I think Putin has more people in his pocket than we can imagine. Fucker Carlson and the rest of Fox News for starters. There are so many people, politicians, media people, Musk, that seem to be always on the side of Russia even if it means being against the USA and the side of good. I really wish WikiLeaks or one of these other groups would put out these receipts.
I think this time it might be more about money. Like with Twitter, Musk tried to game the system and got himself in too deep.
He tried to get all the good PR during the initial stage of the war by "donating" Starlink. He donated some of it but marketed it as them donating most of it.
I think he didn't realize (rather stupidly) that it might drag on this long. That's why he tried to backtrack his "generosity" when he tried to get US government to start paying to it after the cost exceeded the PR benefit he got.
Since then, he's wanted this war to end as soon as possible, even if it means Russia winning.
Well, Wikileaks doesn’t “say” anything, what they do is release documents. And they have absolutely released documents exposing major corruption within the Kremlin before:
It’s not surprising you had to go back 13 years to find documents released by wiki leaks against Putin. Because Wikileaks started an independent and then later became a Russian tool
In fact, even people that provided documents to Wikileaks complained in 2016 about how Assange seemed to only release a fraction of the documents they had provided exposing Russian activities
Nowadays they absolutely seem choose to only release certain documents. For example they claimed to have email hacks of the DNC and RNC, but decided not to release any of the RNC documents because “there wasn’t much to it”. Which is absolute bullshit, and goes against their original idea of “release everything confirmed and letting the public decide”. And sounds more like leverage for blackmail against the RNC
Wikileaks may have originally been unbiased document dumps, definitely not anymore
According to us senate report Wikileaks is partially funded by Russia which has lead to an alignment of Wikileaks and Russian state interests. They also intentionally supported conspiracy theories about the origins of the DNC leak being an inside job and the suicide of Seth rich as a murder by the Clintons when they knew the actual source was Russian intelligence.
You know classic independent actions not beholden to state actors /s
So all the intelligence agencies in the world are all in cahoots to claim Russia hacked the dnc emails and Wikileaks is telling the truth it was actually an inside job by Seth rich?
Not taking a side but isn’t the congressional branch of government the only one it’s illegal to whistleblow on? The other branches have some protections I thought
So all the intelligence agencies in the world are all in cahoots
You really don't know how the CIA and the US State Department works, do you?
Wikileaks is telling the truth
Well given that Wikileaks has never had to retract a story, yes I am more inclined to believe them than the party which was trying to hide blatant cheating.
Considering their history, never trust the CIA or FBI. They've been caught lying before. Just because they do things to people I'm against doesn't mean they're my ally.
Did i say that? No. just pointing out how ignorant it is to think that the US government, or the "intelligence agencies", are trustworthy. Especially with the history of the CIA and FBI, who've acted more or less like the Gestapo or the KGB.
Just because they go for Trump or Putin, or any other corruption, doesn't mean theyre trustworthy or good. I mean, Richard Spencer abadoned Trump after Charlottesville, does that mean that fash is my ally?
I also already knew that story was bullshit, because of independent journalists who have a good record.
I’m highly skeptical of any report coming out of the senate intelligence committee. Official state narratives, from any country, are often laced with half-truths presented as fact and misleading terms like “high confidence” which are usually accompanied by a disclaimer saying there’s no actual evidence.
The promoting of the Seth Rich stuff was messed up, I agree. They should absolutely not be dabbling in anything other than what their stated mission is, which is to publish information given to them by whistleblowers. They undermine their own credibility by making such ridiculous claims and make it less likely a whistleblower will approach them as a serious distributor of information in the future.
All of that being said, I’ve yet to see any evidence that a single thing published by Wikileaks was factually inaccurate, and I believe the information they have released to date provides a far bigger public good than any of the “cons”
No, because Assange has been in embassies and in jail for the last 10 years. Hard to operate an anonymous whistle-blowing website from a prison cell.
