As Putin’s little adventure continues apace, the retaliation against Russia grows, in various forms, both serious and silly. The latter is exemplified by stuff like this:
EA is removing all Russia-linked teams from its wildly popular FIFA and NHL video game franchises.
Ouch. That’ll get the Russkis out of Ukraine toot sweet, you betcha. As will this:
FIFA and UEFA have suspended Russia’s national teams and clubs from international football until further notice due to the country’s invasion of Ukraine. The move makes it likely that Russia will be excluded from this year’s World Cup and the women’s Euro 2020 tournament.
That’s going to hurt a little more, because the Russkis are football crazy. Still, not much in terms of geopolitical leverage. Then there’s this:
The Haas Formula One team has terminated Russian driver Nikita Mazepin’s contract “with immediate effect” following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The decision comes on the back of F1’s decision to terminate its contract with the Russian GP. That contract had been until 2025. Haas also ended its sponsorship with Russian company Uralkali, owned by Mazepin’s father.
Now that’s interesting because the F1 cognoscenti will note that the hapless Nikita was easily the worst F1 driver in years, only getting his seat because his Daddy owns Uralkali, Haas’s largest sponsor.
(As such, Haas may have killed two birds with one stone, so to speak.)
But they announced Mazepin’s termination before they pushed Uralkali away — which I have to admit, made me a tad uneasy. Granted, Mazepin’s father is a crony of Putin, but it seemed a little like overkill to axe the driver — he wasn’t responsible for the Ukranian invasion, and if we’re going to toss every individual Russian out of their field of endeavor just for being Russian, that seems to me to be wrongheaded, as so many of these blanket actions so often are.
Which brings me to this injustice:
Soprano Anna Netrebko withdrew from her future engagements at the Metropolitan Opera rather than repudiate her support for Russian President Vladimir Putin, costing the company one of its top singers and best box-office draws.
Anna who? This Anna, is who:
But that’s not the relevant part of this. (As it happens, the 50-year-old Netrebko is not the svelte little thing she was at age 20, but then, who is?)
But all that aside, Anna Netrebko has one of the greatest soprano voices of the past century, and as she’s got older, it has only got better. Forcing her to quit engagements simply because she “refused to repudiate her support for Russian President Vladimir Putin” is clearly a bad thing.
Let’s be clear, here, and remember exactly who we’re dealing with: regardless of her actual sympathies, if she were to come out and say, “This asshole Putin should quit invading Ukraine”, not only would her career end, but there is a good chance that she would be assassinated by the loathsome Unit 29155 for her opinions.
Think I’m exaggerating? Try this, and this, and this. Note that none of this took place in Russia: nowhere in the world is safe when it comes to this criminality.
We should quit being childish about this — it’s not the first time, either; remember “freedom fries”, FFS? — and while I have no issue with punishing teams or people actually representing Russia, let’s not take out the sins of the country on its innocent citizens, cursed simply by an accident of birth.
Oh hell; Anna’s also one of the most beautiful women in the world, so why not indulge ourselves?
Imagine if YOU were targeted and punished because of the things biden and company did.
If someone did that to me I’d never have anything to do with them again. I don’t react well to people with a kindergarten mindset and associative guilt is the behavior of a child.
Err, you mean besides the increased costs for damned near everything?
Wrong enemy too. No, not the Ukrainians but the globalists who directly threaten us.
Yes. One of the remarkable things about “who you think the bad guys are” in the Ukraine v Russia business is discovering how many talking heads, commentators, pundits, and sages turn out to be not who we thought they were. The Cog Dis of both Hannity and Senator Graham calling for assassination is one small example of the craziness.
Those two I had given up on years ago. But there are people I have interacted with on the internet for years that I though were smart enough to realize when they were being played. Wrong.
Agreed, but those two might trigger a few normies into going “hmm…”.
Nah, nevermind, that won’t happen.
I’m glad someone finally came out and said this. I’m tired of articles about liquor stores pouring out Russian vodka like that’ll make any difference. Firing this person or that isn’t going make any difference. The USA hasn’t had a serious foreign policy since Reagan, and even then our policy is always just one election away from changing. And 9/10’s of the news we read is propaganda anyway. The fact that both Dems and Repubs both want to go to war has me firmly in the anti-war camp. We were energy independent under Trump (actually exporting oil) and now we’re back in the fricking hole. Part of me wishes the Russians would open up a can of sunshine over DC and burn out the swamp for good.
“…liquor stores pouring out Russian vodka like that’ll make any difference…”
=========
The store owner has already paid for the vodka.
Russia wins.
Pouring it out means the owner can’t recoup the cost.
Store owner loses.
How retarded can they get?
The smart store owner would have taken a cue, since no more Russian vodka is being imported the stuff they have in stock is now rare and more valuable and therefore the customers that want it must pay more.
Hell, I wasn’t even svelte at 20!
This stupidity is definitely nothing new. In World War I, sauerkraut got renamed “liberty cabbage” in the US for exactly the same silly reasons. Punish the people responsible, not anyone and everyone with even the slightest association with them.
The virtue signaling couldn’t be more asinine. Pouring out bottles of hooch v. the 600k barrels of oil we buy every day from Putin, and the millions more Europe is obliged to purchase thanks to Dementia Joe shutting down our petro production on day one. DJ is a bigger threat to the U.S. than Vlad.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is fucked. It’s just math. David & Goliath is memorable only because it never happens. I suppose it’s possible Putin makes Russia enough of a pariah that he gets whacked, but that’s far from a guarantee he’s not replaced by someone as bad or worse.
What if Ukraine can beat the point spread like Finland did in 1940 in the Winter War?
Spot on Kim. What we are witnessing is cancel culture taken to a rediculous extreme. No one can control where they were born. The average Russian has no more control over their government than anyone else, in fact probably less so. Things like international trade and sports keep people connected, and lessen the risk of war when it’s harder to vilify another group of people. FFS, Apple, Google, Visa, Mastercard cutting off everyday Russians from buying groceries and riding the subway?? I’m convinced the Davos/WEF folks WANT this war and are pushing all this rediculous isolation to make it happen.
Destroying liquor made in Russia isn’t harming the Russian government or the producers at all. They already got paid by the importer and the government already collected their taxes. Russian vodka is such a small portion of US vodka sales. I don’t understand how the vodka market can support so many different manufacturers but apparently it does and does it quite well. I bet most vodka drinkers couldn’t tell the difference between brands anyway.
Ukraine signed away its national security when it gave up its nuclear arsenal. The bottom line is that Russia should not have invaded the Ukraine and they should not have annexed the Crimea when Obummer was in office. But we have seen that the UN is a feckless organization of cleptocrats. Saddam Husein violated no fly zones, prevented and delayed UN inspectors to various sites etc and the UN didn’t do anything to punish Hussein other than just make useless declarations.
JQ
Anna: There is evil lurking in those eyes.
re Anna Netrebko, as she was.
I was shocked, astounded, amazed and extremely pleased at the number of Anna Netrebkos all over Slavic Mitteleuropa when I first went there about 5 or 6 years ago. I’m not sure it’s being Slavic, because the Hungarian ladies are not Slavic but are not behind the Czechs, Poles, Slovaks or Slovenians at all, no, no, not at all.
Prague and Budapest are particularly dangerous hot-spots.
My wife says I am banned from going anywhere near there ever again.
That 20s to 50s transition….guess Wendy’s had it right back in the 80s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpypTXccG2I