of immigration to EU, is life hard but you have option to get away? Is your economy not working? At least you have cheaper products because yours were not protected by your politicians and had to close down because they can not compete?
It seems that one more part of society who are driven by hatred is supported by the civilized and superior leaders of the world to who we should look up to. I wonder when will they start directing their hatred on Russians/Ukrainians who do not support their views?
Also, because of immigration in EU how much time do you have before the radical parts of your societies collide inside your home countries?
> It seems that the protestors have no other clear goal in mind except joining the EU
Incorrect, the main goal is to prevent the current government mafia allied with government-connected industrial oligarchs in Donetsk region to become even less representative and even more Russian-controlled.
> I wonder if there are Russians living in the west part of Ukraine, how violently would the protestors deal with them.
So far the protests were targeting the government, not civilians. This is a very good thing.
> Because it seems that the protestors are driven by their hatred towards not-signing the deal with Russia instead of EU
Again, incorrect, the protests are driven by resentment against the current tightly-connected pro-Russian ruling elite.
> nazi supporters.
There is indeed a party with extremely right-wing views that regularly receives up to 8-10% of the vote. However it is questionable as to whether that portion of the population actually holds those beliefs or simply uses them as signaling to antagonize Russia.
> And the EU/USA always support the more radical parts of the society(with media, weapon support etc..)
Current Western support is nearly non-existent while that of Moscow is extremely significant and some would say heavy-weight.
>Incorrect, the main goal is to prevent the current government mafia allied with government-connected industrial oligarchs in Donetsk region to become even less representative and even more Russian-controlled
It is just a coincidence that that seems to align with the EU goals. Hatred and emotions have nothing to do with what is happening and noone is using anyone.
>So far... < the key word
>Again, incorrect, the protests are driven by resentment against the current tightly-connected pro-Russian ruling elite.
Whose actions are sparked by what is viewed by them as not-signing the deal with Russia instead of EU, because it seemed like the final step of evil controlled Ukrainian government stepping closer to Russia. Who it self is lead by a dictator like Putin. Unlike the benevolent EU.
>There is indeed a party with extremely right-wing views that regularly receives up to 8-10% of the vote. However it is questionable as to whether that portion of the population actually holds those beliefs or simply uses them as signaling to antagonize Russia.
I am sure that all others who also supported nazis also supported them for no other reason but to antagonize someone else, ever. I realize that maybe you are correct i should re-check the history of people who were antagonized by nazis.
>Current Western support is nearly non-existent while that of Moscow is extremely significant and some would say heavy-weight.
I fail to see how "Western", the civilized worlds support against corruption and a puppet who is controlled by a tyrant like Putin is non-existent. It has been running for how many years. Media support, pressure on the government and so on, do not spread lies like those, Ukrainians will not know who helped them later. It is not that there is no help it is just that there need to be found more ways to help. Probably some help on the ground too would be good.
Putin/Russia/Russian EVIL, EU/US/NATO GOOD.
> Who it self is lead by a dictator like Putin. Unlike the benevolent EU.
You are trying to sound sarcastic. You are failing.
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You are telling me that Putin is not a dictator? Did you not listen to the free media? Where are you getting your news?
EU and Europeans are benevolent, they are also tolerant unlike the gay hating Russians
The basic political problem in Ukraine is that Russia still has lots of influence over it, and Russia sees it as its territory separated temporarily after the breakup of the USSR. Ukraine is dependent on Russia for things like natural gas, and thus cannot simply break away from the abusive relationship. Russia naturally has an interest in having a political puppet in power in Ukraine. Who better to do this than a convicted felon like Yanukovych? This is how the riots started this time around: to protest the sudden pro-Russian turn of the Yanukovych administration.
Ukraine has for some time now faced the tough choice: continue its abusive but familiar relationship with Russia or turn to Europe and risk everything to try to build a new relationship with the EU? IMO, until Ukraine grows a spine and does what's best for its people long term, it will continue getting into situations like this. Yanukovych, while completely corrupt, is not the ultimate evil. He is a lackey that will be replaced if he is ousted. The real issue here is Russia.