There seems to be a certain sort of celebrity who feels the need to use their megaphone for awful takes on complex subjects of which they have only the most basic understanding. Musk is a particularly prolific example, but it’s a bit of an epidemic lately.
He might do better to stick with the imaginary car tunnels, when he feels the urge for some nonsense.
I struggle to understand how implying that the electorate is uninformed correlates to claiming to understand the situation fully.
I, for example, don't know much about a lot of the US federal government's internal workings, but I do know that most people that pay taxes to the US don't know much about how their tax money is used, or why.
It's a stretch to claim that he has some special understanding because he tweeted something adjacent.
Musk the pro-Russian, anti worker rights strikes again. Authoritarian and anti-social regimes are clearly a part of his personal agenda at this point. I never say that but fuck that guy, he did some great things but still manages to be a net negative for the world.
I uninstalled Twitter from all my platforms and will not use any of his products in the future. If you want to « gotcha » me with some product I don’t realize is his, please tell me so that I stop using it asap.
Fun fact: he didn't shut anything down, as Starlink was already inoperative in the warzone.
The comic suggests that an affirmative decision was made to violate the assumptions of those in possession of working hardware. In fact he simply declined a special request that Starlink be activated in a region in which it is not currently active, a request made by people who wished to use it to carry out violence.
I know it's not popular to be anti-war, especially when there is an invasion where it's pretty clear who is the aggressor and who is the victim, but at the very least if you are going to attack someone for being anti-violence and anti-war, get your facts straight when you do the attacking.
I think there is a lot more anger and outrage due to the remaining members of the UN Security Council who haven't kicked Russia out yet than a guy who wouldn't let you use his internet satellites to conduct mass murder.
On a recent episode [0] of the Geopolitics Decanted podcast there was a discussion that pretty much agrees with your take on this not being the one thing to blame Musk for.
I am pretty confused about your "anti-war" comment though. In the russo-Ukrainian war the calls for "anti-war" can be made only to russia and since we know that this has been proven to be futile the rest of the options are to let Ukrainians die, be tortured, raped, enslaved, terrorized or help them. Or am I missing something?
You're missing something in that there is a war with two participants going on.
It is not accurate to say that "calls for anti-war can only be made to Russia". Ukraine could of course end the war today by surrendering. I'm not saying that that is good or bad, just that it's fact.
It seems to be heterodox to point out that the war could probably end immediately in some capacity other than total surrender by one of the combatants, which would necessarily involve a new status quo that does not comport with the pre-annexation territory lines. Musk was attacked endlessly for proposing such a thing.
I personally think the tragedy befalling the societies on both sides of this conflict are roughly on the same order in terms of magnitude, and that whatever we can do to end the senseless deaths of thousands of people should be done, regardless of where lines on maps end up. Our automatic and reflexive human drive for fairness and equity seems to be incompatible with this idea of letting an invader keep their ill-gotten territorial gains, preferring instead to continue slaughtering population on both sides in service of an old map.
It is not more or less tragic when a teenage Russian conscript's mother gets the news of her son's slaughter than it is when a Ukranian mother gets similar news of her own son after he has been forced into slavery in service of a status quo that no longer exists. I see everyone clamoring how this is "not our war" but neither is it that of those who are being forced at gunpoint into this violence, no matter what flag is on their arm.
If you believe, as I do, that the Ukranian people are a somewhat cohesive group with a distinct culture and identity that is worth preserving, the optimal strategy for preserving that culture and group into the future seems to me to take whatever actions possible that will preserve the lives of as many Ukrainians as possible, regardless of what nationality they are assigned by whoever controls the territory on which they live. I fear that they have chosen to trade numbers for sovereignty, which historically never works out very well when matched against an opponent with vastly more resources.
I want people (Ukrainians AND Russians) to stop being killed. Now. Today. All other considerations are secondary.
In the areas occupied by russians the killing does not stop when the fighting stops. There are countless examples of this from this war and previous ones.
So your claim that borders don’t matter one should just accept conquest is utterly naive.
The human wish for fairness has a reason and this comes from a deeper place of understanding that accepting aggression will encourage more aggression.
Something else is being done, there are sanctions, there is ostracizing, there is building awareness, exposing misinfo, etc. Effectiveness of those stopping russian murder is fairly low however.
