So you are just a simple GB citizen and some external site blocked access by country affiliation?! Is there any practical reason for blocking access to that site by geotargeting?
No, it doesn't need a source. It's not mysterious. To meet the demand, age verification would be necessary. What's your claim?
I guess you could be saying that the regulators were carrying out legal duties like blind automatons, without giving a thought to the way their requirements would have to be met.
My claim is the documentation about the ICO investigation and the resulting fine.
It's an entirely different piece of regulation to the "horror" of the OSA.
It's not hard - you're not allowed to target adverts for children - if Imgur aren't able to agree to that, they are within their rights to decide they don't want to properly safeguard the private information of children and withdraw from the market. That many other providers haven't thrown their toys out of the pram and complied with the law would show they decided if they can't tailor ads to children they wouldn't be able to turn a profit in the UK.
The governments of the countries that dabbling into the "think of the children" laws should build their own "safe" internets for their citizens, walling them in, requiring them to "verify their age" before letting them out of their cages into the Internet.
Hi, Russian here, located in Moscow.
I don’t root for our president and current operation in UA is not something I like.
I had to say words above, sorry, and that words are true since I am mostly committed to western values.
Facebook would be restricted in Russia because they don’t allow gov to publish their views, opinion and their “truth”, like any other gov can.
There are also intentions to block youtube and any other platform, which have many russian users and which block different “zvezda”-like channels/accounts. I also think no any real user watches “zvezda”-channel on youtube or any other internet-platform.
Additionally, I think that “if you own a house, you could no be required to allow anyone to live with you”
And I forgot to ask a question.
Why do you think that we all should feel pain of sanctions? Because we are not able to stand against gov? Well, we are not able. And I think noone would be able if there is such a law and permissions of authorities. And for sure we, who know English(ok, not as good like any EU-person knows) and not working in gov-structures are the most small part of russians who have different opinion
>> Why do you think that we all should feel pain of sanctions?
I feel bad for people in Russia who don't want that war either, sanctions will hurt.
But:
1. Sanctions are a way to exert pressure and say "don't DO that". They're supposed to hurt. The other effective way to send that message is to use actual force. I'm sure people of Russia would prefer that less.
2. As a kid from Sarajevo, I feel Ukrainan's pain a LOT more today than yours, because they ARE being shelled and bombed and besieged and starved. You are not. Count your lucky stars.
3. As others pointed, there are choices. At this point, mostly shitty choices, all around, for all involved. I for one ran the fuck away from that part of the world. That was a personal, selfish choice (well, in reality, made by my parents, but I sure as heck supported them). Others protest secretly. Others, braver and less selfish and more idealistic, protest loudly. Yet others take up arms. Much as Canadians let alone world like to find things to complain about US (often validly), they did hash these things in a rebellion and a Civil war and again in the violent protests of the 70's... and they seem poised to be hashing them out violently again. Point being, it's not easy ANYwhere to get things even remotely right or fair or just or peaceful. I'm not selfless enough to die fighting a government; but I recognize it is an option and a choice.
So what I'm saying is, today, people of Russia are not at top of my personal priority list of people to feel sorry for. You're not absent from it, but everything is a limited resource. Sorry :-/
Sanctions that hurt the general populace are not an "effective message" for the simple reason that said general populace is not in charge of "DOING that".
My statement (about sanctions being a message or behaviour modifier) is no more of an oversimplification than yours (about populace not being in charge / not being able to modify their country's behaviour)
At any rate, if we want to engage in a productive discussion, let us enumerate alternatives and rank them. I'll start
What other means does the world have to say "please don't do that"? Which are preferred over / should come before sanctions, and why?
I don't mean this to sound antagonistic. I'm tremendously frustrated because I agree sanctions are weak, mis-targeted and won't drive sufficient change fast enough. But while I can rail against them, I don't genuinely know what else is left on the plate. One participant is acting like a violent bully. At that point, once discussion/education/negotiation has failed, there's really no good options for anybody left.
It's not that the sanctions don't drive change fast enough - it's that they don't drive them, period.
The only effective counter to Russia right now is direct military aid to Ukraine. But the rest of the world has chosen to re-enact 1938 all over again.
> The only effective counter to Russia right now is direct military aid to Ukraine. But the rest of the world has chosen to re-enact 1938 all over again.
The US aid package just announced includes security aid that is a sizable fraction of Ukraine's annual defense spending, on top of preexisting direct security aid. And the US isn't alone. Sanctions aren't the only response.
Many countries, including Canada, are sending military equipment or financial support to Ukraine. Its not an either / or proposition.
