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Northern Ireland25510 Posts
On March 03 2022 17:31 iFU.pauline wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2022 17:17 WombaT wrote:On March 03 2022 17:09 iFU.pauline wrote:
Sport should be above conflict and division and not lower itself to the mediocrity of politics. Have you followed any sport for the last, 90+ years? What kind of question is that. You disagree, fine, then prove your point instead. My belief is that sport should not get involved in politics, you have a problem with that?
Russia have had a Winter Olympics, a World Cup, Gazprom as the Champion’s League’s main sponsor and a state-sanctioned doping program within recent times because politics and sport are so compartmentalised right?
I mean sure sport should be above such things, insofar as it’s possible given well, politics is just human interaction after all.
But it’s historically, and with increasing regularity recently been a vehicle for national propaganda and image laundering.
As long as that’s tolerated, I don’t see how international sport can hope to be above the political fray.
It’s possibly going to be a moot point in this case, there may be more general sanctions against Russia such that sportspeople are a casualty by default rather than sport being specifically targeted.
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You only ask this because russian scene is very small and isn't important. Now imagine if russians in sc2 were as big as german players or Serral was russian.
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the citizenry of a nation is supposed to be responsible for the political leadership that represents them. you'd think that everyone should be held accountable. the catch is that you can only punish those that are weak enough to be punished, and you can't punish those that are too big to punish. who's gonna ban the US / UK from sports because they invaded Iraq for oil? nobody, because that would be diplomatic suicide for everyone else. I wonder how many fans would support a ban on South Korean players if South Korea were to do some horrible shit tomorrow
I think in this particular instance of SC2 esports, you really have to really keep things in perspective. who really cares about starcraft 2? does Putin and his oligarchs even know what starcraft is? so what's the point? sports bans are intended to dissuade the leadership of a nation from doing whatever bad shit it's doing. I see no justification for a ban where the punishment would be fully or 99% borne by the individual. this isn't anything like gymnastics or ice-skating where it might actually put some pressure on the Russian leadership. I don't mind sport should get involved in politics, but only when some good can come out of it
other measures such as no Russian flags on esports casts seems reasonable
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Hungary11295 Posts
Just to add to the discussion, ESL released a statement regarding upcoming CS:GO competitions. They are not allowing "organizations with apparent ties to Russian governement" to participate, but they are allowing the players to "compete under a neutral name, without representing their country, organization or their teams’ sponsors on their clothing or otherwise." source
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Imo the fastest way out of this war is by removing Putin from power by the people of russia.
While I pitty every russian individual, who is hit by sanctions way harder than Putin himselve, I welcome every single one of them.
If that also includes russian athelts from various sports (and e-sport) as well, I m fine with that.
Russia needs to remove Putin from power. When the West is comunicating, that everything is going back to normal, as soon as Putin sits behind bars, there are no sanctions, that are to hard.
Ban all russian goods (including gas) and all russian participation. Make them hurt for what Putin has done to the European peace.
This war is Putins war and he alone is to be blamed for it, but the russian people are those who can end it.
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On March 03 2022 14:49 quaristice wrote:
people who are competitive video game players arent the cause of any of this and i wish people would stop being so desperate to punish the regular citizens of a country
your location says united states, and just imagine for one second if people treated americans in that way in order to punish the extremely lengthy list of american war crimes
I think the goal of these collective punishments is to make the russian population unhappy with the situation their government has put them in and try to stop it from within.
But in general I see it like it was already mentioned. These players are single persons who happen to live or are born in Russia. Banning them won't do anyone any good
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Na, unless those players/teams/orgs have direct ties to people in power in Russia.
It’s going to be hard enough to be a Russian pro gamer with the sanctions.
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Czech Republic12129 Posts
On March 03 2022 20:08 Harris1st wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2022 14:49 quaristice wrote:
people who are competitive video game players arent the cause of any of this and i wish people would stop being so desperate to punish the regular citizens of a country
your location says united states, and just imagine for one second if people treated americans in that way in order to punish the extremely lengthy list of american war crimes I think the goal of these collective punishments is to make the russian population unhappy with the situation their government has put them in and try to stop it from within. But in general I see it like it was already mentioned. These players are single persons who happen to live or are born in Russia. Banning them won't do anyone any good
Yeah, because we wanna have a revolution in a country with the 2nd highest nuclear weapon stockpiles. What can go wrong :D
On the topic - no, sport should be above any politics and bringing politics into sports is bad.
