What’s actually going on in Ukraine is that there is a massive incentive difference between the elites and the people.
The former have grown very rich off the hundreds of billions flowing to Ukraine, while the latter’s children are conscripted to die in trenches.
Last I’ve heard, most civilians polled want the war to end…but would rather keep fighting than end without concessions Russia isn’t willing (IIRC restoring occupied territory, maybe NATO). But I think that was over a year ago.
Personally (I a non-Ukrainian) think it’s horrendous they physically kidnap young men and place them in the front lines, which they are accused of and probably to some extent doing. I doubt it’s effective, and if it’s that or lose, they’ve already lost. But if the Ukrainian majority in Ukraine does not want to officially surrender, and I can definitely understand why, we should keep supporting them. Otherwise it should end. Though if denying weapons and other resources is unlikely to reduce the bloodshed, we should continue providing them but change our messaging, using that evidence to persuade other nations.
Just to play devil's advocate - why should a private American citizen offering a telecommunication network be compelled by an Eastern European power to let them use that network to guide killing machines?
Bearing in mind this war has absolutely nothing to do with the private American citizen.
Seems especially dangerous for the American citizen to be required to provide this support now that Russia is destroying Starlink stations in response - see the stories from Lithuania and Poland:
Just for the record, I support Ukraine in its defence against Russia's illegal and outrageous invasion. However, I don't understand by which moral or legal code, Elon Musk is required to provide direct military assistance to them?
Because there was no warning. He just crippled it and then denied that he's done it.
Ukraine uses it for defensive purposes, not offensive. Starlink is disabled on Russian territory.
Musk alongside Trump want Zelenskyy gone (receipts are there) and he thought pressuring him by crippling access to Starlink would do it or at least get him to stop attacking Putin's oil refineries.
> Because there was no warning. He just crippled it and then denied that he's done it.
What if he's telling the truth and it wasn't him that disabled it? How is it that you have obtained evidence as to internal operational procedures of Starlink/Starshield/Pentagon that make you better qualified than Musk to judge who carried out an action?
And why would Ukraine deserve any kind of warning? Surely if anyone breaks the very clear T&Cs by using Starlink in weaponry, then they should expect the service to be withdrawn, or at best, temporarily limited.
> Ukraine uses it for defensive purposes, not offensive
Ukraine have blurred the line since they started attacking energy infrastructure and civilian data centres etc deep inside Russia, with loss of Russian civilian life. I'll say it again - I support Ukraine vs Russia's illegal invasion. However, from Starlink's PoV, Ukraine is using its network for military attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure, which gives Russia the right (arguably) to attack Starlink infrastructure (e.g. ground stations). Why would Musk allow this to happen?
> Musk alongside Trump want Zelenskyy gone (receipts are there) and he thought pressuring him by crippling access to Starlink would do it or at least get him to stop attacking Putin's oil refineries.
That's a possible motivation, although speculative at this point. And it seems certain people are strenuously trying to paint Musk as the bad guy in this, and any other circumstances they can find. There's some partisan noise and speculation that we need to remove in order to find the truth here.
> What if he's telling the truth and it wasn't him that disabled it?
Because he admitted that he was behind throttling Starlink.
> And why would Ukraine deserve any kind of warning?
Because Ukrainian lives are at stake? If you owned Starlink, would you just cripple it without warning them first? This is not some SaaS service. People died because Ukraine wasn't able to defend itself from Russian jet powered drones.
>However, from Starlink's PoV, Ukraine is using its network for military attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure
Again, Ukraine doesn't use Starlink to attack Russia. It uses it to defend itself on their own territory.
>That's a possible motivation, although speculative at this point.
Trump and Musk both said Zelenskyy needs to be replaced. Trump said it on TV and Musk on Twitter. And they also parrot Russian propaganda and claiming he won't allow elections, even though it's in Ukrainian's constitution that elections can't be held when there is a war.
That’s some grade A B.S. — Elon talking about elites.
We should never have allowed this private citizen to be in a position where he has a hand in the spigot of defense infrastructure, dictating the outcome of foreign policy by fiat because he’s a company owner.
Musk dared to talk about a massive incentive difference between the elites and the people? He dared to talk about elites growing rich off of hundreds of billions?
It's true there's a difference between Ukraine's people and elites but it skips the larger issue of this being a war of choice by Russia that could stop tomorrow if Putin chose.
I think hobbling Starlink is the wrong direction - they should increase access to let Ukraine take out missile launchers in Russia.
> A private citizen turning off a military system with everyone in the administration ok with it?
The Trump administration has all the hallmarks of Russian assets, and Elon "please invite me to your wildest parties mr Epstein" Musk is no different. Once you start to look at those bunch through that perspective, their once incomprehensible and self defeating stunts start to make sense.
Hillary Clinton warned all you guys that Trump was a Russian asset and you learned nothing.
Musk is not my idol but I have to agree with him. Sending someone else's kids to die for a proxy war was the wrong move. They should have used diplomacy to resolve it. Europe is using Ukraine aka a small country for its proxy war with Russia that has become a perma war like in star-track.
People in the west want Russia to lose badly that they have no problem sacrificing some other country as their proxy just like Afghanistan war with Russia. Afghanistan became dust and land of warlords and did not become a democratic country and still running perma wars and it has been what, 40 years!?
Are they planning to continue this till all the kids in Ukraine die? For how many years?
Americans don't want the war to end either. They were part of the playbook at the onset. They are pretending to want to end the war. What they want is for Europe to finance the war without their contribution.
You can’t have diplomacy with a group who systematically rapes and murders entire families.
You can’t have diplomacy with a group who purposefully targets civilians with reckless abandon instead of legitimate military targets to kill the people.
You can’t have diplomacy with a group who doesn’t believe you exist or should exist. That it would be better to execute you than negotiate with you.
You cannot have diplomacy with a group who brought mobile crematories to disappear your citizens. Who had lists for who should be be killed.
You cannot have diplomacy with a group who does not want diplomacy.
Early in WW2 the Jews would stand in line for hours to wait and be shot. They would queue politely to be executed. That is what “diplomacy” looks like in this case.
Ukraine was on the verge of surrendering early in the war. Then news of the Bucha atrocities reached the Ukrainian Leadership and they refused to surrender. Because surrender means certain death. That’s the thing folks don’t seem to get.. if you’re fate is to die.. or to fight and have a chance at not dying.
In proxy wars, the apposition groups are evil and rapists except the ones that are sitting on sidelines and pump the war to continue. Whosever kids that are not dying in the war are the most ethical, moral and righteous. They parts Europe won't allow the war to end but not in their own home turf have the highest morals of them all! yup!
Most of Europe did not take care of their jews or helped them. They allied with Germans like vishy France. US turned back a ship of Jews that were escaping the war. USA's interest was in far east against Japan. They dumped the nukes on civilian populations there to solidify their takeover of Hawaii .. what a high morals.. wow!
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
Some (un?)reliable sources on the Internet claim that it was actually written by a man named M.J. Shields and published as a letter to The Economist in the 1940s
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