If however by direct military aid you mean soldiers on the ground fighting Russians, then a) I agree that would be more effective and b) I think it's unlikely to happen because c) if we engage in second order thinking, I don't see how it ends well for anyone in the short term. That's the problem with a Bully, they don't care about their own pain as much as other guys care about theirs. Once they start hitting, there are no great options. All options from here on suck.
Indeed. But the bully also knows that using nukes would be the end of him, even if he gets to take everybody else along. Russia would absolutely use nukes if it's actually invaded, but a conventional military confrontation on foreign territory is a very different matter.
As for being willing to take more pain - you're right, that's a big part of the problem for the West. But it needs to understand that, just like in 1938, avoiding the bully only delays the inevitable, and the pain will still come eventually.
I worry that it's not about one big red button but gradual escalation.
Somebody decides that using tactical kiloton Nukes is the way to go and other side would not dare escalate further.
A lot of people think if they do the big fearsome escalation, then the other side will back off. Everything up to this point indicates this is Putin's logic. He may be over committed now - what option other than finishing invasion does he realistically have that preserves any goals or prerogatives? In some ways the rational thing, from his perspective, is to keep escalating until other side acts "rationally" and backs off.
It's all a giant game of chicken, and I am not convinced that all state leaders anywhere let alone everywhere are rational and fearful enough.
Norwegian authorities, when questioned directly, confirmed yesterday that it is legal for Norwegians to travel Ukraine and participate.
I know some went to Kurdistan on their own expense to help hunt down Daesh war criminals and further back I think some well known resistance fighters from second world war had experience from defending Finland before going back to Norway to fight the Nazis.
> Why do you think that we all should feel pain of sanctions? Because we are not able to stand against gov? Well, we are not able.
Every person can. That's why sanctions exist: to incentivize a government to focus on its people and isolate a violent government from the world, or conversely, for a people to hold their government accountable.
What would you propose the world do instead of sanctions when diplomacy alone has clearly failed?
If the West actually wants to defend Ukraine, it needs to intervene militarily. If it doesn't, then it shouldn't try to placate its conscience with meaningless token gestures.
Governments have changed behavior after sanctions regimes were put in place. The degree and mechanisms of any causal relationship are infinitely debatable, because it's near impossible to falsify them conclusively.
> If the West actually wants to defend Ukraine, it needs to intervene militarily. If it doesn't, then it shouldn't try to placate its conscience with meaningless token gestures.
The government of Ukraine, who is both better positioned to evaluate the value of interventions and whose leaders have quite a bit personally at stake, doesn't seem to have this attitude of “intervene militarily or fuck off”, and has indeed been calling for sanctions and specific enhancements to them.
The only clear case I can think of is South Africa, but even that had its own internal movement; sanctions merely sped things up.
Besides, Russia knew of all the possible sanctions way in advance, and proceeded to invade anyway - which already tells you how much the government there is worried about them in practice.
Biden is absolutely correct: sanctions couldn't and won't prevent anything. What he's not saying, but what follows directly, is that military force is the only option that'll work.
Collective punishment is against the laws of war and the UN charter. My preferred resolution would be NATO backing off and agreeing to Ukraine as a neutral buffer state with Russia withdrawing troops.
The American foreign policy instinct is always for unrelenting brutality.
> Collective punishment is against the laws of war and the UN charter.
There's nuance that you're missing (e.g UN not empowered to sanction war crimes by a veto-power state), and your broad interpretation doesn't align with accepted practice.
That's fine but don't make it seem like there is no choice, there is plenty of evidence of people in Russia protesting and they have made a different choice than you.
And "current operation" is distancing language. It's an invasion or a war, not an operation.
FWIW I was in Poland at the time, the people there were absolutely phenomenal, and the amount of personal hardship and risk endured blew me away. Unstoppable, they would have happily run their country into the ground first. Big difference: they had relatively little left to lose, Poland had been bled dry by the Soviets over decades. By contrast Russians today have far more to lose, or so they may believe, when in fact they probably have more to lose from Putin's continued presence.
A dictator is one thing, an unhinged dictator quite another.
I agree. Unfortunately those prosecuting this war knew that sanctions were coming, and will be largely/wholly unaffected by them.
It is only normal people, most of whom are against war, who will suffer as a result. Doctors who can't source medicine, workers who can't pay their staff, et c.
These sanctions will not negatively affect Putin; he has expected them for years and indeed has been explicitly preparing to cope with them.
That's true but the sanctions do send a message, especially if those sanctions also affect the EU: that we are willing to take a hit to get this under control.