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On March 03 2022 19:17 dbRic1203 wrote:
Imo the fstest way out of this war is by removing Putin from power by the people of russia.
While I pitty every russian individual, who is hit by sanctions way harder than Putin himselve, I welcome every single one of them.
If that also includes russian athelts from various sports (and e-sport) as well, I m fine with that.
Russia needs to remove Putin from power. When the West is comunicating, that everything is going back to normal, as soon as Putin sits behind bars, there are no sanctions, that are to hard.
Ban all russian goods (including gas) and all russian participation. Make them hurt for what Putin has done to the European peace.
This war is Putins war and he alone is to be blamed for it, but the russian people are those who can end it.
Any peaceful attempt at revolution will result in thousands of political prisoners, beatings and abuse, up to and including murder and disappearances. And it will not lead to success. Check Belarus. A revolution by force will lead to thousands of deaths and an unknown outcome. That's what everyone wants - the continuation of the banquet?
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no real reason to do it
SC2 is too inconsequential to matter
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Canada8989 Posts
That's a very good question.
Banning CSGO or Dota/Lol players or organization (or any other big esport in Russia) would almost certainly put a lot more pressure on Russia than some of the smaller sports ban they got until now (like curling or biathlon). Esport is both more popular and popular with a different segment of the population. Excluding esport players to play "under the Russian flag" is silly, it's not an esport tradition to do so anyway.
Economic sanction, expulsion of international event/association or targeted individual sanction are almost by essence unjust for the individuals impacted by them as organization or states unilaterally take them as responsible for a State action (ie invasion of Ukraine) despite a lack of proof or logic that these person had any kind of say with the State action compared to the rest of the population. So it would, for example, be evidently unjust for Skillous personally to get banned from the EPT circuit. It's also unclear whether sanctions work as it seemed to have work in some case (South-Africa or Rhodesia) and backfired terribly in other (North-Korea or Iraq in the 1990).
With that said, sports/esports sanctions are amongst the least hurtful for the population of the country while also impacting a lot of people and hurting the country international image. We can say what we like about a ban on Russian gas for example, but it's the kind of sanction that will send the life of thousands of Russian people into disarray, banning pro-CSGO teams would scrap the life of a couple dozens persons but hurt in a very small way the life of thousands and reduce Russian presence on the international stages.
SC2 feels different because it is not particularly popular in Russia, hence it feel even more unjust for the couple of pro-players, but it's hard to argue that we shouldn't follow the rest of the esport world if it goes there.
Honestly, at the end of the day, I think esport should activate a ban of Russian and Belorussian players and organizations. There was a massively supported motion at the UN condemning the Russian regime and calling for it's isolation, the EU, the US and pretty much all their allies have enacted sanctions and tried to maximize the pressure on Russia and sporting and civil society organizations across the world have boycott Russia and called for others to do so, the esports world has an obligation to follow.
True to their Silicon Valley/Tech company roots, esports organization tend to be happy to pretend that they can operate outside state or political affair, but they are major internationals actor whether they like it or not.
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On March 03 2022 15:06 honorablemacroterran wrote:
Collective punishment is always a bad idea. It seems that people like you just delight in ruining people's lives for no reason.
I think the way you attempted to present this as a leading question is especially unctuous and toxic.
"Oh, I don't know, should we ban all these people from competing? Would that be our responsibility? What about hypothetical?"
So scummy. I think we should ban you.
Lol what? OP isn't out to ruin people's lives, he just asks the very valid question if E-Sports should follow the example set by FIFA etc.
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Sports are basically never above politics - sporting competitions between rival powers have always been politically loaded. The nationalistic aspect is less significant in esports and especially SC2 because most people are representing themselves, but at the end of the day esports is a business. Every business decision results in a flow of money from one party to another, and money translates to direct economic power. This can never be politically neutral, as much as we would like to think it is - politically unobjectionable maybe, but never politically neutral.
