I'm sure the precogs employed by Starlink can predict which terminals sold in other countries will be "illegally" moved to Russia and stop the transaction before it happens. So yes, it's all Starlink's fault.
I'm also sure they can distinguish between terminals used by ukrainians and russians on a front line that probably changes daily. Again, it's their fault.
Musk can be blamed for a lot of things, but for this, not really.
And so if Musk were to be providing material support he could see Starlink placed on the export control list. Which if it happened would then open Musk up to severe criminal charges if he didn't take steps to prevent devices being used by Russia.
So I suspect he might want to do the right thing ahead of time given the US government is a pretty important customer for SpaceX.
Because NATO did not expand. Countries decided to join NATO. You may think this is the same with other words, but it isn't.
In the first version there's only two actors in the world, who can make decisions: Russia and NATO (or rather USA, for they argue NATO is basically the USA with another name). In the second version countries are free to decide who they associate with. There wasn't some empty space that NATO moved into. The countries who were there said "hey, NATO. Russia has been attacking and oppressing us for a long time and we fear they will do it again. We'd like to join."
To answer your second question: Exactly what Russias neighbors feared is the reason. Russia is unhappy they couldn't oppress their neighbors anymore since 1990 and they want to do it again. They cannot really do it to the countries that already joined NATO, so they did it to the country that was late to the party.
>Because NATO did not expand. Countries decided to join NATO. You may think this is the same with other words, but it isn't.
In the first version
That is sort of a weird argument. Do you believe that is the case for the US as well? The US did not expand into Indian areas those areas just decided to join the US..
Just to clarify: the "we" who would like to join is a government that was installed by the USA in a coup. What kind of "attacking and oppressing" happened before the coup?
That's just being obtuse to be obtuse. You and I both understand the difference between the choices that Finland or Sweden made and the "choices" that Ukraine or Iraq made.
If a political party came to power in Finland or Sweden outside the normal electoral process and decided to align the country with Russia, would the EU and the USA call them usurpers and terrorists and start military intervention to liberate Finland or Sweden? Or would they not?
I asked about a hypothetical scenario: would the USA violently suppress a Pro-Russia Party of Finland. That seems to have caused a crash and you fell back to your default rhetoric.
> Just to clarify: the "we" who would like to join is a government that was installed by the USA in a coup. What kind of "attacking and oppressing" happened before the coup?
And the Yank said that only the US of A gets to have anything to do with geopolitics because "we are just better that's why". Oh, and "because all my life I've been told Russians are evil".
Putin is unfortunately right, you understand only one kind of argument.
Living in a country that was occupied by russians and gets constant threats by russians to be invaded again. Being in NATO and EU is the best available security guarantee.
No one needs to tell me russians are evil. It’s just something you pick up living next to russia.
Also your threat “putin was right” proves that you are, in fact, evil.
It's more about frustration with hypocrisy than being evil. When your friends kill in Gaza - "that's different", that's freedom, it's for democracy. It's not like the West shies away from cruelty when advancing its interests. You just choose to be blind to the brutality, that's all.
I don't want MY HOME to be occupied by anyone. In the last 100 years the only ones were nazis and russians. russians are doing the same again in Ukraine and are threatening to do it again in my home.
There is nothing hypocritical about not wanting my family being killed or raped by russians or anyone.
You say "your friends kill in Gaza"? Who would those be? I have said nothing about who my friends are. I said NATO and EU are protecting my home from russians. As for Gaza, Israel is not in NATO, also not in the EU.
Russia wants to control and annex its former vassals who in turn try to flee under the shield of NATO.
That is all there is to it.
Right now the west can send as much weapons as it wants to Ukraine to be used against Russia with impunity. If Ukraine was a member of NATO Russia would be completely safe.
But the US cant even be bothered to send an insignificant amount of aid to Ukraine, never mind an actual attack. Russia knew this very well and much of its strategy is based on this decreasing interest and support.
>Why is this "propaganda", and not fact? Why is it so hard to believe that the Russians don't want what they consider hostile parties on their borders? We would do the exact same thing.
I am from eastern Europe, we do not want to sacrifice our lives to invade Russia and loot their shit, we begged to enter in NATO to ensure our survival from Russia, from our history and large number of Russian invasion we understand better why we wanted it then some Westerners. Again we have no fucking intention to still Russian land or their toilets.
>What, in your opinion, is the reason?
I thin it is easy to understand, Putin grabbed Crimea in a genius move, the Western Europe were surprised and too dependent on Russia to do anything about it, the retards shoot down an airplane with civilians and EU did nothing.
And here all it starts, Putin got his ass kissed so hard by his minions that now he thought he can do again a genius blitz attack in Ukraine, Zelensky will run, the old people will pull out the communist flags and portraits of Putin and all will be glorious. Basically Putin was misinformed and stupid enough to think he can win in 3 days or 2 weeks whatever makes Rusky feel better.
And why would Putin want to grab land, steal crap? It is a Russian thing, they like to control, steal, invade etc. They always cry that they lost their sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and they accuse us Eastern Europeans of beeing Rusofobs and brainwashed by CIA.
The final plan was probably to grab as many territories as possible before this countries enter EU and NATO, this is why Ruzzia is supporting anti-EU groups in their neighbors to delay things so his army can invade.
When some Rusky or tanky will tell you that Ruzzia is just afraid of beeing invaded, use your brain and remember that Ruzzia has nuclear weapons so nobody will invade them, the danger for them is the diea that ex-USSR cuntries are prospering in EU and NATO, this idea makes itharder to keep the new generation under contrl so extreme measures were taken to brainwsh them.
Why is it so hard to believe that the Russians don't want what they consider hostile parties on their borders?
"Russians" who have an awareness of history (who are all the Russians I know personally) understand, implicitly, that these countries did not join NATO out of hostile intent - but from the need for some level of security to protect against a neighboring country which has done, as I'm sure you must know, some pretty awful things to them in the not so distant past.
They don't love NATO by any means. But they fully get why these countries sought membership. And don't for a minute believe the hogwash put out by the current Tsar, that it was somehow "necessary" to start bombing an shooting everywhere with oblivion, and letting the bodies pile up with such an awful stink -- just to make a "point".
(I put "Russians" in quotes because only about 70 percent of the country is what one would call ethnically Russian).
We would do the exact same thing.
You're right - "we" (by which you mean the US) did in fact do a basically very similar thing, in regard to numerous countries in Latin America from about 1961-1985. To the point of establishing or supporting dictatorships that killed and tortured probably upwards of 200,000 people, on top of putting multiple generations of social development in these countries effectively on hold.
And for which we have been rightly and thoroughly condemned, by folks with a good conscience, and an awareness of basic history everywhere.
Russia has always (somewhat fairly) been vocal that since the collapse of the Warsaw pact, Nato has no reason to exist other than to defend against a potential attack from Russia.
Nato have always acted as though that's true, and have pursued expanding the alliance to countries bordering Russia, and established missile defence installations there.
The closest we ever got to nuclear war was when Russia moved missiles to Cuba, so it doesn't take a geopolitical scientist to understand that the US is very uncomfortable about threats near its borders, but expects Russia to accept it the other way round.
I'm not up to date with what the propaganda systems are belching out in Russia, but I believe the original reason was something about Nazis in Ukraine, and it would not surprise me if the narrative is shifting to be 'Nato is creeping up on us again'. Which is odd, because Russia already has borders with Nato countries, and controlling Ukraine actually brings them closer to where Nato already has a strong foothold.
A lot of what's going on in Ukraine at the moment is linked to Sevastopol, I think. Russia absolutely cannot afford to lose Sevastopol. Not sure quite what happened that triggered the full scale invasion after the annexation of the Crimea, mind.
> Which is odd, because Russia already has borders with Nato countries, and controlling Ukraine actually brings them closer to where Nato already has a strong foothold.
A couple of minutes with a globe would answer many of those questions. Not the propaganda ones, of course.
No I just mean it’s a bit of an implausible explanation and requires Russian citizens to adopt doublethink. Not that they’re not used to it, just harder in the internet age.
Lots will be paid for by the DoD, for the others: ask the AFU - the users could supply their account details up through the chain of command (or directly via GIS Arta).
Actually, I'd hope this is already happening regularly anyway so they can cut off any terminals captured by the enemy
That effort must come via Ukraine. Accusations and antagonism will lead to a more abrupt solution. Service termination for currently unverifiable equipment
That's exactly what they have been doing since the start of the invasion, and that's how they explained the cut-off when Ukraine was using the Sea Babies for the first time. So either something changed, or the article's claims are bogus. Starlink definitely has the exact location and ID of every ground terminal and can easily refuse the connection.
If your truck would have an extension cord going back to your factory so it can run and running the truck would be sanctioned, you could be blamed if you don't cut the cord.
This comment states the obvious, but it isn't adding anything. Must has expensive lawyers for this kind of stuff, but in the worst case (there is no legal route to stop Russia using starlink in this way) I would want to make it very clear that that was a problem and use my substantial voice to have something done about it.
Here we are talking about regulations even if we agree or not. Answering your question: if your truck is specially considered under those regulations the answer is yes.
For example, we had a customer from Malaysia who was in jail in US because he sold normal hardware devices bought in USA to Iran and that is banned.
> “There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol,” Musk wrote on X, the platform previously known as Twitter.
> “The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor. If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation,” Musk wrote.
Musk himself has used the ostensible fear of becoming complicit as a justification to disable Starlink access for the Ukrainian military.
So yes, he's already taken the position that he would be to blame. You can't then turn it around and say he wouldn't be to blame for russian military success through the use of the same technology.
If your truck gets traced back to you, expect a government audit. If you sold it to a denied party due to lack of due diligence, you will be held liable.
(A truck is probably an extreme example. I'm not sure we're spending time tracing vehicles, but you better believe we are for our state-of-the-art radio tech.)
Source: I with export controls for the semiconductor industry.
He is on the side of Russia but giving away for free this Starlink thing to the UAF that has proven useful for their operations. But how come the UAF are still using Starlink if it's provided by someone clearly on the side or Russia?
One thing is if some soldiers use it to have Google Meet video calls from the battle field. That's comparable to selling some consumer laptops to the army - nobody cares.
Entirely another thing - and now I mean the US ITAR perspective - is if it's used literally as key and unique capability enabling part of a drone weapon. Now that makes it a weapon too. SpaceX doesn't have the US government's approval to manufacture weapons, export weapons or sell them to Ukraine army. The terminal or the constellation itself must not be used as a weapon according to the US law, and the operator must do everything to stop such use.
You should be angry with the US government. Biden could go live on the TV right now and say "Mr. Musk, it's fine - we allow it.". And if Musk didn't do it anyways, then you'd be right to be angry with him. But the US government didn't and won't do that.
Take it to your elected representative, not to a businessman doing what the law requires him to do.
You know what was the biggest fail, IMHO? That UA soldiers put the video online. Up until nobody knew, nobody cared. They carried out several attacks. Then they showed the world - and of course it got banned, there is no other option on SpaceX or Musk's side.
Histrionic? Over three quarters of a million people are dead from this war. The morality is indeed clean and simple here.
Trying to portray this as some deeply, historically complicated and nuanced situation is pretentious, and I'd hazard a guess that anyone taking this position likely has little familiarity with the war and why it's happening.
Yes we all know when a frontline moves from day to day a satcom supplier can figure out who is in possession of what equipment without disclosure of the user.
This was immediately debunked by the source himself?
> Following the publication of this article, Walter Isaacson retracted the claim. Walter Isaacson said his biography’s claim about Starlink and Crimea was based on “mistaken” information.