Regardless: if Russia doesn't come to its senses quickly the country will likely not recover in the next 40 years or so from the kind of damage they are doing to their stature on the international stage, this is not the kind of thing you walk away from and claim it was 'just Putin'. Time is running out, and the easy solutions have all already been pre-empted by events.
Russia is a lot more than its military dictators, it is the Russian people you are talking about harming.
Should cancer patients in Oklahoma not be permitted to buy chemotherapy medications because Bush invaded Iraq?
We banned collective punishment in the Geneva Convention because it is insane and unjust.
I have persian friends with family in Iran who can testify firsthand to how damaging sanctions are to people who have no ability whatsoever to remedy the problems that caused the sanctions to be put in place. Personifying countries is an error.
> Russia is a lot more than its military dictators, it is the russian people you are talking about harming.
Yes, and I'm sorry about that. But that is the country that is currently invading another country.
> Should cancer patients in Oklahoma not be permitted to buy chemotherapy medications because Bush invaded Iraq?
I'm out of patience for the day for silly arguments, sorry.
> We banned collective punishment in the Geneva Convention because it is insane and unjust.
That's not what collective punishment is about.
> I have persian friends with family in Iran who can testify firsthand to how damaging sanctions are to people who have no ability whatsoever to remedy the problems that caused the sanctions to be put in place. Personifying countries is an error.
Yes, this is called collateral damage. See also: photos of Ukrainian kids sheltering in the Kiev subway today in fear of the Russian onslaught headed towards their city, if you want to personify this then maybe have a look at those instead of trying to gain sympathy for the citizens of the aggressor nation.
I have sympathy for the innocent people on all sides of these invisible lines who are or will be harmed by the criminal, violent actions of a tiny minority. Nationality does not enter in to it at all.
Using techniques that will not affect those who caused the war, while severely punishing those who are not involved in the war (simply because of where they live), will not help the situation, it will make it worse.
Sanctions are a required step in this process, it is annoying but that's how it is. Skipping that step would require a far stronger response at this stage, and that is really going to punish people that are bystanders. But it may well come to that.
Isn't Iran a great example of sanctions actually having some useful effect, though? In 2015 Iran agreed to give up much of its nuclear program in exchange for lifting many of the US/UN/EU sanctions.
That's sort of a no true scottsman. Occupy wall street resulted in nothing, BLM protests were huge to no lasting effect, massive anti war protests in the early 2000's resulted in a couple decades of war. What ones recently were big enough? Million man march? That was just LBJ buying votes if you ask him about it privately.
Accountability for criminal homicide of Black people, especially by law enforcement, has definitely increased since BLM became a force. Whether that's a lasting effect is, of course, too soon to say, but it's not to be casually dismissed as you have.
None of those resulted in crippling the country, which is the level you need.
Without Russia propping him up Lukashenko would be out by now.
Think Solidarity, not BLM and get the whole country to grind to a halt. That will make a difference. By the time the police and the army have to decide if they want to open fire on their family it can be won. But for that to happen something major will have to change in Russia first.
In Canada they just had protests that crippled the country, they just took food and the ability to bank or heat themselves from the protestors until they gave up. No change. Imagine if Trudeau had a gulag.
That was a few hundred people at best. Anyway, I can see that you believe strongly that protests don't work, I've been eyewitness to protests that did work and that changed the direction of a country (in fact, multiple countries) in a massive way.
Those instances are rare, but that's an existence proof that you can't deny (and there are, historically, more examples).
Note that the support for those Canadian protests amongst ordinary Canadians was minimal.
I'd assume support for those anti war protests in a time of war is probably lower than the support for the truckers in canada (which wasn't that low, 30-40% of the population). Does that make anti war protests in russia illegitimate ? Especially since appearing to undermine a war effort is usually universally despised once a war starts. Even the iraq war started with 90% of americans rallying behind bush and supported the war, so the legitimacy of the war itself does not seem to matter a lot.
> Does that make anti war protests in russia illegitimate ?
According to the Russian authorities, yes. According to me: those people are real heroes, right now it is far more dangerous to join such protests than when the numbers are higher, especially in places like Russia.
Virtually every Canadian province has dropped vaccine passports or is in the process of doing so. This was not the case before the protests began. While it's possible that this would have happened anyway (and not even the purview of the federal government), it seems likely that protests accelerated things.
Of course, I'm not sure there are many parallels here to the situation in Russia/Ukraine.
Unless I'm misunderstanding the request here that is what folks are truly asking the Russian population to do. Someone must physically cast Putin down within Russia itself. I agree peaceful protests inside the country will not work.
