As someone that protested frequently and usually has a "short fuse" regarding abuse of authority, I find that unlikely. Marching down a street can cause collateral damage, you slow down emergency services when you do that. Same with picketing government buildings, people providing essential services just can't show up to work that day.
A modern "government" is a controlled civil war in the same way a modern engine is controlled explosions. I day dream and have the stamina to engage in endless friendly debates about how we can improve or change this, but let's not pretend there's a clean way to engage with "the system" because there's not.
Protests almost by definition cause collateral damage.
If you are blocking off streets, you are slowing down people getting into work, slowing down emergency services...
If you are not doing any of that, you are not getting heard and there's not much "protesting" going around.
I think GP's point was that these protests, while aligned in spirit, might actually work against each other. Non-Russian companies stopping to provide service to Russian-protesting entities will mean that they can't achieve their protest objectives anymore.
In the US, Europe, etc, one's government is actually approximately representative of a large portion of the populace.
In Russia, the government is autocratic and not at all representative of the populace, so comparisons like "their government is doing a worse thing than we're doing to them" kinda falls flat.
What it sounds like is happening here is that Namecheap feels like they want to do something, and they're doing a thing that they are able to do, and something causes damage in the general direction of the intended target. Probably there are non-zero Russian state news, propaganda, etc sites that will be affected by this.
But this is clearly not a war born out of popular desire of the populace, and the collateral damage from this is huge. The amount of harm this will cause random people who may be trying to flee Russia, or to Russian opposition organizations that might now be less able to organize internal protests, almost certainly outweighs any inconvenience caused to the Putin regime.
Yes it's true the Russian regime is not a representative democracy, but it is an oligarchy.
International trade and economic sanctions hits the wealthy elite and is effective at influencing change. It's unfortunate that this inconveniences citizens but when the regime is unjustly declaring war and killing people it's one of the few moves left to make.
As someone that protested frequently and usually has a "short fuse" regarding abuse of authority, I find that unlikely. Marching down a street can cause collateral damage, you slow down emergency services when you do that. Same with picketing government buildings, people providing essential services just can't show up to work that day.
A modern "government" is a controlled civil war in the same way a modern engine is controlled explosions. I day dream and have the stamina to engage in endless friendly debates about how we can improve or change this, but let's not pretend there's a clean way to engage with "the system" because there's not.
Protests almost by definition cause collateral damage.
If you are blocking off streets, you are slowing down people getting into work, slowing down emergency services...
If you are not doing any of that, you are not getting heard and there's not much "protesting" going around.
I think GP's point was that these protests, while aligned in spirit, might actually work against each other. Non-Russian companies stopping to provide service to Russian-protesting entities will mean that they can't achieve their protest objectives anymore.
But his government is directly killing innocent people in Ukraine right now, which is worse.
Different times call for different measures of protest, albeit these two people still share the same goals against the same aggressor.
> his government
In the US, Europe, etc, one's government is actually approximately representative of a large portion of the populace.
In Russia, the government is autocratic and not at all representative of the populace, so comparisons like "their government is doing a worse thing than we're doing to them" kinda falls flat.
What it sounds like is happening here is that Namecheap feels like they want to do something, and they're doing a thing that they are able to do, and something causes damage in the general direction of the intended target. Probably there are non-zero Russian state news, propaganda, etc sites that will be affected by this.
But this is clearly not a war born out of popular desire of the populace, and the collateral damage from this is huge. The amount of harm this will cause random people who may be trying to flee Russia, or to Russian opposition organizations that might now be less able to organize internal protests, almost certainly outweighs any inconvenience caused to the Putin regime.
Yes it's true the Russian regime is not a representative democracy, but it is an oligarchy.
International trade and economic sanctions hits the wealthy elite and is effective at influencing change. It's unfortunate that this inconveniences citizens but when the regime is unjustly declaring war and killing people it's one of the few moves left to make.
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