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