Ask yourself what would you do if a brute would show up under your home window and start shouting: “you are a nazi, some babtism happened in this neighborhood centuries ago, therefore I demand your home belongs to me”.
Then breaks down your front door, occupies your kitchen, kills one of your kids, rapes another, flings stones against your windows every night, cuts your electricity regularly, tries to set the house on fire etc.
Would you fight?
Would you ask for help?
Or would you appreciate a neighbor few streets down telling you ‘all this commotion is ruining my vibe, give your home to the bully and accept them as your new head of family’? Maybe they will not kill you, also maybe they will not starve you in another holodomor?
If you have any viable ideas of bringing peace, let’s hear them.
If they involve denying agency to the people of Ukraine, telling them that from now on you must live under russian tyranny then this is not a viable solution for ending killing nor bringing lasting peace.
I already made it: a viable idea for bringing about peace is to stop fighting. A war requires at least two combatants.
You rejected it, presumably on the basis that it is better to fight a war than to live under Russian occupation.
To answer your question directly, I would move somewhere else. This option is legally and practically prohibited by the Ukranian government for half their population.
That seems like a horrible suggestion: That might work for one person but an entire country? That people who have lived their lives for generations in Ukraine simply uproot their entire lives, give whatever wealth they've built up and move to a different country where they speak a foreign language, have different cultures and customs, where they need to integrate and learn the language to have a chance at any semblance of a life. Sorry that sounds like a horrible idea.
Well, the alternative is slow suffering and eventual capture and/or death at the hands of a better-resourced adversary. That sounds like a much worse idea. I'd run away, myself.
A huge percentage of Ukranian women have already fled the country, mostly to Europe. It's legal for them to do so, but not for the men. Russia has so far been unsuccessful in mass murdering the Ukranians who have fled to Europe, so it seems to be working for them.
There is literally zero circumstance that you could put me in that would result in me choosing to fight a war. None.
> There is literally zero circumstance that you could put me in that would result in me choosing to fight a war. None.
Not even to protect your spouse? Children? Family?
Don't try to project your own bravery onto others though. Ukrainians can choose for themselves whether they fight or not.
As for the claims that the male population can't leave the country, there are plenty of exceptions when they can and even then they don't need to become soldiers. I have several team mates who work either from Ukraine or abroad and have no issues.
> Not even to protect your spouse? Children? Family?
Not even to protect myself. I'd exhaust all available methods of avoiding fighting, and I'm sure at least one would be successful. If not, I'd just be captured or die. War is such a bad thing that I would literally rather be killed than participate in one, if those are my only options. (Those are almost never the only options.)
> As for the claims that the male population can't leave the country, there are plenty of exceptions when they can and even then they don't need to become soldiers.
Just because there are exceptions doesn't mean that the vast majority of Ukranian males aren't having their human rights stripped by their government. They are being enslaved in service of a war that many of them would not themselves choose to fight, as plainly evidenced by the fact that double-digit percentages of Ukranian women have fled over the western border of the country. It's shameful.
Your claims about "vast majority of Ukrainian males" and "enslaved" and "would not choose to fight" that should somehow result from double-digit women leaving the country are completely unsubstantiated. You are just making up stuff that you would like to believe.
The reality is that the war has united the nation and given purpose of being to many, to stand up to tyranny and be brave. As they say in the states: Live free or die.
What I find shameful is that someone in a cushy place far from war is telling millions to give up, let them be killed, raped and enslaved by maffia barbars so you would feel just a tiny bit better about yourself.
This suggests that there are AT LEAST around 8M men that would also have liked to leave, but are legally and practically prohibited from doing so, something that is a violation of their human rights.
The vast majority of human beings everywhere recoil from violence and do everything they can to avoid it. It is only when power structures impose harsh physical penalties for avoiding violence do they submit to wars and such.
This is your OPINION it is decidedly NOT a FACT. Which you try to claim.
You are free to hold opinions but I'm also free to reject them.
I am not contesting that most people would like to avoid violence .. but don't assume most people will avoid violence AT ALL COST. Some people might care about their family, friends, home and freedom more than they want to avoid violence.
Some people think differently than you. I think, Ukrainians do, russians do.
I think war is bad but defending yourself against tyranny is not.
russians seem to think that war is good and inflicting violence on others is fine.
You think that war is bad and facing violence is worse than death.
