Skiluros

I don’t get it, headline seems reasonable.

“From the river to the sea” is a Pro-Palestinian slogan. I don’t think it’s anti-semetic. Anti-Israel sure, but that’s not an inherently bad or negative thing depending on your frame of reference. If you come from a country that has been suffering from colonization historically or even significant occupation for a long period, there is nothing wrong with calling for the destruction of the occupation regime.

It’s a chicken and egg problem.

There are alternatives:

https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-phone-preorder

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairphone (supports Ubuntu Touch in addition to non-google Android distros).

I am going to keep my Samsung for banking and government apps (it has the latest Android ver, so it will work at least for a few more years), but I am planning to switch to Jolla once it is released. I also think Euro government will eventually realize that they need to move off Android/iOS.

Hahaha, I always chuckle when I see people online parrot PR copytext about how Apple cares [about digital privacy]. Just read their privacy policy…

In a sense, we were really lucky that Yanukovich was a fool and a coward. Trump too is committed to ignorance and he is definitely a huge coward, but he knows how to “own” his corruption and criminality in a manner that appeals to a significant portion of the US public (perhaps not a majority or even a plurality, but whatever it is, it is large enough to matter). That wasn’t true about Yanukovich.

The killing of protesters in Feb 2014 was the inflection point, a point of no return. That’s when a significant portion of society came to the conclusion that the Yanukovich regime has to go. And the fact that the public pushed back, even with the use of violence by regime goons, is what doomed Yanukovich. The Yanukovich regime was not able to take back Maidan Nezalezhnosti; the “main square of the country”, if a government can’t control it, it de facto does not have legitimacy.

His senior allies started to get worried that they would have to go down with the ship and that they wouldn’t be able to “lawyer their way out of it” and might have to face true justice from the public. I would argue the same was true of the security forces, when the public fought back, they started asking themselves uncomfortable questions about whether it was worth risking their lives for some thugs (who would be focused on saving their own butts).

There really was a sense of “history is being made in front of our eyes” or the apocryphal quote “there are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” There was a whole parallel self-organized administration. Tens of thousands of people were flowing in from the regions to Kyiv to back anti-regime protests (not to mention every region had its own protest HQ, even Crimea had protesters opposing the regime). During the day the crowds would swell to hundreds of thousands. People were constantly bringing in supplies (food, medicine, protective gear, I personally delivered donations from foreigners who supported the protesters, but didn’t want to enter Maidan/Khreshatik). In the night the security forces would try and siege the liberated part of the city, you could even see how the barricade line would move through the square over the days (security services gaining a bit, protesters pushing them back in other days).

Of course, America is not Ukraine, but perhaps this is a case in which America can learn something from Ukraine.

This is a pattern of authoritarian drift that Ukrainians are closely familiar with: rapid consolidation of executive power, aggressive use of state capacity against perceived enemies (including former allies who dared defy the president), and a growing insistence that legality is whatever the leader says it is.

In pushing against all that, Americans can take a page from Ukraine’s civil society playbook.

I tend to agree. Life is a strange thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nNFrvGOb9o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwf9EjesvtM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eTuFAR169s

Sure US has its own specific challenges: much more competent and violent security forces, much less “motivated” society (a national liberation movement is a powerful thing), but US also doesn’t have to deal with many challenges that are present in Ukraine. Specifically, an enemy neighbouring country x4-x5 times larger where the overwhelming majority of the population is committed to genocidal imperialism.

US is really turning into russia but with a stronger cultural preference for “freedom” polemics.

I’ve lived for multiple years in both US and russia (I speak English and russian), so I think I have something like a frame of reference.

That’s a fair point, but with software platforms, I don’t think you can make a seamless migration tool without Google’s cooperation. And there a lot of roadblocks and malicious compliance type strategies that US oligarchic institutions can adopt. There is also the issue of monopoly-like network effects.

Considering their administration’s behaviour and the current course of American society, I think it’s better to make a permanent break with US. I do not think they will be able to address corruption and criminality. Even if the centre-right comes to power, it will be some variant of Obama, perhaps competent, but with zero desire to reign in corruption, oligarchs and prosecute criminals. Just like Obama refused to prosecute the financial industry oligarchs, a hypothetical centre-right leader won’t address Meta’s $16 billion raised via conscious enablement of fraud.

Then there will be another election, they’ll seed in some more propaganda about “freedom” and “destruction of America” and you’ll have JD Vance elected or perhaps someone even far worse than Vance or Trump.

To hell with that.

I’ve lived in the US for several years and travelled extensively, I feel confident in what I am saying. A large portion of American society is obsessed with ostentatious posturing about how they are the biggest supporters of “freedom” in the world (and similar self-aggrandizing polemics), that they cannot be engaged with in good faith.

Blacklist of senior US regime collaborators is also a must.

Would help if Russians were banned too.

Sometimes it’s best to deal with an issue early rather then letting it simmer.

Not to mention they could always a implement a Fediverse based foundation (for every country) before implementing a ban. Literally re-direct instagram.com to pixelfed.nl (if you are in the Netherlands). Move all government accounts and let businesses know that it’s in their interest to setup Fedi accounts or other non-US networks (and help them with it).

They should start with banning US tech services, first insta/FB/Twitter/Reddit and then slowly kicking out MS/Amazon/Google and other enterprise providers.

From what I remember Biden won with a small margin in 2020 (I remember messaging my American friend about this before the votes were fully tallied).

Trump is a symptom, the cause is American society (not only the far right, much of the centre-right voting public too).

The US is comically corrupt!

Did the thugs at the Blackstone criminal gang decide to play hardball with the recent demand to increase the size of bribes?

Not an expert, but this seems relatively reasonable. If anything one would think Roblox will eventually fall under this process, that being said, I am just thinking out loud, I could be wrong.

It should be challenged by Australians. An American oligarchic organziation by definition shouldn’t be able to have any influence on national policies. If the Americans ever clean up their act, which is unlikely, then one should at least consider whether they should be allowed to file such challenges.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Roblox gets blocked too. Although this is complete speculation on my part.

Is there anything specific around why Roblox would not be banned?

Almost none of them are morons. They are all cunning, sophisticated and they spend all their time on work and their goals.

No need to underestimate them.

If anything their weaknesses lie in arrogance, ignorance (not the same thing as being stupid) and low tolerance of dealing with challenges they haven’t encountered. As things stand today, this weaknesses haven’t really caused them any problems, but that doesn’t this will always be true.

This is honestly really funny in an absurdist, black humour kind of way.

That’s of course a free speech issue. But the contrast between the alleged deep commitment to free speech claimed by many Americans and the fact that this issue wasn’t that much of a deal-breaker in support for the current US administrator suggests that theatrics and ostentatiousness are a significant driver of free speech polemics.

When I was living in the US I didn’t find local polemics about free speech to be convincing.

It honestly felt more like a theatrical way to highlight one’s alleged “independent” mindset and virtues. It just didn’t seem genuine.

Recent development have largely proven my thinking on this issue. Many Americans who claim to support “freedom of speech” don’t understand the concept and don’t really care about it (beyond theatrical repetition of phrases that they’ve heard other locals use).

While I too am skeptical of the true commitment of large section of the US population to freedom (in the real sense not in the American “I support free speech!” sense), I would not underestimate the fundamental unpredictability of history.

Not a fan of Lenin, but the notion that “there are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen" is a powerful observation of human history and behaviour.

Not saying this is going to be a inflection point, but there are always steps to reach a given inflection point.