Piss of Elon, now he takes away starling completely for Ukraine, giving Russia the edge they need
He has a contract with the DoD now, he won’t breach it.
He didn’t have a contract before… didn’t breach it either.
If he did that he would become an open enemy of the state. Which means starlink would become propriety of the USA gov?
I think if you interfere with a military intervention of the currently most important proxy war party of the united states then you are already an enemy of the state. the question is if they will finally do something about him…
Fucking lol, obviously they won’t. That’s not how liberals work. Biggest consequence Musk will face is not getting future government contracts.
Why did you decide to assign this to liberals here? Serious question
Liberal idealism, with all it’s positives and negatives, dominates the way America thinks and American government works. Personal freedom and private enterprise are much more highly valued than state loyalty.
yeah no im not expecting them to do anything but it would be nice if they did :)
Not only a fraud, but also a terrorist support.
Don’t forget a disgusting billionaire, authoritarian, hater of his own children, and a fascist
Oh and sexual abuser, can’t forget that one
He’s a saboteur. Detain the mother fucker and try him for treason. At the very least, his removal from his companies is paramount to national security at this point.
No, no, you don’t understand…he’s rich.
It’s because Elon finds Putin more relatable than the people Putin is attacking.
Not really. He’s just afraid that his satellite constellation will get targeted by the Russians. They probably threatened him and he being who he is (attached to his companies) started to cave.
Plausible but wouldn’t they already be a target at this point, and to counter wouldn’t this have been a known risk when he signed the contract with the US Government on providing the coverage for Ukraine?
Why are you lying in your post title
In what way are Podolyak’s words not being accurately paraphrased in the headline?
Whoops, it seems you accidentally posted here instead of a maga site, like Russian supported Parler.
I’m not even going to check what it is, but kbin.projectsegfau.lt sounds like a sketchy place.
Lots of sketchy places on Lemmy. “In other news” on sh.itjust.works is a textbook example of Horseshoe Theory, right down to banning users who dare to question the propaganda posted by the “liberal” running it. I’m proud to be one of those users.
No. The real question is why does one man, because of his wealth, have so much power over the life and death of other people he has no interest in.
Because the government didn’t want to pay for it… that would be “communism”. (they’re paying now, way to be coherent!)
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Wealth and capitalism is anti-democratic. And this is a prime example.
Not directly and not necessarily.
Being a little rich isn’t a problem. Being very to insanely to disturbingly rich, that is a big problem and should be removed as a possibility by governments. Tax the shit out of people until their riches reach acceptable levels
Capitalism is only anti democratic if left unchecked. It needs to be much MUCH more limited than it currently is. But you don’t want to remove it, capitalism is -unfortunately- the most successful way of running societies. Again, you want to limit the crap out of it and right now it’s just running in stampede mode which indeed will destroy democracies
Disagree. The more disparity in wealth there is, the more anti-democratic. There are many small towns in the U.S. that are captured by a single large employer (who I guess is a “little rich”) through threats to move or lay-off workers, campaigning, “donations,” or just straight-up kickbacks to judges and law enforcement.
Capitalism is inherently anti-democratic. It creates an owner class and a worker class, and the owner class has a very large amount of power over the worker class. Something like a worker cooperative is inherently democratic (workers own and control their workplace/means-of-production, democratically).
As for “successful,” I suppose that depends on what metrics you use. I’d bet there have been other societies that were on a whole happier than capitalist industrial societies. I think we can do better than capitalism, and I think the survival of the human species depends on it. Capitalism requires unending growth to function, and I don’t think that’s sustainable on a planet with finite resources and a finite atmosphere that can only take so much greenhouse gasses being dumped in it before it causes a reduction in other resources, such as arable land.
Capitalism is inherently anti-democratic
No its not. At its core, capitalism is about allowing people to directly trade and find the most efficient solutions. This has led to the success of the west.
It creates an owner class and a worker class
Does it? I’ve been a worker. I’ve been a company owner (well, technically still am). So?! If you want to own something, you buy it.
As for “successful,” I suppose that depends on what metrics you use.
How about the metric of the largest super power in the world? How about the most advanced power in the world? How about the richest country in the world? Trust me, I’m not trying to woo the USA, it is VERY flawed with a shit tonne of problems, but it is BY FAR the most successful country in the world coming up with “yeah what metric” is bullshit. Ask a poor homeless person in the USA if they would perfer to extrange their lives with somebody in say, Niger, and I think I can be pretty sure they will say “HELLS NO” because as shitty as their lives are, its still a mile better than the alternative. The USA does not have famines.
