Patreon blocked large Ukrainian army charity volunteers account https://savelife.in.ua/en/
It was probably the second largest on Patreon - getting more than a 200 000$ a month
If anyone has a twitter account (I do not), would be worth mentioning in that thread, to those who are deleting their accounts, to also formally request to have their personal data removed, this would give them a massive pain in the balls (if they complied that is).
We all know the final outcome of this. In the face of the overwhelming force Ukraine faces it seems to me any help we provide is just going to prolong the agony.
That's all I can think of... I just don't see an outcome where Ukraine receives so much support from the West that it will manage to beat Russia and make it go home without accomplishing any of its goals.... people seem to think that's a possible outcome. I wonder why when Kiev seems to already be surrounded and the USA government (who was right about warning about an imminent invasion!) has already said (correct me if I am wrong) that Kiev is likely to fall within days.
Short of actual military action from the West, which is extremely unlikely as that would give grounds to retaliation by Russia, escalating the war outside Ukrainian borders, Russia seems only days away from removing the Ukrainian government...
The rational thing to do right now is to start planning for the aftermath: how to get Russia out of Ukraine as soon as possible once they've taken control of the country. IMO there's only one way: to dialogue with Putin and finally accept some kind of terms for their removal from Ukraine. This is not what anyone wanted, but now that we've let Putin get to Kiev, what exactly are the options?
Anyone who thinks sending money and weapons to Ukraine will help solve the problem (including, to my horror, the UK government) seems to completely ignore the reality of the situation and is hoping for a delusional outcome, and worse, opening the possibility for things to go wrong and foreign soldiers being killed while trying to reach Ukrainian troops - which may without a doubt trigger a counter-attack by NATO and total escalation of the conflict (which should be priority number one to avoid right now!).
Look at the cost though. Afghanistan is the poorest country in the world, people are actually starving there now, women aren't allowed to work, people are being murdered for their political beliefs. Just so they could give their invaders a bloody nose.
I think there is nuance there but it may derail the intent of my comment: It is not a foregone conclusion that an invasion with intent of regime change and control is actually a viable strategy. The point of the Afghanistan inclusion is that the relative miltary strengths were even more lopsided yet it was not enough for Russia nor the US to maintain control. Insurgencies are devastating and the more legitimate they are, the more likely they are to maintain support.
Do you really think Ukraine has a reasonable chance of resisting this invasion? It doesn't look like it to me. So what are you offering other than prolonging the agony?
Ah the 'lets roll over for the enemy' group. Yes, we had those here in NL as well when WWII broke out.
Let's just say that when the invaders eventually left - as they always do - that group didn't fare particularly well. It's called cowardice, if coupled with actions that benefit the enemy it's called collaboration and is usually dealt with for what it is: treason.
I have no dog in this particular race other than that I know both a number of Russians and a number of Ukrainians so consider my views 'balanced' for what that is worth: down with Putin, and I hope that the Russian soldiers know that they may win the initial push but the price will be substantial and eventually they will lose.
The weird thing is that if anything the result of this is that NATO will expand, precisely to ward of this sort of idiocy.
As for agony: some prefer to fight rather than to suffer under an invader, which is a special kind of agony, which tends to last a lot longer and which will endanger not just you but also your family, your children and so on. Russia has a long history of invading other countries and it invariably spells utter misery for the occupied people.
> The weird thing is that if anything the result of this is that NATO will expand, precisely to ward of this sort of idiocy.
And many seem to have forgotten under Putin's propaganda of "the NATO provocations" that the free and democratic societies of the former Soviet Union / Eastern Bloc chose to join NATO after Russia's military actions, particularly after the events of 1991-1996 (Transnistria conflict, Abchasian separatist conflict, "intervention" in Chechnya).
It is the fault of Russian politics that NATO is so close to its borders!
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing"
Of course they have a chance. Their current strength is about 465k men (and women). Add on top the general mobilization happening now. They're also strongly motivated, which the Russians aren't.
Ukraine can definitely do this.
Also, giving up doesn't guarantee people will be safe. Russian occupation forces aren't usually very nice.
Did Ireland ever have a reasonable chance of resisting British invasion?
Did Afghanistan ever have a reasonable chance of resisting Soviet/US invasion?
Did Vietnam ever have a reasonable chance of resisting US/Chinese invasion?
Would you have thought the Taliban and IS did in e.g. Afghanistan? Twenty years later and the US got tired of trying, pulled out, and they're back in power.
Yep, fighting without considering the consequences is what people should do. Let's destroy all of Europe if we need to, just so we can say fuck you Putin! Beyong disgusting , me? I am sure you're the best person in the world and ready to pack your bags and bear arms against any invincible opponent without even thinking about the costs as they don't matter a single bit.
Your position is called 'appeasement'. It's understandable, if not very good in the long term because that means that Putin gets to rule the world.
Somewhere you have to draw a line, you can choose for yourself whether that line is the Ukrainian border, Kiev or France. But you too will find that you have a line. Or maybe you don't.
> destroy all of Europe if we need to, just so we can say fuck you Putin
"just so we can say fuck you Putin"? Really? That is how you are attempting to frame the situation of a clear victim defending itself against an aggressor that has been appeased for years now?
So you believe that the attacking entity should always win, no questions asked? Is conflict to be avoided at all costs?
Can I come into your home and just claim your house if I threaten to escalate with violence? You wouldn't want any conflict, so the right move would be to just give it to me.
IF I tell you I will kill you if you move, and I have a knife to your throat, I think you should have a pretty clear and well formed belief that I probably mean it.
Telling victims of crime to react as you seem to be proposing is completely irresponsible. I come from a country with high crime and we know very, very well that doing that only causes more deaths - it's public policy to tell people this as many people, like you, believe they can be brave and fight back. There's no heroes. Life is not a movie.
To survive in this world, we all need to take a hit every now and then: as long as we can stand up again later, it is often the only reasonable course of action.
I am also revolted, disgusted by your suggestions that people should put their lives on the line even when they have clear indications that it may be the last thing they do. Losing your life is NEVER worth it. Please stop propagating the ideology of being a martyr or a hero as if that was a good thing. It's not, it costs real lives in the real world.
My country was in a similar position 30 years ago. A laughable army compared to the 5th largest army on paper in Europe that attacked us. The USA didn't want to get involved.
1. Appeasement is not an option. It just encourages them to do it again.
2. It is up to the Ukrainians if they want to fight to the bitter end. We can't make them, we can't stop them, but we can have their backs.
3. The purpose of resisting an illegal occupation is to drive up the cost of staying as high as possible. This works, even without economic sanctions. Just ask Vietnam or Afghanistan.
4. In a proxy war, countries officially "ignore" inconvenient facts because acknowledging them will cause a more complicated conflict. This happened all over the Cold War, but as recently as Afghanistan the US had to turn a blind eye to Pakistan's behavior.
5. Nothing is predetermined or strictly predictable. History is chaos. The only thing we know for sure right now is this will be hell for the Ukrainians.
Depends on Russia's goals. From this other front page (lengthy) discussion[1], they posit Russia likely made a mistake if their goal is regime change. Insurgency's work, especially when they are legitimate. I expect if Ukraine forces survive, they would recieve long-term and well-financed backing indefinitely from the west. Now if Russia's goals are not regime change but just to destablize / make a mess, or even to just make a statement and leave (if that's politically viable? idk), different story.
I personally don't expect Russia to conquer all of Ukraine. It's a big country with 40 million people iirc.
When Germany invaded Ukraine in 1941 they had 3 million soldiers.
I honestly don't know what Putin is expecting to gain from this. The occupation won't pay for itself and Russian economy is already bleak.
On paper with raw soldier numbers you may be right, but look at the map, and check once again how many troops russians deployed. Its not possible to really conquer country so vast with so few soldiers. Maybe 5x more, maybe 10x. Not if civilians are armed, full of hate and can actually shoot their guns and plan diversions effectively.
Yes they can bomb the bases and airports, capture few important points, but if population offers resistance in form of guerilla warfare, russians will bleed and will bleed hard and achieve nothing. Not that russian oligarchs like Putin ever cared about casualties even on their side.
I am not claiming its the best approach overall, maybe even the worst in terms of casualties. But there is something in human nature that reacts wildly when oppression comes and freedoms are being taken. Americans should understand this very well.
I personally think his game is just to install pro-russian government forever and few military bases and withdraw most of the army. Something like second Belarus. Look at the map - he will have 500km wall from rest of Europe. Now the billion $ question is, what he thinks about baltic states, since they are part of Nato.
No, because Russian soldiers get demoralised the longer they stay or fight: noone waits them in Ukraine with hugs, its not their land. Not just Ukrainian soldiers fight with them, but also civilian people resist, especially those who sign for local (in-city, in-town, in-village) defence groups.
Please fix your comment, you're basically saying that Ukraine should just roll over. What happens next? Think before replying, you may come across as a Russia apologist.
the Taliban and IS dragged out the conflict in the middle east for 20 years and came out victorious against an army that spent trillions on that conflict. That was after said army was defeated in Vietnam as well.