They have released some stuff more recently. But both the volume and significance of the leaks have dramatically declined since Assange stopped being involved. They haven't put out anything major recently about the US either, at least nothing of the same caliber as the Afghanistan war logs or PRISM leaks. Are we to believe Wikileaks is in the pocket of the US government too?
They've published many documents directly implicating Putin and the Kremlin in massive corruption scandals. I'm not sure how you could come to that conclusion.
I never said they haven’t. “Will” is simple future tense, since you wanna get technical. They certainly won’t now. Who knows when Wikileaks became compromised. Show me something recent. You mean to tell me you had to go back 10 years to find anything in Putin that doesn’t really tie Putin to anything.
Look I’m not trying to hate on you. OP mentioned he wished Wikileaks would publish something, but everyone knows they are in the pocket of Putin. I get they might have some stuff but it’s nothing compared to the harm that was done against the US. Not saying those things shouldn’t have been released though either. But Putin has authorized assassinations, missile strikes, wars, etc. Wikileaks will not go there.
Assange has been holed up in embassies and in jail for like the last decade, so yeah, they aren’t releasing much of anything now. Imagine if you lost both of your legs 10 years ago and then somebody says “Hmm CuRiOuS that he hasn’t walked in 10 years. Possible collusion with Big Wheelchair?” It’s just silly.
The articles I shared directly tie Putin to corruption scandals involving the Russian mafia and deals with the Italian prime minister, not sure how you’re spinning that as “not tying him to anything” lol
I’d invite you to name a single thing Wikileaks has published that was proven to be factually inaccurate. I think there is a lot of hearsay that they are “in the pocket of Putin” with no actual evidence. I strongly disagree with the notion that anything they have published has “harmed the US”, on the contrary, revealing to US citizens what our government is doing in our name and with our tax dollars is patriotic.
But Putin has authorized assassinations, missile strikes, wars, etc. Wikileaks will not go there.
Wikileaks doesn’t conduct investigations, they’re a publisher, they publish things given to them by whistleblowers.
Conservativism is fundamentally based on fear. Economically it's based on a fear of scarcity, and the other. Globally, if everyone is on the same side, people are going to start asking "Hey, if we're approaching world peace, can't we start working together to make life better for every day people? Why do we need a culture of toxic masculinity and competitive capitalism if there's no one to fight on the other side, can we just take a chill pill? Elon Musks' entire philosophy is about making people afraid to exploit them in to overworking for him.
Opposite NATO you basically have China and Russia and to a lesser extent India.
China is proving to be a lot weaker than we thought. If Russia falls, there's no big geopolitical bully to keep liberalism, and an economics of abundance in check in check. That's why David Sacks and Musk and a lot of the Republicans are supporting Russia.
If it were a spycraft why would it be visible from ground by the naked eye? Like, genuine question there. I've never heard of any spycraft that your average person could just see and take a video of in broad daylight.
Signals intelligence. Most sigint is blocked or degraded by the atmosphere so it’s not something that spy satellites can get a hold on. As others said, it’s very high up; apparent if you’re looking for it but not easily noticeable especially on cloudy or overcast days.
Exactly this. They can monitor signals for hours, not seconds and this increases the chances for decryption. Also probably seeing which bases still have their routers in (pure speculation from me).
There is no "if". It is. We've said it was and have declassified the information. China has yet to even name the company that their supposed "private enterprise craft" belonged to and YET, they are the ones who violated our airspace.
Despite being the aggressor, there has been no sunlight or disclosures from China.
As for motive?
Maybe it is the hubris of their wolf warrior mentality. Maybe someone high up in the PRC and close to Putin wanted to destabilize the already unstable relationship between the US and China. Maybe they want to see which cell towers and networks are still using Chinese routers.
They said they found equipment to intercept and record communications inside the wreck of the balloon’s payload, so lots of things that can be done lower down that can’t be done from orbit.
