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Mapping and Seizing the Oligarchs' Assets

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191–200 of 202 posts

Re: Mapping and Seizing the Oligarchs' Assets

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes, "large groups" of bombed afghanis wanted to be bombed by amercans? And if UK and EU supported putin in ukraine (to make gas cheaper in europe for example), than the occupation of ukraine would be a good thing? So it doesn't matter that you destroy a country and kill a huge number of people, if your friends help or atleast "morally" support you with that? Putin has a russian minority in ukraine, that was being…

Why does the skin color have anything to do with whether something is racial cleansing or not? Skin color is not a race. When the Tutsi were massacred by Hutus wasn't this a racial cleansing because they both have roughly same amount of melanine in their skin? Are you seriously trying to justify what is happening right now in the Ukraine by existance of small nationalistic groups not condemned by the Ukrainian govern…

> Are you seriously trying to justify what is happening right now in the Ukraine by existance of small nationalistic groups not condemned by the Ukrainian government? Anything that this fringe nazi group did, Russian soldiers are doing on a country wide scale as we speak.

I mean... that "small nationalistic group" became a part of the official national guard, so it has support from the government itself. What exactly did eg. Afghanistan do, that attacking it was "good"?

> And also yes. Allies matter. Even the moral allies.

Oh yes... if your friends say it's ok to bomb some random country, that makes it OK?

> But if Ukraine built death camps for their Russian population. Allying with Putin to put a stop to that would be good.

Afghanistan had death camps? Yugoslavia did? Iraq? Lybia?

> However we do not live in any of those worlds. In ours Ukraine just wants to be a country and a nation they were always striving to be, despite being repeatedly crushed by the Russian heel and murdered by millions. And the west is supporting that ambition despite the great cost to its economy that is the result of cutting outselves off from Russia exports. We are doing it for both moral and selfish reasons. Because people and their actions are nuanced like that

Yes, so did every other middle eastern country strive to be a normal, peaceful country... sadly most of them have been attacked by americans, some more than once.

America had no real reason to attack eg. afghanistan, but they did. Because you find americans to be allies/friends, you support them at that, even though they basically destroyed the country in the same way as putin is doing now. And same for many middle eastern, south american etc. countries, that were attacked by americans. Putin is atleast using the same excuse america used when they attacked yugoslavia. America couldn't even plant "weapons of mass destruction" in the second iraq war, but that faked excuse was enough to attack a sovereign country.

America has been destroying countries for decades now, for same egoistic reasons putin has now. They have destroyed many buildings, killed many people, army and civillian, children and old people, destroyed infrastructure, etc., and the destroyed/killed numbers are a still lot higher than russias, even with this war now.

I have no idea, how lying about weapons of mass destruction can be a good reason for you, to attack a country on the other end of the world, and than act as if you're better than putin.

Re: Mapping and Seizing the Oligarchs' Assets

#192
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the worst part about this is, most Russians in the west are basically asylum seekers now. their state went full totalitarian in the last couple weeks. i'm trying hard to make delimit the difference between Russians and Putin, but it's hard to get ordinary people to listen. MSM does not like nuance at all.

> their state went full totalitarian in the last couple weeks I’m sorry but a state does not go full totalitarian in a week. Putin has been in control for 20 years. This, was predictable and many had been predicting it for a long time. What happened over the last couple weeks is that “authoritarianism” has lost its sheen. Russian-style strongman authoritarianism has bee a twinkle in the eye of a certain strain of Ame…

you're contradicting yourself here:

> I’m sorry but a state does not go full totalitarian in a week. Putin has been in control for 20 years.

the point is that it has happened suddenly in the past couple of weeks; let arrests of top FSB officials speak for it.

> This, was predictable and many had been predicting it for a long time.

oh that is absolutely true. every child in eastern europe knows this. the point is, when it happens matters - and it just has.

Re: Mapping and Seizing the Oligarchs' Assets

#193
post #17
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are brazen calls for literal assassination of Russian leaders with hundreds of upvotes on Reddit, but when a veteran soldier confronts a former US president for pulling pretty much the same shit, he gets dragged and thrown out: https://old.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/td5wgj/ir...

I hadn't been on reddit for a really long time (way before all this started) and I logged in yesterday and was pretty surprised by how much war glorification was dominating the popular page and the simplistic narrative being pushed.

It’s literal propaganda:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30548972

Everything that pushes the required narrative gets massively upvoted and accepted as truth without verification, even if falsified later (like the “Ghost of Kyiv” which turned out to be screenshots from a video game)

You can try it yourself. Take a random picture from Google and put a made-up caption on it and note the results.

Re: Mapping and Seizing the Oligarchs' Assets

#194
post #66

So much whattaboutism in this thread. We are at war. Seizing property of the other belligerents is a very normal thing to do in a war. Russia is currently seizing assets from American companies who leave the country. Russia is currently bombing Ukrainian hospitals. This is a somewhat tame escalation in that light.

You complain about whattaboutism then point out that Russia is doing the same thing three sentences later. "We are at war" has been used to justify the worst atrocities in human history.

It’s not whattaboutism if they’re linked. The two actions are by belligerents in the same conflict.

EDIT: I’m also calling it whattaboutism because I don’t think folks are actually arguing that other nations should have entered the Iraq war on the side of Iraq or ISIS. If they’re legit arguing that, it’s valid (though I disagree).

