US could cut Ukraine's access to Starlink internet services over minerals, say sources.

From world police to mafia protection racket.
- we did impeach him for extorting ukraine last time.
  
  Let's do it again! Let's make sure nobody can break his record for impeachments.
- ItsTheSamePicture.png

Nevermind that the terminals were not free and were paid for mostly by European allies. Duo of fuckers will leverage them anyway.

Jesus fucking christ. If you do this, and exploit Ukraine while they are literally under the gun, the US will be dead to the rest of the western world.
I cannot express how hard you can go fuck yourselves.
The literal rest of my life will be spent trying to fuck over America and Americans. Fuck you, you selfish, coward, pieces of shit.
- oh my apologies! I'll personally see to stopping it myself.
  
  Come on doc, you've gotta help us, we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!
- American here: hard agree. This is all insane, but it’s predictable, and they told us about it ahead of time, and people still fucking voted for it. We shat the bed, now we must lie in it.
  I’m probably gonna try to leave the country and renounce my citizenship at some point, particularly if the next few months are as catastrophic as I think they’ll be.
- I was planning a holiday in the US this or next year, but decided not to proceed with it. I’d rather go anywhere else now really. Currently for me Russia = India = China = North Korea = USA now. Plenty of european countries I’d rather throw my money at.
  
  Come visit us in Canada! It's beautiful here. Better come fast before Trump decides to invade us for our oil and minerals though. I expect it'll be much less beautiful after that, and we won't have as much time to spend with you while waging a guerilla resistance.
  
  The fuck did we... Oh right, Modi.
  
  That's a bit of an extreme take. Surely you can see some differences between them...
  
  I feel this. I would love to see Russia, China and India...but there's not a chance that I would knowingly give my money to those regimes. Not even through participating in their economy for half a week.
- I think a global boycott on US-made goods + services is necessary. Trump can only do this because the US is such a powerhouse.
  
  We don't really make anything though, aside from software I guess.
  
  That is already happening in Canada. Those imperialists threatening annexation was finally what brought us Canadians together on something lol
  
  Would be nice to see global sanctions against the US. Not realistic, but I hope all countries are moving towards significantly reducing American reliance. It'll be a slow process, but needs to be done.
  
  The US is only such a powerhouse, because they generally have the support of their allies. That makes it the unparalleled biggest economic block in the world.
  But without their allies, USA isn't that much stronger than China economically. And USA wouldn't be nearly the powerhouse they've gotten used to be.
  So China just has to look on and do nothing, while USA is losing their world dominance quickly.
  
  Just relax and let trump continue destroying the USA. He’s doing putin’s work and fucking us all, Europeans and Americans alike.
  
  Yea, buyFromEU is already getting traction. More intense on reddit and a little bit on https://feddit.org/c/buyFromEU
  
  I moved all my cloud computing from DO and Vultr to European owned options. It's a small thing, but it's about the only thing that I had been purchasing from the USA.
- The literal rest of my life will be spent trying to fuck over America and Americans.
  As an American, I'd just like to say we absolutely deserve this.
  
  No we don't. Trump deserves to be kicked to the curb, but Americans are absolutely fine, if a bit short sighted.
  A country is not its leadership, it's the people. And it's incredibly hard for the people to replace their leadership outside of election season, and even then, there's a lot of pressure to make poor choices on your ballot.
  
  Sure, but does the rest of the world?
  
  All Amerikans deserve this and worse because they sit at home and complain online while a literal textbook definition of a coup is happening to their country. The country that literally screeches at the top of its lungs about the second amendment and right to have a gun “in case of a tyrannical government”. Not a single shot fired. No protests, just complaints. Y’all gave up your country without a fight.
- I understand your feelings, and I share them. Let's stay strong and united, refusing to let fear or hatred divide us. Remember, we have allies in America who stand against extremism and are working tirelessly to promote justice and equality. There is a growing movement of brave activists, judges, and everyday Americans who are standing up against these challenges. It's crucial that we support them and let them know they are not alone. Together we are stronger.
  You can find an overview of the current resistance in yesterday's post on Substack: https://robertreich.substack.com/p/ten-reasons-for-optimism
  
  As someone who didn’t vote for the Cheeto Nazi, thank you for the nuance.
  That said, comment OP and anyone reading this - please boycott and sanction the US! Starving the billionaire leeches and smacking government into pretending they have an iota of decorum or sense is necessary, and any outside influence on that is helpful.
- I'm with you. Fuck this shit.
- Exactly. I'm already thinking about pulling my pension pot out of any US investments. It's a tiny amount but maybe we can start a movement to keep pension investments in countries and systems you believe in, not whatever mix are typically used
  
