Supposedly third parties paid for 80% percent of the units that were sent to Ukraine, but now Starlink wants Pentagon to pay them for the actual service. Maybe it's just a negotiation tactic...
But moving from the black budget to the white budget means starlink's paycheck is guaranteed and contract renewal is practically guaranteed even if the system doesn't work!
Maybe, but a lot of them seem to have been provided by Pentagon and NATO countries.
What I'm saying they don't even need cutouts. They can pay for those things straight out of the budget.
I'm assuming that's why the second I got my satellite dish, they sent us an e mail and said "actually, we need to charge you $25 more a month"
Ukraine forgot that outside of their NAFO bot army, they are not actually that popular right now
Exactly, they think they have pull but they're just a strategic ally of the US. They're popular in the imperial core but not much elsewhere.
And its not like Musk being petty is a little known fact. He's been petty publicly several times.
Melnyk is ex-ambassador now after stanning Bandera to the point of downplaying the holocaust and repeatedly insulting members of the German government. He's really like a less funny, fascist Chen Weihua. I hope he and Musk fight a bit more, this has potential.
Having two people who are completely out of their depth, overconfident, and each personally odious fighting it out on twitter could have all kinds of gut busting geopolitical side effects.
Kinda weird move of the Ukrainian government to potentially promote somebody who "doesn't represent their views" to vice minister of foreign affairs lol
Ukraine war supporters are in a weird place because they're acting like this is a great conflict between good and evil where everyone should be taking a principled stance against Russia and for Ukraine. If you actually believe that then you should be willing to make considerable sacrifices to support the cause and worry about paying the bill later.
But like it's pretty obvious that isn't what's happening, and many if not most people don't want to freeze to death this winter because of a regional conflict between two countries no one really cares about, especially when it's pretty obvious that the US is jerking everyone's strings to make this happen.
idk, I have no idea what the average person on the street thinks, or even what the average non-brain poisoned politician thinks. My exposure to popular opinion about this war is twitter flag emojis who consider it their holy posting duty to search for every twitter post relating to the war and post "OMG Putler Shill Russia psy op cash kremlin check when?!"
I imagine most people just don't care.
I'm not sure where I was going with this.
I think there's a racial element to it too. White people were having their country invaded, white people were refugees, white people were taking a gallant stand to fight to the last man in defense of home and hearth. Racists could root for the underdog and feel righteous about caring about refugees while continuing to follow :us-foreign-policy:
…oh god, I know exactly that stupid, stupid feeling of hope you’re describing. The feeling that, even if we lose, there’s still proof that we’re not all sleepwalking zombies doomed to toil even after death.
Could it be that wanting things on the global stage in general is a liberalism? That we need to just read the theory and do the praxis?
idk, I have no idea what the average person on the street thinks
I'll give you the gist: basically most normal people's thoughts on this is "oh Ukraine? I see them on TV all the time, are they doing well? I know we're supposed to support them but I have really been following it"
the people I talk to in real life still seem broadly in favor of the war despite my efforts to sow discontent by pointing to the cost.
Why is it when I talk about saving lives everyone asks where the money is to come from but that is never asked about taking them
PUTLER PUPPET!
What, me? Nah, I'm a Saddamn Lover, kickin it old school :gigachad-hd:
I think he has a very expensive proprietary satellite network that was never meant for military use or to work in military conditions and I have no idea who has been paying for it but apparently not Ukraine or the US, but I imagine it's quite expensive and under capitalism, especially for a private corporation, nothing comes for free.
It's pretty weird to provide the entire communications infrastructure for a country at war and be expected to do it for free, indefinitely. War is about making tons and tons of profit, not acting selflessly in accordance with one's principles.
It's also weird that he's saying this in public instead of hitting up the Pentagon or Ukraine to start paying their internet bill.
It’s also weird that he’s saying this in public instead of hitting up the Pentagon or Ukraine to start paying their internet bill.
That's the funny part. For some reason he's doing both.
we all know the reason, the reason is that he is both very stupid and addicted to twitter
I think starlink is yet another musk project that only exists because of federal funds, the air force was testing it for total battlefield awareness in Africa before or right as the first beta program started.
It was just never intended to be used against a peer adversary, only nations without the ability to intercept or jam satellites.
Sure, but why are Ukraine officials hyping up this thing if it isn't useful? No one seems to want to pay for it so there are probably better way to get a cut of DoD money.
When Musk does it, he should do it for free.
As a punishment for saying peace should break out. That's the worst possible thing anyone can say. Worse than the literal Nazis on Ukraine's side.
Americans be like "Hmm do I want my taxes to go to war or healthcare :thinking-about-it: "
I think we all forget that almost the entire US population that's in favor of war lives within 50 miles of Washington DC.
The rest of us, you think they listen to us? Hell no. We have stupid ideas like "stay at peace" and "we shouldn't offshore our blue collar jobs." We can go die in a fire for all they care. They certainly don't give a shit about what we think.
Well, paying the troops better doesn't mean starting new wars overseas. I think Americans are sick of war. Particularly because the blob can't seem to win a war. 20 years in Afghanistan against goat herders with AKs and they didn't win? WTF
they didn't win because they didn't have a goal. Their plan was just "Idk just sort of hang around taking casulties and killing civilians for a couple decades until we decide we're bored"
it's not surprising that plan didn't have results it didn't even plan to get results
The plan was to extract a bunch of rare earth minerals and grow a ton of opium poppies to give to the Sacklers so they could get people hooked on oxycontin. Billions of dollars of minerals were successfully stolen and the opioid crisis exploded, stealing over a trillion dollars from working class Americans and another trillion and a half from the state in the 20 years since then.
I… did not connect the opioid crisis and Afghani poppy fields until now. This is what zero material analysis does to a motherfucker.
Here's a document on other resource extraction and exploitation
I've read that during the time of peak US occupation, some insane majority percentage of the world's heroin supply came from Afghanistan
Hey, a war between Musk fans and NAFO would be super funny to watch. I'm rooting for mutual destruction.
Half of the replies to his post are "epic win for the based gigachad" and the other half is "this childish idiot is a Russian asset".
It's the battle of the dog and the frog.
his goal in any situation is get as much attention with as little effort. as soon as the state responds with regulatory threats he'll cave.
With that Twitter court case tightening around his neck, this could legit just be about the money.
"Fucking off, sir!"
Oh wait, you mean you just don't want peace. Unlimited, unending war is the goal here. Plus nuclear armageddon. Oh, won't it be lovely to get back to the duck & cover fear from the 1950s?
i think american kids are ready for shooter PSA and NUCLEAR PSA in schools i am sure thinking about the absolute destruction of the planet will really have a good effect on them
They're already doing so well, what's another trauma to pile on top of the festering heap of shit.
is he petty enough? ABSOLUTELLY, HE IS REAL PETTY, he is a man who has billion of dollars and still uses twitter instead of paying someone to do it and gets mad at people online due to this
the Ukrainian army gets a bunch of Elon Flamethrowers to burn the soviets like it’s WWII
Charging the Russian army with glorified blow torches while they prepare to fire their next volley of thermobaric rockets from a kilometer away.
What if Melnyk told Musk to fuck off in response to Musk saying he'll no longer do Starlink for free
Didn't he tell him to fuck off on twitter when Musk suggested Ukraine needed to sue for peace on conditions that agree with new Russian territorial claims?
Can't wait for all the "Russian Musk fuck off" merch that libs will be cranking out