Really think this through...if the Taliban had rolled over and let the US win, then there would be a more "stable" western influenced government in place, which is exactly what they were fighting against the whole time.
The only party committing violence here is Putin and his cronies, the guy doesn't even have the backing of the Russian society - he's been ruling by fear for many years now.
To stand aside and claim "violence is bad" while someone is attacked is supporting the attacker, not the innocent attacked.
> when in this specific situation violence is maybe not bad.
I'm pretty sure Russia would say the same thing if you ask them about their situation. That's the problem once you bring in subjectivity.
That being said, tolerating the account for a few more days would've probably been a better play.
EDIT: Just to be very clear, I'm not condoning Russian aggression in any way. My point is that not funding a war is an acceptable choice, since it's very easy to be wrong and a sure way to bring human suffering.
Well, from their point of view, a military pact with the explicit goal of keeping them under control has first taken their land and is now threatening to get even closer to their border and encircle them. Just take a look at the Cuban missile crisis to see how the US reacted in a comparable situation and in that case, the distance from the missiles to the capital was a lot longer. For Russia, this is more like the missiles are already in Cuba and now Mexico is considering to join the Warsaw pact.
Everyone thinks they're on the right side. Now, obviously I think we (as in EU+US) are the good guys here, but it's quite clear that a lot of people were both very convinced and very wrong about this and I don't consider us unfailable.
"Mexico joining Warsaw Pact / China" and "NATO Missiles" are common Russian propaganda talking points. When someone says those words, you know they are compromised - either willingly working for the enemy of free world, or manipulated into doing it.
("Russian sphere of influence" is another sign of Soviet-thinking, as is talking about "Ukrainian Nazis".)
In this case that has been made pretty easy to see. Even large numbers of Russians agree with that.
> Now, obviously I think we (as in EU+US) are the good guys here, but it's quite clear that a lot of people were both very convinced and very wrong about this and I don't consider us unfailable.
Indeed. But this isn't the Cuban missile crisis (which was provoked by the USSR to begin with) and the Ukraine isn't anything like Cuba.
Note that Cuba was - in spite of everything - never actually invaded with the intent to occupy, and it's not as if the US couldn't have done that if they had wanted to do so.
> In this case that has been made pretty easy to see. Even large numbers of Russians agree with that.
Just as large numbers of US citizens disagreed with the wars of the last decades.
> Indeed. But this isn't the Cuban missile crisis (which was provoked by the USSR to begin with) and the Ukraine isn't anything like Cuba.
Well, you could argue that the EU/NATO expansion did provoke this, too.
But I'm getting distracted here; I really don't want to defend Russia and especially not their recent actions. I also don't think that helping the Ukraine is a bad thing, quite the opposite actually. My point is that you don't get to both condone violence and keep your status as "peaceful" because it's against the right people. If German history has taught me anything, it's that accepting violence as right leads down a very bad path quickly. It might sometimes be necessary, but it's never "not bad".
> Well, you could argue that the EU/NATO expansion did provoke this, too.
You could, but it would be bullshit.
> But I'm getting distracted here; I really don't want to defend Russia and especially not their recent actions. I also don't think that helping the Ukraine is a bad thing, quite the opposite actually. My point is that you don't get to both condone violence and keep your status as "peaceful" because it's against the right people. If German history has taught me anything, it's that accepting violence as right leads down a very bad path quickly. It might sometimes be necessary, but it's never "not bad".
If you really had paid attention to German history you would have realized that sometimes violence is the only way to deal with an emerging threat. It is precisely the lack of decisive action that allowed Hitler the space to do what he did.
In your (our) opinion. But that does not make it an absolute truth.
> If you really had paid attention to German history you would have realized that sometimes violence is the only way to deal with an emerging threat. It is precisely the lack of decisive action that allowed Hitler the space to do what he did.
And that's why I ended my post with:
>> It might sometimes be necessary, but it's never "not bad".
I don't think that turning the other cheek is the right move here. My point is that we don't get to feel good about violence because it's against the right guys.
There we have that false balance thing again. It's documented bullshit, so you can choose to just see it as my opinion, but NATO has a couple of articles formulated especially to deal with aggression like this. To posit that joining an alliance - which didn't happen, another simple fact - because you are afraid of your aggressive neighbor is the cause of the aggression is a pretty extreme form of victim blaming.
> My point is that we don't get to feel good about violence because it's against the right guys.
Believe me, I'm a pacifist at heart. And what's happening now in Ukraine (and prior to that in Chechnya) makes my blood boil. I've seen first hand what life under Russia looks like, there is no way this is going to be whitewashed.
> I've seen first hand what life under Russia looks like, there is no way this is going to be whitewashed.
I'm really not trying to whitewash anything. I have friends in the Ukraine and I'm fearing for their live right now - and, to be honest, a bit for mine, since this conflict is really close to escalating near my actual home. The last thing I want to do is to condone Russian aggression.
My point is that it's really easy to get lost once you accept violence as good. So I can absolutely understand why Patreon chooses to stay neutral in a war, even if it's for (what we see as _and probably is_) the right side. Violence might sometimes be necessary, but it's never a "not bad" thing, especially since it's easy to see oneself on the right side and be wrong about it - which does not mean I think Russia is in any way right here, just to be very clear.
And I think we both agree that the aggression in the Ukraine is both wrong horrible and that violence is generally a bad thing, just to state the obvious - which is probably why we don't get anywhere with this discussion.
> My point is that it's really easy to get lost once you accept violence as good.
I don't think any normal person believes that violence is good. It's the last option on the table. But it is an option.
> and, to be honest, a bit for mine, since this conflict is really close to escalating near my actual home. The last thing I want to do is to condone Russian aggression.
Excellent. And if and when it does happen, then maybe you will understand a bit better why the likes of Patreon cutting off support for the defenders is effectively taking sides.
It doesn't cost Patreon anything to pass on those funds. But fine, if they want to take sides then that's cool with me, they just made it to my shitlist, not a cent through their company, ever.
> then maybe you will understand a bit better why the likes of Patreon cutting off support for the defenders is effectively taking sides.
It obviously affects the conflict; there's really no option not to play for them. I just honestly think that "it's for the right side" is a really bad justification to directly fund weapons. There are better ones in this case, no doubt, but the one the initial comment I replied to made wasn't one.
And I can also see why they don't want to start doing so; once they do, they are either in a position to fund less clear-cut wars or to decide which side in a war is right and both are positions they really don't want to be in. So it's not quite true that it costs them nothing to support the Ukraine (even though, just to be clear, we're in agreement that it would have been the right thing).
> they just made it to my shitlist, not a cent through their company, ever.
Yeah, I see this kind of sentiment everywhere these days. Just because people disagree about things doesn’t mean it’s a subjective issue you can just wash your hands of. Sometimes you just have to dive in, figure out who’s right (or less wrong) and hope your assessment is correct. It sucks if you’re the kind of person who wants to never be wrong, but the adult world is messy, we often can’t afford that luxury.
Thank you. I was wondering if there was a term for this. It is, in my opinion, the most caustic force across public places of discourse today. Humans seem to have an overriding need to "balance the books", perhaps to avoid conflict with their peers or presume logical conclusion must hold two sides in equal reverence. There is nothing fair about this rape of a country, no feebly concocted realpolitik to soberly justify the murder of hundreds and soon thousands of people who want to live free of an abusive parent.
The Ukraine has disabled some human rights 7 years ago and is actively engaging in violent war with several human right violations for over 8 years now.
I don't see how even this situation is as clear as people make it out to be.
No, they still allow all the gun-advocacy patreons and things like that. It's more because of regulations that make it harder to exist if your platform materially supports foreign war efforts. Cowardly stance, though.
You can also donate to entities like https://www.unhcr.org/. Could someone suggest other reputable options?
Tangentially (as far as I can tell this doesn’t apply to the Patreon in this post), seeing social media scam profiting from the tragedy by tricking people into reposting shady donation links is disheartening.
One twitter comment mentions the account has been active for several years. Call me paranoid, but it's too big of a coincidence that it was closed exactly today.
The flow of money seems to be one major battleground in this war.
The biggest sanctions so far are disallowing to exchange funds with some russian banks. And the "nuclear option" is to disallow Russia from using the SWIFT system.
What are the chances that this conflict will completely change how trading is done between countries?
Could the USA, Europe, South Korea etc simply "nullify" all Russian holdings of their currency? I guess it is just some numbers on computers the respective countries have control over?
Kicking them out of SWIFT would hurt but China built an alternative system called CIPS. It’s nowhere near as big but it out there. But if China and Russia both used CIPS more then that would threaten the US dollar’s power as the global reserve currency.
Because the strategic goal for China and Russia is to establish a stable, long-term alternative to US hegemony. The invasion of Ukraine is a demonstration of independent will.