People have brought up the hypocrisy of targeting some countries for their bad behavior but not others. It's absolutely hypocritical that, for example, there is no real international blowback to the USA's wars, or that gulf states complicit in Saudi Arabia's murderous campaign in Yemen continue to be sport sponsors in good standing. As far as I'm concerned these are reasons to target more bad actors, not to give Russia a free pass. Ultimately geopolitics and media bias means the international community will never be fair in this regard, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't take what we can get in terms of accountability.
I don't believe in blanket targeting of all Russian players though. Ban events in Russia, ban sponsors who are close to the Kremlin, and ban national teams, but if some individual player representing nobody but themselves wants to compete they should be allowed to.
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Emphatic YES.
Sanctions work, but you can't cut corners. The only way the Russian govt stops this shit is internal pressure, which should come from every direction possible as fast as possible. Nothing gets that pressure to build faster than making it crystal clear that the world sees Russia as a pariah state until something changes.
Glad Wombat mentioned the example of apartheid SA (which I am lucky enough to born in just after that ended). Sanctions were an effective pressure tactic, doubly so given that my country prides itself on its athletes in some sports.
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Czech Republic12129 Posts
On March 03 2022 22:04 Ciaus_Dronu wrote:
Emphatic YES.
Sanctions work, but you can't cut corners. The only way the Russian govt stops this shit is internal pressure, which should come from every direction possible as fast as possible. Nothing gets that pressure to build faster than making it crystal clear that the world sees Russia as a pariah state until something changes.
Glad Wombat mentioned the example of apartheid SA (which I am lucky enough to born in just after that ended). Sanctions were an effective pressure tactic, doubly so given that my country prides itself on its athletes in some sports.
So, how long before sanctions start working in the North Korea and we finally stop losing players to the army because the peninsula will be peaceful?
On March 03 2022 21:59 dysenterymd wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Sports are basically never above politics - sporting competitions between rival powers have always been politically loaded. The nationalistic aspect is less significant in esports and especially SC2 because most people are representing themselves, but at the end of the day esports is a business. Every business decision results in a flow of money from one party to another, and money translates to direct economic power. This can never be politically neutral, as much as we would like to think it is - politically unobjectionable maybe, but never politically neutral.
People have brought up the hypocrisy of targeting some countries for their bad behavior but not others. It's absolutely hypocritical that, for example, there is no real international blowback to the USA's wars, or that gulf states complicit in Saudi Arabia's murderous campaign in Yemen continue to be sport sponsors in good standing. As far as I'm concerned these are reasons to target more bad actors, not to give Russia a free pass. Ultimately geopolitics and media bias means the international community will never be fair in this regard, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't take what we can get in terms of accountability. + Show Spoiler +I don't believe in blanket targeting of all Russian players though. Ban events in Russia, ban sponsors who are close to the Kremlin, and ban national teams, but if some individual player representing nobody but themselves wants to compete they should be allowed to.
YES!!! This, exactly this!!! People calling out the hypocricy doesn't want free pass for everyone, but punishment for everyone!
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On March 03 2022 22:08 deacon.frost wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2022 22:04 Ciaus_Dronu wrote:
Emphatic YES.
Sanctions work, but you can't cut corners. The only way the Russian govt stops this shit is internal pressure, which should come from every direction possible as fast as possible. Nothing gets that pressure to build faster than making it crystal clear that the world sees Russia as a pariah state until something changes.
Glad Wombat mentioned the example of apartheid SA (which I am lucky enough to born in just after that ended). Sanctions were an effective pressure tactic, doubly so given that my country prides itself on its athletes in some sports. So, how long before sanctions start working in the North Korea and we finally stop losing players to the army because the peninsula will be peaceful?
That's a fucking stupid comparison 
A large portion of the Russian population have become used to not being part of a pariah state - and will want to return to that. And autocratic as it may be, the Russian people have a lot more power over their country as a whole than the North Korean people do (especially true when you consider that some oligarchs, celebrities and even politicians have spoken out against the war).