These kind of conversations are exhausting. I for one don’t know all the details, which I think there are many. I realize it is easy to make a blanket accusation and harder to provide details. Last time I looked this up it was pretty murky. Specifically on your point I believe there was a couple things at play but maybe I am wrong. 1) did not have approval by the state department 2) blanket rule that they could be used but not on weaponry. They were using these with drones to bomb a Russian fleet.
I don’t know what the right answer here is but it would be nice to explore the topic more than “Musk is bad”.
In the [excellent] interview with Putin, Putin also called many US Presidents quite smart. Are you now also quite dubious of them, because of literally the exact same sort of "praise"? Calling it praise is not even rational - it is an observation. One may call Musk many things, but denying he's both quite intelligent and willful would be absurd.
But it did not say it only in the interview.It seems Putin the KGB man, can't stop praising Musk. For example back in Sep: "Russia’s Putin praises Elon Musk as an ‘outstanding person’ and ‘talented businessman’" - https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/12/russias-vladimir-putin-prais...
It was not like an interview with a typical politician, which is perhaps not a surprise, but interesting nonetheless. He was happy to acknowledge when he didn't know things, gave numerous interesting insights in conversations he has had with other world leaders - while actively avoiding betraying their trust of confidence. He also displayed a rather encyclopedic knowledge of history which I found fascinating as a history buff myself. In fact most of the section about Ukraine was largely a lengthy history lesson, including a reasonable overview of how people like Bandera came to be national heroes in Ukraine.
I suppose seeing a world leader who actually seems intelligent and "real" was just something novel. The political personality all Western politicians use now a days is something I find irritating. Giving focus tested answers, or no answers at all, while speaking endlessly nonetheless. Even on topics he clearly found irritating, he didn't try to spin things. E.g. - on the Wallstreet Journal guy, he simply focused on the fact that he broke Russian law, and wanted to trade him for a Russian citizen.
Basically it felt much more like a diplomat speaking to another diplomat instead of a politician trying to give you the answers he thinks you want to hear, regardless of what he actually thinks.
It doesn't sound like an interview at all, at least not a hard hitting interview with tough questions. More like a promotional tour for a new book or something.
Well it wasn't a "trap" interview, if that's what you mean. It also wasn't a "pr tour" type interview of the sort we have repeatedly given Zelensky. I think the thing it reminded me most of was the old school days of interviews with people like Larry King.
Yeah I was able to find a transcript of his interview with Putin [1] but oddly it does not seem to exist in YouTube in video format unfortunately. It's been years since I've watched him, but skimming through that transcript I can still hear his voice!
And yeah, I do think the two interviews are extremely similar in content. He asks significant and poignant questions, without fishing for trap stuff. So e.g. he asks most obviously why Putin invaded, what he even means by 'denazification', why he thinks Britain wanted Ukraine to fight, whether China may end up dominating (and thus undermining the point of) BRICS, the risks and possibilities around potential ongoing escalation, and other such questions.
Whenever I hear "hard hitting" in modern times, I just think of a journalist digging up some random dirt to try to shock the interviewee with, using argumentative fallacies like strawmen, and just generally doing whatever they can to agitate the interviewee and get some sensational headline or emotional response. And there was none of that.
> Whenever I hear "hard hitting" in modern times, I just think of a journalist digging up some random dirt to try to shock the interviewee with, using argumentative fallacies like strawmen, and just generally doing whatever they can to agitate the interviewee and get some sensational headline or emotional response. And there was none of that.
> And there was none of that.
Yeap, no questions on Bucha and who did such a well documented atrocities...
Yeap, no questions on how people fall from windows, or get poisoned so easily in Russia and the Russian chemical attacks in the UK...
Yeap, no questions on the 20,000 Ukrainian children kidnapped into Russia...
Yeah none of that. An excellent articulated piece of propaganda.
This one was actually heard by a sizable audience?
The Western take is: look, Putin is avoiding talking about the current conflict and talks history instead. The Russian take is: look, Crimea changes hands once every 100 or so years, and this is just the latest iteration.
> This one was actually heard by a sizable audience?
So, the content is the same? An aggressor trying to justify his aggression by his version of history?
> The Russian take is: look, Crimea changes hands once every 100 or so years, and this is just the latest iteration.
Putin was not going after Crimea, he was going to "free" the whole Ukraine in a few days (the "special operation") and then beyond. That's what he sold the Russian people. Too bad, his troops were defeated while on their way to Kiev. Now his troops are fighting a bloody war and Russia is isolated in Europe. Countries are joining NATO instead. Putin has achieved to unite most of Europe, unfortunately without and against him.
The Russia public lives in the propaganda bubble of an aggressive regime. There are no flights to much of Europe, few trains, borders are closed, ...
There Russian take is that the evil West is responsible and the reason why its now hard to get all the good things..., but is it worth for them to die for an outdated version of an imperialistic history, where Putin is a czar?
Come on, you don't actually believe in "and beyond", do you? That's just a scare tactic to feed more of your tax money to the military industrial complex.
Putin? Don't be naive. He is the "protector" of every Russian (or what he thinks is a Russian). Like Crimea, he will start with regions where people will russian background live.
If he has the opportunity, than he invades neighbour countries. Why do you think Finland is a NATO member now and Sweden is seeking NATO membership? It was clear to them that they would be easy and early targets for conflicts, if they were not in a more powerful union.
Other countries he would start a conflict with, are countries which are looking to be members of the EU.
Putin just said in the interview that he won't invade Poland, only when Poland attacks Russia. Just like he said before that he won't invade Ukraine, but then he had to, to defend Russia from the West (and then did not call it war, but "special operation).
Putin dreams of a larger Russia and he as said that the real enemy is the "west", which he now sees as weak, especially when Trump is President again and Trump and his republican party won't defend Europe.
Poland and Estland would be the first targets. It might not start with a war, but Putin also did start to destabilize the Ukraine long before the current war. The interviewer is a tool, just like Trump.
Restore the former "glory", influence zones and importance of the Soviet Union / now called Russia. Defend his dictatorship against western influence of democracy and self determination of nations. Putin sits on a huge pile of natural resources and he wants to use that as a power instrument. It's the fate of many resource rich countries, that it leads to governments (and helping classes) enriching themselves.
But I don't think Putin is self-destructive / suicidal. There is no hope for controlling a hypothetical conquered European country for any length of time given Russia's present capabilities.
Realistically the only thing Russia can hope for is the preservation of the status quo - keeping Crimea and the land bridge to it.
Putin has invaded the Ukraine. This "interview" was only a platform for him to explain his propaganda version of his motives, based on his skewed version of history. None of that was questioned. The reality is that he failed to conquer Ukraine in a few days, as he planned initially, and now is in a bloody war where he sacrifices the lives of hundreds of russians per day for his own personal goals. His troops kills and destroys in the Ukraine. His invasion is a huge catastrophe for him, for russia and especially for the ukraine. There is no justification for this and it can't be found in history.
I think it highlights differences in American and Russian communication style very well. Even with the softball questions, Carlson kept trying to steer the conversation towards a series of questions and answers and seemed a bit annoyed by the long-winded stories. Putin kept saying he'll answer the question but finish his explanation first.
To an American this kind of communication seems like evasion and filibustering. To a Russian not getting into the details feels shallow and rash.
Personally, I've struggled mightily with writing in American business style. You know, executive summary front and center, any details relegated to an appendix. A much more natural style for me is storytelling - linear, chronological, with details inline.
Not to contradict you, but he did also say a few quite annoyingly incorrect things, like claiming it was the fault of Poland that they were invaded by Hitler.
Also the point where Tucker reached the conclusion that "only an idiot would believe that Russia is an expansionist power" sounds a lot like slurping sounds around Putin's private parts to me(Russia has invaded at least 3 neighbouring countries in the last decade)
The Hitler/Poland observation especially makes me think perhaps Putin would like to call it the Second World Special Military Operation, which isn't all that far from calling the Ukraine war by any other name than a war.
Tucker said nothing of the sort, nor did Putin claim it was Poland's fault they were invaded. Putin did, however, explain what Hitler's motivation was, The Free City of Danzig. [1] It was an area primarily populated with German peoples but 'granted' to Poland after WW1. Germany wanted it back, Poland refused, and eventually Germany ended up invading to get it back. This doesn't mean Germany's actions were right, nor Poland's wrong. It simply is what it is, and is obviously an extremely important part of history.
There's a transcript of the interview here [2]. It looks like an auto-translated version of the Russian transcript, and a rather terrible one at that. So I would take it with a grain of salt, but it should at least be a decent way of finding whichever topic you're interested in and correlating that against its location in the actual interview.
> Putin did, however, explain what Hitler's motivation was, The Free City of Danzig.
That was an excuse, not motivation. Hitler was motivated by theories of racial superiority, which he immediately began carrying out in Poland after invading the country and dividing it with the USSR, which had attacked Poland from the east in a supporting action (they even held a joint victory parade). Hitler sought to exterminate all Jews and most Poles living in Poland and turn the few remaining Poles into a slave race serving German settlers, who were given Polish farms and businesses. Hitler managed to murder roughly 3 million Polish Jews and 3 million Poles before finding a sorry end in a petrol-filled ditch somewhere in Berlin. Systemic extermination of people living in Poland had been planned for years in advance and started right on the first days of the invasion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligenzaktion
Russian theories of superiority, exceptionalism and Russki mir are eerily similar to the German ideas of superiority and Lebensraum in both theory and practice:
Operation Tannenberg (German: Unternehmen Tannenberg) was a codename for one of the anti-Polish extermination actions by Nazi Germany. The shootings were conducted with the use of a proscription list (Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen) targeting Poland’s elite, compiled by the Gestapo in the two years before the invasion of Poland. The secret lists identified more than 61,000 members of the Polish elite: activists, intelligentsia, scholars, clergy, actors, former officers and others, who were to be interned or shot. Members of the German minority living in Poland assisted in preparing the lists.
USSR did the same in the parts of Poland they invaded:
The Katyn massacre was a series of mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligentsia prisoners of war carried out by the Soviet Union, specifically the NKVD ("People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs", the Soviet secret police) in April and May 1940. /---/ The order to execute captive members of the Polish officer corps was secretly issued by the Soviet Politburo led by Joseph Stalin. Of the total killed, about 8,000 were officers imprisoned during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, another 6,000 were police officers, and the remaining 8,000 were Polish intelligentsia the Soviets deemed to be "intelligence agents and gendarmes, spies and saboteurs, former landowners, factory owners and officials".
And the same thing is going on in occupied parts of Ukraine right now:
In a deliberate, widespread campaign, Russian forces systematically targeted influential Ukrainians, nationally and locally, to neutralize resistance through detention, torture and executions, an Associated Press investigation has found. The strategy appears to violate the laws of war and could help build a case for genocide. Russian troops hunted Ukrainians by name, using lists prepared with the help of their intelligence services. In the crosshairs were government officials, journalists, activists, veterans, religious leaders and lawyers. /---/ The pattern was similar across the country, according to testimonies AP collected from occupied and formerly occupied territories around Kyiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Chernihiv and Donetsk regions.
In conflict, both sides try to demonize the other side, often using what are shown to be grossly exaggerated, and sometimes plainly false, claims. And it's not just "the other side" that does it. You should contrast what you read, when it sounds extreme, with what you know to be true outside of these claims. So for instance, Russia has more ethnicities than near to any other nation, with something like 185 different recognized ethnicities [1] living in the country.
And there's no marginalization or racial issues or whatever, at least nothing outside the norm. You can find countless ethnic minorities in various positions of power that aren't there just because of an invisible quota or whatever, but because all that matters is who can do the job best. For instance Sergei Shoigu [2] is a name you probably know, and he is ethnically Tuvan. The American far right who view Russia as something like a white Christian ethnostate are seen, by Russians, as complete idiots.
