Or it’s a misleading way to attract funding. The hard thing about sabotage is that it’s dangerous, not that it’s expensive. Either they are doing it, then publicly fundraising for it shows they have poor judgement and money they get will soon be confiscated by the government. Or they’re not doing it, then talking about it is (perhaps unintentionally) misleading. I think it’s the latter, because overwhelming majority of opposition activists are not capable of executing that kind of thing.
On the other hand, I heard quite a few stories about Russian opposition activists stealing laptops, borrowing money and never returning etc. Not saying Russian opposition is unusually untrustworthy, but they are no more trustworthy than an average person. Meaning you should apply your regular amount of caution to check that you are not donating to a scam. And if you send money hoping they will be spent on X, even though no one actually promised that and officially money are spent on something else, that’s not even a scam. That’s you scamming yourself.
Viktoria Malyasova
I think this question is irrelevant, as the group in question almost certainly doesn’t do any sabotage.
I looked up what your group does. You hold pickets and spread antiwar agitation like this one:
Writing says “No to war” There is no way to know if you also sabotage railways, but I’m guessing you don’t, because if you sabotage railways, it would make sense to keep a low profile and not draw attention to yourself by making a website and writing things on fences.
So, what is your theory of change? I.e. what sequence of events do you imagine will lead from you writing things on fences to the war stopping?
Well, the marginal value of money does go to zero eventually, once you have enough money to buy everything, hire everyone and take over the world. It’s trickier with QALYs.
You called attention to the existence of a hack and said his name, that could be enough for some people to uncover identity. (Agreed that people posting the full name were not very considerate either). Did it even occur to you that saying some things in some countries is illegal and your doxxing victim could go to prison for saying something that looks innocuous to you? Do you know where Mark is from and what all his country’s speech laws are? I am so completely disappointed that you would notice a leak like this and not quietly alert people to fix it and PM Mark about it, but doxx someone over an internet argument.
It was already suggested to use US humanitarian parole program to to give refuge to surrendering soldiers. Anything making it easier to get work permits will help, too. When I applied for a Blue Card in Germany last year, it took about a month, and I needed lots of notarized translations of documents, which are expensive. An H1B visa in USA takes half a year to get.
There are flights into some countries like Armenia, Georgia, Serbia. Yes, I think the main problem is people don’t have a lot of money, and sometimes cannot access the money because of new Russian laws and sanctions. And rent became 2x-3x more expensive in Erevan. So people are not sure if they can make it. But I am not one of the people who recently left, I think they understand the situation better.
Hello everyone!
I am a human rights activist from Russia. I work as a ML scientist at a medical tech startup in Germany. When the war with Ukraine started 8 years ago, I decided to record an antiwar video as a reply to Ukrainian students. It was my first time trying to organize a protest, and it was way scarier than just participating. What if one of the students got expelled for this? What if at the rally I’d organize in their support someone got accused of hitting a cop? Suddenly it looked like my little initiative could turn into a years-long nightmare. I decided to do it and was very glad to discover that an Open Russia journalist had the same idea and we could merge our efforts.
No one got in trouble for the recording, but it didn’t change anything, either. So I went looking for more effective ways to help Ukraine and free my own country. As protests in Russia dwindled, I decided that building a friendly AI was my best bet. I got into machine learning, read most books on MIRI’s reading list and was in the middle of a MIRI interview when COVID struck and they stopped hiring programmers. My plan no longer called for staying in Russia, so I moved to Germany last year, to stop supporting Putin’s war and oppression with my taxes.
Is there any reason why, when you commit to a grant, you cannot set aside the money as gold or index funds or some other reliable asset, and instead have to rely on a single company’s ability to pay in the future?