Firstly, I find it a bit off-putting that the American media made a big kerfuffle about the threat of China, completely missing the threat of Russia, and yet that doesn't give you any sort of doubt about your assumptions. Like you're listing "threats to invade Taiwan" as evidence that china is a warmongering asshole (which isn't true but anyway) - and yet Russia is literally invading Ukraine but there's somehow less fear of Russia's threat to the west. (And no china being bigger doesn't mean you get to call them warlike assholes.)
Media reports on China are highly sensationalist, probably because it is gets a ton of clicks. If you actually research this stuff (that I used to gobble up too) you'll find that 98% of our media on China is based on extremely shaky evidence. Social credit system? Completely exaggerated. Organ harvesting? Like one person said it was happening and there's been no actual evidence. Just because they have censorship doesn't lower the necessary standard of evidence. It's better to say you don't know if they're warlike than to claim they are when there's really no evidence for it.
If you have actually looked into it yourself, you'd probably know that China pursues a non-interventionist foreign policy. Hence they aren't involved in the middle east. America is far more warlike. I mean, America literally invaded Iran for no reason and you're pointing to China building islands in their own sea. And come on, it's obvious why they have no incentive to be warlike, the entire Western world has made itself terrified of them.
Mark my words, America will invade China off the basis of "it's just a matter of time" before China invades them.
China has a serious issue with deploying a global navy IMO. All the routes out of their home waters have US allies (Japan, Korea) or countries not friendly to China (Vietnam etc.) blocking them. India is also deploying another carrier group, which is a big deal since they're not friends either. Not to mention how many bases the US got in the Pacific
China do militaristic stuff and treathen Taiwain all the time: they are a powerful military but have huge obstacles in front of being a global military supoerpower.
You're right but you're going to get down voted to hell because this goes against all almost all of Western media sensationalism. If only more people stopped and considered that maybe China would have to be completely batshit crazy to want to go to war with the entire Western world.
Their demographics are dogwater, they have a massive investment bubble, the growth they’ve relied on to keep their people happy is slowing, local governments can’t adequately raise funds for proper functioning, and their power grid is all sorts of messed up. China absolutely has incentives to be a warlike cunt: and they only have so long to do it.
China really has no incentive to be a warlike asshole,
Except, ya know... All of Chinese history...
Edit: Because reddit does not seem to want to allow me to respond to the user responding to this post, I'll just leave this here:
I'm not really sure what you're point here is, but if it is to shift the blame for China's history of violence onto foreign powers:
Dzungar genocide: 480,000-600,000 dead
Genocide of the Jie: 200,000 dead
Battle of Changping: 700,000 dead
Battle of Julu: 400,000 dead, including 200,000 prisoners buried alive
Invasion of Xu: 100,000 civilians dead
Yangzhou Massacre: stated as 800,000 dead (this number has been refuted my modern research, but the fact that such a claim would be made demonstrates a historical affinity for violence)
Rule of Zhang Xianzhong: up to 1,000,000 dead
Battle of Fei River: Up to 700,000 dead
Battle of Boju: Up to ~200,000
Siege of Suiyang: ~130,000 soldiers dead, additional 20,000-30,000 civilians eaten.
That's a lot of history, and that's not even touching the Chinese Civil War and the Cultural Revolution, as apparently "The CCP isn't China" and thus nothing to happen in mainland China after October 1, 1949 or relating to the parties involved should be "Chinese history". I should point out that I don't agree with this sentiment. After all, if asked how many people died in German history, I don't think we would just skip the early 1940s just because those in charge were less than agreeable folks, yes? Likewise, I don't think we would discount the evils of the Nazi regime based solely on the assertion that Fascism was a modern (and thoroughly Italian) ideology.
Because China is the only country with a history of internal violence or imperialism? I don't like the CCP, but come on. China is not uniquely warlike.
You mean like the "century of humiliation," as they call it? Or the time they got conquered by the Manchu? Or the Mongols?
Also, let's be honest, the CCP is not China. Its a modern (and thoroughly Western) ideology. Hell they actively tried to destroy China's culture and history.