One can disagree with another, even be involved in a violent war, without trying to turn them into the Devil incarnate. Such fatuous and exaggerated claims also ultimately make light of when there are real issues, such as in another war we're supporting, which is nothing like this one.
Nonsense, the second world war history is excellently researched and Putin tells you only his propaganda views, which are just false. The Soviet Union collaborated with Germany on the invasion of Poland. In fact the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the East. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov–Ribbentrop_Pact This is not a "view", that's actual history.
I see no reason to call any of what I quoted an exaggeration. These are very well documented episodes, which barely scratch the surface when it comes to German and Russian crimes committed in Eastern Europe. The described actions were merely opening shots of WWII. The worst was yet to come.
As to ethnic minorities in Russia:
> And there's no marginalization or racial issues or whatever, at least nothing outside the norm.
"On 19 June 2018, the Russian State Duma adopted a bill that made education in all languages but Russian optional, overruling previous laws by ethnic autonomies, and reducing instruction in minority languages to only two hours a week.[48][49][50] This bill has been likened by some commentators, such as in Foreign Affairs, to the policy of Russification.[48]"
This is not really what I would call ethnic strife. I do agree that language is a big part of ethnic identity, but such a law obviously does not prevent people from using or learning their ethnic language, and people being unable to communicate in a common tongue is likely to lead to real ethnic strife within a region. To me, the ideal of a multi-ethnic nation would be one where people have a shared common identity first, yet also don't entirely relinquish their own unique distinctions. Like I think in America one of the reasons there's such an increasingly absurd division in society is that we've lost any sort of shared collective identity.
Out of curiosity, would you actually even prefer the opposite of what is described in the page you linked to? If there happens to be an ethnic minority that is a majority in some region, should that region be able to determine that education, and so on, should be in the language of the local ethnic group?
> such a law obviously does not prevent people from using or learning their ethnic language
It is only one measure of many that is driving the rapid decline of indigenous peoples in Russia. Russia has a long history of methodical persecution of indigenous peoples with a wide arsenal that spans from closure of schools and suppression of media to made up charges about "extremism" and being a "foreign agent" to punitive psychiatry in the best Soviet traditions. Many languages and cultures have already become extinct like Native American tribes that were forced into conditions that caused a permanent loss of language, culture and identity. With official departure from the European Convention on Human Rights, the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, and other international treaties, Russia doesn't even bother to act like they care about human rights. The council that monitored how signatories enforced the framework convention used the same word in their reports about the situation of minorities as you did: marginalization, increasingly so.
And it's gotten much worse since Putin decided to invade Ukraine in 2022. Russia is now decimating indigenous populations by disproportionally conscripting them to die in Ukraine. Buryats and Nenets are overrepresented by a factor of 50 in casualties compared to ethnic Russians from Moscow. Two genocides for the price of one - trying to overwhelm Ukrainian defenders by throwing indigenous peoples from Russia at them.
My friend, what you're doing here is called gish galloping. [1] Pick something you find truly compelling and stick with it. A lot of the things you're saying are poorly supported, misleading, or probably plainly false. And FWIW I'm not saying you're doing this intentionally. "We" have been in an information warfare mode for the past 2 years, and the truth is only just recently starting to come out of this mess. We probably won't really know what's happened over the past 2 years for many years yet to come.
So for example, I decided to look up the European Convention on Human Rights things, because it sounded pretty interesting. And what you've been told is not quite what happened. It seems that after the invasion of Ukraine, the relevant bureaucracy chose to suspend Russia's representation in such, so Russia announced a petition to withdraw from the organization, which the Council responded with, 'you can't quit, you're fired!' type stuff. [2]
It's just the ongoing of weaponization of international organizations in the West, which ultimately serves little purpose other than to undermine their relevance and authority. Observe the the grossly incongruent responses to actions of Israel vs those of Russia. Organizations whose actions become driven by politics become seen as political actors, which entirely defeats their purpose.
> what you're doing here is called gish galloping.
It wasn't me who changed the topic from blaming Poland for Hitler's invasion, to denial of the well-known persecution of indigenous peoples in Russia, to calling international human rights organizations weapons against the glorious Russian motherland. Denial of mistreatment of indigenous peoples is particularly nasty, because it has been a cornerstone of dissident Russian human rights and environmentalist movements for a very long time. Indigenous peoples inhabit many Russian regions rich in natural resources and they have seen persecution not only in the form of suppression of their language and culture, but also in the form of physical destruction of their native land through mismanaged and inefficient resource extraction that leaves behind toxic wastelands. "We don't want to live in moonscapes," as one activist put it: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/1/23/in-russia-indig...
Would you prefer to return to how Hitler only wanted Danzig and other Nazi myths? For some unknown reason they are very widespread in Russia and have strong foothold among boomers like Putin.
Imagine I had a different perspective than you, tough to believe - I know. Now of course you are right, or you wouldn't think like you do. So wouldn't you want me to think, like you? Thus instead of turning to absurd hyperbole, speculation, ad hominem, straw men, and all other sorts of really great ways to debate a topic, why not simply try to calm down and coherently express yourself? I am genuinely curious, but your style of debate and discussion is a pretty big turn off.
So here, it seems to me that your biggest and most compelling issue with Russia is the mistreatment of ethnic indigenous groups? But the article you linked to uses a lot of words to say very little. And what it does say is so absurdly one sided that it just completely omits any sort of detail whatsoever. For instance:
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Pressure on Sulyandziga began after he organised public hearings on pressure on an Evenki Indigenous community that developed a jade mine on their ancestral lands.. In 2012, the mine was taken over by the Rostec state-run corporation focusing on defence and hi-tech... That year, criminal charges were brought against community leaders, leading to confiscation of jade and land, activists say... Sulyandziga claimed he was accused by state officials of “separatism”, “espionage” and embezzlement... In 2016, Sulyandziga left for New York to deliver a speech at a UN session about Russia’s Indigenous rights situation. He says he never returned because a high-ranking security official told him that intelligence services planned to kill him and present his death as “suicide”.
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What was the conclusion of the charges? Why were they initially made and/or dismissed? What happened between 2012-2016? How did a random indigenous tribesman in Russia find himself able to present a speech in front of the UN? I feel like this article is trying to appeal to my emotions, and not my logic. I want details, I want logic, I want evidence. I want something that doesn't assume I already agree with the premise of what's being said, and thus will just happily accept anything they say.
What really made you take up the issue of indigenous peoples in Russia as such a key cause? Was there some significant event that happened? Is it something personal? I'm just trying to understand where you're coming from, and perhaps with such I might be able to see the world through your eyes. Make sense?
Putin lied about the motivation of Germany and failed to mention, that the Soviet Union itself invaded parts of Poland. Hitler's motivation was to conquer and enslave East Europe. Getting Danzig back was not the motivation. It was only a stepping stone. The Soviet Union itself worked together with Nazi Germany and attacked & invaded Poland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov–Ribbentrop_Pact Putin should be convicted for war crimes. We learned nothing new from Putin, this stuff was all already explained by him. The right-wing "interviewer" from the US acted like a tool.
You might want to watch the interview. In that section Putin obviously mentioned that the USSR also invaded Poland. That's when Western Ukraine, which had been part of Poland, came back under 'Soviet' control! Which is, again, a rather critical part of relevant contemporary history. As Wiki puts it [1]:
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"The response of non-ethnic Poles to the situation caused considerable complications. Many Ukrainians, Belarusians and Jews welcomed the invading troops.[100] Local Communists gathered people to welcome the Red Army troops in the traditional Slavic way by presenting bread and salt in the eastern suburb of Brest. A sort of triumphal arch on two poles, decked with spruce branches and flowers was fashioned for this occasion. A slogan in Russian on a long red banner, glorifying the USSR and welcoming the Red Army, crowned the arch.[101] The event was recorded by Lev Mekhlis, who reported to Stalin that the people of the West Ukraine welcomed the Soviet troops "like true liberators".[102] The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists rebelled against Polish rule and Communist partisans stirred up local revolts, such as in Skidel.[1]".
The Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east and ruled there with terror, mass-killings and deportations. "back under soviet control" means that the SU was taking the opportunity to conquer parts of Poland in an undeclared war, working together with Nazi Germany. Sure that it also exploited local conflicts.
You won't find too many arguments from me here. Stalin was the absolute embodiment of Machiavellianism, which I loathe with a passion like none other. The inevitability of people like him in politics are the reason I think overly centralized political systems are doomed to failure, sooner or later. Had he not been the main reason Nazism was defeated, I think his legacy, as colored as it already is, would have been very different. But, on the other hand, the importance of and the sacrifices suffered in the defeat of Nazism cannot be overstated.
Such is history that sometimes great people do awful things, and sometimes awful people do great things.
Nothing about the war in the Ukraine is great, not Putin, not the "things". There is only the will of the people of the Ukraine to defend their country. Putin was (and is) too dumb to see this.
Nothing about the war against Poland was great.
Putin is an aggressor and he even tried to justify his history view with Poland/Germany from 1939.
From the interview: "Hitler asked them to give it amicably, but they refused."
That's complete nonsense, Hitler had very different motives and Poland knew that it was not "amicably".
What is disturbing, is that Putin compares his own motives to attack the Ukraine to the German/Polish situation in 1939, where we see Putin siding in his arguments with Hitler. That's completely crazy.
Hitler had all staged this, back then, to conquer Poland and follow his long-term goals & plans (-> kill the jews, enslave east europe).
That's a very strange, view given that the history was mostly wrong. Putin is not a typical politician, he is an ex- intelligence service ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin#KGB_career ) guy who got to power and made Russia his own authoritarian ruled country.
Not really. Praise is free and regardless how you feel about him, Elon is one of the world's most successful businessmen. He's done things worthy of praise. (He's also done things worthy of scorn.)
Are the reasons for praise problematic? What are they, and why?
Here's a few other quotes by Vlad that contain praise:
> It's a historical phenomenon that in 250 years, a nation could move from a colony into the most prosperous nation of the world and the leader of the world. It is indeed an achievement, a tribute to the talent of the American nation, the American people and an optimal political and economic system.
He's praising all of America! Worthy of self-reflection?
> History proves that all dictatorships, all authoritarian forms of government are transient. Only democratic systems are not transient. Whatever the shortcomings, mankind has not devised anything superior.
Democracy itself has been praised by a war criminal! What should we do with this knowledge?
Evil doesn't hand out gold stars for attendance. When a war criminal beams a spotlight of praise onto someone, it's not because they're dazzled by their moral compass; it's more like they see a bit of themselves, or rather, something exploitable that aligns with their nefarious schemes. It’s the dark mirror of endorsement—'I like how you think; it reminds me of, well, me.'
It's not about falling for a logical fallacy; it's about recognizing the dance floor where these accolades are given. Evil's endorsements don't come from a place of benign admiration but a strategic calculation of how such qualities or actions serve their agenda. To ignore the context and implications of such praise is not only ingenuous but dangerously naïve.
This is the argument from authority fallacy but in reverse. Just because a idiotic war criminal praises someone does not mean that person is bad. Neither is it an indication that person is good. You should not pay attention to idiots. If you always do the opposite of idiots, you're letting idiots control you, and what does that make you?
Because Putin's statements are not mere random utterances of 'fun facts'. How many times has Putin said 'Garry Kasparov is a smart guy'? (Kasparov is a former world chess champion, Russian Presidential Candidate, and now works on Renew Democracy Initiative, a pro-democracy NGO, which opposes spread of autocracy). Or, for that matter, the same abt Navalny or any of his other opponents ?
Reductionist thinking is convenient, but far too often misleading.
And? Not to be dismissive but this does not prove any point. I have no idea what kind of game anyone is playing so this kind of article does not have much meaning to me.
What does have meaning to me is an US based company that is supplying weapons to foreign nations/groups needs approval by the US government.
