The Russia is getting more evil thread

[ShivaX]

Also consider that Musk was bragging about how they were giving the Ukrainians Starlink to fight back until he took a turn and decided to suckle Putin’s schlong.

[TheWombat]

@Menzo

Not really - in the US there are laws that make discrimination based on religion or race illegal.

Leaving aside the complexities of corporations, jurisdictions, the global sphere, and all that in general, this sort of thing raises its own set of issues. If it is ok for a company to be prevented from discriminating due to race, why is it not ok to prevent them from backing the wrong side in an international conflict or for taking any other position? Mind you, I’m not disagreeing with any particular law, it’s just that there is a lot of inconsistency here.

The real problem is that we have given corporations the best of both worlds. They get to be individuals when it benefits them, but also get to hide behind limited liability to escape the consequences that individuals have to face.

[scottagibson]

@TheWombat

If it is ok for a company to be prevented from discriminating due to race, why is it not ok to prevent them from backing the wrong side in an international conflict or for taking any other position?

As a general response, I’d say discriminating against people because of their words or ideas or actions is a different kind of thing than discriminating against people because of their identity. “I don’t want my business to help you disseminate your Nazi screed or kill people,” is an understandable objection, while “I don’t want to publish you because you are black or Catholic or Chinese,” is not, from an ethical and moral perspective.

But in this specific example, the more immediate reason is that race is a protected class under the constitution.

[Coldsteel]

@KevinC

I love Russia’s take on Vuhledar.

The Russian Defense Ministry has insisted the assault on Vuhledar, where the 155th Marine Brigade is prominently involved, is going according to plan.

[vyshka]

I believe they regularly issue those advisories.

[Mark_Weston]

@TheWombat

The whole Starlink thing is complex, and important, as going forward the lines between different types of use of connectivity will continue to blur. One could argue as some have that civilian companies should be able to decide who uses their system for what purposes, but that opens up the possibility of, say, not allowing BLM activists or the Baptist Church or whatever to use it, either. One could argue that modern Internet connections are equivalent to power and water and other utilities, and the companies running them (never mind the discussion about state vs. private control) have an obligation to keep them up and running regardless of use cases, but then you have the problem of enabling, say, a repressive dictatorship or hate group.

I think that imagining some kind of slippery slope from “no killer drones” to “no blacks” is pushing this rhetorical technique past reasonable limits. This slope would have to be frictionless.

@TheWombat

One problem here is that the way Musk frames things is horrible, and makes him look like a Russian stooge, as well as someone totally ignorant of how the modern world actually works outside of his little bubble. Elevating a private company to a position of monitoring and vetting a sovereign nation state’s communications is certainly a celebration of private property rights but it also has a lot of ramifications. After the war, assuming Ukraine is still intact as a sovereignty, I’m betting there will be a piper to be paid.

The thing is, this is a very unusual case. I would bet that no other western military would dream of pushing time-critical intel or weapons control channels over the public internet. Militaries build their own networks. But Ukraine, being short on money but long on smart, motivated people, have managed to build C3I capabilities which are by all accounts more effective than those of the country we used to think was a near-peer US rival. It’s been a huge success story. Unfortunately they were smart people whose knowledge was of publicly available civilian tech, and there aren’t any easy ways to parachute a robust new internet infrastructure into a country that’s being bombed.

[Aleck]

Does anyone know if the Iridium network would be suitable, as opposed to Starlink?

[Mark_Weston]

Scouring the world for every last Soviet-era ammunition cache:

Visegrád 24

[Mark_Weston]

WhereisRussiaToday

WhereisRussiaToday

[sillhouette]

If EM wants to be a real partisan about Starlink, he should just make an internal corporate decision to recognize Russia’s claims over Ukr territory. Then he can secretly start complying with Russian intel requests for Starlink data, geolocation, and intercepts in “their” land.

[Ginger_Yellow]

If he’s doing things secretly, he could just give it to them anyway.

[John_Many_Jars]

Photos of Solovyov's youngest son in women's clothes and with manicure are...

[KevinC]

Rules for thee but not for me seems to be an international constant when it comes to revanchist culture warriors.

[morlac]

@JonRowe

Civilian internet/telecoms being used by the military for operations feels wrong.

You should look up the long and lustrous love affair the US Intelligence has with ATT.

[alekseivolchok]

The article also fails to mention that Solovyev himself also has few villas in Italy. One is not enough to observe the depth of Western decadence. He was angry live on TV when this happened last year:

Russian Propagandist Vladimir Solovyov’s Italian Villas Torched and Vandalized

I don’t think anyone on this forum needs to be persuaded, but anyone thinks Russian elites defend any traditional values except for “might makes right” is delisional.

[TheWombat]

@scottagibson

But in this specific example, the more immediate reason is that race is a protected class under the constitution.

True, but the situation is one that extends beyond the USA. What the US says about this or that isn’t global law, as much as we would like it to be sometimes. It also doesn’t get at the heart of the question, which is really about the limits of corporate power.

@Mark_Weston

I think that imagining some kind of slippery slope from “no killer drones” to “no blacks” is pushing this rhetorical technique past reasonable limits. This slope would have to be frictionless.

Eh, I see your point, but I disagree. My lack of faith in corporations is itself a frictionless slope.

@sillhouette

If EM wants to be a real partisan about Starlink, he should just make an internal corporate decision to recognize Russia’s claims over Ukr territory. Then he can secretly start complying with Russian intel requests for Starlink data, geolocation, and intercepts in “their” land.

Pretty much; one of the points I’m getting at is that if corporations want to act as individuals, and get all the protections of individuals, they should have to take the flak for their decisions like individuals. When a star like Roger Waters blathers on about this stuff, he gets pilloried, but at least he owns it. When a corporation or corporate officer says what amounts to the same thing (or acts in a way that echoes such sentiments), it/they hide behind the corporate identity and mutter stuff about business and non-partisanship, blah blah blah.

[ShivaX]

@TheWombat

My lack of faith in corporations is itself a frictionless slope.

If Jim Crow was financially lucrative, 90% of corporations would happily start posting ‘Whites Only’ signs in under a month.

[Grifman]

Russia may have lost an entire elite brigade near a Donetsk coal-mining town

[jpinard]

Russia just wants to be the most evil country out there don’t they?

Russian Hackers Disrupt NATO Earthquake Relief Operations

[Grifman]

Interesting interview from the front lines:

CJ

Pravda.com.ua Interview: Ukrainian colonel Oleh Faydyuk • WarTranslated