More evidence that Libertarian cryptobros have a very narrow definition of “freedom” that has little to do with human rights and lots to do with financial transactions.
As hundreds of thousands of refugees flee Ukraine, some bitcoin fans seem practically exhilarated, feeling that geopolitical disruption, which includes heavy sanctions and an effort to kick Russia out of financial networks like SWIFT, can only benefit the cause of crypto adoption. Some root openly for Vladimir Putin, hoping that his government will be forced to use bitcoin to bypass Western sanctions.
20 Likes
- You have the right to own property with unrestricted use.
- You own yourself, with unrestricted use. (“Freedom!”)
- Anything else about other people, laws, is way down the list.
After that fallacy, they get into all kinds of trouble with “voluntary” slavery and age of consent. They have a lot in common with the SovCits, but they usually hide it better because their magic words of “property rights” don’t stick out for normal people.
16 Likes
In answer to your question about fallout and my own questions, I came across this, and I should probably add here “fascinating if true” (I have no way to verify its authenticity):
It is a very long thread for Twitter (a stack of tweets, translated and posted in a series), so here’s the link to the compiled version:
The usual cautions apply but the TL;DR is that it may be less likely that Putin would “push the red button” for several reasons, including his/their nuclear protocols likewise require several people to participate in such a launch, and the fact that Putin seems interested in self-preservation (evidence is cited in that thread).
16 Likes
The article isn’t paywalled for me, so The Daily Beast might allow a certain number of free articles.
8 Likes
The analyst also says that the FSB wrote reports on war-related hypothetical scenarios such as sanctions, but the analysts who wrote the reports were told that they had to have optimistic conclusions and anyway were only being written so that nobody could complain that they hadn’t been done. He implies that these bullshit reports were instead read seriously and acted upon at high levels of government.
11 Likes
These losses are just a little bit different from Russia’s “official” numbers
15 Likes
The real numbers are probably a bit less than that; Ukrainians have every reason to exaggerate things, and of course in a war getting the accurate numbers is horribly difficult in the first place.
But whatever the real numbers are, they are very bad for Russia.
12 Likes
One investor went so far as to call the request “evil”and announced that he was “pulling [his] support for Ukraine based on these comments.”
I’m sure the frontline fighters and trapped civilians will be devastated
6 Likes
Yeah, I took those numbers with a grain of salt, just highlighting the disparity between Russian and Ukrainian reports
6 Likes
the whole story of the ethnic and religious rivalries and cooperation is an extremely fine-grained and complicated. unfortunately people in the west aren’t interested, for the most part, in sifting through complexities. they’ve either become accustomed to or developed a taste for simple narratives and anything that takes more than five minutes to read about is likely to be ignored.
15 Likes
sadly nodding teachers gif
21 Likes
