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According to HN commenters, opposing Russia in any way is wrong because censorship, slippery slope, dissidents, etc. take your pick of why their horse is higher than yours.
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This isn’t a “genocidal” war.
Yes, it is. Russia wants to squash Ukraine out of existence. He’s going out of his way to get rid of the Ukrainian language and culture. For him, Ukraine is a part of Russia, and its independence and own culture is a threat to Russia. What is your argument that this isn’t genocidal, by definition?
>Then it would maybe just be a matter of time until they also closed down access to Spotify in Russia. But it would at least be a statement, saving the face of Daniel Ek. Okay, so the author's idea of bravery is to pull a meaningless PR stunt that does nothing for Russians but instead saves the face of the company's CEO in the eyes of anglosphere online bloggers? For once an actual instance of behavior where the over…
This is more of an American thing - the slow and subtle ceding of autonomy and power to corporates, with the expectations that they should behave like country states and be political. It's a very dangerous idea that Americans are being slowly brainwashed into, to repose more and more faith on corporates than their own democracy! This is the kind of thinking that lead to imperialism, with the Dutch East India Company…
More to the point, one cannot dictate the actions of another under pressure.
It's one thing to have a theoretical model of what others _should_ do when confronted with aggression.
It's quite another to stay on the theoretical course when confronted by state actors backed by guns.
Another dimension is those affected by our decisions. One might go down in a blaze of Leeroy Jenkins[1] glory if it's only oneself in the blaze.
If ones actions put others in harm's way, things tend to get far more cautious.
SUMMARY: it gets hard to be too harsh in these situations.
According to HN commenters, opposing Russia in any way is wrong because censorship, slippery slope, dissidents, etc. take your pick of why their horse is higher than yours.
>Then it would maybe just be a matter of time until they also closed down access to Spotify in Russia. But it would at least be a statement, saving the face of Daniel Ek. Okay, so the author's idea of bravery is to pull a meaningless PR stunt that does nothing for Russians but instead saves the face of the company's CEO in the eyes of anglosphere online bloggers? For once an actual instance of behavior where the over…
This is more of an American thing - the slow and subtle ceding of autonomy and power to corporates, with the expectations that they should behave like country states and be political. It's a very dangerous idea that Americans are being slowly brainwashed into, to repose more and more faith on corporates than their own democracy! This is the kind of thinking that lead to imperialism, with the Dutch East India Company…
There is an alternative, as a company can either be organized around values like money, shareholder value, opportunism or values like still making money but not at all costs. Acting based on humanistic values.
This is a spectrum. And lots of grey between black and white. One could look to be one thing and behind the scenes actively act contrarian to this outside facade.
Take many examples of people or companies in oppressive regimes that use their influence to protect others.
For example out of personal interest I studied a lot of stories of people in the ranks of the NS regime (2nd World War) that did use their role to secure people being hunted by the state's ideology and others within the NS ranks. As well as many normal people.
People like from average Else up to government officials.
What I am incoherently rambling about is the fact that one can't always see the details from the outside while things unfold. These people would have been seen as part of the system. Not as actively working against it. Because if the later they would not have been able to work against the system.
On the other hand there were a lot of opportunistic people as well. That would have looked a lot like the other category of people described.
Maybe Spotify is just opportunistic. Maybe there is a hidden positive agenda. We don't yet know. So I would not try to have a definitive answer in my head.
There is nothing bold about halting trade with Russia right now; as far as can be told there is a great deal of social and political support for anyone making such a choice. To be honest, companies making emotional decisions is more concerning to me. It is reasonable and to be encouraged if businesses want to be a moral-less dumb pipe. Spotify is not equipped to make geopolitical judgements about what is and isn't a…
This is an extreme position, and IMO unrealistic. The key term here is " a moral-less dumb pipe ." I'm not sure it's even realistic to expect "dumb pipes" to me morally neutral, but that doesn't matter because Spotify is not trying to be a dumb pipe. This is about podcasting, so let's stick with that. We already have/had a dumb pipe for podcasting. RSS. Podcasting is more free than most online media specifically for…
We're watching an escalating conflict that could easily involve nuclear armed powers. Maybe we should try something extreme that doesn't involve asking Spotify to escalate the situation further? Heaven help us, now is the time to be de-escalating rather than throwing more sticks and stones at Russia that do nothing but annoy people.
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Please provide alternative view points from other scholars on geopolitics and we can happily discuss.
I’m not interested in having that conversation with you, just pointing out that this is one of the more extreme points of view on the table. It is certainly not a widely accepted one. You could for example read what Mearsheimers university of Chicago colleague Paul Poast, or Stanfords Michael McFaul have to say about this. They’ve gone as far as argue that it is exactly the absence of NATO expansion that is to blame…
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No, I can deny, there's no similarity at all.. There's no concentration camps. There's no gas chambers. There's no ideology of a supreme race. Nothing at all is similar. While I do agree Putin's speech was based on flimsy excuses, the actual trigger of the war was the West's refusal to accept Russian terms in their ultimatum[1], which you seem to have forgotten, which only asked one thing of Ukraine: to abandon plans…
> Ukraine: to abandon plans to join NATO. No, for Ukraine and NATO to sign a guarantee Ukraine will never join NATO. Which is a ridiculous thing to ask, just like Danzig, or the Autro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia was. And of course, it was 1) deliberately unacceptable 2) all for show, as Kadyrov's leaked communications show ( he's talking about the impeding invasion weeks in advance). The lack of complete parity doe…
The parallels you're drawing could've been drawn with every single other armed conflict in history.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it is. Russia wants to squash Ukraine out of existence. He’s going out of his way to get rid of the Ukrainian language and culture. For him, Ukraine is a part of Russia, and its independence and own culture is a threat to Russia. What is your argument that this isn’t genocidal, by definition?
By your own claims, and the definition of genocide.
How does this not describe what’s happening? Could you not be obtuse, please, and either argue your point in more depth or say you’re wrong?