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I do not see this really mattering much, and ESL seem to have made ruling that they are fine with Russian players as long as they or their teams don't show off them being Russian or have connections to the government. Basically same kind of treatment as Russian athletes had in Olympics. Also, it seems like it will become extremely hard to travel from Russia to anywhere. No direct flights. Plane leases ending. No spare parts from manufacturers. Only a few trains, no visas, and so on. This will be big problem if/when offline events start to return as pandemic hopefully ends.
More impactful way could be if game publishers and developers pulled their services and servers out, but that would affect everyone playing in Russia and not just pro-players. This could happen as many other industries are already pulling out.
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Northern Ireland25510 Posts
On March 03 2022 22:08 deacon.frost wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2022 22:04 Ciaus_Dronu wrote:
Emphatic YES.
Sanctions work, but you can't cut corners. The only way the Russian govt stops this shit is internal pressure, which should come from every direction possible as fast as possible. Nothing gets that pressure to build faster than making it crystal clear that the world sees Russia as a pariah state until something changes.
Glad Wombat mentioned the example of apartheid SA (which I am lucky enough to born in just after that ended). Sanctions were an effective pressure tactic, doubly so given that my country prides itself on its athletes in some sports. So, how long before sanctions start working in the North Korea and we finally stop losing players to the army because the peninsula will be peaceful? Show nested quote +On March 03 2022 21:59 dysenterymd wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Sports are basically never above politics - sporting competitions between rival powers have always been politically loaded. The nationalistic aspect is less significant in esports and especially SC2 because most people are representing themselves, but at the end of the day esports is a business. Every business decision results in a flow of money from one party to another, and money translates to direct economic power. This can never be politically neutral, as much as we would like to think it is - politically unobjectionable maybe, but never politically neutral.
People have brought up the hypocrisy of targeting some countries for their bad behavior but not others. It's absolutely hypocritical that, for example, there is no real international blowback to the USA's wars, or that gulf states complicit in Saudi Arabia's murderous campaign in Yemen continue to be sport sponsors in good standing. As far as I'm concerned these are reasons to target more bad actors, not to give Russia a free pass. Ultimately geopolitics and media bias means the international community will never be fair in this regard, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't take what we can get in terms of accountability. + Show Spoiler +I don't believe in blanket targeting of all Russian players though. Ban events in Russia, ban sponsors who are close to the Kremlin, and ban national teams, but if some individual player representing nobody but themselves wants to compete they should be allowed to.
YES!!! This, exactly this!!! People calling out the hypocricy doesn't want free pass for everyone, but punishment for everyone!
Russia is many things, but it is not a closed society. There is propaganda, as there is everywhere, but it's still pretty damn open in terms of ability to access information from all over the globe.
Russians have been free to kick my arse and trash talk me while doing it in CS:GO for many a year, North Koreans do not have this kind of wider exposure to the rest of the world. There's Russian expatriates all over the place, hell there's many a Russian on TL
Russians have the ability to notice and feel sanctions bite, wonder why life has got worse and, oh yeah that's the reason why in a manner that isn't comparable to North Korea at all. They don't have the ability to even have a frame of reference with which to judge their lot by, so it is difficult to turn the screw as it were in that society.
As per my South African example, I imagine all sorts of spin was put on it by the Apartheid regime sure, but they couldn't keep it secret why the country was subject to cultural boycotts and economic censure, and thus the question turns to 'is it worth keeping this system that is attracting all this international blowback? Oh and it's a terrible system anyway'
Setting aside of course the many people who had strong moral objections throughout, and would have regardless of any outside pressure.
It's a slow process, it's not universally applicable, it can require a significant commitment to boycotting in various forms but it can be effective, and has been shown to be.
It gradually shifts the opposition to a level where it is simply unassailable. Those who maybe disagreed with apartheid, but were afraid to raise their head above the parapet grew in number and were emboldened over time. Some who were pro-apartheid over time may have evolved and changed their minds on the issue. Eventually the pro-apartheid cohort gets subsumed by the shift and hey presto, thing's change.