I’d bet there have been other societies that were on a whole happier than capitalist industrial societies.
Yeah this is just plain naive. This is looking at the problems that our current societies have, and without knowing anything about the alternatives, saying “well the alternatives must be SO MUCH BETTER!” Yes, our capitalist system needs MUCH more checks and balances, we need to tax the shit out of the rich, we need less focus on material things and money and more focus on just being happy, we need universal and free healthcare, we need free education… So many problems we need to resolve…
But its NOTHING compared to how life was only a hundred years ago where people still got 12 kids because they knew that on average, 4 of them would not even reach adulthood because of diseases, famines, war and whatnot.
Say what you want about the US, and it has done some fucked up shit, but its been a pretty stabilizing force in the world. Without the US, the communist USSR would have overrun Europe and we’d all be enjoying the funs of famines, state terror (read about the chekists!) and just general misery.
There are no other countries that match the successes of capitalism, period…
Now, you want to talk on really how to improve societies?
Try north European countries. Socialist countries that use their capitalist systems to fund their socialist ways. THAT, I believe, is the solution. Control wealth with taxes, but let people free to do what they want. Educate people, have a shared political power system (and not the winner-takes-all shit like everywhere in the Americas) so that you have political stability, use the power from limited and capped capitalism to fund things like free healthcare, free education, a strong army for defense (unfortunately still required)… That will make hte world a better place.
No its not. At its core, capitalism is about allowing people to directly trade and find the most efficient solutions.
No, that’s the idea of free-markets. You can have free-markets without capitalism, and you can have capitalism without free-markets (such as State Capitalism). Capitalism is about using wealth (capital) to acquire the means-of-production (capital assets), and hiring and paying workers less than the value of their labor to make profit. It is inherently anti-democratic because the workers have little-to-no say on what labor they do within the company, how their labor should be used, who should manage the various parts of the company, etc.
This has led to the success of the west.
The West has been very “successful” before capitalism. I’m more in favor of the hypotheses from Guns, Germs, and Steel (for the most part, geography, climate, and natural resources has determined the fate of the nations). There are many very poor capitalist nations after all. Most the wealth of those nations seems to be funneled into the hands of the owning class in rich nations.
Does it? I’ve been a worker. I’ve been a company owner (well, technically still am). So?! If you want to own something, you buy it.
Yes, it does. When you make money from the labor of others, you are in the owning class. I am also, personally, in the owning class. I suppose there is some gray area with 401ks and stock options, but those amounts of ownership are often very low compared to outside investors, founders, executives, so they have virtually no voting power.
Don’t get me wrong. I think Social Democracy, which northern European nations are close to, is preferable to the extremely weak regulatory and welfare state the U.S. has; but Democratic Socialism would further reduce exploitation, IMO.
I’m also no fan of the USSR or China, and do not even consider them to be leftist governments (the State owns much of the means of production, not the workers, which is antithetical to leftism). I consider them to be authoritarian State Capitalist nations.
The academic model of capitalism has safeguards in place to prevent the shitshow we’re living in now. Leave it to us Americans to knock off those safeguards because we’re greedy as hell.
Yes, so is individual freedom.
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Not without grassroots movements and uprisings. Especially when it comes to stuff like labour laws and slavery. If factory owners got their way, we would still have worked 12 hour workdays 7 days a week. The wealth was not shared with the people, anything gained was taken by force in the form of unrest and movements. In many ways the French Revolution was the subtle threat to every nation unless they gave the people what they wanted.
Then not to mention stuff like women’s rights and civil rights, which were not given thanks to wealth, but again due to grassroot movements and civil unrest. In many ways we still are facing tons of inequality today, due to the profit incentive of the people with wealth. See rising wealth inequality for example. If wealth and capitalism is what gave regular people political power, why do we not see this trend continue today?
If anything, I’d argue we got democracy and political power in spite of capitalism and concentration of wealth. Maybe it has more to do with the developed technology than with the economic system. Stuff like the printing press and easier access to knowledge. Requiring an educated populace to operate factories and producing more complex technological items. These kinds of stuff paving the way towards people getting “funny ideas” and thinking back on their position in the world, no longer accepting what was the status quo, but instead striving for something better.