There is going to be nothing to stop China and the USSR from doing this for exactly that reason. At this point the only thing you can do is temporarily inconvenience them, since they’ll get off SWIFT as soon as possible anyway.
It would also sour China's trade relationships with the rest of the world. The US is China's biggest export market at $452 billion a year, with Russia trailing at just $50B a year. If China decided to ally with Russia - or help them get around the sanction - it would decimate China's economy as well: https://tradingeconomics.com/china/exports-by-country
Russia is an economically weak state; it's not in China's interests to help them.
> If China decided to ally with Russia - or help them get around the sanction - it would decimate China's economy as well:
The US and EU also heavily depend on China. Russia is not thrown out of SWIFT for a full-on war; I highly doubt that there will be sanctions to a more important trade partner that massively hurt the EU and US themselves for merely supporting Russia.
It is incredible how easy it is for Russia to spread their misinformation about their invasion on Ukraine without any bans or blockades, I have been reporting multiple times accounts that were clearly created by trolls to spread FUD and none of them "was breaking community standards".
On the other hand perfectly factual posts are regularly deleted from groups that track situation on Ukraine and do this in a honest way without pro-soviet bias, e.g the posts from Polish Obrona Pro (Defence Pro) Facebook group are deleted randomly, users are threaten to be banned without any explanation, except "blah, blah community standards".
From what I see all those "algorithms" and "AI" and "moderators" that are supposed to filter out spam are very easy to game by the party with sufficient resources.
If their policy banned this sort of activity and they cared at all, they would have removed this page 7 years ago, it's been up for 7 years. This isn't about their policy. The timing is everything.
this is a bit of a hassle, as UA government agencies can accept donations only through wire transfers, but that's just a few clicks in the banking app anyway.
Anybody can confirm whether ukraine.ua is legit? Their SSL certificate is issued to sni.cloudflaressl.com, which says nothing about whoever owns ukraine.ua.
Googling the IBAN (UA458201720313281002302018611) finds search results [1] from sites including treasury.gov.ua [2], mil.gov.ua [3] and 24tv.ua [4]. I currently see only 23 results for the IBAN code, but I blame this on the newness/novelty of the information and a suspicion that Google's keyword indexing engine doesn't particularly like rare/unique terms (both when parsing queries and tokenizing page content).
Googling the USREOU [4] code (00034022) leads me to discover [5] that this code maps into an open-data public register that several search/scrape services [6,7,8,9,10] identify (with the help of Google Translate) as the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. A cursory examination suggests that all of these services seem to 100% corroborate each other.
The MFI (820172) is a very simple/common query/construction that returns junk/irrelevant results without further context. I wondered if this number being incorrect would cause a transaction to irreversibly "commit" but not go to the correct destination (or anywhere), so I tried to understand its significance. It's a Monetary Financial Institution code [11], part of a European banking standard that Ukraine participated in until it very recently switched to IBAN in 2020 (!) [12]. Critically, while the format of an IBAN (International Bank Account Number) seems (my speculation!) to be up to the implementer to format (seemingly within some loose guidelines... again, speculation), the way Ukraine is doing it is they are embedding the MFI code into the IBAN: UA45𝟴𝟮𝟬𝟭𝟳𝟮313…. Thus the MFI is provided by the MOD likely for bureaucracy purposes, and if it is needed at all it is encoded redundantly into the IBAN in any case. Yay.
**Disclaimer**: I encourage challenging and fact-checking the rationale presented here before proceeding. (The registry information [6..10] is honestly mildly interesting.)
Thankyou for coming to my Wikipedia comment (this was fun!), dodge the citations as you go past :P
Realized just as the edit window elapsed (Arc ate my revised text!! noo) - [12] should be [12,15] (I got them the wrong way around and I can't renumber them now), and [13,14] was supposed to go after "encoded redundantly into the IBAN [13,14]".
First time using this citation format (keeping track of numbers is fun O.o), I typically insert links inline but I expected my comment would have been unread(able) in that case :)
Not really, seeing who the certificate was issued to is a good way of figuring out whom the site belongs to (or at least it was, before Let's Encrypt).
The site is definitely legit and linked to the Ukrainian government. Now hopefully, the money will actually serve the intended goal and not land into some official's pockets... I'm just stating the facts of the region, nothing more.
I would (and will) personally give money to NGO like the red cross or doctor without borders if they intend to intervene in Ukraine, rather than the military.
While I wouldn't have stopped this myself, I think its perfectly reasonable for a crowdfunding website to not want to host campaigns used to purchase military grade weaponry.
Freedom. What is being defended here is the right to have a website like this at all. The west has a long way to go to wake up to what's at stake here.
Patreon isn't against "freedom" and they most certainly know what's at stake here. What they're against is having to decide whether a cause is just or not. After all, one side's "freedom fighter" is another side's terrorist. In this case it might be pretty obvious, but they don't want to get in the habit of having to make calls, because there are far more cases that are less clear cut.
Patreon hosts tons of youtube channels focused only on weapons including purely military ones, how to make guns more effective (aka better at killing), how to tweak ammo to be more destructive.
That's one fucked up schizophrenic stance, especially from US company in this specific conflict. Does Trump have any influence there by any chance, given his recent statements?
Trump campaigners and other alt-right types don't like Patreon due to prior disagreements; they literally founded an alternative platform with a parody name, to avoid it -- Hatreon.
Exactly. My point is that they are materially different.
A person may disagree with Patreon’s policy, but you have to agree that it is not in fact hypocritical (or “schizophrenic”) to allow funding to one but not the other.
And you, my dear pister, are waffling on the freedom to self-organize, and falling into the Kissinger trap.
Soft power; Sickening thing. Once you have it you're responsible for everything. In this case, the U.S. trying to once again get entangled in another spat.
Once you start binning which transactions are really appropriate to happen, you're de-facto making policy.
Now you’re just stringing random words together. What is the “Kissinger trap”?
The topic was the freedom of an American corporation to not finance warfare. There is no moral or legal imperative for them to permit their users to finance a foreign country’s military, whether that country is an ally or adversary.
Of course they are free to do so. Nobody has said they are not.
What people are saying is that they are cowards for doing so, and that they will from now on refuse to do business with them. As I am sure you can agree, they are free to do.
The Kissinger Trap. As good a name as I can think of. Rule through soft power as enacted top down from a Global power. Basically "sensible defaults" as applied to foreign policy, as interpreted by diplomats.
It leads to delegatory attitudes wherein people should cede agency to "the authorities" to broker things out and any type of personal agency being disencouraged or quashed.
Works great when people aren't interconnected to the degree we are now, but at the cost of the action potentials being much more strongly gated and open to the idiosyncracies of Heads of State, rather than genuine support across the populace.
Now you're faced with reality where funds can potentially be transfered somewhere they can do good. The reliance on a centralized facilitator is technically lower.
It'll be interesting to see if the "Game of Kings" plays out the same way when the pawns can signal betwixt themselves more easily.
As long as there's a plausibly non-military use of such projects (ie. entertainment), it's fine. It's not any different than funding some open source project, even though the open source project can theoretically be used for weaponry.
> Patreon hosts tons of youtube channels focused only on weapons including purely military ones, how to make guns more effective (aka better at killing), how to tweak ammo to be more destructive.
This is a straw man argument unless you can produce some sources.
I mean you've had to do some pretty serious stretching to compare the two there.
Essentially saying there's no difference between e.g. a video game store selling games that have guns in them and actual rifles. Come on. Basically the entire non US western world would find that absurd.
Lets be clear.
There is no difference between weaponry and military grade. That people entertain the notion is a sign of the softening of language and perversion of meaning by the political classes to justify breaking their own founding document to centralize power (in the case of the U.S.)
There is weaponry, and there is volume. And if you want to completely sidestep these issues, get a mill, some metal, and get fabbing.
Save the squishy little handwringers their conscience. My heart goes out to you folks. Give 'em hell.
Europe has promised 1.2 billion in aid and has been sending them armament for a while now. I much prefer countries and politicians sending them large sums than the small donations - of which Patreon and any payment processor in between gets a big cut - given by well-wishing common folk.
That said, the US denied them financial aid though, Trump got impeached for withholding $400 million in military aid to Ukraine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_impeachment_of_Donald_Tr...) if they didn't investigate Joe Biden and took the blame for Russia's intervention in the 2016 elections.
Are we even at a point now where money can make a difference? It seems like within 2-3 days the existing governmental structure will be seized, along with (I assume) funds that are being donated. Is it plausible that Ukrainian gov officials will retreat into NATO territory and continue to coordinate resistance from there, along with the still-pouring-in funds, or is that a pipe dream?
For what it's worth plenty of nationalists did actually flee to Hong Kong. Had a friend whose family was from HK, his grandfather was a banker and supposedly a personal friend of Chiang Kai-Shek and he hid under a pile of dead fish on a fishing boat to escape the communists and go to HK.