This incredible high brow view is a stain on what is happening in Russia. I’m in America and I am not at all surprised that our private company’s are in the pocket of our government interests, once again. This would feel like ANOTHER provocation, if you are a Russian official. I wonder if we will see Americans realize that (at least in part) this Russian aggression is a retaliation to how the USA / EU policies have put the Ukrainian people in incredible danger for their own political motives.
To be clear, against all war and what is happening in Russia is also equally unacceptable.
I want to preface this by saying that I 100% disagree with the war in Ukraine and the Russian infiltration and my heart goes out to the Ukrainian people. Also, please feel free to correct me or argue these points!
A few ways:
1. NATO is largely an anti-Russian coalition. With many of its boarder neighboring countries being part of it. You can google the map and you will see the strategic position of those countries. In the West, only Belarus and Ukraine have not been added to this list of Russian neighboring countries. The USA & EU has been running military drills at those locations for many decades in an act of intimidation.
2. Sanctions are effecting mostly the everyday people of Russia. This is gathering more support internally for Putin’s aggression.
3. The Ukraine has a major movement toward the west in the last decade. Making Ukraine NATO would be another enemy at the boarder and this would be unfavorable for the Russian’s. Again provoking conflict in the region.
4. There has been no attempt by the USA to work with Putin or the Russian officials. Even using Russia as a scapegoat for the Wikileaks dump in 2016. And of course so, so much more anti Russian sentiment in our media ahead of this.
5. Biden and his sons involvement in the Ukraine (as reported on in 2020 by some of the US media) shows the constant strain that the Ukrainians are under. A pawn between the USA and Russia.
Open to thoughts and opinions by everyone!
Thanks for sharing that perspective. I'm curious if those NATO members bordering Russia were pressured into joining by the US/EU or felt compelled by other outside influence.
Maybe Putin's Russia should not exist in its current form?
Russian people are infested and brain washed with decades of propaganda. I hope this war and sanctions will cripple the country back into 1990s and Russian state cease to exist in its current form, regime, and borders.
Russia is seriously sick and must rid itself from Putin first
Factually incorrect, the word 'Russia' doesn't appear in NATO's charter, it is first and foremost a security pact. That Russia ends up in the position of the main party to worry about is in principle unrelated to that, but obviously it is the reality, as Russia has proven beyond any doubt now.
> You can google the map and you will see the strategic position of those countries.
Those countries were and are where they always were, and they were happy to join NATO precisely because they feel threatened by Russia, which is not without reason, they were under Russian occupation for decades.
> In the West, only Belarus and Ukraine have not been added to this list of Russian neighboring countries.
You missed Sweden and Finland.
Belarus is a vassal state of Russia, and does not have a functioning democracy. Ukraine has asked to join but this has to date not happened. The fact that it just so happened to be Ukraine that is attacked seems to lend credence to the fact that being a NATO member has its advantages and that those countries made the right decision.
> The USA & EU has been running military drills at those locations for many decades in an act of intimidation.
No, you run military drills to ensure that if and when you ever need them they will work, if you need to figure that stuff out - especially with multiple nations operating together - when you need it then you have already lost.
FWIW Russia does exactly the same thing.
> 2. Sanctions are effecting mostly the everyday people of Russia.
Yes.
> This is gathering more support internally for Putin’s aggression.
You have cause and effect reversed.
> 3. The Ukraine has a major movement toward the west in the last decade.
Which they were entirely free to make. Russia needs to 'stay in its lane'.
> Making Ukraine NATO would be another enemy at the boarder and this would be unfavorable for the Russian’s.
Note that you want to see NATO as 'the enemy'.
> 4. There has been no attempt by the USA to work with Putin or the Russian officials.
The USA is not involved in this conflict. China hasn't attempted to work with Putin or Russian officials either. And FWIW those Russian officials that were worked with were lying through their teeth, which is on the record.
> Even using Russia as a scapegoat for the Wikileaks dump in 2016.
Which has nothing to do with Ukraine.
> And of course so, so much more anti Russian sentiment in our media ahead of this.
'our'?
> 5. Biden and his sons involvement in the Ukraine (as reported on in 2020 by some of the US media) shows the constant strain that the Ukrainians are under.
Not relevant.
> A pawn between the USA and Russia.
In your mind, perhaps, but not in the mind of Europeans or Ukrainians for that matter, who mostly just want to get on with their lives, which a deranged dictator has now made impossible. This confrontation is on Russia and Russia alone, and any kind of attempts to whitewash it or to paint some alternative story is so much bs.