These are demonstrably three differences in thought. Therefore you can't force your mindset as a fact upon Ukrainians.
You can't also just reject reality, war is horrible, but it still exists, I wish it didn't but it does. You can't just tell Ukrainians to give up and either be enslaved or flee. If they did then soon the tyrants would be attacking all the countries and you would actually need to face war.
I have many friends that have joined the local territorial defense here years before the current war and are training themselves for defending the country as volunteers. This is the spirit of defending your homeland.
Also being able to stand up for yourself is a useful skill to be had. I would recommend joining a local Krav Maga group. A very friendly but effective way of getting some self defense skills and confidence.
It is interesting that you lot always call for Ukraine to stop fighting. Why are you not calling for russians to stop fighting or fuck off from Ukraine?
It says only, "Are the German public aware of this?" as a response to a tweet about Germany funding NGOs who are shipping illegal immigrants to Italy. The original tweet ends by saying they hope the AfD will win.
So there are a few problems here:
1. Musk didn't even mention the AfD, yet he's now "promoting calls to support the far right" where by "promote" they mean "reply on Twitter to a tweet promoting".
2. The AfD is not extremist. Go read their manifesto. It's translated to English. The very first section is basically let's be more like Switzerland, lol, that well known bunch of extremists.
3. Business Insider says The billionaire had promoted the claim that Germany is facilitating "illegal" immigration to Europe. with illegal in quotes, as if there's actually some doubt about it. But it's not a claim, it's a fact, which BI admits in the very next bullet point. None of the people being shipped to Italy are legal migrants.
4. It then says Musk, on Friday, amplified similar criticism and directly waded into German domestic politics, suggesting that the governing coalition should pay a price at the ballot box. but he didn't make any such suggestion anywhere, only the tweet he was replying to did. So this point isn't accurate at all.
This is a great example of the ideological propaganda that the media loves to serve up as news. It plays fast and loose with the truth, puts words in people's mouths that they didn't even say, implies controversy and doubt over universally acknowledged facts and describes anyone who disagrees with the journalist's stance as a Nazi extremist.
Wonder if it would be a better outcome for him to just focus on his own companies? Why does he weight in so heavily on politics? I guess for new business opportunities ?
I guess sometimes situations appear so obviously broken that you have to say something if you see something.
If I see someone about to drill through an electrical cable, I'll tell them to stop. Some people will just watch and laugh. That's the difference between us, I guess.
I have no idea why Germany appears to have adopted a migration strategy that seems almost guaranteed to start a large scale race war within their country but I'm not going to pretend I think it's fine.
That depends on how you want those companies to perform. Cybertruck is Elon's baby. His designers were, and probably still are skeptical. Starship could very well be a Space Spruce Goose. And, of course, Xitter, which is his passion project, is down in value by 66-90% depending on who you ask.
No modern country (where people want to immigrate) has or is planning unrestricted immigration. Starting from that kind of strawman doesn't lead to any reasonable argument.
> So, don't blame Musk and the AfD - blame the ultra-progressive EU politicians who believe you have to help everyone who's escaping their country, sustain them on welfare indefinitely, and not criticize them no matter their crimes.
I feel like the only way one can write this with a straight face is if you are ignorant of the AfD's actual stance on issues other than immigration.
AfD are the hybrid between a populist and a political prostitute. They voice the real pain points (COVID madness, high cost of energy, immigration etc.) but the proposed solutions are either stupid or paid by their sponsors or both (for example, avoiding vaccines entirely, leaving EU, lifting anti-Russian sanctions etc.)
Supporting the AfD doesn't make you a far-right bigot, it makes you an actual Nazi (also see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37724832 ). Distractions from that are not acceptable and will not be forgotten.
Most of the times there are dropped a few miles away from the African coasts, with a good coordination between the smugglers and the NGOs. They then spend the essential of their travel in safe ships. They could travel less if the NGOs policy was to save them and return them to Africa.
The solution is to take these people from the sea back to where they came from. The idea to rescue them onto a small island so they can flood Europe has been tried, doesn’t work, it only causes more people to try to cross over.
He's likely speaking of unskilled immigrants that get into a country illegally. This type, in large enough quantities, could destabilize a country. How could they not?
The question is, is this happening in quantities that large.
If any quantity of illegal immigration is OK with you, then why have borders at all?