They have a valid point in not wanting to be used for funding military support, however the way they express concern for the safety of Ukrainian people without criticizing or even taking distance from Putin and the Russian invasion looks quite strange to me. Ukraine wasn't hit by a tornado or an earthquake; there's people behind the invasion, and Patreon seem to ignore that. Expressing disapproval against people behind the facts, and not merely the facts, is important.
“We don’t allow Patreon to be used for funding weapons or military activity. It is a violation of our policies, and so we have removed the page. All remaining funds in the account will be refunded to contributors.”
While I wouldn't have stopped this myself, I think its perfectly reasonable for a crowdfunding website to not want to host campaigns used to purchase military grade weaponry.
That's fine, and they're within their rights to have this policy in place, but it doesn't change the fact that they've completely fucked over the volunteers in their hour of need.
"It's a violation of our policies" doesn't magically clear their conscience. It's just another way of saying "because we can".
Companies do this all the time and I have no idea why we accept it.
Because a private company is perfectly entitled to NOT want their platform to be used to fund weapons. That isn't unusual and it absolutely IS perfectly acceptable.
What's the alternative exactly? Propose legislation to force websites to allow arms sales? Give me a break.
Would you be satisfied if they just came out and said "Patreon is a small financial services company. Not black-ops mercenary outfit. Not a powerful nation state. If you expect us to face down powerful nation states on your behalf, we suggest that you sign up HERE to fight on the front lines in Ukraine yourself." ?
Honestly, I'd be satisfied if they gave any indication at all that they had considered the weight of their decision, especially given the timing.
Patreon arguing that they were just following the rules, when they themselves created the rules and can rewrite them arbitrarily, is absolutely piss-poor form in a humanitarian crisis like this.
I am not too aware of this account. How much money was moving through Patreon to the Ukrainians? Is it the majority of the weapons funding they needed?
+1 and ditto...but my bet is that such honesty would not turn out well for Patreon. "Per our Terms & Conditions..." is a legalism which excuses their behavior, keeps the discussion safely in the legalistic realm, applies a dose of "who actually reads those Terms & Conditions, anyway?" mind-numbing, and fairly well signals "decision is final, case is closed".
Vs. honesty would open a Pandora's Box of internet outrage & arguments about morality, the roles of corporations in modern society, whether Patreon should stand fast if the GRU (Russian military intelligence) sends 'em death threats, how close to funding an overseas armed conflict they (and the banks they use) can legally come, and more. All with Patreon stuck in the middle of that sh*t-storm, collecting $0.000 for each & every enraged comment, reaction, DDoS, etc. aimed at them.
When there are little kiddies in the room, it just works better to say "Because Santa Claus...". You get far fewer screams and tears and arguments from the kiddies, and the grown-ups still understand.
This method is super inaccurate, since visitors from many countries (including Ukraine) could use Russian as their preferred language. You might probably want to use IP geolocation instead.
No method is perfect, obviously. But in this case you probably want to use a bunch of heuristics, placing them in a OR statement would probably get you as close as possible.
- Check preferred language (won't work for Russians who prefer English, and will show for non-Russians who prefer Russians)
- Check where IP is coming from (won't work for Russians on the border if public node is on other side of bordering-countries, won't work for Russians who use VPNs)
- Check preferred locale (won't work for Russians who has a different preferred locale, will show for non-Russians who use Russian locale)
- Finally, ask the user where they are from (worse UX, won't work for people who are lying)
Using all of them gets you pretty close to "perfect" but again, nothing is 100% perfect.
I'm Ukrainian[0] and YOUR SUPPORT for Ukrainian people in such terrifying times WOULD BE NEVER FORGOTTEN by me & by all Ukrainians actually fighting just for freedom FOREVER!
FYI, after opening your page in the same tab (by accident) as HN, I couldn’t get back to HN, going back a page just ended up looping back to your site. I absolutely hate when websites do that (messing with expected behavior), please consider fixing it.
Either this was fixed 4 hours after your comment was posted, or the issue doesn't surface on Chrome on Linux or Android. I opened the site by clicking the link in the GP comment.
Your comment was flagged, i vouched for it so i can downvote and rebuke.
No. Inaction is equal to support of the Russian invasion ( like in so many other cases). People have to decide for themselves what they want, where their morals lie, and how they want to act on that. Message of support? Donation? Whatever. Ignoring the problem only helps the war criminals. Don't critique people for daring to speak and act against war crimes just because you're deciding for yourself to ignore them.
If you think posting on a message board on the internet will do anything, I'm sorry to tell you, it won't; it's just self serving moral gratification. Might as well send them some thoughts and prayers.
It most certainly is. In terms of the U.S.'s own involvement, we floated the idea of Ukraine joining NATO, but then did nothing to ensure it actually happened, and the end result is invasion.
Staying neutral on the matter of a straightforward invasion of another country where there is no meaningful "two sides to the issue" analysis to be had is equivalent to materially supporting the invasion. Anyone remotely rational has condemned these actions. True neutrally is only desirable for those who want to continue doing business with the Kremlin or who have other nefarious designs.
> Inaction is equal to support of the Russian invasion
No, no it isn't, in this or in other situations. More than two choices _usually_ exist. Statements like this present a false dichotomy in an attempt to coerce people to support a preferred position or interpretation.
No, it isn't. The comment we're replying to here is about someone adding a message to their code repo that's shown to Russian viewers. Are you saying that if people don't do this, they support the Russian invasion? It seems pretty obvious when you get specific. It's simpleminded to divide people into two groups and say that anyone who doesn't agree with a _particular action_ is the enemy.
I'm glad, and I shouldn't try to pigeonhole you here either, I just think these types of conversations lose specificity quickly.
Person A: I'm doing <this thing> to support <cause>
Person B: You shouldn't do <that thing>
Person A (or more often, C): Inaction is equal to support / silence is violence
I think there is almost always more than one possible action, even in support of <cause>. Also, some well intentioned actions can hurt a cause, so inaction is obviously preferable. Or, there may be a third outcome that I like better than <cause> or <not cause>.
Let me get specific, to avoid my own criticism.
I don't know if what the original commenter is doing is worth the effort, in terms of supporting Ukraine in this conflict. There's obviously a cost, in terms of dev time and false positives (showing the message to an unintended audience). I do think it is usually annoying, distracting, and unnecessarily polarizing to add politics to technical projects, so I would lean against doing this, even if I agree with the politics. Good technical work is hard enough on its own.
I'm not terribly offended by this action, and I wouldn't criticize it on its own; but I definitely think that "inaction supports the Russian invasion" is out of line here.
The invasion is itself a war crime ( crimes against peace), and the indiscriminate bombing of civilian buildings as can be seen from numerous videos from Donetsk, Kyiv, Lviv, Mariupol, etc. are also war crimes.
> The invasion is itself a war crime ( crimes against peace)
Technically, “war crimes”, “crimes against peace” and “crimes against humanity” are distinct categories (though the second two are often distinguished only by whether or not they occur in the context of a war; e.g., genocide is either a war crime or a crime against humanity, depending on context).
Aggression is a crime against peace, not a war crime.
> the indiscriminate bombing of civilian buildings as can be seen from numerous videos
Those would be war crimes, though videos of the impacts are generally only suggestive evidence of indiscriminate (or, worse, intentional) targeting.
Seems sensible. Private companies shouldn't be funding wars, particularly wars overseas from where they are based. The Ukrainian's need help but this should be coming from government's, not private citizens through a private foreign company. I feel like this shouldn't be controversial at all.
Patreon is not a "payment gateway", it's a mechanism for people to support creative activities, as the original term "patron of the arts" means.
Funding military weapons steps on some very complicated lines about what people are allowed to spend their money on. So saying "what private citizens do with their money is up to them." is only true as far as the law says.
Sure, but Patreon was just fine with this until two weeks ago. They should either work on their acceptance criteria or admit that they are in fact a money transmitter. They very selectively enforce this and that is why it makes them look bad because right now is the worst possible time to close this account.
That might be a norm that the world _should_ have but it’s not one that actually exists currently.
We demand that payment gateways prevent fraud, prevent the sale of criminal or objectionable materials, prevent money laundering and prevent sending money to nations and individuals under sanction.
Having a policy of not supporting weapons purchases is on that spectrum. Just claiming people can do what they want with their money just isn’t true.
I'm perfectly capable of transferring funds to Ukranian bank accounts from where I'm sitting, my bank doesn't get a say in that.
If I were to try to send money to ISIS or some other known terrorist organization they would surely step in under AMT laws, but the Ukranian defense force is last I checked not on that list (Though I'm sure Putin would love that.)
Your bank absolutely gets a say in that. They can refuse to transfer those funds for effectively any reason and will if they think that those funds are being transferred for any number of proscribed actions.
Those actions need not be official sanctions either. They can refuse to do business with another bank at their discretion.
I agree that it’s a very bad look for Patreon but it’s pretty business as usual.
> Your bank absolutely gets a say in that. They can refuse to transfer those funds for effectively any reason and will if they think that those funds are being transferred for any number of proscribed actions.