> Open to thoughts and opinions by everyone!
If anything the EU and the US should have done more, not less to arm the Ukraine, but they were under the mistaken impression that that would trigger a Russian response, if they had known then what we know now I'm fairly sure the situation would be completely different. But we're on to it now, and those that still aren't will wake up soon enough.
The victims are the people in Ukraine, not you. People are dying there and the country has been dragged into chaos. Russia is 100% the aggressor in this case. If you don't want to feel the pain of sanctions, you better do something to change your government. This might not appear fair to you and certainly isn't easy, but don't forget that life is currently even less fair to the Ukrainians who die defending their country.
This is such a simplistic take, considering a true dictator is in power, who has continually demonstrated a heavy, unforgiving, hand, with any concepts of democracy being laughably false (107% voter turnout!).
Multiple bad things can happen at once. Multiple people can be victims. Nothing is actually black and white.
The Russian people that didn't vote for Putin aren't associated with the army that's attacking right now, in any way, other than randomly being born within the countries borders, where one of the most powerful dictators in the world happens to rule.
Yes, because I don't appreciate complex geopolitical issues being boiled down to "Russia bad, poor Ukraine." It's complicated and messy. Don't pretend like it's black-and-white.
Contrary to what you're insinuating, this is one of the clearest cases in recorded history of conflicts. Russia is the aggressor and started a territorial war against Ukraine - already in 2014, now turned into a full-scale invasion. You need to check your moral compass and brush up your knowledge of international relations and history.
Not true. This has been eight years in the making. Civil War at Russia's borders. A fascist, neo-Nazi military terrorizing ethnic Russians. 14,000 dead in Donbas. Your "clear case" is missing quite a bit of information.
Nice try but the exact opposite is true. During the past 8 years, those ethnic Russians have been snatching other random ethnic Russians from the streets in the Donbas region to torture them for days to weeks. They're no more than a bunch of Kremlin-controlled thugs. There are plenty of eye witness reports to corroborate the horrendous human rights violations in the Donbas region by their self-proclaimed governors and their goons - and they are radical Russian nationalists aka Neo-Nazis.
> Why do you think that we all should feel pain of sanctions?
We want Russia to stop their criminal war on Ukraine. Either by government action, open revolt or a population starving in the streets. The only other option is nuclear holocaust.
I don't want to see anyone starving on the streets but massive civil disobedience or a nation-wide strike by the Russian people would be incredible to see.
Sorry, you keep repeating that linking strikes in 1980, but the freedom came 10 years later (after Soviet union collapse). Those protests gave us (I mean as a consequence, not to say they were not justified) martial law and so called "lost decade". Miserable time. I also hope for a big change in Russia after some revolution, but it is not that simple under a strict dictatorship.
Yes, it took a years, so what? Poland showed the way for all of the USSR satellite states and was instrumental in the collapse of the union. I know that America likes to take credit for this through their financing and support of Afghanistan during the Russian-Afghan war but I am pretty sure that that does not properly credit all of the players.
The protests gave you martial law and the lost decade, but they also gave you the foundation of what came after: the best performing ex sovbloc country. I'm sure proximity to Germany helped here, a lot of money got dumped into Poland but at the same time Poland worked extremely hard to get where it is today. And without those protests all that might have never happened, or it might have happened much later.
> I also hope for a big change in Russia after some revolution, but it is not that simple under a strict dictatorship.
This is true, and Russia has far bigger problems than Poland had, in spite of being plundered for decades. I'm under no illusion that such a process would be either quick or easy.
I'm reminded of reddit saying they're going to shut down the USA with protest if Trump fired Mueller. Easy to say "You all should do X!", but even in the US people said "well if I skip work to protest I'll lose my job.".
Telling others they should endure a decade of pain... Hah, would you do the same, in their position? (I guess the keyboard warriors will say yes...)
If this is the first tough and principled choice you have to make in your life then I can imagine it is hard. I've worked hard to put together a life that is worth living, but if it comes to Russia calling the shots here then I'm prepared to give that all up. You don't have to believe me.
Because people tend to copy the terminology of the regime they live in, even if they don't agree with it.
We do the same thing. IE on English Wikipedia there's an article 2011 military intervention in Libya. I can't remember many prestigious western news sources calling it an "invasion" - so neither do most of us.
> The intervention did not employ foreign ground troops.
I'm no military theorist, but "foreign boots on the ground" is the lay-person's definition of an "invasion". Absent that, it could have been a war, a police action, a military intervention, or a bombing campaign, but it wasn't an "invasion".
