The Ukrainian Army choir singing Eli Eli at #BabynJar on the #HolocaustMemorialDay pic.twitter.com/nOc7UhGo5y
— Michael Brodsky (@michael_brodsk) January 27, 2023
TIMING: Russia launches an offensive in Ukraine right after Elon Musk's @SpaceX curbed Ukraine's use of Starlink internet for drones. Musk has expressed on multiple occasions that he believes Ukraine should officially recognize Crimea, which was invaded by Russia, as Russian. pic.twitter.com/CfBA1hRE4A
— 'ask me about free Tw!tter Blue' steven monacelli (@stevanzetti) February 9, 2023
I am in no way an expert, but I think Musk’s main motivation here is to waggle his dick at the grown-up’s cocktail party. According to his mom, this — well, she phrased it ‘he preferred talking to the grownups, who were astonished at his insights, to playing with other kids’ — was a favorite activity when he was in kindergarten, and Murphy knows Elon honors his inner child as very few of us grownups can afford to do…
.@elonmusk Ukraine desperately needs your continued support. Please restore the full functionality of your Starlink satellites. Defense from a genocidal invasion is not an offensive capability. It’s survival. Innocent lives will be lost. You can help. Thank you.
— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) February 11, 2023
united states government should really, really take another look at all of the different contracts we have with musk’s businesses. https://t.co/vir34SsNnX
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) February 12, 2023
tesla, starlink and spacex are all heavily dependent on the federal teat for survival, and i think dark brandon should consider cutting them off.
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) February 12, 2023
Thing is… Biden doesn’t have to scramble an F-22 to shoot down Musk’s floating ego-chains. If The Invisible Hand decides that Musk looks as though he’s trying too successfully to push Tha Gubmint’s buttons, market support for all of his companies gets withdrawn so fast, it’ll look like one of those exposed-beach videos just before the tsunami rolls in.
Biden should invoke the Defense Production Act and require Starlink restore Ukraine full service.
Btw why did Elmo say don’t believe the Media when he just confirmed the story. https://t.co/MpGIKIeP6w
— Armando (@ArmandoNDK) February 13, 2023
Wonder what the cash comp for nationalizing Starlink would look like
Bet Elon has thought about it https://t.co/WYhVXIIG5l
— post malone ergo propter malone (@PropterMalone) February 12, 2023
Too also, seems like Musk & Putin are kindred spirits:
If this is true, which it is not, then it has to said that it has been a total and complete failure strategically and diplomatically https://t.co/Ma4lpX56eu
— Lord Businessman (@BusinessmanLego) February 6, 2023
Anyway, my theory is that Putin thought it would be easy, and that giving his soldiers an opportunity to plunder and murder would be a constructive use of the military
— Lord Businessman (@BusinessmanLego) February 6, 2023
New wars, old shadows…
“We interviewed this Wehrmacht veteran about why sending tanks to Ukraine is a bad idea” would be an incredible article for the German edition of the Onion, but as Germans have no sense of humour it is instead real https://t.co/Gs5jMsBQCv
— Kitara Revanchist (@canderaid) February 10, 2023
Chetan Murthy
AL, thank you for this! I mean esp. the tweet with the interview with the former Wermacht soldier. It’s all in German, but clicking-thru the tweets bring up the oppty to translate for each tweet, one-by-one. And I did that, as well as for the replies and replies-to-replies. It was interesting: the interviewer “DerMonologist” clearly understood that he was getting a certain POV, and didn’t take anything the interviewee said for granted. He says at one point “if we only hear the opinions of people we agree with, well, that won’t make for much of a dialogue will it?” (or something like that).
Very illuminating.
kindness
Elon & Trump both prefer Putin to a free Ukraine. I wish Biden could do something about it but I guess it’s complicated since Republicans are complicit. Redirecting government funding is probably the easiest course. I don’t think nationalizing Star Link is possible with the political structure we have now.
mdblanche
To be fair, the previous time Germans sent tanks to Ukraine it really was a bad idea.
Poe Lari
Starlink is a step to an unregulateable internet that will free the John Galts from the oppression of liberal nation states.
Steeplejack
Last tweet translated:
Amir Khalid
Obviously I don’t agree with Höppner that sending tanks to Ukraine will only prolong the war, and I definitely don’t think, as Höppner does, that any peace is better than any war. For what it’s worth, Alexander Moritz says he too disagrees with Höppner, despite having had a great interview with him, and calls his opinion “naive wishful thinking”.
scav
Well, I guess all consumers and investors will just have to be smart enough not to swallow statements, advertising & other propaganda bs emanating from Musk-allied corporations.