I think I covered that by linking to the charter that governs this.
> Those actions need not be official sanctions either. They can refuse to do business with another bank at their discretion.
They'd have to have a pretty good reason or I would have an excellent opportunity to sue. Capricious interference with the flow of capital is frowned upon.
> I agree that it’s a very bad look for Patreon but it’s pretty business as usual.
Patreon effectively joined Putin. There is no way they will whitewash this.
You linked to the charter of what is disallowed, not what is a right.
I’ll concede I don’t know the Netherlands banking regulations so perhaps you do have a right to send electronic wires but what you linked doesn’t outline that.
In the US the cfpb regulates consumer rights when sending international transfers. The rights include disclosures about fees and fx and processes for adjudication of disputes but you do not have a right to send a wire.
IMO exact opposite is the more sensible. Governments are terrible at representing people who put them to their position, let alone the rest who completely disagree with them.
I think it should be controversial, and I do not think people should just proclaim "let the government handle it", that is very dangerous idea and one that is getting us in to more and more problems
The people are the government, when we loose sight of that we have problems. Clearly the governments around the world are unwilling to help
I would but then i would be labeled an "insurrectionist" and possibly have my ability to transact in the every day life removed...
the US, Canada, and most of the "West" is trying very hard to make Liberty and freedom protest illegal, you can only protest some topics, and some actions by government and only with the approval of government that your protesting is OK
I feel like if you don't literally break into the seat of government, smash stuff, kill a cop, or take a literal shit on the floor you'll be just fine.
What if you are let in by police (police actually holding the doors open as is seen on multiple camera's), walk through the building peacefully and unrelated to that a police office has a medical event that sadly costs him his life...
Because that was the experience for 90%+ of people... the less then 10% should be prosecuted, that actually committed property crimes.
Then you have Canada... which was a 100% peaceful protest.
You mean like for the 8 years when the same page was up, and Patreon never had a problem with it?
SO they were OK with it, until they suddenly decided when Russia ramped up the invasion - got it patreon, small invasions no problem big invasions, pull the rug.
Is it possible that it's more about the amount of money rather than just timing?
I imagine that the page recently started receiving way more money than it ever has.
I'm aware that the timing still looks bad and won't change some people's view of the move. I'm not asking for that. Just asking for at least an ounce of nuance.
when you are starving and finally get a loaf of bread but still die from hunger because you don't have knife to cut it. because somewhere it is written that you SHOULD cut bread with knife. how pedantic
Patreon money goes into their left pocket. When they buy guns, they pay with their right pocket. Internet bills are indeed paid with their left pocket ;).
If the Iraq war had happened today, would you be able to use the same arguments for patreons who collect money against the British and US invaders who used imaginary WMD[0] as pretext?
I believe it is very clear that it is impossible for legally operating institutions to collect funds for wars without direct governmental involvement or blessing as these are complex matters that you don't want to end up on the wrong side when things settle. The Iraqi WMD were found to be imaginary much later, not at the time of operations and in this alternative timeline, Patreon could have ended as the company that facilitated the collection of funds for WMD operators.
It's very different from facilitating the collection of funds for creation of weapon related media. No person in right mind would want to be involved in collecting funds for armed conflicts unless actively takes sides.
Even humanitarian aid is risky as it is often used as a cover for military operations, so you will need solid guarantees - preferably from the state actors that you are abiding with.
Where is the 'call to military action' or 'call for violence' with guns or anything that is funding an active military campaign in your link? There is none.
This is a 'private platform' doing private platform things and they can decide to do business with whoever they want to and will point to anything that breaks their ToS.
Don't like it? Use cryptocurrencies for donations then.
Mostly video and other media creation about guns (not funding “weaponry or other military activity”), some things that have the string “guns” in a brand name but which aren't, by description, particular even about guns as a subject matter (“Gunsmoke Games” which uses it to fund...Dating Sims).
Even as Whataboutism goes that's pretty weak sauce.
A funding mechanism should be set up for refugees fleeing Ukraine. Jen Psaki announced US is coordinating with Poland to accept refugees who want to relocate to US.
Which principles were they following? the principles that made it OK for 8 years, or the principles were they decided to side with Russia's agressions once the real invasion started.
I guess the principle is "it's bad for business".
Every corp prioritizes business by design, it's irrational to expect ethical behavior (unless it's good for business).
Not implying a moral judgement in my question, I just noticed a lot of other comments jump directly into the discussion suggested by your statement without ever qualifying whether Patreon has political pressure (whether intrinsic or extrinsic) that would influence their decision one way or the other. I think it adds important nuance / clarification to the situation.
but if political pressure lead them to their decision, it wasn't really a principled decision was it? It was a decision of convenience.
A principled decision is one you make regardless of outside pressures - i.e. you stick by your principles; clearly patreon has no principles in play here. If it was wrong to allow donations, it was wrong since 8 years ago as they happily collected their commissions on donations.
I think the most likely explanation is that the account only came to Patreons full attention due to recent events and (probably) an insane rise in support.
Not surprising.Most of the westerners in the corporate world(especially on the far left end of the spectrum) and people near that sphere of influence are fetishists of either the russian regime or the russian way of doing business.They talk about 'dangerous' people as being pro-russian because it's easier to de-legitimize people this way: the "russian bad" rhetoric is long-known since the atomic period of propaganda.And the same goes for other demographics and ideologies(conservative?->nazi; etc.): the problem with this approach is that when russians ,other such groups, or actual nazis are actually doing something bad, the people (western masses) are already insensitive to the same rhetoric and thus won't give a crap, that's why i stated at the beginning that such authoritative voices, often media(i.e. MSM) are closet russian sympathizers.This is and could somewhat further be fixed with social networks that are not censorious, and we've already seen such tendencies of people informing themselves from multiple channels and creating their own opinions, but the issue still exists.
And to fully acknowledge the situation:the right makes the opposite mistake aswell: they confuse neocon and post-modernist american imperialism greed, such as the Middle East situation, with a military alliance(NATO) that's talked about purely in a defensive manner here.NATO does not and will not invade Russia because that's not the intended goal.This is why eastern europeans liked Trump more than Biden, because we remembered the Clintonian geopolitics.
Same happened/happens in Canada: normal people are declined the opportunity of a help-hand on the pretext of "terrorism" as similar talking points.
I fail to see the connection to the Patreon situation in the reply. You're saying western leftist corporations are fetishists of the Russian regime? The reply ends with Trump/Biden/Clinton, then make a turn to mention Canada.
The connection is that lately(well actually since around 2017), when Patreon/other claim to stop supremacists/russian trolls/bots/"dangerous groups" it's mostly a smoke screen and based on nothing than ideologically-based censorship, or due to certain people being tied to russia. To give a little bit more context,when the western "anti-russian" folks (often left wing but not necessarily, there's some nuance here) talk about stopping russians but don't see the hypocrisy when they censor specifically people who are not pro-russian at all, but due to being labeled as such by the MSM, end up in the crosshairs when legitimate good-will gestures are being made.This is precisely why I also shortly mentioned the Canada situation, though arguably that's even worse because we're not talking about violent conflicts, and donations from US to CA are not "foreign meddling".
You might say: why does this bother you? Well, because for non-american citizens it actually makes it really harder to be pro-liberty and stand by US.Many people look up to US as a good reference of the struggle for liberty and freedom.And some can even tolerate US warmongering, but labeling pro-western (which is what most of UA is right now) foreigners wrongfully is really shitty, and the benefiting entities from this are mainly pro-war, western/eastern military industrial complexes.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 286 ms ] threadShort of actual military action from the West, which is extremely unlikely as that would give grounds to retaliation by Russia, escalating the war outside Ukrainian borders, Russia seems only days away from removing the Ukrainian government...
The rational thing to do right now is to start planning for the aftermath: how to get Russia out of Ukraine as soon as possible once they've taken control of the country. IMO there's only one way: to dialogue with Putin and finally accept some kind of terms for their removal from Ukraine. This is not what anyone wanted, but now that we've let Putin get to Kiev, what exactly are the options?
Anyone who thinks sending money and weapons to Ukraine will help solve the problem (including, to my horror, the UK government) seems to completely ignore the reality of the situation and is hoping for a delusional outcome, and worse, opening the possibility for things to go wrong and foreign soldiers being killed while trying to reach Ukrainian troops - which may without a doubt trigger a counter-attack by NATO and total escalation of the conflict (which should be priority number one to avoid right now!).
Jesus Christ, how do you people get so callous? What is wrong with you? who hurt you? What made you give up empathy and humanity?
I'll never understand you people.
Let's just say that when the invaders eventually left - as they always do - that group didn't fare particularly well. It's called cowardice, if coupled with actions that benefit the enemy it's called collaboration and is usually dealt with for what it is: treason.
I have no dog in this particular race other than that I know both a number of Russians and a number of Ukrainians so consider my views 'balanced' for what that is worth: down with Putin, and I hope that the Russian soldiers know that they may win the initial push but the price will be substantial and eventually they will lose.