  That does literally nothing though. Buying a share of a company is like buying a used product, none of that money goes to the company. The only benefit to a company is the share price rising, and your contribution to that is effectively zero, and it only matters if the company issues or buys back shares, which is somewhat rare.
  It's the same reason that buying "green" shares does nothing.
  Invest based on what's most likely to give you a good return, even if you don't agree with their products. And then buy products based on your convictions. If you want to feel like you're "sticking it to the man," use the profits to buy from their competitors.
  
  Canadian. I've divested 100% of my meagre savings out of us stocks. USA is not a reliable trading partner, or a leader in anything anymore except deceit.
  
  Given there is going to be serious economic disruption there is a lot be said for diversifying your assets. If most of your assets are currently in the US moving your pension fund into assets held outside it is a strong de-risking move, particularly if you can move it out of the country totally using a foreign ~~prover~~ provider as well as holding non-US assets(not sure if that last is legally possible, don't know much about your pension system).
  Note you may get poorer performance - it's really up in the air just yet what the short term impacts will be economically (depends what King Mango ends up deciding, it's mostly speculation right now)
  Edit for typo
- the fuck does Galicia have to do with this?
  
  Sounds like someone who is sensibly voting with their dollar. I'm not from USA or Canada, and I am doing the same.

Time for the UK government to make good on all that money we spent rescuing OneWeb...

the weird cube man has been dicking around the Ukrainians over his satellite service since before he got involved in the election he just won. if you look into the history of spacex, a meeting with russia looms large in its early history. i personally think he's been a kremlin asset since 2004, at least.
- He may have been a russian asset since 2004 (I don't know either way) but it certainly was nothing to do with that SpaceX meeting. He went there to try and buy Russian rocket engines, they told him to pound sand. He was forced to do it the hard way and hire a team and they designed what are now the Falcon 9 engines.
  I don't understand why people keep making stuff up (not just this post, it's one of many), he's evil enough on the actual facts
  
  I see it as an extension of the myth of American purity and external corruption. "This person is evil, some outside power must have compromising info on them." "Immigrants are violent criminals preying on innocent americans."
  These attitudes ignore the reality that bad people can come from anywhere. There are plenty of villians with very mundane origin stories. What matters is if everyone else has the will and ability to keep bad people in check and hold them accountable.
  The grifters in charge need no other motivation than a sense of superiority and an opportunity to make a buck.

Please, everyone else quickly develop options other than the US. We’re going to need a minute to sort this mess out. :(((((((

I’ve had the great fortune to visit and live among other peoples in their countries (primarily the Baltics, Russia proper and Belorus) many years ago (first when Eesti still used the ruble, and then later again when she used those beautiful Eesti Kroon), when the people of those countries had much to tell me about their lives and cultures. I then had to return to the states, where knowing these things was frowned upon heavily, because they weren’t US-centric stories.
I’ve lived outside US borders just perhaps long enough to be able to disdain US exceptionalism, and understand that its head hasn’t been cowed enough yet for its population to understand humility relative to the much older and wiser world.
It’s very sad that I have to live to see it, especially with Canada and Mexico as our neighbors, but it seemed inevitable decades ago, so I’ll watch grimly as the country I was born in is made to fucking reckon… if it ever even learns to understand that fact.
- For what it's worth, plenty of us who have lived here our entire lives reject US exceptionalism, protestant work ethic, etc.

How pathetic.

Makes me wonder if this was Musk's plan all along - make Starlink indispensible and then leverage it against Ukraine when the time came.
- Modern capitalism in a nutshell. Establish a monopoly through any means, then exploit the hell out of that monopoly to become richer and more powerful.

*will.
The space Nazis are here.

"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
- Was that a warning or a threat from Kissinger?
  
  Maybe it was from his Nobel peace prize acceptance speech.

You can do directed WiFi with pretty long range. But you have to set up both transmitter and receiver antenna, and you'll want to tune the direction of both antenna since radio waves don't travel in a straight line along the surface of the Earth. Bit of a faff really.
Long-range Wi-Fi - Wikipedia - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-range_Wi-Fi
- The point is that they can't set up a receiver. Modern warfare uses a lot of land.