Sorry if it sounded hostile, it wasn’t aimed at you but at the public in general. No one can afford to boycott China really, and Germany can’t afford to cut ties with Russia as well. Even if they apply those long-term plans for a complete change of their economy for the sake of being dependent on someone else - these markets are not static. Maybe tomorrow they get a better deal with US about resources (like the one that was promised but then disappeared IIRC). Maybe gas will become cheap tomorrow. Maybe by the time you transform your economy in spite of Russia it collapses.
Seems Google is a bad example indeed. I can see a lot of noise in the news about possible collaborations and deals with Tencent but nothing solid.
Timex
1660
https://www.ft.com/content/28e104d4-bee1-4685-acd1-ff7cd0186ddf?s=09
Russia’s sabre-rattling in Ukraine has reignited the debate in Finland as to whether the Nordic country should join Nato, defying demands from Moscow that seek to limit expansion of the military alliance in Europe.
Both the president Sauli Niinisto and the prime minister Sanna Marin used their new year addresses to underscore that Finland retained the option of seeking Nato membership at any time.
Yeah, it’s a dynamic landscape, and you have to be flexible to an extent. I mean, for decades we bought (and continue to buy, to some extent) oil from countries that shall we say are not exactly paragons of human rights observation. Hell, one could argue that someone buying something made in, say, Texas was contributing to human rights abuses, given some of the laws in that US state! The whole world is tied together, which means every transaction is tainted.
My antipathy of Google was fueled by the fact that for the past year they allowed political ads in Belarus were tortured and beaten people have “confessed” they protested against the government. This was in addition to more traditional political propaganda.
Yesterday there was some kind of court action against Google in Belarus. Hard to know what exactly was it about cause it was behind closed doors. But today Google representative meets with the leader of Belarusian opposition and talks about how can they prevent political propaganda in google ads. Go Google, I guess, even though it would be nice to have something like that much earlier.
KevinC
1663
And to think this a company that used to have “don’t be evil” in their code of conduct. Can’t worry about that sort of thing if there’s more money to be made!
RichVR
1664
Well… it was on a sign… :)
Thrag
1665
They said don’t “be”, not assist.
ShivaX
1667
There is a reason they removed that part imo.
Zylon
1668
They certainly didn’t remove it for NO reason.
Glad seeing people making pointless ignorant comparisons to something other than Hitler.
Real concern of Kazakhs right now is that outside intervention will spark nationalist conflicts. Kazakhstan has a lot of ethnic Russians and they’re concentrated in the cities. Protests themselves have nothing to do with ethnicities but it will quickly change if the protests are shot down by caucasian people (it’s not just Russia, Armenia and Belarus sends people too). They’ll leave eventually and local Russian populace will remain.
jpinard
1672
I have to admit I’m not exactly sure what your complaint is… or if you’re complaining at all. Right now the overthrow is because of mismanagement and autocracy in the country. But if RUSSIA marches in, it becomes a Nationalist problem with Russians who live in Kazakhstan allying with the mother country, and everyone else feeling under the boot of an occupier and its minions.
So if what you say gels with what is basically being said elsewhere (if for slightly different reasons), what are the ignorant statements?
The ignorant statements are comparisons to historical events. Putting it all in the Cold War narrative is extremely misleading. Also sad to see that the world took notice of Kazakh events only when Russia became involved.
CraigM
1674
I’ll admit the only time I pay attention to Kazakstan is when there is a rocket launch at Baikunor.
Not saying you should always be thinking about Kazakhstan but you should at least realize it’s not a Russian satellite, not even close. Russian minority is not happy there and the Russian state never says anything about it or some other clear anti-Russian moves (like few years back they decided to switch from Cyrillic alphabet they’ve used since 1940 to Latin one. I’ve been in Kazakhstan when they started it and it was quite confusing). You can imagine Kazakhstan becoming a Russian satellite as a result of all this but this is a huge stretch.
Hey, there were two Borat movies!
I was just thinking, what would Borat and Azamat do?
