> you don't have FBI agents knocking on your door threatening you with prison.

Correct, it's DHS.

https://twitter.com/_secondthought/status/133274617257067725...

You know people online can just say things, right?

I don’t think it’s that far fetched that DHS shows up to someone who is opposed to the US government and is a self identifying communist.

The same DHS who bans immigrants that are or have been members of a communist party [1].

[1] https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/policy-ma...

Not everyone who questions US foreign policy is a paid Russian agent.

The United States has over 750 military bases in 80 countries. Which state is the militaristic state?

>I reject the false equivalence of the DHS and FSB. Not gonna both-sides this, sorry.

lmao mkay. Not identical, but very similar. It's not even 'Alex Jones'-tier to say this. I think you forget you are if you are under US or (even NATO). YOU WILL hear propaganda from your side, as the Russians do. It's NORMAL. We live under control of a hegemon with self-interests.

May I have to remind you of these? And tell me the difference between these and Russian spookery:

>Assange was being hunted down by the US worldwide (https://diem25.org/exactly-10-years-ago-wikileaks-released-a...)

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM

I could go on, but the point was made already.

Edit: So yes, it's actually 'both sides'

Would you please stop posting flamewar comments and using HN for ideological battle? We ban accounts that do those things, and you've already been doing it repeatedly.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

>Would you please stop posting flamewar comments

Sure, my rhetotic got kinda out of line. I get excited debating.

>and using HN for ideological battle

I reject the characterization, it's almost implying I have an end with these posts besides putting a point of view that's at least an alternative to status quo that can make people realize they don't have any skin in the game, and that the US State Dept. has. I also don't. I don't really care about the outcome of the war.

>If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

I'll do that then. Thanks for the heads up.

> I don't really care about the outcome of the war.

Which IMO is a comment that only a shitty person would make.

Yeah, you could go on, but you get paid per post, not per word.

You broke the site guidelines badly here. The rules apply regardless of how wrong another comment is or you feel it is. We've had to warn you about this kind of thing a lot. If you keep doing it, we're going to end up having to ban you, so please stop.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Unmasked as a shill for saying that great powers engage in propaganda, false flagging and dissent crushing.

I have no skin in the game. War, no war, it doesn't matter to me the outcome of this war to be honest.

EDIT: But if you are all moral highground, answer me this:

Why did the US goad Ukraine into taking a hostile stance against a neighbouring (and somewhat rival) great power? Whas this to the interest of Ukranians? Or to the geopolitical interests of US? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93eyhO8VTdg

I don't accept that you can make this case:

"Why did you, W, goad X into expressing their sovereignty against Y? Didn't you know that Y would react with violence? That makes W the bad guy"

No, Y is always on the wrong side; you can't use the threat of violence and then claim via realpolitik that the other side was in the wrong. "Moral high ground" means you act out of principle, not political convenience. In this case, Ukraine didn't want to be in the Russian sphere, so we supported them.

And now yeah, the US is paying a lot of money and inconvenience to support Ukraine. Gas will be more expensive, we're spending tens of billions on weapons. But that's because it's the right thing to do; not every decision is a realpolitik game about maximizing revenue from vassal states (which I hope Russia will learn someday).

what I meant for the goading part was this:

Ukraine has self interests. Everyone has. But not everyone can actualize those, due to reality. The reality is that Ukraine neighbours a powerful hegemon.

Since international relations are anarchistic (due to not being a supra-entity that has authority over states [authority!=international courts bullsh*]), Ukraine hasn't any right (to its sovereign, that does not exist) to be sovereign. It has to go out and look for itself.

Ukraine thought that had the US/NATO back, that made it act in a more reckless way (kind of when you rely on your big brother type stuff). It escalated 'till it decided it wanted to join NATO. It was goaded.

>you can't use the threat of violence and then claim via realpolitik that the other side was in the wrong.

who says? That's your problem. You lack the 'anarchistic' framework of geopolitics.

Now, realpolitik-wise, Ukraine's self-interests (of being more independent of Russia thru NATO) did clash with Russia's self-interests of being safe (and probably made Russia have a expansionary Casus Belli).

I feel that the US triggered and amplified the war, thru regime change in Ukraine (yep, maidan was a coup), recognizing aspirations of UA to NATO, making Zeleskyy too comfy to be more harsh in negotiations (where he had no leverage, cuz Ukraine's power small vs Rus.), ultimately resulted in unnecessary deaths, just for the purpose of sphere of influence expansion.