I’d even argue that today’s capitalism is a compromise, because the people in power tried their hardest to stay in power, but not the ideal that we could have had.
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Rulers also knew that if they ended up behind other countries they would end up crushed by economics or times of war. Technology was vital long before democracy got its hold in the modern age. The industrial revolution happened under the British monarchy, after all. Did they block that development? The printing press was also created under the holy Roman empire, long before capitalism, and we can see how well that went with many monarchies trying to suppress it. Maybe they tried, but they failed.
Don’t look at the answer starting from capitalism and working backwards. History is much more nuanced than “the system we have right now is the best and is what caused good things”. It very well could be that the system itself is mostly coincidental, or due to parallell historical factors.
And technology would have been developed no matter the economic or political system. As it did, and as it does. As long as people researching new things get sufficient time and resources to do so. And they do, and did, because being more technologically advanced makes you stronger compared to others.
I mean, hell, saying capitalism is what solely incentivized development is completely ignoring how many resources state actors are pouring into science even today. From the US military to the global academic network. It wasn’t very different back then, at the start of capitalism. Philosophy traces back to ancient Greece, after all, and exists everywhere in between.
My whole point is that saying that “capitalism gave us political power” is the too simple answer. And I argue against it, because it posits capitalism as this objective good that should stay when that is not certain. And it may well be what is actually standing in the way of democracy. Maybe political power would have been spread to the people quicker if it were not for capitalism, hard to say, because capitalism quickly entrenched itself in the whole world. But history can give us clues.
In the end, it’s important to not necessarily attribute too much to capitalism, because, well, we live in, and have been, surrounded by capitalism our whole lives. With no part of the world really escaping it. We don’t have anything else to compare to, as we only have one world. We are always looking from a capitalistic point of view by default. But maybe there is more to everything than just capitalism.
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It wasn’t capitalism. The Soviets had science, technology and progress without it. That doesn’t excuse all the bad, oppressive, authoritarian things. Just blows holes in your claims.
The same could be said for China, ignoring their atrocities. And yeah you could even say that about the US too if you ignore their copious atrocities. So it isn’t something endemic to capitalism
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The hole is yours. I’m afraid I understand the reason perfectly well. It’s largely the same reason that the United States is falling right now. And the fall China is cruising towards as well.
Let’s pretend you were right about the Soviet Union. You’d still be wrong regardless. Social and scientific progress were everywhere even before capitalism was a twinkle in the eye of the fool that coined the term. It was happening in the renesance, under any number of monarchs and even the church. Capitalism accelerated and encouraged none of it realistically.
Capitalism didn’t industrialize the United States either. The whole world was industrializing. It just happened in America DESPITE capitalism. Americas success in the 20th century has nothing to do with capitalism. It’s more a function of being as far as geographically possible from 2 of the worst wars in human history so far. Combined with untold stolen natural resources.
Wealth and capitalism replaced one group of antidemocratic oligarchs with another. Nothing more nothing less.
They all do, this action is just more obvious.
Starlink wasn’t enabled in that region to begin with.
Lol! That’s why disabling it prevented Ukraine from launching an offensive, right?
In the CNN article I read they say musk was specifically asked to expand the network for the operation. It seems like a weird spin.
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He did not disable it, he refused to enable it in that region.
He did not disable anything, he refused a foreign (Ukrainian) request to enable it, that was contrary to his country’s (US) stance at that moment: sanctions forbidding him to provide any service over Russia or Russian assets.
Others say he disabled the system. Malicious narcissist & pathological liar says he didn’t. If Musk disabled the system it makes him look very bad and may result in a major government response that would harm Musk and his business.
Gee, I wonder who is telling the truth?
This isn’t “who said what”, these are facts:
- Musk had no contract with the DoD
- The US imposed sanctions on private businesses from offering services to Russia
- Starlink blocked all service over Russia and Russian assets
- Ukraine asked Musk to extend the service over Russian assets
- Musk followed US’s rules
- Shit happened
- Suddenly, the US DoD scrambled to get a contract for Starlink… wonder why?
As much as I dislike Musk —and I wouldn’t be surprised if he used this to negotiate a better contract—, this one was a total fuckup by the US DoD, and in part by Ukraine for not pressuring the DoD into signing a contract much sooner.