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On March 03 2022 22:34 Ciaus_Dronu wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2022 22:08 deacon.frost wrote:On March 03 2022 22:04 Ciaus_Dronu wrote:
Emphatic YES.
Sanctions work, but you can't cut corners. The only way the Russian govt stops this shit is internal pressure, which should come from every direction possible as fast as possible. Nothing gets that pressure to build faster than making it crystal clear that the world sees Russia as a pariah state until something changes.
Glad Wombat mentioned the example of apartheid SA (which I am lucky enough to born in just after that ended). Sanctions were an effective pressure tactic, doubly so given that my country prides itself on its athletes in some sports. So, how long before sanctions start working in the North Korea and we finally stop losing players to the army because the peninsula will be peaceful? That's a fucking stupid comparison A large portion of the Russian population have become used to not being part of a pariah state - and will want to return to that. And autocratic as it may be, the Russian people have a lot more power over their country as a whole than the North Korean people do (especially true when you consider that some oligarchs, celebrities and even politicians have spoken out against the war).
I think the proper comparison is broad based sanctions impacting everyone versus targeted sanctions that go after elites/power brokers. The former have a very poor record of changing the behavior of leaders (as in North Korea/Cuba/Iraq/Iran), whereas the latter have had some success. Sanctions targeting specific sports teams/sponsors are more likely to directly impact business elites, who are more Putin's constituency than the public. Granted, Putin does have quite a bit of popular support too, but a conflict between business interests and his revanchist aspirations has a chance of constraining him somewhat.
A promising sign so far is that most sanctions against Russia so far seem more narrowly targeted, though of course Russia's currency crisis (and their frozen central bank reserves) are going to hurt normal people to an extent.
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Northern Ireland25510 Posts
On March 03 2022 22:53 dysenterymd wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2022 22:34 Ciaus_Dronu wrote:On March 03 2022 22:08 deacon.frost wrote:On March 03 2022 22:04 Ciaus_Dronu wrote:
Emphatic YES.
Sanctions work, but you can't cut corners. The only way the Russian govt stops this shit is internal pressure, which should come from every direction possible as fast as possible. Nothing gets that pressure to build faster than making it crystal clear that the world sees Russia as a pariah state until something changes.
Glad Wombat mentioned the example of apartheid SA (which I am lucky enough to born in just after that ended). Sanctions were an effective pressure tactic, doubly so given that my country prides itself on its athletes in some sports. So, how long before sanctions start working in the North Korea and we finally stop losing players to the army because the peninsula will be peaceful? That's a fucking stupid comparison A large portion of the Russian population have become used to not being part of a pariah state - and will want to return to that. And autocratic as it may be, the Russian people have a lot more power over their country as a whole than the North Korean people do (especially true when you consider that some oligarchs, celebrities and even politicians have spoken out against the war). I think the proper comparison is broad based sanctions impacting everyone versus targeted sanctions that go after elites/power brokers. The former have a very poor record of changing the behavior of leaders (as in North Korea/Cuba/Iraq/Iran), whereas the latter have had some success. Sanctions targeting specific sports teams/sponsors are more likely to directly impact business elites, who are more Putin's constituency than the public. Granted, Putin does have quite a bit of popular support too, but a conflict between business interests and his revanchist aspirations has a chance of constraining him somewhat. A promising sign so far is that most sanctions against Russia so far seem more narrowly targeted, though of course Russia's currency crisis (and their frozen central bank reserves) are going to hurt normal people to an extent.
In this case, doing both would be pretty effective, or could be.
As I said, there's not really any hard and fast rules, there's a fair amount of moving parts and different circumstances. What is the political/socio-cultural state of the country. What are the actual goal of sanctions? Is it wider, multilateral sanctions or is it a unilateral trade embargo? US loves its unilateral sanctions that basically equate to 'be our bitch' in countries they've literally tried to overthrow leaders in and wonder why they don't work.
All sanctions have to do to be effective is tilt things sufficiently in terms of discontent that Putin fears it cascading to a point where an appetite for regime change could form, and pull out of Ukraine before that happens. A popular uprising might be the absolute dream ticket for many of us, but what I outlined is still a win.
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EPT