>so we supported them.

Even if it's reckless and could trigger something like this?

Also, I will play the 'reversed roles card' again. This time with a REAL example. Cuba. Was. The. Same. Thing.

That's why this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods and this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine.

US has the same pattern as Russia. It's actually incredible how close these are.

> clash with Russia's self-interests of being safe

They clash with Russia's perceived self-interests of being safe, yes. The problem is, Russia defines "being safe" the same way it always has, under the General Secretaries of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and all the (other) Tsars before, going right back to when the Grand Duchy of Muscovy emerged from vassalage to the Mongols: by distance of their borders from Moscow. And the distance they want is at least up to Warsaw, Vienna and Sofia, but preferably Berlin or Paris (or, better yet, Lisbon).

That kind of clashes with the current world order, where there are quite a lot of currently sovereign nations in the way, which would have to be subordinated to Moscow – or basically just wiped off the map – to give Russia what its leadership wants.

What you're advocating is in effect that this is how it should be, because Russia is "a great power". (Newsflash: So were Germany and Japan in 1939. And, to compare with Russia's current equal in GDP, Italy.)

A more rational solution would be that Russia updates its concept of "being safe" to at least the 20th century. (Or, hey, one that worked for at least some countries even in the 19th: Don't be an asshole to anyone, then nobody will want to attack you.)

> yep, maidan was a coup

I've found that to be rhe most infallible heuristic on social media for – oh-so-coincidenctally – the last third of a year: Calls Maidan a "coup" → is a Putler-propagandist troll.

> UA ... NATO ... Zeleskyy [yadda yadda] ultimately resulted in unnecessary deaths

Oh, that's funny. And here I thought it was Putler's unilateral decision to start a war of aggression causing all those deaths.

> Why did the US goad Ukraine into taking a hostile stance against a neighbouring (and somewhat rival) great power?

You gravely misspelled "Why did the US support the sovereign nation-state Ukraine in asserting its independence against a neighbouring rogue state whose dictatorial regime has delusions of still being a 'great power'?"

But I don't know, maybe that was what you meant to write and some evil employees at one of Putin's troll factories inserted their master's propaganda into your otherwise so well-thought-out piece.

You can twist it however you like, and select individual sentences and ignore the context and everything else I wrote. At this point (again, may get worse, it does not look good IMO) Russia is at least an order of magnitude worse. You have individual cases - maybe - in the US, but in Russia it's systemic and systematic and goes all the way to murder not just of the person but of the entire family - as we saw in March, when two oligarchs and their entire family were murdered, one in Russia, one in Spain (summary of oligarch deaths: https://www.businessinsider.com/these-are-all-the-russian-ol...). On top of that various murders of "traitors" e.g. in UK and in Germany. Trump got close in rhetoric to what Putin said on Russian TV in March but did not have a chance to implement it, and the US institutions still resist and don't (yet?) follow a dictator blindly, as they do in Russia.

> Take down Russia protest vote app or go to prison

What about Canadian truckers? Didn't Trudeau call them terrorists, took their trucks, donations, bank accounts and driver licenses... There is no right to protest anywhere, don't kid yourself.

The Canadian truck protesters were allowed to shut down the center of the city, blast their horns 24 hours a day, and shut down a major international trade route. They were permitted to do this for weeks before the citizens got sick of it and demanded action from their government.

They gave protest a bad name.

Your conclusion that "There is no right to protest anywhere" is simply ridiculous.

>Your conclusion that "There is no right to protest anywhere" is simply ridiculous.

BLM rioters did this, and more. Violence + Property damage + Corporate Backing + gov backing. They didn't had their donation money seized,and almost no resistance to establish order.

Yes, the BLM protests are more examples of the right to protest being alive and well.

> I doubt that anything like this happend to Google execs in the US:

It seems plausible; we don't know what gets done under the FISA court but it would presumably involve companies like Google. Some suited agent of the US government turning up at Google HQ and threatening jail time under some FISA warrant if some pro-Trump something doesn't disappear off Google.

That'd be a scandal but not the worst abuse of the secret court system. It hasn't exactly covered itself with glory since inception. They already spy on basically everyone and that is a lot worse than some light censorship.