Where do you get your "facts’? Especially like the “shit happens” addition to explain an admitted action by Musk. Very creative.
Facts come from history, most are recorded for everyone to check, particularly these ones are public. You may even find the exact dates for each one.
The “shit happens” is Ukraine botching a military operation because they asked a private US citizen to break US law. You may have confused “action” with “inaction as ordered”.
Edit: Here’s a link with sources and dates.
Thanks for the link. So many people online just pull stuff from their ass it’s a surprise when sources actually exist.
I see nothing in those links regarding the DoD contract specifics and I think you’re making assumptions about how US law is applied in foreign war zones involving our allies and hostile adversaries. US law is amazingly flexible in just about any situation that can be said to involve our or our allies national security. The Defense Department has withheld almost all information about the Starlink contract, and from what I can see even the date it was signed hasn’t been made public. All I can find at multiple sites is that a contract has been signed with almost zero additional information.
The Defense Department acknowledged the decision but withheld virtually all details about the agreement, including how much it will cost U.S. taxpayers and when the contract was signed.
From Ronan Farrow’s excellent New Yorker article:
SpaceX, Musk’s space-exploration company, had for months been providing Internet access across Ukraine, allowing the country’s forces to plan attacks and to defend themselves. But, in recent days, the forces had found their connectivity severed as they entered territory contested by Russia.
At a conference in Aspen attended by business and political figures, Musk even appeared to express support for Vladimir Putin. “He was onstage, and he said, ‘We should be negotiating. Putin wants peace—we should be negotiating peace with Putin,’ ” Reid Hoffman, who helped start PayPal with Musk, recalled. Musk seemed, he said, to have “bought what Putin was selling, hook, line, and sinker.” A week later, Musk tweeted a proposal for his own peace plan, which called for new referendums to redraw the borders of Ukraine, and granted Russia control of Crimea, the semi-autonomous peninsula recognized by most nations, including the United States, as Ukrainian territory. In later tweets, Musk portrayed as inevitable an outcome favoring Russia and attached maps highlighting eastern Ukrainian territories, some of which, he argued, “prefer Russia.”
By then, Musk’s sympathies appeared to be manifesting on the battlefield. One day, Ukrainian forces advancing into contested areas in the south found themselves suddenly unable to communicate. “We were very close to the front line,” Mykola, the signal-corps soldier, told me. “We crossed this border and the Starlink stopped working.” The consequences were immediate. “Communications became dead, units were isolated. When you’re on offense, especially for commanders, you need a constant stream of information from battalions. Commanders had to drive to the battlefield to be in radio range, risking themselves,” Mykola said. “It was chaos.” Ukrainian expats who had raised funds for the Starlink units began receiving frantic calls. The tech executive recalls a Ukrainian military official telling him, “We need Elon now.” “How now?” he replied. “Like fucking now,” the official said. “People are dying.” Another Ukrainian involved told me that he was “awoken by a dozen calls saying they’d lost connectivity and had to retreat.” The Financial Times reported that outages affected units in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Luhansk. American and Ukrainian officials told me they believed that SpaceX had cut the connectivity via geofencing, cordoning off areas of access.
The senior defense official said, “We had a whole series of meetings internal to the department to try to figure out what we could do about this.” Musk’s singular role presented unfamiliar challenges, as did the government’s role as intermediary. “It wasn’t like we could hold him in breach of contract or something,” the official continued. The Pentagon would need to reach a contractual arrangement with SpaceX so that, at the very least, Musk “couldn’t wake up one morning and just decide, like, he didn’t want to do this anymore.” Kahl added, “It was kind of a way for us to lock in services across Ukraine. It could at least prevent Musk from turning off the switch altogether.”
I find it laughable that Musk would assert that Putin wants peace and that Ukraine should negotiate. Putin can achieve peace by unilaterally withdrawing his forces and restoring pre-war borders. In other words Musk wants peace on his and Putin’s terms and that means victory for Russia.
We don’t know the specific timelines of what else has gone on with Musk and Ukraine yet. We do know that Musk lies constantly about things as important as major government contracts, buying out major corporations, taking companies private, the capabilities of Telsa vehicles and even about things as mundane and ridiculous as showing up for a cage match with Zuckerburg. It strains credulity to suggest he’s not lying about what he’s done with Starlink if telling the truth might make him look bad. Given his history of openly siding with Putin and pushing Ukraine to surrender significant parts of their country, it is more than reasonable to assume he’s lying in support of that goal too.
