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@ Peter Todd
2025-05-17 20:13:01
“Can't kill an idea”
What absurd nonsense. Ideas don't themselves kill people. Weapons kill people. Weapons that are paid for by economies.
The reason why Gaza is a threat to Israel – why Oct 7 happened – is because we allowed Gaza sovereignty and the ability to import huge amounts of supplies. Cutting off Gaza from the world solved that problem.
Killing Russia's economy also kills Russian imperialism. Whether or not the idea dies is irrelevant. If they can't afford weapons and soldiers, who cares?
Neither Nazism nor Japanese imperialism are dead ideas. But that's ok: we killed millions of the young people holding those ideas, and crushed the economies of the countries they lived in. Both ideas are mostly irrelevant because the people holding those ideas lost their economic power to use those ideas.
Extremist Islam isn't there yet. But we could get there pretty quickly by destroying the economy of just a few countries, mainly Iran. As I've said before, Israel should use their military power to destroy Iran now, while they still don't have nuclear weapons.
You would rather risk the lives of Ukrainians, and everyone else neighboring Russia, for the sake of Russians. You aren't even doing it well: you're HRF is literally platforming imperialists who seek to make Russia less corrupt, and thus better at fighting their next war. Imperialists who are also trying to get sanctions lifted on Russia, which would immediately help them win this war.
It's notable how HRF had four Russians on the recent program and only one Ukrainian, and then harassed the Ukrainian for pointing that out. They're fighting a clever diplomatic war, taking advantage of the fact that organizations like HRF are uncomfortable with military force – the actual solution to these problems. While you dither with words, Ukrainians die.
FWIW I'm very glad I didn't end up accepting funding from HRF for OpenTimestamps. I can't ethically work with you and would have had to cancel it.