The weird thing is that if anything the result of this is that NATO will expand, precisely to ward of this sort of idiocy.
As for agony: some prefer to fight rather than to suffer under an invader, which is a special kind of agony, which tends to last a lot longer and which will endanger not just you but also your family, your children and so on. Russia has a long history of invading other countries and it invariably spells utter misery for the occupied people.
And many seem to have forgotten under Putin's propaganda of "the NATO provocations" that the free and democratic societies of the former Soviet Union / Eastern Bloc chose to join NATO after Russia's military actions, particularly after the events of 1991-1996 (Transnistria conflict, Abchasian separatist conflict, "intervention" in Chechnya).
It is the fault of Russian politics that NATO is so close to its borders!
Of course they have a chance. Their current strength is about 465k men (and women). Add on top the general mobilization happening now. They're also strongly motivated, which the Russians aren't. Ukraine can definitely do this.
Also, giving up doesn't guarantee people will be safe. Russian occupation forces aren't usually very nice.
They can't win a guerilla war.
Somewhere you have to draw a line, you can choose for yourself whether that line is the Ukrainian border, Kiev or France. But you too will find that you have a line. Or maybe you don't.
"just so we can say fuck you Putin"? Really? That is how you are attempting to frame the situation of a clear victim defending itself against an aggressor that has been appeased for years now?
So you believe that the attacking entity should always win, no questions asked? Is conflict to be avoided at all costs? Can I come into your home and just claim your house if I threaten to escalate with violence? You wouldn't want any conflict, so the right move would be to just give it to me.
Nobody is saying that.
Depending on the topic you can easily call it victim blaming too.
But nobody knows that ahead of time.
Your comment is absolutely revolting.
Telling victims of crime to react as you seem to be proposing is completely irresponsible. I come from a country with high crime and we know very, very well that doing that only causes more deaths - it's public policy to tell people this as many people, like you, believe they can be brave and fight back. There's no heroes. Life is not a movie.
To survive in this world, we all need to take a hit every now and then: as long as we can stand up again later, it is often the only reasonable course of action.
I am also revolted, disgusted by your suggestions that people should put their lives on the line even when they have clear indications that it may be the last thing they do. Losing your life is NEVER worth it. Please stop propagating the ideology of being a martyr or a hero as if that was a good thing. It's not, it costs real lives in the real world.
Today we are richer than Portugal.
1. Appeasement is not an option. It just encourages them to do it again.
2. It is up to the Ukrainians if they want to fight to the bitter end. We can't make them, we can't stop them, but we can have their backs.
3. The purpose of resisting an illegal occupation is to drive up the cost of staying as high as possible. This works, even without economic sanctions. Just ask Vietnam or Afghanistan.
4. In a proxy war, countries officially "ignore" inconvenient facts because acknowledging them will cause a more complicated conflict. This happened all over the Cold War, but as recently as Afghanistan the US had to turn a blind eye to Pakistan's behavior.
5. Nothing is predetermined or strictly predictable. History is chaos. The only thing we know for sure right now is this will be hell for the Ukrainians.
[1]: https://acoup.blog/2022/02/25/miscellanea-understanding-the-...
I honestly don't know what Putin is expecting to gain from this. The occupation won't pay for itself and Russian economy is already bleak.
Yes they can bomb the bases and airports, capture few important points, but if population offers resistance in form of guerilla warfare, russians will bleed and will bleed hard and achieve nothing. Not that russian oligarchs like Putin ever cared about casualties even on their side.
I am not claiming its the best approach overall, maybe even the worst in terms of casualties. But there is something in human nature that reacts wildly when oppression comes and freedoms are being taken. Americans should understand this very well.
I personally think his game is just to install pro-russian government forever and few military bases and withdraw most of the army. Something like second Belarus. Look at the map - he will have 500km wall from rest of Europe. Now the billion $ question is, what he thinks about baltic states, since they are part of Nato.
I have my suspicions that a few of them believe the opposite.
the Taliban and IS dragged out the conflict in the middle east for 20 years and came out victorious against an army that spent trillions on that conflict. That was after said army was defeated in Vietnam as well.
At what cost? America and their allies would have left a long time ago without the Taliban.
Violence is exaggerated force.
You can kill a man and not be exerting violence (like in self-defence).
To stand aside and claim "violence is bad" while someone is attacked is supporting the attacker, not the innocent attacked.
I'm pretty sure Russia would say the same thing if you ask them about their situation. That's the problem once you bring in subjectivity.
That being said, tolerating the account for a few more days would've probably been a better play.
EDIT: Just to be very clear, I'm not condoning Russian aggression in any way. My point is that not funding a war is an acceptable choice, since it's very easy to be wrong and a sure way to bring human suffering.
Everyone thinks they're on the right side. Now, obviously I think we (as in EU+US) are the good guys here, but it's quite clear that a lot of people were both very convinced and very wrong about this and I don't consider us unfailable.
("Russian sphere of influence" is another sign of Soviet-thinking, as is talking about "Ukrainian Nazis".)
In this case that has been made pretty easy to see. Even large numbers of Russians agree with that.
> Now, obviously I think we (as in EU+US) are the good guys here, but it's quite clear that a lot of people were both very convinced and very wrong about this and I don't consider us unfailable.
Indeed. But this isn't the Cuban missile crisis (which was provoked by the USSR to begin with) and the Ukraine isn't anything like Cuba.
Note that Cuba was - in spite of everything - never actually invaded with the intent to occupy, and it's not as if the US couldn't have done that if they had wanted to do so.
Just as large numbers of US citizens disagreed with the wars of the last decades.
> Indeed. But this isn't the Cuban missile crisis (which was provoked by the USSR to begin with) and the Ukraine isn't anything like Cuba.
Well, you could argue that the EU/NATO expansion did provoke this, too.
But I'm getting distracted here; I really don't want to defend Russia and especially not their recent actions. I also don't think that helping the Ukraine is a bad thing, quite the opposite actually. My point is that you don't get to both condone violence and keep your status as "peaceful" because it's against the right people. If German history has taught me anything, it's that accepting violence as right leads down a very bad path quickly. It might sometimes be necessary, but it's never "not bad".
You could, but it would be bullshit.
> But I'm getting distracted here; I really don't want to defend Russia and especially not their recent actions. I also don't think that helping the Ukraine is a bad thing, quite the opposite actually. My point is that you don't get to both condone violence and keep your status as "peaceful" because it's against the right people. If German history has taught me anything, it's that accepting violence as right leads down a very bad path quickly. It might sometimes be necessary, but it's never "not bad".
If you really had paid attention to German history you would have realized that sometimes violence is the only way to deal with an emerging threat. It is precisely the lack of decisive action that allowed Hitler the space to do what he did.
In your (our) opinion. But that does not make it an absolute truth.
> If you really had paid attention to German history you would have realized that sometimes violence is the only way to deal with an emerging threat. It is precisely the lack of decisive action that allowed Hitler the space to do what he did.
And that's why I ended my post with:
>> It might sometimes be necessary, but it's never "not bad".
I don't think that turning the other cheek is the right move here. My point is that we don't get to feel good about violence because it's against the right guys.
There we have that false balance thing again. It's documented bullshit, so you can choose to just see it as my opinion, but NATO has a couple of articles formulated especially to deal with aggression like this. To posit that joining an alliance - which didn't happen, another simple fact - because you are afraid of your aggressive neighbor is the cause of the aggression is a pretty extreme form of victim blaming.
> My point is that we don't get to feel good about violence because it's against the right guys.
Believe me, I'm a pacifist at heart. And what's happening now in Ukraine (and prior to that in Chechnya) makes my blood boil. I've seen first hand what life under Russia looks like, there is no way this is going to be whitewashed.
I'm really not trying to whitewash anything. I have friends in the Ukraine and I'm fearing for their live right now - and, to be honest, a bit for mine, since this conflict is really close to escalating near my actual home. The last thing I want to do is to condone Russian aggression.
My point is that it's really easy to get lost once you accept violence as good. So I can absolutely understand why Patreon chooses to stay neutral in a war, even if it's for (what we see as _and probably is_) the right side. Violence might sometimes be necessary, but it's never a "not bad" thing, especially since it's easy to see oneself on the right side and be wrong about it - which does not mean I think Russia is in any way right here, just to be very clear.
And I think we both agree that the aggression in the Ukraine is both wrong horrible and that violence is generally a bad thing, just to state the obvious - which is probably why we don't get anywhere with this discussion.
I don't think any normal person believes that violence is good. It's the last option on the table. But it is an option.
> and, to be honest, a bit for mine, since this conflict is really close to escalating near my actual home. The last thing I want to do is to condone Russian aggression.
Excellent. And if and when it does happen, then maybe you will understand a bit better why the likes of Patreon cutting off support for the defenders is effectively taking sides.