If Putin called Musk stupid, it would make Russia look bad. SpaceX is far more capable than Russia's rocket industry so for Russians to save any face, they must say Musk and SpaceX are very good at what they do.
What else would they say, "We're being beaten by idiots"?
> would be nice to explore the topic more than “Musk is bad”
Isaacson’s Starlink claims are muddied.
But Musk has tweeted Kremlin propaganda points, e.g. on its proximate nuclear red lines (which, for the record, we’ve since passed). I blame David Sacks for giving him bad advice. But whatever the reason, it’s fair to question whether this was intentional at some level.
Not to be overly defensive of musk, but musk is currently one of our most major diplomatic point of contact with Russia (SpaceX deal to send up cosmonauts to iss) so it's kind of in the US interest to ask musk to gas up putin a bit. Although I wouldn't find it hard to believe that musk is that clueless, I also have to consider that it might be a diplomatic task.
> musk is currently one of our most major diplomatic point of contact with Russia
Genuinely curious where you’re getting this. For what it’s worth, no, Musk is not a diplomatic contact for anyone in the West with Russia, though there is rising concern he sees himself as such, which leads to him e.g. leaking Ukrainian firing plans to Moscow’s envoys.
> it's kind of in the US interest to ask musk to gas up putin a bit
Not particularly. Though I can see him being used without knowing it.
I am a huge fan of SpaceX and Musk. But while Starlink is hugely relevant to the war, Musk per se is presently between irrelevant and mildly damaging to American interests.
> SpaceX is a provider for Roscosmos..would be crazy for the US state department to NOT use that as some sort of opportunity
Sure. That doesn't make Musk a "major diplomatic contact," nor even a pertinent one (let alone "most major").
Also, these are NASA launches. NASA paid for them and handled the seat swap with Roscosmos [1], though there was no doubt coördination between the latter and Hawthorne.
I'm sorry would it be helpful if I said "likely a major diplomatic contact"?
I'm not sure if you're being naive about international politics, obsessively pedantic, or knee jerk argumentative.
Point being if musk goes anti-russia or possibly even neutral-but-following-sanctions-too-carefully we absolutely risk losing the rideshare (diplomatic point of contact, beyond just musk) and upticking the risk of nuclear conflict. And I imagine the state dept. Is aware of this.
> would it be helpful if I said "likely a major diplomatic contact"?
No, this is still wrong.
> being naive about international politics, obsessively pedantic, or knee jerk argumentative
I'm telling you the reality from D.C. Musk is not a diplomatic asset. To the extent he might be, it's indirectly. His contacts in Russia are simply not unique and deep enough to merit that designation. (And the risks of blowback, given his public profile, too high.)
> we absolutely risk losing the rideshare (diplomatic point of contact, beyond just musk)
Roscosmos needs NASA more than the other way now. Due to SpaceX.
> I don’t know what the right answer here is but it would be nice to explore the topic more than “Musk is bad”.
I mean, Musk has been on the vanguard of the "Ukraine's resistance is futile" push. You can call speculation on this line specious, unthinking "Musk is bad" rhetoric, but at some point negative criticism of a person is relevant.
It takes zero imagination to conceive of Musk turning a blind eye to Russia's use of Starlink, it would be consistent with the way he speaks on X/Twitter.
It may seem like bashing, but honestly it's easy to run out of good things to say about some people.
Actually it does take some imagination. As does thinking that somehow starlink does not have to answer to the state department.
My point being that no matter what narrative we want to use for Musk, ultimately there is some accountability to the state department for tools used in war.
I believe starlink is deliberately allowing the service to work in places without licensing [1], because they want to follow the precedent of other sat-phone and sat-TV operators who just have worldwide service without getting permission from every government first. (and in many cases don't have the ability to geoblock, because the signal beam covers entire continents)
It's also fairly doable to spoof GPS if you care to. And I'm talking about the earlier satellite communicators, not Starlink, which can indeed easily triangulate.
Problem with that in context of Starlink is the terminal needs to know its position relative to the satellite to communicate with it; spoof position, and you're likely to lose comms.
At least for maritime terminal many of them can use external GPS source, so it is very simple to spoof GPS. However, that would also mean the terminal would connect to the satellite on wrong frequency as it would think it is in a spot beam it is not and as such you would get crappy signal or no signal at all. That said, many geo-satellites spot beams are the size of Ukraine, so it doesn't matter that much if you just need to move your position a kilometer or two.
Many satcom operators geoblock their terminals in regions where they do not have license to transmit. This is trivial as both modem and hub/nms/noc will have the gps data from the equipment.
Most governments don't care enough to do anything about illegal transmitting, but some, like the Indian coast guard, has been known to board ships and write out fines and cause a ton of paper work for ships sailing with transmitting satcom equipment. And often they don't know how to determine if the equipment is transmitting or not, so it's safest for the crew to just turn it off when within Indian territorial waters even if the satcom provider automatically mutes equipment.
Do Starlink not have to follow Ukrainian radio laws within 2014 or at least 2022 Ukrainian territories?
If they have to, wouldn’t they be required to reject authentications from terminals not tied to payment account for Ukraine or US DoD, if not by law at this point, like starting yesterday by Ukrainian Presidential order?
So you mean Ukraine should request these to be disabled i aide the occupied territories and if Musk refuses he has basically taken side with Russia in annexation of Ukraine?
Starlink doesn't offer service in UAE, so this must refer to diverted use of Starlink Maritime. Starlink Maritime is offered through (among others) Dubai-based maritime supplier ELCOME.[0]
The ToS for Starlink Maritime isn't available, but this partner brochure[1] says:
"Starlink Maritime is available for use in waters around the globe. Coverage in Territorial Waters is contingent on government approval." (italics in original)
"* Starlink Maritime service is provided on a best effort basis; stated speeds and uninterrupted use of services are not guaranteed."
So yes, Starlink will have ample reason and cause to shut down any ELCOME (etc) terminals found operating inside Ukraine or its territorial waters. Starlink terminals all have built-in GPS, so from a technical standpoint this is trivially easy.
Forgive me if I'm thinking like a TV writer since I don't have the scientific knowledge, hence the question: can GPS signals not be spoofed, if you are in possession of the device you want to trick? I.e. Couldn't they have fake GPS signals right next to a Starlink terminal that's not strong enough to have a wide-reaching effect, but enough for the terminal to believe it's somewhere it isn't and report that false location back to the satellites? (And/or finding a way to hack the terminal itself to send false coordinates?)
I guess even if that's possible, it would be feasible for Starlink to triangulate from their satellites to estimate terminal locations and spot which ones are lying?
I'm going to call on Cunningham's law here... (I'm not sure if I am right or wrong but I think I'm right and hopefully someone can correct me)
I don't think starlink needs GPS as much as the starlink service is a form of GPS. The base station sees several satellites and the satellites know where they are and so the base station can triangulate where you are, and the whole system requires this precision location mechanism to work, so the 2 way communication is a form of Global Positioning without relying on external GPS data.
Perhaps the base station is also able to use GPS but the starlink communication is also able to do exactly what GPS does so "fake GPS" would do nothing to conceal the base station's location and probably make initialization hard or impossible.
You need a precise clock for any form of GNSS[0] to function. AFAIR StarLink satellites doesn't have precise clock on the board. And anyway, modern GNSS chips are.. $1? Cheaper? No way you wouldn't use GNSS already deployed and working (and you are not paying for it) in a commercial product.
[0] GPS is GNSS, it's just in America GPS became the synonym for GNSS
So -- for the purposes of locating a base station that's connected to the starlink network -- the starlink network would rely on the base station reporting it's location? Hopefully not... It certainly doesn't need to just trust it when it has direct observation available too.
I'm not suggesting that whatever GPSish thing you'd be able to get out of a pure starlink protocol communication would give you super resolution, but it'd certainly be enough to identify "Crimea" vs "Indian Ocean".
And as far as base station -> constellation -- putting a GPS receiver in it is of course smart to speed that up, but I'm not sure even that's necessary or just helpful.
> You need a precise clock for any form of GNSS[0] to function
How precise? I assume that inaccuracy in the clock produces imprecision in location - how much time inaccuracy produces how much location inaccuracy?
> And anyway, modern GNSS chips are.. $1? Cheaper? No way you wouldn't use GNSS already deployed and working (and you are not paying for it) in a commercial product.
Rather than using the Starlink satellites as an alternative to GPS - get a location fix using both Starlink and GPS, and compare them. Even given the former is going to be significantly less accurate - suppose GPS is accurate to within 5 metres and Starlink is accurate to within 5000 metres - well, if the two differ by 50,000 metres, you know something is going wrong, and the terminal might decide to disable itself in such a situation.
GNSS satellites orbits are between 20000km and 30000km. 20kkm is 0.06671s of c, 30kkm is 0.10007s, 5km is 0.000016678. So a very precise, that's why they have an atomic clock on board instead of cheap quartz one.
> if the two differ by 50,000 metres, you know something is going wrong
Like what your imprecise methods give you a very rough estimate where is the terminal and your legitimate customers in the nearby areas (not even doing anything for or against) are saying thanks for their shut off terminals.
Spoofing is possible, and Russia is known to use it. But it's unlikely they'd use it here. Spoofing is pretty indiscriminate, so nearby devices would also be affected, and as another commenter pointed out the device knowing it's location is important for it to connect to the network.
Spoofing a Starlink receiver's GPS is not going to be very helpful with phase-shifted array antennas. Both the satellite and the terminal need to know each other's position.
Starlink satellites are in a very, very low orbit - which means they "see" a fairly small patch of land. So if you're in eastern Ukraine, currently satellites #32581 and #44197 are above you, with #17994 coming soon over the horizon (numbers invented).
Additionally, they have phased antenna arrays able to narrow-beam your data pretty much to you (this is very useful as you can, among other things, recycle the exact same frequency for another user a short distance away).
Spoof GPS all you want, but Starlink knows you're not actually somewhere else, simply because of which satellites are able to talk to you right now.
Obviously what Russia will do is send a spacecraft to bump some of the starlink satellites to point upwards towards space, and then launch satellites in higher orbit to bounce the signal to anywhere in Russia, bypassing the geo-fencing /s.
Spoofing is a big topic in the GNSS world (which is the broader set of satellite constellations like GPS). There's a lot of stuff happening to prevent spoofing. One of those things is using digital signatures that you can use to authenticate the signal. Another thing is using signals from multiple satellite constellations and correlating those. And of course the way these things work you need to talk 3-5 satellites from each network at least to be able to reliably interpolate the position. Even older networks, like GPS, change over time as satellites get replaced and software is updated.
The advantage Starlink has is that there are a lot more satellites that are also in a much lower orbit. There has been some talk about using their satellites for positioning. I think they look at that as a bit of a low value market so far.
Ukraine might economically collapse under the weight of the war machine of one the biggest military powers in the world.
You could do better than spinning classic Russian propaganda tropes of "Ukraine is the most corrupt country on Earth".
There is corruption in Ukraine, more than in the EU but about the same level as other non-EU countries like Moldova, Serbia, Kazakhstan etc.
Russia could economically collapse as well though it’s true that they have a longer runway. But as far as corruption goes I think Russia is far more corrupt than Ukraine, US or China. Russia is literally a mob state in its current form.
Something to note: I would not trust a single sentence coming from this site, knowing who is running it - he is no way affiliated with the Bulgarian military or army and is likely on russia's payroll.
>he is no way affiliated with the Bulgarian military or army and is likely on russia's payroll
The sheer number of people - Americans, mostly - who consider Russia this omnipotent boogeyman is both hilarious and scary. Everything is Russian propaganda, you can't believe anything a Russian says, all Russians are evil. I mean, where does this mentality come from? It's insane. In some circles you can literally dismiss anything by mentioning it could be Russia. Even the politicians do it.