Oh, wait, let’s not omit the IRS and similar regulatory organizations from the list of those with a skeptical, if not unbelieving, eye.
trollhattan
A German “The Onion” would be the driest thing this side of Saharan melba toast.
Kent
Elon is clearly still in the “Fuck Around” stage of his intellectual progress.
One only hopes that the “Find Out” stage starts to happen soon. I suppose it probably already is with respect to Twitter, although he doesn’t appear to be learning from it. But he has a hell of a lot more “finding out” to do.
cain
@Kent: I think Elon thinks he has leverage – but he’s definitely thinks he can fuck around. But if he loses his federal contracts – he’s going to weep. On the other hand, he’ll probably be even deeper with the Saudis. At some point he’s a walking security risk.
Kent
I don’t even think it is leverage. He isn’t really trying to leverage anything that I can see.
He has spent that past 10 years convincing himself (with the help of all the sycophants and fanboys around him) that he is literally a master of the universe who knows better than all else. No matter what the subject. Cave rescues in Thailand, running an advertising-based social media company, or geopolitics in eastern Europe.
I don’t how you fix that other than simply taking away all his toys and disabusing him of the notion. But it is part of a pattern. We have coddled billionaires far too long. They are a plague.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
To add to your point, the claim that sending tanks to Ukraine will only prolong the war is equivalent to saying you believe in inevitable Russian victory. I don’t believe Russian victory is inevitable, but believing it is may be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Splitting Image
Wow. I was pretty much the same when I was four years old. Funny to think that if I had been a billionaire, I would never have had to grow the fuck up.
HarlequinGnoll
Wow how many idiots are there with the bright idea of: “if they don’t have the gear to effectively defend themselves the killing will stop!”. Regular citizens were making Molotovs in the beginning after all.
Ruckus
@Kent:
elon seems like the fuck around type. He was supposedly the worlds richest person, till he offered to purchase twitter. He likely didn’t learn that just because you have a lot of money according to some kind of paper that says you do, doesn’t mean you can actually spend much of it. Offering twice what twitter was worth was him fucking around. The find out part likely will not register with him because his ego, which is the size of about 4 states, and not one of them is one of those relatively small states, is blocking all reasonable concepts of him being an ass, and finding out about it.
His other problem is that his loyalty is to elon and elon alone. And that won’t do him one bit of good when the realization hits him that he’s made the finding out segment.
Ruckus
@Splitting Image:
Funny to think that if I had been a billionaire, I would never have had to grow the fuck up.
Oh he likely will grow up at some point. But he’s way past 4 yrs old, at least in physical age. Philosophical age though, he’s got a long way to go to get to 4.
Mallard Filmore
@HarlequinGnoll:
That was before the Russians brought up their artillery .
bjacques
@Mallard Filmore: Off Snake Island, Russia had more than artillery. But the Ukrainians still had their middle fingers. With massive western help or none, Ukrainians have always been prepared to “prolong the war”.
Aussie Sheila
I find it incredible that the US govt would permit a private actor to withdraw a vital form of support to an ally that the government was supporting against an aggressor. Just who runs the place?
How does it get to the point that a billionaire just decides what aspects of US foreign policy he is prepared to support.
I am genuinely flummoxed at the latitude extended to someone simply on account of their wealth. It is not only bad in a humanitarian sense, it is simply bonkers from any national security point of view. What is it with a government that permits such impertinence.
HumboldtBlue
Tried for the last hour to think of something to write about Musk, but fuck him.
Elsewhere, I stumbled upon the show Fake or Fortune, a show about finding — or not finding — hidden gems of art and determining if they are the work of real masters or not. I know fuck-all about art and one masterpiece looks much the like the others to me, but the Brits do these shows so damn well.
It involves art, science, history and some artificially created drama, but they are very interesting if for no other reason I learn about the history of painters and their paintings and how modern technology allows the forgeries to be separated from the real classics with much more precision.
Baud
Vindicated! Heh heh heh.
Baud
@Chetan Murthy:
That only applies to liberals. No one else is required to listen to the opinions of liberals.
Manyakitty
@cain: already, at this point. He has demonstrated repeatedly that he can’t be trusted. Weak, vain, and nowhere near as smart as he thinks, our risk increases every day we continue to rely on him for anything. What a truly repulsive person.
