HN user
Maybe you should follow your own advice - your numbers are wildly inflated (can easily be checked at Wikipedia), Ukrainians weren't the only ones in USSR who were starving to death and they were part of USSR leadership as any other nation there (with Stalin being Georgian). And frankly, idea that you're going to judge who is fit to comment is highly delusional.
So something like Assange.
Everybody is doing that. Even here on the HN you'll get shadow banned - couple of weeks ago whole thread that someone else started just disappeared. I become aware of that only when searching for my own message from that thread. It was semi-controversial issue but nothing in that thread (at least at the time I saw its content for the last time) warranted that. Basically what I'm seeing as a HN is just a view that someone else curates.
Impressive level of paranoia from a citizen of a country with 800 bases around the world. Mad propz for your mass media.
You mean you want US to be even more jingoistic? It won't be an easy task for sure as I'm reading propaganda pieces almost every day for a last few years in a places that earlier were almost politics free (ars technica, hn...) - regular new sites not to mention.
Why would he do any time at all? Because the people who actually should be doing time are the people in power so they are somehow immune?
Also, Chelsea could transition to a woman without prison too. The fact that they ended/will end in prison while people who actually committed crimes that these two (and Snowden) exposed speaks volumes about how fundamentally different USA is.
Nobody cares what Canada fears or not.
Simple fact is that there's no Chinese hegemony now and there won't be one in foreseeable future because there's existing hegemon that won't just give up.
btw one man's whataboutism is another man's uncovering of hypocrisy.
Sure, I clearly remember how Bush Jr. along Cheney, Powel and Rumsfeld went to court and were imprisoned for life for all the misery they inflicted. Oh, wait...
Yeah, EU investing money - good, China investing money - bad.
- Why it's bad?
- Because they get influence over government.
- But EU also gets even more influence when they invest money and finance myriads of NGOs?
- Yeah, but that's different - we are the good guys and they are bad (even when we're doing same thing).
Passengers were in danger in a same way passengers are in danger over New York if pilot refuses ATC directions.
Yeah, Morales's pilot could choose a different path provided there's air refueling available. Otherwise it had to land somewhere, and then airplane was searched. I'm pretty sure there are conventions that forbid that kind behavior against diplomatic personal.
So, in the end, we are again at the same place - when we ignore conventions that's perfectly fine, and when they do the same it's a completely different.
btw read first article of Chicago convention, then check what sovereignty means.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achille_Lauro_hijacking#Interc...
Looks like they learned from the best.
US allies kept CIA black sites on their territory without raising a voice (I guess they were very happy to prove their usefulness to the big boss), I certainly doubt they would protest for landing a plane for a few hours.
A said 'right' in the sense that they are free to do it like any other state - Lukashenko isn't nice guy at all but he didn't do anything unusual here - shooting that plane down would be extraordinary, but forcing it to land isn't significantly different than crap that was brought down on Assange or Snowden.
Don't be silly - Belarus is a sovereign state, they control their airspace and they had every right to land that plane down. Assange made US looked stupid in that incident while Lukashenko made Protasevich looked stupid yesterday.
btw nobody sane is believing that US wouldn't force to land plane flying over US with Snowden in it - but Snowden isn't that stupid I guess.
Nope, that airplane was in Belarus airspace so it's up to them to decide if they want it landed or not. If you don't like it nobody is forcing you to fly over Belarus. Their airspace - their rules.
Same thing happened on 9/11 - US chose do land all aircrafts, and in case that anyone disobeyed orders it would be promptly shot down - foreign planes or not, it didn't matter in slightest.
US bombs landed on Croatian Serbs on multiple occasions thus enabling ethnic cleansing. But no biggie, what's small ethnic cleansing between NATO friends?
Belarus airspace - Belarus rules. If EU civilian aircrafts doesn't like it they are free not to enter that airspace.
Yeah, you have such a great legacy when defending democracy all over the world even in cases where you were absolutely dominant military power that this one would be walk in a park - Russia would just stand down, peacefully looking NATO invading its ally on its doorstep. Fortunately no-one in NATO has such illusions.
No, they certainly didn't have to land in Austria. But somehow, god knows why, certain countries closed their airspace for that specific plane. I'm inclined to belive that more countries would suddenly close their airspace too if plane chose not to land in Austria but to go to some country where Snowden won't be in danger of being arrested - France, Spain, Portugal and Italy are hardly the only one that would bow under US pressure.
What happened in the Snowden case was DIPLOMACY ("you may not travel here if you carry this man"), not force.
And MiG-29 sprinkled same kind of diplomacy here - they weren't shot down, they just were diplomatically notified that in their best interest is to land down. See, no force, pure diplomacy.
It's not exactly the same but it's almost the same - multiple countries synchronously closing their airspace so plane can't just go around single one thus basically forcing plane down as it could run out of fuel is quite similar to faking bomb alert in order to force plane down. Only lame excuse is different.
The thing about a destabilised world order is that it works both ways.
Maybe it took 30 years to become obvious to you but at least you got it - sadly that happened only when you ended being on a receiving end.
NATO to "protect" airways over Belarus? When pigs fly, I guess.
Sure there are differences - in one case it was us (and we are good guys of course) and in another case it was them (and they are bad guys). Nothing new under the sun, it has always been like that, us vs them.
Great work in the Libya guys - 10 years later country is still at war, 10s of thousands dead (and counting), people are worse in every possible way than during Gadaffi rule... Can't wait to see more similar interventions in the future.
Because this is straight from James Bond movies - when villains fail to kill him as they always give him a chance to escape.
They could easily kill Navalny with gun, bomb, polonium... But no, let's poison him with something that's very lethal but in such way that he lives.