Take this article: what is the big Russian conspiracy, on some obscure site, some of which can be confirmed on X? Wouldn't someone on Putin's payroll be better served not publicizing that they are using Starlink?
Look its all well and good to bring up the objective and obvious fact that Russia isn't a threat to the United States, but have you considered the impact on the families of defence contractors?
Haliburton's share price is correlated with the amount of global conflict, but did you know that same share price determines executive compensation? Do you know how much it costs the producers of child killing weapons to hire a twenty something to cheat on their wives with? A lot, therefore we need to keep the stock high and people very afraid otherwise how will the child murdering members of the professional managerial class be rewarded?
I have never seen Russian being describe as the ultimate boogeyman while in America but I am also realistic. Russia is after all a mob run state and makes no qualms with public assassinations. There are fairly well documented instances of their operations. I am not scared of them, look at the massive failure their military is but I also am aware that they are an outlier to world stability.
Sure? No doubt the US does similar activities and in the past more so when it comes to creating instability within regions but in more recent history I don’t think we have made very public executions on foreign soil, even more so I cannot recall us doing it in public for dissidents.
South Africa won't allow Starlink unless it meets local BEE requirements. As a result several ISPs are importing and registering Starlink in neighbouring countries, allowing us to stay online during almost daily load shedding caused by our crumbling, government owned power utility Eskom.
For those of us who want to minimize our reliance on a corrupt, incompetent government Starlink is invaluable as it allows us to go completely off-grid. Power and water is one thing, but without Starlink our mobile and fibre networks can still go down when the backup batteries inevitably run out.
Perhaps you could expand beyond that flippant snark and help people understand what they're missing? Otherwise, your comment doesn't really contribute much beyond making you feel better than others.
If for example you live in a country that doesn't register sim cards with authenticated information (e.g Ukraine) anyone can use the service.
That's why Russian soldiers are using Ukrainian network sims in Ukraine.
The same is true of starlink. The equipment (analogue of sim and phone together) is easily acquired. There's no whitelist . And service is available to anyone that can get a valid payment card. So just like the mobile network, Russians can use it.
SpaceX used to mitigate this by limiting areas service is available. But that helps with places 20+km from the frontline. Not somewhere opposing soldiers can see each other. And Ukrainians complained about this. They had partisans and SOF they wanted to communicate with. Now it's done and we have a new narrative l
You won't see Reddit level comments for such mobile networks.
We know the reason for the difference in sentiment. The solution is device whitelisting at the frontline and beyond visual range. Maybe for some people limiting movement might be enough.
But our anti work crowd will rather blame the supplier
I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone propose the possibility that allowing Russia to use Starlimk is an espionage play.
I have no idea if that's actually what's going on, but if it would give Starlink information on troop locations and open a door for listening in on all Starlink-based communications, you would want the public and Russia to believe the CEO is on their side. It would also align with the fact that Russia's big military pushes to secure and advance the front have largely failed or ended in stalemate. Tie that to the number of Russian ships attacked and again, if Russia is using Starlink Maritime that would track as well.
By no means am I proposing this as the likely scenario, but it does seem possible and one that gets buried by people piling on to hate on Elon.
There is of course the reality that they actively helped the Ukranians with internet connectivity when early in the war they lost most of their satellite connectivity due to Russian hackers disrupting that. Distinguishing Russian users from Ukranian ones in Ukraine is probably not that easy.
Can't they look up the subscriber information? Presumably the Ukrainian ones would be registered to the Ukrainian government, but the Russian ones would be registered to some random UAE company.
Many, many Starlink terminals and service subscriptions used in war zones by members of the UA army are donated and/or fully or partially paid for by private people - ukrainians and many more nationalities (including UAE). I personally helped stuff a van full of Starlink terminals and drones and my friend drove it to the UA border (though this was a much larger group effort than just us - especially the finance and sourcing).
The UA army command is doing everything it can, but it's not unlimited and everywhere. The war effort relies on help of private individuals and groups a lot. Many soldiers are using equipment sourced entirely from private sources - all they got officially was a uniform and gun. All the drone videos you see on the internet - these are almost 100% bought privately.
Do you think the American government can't already find Russian ships? America gets their ass beat consistently in unwinnable wars against guerilla armies, but in terms of identifying giant warships I think they're pretty capable.
Finding them is actually likely much less of a problem than listening in, though providing the Ukrainians with additional ways of finding and tracking their enemy without us directly providing intel does offer the US plausible deniability.
It never really has to be believable, it just needs to be enough that you can deny direct involvement in a specific attack. I have little patience for politics and which we didn't let pur world be run this way, but that's the way we do it.
Guerilla tactics just raise the cost of steamrolling an opponent to an unpalatable level, hiding among civilians, civilian infrastructure, etc. American loses these matchups not because they can't blockade a country, raze their farmlands and wait a few seasons while they all starve, but because fully eliminating and "winning" would be the worst possible choice.
I'd still argue that the problem is not defining "winning" beforehand. That could mean any number of thing, but without defining that first we can't weigh the likelihood of success or cost of tactics that will be required.
I agree I'm not sure when a goal of eliminating the enemy completely is one that I could support, though interestingly enough that is precisely what Israel's claimed goal currently is with regards to Hamas. I believe its also the stated goal of Russia, though I'm not familiar with what faction of neo-nazis they claim to be targeting or whether they even exist in any meaningful numbers in Ukraine.
I think it'd be more accurate to say the US consistently signs itself up for wars based on political or economic motivations with little intention of doing what would be needed to actually "win" the war.
Specifically, we either don't define metrics for success or we define completely unrealistic metrics. Worse, we go to war with no intention of destroying an enemy that has left us with no alternative other than to risk many, many human lives to stop them. We go for political wins at home, to claim ground in a geopolitical power struggle, or for natural resources.
Yeah, listening in wouldn't work because you can always stack more encryption on top of the one the carrier might listen in to. But Starlink can't operate without exact knowledge of antenna locations for aiming the phased arrays (some sibling said that it can operate without GPS, but I read that as it's able to locate the antenna on its own after a crude signal handshake is done).
But in a world where Musk/Starlink/someone inside Starlink/someone with sufficient leverage over Starlink was trying to hinder the Russian invasion, they would allow Starlink terminals to be sourced through plausibly shady channels and then operate in Russian hands for quite a while, before striking locations and only then shutting down.
Or even go all Ultra on them and start an elaborate programme to create alternative explamations for the data use.
One reason I don't consider this likely: imagine how hard Musk would enjoy going through his very own version of the Cryptinomicon Ultra plot line. The idea that he might be able to keep that a secret just doesn't fit in my skull.
Not divulging boring details of stuff you have clearance to and keeping quiet about the biggest adventure of your life, while being a person so talkative that you once spent 44 billion on your favorite blogging tool? Those are very different challenges.
OTOH, "cryptonomicon ultra plot line" could be the ultimate Musk lure, so the gates are open to even the wildest speculation.
Is it fair to assume Musk and any state actors he could be working with don't have any way to decrypt Russian encryption techniques?
My only point is they its interesting how quick many are to jump on this a narrative that Elon is evil, he works for or with the Russians, etc when there is actually a scenario that fits in which he is closer to playing a role akin to Allan Turing during WWII.
I was comparing a potential scenario in which Muak found himself in much the same situation as Turing, I'm not comparing the men or their character at all.
I'm definitely not trying to compare what both men were/are put through. A sea of internet trolls complaining about how terrible a person they believe Musk to be is nothing compared to chemical castration and being convicted of gross indecency for what one chooses to do behind closed doors.
Plus, that would give the ability to degrade communications whenever it's tactically useful.
Flight MH17 investigations revealed Russian military has a habit of switching to cellphones when their normal communications don't work, and those calls tend to be plain audio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
starlink meta data is surely being collected and used for sigint, thou i suspect russia has good enough mathematicians so that listening in on content is not on the table unless the endpoints are compromised.
I never know where the line is for assumptions on encryption and espionage. The Germans thought Enigma was unbreakable, you really just never know if you encryption was compromised unless the ones who cracked it tip their cards.
The US has reconnaissance satellite data that it provides to the Ukrainians. Each side knows where each other's troops are. I don't know where this report is getting its facts, but the Ukranians haven't captured any significant territory in months, so it's unlikely their troops are seeing 'star link' unless Russians are hauling terminals to the front trenches, which seems quite unlikely.
On the flip side, we know from the article and elsewhere the Ukrainians are using the terminals for military coordination, and command posts have been struck which utilize star link.
Naive question; but given all the other intel channels of the US, from satellites to EW planes over the Black Sea through on-the-ground info from the UAF, would StarLink teach them something they don't already know?
And if it did, would it be more valuable to the Russians to hide and drop a good 3C tool?
Should a private individual be able to limit a sovereign nation's battle plan to defend itself from an invasion? Specifically, in the US, should a private individual or a public company be able to compete with the federal government over foreign affairs policy? (Presuming that allied war support, materiel, and rules of engagement qualify as elements of foreign affairs.) Are Elon's choices a mercantile challenge to democratic decision making that dilutes the sovereign powers of the US?
Well hey, if you sell stuff that gets used in a war you're gonna have one both sides pissed at you. Only way to avoid would be to geofence the entire region and nope out on the whole thing.
Previously Ukraine wanted to use Starlink in Crimea, but Musk geo-disabled them saying that Starlink is forbidden to provide business to sanctioned regions.
> Musk said on the podcast that Starlink had been turned off over Crimea originally because of US sanctions on Russia.
Why would the Russian military use a US satellite communications service to direct their operations in Ukraine? They would expect US intel to capture everything and share it with Ukraine.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 273 ms ] threadI'm also sure they can distinguish between terminals used by ukrainians and russians on a front line that probably changes daily. Again, it's their fault.
Musk can be blamed for a lot of things, but for this, not really.
And so if Musk were to be providing material support he could see Starlink placed on the export control list. Which if it happened would then open Musk up to severe criminal charges if he didn't take steps to prevent devices being used by Russia.
So I suspect he might want to do the right thing ahead of time given the US government is a pretty important customer for SpaceX.
In the first version there's only two actors in the world, who can make decisions: Russia and NATO (or rather USA, for they argue NATO is basically the USA with another name). In the second version countries are free to decide who they associate with. There wasn't some empty space that NATO moved into. The countries who were there said "hey, NATO. Russia has been attacking and oppressing us for a long time and we fear they will do it again. We'd like to join."
To answer your second question: Exactly what Russias neighbors feared is the reason. Russia is unhappy they couldn't oppress their neighbors anymore since 1990 and they want to do it again. They cannot really do it to the countries that already joined NATO, so they did it to the country that was late to the party.
That is sort of a weird argument. Do you believe that is the case for the US as well? The US did not expand into Indian areas those areas just decided to join the US..
russia attacked Ukraine.
Ukrainians had enough of kremlin puppets.
I asked about a hypothetical scenario: would the USA violently suppress a Pro-Russia Party of Finland. That seems to have caused a crash and you fell back to your default rhetoric.
> Just to clarify: the "we" who would like to join is a government that was installed by the USA in a coup. What kind of "attacking and oppressing" happened before the coup?
Putin is unfortunately right, you understand only one kind of argument.
No one needs to tell me russians are evil. It’s just something you pick up living next to russia.
Also your threat “putin was right” proves that you are, in fact, evil.
I don't want MY HOME to be occupied by anyone. In the last 100 years the only ones were nazis and russians. russians are doing the same again in Ukraine and are threatening to do it again in my home.
There is nothing hypocritical about not wanting my family being killed or raped by russians or anyone.