Those weren't immigrants, those were colonizers. Different thing. Immigrants assimilate to the local culture and follow local laws, colonizers force the locals to adopt their laws and culture, or just enslave or kill them.
The argument, such as it is, being made in Sweden and Germany is that immigrants from Syria and other such places (not the immigrants from the US, Norway, Finland, etc) are not assimilating and not following local laws, thus increasing crime rates, etc.
By your comment, they are therefore not immigrants, they are spearhead colonizers.
None the less, as evidenced by newspaper articles in Germany and Sweden there are many that state that recent immigrants are not assimilating.
By your definition in your comment above, if they do not assimilate then they are .. (in your words) ?
FWiW if immigrants are not assimilating I'd put that down to what resources are being put into integrated housing, education, etc. and whether those resources are stretched, etc.
I understand that this is the argument being pushed primarily by right wing media and politicians, I think it's quite universal and not only in Sweden in Germany. Are you aware of any data that either supports or refutes this claim?
FWiW if immigrants are not assimilating I'd put that down to what resources are being put into integrated housing, education, etc. and whether those resources are stretched, etc.
which is a crux, given populations can only assimilate so many new people in any given time period and that is mediated by how much effort goes toward welcoming people in.
We have examples in Australia over the past six decades that demonstrate segragated communities with no programmed support remain isolated from mainstream society for longer than communities that are spread about more and given support to find work, learn languages, and have their children make friends with other Australian children.
I don't know enough about Sweden and Germany to comment on the issues they are currently facing.
Yes ok, my take on left wing media's spin here is that it often boils down to 'right wing media are only interested in identity politics and racist dog whistles'. I don't entirely disagree with this, but it doesn't go very far to address the legitimate concerns of the people who live in affected areas.
Nice to see an example that there can be a positive outcome with allocated resources. I'm not sure how it would affect their electability among affected populations, but (I'm in the UK and) I'd like to see Labour addressing this problem by proposing solutions like you're suggesting.
> "The big problem is that one presents Hitler as absolutely evil, but of course we know that there is no black and no white in history."
-- Björn Höcke, AfD
> Who is openly living as homosexual, might go to jail
> "We should do that in Germany, too!"
Andreas Gehlmann, AfD
> "Niggers, sand niggers. I hate them all"
> "I would never condemn someone who sets a refugee home on fire."
> "I am so longing for a civil war with millions dead. Women, kids. I don't care. As long as it gets started."
> "I want to piss on corpses and dance on graves. Sieg Heil!"
> "At least now we have so many foreigners in the country, that it would be worth another Holocaust"
- Marcel Grauf, Referent of Dr. Christina Baum, AfD and Heiner Merz, AfD
> "Burning refugee homes are not an act of aggression."
-- Sandro Hersel, AfD
And so on.
Giving these fucks (which is putting it way, way too mildly), or anyone who remotely supports them, one inch, causes so much more harm than any specter you could conjure.
And of course, the AfD supports all sorts of neo-liberal BS, and doesn't support worker's rights. It's just the same old, same old: the actual exploiters playing the little people against each other.
Germany is a rich country. We can afford immigrants. We cannot afford Musk and his ilk. Nobody can.
Putin is actively trying to destroy Europe by multiple channels. Russian web brigades, support of far right parties, destabilizing African countries to increase migration (eg. preventing wheat export from Ukraine), transporting migrants as a weapon to Europe, starting a war in Ukraine etc.
And Elon is frequently shows support for Putin's side. His tweet is giving support to an extremist party that is pro-Putin. And in just one weeks there are elections in Bavaria.
Inferior yes in the short-term perspective of a human life. Who do you think will is more likely to contribute to earth, a random person from Africa who immigrates to the US on a boat, or a random person who was born and lives in the US?
Migrants from Africa and south of the US border are like weight we carry on our back. More and more weight, the slower and slower we are.
The distinction of 1. and 3. world countries is outdated as this indicates that there is a dichotomy between rich and poor countries but there is not.
Assumming "1st world country" means US, Canada and most of Europe, Elon Musk is an immigrant from a third world country.
Billionaires, whose fortunes are amassed with disregard for citizens welfare, are unlikely to harbor genuine concern for immigrants. Their advocacy for right-wing causes, is not altruism....More a narcissistic desire for the spotlight...