It doesn't cost Patreon anything to pass on those funds. But fine, if they want to take sides then that's cool with me, they just made it to my shitlist, not a cent through their company, ever.
It obviously affects the conflict; there's really no option not to play for them. I just honestly think that "it's for the right side" is a really bad justification to directly fund weapons. There are better ones in this case, no doubt, but the one the initial comment I replied to made wasn't one.
And I can also see why they don't want to start doing so; once they do, they are either in a position to fund less clear-cut wars or to decide which side in a war is right and both are positions they really don't want to be in. So it's not quite true that it costs them nothing to support the Ukraine (even though, just to be clear, we're in agreement that it would have been the right thing).
> they just made it to my shitlist, not a cent through their company, ever.
Well, they're on mine, too, so no argument here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance
Nothing is as black and white as some want it to be.
> If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor — Desmond Tutu
Next step would be all kind of groups trying to get military funding.
[1] Thinking about this https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/99574-we-must-take-sides-ne...
There are better channels and ways of helping without making a civilian platform a war target.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_impeachment_of_Donald_Tr...
[1] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2022...
I don't see how even this situation is as clear as people make it out to be.
Similar to how the "zero violence policies" in schools means they punish the bullied because they're defending themselves.
I mean would you still support it if the Ukranian military capture a Russian soldier and torture them?
What if it's not the Ukranian military but IS? Or the US army, which is also guilty of war crimes [0]?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_Naval_Base
Tangentially (as far as I can tell this doesn’t apply to the Patreon in this post), seeing social media scam profiting from the tragedy by tricking people into reposting shady donation links is disheartening.
https://www.caritas.org/where-caritas-work/europe/ukraine/
(I have just made a donation).
In case you'd like to donate or share the financial help link: https://web.archive.org/web/20220224191725/https://savelife.... (I'm using Wayback just in case Russian government hacks it, the original: https://savelife.in.ua/en/donate/)
The timing of the block is bad though. It'd be great if they could comment on the timing.
The biggest sanctions so far are disallowing to exchange funds with some russian banks. And the "nuclear option" is to disallow Russia from using the SWIFT system.
What are the chances that this conflict will completely change how trading is done between countries?
Could the USA, Europe, South Korea etc simply "nullify" all Russian holdings of their currency? I guess it is just some numbers on computers the respective countries have control over?
Russia is an economically weak state; it's not in China's interests to help them.
The US and EU also heavily depend on China. Russia is not thrown out of SWIFT for a full-on war; I highly doubt that there will be sanctions to a more important trade partner that massively hurt the EU and US themselves for merely supporting Russia.
On the other hand perfectly factual posts are regularly deleted from groups that track situation on Ukraine and do this in a honest way without pro-soviet bias, e.g the posts from Polish Obrona Pro (Defence Pro) Facebook group are deleted randomly, users are threaten to be banned without any explanation, except "blah, blah community standards".
From what I see all those "algorithms" and "AI" and "moderators" that are supposed to filter out spam are very easy to game by the party with sufficient resources.
In general, social networks should not be in the business of filtering fake news.
That should be very saying about just what kind of a shitty community that is.
https://ukraine.ua/news/support-the-armed-forces-of-ukraine/ or https://ukraine.ua/news/donate-to-the-nbu-fund/
this is a bit of a hassle, as UA government agencies can accept donations only through wire transfers, but that's just a few clicks in the banking app anyway.
I'd say this one looks a bit more legit: https://bank.gov.ua/en/news/all/natsionalniy-bank-vidkriv-sp...
Site https://ukraine.ua/ is official Ukraine promotion platform, created & managed by Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.
Site https://mfa.gov.ua/ is official site of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.
Here some other related official links (due to Ukrainian gov sites are DDoS'ed periodically):
- https://twitter.com/MFA_Ukraine (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine)
- https://twitter.com/DmytroKuleba (Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine)
- https://twitter.com/DefenceU (Ministry of Defense of Ukraine)
Googling the USREOU [4] code (00034022) leads me to discover [5] that this code maps into an open-data public register that several search/scrape services [6,7,8,9,10] identify (with the help of Google Translate) as the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. A cursory examination suggests that all of these services seem to 100% corroborate each other.
The MFI (820172) is a very simple/common query/construction that returns junk/irrelevant results without further context. I wondered if this number being incorrect would cause a transaction to irreversibly "commit" but not go to the correct destination (or anywhere), so I tried to understand its significance. It's a Monetary Financial Institution code [11], part of a European banking standard that Ukraine participated in until it very recently switched to IBAN in 2020 (!) [12]. Critically, while the format of an IBAN (International Bank Account Number) seems (my speculation!) to be up to the implementer to format (seemingly within some loose guidelines... again, speculation), the way Ukraine is doing it is they are embedding the MFI code into the IBAN: UA45𝟴𝟮𝟬𝟭𝟳𝟮313…. Thus the MFI is provided by the MOD likely for bureaucracy purposes, and if it is needed at all it is encoded redundantly into the IBAN in any case. Yay.
**Disclaimer**: I encourage challenging and fact-checking the rationale presented here before proceeding. (The registry information [6..10] is honestly mildly interesting.)
Thankyou for coming to my Wikipedia comment (this was fun!), dodge the citations as you go past :P
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=UA45820172031328100230201861...
[2] https://www.treasury.gov.ua/ua/dopomoga-na-materialno-tehnic...
[3] https://www.mil.gov.ua/dopomoga-na-materialno-tehnichne-ta-m...
[4] https://24tv.ua/ru/finansovo-podderzhat-ukrainskuju-armiju-o..., https://24tv.ua/mzs-otrimalo-bagato-zvernen-za-kordonu-shhod...
[4] https://www.allacronyms.com/USREOU - "Unified State Register of Enterprises and Organizations of Ukraine"
[5] https://www.google.com/search?q=00034022
[6] https://youcontrol.com.ua/en/catalog/company_details/0003402...
[7] https://opendatabot.ua/c/00034022
[8] https://dozorro.org/profile/UA-EDR-0003402...
First time using this citation format (keeping track of numbers is fun O.o), I typically insert links inline but I expected my comment would have been unread(able) in that case :)
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/12/nope-...
I would (and will) personally give money to NGO like the red cross or doctor without borders if they intend to intervene in Ukraine, rather than the military.
That's one fucked up schizophrenic stance, especially from US company in this specific conflict. Does Trump have any influence there by any chance, given his recent statements?
Interesting take to say the least.
A person may disagree with Patreon’s policy, but you have to agree that it is not in fact hypocritical (or “schizophrenic”) to allow funding to one but not the other.
Soft power; Sickening thing. Once you have it you're responsible for everything. In this case, the U.S. trying to once again get entangled in another spat.
Once you start binning which transactions are really appropriate to happen, you're de-facto making policy.
The topic was the freedom of an American corporation to not finance warfare. There is no moral or legal imperative for them to permit their users to finance a foreign country’s military, whether that country is an ally or adversary.
What people are saying is that they are cowards for doing so, and that they will from now on refuse to do business with them. As I am sure you can agree, they are free to do.
It leads to delegatory attitudes wherein people should cede agency to "the authorities" to broker things out and any type of personal agency being disencouraged or quashed.
Works great when people aren't interconnected to the degree we are now, but at the cost of the action potentials being much more strongly gated and open to the idiosyncracies of Heads of State, rather than genuine support across the populace.
Now you're faced with reality where funds can potentially be transfered somewhere they can do good. The reliance on a centralized facilitator is technically lower.
It'll be interesting to see if the "Game of Kings" plays out the same way when the pawns can signal betwixt themselves more easily.
This is a straw man argument unless you can produce some sources.
Essentially saying there's no difference between e.g. a video game store selling games that have guns in them and actual rifles. Come on. Basically the entire non US western world would find that absurd.
There is weaponry, and there is volume. And if you want to completely sidestep these issues, get a mill, some metal, and get fabbing.
Save the squishy little handwringers their conscience. My heart goes out to you folks. Give 'em hell.
That said, the US denied them financial aid though, Trump got impeached for withholding $400 million in military aid to Ukraine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_impeachment_of_Donald_Tr...) if they didn't investigate Joe Biden and took the blame for Russia's intervention in the 2016 elections.
The platform is in a position to actually help beyond denouncing but they abstain. It is lip service nothing more.
What a shit fucking response.
Following a policy that you arbitrarily created yourself is not a reasonable justification for anything.
"It's a violation of our policies" doesn't magically clear their conscience. It's just another way of saying "because we can".
Companies do this all the time and I have no idea why we accept it.
What's the alternative exactly? Propose legislation to force websites to allow arms sales? Give me a break.
Patreon arguing that they were just following the rules, when they themselves created the rules and can rewrite them arbitrarily, is absolutely piss-poor form in a humanitarian crisis like this.
I am not too aware of this account. How much money was moving through Patreon to the Ukrainians? Is it the majority of the weapons funding they needed?