You say "your friends kill in Gaza"? Who would those be? I have said nothing about who my friends are. I said NATO and EU are protecting my home from russians. As for Gaza, Israel is not in NATO, also not in the EU.
That is all there is to it.
Right now the west can send as much weapons as it wants to Ukraine to be used against Russia with impunity. If Ukraine was a member of NATO Russia would be completely safe.
But the US cant even be bothered to send an insignificant amount of aid to Ukraine, never mind an actual attack. Russia knew this very well and much of its strategy is based on this decreasing interest and support.
I am from eastern Europe, we do not want to sacrifice our lives to invade Russia and loot their shit, we begged to enter in NATO to ensure our survival from Russia, from our history and large number of Russian invasion we understand better why we wanted it then some Westerners. Again we have no fucking intention to still Russian land or their toilets.
>What, in your opinion, is the reason?
I thin it is easy to understand, Putin grabbed Crimea in a genius move, the Western Europe were surprised and too dependent on Russia to do anything about it, the retards shoot down an airplane with civilians and EU did nothing.
And here all it starts, Putin got his ass kissed so hard by his minions that now he thought he can do again a genius blitz attack in Ukraine, Zelensky will run, the old people will pull out the communist flags and portraits of Putin and all will be glorious. Basically Putin was misinformed and stupid enough to think he can win in 3 days or 2 weeks whatever makes Rusky feel better.
And why would Putin want to grab land, steal crap? It is a Russian thing, they like to control, steal, invade etc. They always cry that they lost their sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and they accuse us Eastern Europeans of beeing Rusofobs and brainwashed by CIA.
The final plan was probably to grab as many territories as possible before this countries enter EU and NATO, this is why Ruzzia is supporting anti-EU groups in their neighbors to delay things so his army can invade.
When some Rusky or tanky will tell you that Ruzzia is just afraid of beeing invaded, use your brain and remember that Ruzzia has nuclear weapons so nobody will invade them, the danger for them is the diea that ex-USSR cuntries are prospering in EU and NATO, this idea makes itharder to keep the new generation under contrl so extreme measures were taken to brainwsh them.
"Russians" who have an awareness of history (who are all the Russians I know personally) understand, implicitly, that these countries did not join NATO out of hostile intent - but from the need for some level of security to protect against a neighboring country which has done, as I'm sure you must know, some pretty awful things to them in the not so distant past.
They don't love NATO by any means. But they fully get why these countries sought membership. And don't for a minute believe the hogwash put out by the current Tsar, that it was somehow "necessary" to start bombing an shooting everywhere with oblivion, and letting the bodies pile up with such an awful stink -- just to make a "point".
(I put "Russians" in quotes because only about 70 percent of the country is what one would call ethnically Russian).
We would do the exact same thing.
You're right - "we" (by which you mean the US) did in fact do a basically very similar thing, in regard to numerous countries in Latin America from about 1961-1985. To the point of establishing or supporting dictatorships that killed and tortured probably upwards of 200,000 people, on top of putting multiple generations of social development in these countries effectively on hold.
And for which we have been rightly and thoroughly condemned, by folks with a good conscience, and an awareness of basic history everywhere.
Nato have always acted as though that's true, and have pursued expanding the alliance to countries bordering Russia, and established missile defence installations there.
The closest we ever got to nuclear war was when Russia moved missiles to Cuba, so it doesn't take a geopolitical scientist to understand that the US is very uncomfortable about threats near its borders, but expects Russia to accept it the other way round.
I'm not up to date with what the propaganda systems are belching out in Russia, but I believe the original reason was something about Nazis in Ukraine, and it would not surprise me if the narrative is shifting to be 'Nato is creeping up on us again'. Which is odd, because Russia already has borders with Nato countries, and controlling Ukraine actually brings them closer to where Nato already has a strong foothold.
A lot of what's going on in Ukraine at the moment is linked to Sevastopol, I think. Russia absolutely cannot afford to lose Sevastopol. Not sure quite what happened that triggered the full scale invasion after the annexation of the Crimea, mind.
Edit: added a quite important “not”
A couple of minutes with a globe would answer many of those questions. Not the propaganda ones, of course.
I'm also sure they can distinguish between terminals used by ukrainians and russians on a front line that probably changes daily.
So it should be trivial to determine who is Ukrainian and who is not Ukrainian.
Actually, I'd hope this is already happening regularly anyway so they can cut off any terminals captured by the enemy
That's not how starlink works. At all.
If your truck would have an extension cord going back to your factory so it can run and running the truck would be sanctioned, you could be blamed if you don't cut the cord.
export and re-export laws, especially from the US, are extremely complicated
comment i replied to was acting like you would not be legally at fault
in reality, it's way too complicated to say. at best it's ethically shady, at worst it's a mega fine and jail time
For example, we had a customer from Malaysia who was in jail in US because he sold normal hardware devices bought in USA to Iran and that is banned.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_analogy
that's one of the primary reasons a service isn't necessarily a good.
> “The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor. If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation,” Musk wrote.
Musk himself has used the ostensible fear of becoming complicit as a justification to disable Starlink access for the Ukrainian military.
So yes, he's already taken the position that he would be to blame. You can't then turn it around and say he wouldn't be to blame for russian military success through the use of the same technology.
If your truck gets traced back to you, expect a government audit. If you sold it to a denied party due to lack of due diligence, you will be held liable.
(A truck is probably an extreme example. I'm not sure we're spending time tracing vehicles, but you better believe we are for our state-of-the-art radio tech.)
Source: I with export controls for the semiconductor industry.
Starlink is a US company. The US have imposed some sanctions against Russia. Likewise EU have imposed sanctions against Russia too.
So the question I think they are asking is if Starlink is in violation of any US or EU sanctions here.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/07/elon-musk....
He is quite clearly on the side of russia.
I wonder if that's true: Maybe he just wants to be a controversial contrarian and always tries to be on the "non-woke" and "non-mainstream" side.
Doesn't change much in this instance, but still.
US government bought some antennas so even if he loves Putin he can't bite the USA government who gave Tesla and SpaceX a ton of money.
Nothing to do with Starlink or Musk. Those orders were from the State Department.
Entirely another thing - and now I mean the US ITAR perspective - is if it's used literally as key and unique capability enabling part of a drone weapon. Now that makes it a weapon too. SpaceX doesn't have the US government's approval to manufacture weapons, export weapons or sell them to Ukraine army. The terminal or the constellation itself must not be used as a weapon according to the US law, and the operator must do everything to stop such use.
You should be angry with the US government. Biden could go live on the TV right now and say "Mr. Musk, it's fine - we allow it.". And if Musk didn't do it anyways, then you'd be right to be angry with him. But the US government didn't and won't do that.
Take it to your elected representative, not to a businessman doing what the law requires him to do.
You know what was the biggest fail, IMHO? That UA soldiers put the video online. Up until nobody knew, nobody cared. They carried out several attacks. Then they showed the world - and of course it got banned, there is no other option on SpaceX or Musk's side.
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/pentagon-...
He said he "donated $100M to Ukraine" though:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1650008972865224704
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776 resulted in his having to step down as Tesla board chair and have his tweets vetted by a minder. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/elon-musk-ordered-to-ab...
2) so?
1) Not dilute the horrific tragedy of a century in pursuit of my histrionic agenda
2) Try and not overfit the clean simple morality of young adult fiction onto the real world
Trying to portray this as some deeply, historically complicated and nuanced situation is pretentious, and I'd hazard a guess that anyone taking this position likely has little familiarity with the war and why it's happening.
Starlink has a service map that excludes certain areas.
Go take a look at Ukraine
> Following the publication of this article, Walter Isaacson retracted the claim. Walter Isaacson said his biography’s claim about Starlink and Crimea was based on “mistaken” information.
I don’t know what the right answer here is but it would be nice to explore the topic more than “Musk is bad”.
"Elon Musk spoke with Vladimir Putin directly, Pentagon official says" - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/elon-musk-pu...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_indicted_in_the...
"CC judges issue arrest warrants against Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova" - https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-ukraine-icc-judges-is...
I suppose seeing a world leader who actually seems intelligent and "real" was just something novel. The political personality all Western politicians use now a days is something I find irritating. Giving focus tested answers, or no answers at all, while speaking endlessly nonetheless. Even on topics he clearly found irritating, he didn't try to spin things. E.g. - on the Wallstreet Journal guy, he simply focused on the fact that he broke Russian law, and wanted to trade him for a Russian citizen.
Basically it felt much more like a diplomat speaking to another diplomat instead of a politician trying to give you the answers he thinks you want to hear, regardless of what he actually thinks.
And yeah, I do think the two interviews are extremely similar in content. He asks significant and poignant questions, without fishing for trap stuff. So e.g. he asks most obviously why Putin invaded, what he even means by 'denazification', why he thinks Britain wanted Ukraine to fight, whether China may end up dominating (and thus undermining the point of) BRICS, the risks and possibilities around potential ongoing escalation, and other such questions.
Whenever I hear "hard hitting" in modern times, I just think of a journalist digging up some random dirt to try to shock the interviewee with, using argumentative fallacies like strawmen, and just generally doing whatever they can to agitate the interviewee and get some sensational headline or emotional response. And there was none of that.
[1] - http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/21558
> And there was none of that.
Yeap, no questions on Bucha and who did such a well documented atrocities...
Yeap, no questions on how people fall from windows, or get poisoned so easily in Russia and the Russian chemical attacks in the UK...
Yeap, no questions on the 20,000 Ukrainian children kidnapped into Russia...
Yeah none of that. An excellent articulated piece of propaganda.
The Western take is: look, Putin is avoiding talking about the current conflict and talks history instead. The Russian take is: look, Crimea changes hands once every 100 or so years, and this is just the latest iteration.
So, the content is the same? An aggressor trying to justify his aggression by his version of history?
> The Russian take is: look, Crimea changes hands once every 100 or so years, and this is just the latest iteration.
Putin was not going after Crimea, he was going to "free" the whole Ukraine in a few days (the "special operation") and then beyond. That's what he sold the Russian people. Too bad, his troops were defeated while on their way to Kiev. Now his troops are fighting a bloody war and Russia is isolated in Europe. Countries are joining NATO instead. Putin has achieved to unite most of Europe, unfortunately without and against him.
The Russia public lives in the propaganda bubble of an aggressive regime. There are no flights to much of Europe, few trains, borders are closed, ...
There Russian take is that the evil West is responsible and the reason why its now hard to get all the good things..., but is it worth for them to die for an outdated version of an imperialistic history, where Putin is a czar?
Putin, the emperor with no clothes.
If he has the opportunity, than he invades neighbour countries. Why do you think Finland is a NATO member now and Sweden is seeking NATO membership? It was clear to them that they would be easy and early targets for conflicts, if they were not in a more powerful union.
Other countries he would start a conflict with, are countries which are looking to be members of the EU.
Putin just said in the interview that he won't invade Poland, only when Poland attacks Russia. Just like he said before that he won't invade Ukraine, but then he had to, to defend Russia from the West (and then did not call it war, but "special operation).
Putin dreams of a larger Russia and he as said that the real enemy is the "west", which he now sees as weak, especially when Trump is President again and Trump and his republican party won't defend Europe.
Poland and Estland would be the first targets. It might not start with a war, but Putin also did start to destabilize the Ukraine long before the current war. The interviewer is a tool, just like Trump.
Putin's Russia is an imperialistic terror state.
Realistically the only thing Russia can hope for is the preservation of the status quo - keeping Crimea and the land bridge to it.
That's not enough for him, it would be a huge defeat. He would not survive that, I would think.
To an American this kind of communication seems like evasion and filibustering. To a Russian not getting into the details feels shallow and rash.
Personally, I've struggled mightily with writing in American business style. You know, executive summary front and center, any details relegated to an appendix. A much more natural style for me is storytelling - linear, chronological, with details inline.