Re: Mapping and Seizing the Oligarchs' Assets

#195
post #30
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a fantastic idea, billionaires are a symptom of our unequal society. We could have a ceiling of say 50 million quid and you get to say you won capitalism, and everyone throws you a bug party.

so we force productive people to retire early? How do you expect to have Google, Microsoft, Apple Tesla, SpaceX? if their founders were to retire once they have 50m

I think this assumes that only Certain Blessed Special People could create Google, Microsoft, Apple, Tesla, SpaceX, and so on. I think there are a lot of people out there who could start and/or run one of these. The population of entrepreneurs is limited by the number of potential commercializable ideas, not by the number of people who can do it. If people just stopped at $50M, it would open things up for even more entrepreneurs to make shots like those companies. Currently, a small number of already-rich people are using up all the economic oxygen in the room trying to get richer.

Re: Mapping and Seizing the Oligarchs' Assets

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does the skin color have anything to do with whether something is racial cleansing or not? Skin color is not a race. When the Tutsi were massacred by Hutus wasn't this a racial cleansing because they both have roughly same amount of melanine in their skin? Are you seriously trying to justify what is happening right now in the Ukraine by existance of small nationalistic groups not condemned by the Ukrainian govern…

> Are you seriously trying to justify what is happening right now in the Ukraine by existance of small nationalistic groups not condemned by the Ukrainian government? Anything that this fringe nazi group did, Russian soldiers are doing on a country wide scale as we speak. I mean... that "small nationalistic group" became a part of the official national guard, so it has support from the government itself. What exactly…

I think you are mistaking me for someone else. I'm not American and I don't support America in their military actions in the middle east.

Out of military involvements I support only the one in former Yougoslavia because it prevented genocide and ended the hostilities.

When you are comparing Putin to someone you can compare him to Serbs. Because similarities are many. And current support of Putin comming from some Serbs only proves that they are spiritually similar in their nationalist ambitions towards their neighbors.

When it comes to everything else America did in middle east and elsewhere I think it had a huge negative effect. That it was unjustified, immoral and instigated just for the economic benefit of US military industrial complex under the false pretenses.

However since US military budget is what it is and there are other strong global players that might act up in the future (Russia, China) the countries of the world couldn't really seriously impact USA.

However USA deserved to loose every bit of global good will and moral standing that they lost due to their actions.

But nothing USA did puts Russia in any better light. Existance of one murderer doesn't make the other murderer less worthy of contempt and punitive action.

You may cry 'hypocrites' all you want but we live in the real world in which because we can't go after one murderer, because he's too powerful, doesn't mean we just let all the murderes free pass just to be consistent.

Be anti-american all you want. It doesn't mean you have to be pro Putin.

To be honest I myself would prefer Anerica sat this one out just because of their lack of moral standing and history of direct mythicized conflict with Soviet Union.

I think Europe should wipe Russian hardware from Ukraine using just European equipment.

Re: Mapping and Seizing the Oligarchs' Assets

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't make accusations you can't back up. I never defended america's atrocities, repeatedly called them out, volunteered and donated time and money for Syria's refugee crisis as much as I could. I'm more personally involved in the Ukraine war because this is my government, and my extended family is targeted. But I never fucking ignored Syria, and I'm not ignoring it now. I'm saying that all you're doing here is helpi…

And I live in what was once Yugoslavia, and a part of our former country was bombed by nato. Let's say you have a country, and there is a minority in that country... and people hate eachother a bit, due to historical reasons, there are tensions, a war, the minority unilaterally declares independence, some superpowers support them at this (others don't), main country disagrees and attacks the separatists, and after al…

I think everybody was sure you were talking about Kosovo and not Ukraine.

Re: Mapping and Seizing the Oligarchs' Assets

#198
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their state went full totalitarian in the last couple weeks I’m sorry but a state does not go full totalitarian in a week. Putin has been in control for 20 years. This, was predictable and many had been predicting it for a long time. What happened over the last couple weeks is that “authoritarianism” has lost its sheen. Russian-style strongman authoritarianism has bee a twinkle in the eye of a certain strain of Ame…

you're contradicting yourself here: > I’m sorry but a state does not go full totalitarian in a week. Putin has been in control for 20 years. the point is that it has happened suddenly in the past couple of weeks; let arrests of top FSB officials speak for it. > This, was predictable and many had been predicting it for a long time. oh that is absolutely true. every child in eastern europe knows this. the point is, whe…

> the point is that it has happened suddenly

My point is that invasions don’t happen suddenly. Even if the spark happened in the last few weeks, the preconditions to make this war possible had been laid for years. People pretending that they never saw this coming are the very same who have been cheering Putin and Russia on for years.

Re: Mapping and Seizing the Oligarchs' Assets

#199

I just want to remind those who are talking about due process that this is about crowd sourcing where assets of Russian oligarchs are. That is not the same thing as denying them due process. In other words, it's just a website. On the other hand, the actual due process part happen when the actual authorities of those countries, follow the laws of their country, and seize those assets because of sanctions.

Reframing mass doxing as crowd sourcing doesn't change the basic dynamics of what's going on.

Reframing crowd sourcing as mass doxing doesn't change the basic dynamics of what's going on.

Re: Mapping and Seizing the Oligarchs' Assets

#200
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're contradicting yourself here: > I’m sorry but a state does not go full totalitarian in a week. Putin has been in control for 20 years. the point is that it has happened suddenly in the past couple of weeks; let arrests of top FSB officials speak for it. > This, was predictable and many had been predicting it for a long time. oh that is absolutely true. every child in eastern europe knows this. the point is, whe…

> the point is that it has happened suddenly My point is that invasions don’t happen suddenly. Even if the spark happened in the last few weeks, the preconditions to make this war possible had been laid for years. People pretending that they never saw this coming are the very same who have been cheering Putin and Russia on for years.

oh, there must've been a misunderstanding. yes, this particular invasion has been under preparation for at least months if not years; i'm talking about the country going full totalitarian oppressive basically overnight with a few new hastily introduced laws. this botched war has been the catalyst.

note that if not for these laws and arresting people holding blank pieces of paper, there would be a full-blown revolution in moscow now.

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