Vs. honesty would open a Pandora's Box of internet outrage & arguments about morality, the roles of corporations in modern society, whether Patreon should stand fast if the GRU (Russian military intelligence) sends 'em death threats, how close to funding an overseas armed conflict they (and the banks they use) can legally come, and more. All with Patreon stuck in the middle of that sh*t-storm, collecting $0.000 for each & every enraged comment, reaction, DDoS, etc. aimed at them.
When there are little kiddies in the room, it just works better to say "Because Santa Claus...". You get far fewer screams and tears and arguments from the kiddies, and the grown-ups still understand.
- Check preferred language (won't work for Russians who prefer English, and will show for non-Russians who prefer Russians)
- Check where IP is coming from (won't work for Russians on the border if public node is on other side of bordering-countries, won't work for Russians who use VPNs)
- Check preferred locale (won't work for Russians who has a different preferred locale, will show for non-Russians who use Russian locale)
- Finally, ask the user where they are from (worse UX, won't work for people who are lying)
Using all of them gets you pretty close to "perfect" but again, nothing is 100% perfect.
I'm Ukrainian[0] and YOUR SUPPORT for Ukrainian people in such terrifying times WOULD BE NEVER FORGOTTEN by me & by all Ukrainians actually fighting just for freedom FOREVER!
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30395897
(On iOS)
I like the speech, but I would also like to see your software.
* edit: Seems fixed for me now. Filestash looks pretty useful btw!
No. Inaction is equal to support of the Russian invasion ( like in so many other cases). People have to decide for themselves what they want, where their morals lie, and how they want to act on that. Message of support? Donation? Whatever. Ignoring the problem only helps the war criminals. Don't critique people for daring to speak and act against war crimes just because you're deciding for yourself to ignore them.
It certainly is not.
Staying neutral on the matter of a straightforward invasion of another country where there is no meaningful "two sides to the issue" analysis to be had is equivalent to materially supporting the invasion. Anyone remotely rational has condemned these actions. True neutrally is only desirable for those who want to continue doing business with the Kremlin or who have other nefarious designs.
No, no it isn't, in this or in other situations. More than two choices _usually_ exist. Statements like this present a false dichotomy in an attempt to coerce people to support a preferred position or interpretation.
Person A: I'm doing <this thing> to support <cause> Person B: You shouldn't do <that thing> Person A (or more often, C): Inaction is equal to support / silence is violence
I think there is almost always more than one possible action, even in support of <cause>. Also, some well intentioned actions can hurt a cause, so inaction is obviously preferable. Or, there may be a third outcome that I like better than <cause> or <not cause>.
Let me get specific, to avoid my own criticism.
I don't know if what the original commenter is doing is worth the effort, in terms of supporting Ukraine in this conflict. There's obviously a cost, in terms of dev time and false positives (showing the message to an unintended audience). I do think it is usually annoying, distracting, and unnecessarily polarizing to add politics to technical projects, so I would lean against doing this, even if I agree with the politics. Good technical work is hard enough on its own.
I'm not terribly offended by this action, and I wouldn't criticize it on its own; but I definitely think that "inaction supports the Russian invasion" is out of line here.
Technically, “war crimes”, “crimes against peace” and “crimes against humanity” are distinct categories (though the second two are often distinguished only by whether or not they occur in the context of a war; e.g., genocide is either a war crime or a crime against humanity, depending on context).
Aggression is a crime against peace, not a war crime.
> the indiscriminate bombing of civilian buildings as can be seen from numerous videos
Those would be war crimes, though videos of the impacts are generally only suggestive evidence of indiscriminate (or, worse, intentional) targeting.
Seems unlikely anything changes.
If you set yourself up as a payment gateway people will use you as a payment gateway. And what private citizens do with their money is up to them.
Funding military weapons steps on some very complicated lines about what people are allowed to spend their money on. So saying "what private citizens do with their money is up to them." is only true as far as the law says.
They're not a payment gateway for everything and anything. They can choose what activity they don't want to facilitate and they have.
> And what private citizens do with their money is up to them.
It's not. There are numerous restrictions on what private citizens can do with their money.
Yes, but those restrictions are not typically arbitrated by commercial entities but by the law.
We demand that payment gateways prevent fraud, prevent the sale of criminal or objectionable materials, prevent money laundering and prevent sending money to nations and individuals under sanction.
Having a policy of not supporting weapons purchases is on that spectrum. Just claiming people can do what they want with their money just isn’t true.
If I were to try to send money to ISIS or some other known terrorist organization they would surely step in under AMT laws, but the Ukranian defense force is last I checked not on that list (Though I'm sure Putin would love that.)
https://www.dnb.nl/en/sector-information/supervision-laws-an...
So effectively Patreon is carrying Putin's water here.
Those actions need not be official sanctions either. They can refuse to do business with another bank at their discretion.
I agree that it’s a very bad look for Patreon but it’s pretty business as usual.
I think I covered that by linking to the charter that governs this.
> Those actions need not be official sanctions either. They can refuse to do business with another bank at their discretion.
They'd have to have a pretty good reason or I would have an excellent opportunity to sue. Capricious interference with the flow of capital is frowned upon.
> I agree that it’s a very bad look for Patreon but it’s pretty business as usual.
Patreon effectively joined Putin. There is no way they will whitewash this.
I’ll concede I don’t know the Netherlands banking regulations so perhaps you do have a right to send electronic wires but what you linked doesn’t outline that.
In the US the cfpb regulates consumer rights when sending international transfers. The rights include disclosures about fees and fx and processes for adjudication of disputes but you do not have a right to send a wire.
The people are the government, when we loose sight of that we have problems. Clearly the governments around the world are unwilling to help
the US, Canada, and most of the "West" is trying very hard to make Liberty and freedom protest illegal, you can only protest some topics, and some actions by government and only with the approval of government that your protesting is OK
Because that was the experience for 90%+ of people... the less then 10% should be prosecuted, that actually committed property crimes.
Then you have Canada... which was a 100% peaceful protest.
In this case there's no time for that.
https://www.patreon.com/GunWebsites
SO they were OK with it, until they suddenly decided when Russia ramped up the invasion - got it patreon, small invasions no problem big invasions, pull the rug.
I imagine that the page recently started receiving way more money than it ever has.
I'm aware that the timing still looks bad and won't change some people's view of the move. I'm not asking for that. Just asking for at least an ounce of nuance.
Perhaps they should have obfuscated what their intentions were.
[0] https://bit.ly/3McywUi
If the Iraq war had happened today, would you be able to use the same arguments for patreons who collect money against the British and US invaders who used imaginary WMD[0] as pretext?
I believe it is very clear that it is impossible for legally operating institutions to collect funds for wars without direct governmental involvement or blessing as these are complex matters that you don't want to end up on the wrong side when things settle. The Iraqi WMD were found to be imaginary much later, not at the time of operations and in this alternative timeline, Patreon could have ended as the company that facilitated the collection of funds for WMD operators.
It's very different from facilitating the collection of funds for creation of weapon related media. No person in right mind would want to be involved in collecting funds for armed conflicts unless actively takes sides.
Even humanitarian aid is risky as it is often used as a cover for military operations, so you will need solid guarantees - preferably from the state actors that you are abiding with.
[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7634313
Where is the 'call to military action' or 'call for violence' with guns or anything that is funding an active military campaign in your link? There is none.
This is a 'private platform' doing private platform things and they can decide to do business with whoever they want to and will point to anything that breaks their ToS.
Don't like it? Use cryptocurrencies for donations then.
Even as Whataboutism goes that's pretty weak sauce.
Which principles were they following? the principles that made it OK for 8 years, or the principles were they decided to side with Russia's agressions once the real invasion started.
A principled decision is one you make regardless of outside pressures - i.e. you stick by your principles; clearly patreon has no principles in play here. If it was wrong to allow donations, it was wrong since 8 years ago as they happily collected their commissions on donations.
Yes that is the point of my inquiry :)
You are correct, but your timing for bashing people on the head with the truth is terrible, hence the downvotes.
And to fully acknowledge the situation:the right makes the opposite mistake aswell: they confuse neocon and post-modernist american imperialism greed, such as the Middle East situation, with a military alliance(NATO) that's talked about purely in a defensive manner here.NATO does not and will not invade Russia because that's not the intended goal.This is why eastern europeans liked Trump more than Biden, because we remembered the Clintonian geopolitics.
Same happened/happens in Canada: normal people are declined the opportunity of a help-hand on the pretext of "terrorism" as similar talking points.
You might say: why does this bother you? Well, because for non-american citizens it actually makes it really harder to be pro-liberty and stand by US.Many people look up to US as a good reference of the struggle for liberty and freedom.And some can even tolerate US warmongering, but labeling pro-western (which is what most of UA is right now) foreigners wrongfully is really shitty, and the benefiting entities from this are mainly pro-war, western/eastern military industrial complexes.
And the real question is: what would you do if you were Patreon management right now?
https://savelife.in.ua/en/donate/
https://ukraine.ua/news/support-the-armed-forces-of-ukraine/