Also the point where Tucker reached the conclusion that "only an idiot would believe that Russia is an expansionist power" sounds a lot like slurping sounds around Putin's private parts to me(Russia has invaded at least 3 neighbouring countries in the last decade)
The Hitler/Poland observation especially makes me think perhaps Putin would like to call it the Second World Special Military Operation, which isn't all that far from calling the Ukraine war by any other name than a war.
There's a transcript of the interview here [2]. It looks like an auto-translated version of the Russian transcript, and a rather terrible one at that. So I would take it with a grain of salt, but it should at least be a decent way of finding whichever topic you're interested in and correlating that against its location in the actual interview.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_City_of_Danzig
[2] - https://voxday.net/2024/02/09/tucker-putin-interview-complet...
That was an excuse, not motivation. Hitler was motivated by theories of racial superiority, which he immediately began carrying out in Poland after invading the country and dividing it with the USSR, which had attacked Poland from the east in a supporting action (they even held a joint victory parade). Hitler sought to exterminate all Jews and most Poles living in Poland and turn the few remaining Poles into a slave race serving German settlers, who were given Polish farms and businesses. Hitler managed to murder roughly 3 million Polish Jews and 3 million Poles before finding a sorry end in a petrol-filled ditch somewhere in Berlin. Systemic extermination of people living in Poland had been planned for years in advance and started right on the first days of the invasion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligenzaktion
Russian theories of superiority, exceptionalism and Russki mir are eerily similar to the German ideas of superiority and Lebensraum in both theory and practice:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_TannenbergUSSR did the same in the parts of Poland they invaded:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacreAnd the same thing is going on in occupied parts of Ukraine right now:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline...And there's no marginalization or racial issues or whatever, at least nothing outside the norm. You can find countless ethnic minorities in various positions of power that aren't there just because of an invisible quota or whatever, but because all that matters is who can do the job best. For instance Sergei Shoigu [2] is a name you probably know, and he is ethnically Tuvan. The American far right who view Russia as something like a white Christian ethnostate are seen, by Russians, as complete idiots.
One can disagree with another, even be involved in a violent war, without trying to turn them into the Devil incarnate. Such fatuous and exaggerated claims also ultimately make light of when there are real issues, such as in another war we're supporting, which is nothing like this one.
[1] - https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/largest-ethnic-groups-in...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Shoigu
As to ethnic minorities in Russia:
> And there's no marginalization or racial issues or whatever, at least nothing outside the norm.
Complete lie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification#In_Russian_Feder...
This is not really what I would call ethnic strife. I do agree that language is a big part of ethnic identity, but such a law obviously does not prevent people from using or learning their ethnic language, and people being unable to communicate in a common tongue is likely to lead to real ethnic strife within a region. To me, the ideal of a multi-ethnic nation would be one where people have a shared common identity first, yet also don't entirely relinquish their own unique distinctions. Like I think in America one of the reasons there's such an increasingly absurd division in society is that we've lost any sort of shared collective identity.
Out of curiosity, would you actually even prefer the opposite of what is described in the page you linked to? If there happens to be an ethnic minority that is a majority in some region, should that region be able to determine that education, and so on, should be in the language of the local ethnic group?
It is only one measure of many that is driving the rapid decline of indigenous peoples in Russia. Russia has a long history of methodical persecution of indigenous peoples with a wide arsenal that spans from closure of schools and suppression of media to made up charges about "extremism" and being a "foreign agent" to punitive psychiatry in the best Soviet traditions. Many languages and cultures have already become extinct like Native American tribes that were forced into conditions that caused a permanent loss of language, culture and identity. With official departure from the European Convention on Human Rights, the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, and other international treaties, Russia doesn't even bother to act like they care about human rights. The council that monitored how signatories enforced the framework convention used the same word in their reports about the situation of minorities as you did: marginalization, increasingly so.
And it's gotten much worse since Putin decided to invade Ukraine in 2022. Russia is now decimating indigenous populations by disproportionally conscripting them to die in Ukraine. Buryats and Nenets are overrepresented by a factor of 50 in casualties compared to ethnic Russians from Moscow. Two genocides for the price of one - trying to overwhelm Ukrainian defenders by throwing indigenous peoples from Russia at them.
So for example, I decided to look up the European Convention on Human Rights things, because it sounded pretty interesting. And what you've been told is not quite what happened. It seems that after the invasion of Ukraine, the relevant bureaucracy chose to suspend Russia's representation in such, so Russia announced a petition to withdraw from the organization, which the Council responded with, 'you can't quit, you're fired!' type stuff. [2]
It's just the ongoing of weaponization of international organizations in the West, which ultimately serves little purpose other than to undermine their relevance and authority. Observe the the grossly incongruent responses to actions of Israel vs those of Russia. Organizations whose actions become driven by politics become seen as political actors, which entirely defeats their purpose.
---
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_the_Council_o...
It wasn't me who changed the topic from blaming Poland for Hitler's invasion, to denial of the well-known persecution of indigenous peoples in Russia, to calling international human rights organizations weapons against the glorious Russian motherland. Denial of mistreatment of indigenous peoples is particularly nasty, because it has been a cornerstone of dissident Russian human rights and environmentalist movements for a very long time. Indigenous peoples inhabit many Russian regions rich in natural resources and they have seen persecution not only in the form of suppression of their language and culture, but also in the form of physical destruction of their native land through mismanaged and inefficient resource extraction that leaves behind toxic wastelands. "We don't want to live in moonscapes," as one activist put it: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/1/23/in-russia-indig...
Would you prefer to return to how Hitler only wanted Danzig and other Nazi myths? For some unknown reason they are very widespread in Russia and have strong foothold among boomers like Putin.
So here, it seems to me that your biggest and most compelling issue with Russia is the mistreatment of ethnic indigenous groups? But the article you linked to uses a lot of words to say very little. And what it does say is so absurdly one sided that it just completely omits any sort of detail whatsoever. For instance:
---
Pressure on Sulyandziga began after he organised public hearings on pressure on an Evenki Indigenous community that developed a jade mine on their ancestral lands.. In 2012, the mine was taken over by the Rostec state-run corporation focusing on defence and hi-tech... That year, criminal charges were brought against community leaders, leading to confiscation of jade and land, activists say... Sulyandziga claimed he was accused by state officials of “separatism”, “espionage” and embezzlement... In 2016, Sulyandziga left for New York to deliver a speech at a UN session about Russia’s Indigenous rights situation. He says he never returned because a high-ranking security official told him that intelligence services planned to kill him and present his death as “suicide”.
---
What was the conclusion of the charges? Why were they initially made and/or dismissed? What happened between 2012-2016? How did a random indigenous tribesman in Russia find himself able to present a speech in front of the UN? I feel like this article is trying to appeal to my emotions, and not my logic. I want details, I want logic, I want evidence. I want something that doesn't assume I already agree with the premise of what's being said, and thus will just happily accept anything they say.
What really made you take up the issue of indigenous peoples in Russia as such a key cause? Was there some significant event that happened? Is it something personal? I'm just trying to understand where you're coming from, and perhaps with such I might be able to see the world through your eyes. Make sense?
---
"The response of non-ethnic Poles to the situation caused considerable complications. Many Ukrainians, Belarusians and Jews welcomed the invading troops.[100] Local Communists gathered people to welcome the Red Army troops in the traditional Slavic way by presenting bread and salt in the eastern suburb of Brest. A sort of triumphal arch on two poles, decked with spruce branches and flowers was fashioned for this occasion. A slogan in Russian on a long red banner, glorifying the USSR and welcoming the Red Army, crowned the arch.[101] The event was recorded by Lev Mekhlis, who reported to Stalin that the people of the West Ukraine welcomed the Soviet troops "like true liberators".[102] The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists rebelled against Polish rule and Communist partisans stirred up local revolts, such as in Skidel.[1]".
---
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland#Dome...
Such is history that sometimes great people do awful things, and sometimes awful people do great things.
Nothing about the war against Poland was great.
Putin is an aggressor and he even tried to justify his history view with Poland/Germany from 1939.
From the interview: "Hitler asked them to give it amicably, but they refused."
That's complete nonsense, Hitler had very different motives and Poland knew that it was not "amicably".
What is disturbing, is that Putin compares his own motives to attack the Ukraine to the German/Polish situation in 1939, where we see Putin siding in his arguments with Hitler. That's completely crazy.
Hitler had all staged this, back then, to conquer Poland and follow his long-term goals & plans (-> kill the jews, enslave east europe).
Putin reverses the attacker and the victim.
Are the reasons for praise problematic? What are they, and why?
Here's a few other quotes by Vlad that contain praise:
> It's a historical phenomenon that in 250 years, a nation could move from a colony into the most prosperous nation of the world and the leader of the world. It is indeed an achievement, a tribute to the talent of the American nation, the American people and an optimal political and economic system.
He's praising all of America! Worthy of self-reflection?
> History proves that all dictatorships, all authoritarian forms of government are transient. Only democratic systems are not transient. Whatever the shortcomings, mankind has not devised anything superior.
Democracy itself has been praised by a war criminal! What should we do with this knowledge?
It's not about falling for a logical fallacy; it's about recognizing the dance floor where these accolades are given. Evil's endorsements don't come from a place of benign admiration but a strategic calculation of how such qualities or actions serve their agenda. To ignore the context and implications of such praise is not only ingenuous but dangerously naïve.
This is the argument from authority fallacy but in reverse. Just because a idiotic war criminal praises someone does not mean that person is bad. Neither is it an indication that person is good. You should not pay attention to idiots. If you always do the opposite of idiots, you're letting idiots control you, and what does that make you?
Reductionist thinking is convenient, but far too often misleading.
What does have meaning to me is an US based company that is supplying weapons to foreign nations/groups needs approval by the US government.
What else would they say, "We're being beaten by idiots"?
Isaacson’s Starlink claims are muddied.
But Musk has tweeted Kremlin propaganda points, e.g. on its proximate nuclear red lines (which, for the record, we’ve since passed). I blame David Sacks for giving him bad advice. But whatever the reason, it’s fair to question whether this was intentional at some level.
Genuinely curious where you’re getting this. For what it’s worth, no, Musk is not a diplomatic contact for anyone in the West with Russia, though there is rising concern he sees himself as such, which leads to him e.g. leaking Ukrainian firing plans to Moscow’s envoys.
> it's kind of in the US interest to ask musk to gas up putin a bit
Not particularly. Though I can see him being used without knowing it.
I am a huge fan of SpaceX and Musk. But while Starlink is hugely relevant to the war, Musk per se is presently between irrelevant and mildly damaging to American interests.
it's in the text. SpaceX is a provider for Roscosmos. Pretty public knowledge:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/spacex-crew-dragon-launch-russi...
It would be crazy for the US state department to NOT use that as some sort of opportunity.
Sure. That doesn't make Musk a "major diplomatic contact," nor even a pertinent one (let alone "most major").
Also, these are NASA launches. NASA paid for them and handled the seat swap with Roscosmos [1], though there was no doubt coördination between the latter and Hawthorne.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/07/its-official-a-russi...
I'm not sure if you're being naive about international politics, obsessively pedantic, or knee jerk argumentative.
Point being if musk goes anti-russia or possibly even neutral-but-following-sanctions-too-carefully we absolutely risk losing the rideshare (diplomatic point of contact, beyond just musk) and upticking the risk of nuclear conflict. And I imagine the state dept. Is aware of this.
No, this is still wrong.
> being naive about international politics, obsessively pedantic, or knee jerk argumentative
I'm telling you the reality from D.C. Musk is not a diplomatic asset. To the extent he might be, it's indirectly. His contacts in Russia are simply not unique and deep enough to merit that designation. (And the risks of blowback, given his public profile, too high.)