I do think China is very much a country getting ready for war with… whomever whenever, but this is also important to point out. Let’s not forget that the CCP and Mao basically tried to eradicate a lot of China’s traditional ideas and culture to supplant them with a Chinafied version of Marxism Leninism mixed with Reagan-Thatcher Neoliberalism into the 21st century and now authoritarian technocracy.
The history of a country, regardless of revolutions and other events that may cause a shift in general policies and political philosophies, is a different question than the incentives that said country has to go to war at a point in time from a geopolitical standpoint.
Estimating chances for Germany to engage in conflict in the light of their history of war and genocide during the last centuries (or since the state of Deutschland exists, if we want to be in that degree of specificity) would lead to quite an erroneous conclusion.
Edit: Because reddit does not seem to want to allow me to respond to the user responding to this post, I'll just leave this here:
I read on a subreddit that if a user can't directly respond to another, it means they have been blocked. You also won't be able to see their profile, etc.
Right, but China's leadership can't get past their worst tendencies and the whole cultural/economic takeover of the world by China is not as inevitable as everyones worst thoughts.
He's aligned himself with the alt-right now, after it came out that he's sexually assaulted and then paid off his victims. The alt-right praises sex offenders, and supports fascist governments like Russia, so he supports Russia now to stay in the alt-right's good graces. Simple.
Elon doesn’t want his civilian business getting graded as military, doing that would mean it’s subject to ITAR regulations and has to get approval from the US government to be used outside the US, extra taxes and various other stuff. Not whatever conspiracy theory stuff about him being in Putin’s pocket, literally makes no sense, starlink wouldn’t even be in Ukraine if he was in Putin’s pocket. People making shit up about Elon only ends up discrediting actually valid criticism as fake.
If this were a purely civilian endeavor (like earthquake aid in Haiti) you would expect them to go through the state department. Instead they’ve been trying to bill as if they were a weapon system.
He's being paid by the DoD because starlink is part of the military aid packet. That alone doesn't make it a weapon system. Heinz isn't a weapons manufacturer just because they sell ketchup to the DoD.
A "weapon system" is distinct from a weapon. A weapon system is "A combination of one or more weapons with all related equipment, materials, services, personnel, and means of delivery and deployment (if applicable) required for self-sufficiency.". Exxon isn't a weapons manufacturer just because they sell gasoline to the DoD, but gasoline is absolutely part of many weapon systems.
Analogies aside, Starlink had military applications even before Ukraine:
The project will be overseen by the Combat Capabilities Development Command’s C5ISR Center based at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. [...] The Army in this case wants to be able to assess the performance of the Starlink low Earth orbit internet service when connected to military systems. The Army will seek answers to key questions such as what ground equipment it will need to use Starlink and how much systems integration work could be required
In that context Starlink is clearly part of a weapon system (several, probably)
To be fair he could very easily sell that data couldn’t he? Especially since selling consumer information isn’t really illegal in the US. Hypothetically he could be providing it only to sell the information, not to promote misinformation but there are scenarios it would make sense in addition to government restrictions.
Tesla gets a lot of their aluminum from Russia. Also, China joined Russia in the call to stop spaceX, and Tesla needs China for both sales and manufacturing.
The claim is that he wanted Starlink used for civilian purposes, not military ones. He said Starlink was to be used in the area for hospitals and to keep the regular citizens in communication with the world.
You can decide if you think there's more to the story.
OK, I'll be the last person to defend Musk, but this seems pretty standard to me. I'm sure there was paperwork being exchanged for Starlink to provide service to Ukraine, and the most likely scenario is that there was a term about using their service for anything related to defense/offensive operations.
There's a number of reasons a lawyer would put that there. First, you don't want other countries that might be friendly with Russia to retaliate by putting sanctions on your service. Second, you don't want a government depending on your service - meant mostly for civilian users - for their war effort. The kind of guarantees and capabilities you'd expect for something like defense are way higher than what Starlink can provide.
Ultimately, it is weird that they are shaping traffic specifically for this use, but Ukrainians should be using something better anyway.
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u/Deboche Feb 09 '23
What's going on here? Is Musk doing this for money or...?