Musk is everything but a communist
Ha. You can make the R and L smaller.
(And he’s not a communist, exact opposite of it.)
Stop blaming your weaknesses on others. don’t get into a war you can’t win. no one owes you nothing
Get fucked, Russia apologist.
So Ukraine should do what when they’re attacked?
Surrender and comply to their brothers /s
Russia started the war you fucking donkey.
his dudes opinion brought to you by the cooked shit he got told to think
Big “she should have dressed differently” energy
What about The Pimps who push the weak to do the dirty work for them
your military industrial complex has never had it this good, proxy wars without local push backs, no western blood shed so even the antiwar crowd has gone silent in the west.
Peace at all costs has a price that should not be paid
The sane part of the anti war crowd knows that there have been peace settlements with Russia but that they don’t last. Settling with Russia is just giving them time to re-arm
That’s treason,… is it not?
The US law Musk violated would be the Logan Act…
For Ukraine yes this treason. But in USA if you an oligarch with a lot of money you can do what you want. I won’t be suprise if the republicans will promote to stop the war by not sending ressources to Ukraine. You know, to promote democracy and free world…
I think there’s even a decent case to make this distinction, that Starlink is for communication but not attacking. The problem is making the decision unilaterally, in secret, with no warning, and contrary to customer expectations, with timing that uniquely benefits an enemy of civilization
He’s not ukrainian so I don’t see why or how it would be treason.
Just a very shitty move.
He helped a country we have sanctions against.
That’s just twisting of reality.
I hate Musk, but Starlink has been immensely important to Ukraine, I remember Michael Kofman saying that if there’s one wonder weapon in this war, it’s the Starlink.
What Musk did was refusing to help more. Shitty move, but it’s absurd to call it “helping Russia”. You also aren’t helping Russia because you don’t send all your discretionary income to Ukrainian army.
He was paid for a service and he turned it off, that’s way different than “helping more”. Don’t be a Musk apologist, he’s got billions to go to that cause.
Musk provided terminals and connections initially for free, a contract with US for compensation was awarded only later.
The policy to provide coverage only in Ukraine controlled area was there all along, so that was clearly part of that contract.
Again, I very much dislike Musk, but then I also dislike when hate obscures facts.
That is not treason.
Are you saying it doesn’t meet the definition or he can’t be tried for it. I’m assuming you’re not a lawyer but this is the definition. Elon’s actions=treason. Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance.[1] This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one’s native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplomats, or its secret services for a hostile and foreign power, or attempting to kill its head of state. A person who commits treason is known in law as a traitor.[2]
If you read the wiki page, you’ll find that citation [1] is about Roman and Germanic law, and citation [2] is a dictionary. Neither of which are relevant to this case.
But even if your definition were relevant, Elon Musk did not commit treason because he is not a Ukrainian citizen, and owes no allegiance to them.
Elon Musk has US citizenship. But under US law, this isn’t treason either. Treason is defined in the constitution as “levying war against the U.S.” not the case here, or “or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”
You could argue this rises to the level of aid or comfort, but Russia is not an enemy in the eyes of the constitution. They would have to engage in open hostilities for that to be the case. The war in Ukraine is not open hostility against the US.
I’m not a lawyer, but I can do better research than copying the first paragraph from the first searh result.
Treason is a serious crime STOP diminishing that word by misusing it.
Technically, no. But I doubt that Musk will be getting any contracts in Ukraine after the war. Probably ruined any other future business in any of the other countries in a similar situation as Ukraine bordering Russia as well.
Russia is an enemy aggressor nation. Helping their military and their government without U.S. Congress approval is treason.
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At least $100b
For anyone interested in posting to this community, please keep rule 6 in mind. This post will be kept up because of the valuable discussion and activity that came with this post, but please mind the rules in the future. Thank you (:
Will try to remember to check the rules of each community before posting. Added a link to a news article. Thanks for the heads-up.
No problem. Thank you for responding (:
It’s also not a mistake when we know he’s buddy buddy with Russia. We know why they did it.
It sounds sort of like Elon Musk, a private citizen, just committed conspiracy to perpetuate war crimes. That’s a pretty serious accusation with grave penalties that is somehow not being prosecuted.
Whether or not any of this bullshit is true, I’m just glad that there’s growing distain for billionaires.