> we absolutely risk losing the rideshare (diplomatic point of contact, beyond just musk)
Roscosmos needs NASA more than the other way now. Due to SpaceX.
> and upticking the risk of nuclear conflict
This is a unique perspective.
I mean, Musk has been on the vanguard of the "Ukraine's resistance is futile" push. You can call speculation on this line specious, unthinking "Musk is bad" rhetoric, but at some point negative criticism of a person is relevant.
It takes zero imagination to conceive of Musk turning a blind eye to Russia's use of Starlink, it would be consistent with the way he speaks on X/Twitter.
It may seem like bashing, but honestly it's easy to run out of good things to say about some people.
My point being that no matter what narrative we want to use for Musk, ultimately there is some accountability to the state department for tools used in war.
I believe starlink is deliberately allowing the service to work in places without licensing [1], because they want to follow the precedent of other sat-phone and sat-TV operators who just have worldwide service without getting permission from every government first. (and in many cases don't have the ability to geoblock, because the signal beam covers entire continents)
[1]: https://www.itweb.co.za/article/icasa-takes-note-of-illegal-...
I don’t think anything is stopping them from triangulating if they wanted to, right?
Most governments don't care enough to do anything about illegal transmitting, but some, like the Indian coast guard, has been known to board ships and write out fines and cause a ton of paper work for ships sailing with transmitting satcom equipment. And often they don't know how to determine if the equipment is transmitting or not, so it's safest for the crew to just turn it off when within Indian territorial waters even if the satcom provider automatically mutes equipment.
Attacking the people instead of the ideas isn't going to convince anyone that you're right.
If they have to, wouldn’t they be required to reject authentications from terminals not tied to payment account for Ukraine or US DoD, if not by law at this point, like starting yesterday by Ukrainian Presidential order?
:) :)
The ToS for Starlink Maritime isn't available, but this partner brochure[1] says:
"Starlink Maritime is available for use in waters around the globe. Coverage in Territorial Waters is contingent on government approval." (italics in original)
"* Starlink Maritime service is provided on a best effort basis; stated speeds and uninterrupted use of services are not guaranteed."
So yes, Starlink will have ample reason and cause to shut down any ELCOME (etc) terminals found operating inside Ukraine or its territorial waters. Starlink terminals all have built-in GPS, so from a technical standpoint this is trivially easy.
[0] https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/technology/2023/01/...
[1] https://www.speedcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Speedca...
I guess even if that's possible, it would be feasible for Starlink to triangulate from their satellites to estimate terminal locations and spot which ones are lying?
I don't think starlink needs GPS as much as the starlink service is a form of GPS. The base station sees several satellites and the satellites know where they are and so the base station can triangulate where you are, and the whole system requires this precision location mechanism to work, so the 2 way communication is a form of Global Positioning without relying on external GPS data.
Perhaps the base station is also able to use GPS but the starlink communication is also able to do exactly what GPS does so "fake GPS" would do nothing to conceal the base station's location and probably make initialization hard or impossible.
You need a precise clock for any form of GNSS[0] to function. AFAIR StarLink satellites doesn't have precise clock on the board. And anyway, modern GNSS chips are.. $1? Cheaper? No way you wouldn't use GNSS already deployed and working (and you are not paying for it) in a commercial product.
[0] GPS is GNSS, it's just in America GPS became the synonym for GNSS
I'm not suggesting that whatever GPSish thing you'd be able to get out of a pure starlink protocol communication would give you super resolution, but it'd certainly be enough to identify "Crimea" vs "Indian Ocean".
And as far as base station -> constellation -- putting a GPS receiver in it is of course smart to speed that up, but I'm not sure even that's necessary or just helpful.
How precise? I assume that inaccuracy in the clock produces imprecision in location - how much time inaccuracy produces how much location inaccuracy?
> And anyway, modern GNSS chips are.. $1? Cheaper? No way you wouldn't use GNSS already deployed and working (and you are not paying for it) in a commercial product.
Rather than using the Starlink satellites as an alternative to GPS - get a location fix using both Starlink and GPS, and compare them. Even given the former is going to be significantly less accurate - suppose GPS is accurate to within 5 metres and Starlink is accurate to within 5000 metres - well, if the two differ by 50,000 metres, you know something is going wrong, and the terminal might decide to disable itself in such a situation.
GNSS satellites orbits are between 20000km and 30000km. 20kkm is 0.06671s of c, 30kkm is 0.10007s, 5km is 0.000016678. So a very precise, that's why they have an atomic clock on board instead of cheap quartz one.
> if the two differ by 50,000 metres, you know something is going wrong
Like what your imprecise methods give you a very rough estimate where is the terminal and your legitimate customers in the nearby areas (not even doing anything for or against) are saying thanks for their shut off terminals.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Comparis...
https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/light-year
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/vladimir-putin/russia-spoofing-...
Agree about the other stuff though, and the points made in other comments that Starlink is sort of a GPS itself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array
Additionally, they have phased antenna arrays able to narrow-beam your data pretty much to you (this is very useful as you can, among other things, recycle the exact same frequency for another user a short distance away).
Spoof GPS all you want, but Starlink knows you're not actually somewhere else, simply because of which satellites are able to talk to you right now.
all numbers are invented ;)
The advantage Starlink has is that there are a lot more satellites that are also in a much lower orbit. There has been some talk about using their satellites for positioning. I think they look at that as a bit of a low value market so far.
The public normally use the unencrypted one with lower accuracy. Can fake GPS, but I don’t think it would last for long.
A couple years of propaganda supporting "valiant heroes" like Azov and here we are pointing fingers on the traitor to be arrested.
"US Wants to Defend Satellites From Laser Attack" - https://www.universetoday.com/14614/us-wants-to-defend-satel...
The sheer number of people - Americans, mostly - who consider Russia this omnipotent boogeyman is both hilarious and scary. Everything is Russian propaganda, you can't believe anything a Russian says, all Russians are evil. I mean, where does this mentality come from? It's insane. In some circles you can literally dismiss anything by mentioning it could be Russia. Even the politicians do it.
Take this article: what is the big Russian conspiracy, on some obscure site, some of which can be confirmed on X? Wouldn't someone on Putin's payroll be better served not publicizing that they are using Starlink?
Haliburton's share price is correlated with the amount of global conflict, but did you know that same share price determines executive compensation? Do you know how much it costs the producers of child killing weapons to hire a twenty something to cheat on their wives with? A lot, therefore we need to keep the stock high and people very afraid otherwise how will the child murdering members of the professional managerial class be rewarded?
SpaceX solves this by terminating every dish bought outside of Ukraine due to antagonist comments
There's no list of allowed dishes? But you expect one bought by Russians and used in the same town as Ukrainians are using it not it work.
The supplier is given bad press. And you expect the enmity that already exists over Crimea not to increase?
There's no free lunch
Unlike US?
From people who studied some history, unlike you.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect
See the "see also" section.
For those of us who want to minimize our reliance on a corrupt, incompetent government Starlink is invaluable as it allows us to go completely off-grid. Power and water is one thing, but without Starlink our mobile and fibre networks can still go down when the backup batteries inevitably run out.
Where there's demand, the market will find a way.
They'd rather antagonize the cheapest satcom supplier
That's why Russian soldiers are using Ukrainian network sims in Ukraine.
The same is true of starlink. The equipment (analogue of sim and phone together) is easily acquired. There's no whitelist . And service is available to anyone that can get a valid payment card. So just like the mobile network, Russians can use it.
SpaceX used to mitigate this by limiting areas service is available. But that helps with places 20+km from the frontline. Not somewhere opposing soldiers can see each other. And Ukrainians complained about this. They had partisans and SOF they wanted to communicate with. Now it's done and we have a new narrative l
You won't see Reddit level comments for such mobile networks.
We know the reason for the difference in sentiment. The solution is device whitelisting at the frontline and beyond visual range. Maybe for some people limiting movement might be enough.
But our anti work crowd will rather blame the supplier
I have no idea if that's actually what's going on, but if it would give Starlink information on troop locations and open a door for listening in on all Starlink-based communications, you would want the public and Russia to believe the CEO is on their side. It would also align with the fact that Russia's big military pushes to secure and advance the front have largely failed or ended in stalemate. Tie that to the number of Russian ships attacked and again, if Russia is using Starlink Maritime that would track as well.
By no means am I proposing this as the likely scenario, but it does seem possible and one that gets buried by people piling on to hate on Elon.
The UA army command is doing everything it can, but it's not unlimited and everywhere. The war effort relies on help of private individuals and groups a lot. Many soldiers are using equipment sourced entirely from private sources - all they got officially was a uniform and gun. All the drone videos you see on the internet - these are almost 100% bought privately.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Enduring_Freedom
The US lost 2,380 and the coalition killed 72,000+.
*snort*
I agree I'm not sure when a goal of eliminating the enemy completely is one that I could support, though interestingly enough that is precisely what Israel's claimed goal currently is with regards to Hamas. I believe its also the stated goal of Russia, though I'm not familiar with what faction of neo-nazis they claim to be targeting or whether they even exist in any meaningful numbers in Ukraine.
Specifically, we either don't define metrics for success or we define completely unrealistic metrics. Worse, we go to war with no intention of destroying an enemy that has left us with no alternative other than to risk many, many human lives to stop them. We go for political wins at home, to claim ground in a geopolitical power struggle, or for natural resources.
But in a world where Musk/Starlink/someone inside Starlink/someone with sufficient leverage over Starlink was trying to hinder the Russian invasion, they would allow Starlink terminals to be sourced through plausibly shady channels and then operate in Russian hands for quite a while, before striking locations and only then shutting down.
Or even go all Ultra on them and start an elaborate programme to create alternative explamations for the data use.
One reason I don't consider this likely: imagine how hard Musk would enjoy going through his very own version of the Cryptinomicon Ultra plot line. The idea that he might be able to keep that a secret just doesn't fit in my skull.
Did you forget SpaceX does NRO launches all of the time?
Furthermore, you aren’t allowed to have access to orbit from the USA without playing by the MIC/IC’s rules, clearance or no clearance.
OTOH, "cryptonomicon ultra plot line" could be the ultimate Musk lure, so the gates are open to even the wildest speculation.
My only point is they its interesting how quick many are to jump on this a narrative that Elon is evil, he works for or with the Russians, etc when there is actually a scenario that fits in which he is closer to playing a role akin to Allan Turing during WWII.
I'm definitely not trying to compare what both men were/are put through. A sea of internet trolls complaining about how terrible a person they believe Musk to be is nothing compared to chemical castration and being convicted of gross indecency for what one chooses to do behind closed doors.
Flight MH17 investigations revealed Russian military has a habit of switching to cellphones when their normal communications don't work, and those calls tend to be plain audio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
also afaik it did hold up until a sizeable amount of corelated plain-chipher-text was available for analysis.
On the flip side, we know from the article and elsewhere the Ukrainians are using the terminals for military coordination, and command posts have been struck which utilize star link.
Ferengi Rule of Acquisition 34: War is good for business.
Ferengi Rule of Acquisition 35: Peace is good for business.
* https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Rules_of_Acquisition
And if it did, would it be more valuable to the Russians to hide and drop a good 3C tool?
Ukraine has technology to shutdown this network!
He is the one private person that helped ukraines war effort the most by providing them starlink in the first place.
Is it so hard to understand that there are reasons for him to not allow the usage for deep strikes, besides him beeing on putins payroll?
The US intentionally did not deliver the long range version of ATACAMS.
I also think its questionable that a business person can influence a war. But you know, it was actually in favor of ukraine.
> Musk said on the podcast that Starlink had been turned off over Crimea originally because of US sanctions on Russia.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-14/elon-musk...