Not that the contractors would all be bad people. But sanctions are there to force change. The easier it is to make sanctions ineffective the longer change will take.
I am paying for programming services. Traditional banking system is unreliable, so I use crypto. Nothing illegal or unethical!
Lots of caveats as I don't have enough information, happy to be corrected though.
But I think that these sanctions against Russia are ethically justified. So circumventing them is unethical for me, whether illegal or not.
Edit: Saying that these sanctions are ethically justified does not imply that they would be the most efficient or effective way to stop the war.
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/crypto-exchange-bit...
Chase lets you send wires online for 40 bucks still to all but half a dozen banks there. There might be cheaper ways to wire, too. Not sure what's so unreliable about that, worked all of this year so far.
An action does not get ethical because others are worse. It's good for your conscience noting others are worse, I don't deny that.
(And I did not say that I don't do the same. I recently had to take a plane. It was unethical to make Russia's war budget grow a tiny bit by doing so, but I thought staying at home would have had other morally unpleasant consequences.)
That this would help the CO2 issue is only a nice side effect.
I would argue the more the economic exchange to violence ratio is between two groups, the better it is for both groups (maybe not the leaders)
But there is a tipping poing when a dictator and his elite falls. Nobody thought the Soviet Union or the GDR would fall in 1989/90. But they did, at some point the lying just did not work anymore. As long as average peaceful people can make a good living this is much less likely to happen.
Many Russians that get cryptocurrencies from other countries used it to buy plane tickets to fly away (or other means to get out of the country), and they are definately not want to pay taxes, but are contributing the brain drain that is likely happening right now.
My personal "sanctions" to the US are that I don't travel there anymore. I visited the country around 2 dozens times and I mostly liked it. But after 9/11 only twice and now not for nearly 12 years. 2 Bushs, homeland security, Manning/Assange/Snowden, and Trump gave me enough. Obama and Biden were too small sparks of hope in the 49% misery.
Biden is nothing like Obama. He is an old timer who has zero mental cognitive ability beyond trying to save his son's investments in Ukraine.
China is planning to drop USD with Gulf countries today. and the US power rests on USD.
Future us will look upon Biden's era & foolishness as the death of American hegemony.
The only thing I’m aware of is that Hunter was a non-executive director of Burisma, a private oil company, but that he resigned in 2019 during Biden’s election campaign and 3 years before the war.
Anything more?
They are literally state-sponsors of terrorism and they're funding privately operated terrorist groups.
Rapes, murders, destruction of civilian infrastructure, it's all well documented.
Before anyone jumps to the wrong conclusion: yes, this rule holds (and we enforce it) regardless of what your politics actually are. For more explanation see https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....
I realize it can be frustrating to hold minority views, but it's not ok to vent that frustration in flamewars on Hacker News. We can't allow that, or this place will soon burn itself to a crisp.
That's why Russia is being sanctioned, there is no greater evil.
Regardless of how right you are or feel you are, or how bad others are or you feel they are, it's not ok to abuse HN like this. It does no good for anyone.
No, they didn't.
(predictably, Kremlin apologists/supporters of genocide/whataboutists quickly resort to lies, every single time)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/16/iraq.iraq "Iraq war was illegal and breached UN charter, says Annan"
Even if George Bush went around US punching everyone in their face and telling them that all the wars were war crimes, Americans would accuse him of being a Kremlin apologist.
And, I'm capable of seeing more than one evil in this world.
Those wars were wrong, but the question is will you ever say that the Russians are wrong to be committing genocide in Ukraine, and torturing its civilians?.
I suspect you won't.
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=whataboutism%20by:dang&dateRan...
"Hawala as a legal concept came to be described as early as 1327, according to Schramm and Taube,[5][6] though the actual practice has existed since the 8th century [...]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala
However, the massive speculation and pollution caused by crypto make the overall balance look strongly negative to me.
Such a cruel joke from mother Nature putting all those natural resources in the hands of a nation and people so unworthy.
Read some history. "unworthy", yeah, sure.
The thing is that it doesn’t create any value, it’s all a game of musical chairs. I don’t care VCs holding the bags, but I do care about the retail “investors” that were naive. (I don’t care about the hfsp bros).
In a few years we will look back at the crypto space and we wonder why nobody intervened like nobody intervened with Madoff, despite multiple people warning about him.
The damage the crypto space has caused is just beyond redemption. To both people and the environment.
It’s time that this stuff is regulated to death. It will also kill the crypto ransom ware pipeline because of a lack of on/off ramps.