Amir Khalid
@trollhattan:
Actually, with plenty of local content that works for the German sense of humour, Die Zwiebel could be a hit.
lowtechcyclist
If Armando is correct that Biden can invoke the Defense Production Act to force Musk to resume full Starlink service to Ukraine, then Biden should do just that.
That’s a big ‘if’ because from back when I spent time over at Daily Kos, I remember Armando as being the front-pager most likely to say things that were less substantiated than they looked. (Maybe he’s changed since then, it’s been about a dozen years since I spent any time there.)
But one way or another, this has to be stopped. Private citizens, no matter how rich, need to be made to stay the fuck out of direct interference with U.S. foreign policy. Speech is one thing, but actions with concrete effects are another.
Weird idea: try to get a resolution through Congress stating that strictly with respect to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we recognize Ukraine as an ally, and Russia as an enemy in this particular conflict only. Then Musk’s interference would be aiding an enemy which would be treason.
Aziz, light!
The U.S. is heavily dependent on SpaceX to do what the space shuttle used to do, and SpaceX has been doing a bang-up job of it. This dependence cannot be ended any time soon. So what leverage does the government have, if any? Take them out of the running for the upcoming moon lander? Is there really anything Biden can do to change Elmo’s mind?
Anyway
@Baud:
This time last year just a s Russia began its invasion of Ukraine this is the exact argument I saw and heard– “US did the same thing with Iraq why the double standards now?”
Baud
@Anyway:
That’s a fair argument. It just doesn’t lead anywhere. It’s like when the US protests human rights abuses abroad. Should we stay silent because we have a sad history on that front.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Sure, sending tanks to Ukraine with no oil, like the Germans did in 1941, is a bad idea.
What does the state of Pennsylvania has that Germany doesn’t; oil. What makes tanks go voom, voom, oil. Why what Germany importing trucks from the US in the ’30s, stripping their tires off of and rendering those tires down ; to get the oil. Why did the Germany arm advance stall at the gates of Moscow, they ran out of oil.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
I don’t think that’s right. The DPA allows the US to jump first in line over other customers. I don’t think it allows the US to force a company to offer a service that it doesn’t want to offer.
dave319
I doubt I’m the only one who took in the shot of Elmo and 800 year old Rupture Murderdoc in their skybox at the Super Bowl and thought, “It’s lamppost time!”
Princess
I don’t know if he’s a Russian asset (possibly defined very loosely) or not. But there’s certainly no concrete reason to be certain he is not and that he’s just an asshole. Put it this way, if he were compromised by Putin in some way, how would his behaviour be different?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Aussie Sheila: SpaceX is a good example of how privatizing everything leaves you vulnerable to the private sector’s priorities
prostratedragon
@lowtechcyclist: Whatever teeth it might have or lack, it sure would be interesting to see whether such a resolution could make it through Congress.
trnc
@Baud:
Sadly, I also wonder how a takeover of starlink would square with the hands off approach where we deliver weapons but don’t provide any in-country support. At any rate, I think the Ukrainians who have already paid tons of money to buy starlink equipment and services have a larger claim than the US govt does, but Musk doesn’t give a shit about them and I doubt they’ll be able to hold out for some kind of international court case.
NotMax
@dave319
it was the mother of “Hold my beer” moments.
Murdoch only burned a piddling 780 mil on acquiring MySpace.
Ruckus
@Aussie Sheila:
We have freedom of speech here.
That means we have the freedom to be absolutely ignorant about what we think and say. elon is just staying between the lines, however he is at the lowest level of humanity possible.
His wealth gets him FREE air time, just not the smarts not to use it.
linnen
Germany sending tanks into Ukraine in WWII was not quite the bone-headed thing that it is made out to be. They were going for the oil fields in the Caucus region east of what is now Ukraine, in the area of Azerbaijan and Chechnya near Stalingrad. The Germans were also seen as liberators as Stalin (who Putin is trying to emulate) was more successful before during and after WWII in deporting the native populations in the region (e.g., Ukraine, Chechnya, as well as other regions) to places like Kyrgyzstan with very little supplies and moving Russian people in.
There was a reason why Winston Churchill, even knowing what Nazi Germany and collaboration governments did, considered backing Stalin a bad decision after the war.
J R in WV
@dave319:
Lamppost time, what a quaint notion with regard to traitors like Melon Musk.
Clear, graphic, but you do need some Italian history to really understand the point of “Lamppost time”!
Thanks for the new concept. Am in total favor of Lamppost time with regard to Melon Musk, immediately!!