In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American entrepreneur and investor, David Sacks (@DavidSacks). He's best-known for his investment in various tech firms, for his ghost town podcast service, Callin, and for his "peace plan" on the Russo-Ukrainian War.
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David is much better as a businessman than as a political commentator - he's been involved in many successful companies such as PayPal, Yammer, and Geni.com, and as an angel investor in Airbnb, Facebook and Uber.
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In 1995, While in college, Sacks and his pal Peter Thiel published a book called The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and the Politics of Intolerance at Stanford. The book was critical of culture of political correctness in universities, arguing that campuses should...
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...have more intellectual diversity. Later in 2016, David apologized for sections of the book where he called date rape "belated regret", questioning "Why is all blame placed on the man?" Three years prior they'd published an article titled "The Rape Issue", defending a...
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...student who had earlier pleaded "no contest" (meaning that the defendant does not accept or deny responsibility for the charges but agrees to accept punishment) on statutory rape case. Sacks allegedly included a graphic description of said encounter, suggesting...
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...that the 17-year-old victim "still had the physical coordination to perform oral sex", and therefore could've uttered the word "no".
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Sacks launched a "social podcasting site" Callin in 2021. It's current "Top Shows" are hosted by @briebriejoy, @aaronjmate, Katie "My password is 1234" Halper (@kthalps), and @mtracey.
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The site itself seems to be a ghost town, with biggest shows attracting only 3-7k subscribers. I'm sure that David has had many "enlightening" discussions with these people who all for some reason seem to support a genocidal maniac, some even several.
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The problem with Sacks' commentary on the war in Ukraine is that he's completely clueless about its history, and especially on the history of Russian imperialism and meddling with its ...
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...neighboring countries ("B-but what about the US/CIA meddling in Iraq/Central America/etc..." - that's a different conversation). It also includes some conspiratorial ideas of "deep state" affecting everything and anything related to US foreign policy.
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His "international investor friend" told that the corruption in Ukraine is "beyond belief". Again he has problems in understanding that the systematic corruption is mostly a result of the previous Soviet system & of the Russian meddling since Ukraine's independence in 1991.
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In his article "Should America Go All In on Ukraine?" for the American Conservative, Sacks warned about Russia's nuclear threat and compared foreign politics to a game of poker, stating that pro-Ukraine commentators ...
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..."have not conducted a cost-benefit analysis or even played a hand of high-stakes poker". David's reasoning in the article is as follows: the more the Ukraine and the West weaken Russia, the higher the risk that Putin will resort to "unconventional arms", basically ...
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...saying that we shouldn't do anything to a genocidal maniac because they "might just nuke us". I'm sure the people of Chechnya, Moldova, Georgia, Syria and Ukraine agree with his statement.
Sacks also suggests that the US could offer a peace deal where Ukraine...
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..becomes neutral & there would be a referendum in Donbas and Crimea to determine their fate.A week later,Elon parroted this Sacks' "call for peace" on Twitter.The only problem is that when becoming independent in 1991,both of these areas already voted to be part of Ukraine.15/24
Sacks is still fighting the battle against "Woke Mind Virus", the same battle he started already in 1992 with his good friend Peter Thiel. In a recent interview with UnHerd, he said that "woke cancellation tactics" are used to silence any "peace negotiations" and that the..
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..whole thing "is turning into Woke War III". But Putin himself has said that the four annexed regions are part of Russian Federation and that they're not willing to negotiate about this. The way we can have real peace negotiations is after Russia - pardon my French - ...
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...fucks off from all regions of Ukraine, including Crimea.
Sacks has brought up the conspiratorial idea that Victoria Nuland ousting Ukraine's democratically elected government, and that she was instigating the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, again having no knowledge...
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...of the history of either Russia or Ukraine. He's also claimed that Donbas has been "the location of civil war" for eight years, completely disregarding the overwhelming evidence that Russia fabricated and coordinated most of it, also sending in military forces.
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We know all this because of the Glazyev Tapes, the Surkov leaks and the intercepted calls of Konstantin Malofeyev. It was also directly stated by former FSB officer Igor Girkin who shot down MH17.
khpg.org/en/1551054011
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He's also suggested that it was Ukraine that broke the Minsk 2 agreement,which to some degree is correct,but so did Russia. Russia also broke the 1994 Budapest Memorandum,where they promised to "Respect the signatory's independence and sovereignty in the existing borders"..
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and "Refrain from the threat or the use of force against the signatory".
A month ago David was prematurely touting about "fall of Bakhmut" and blamed media for portraying Russian defeat as "inevitable". The war of course is far from over, but Russia has been trying to...
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...take a small and strategy-wise pointless town since the beginning of Aug 2022 - I would hardly call that success.
To conclude: for some reason, perhaps due to his success in business, Sacks thinks that he has the answer to this complex and horrible conflict.
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He has no knowledge on the history of these two countries, he doesn't know the background of the conflict, he doesn't account either side's agency, nor does he think about any long-term implications.
BTW David, have you ever heard of the 2nd Chechen War?
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Support my work: buymeacoffee.com/PKallioniemi
Past soups: vatniksoup.com
Related soups:
The Grayzone:
The Revolution of Dignity:
"Genocide in Donbas:
NATO expansion:
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