What is happening in Uzbekistan is very serious. Amendments proposed into the Chapter XVII of the Uzbekistan Constitution are viewed as highly provocative by the Karakalpaks. If they are really passed, this may exacerbate the situation even further, escalating the conflict
International community should dissuade President Mirziyoyev from amending the Chapter XVII of the Constitution before it's too late. Deescalating the conflict now is absolutely possible and relatively easy. In a week or two it may be too late, if a lot of blood is shed by then
Uzbekistan is lingustically heterogenous. Uzbeks are Karluks (like Uyghurs). Karakalpaks are Kipchaks (like Kazakhs). Khwarezmians are Oghuz (like Turks in Turkey). Almost all rural population is Turkic, but cities like Bukhara or Samarkand still have many Persian speakers
In the course of the Turkic migration, countryside was Turkified first. Meanwhile some of the cities continued to speak Persian for many centuries, remaining the Iranian islands among the Turkic sea. Not unlike some of the old urban centers of Anatolia after the Seljuk invasion
Karakalpaks live in the northwest and thus are very much affected by the disappearance of the Aral Sea. They used to be coast dwellers and their mode of life heavily dependent upon the sea that is ceasing to exist. Water that used to feed it was directed to the cotton fields
Cotton production was introduced to the region by the Russian Empire to create a source of raw materials for the Russian textile industry. Later Soviets would greatly expand the cotton production to produce gunpowder. But the cotton consumes too much water to grow
Soviet cotton production consumed too much water, depleting the rivers. And it killed the Aral Sea. What used to be the sea bottom is now desert. Wind is blowing the salt and the chemicals brought to the former sea from the fields by the rivers all around the neighbouring areas
Even worse, Soviets used the former Vozrozhdeniye Island as a polygon for biological weaponry for decades. Now it is a peninsula, because the water from the Uzbek side is draining quickly. Kazakstan which is much richer took some efforts to save its own part of the sea
The Aral shore is a location of the enormous man made catastrophe. Basically the Aral desert is a byproduct of the Soviet cotton production. Cotton (=gunpowder) production was prioritised while keeping the environment and the economy of locals was not
In 1990, even before the collapse of the USSR, Karakalpakstan declared its sovereignty. In 1993 it signed a treaty with Uzbekistan. It agreed to remain as part of the country for 20 years, if it keeps its sovereignty and will have a right to later secede through a referendum
Basically in 1993 Uzbekistan signed a treaty agreeing to allow Karakalpaks the independence referendum in 2013. Of course, later the central government would concentrate all the powers and never allow it. In 2013 it simply arrested those idiots who really advocated for it
Now it introduced new amendments to the Constitution (see here, Chapter XVII, you can google translate it) gazeta.uz/ru/2022/06/30/… which strip the region from the remaining rights. That provoked the mass unrests
Uzbekistan ministry of interior claims they already suppressed them. They did not. But if the unrests continue, the government wil escalate the violence which may lead to the unpredictable consequences in a very young and poor society with rapidly rising cost of life
International community should persuade President Mirziyoyev to abstain from amending the Chapter XVII of the Constitution. Deescalation is still possible, before a lot of blood is shed. The end
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What I am saying is that "capitalist reforms" are a buzzword devoid of any actual meaning, and a buzzword that obfuscated rather than explains. Specifically, it is fusing radically different policies taken under the radically different circumstances (and timing!) into one - purely for ideological purposes
It can be argued, for example, that starting from the 1980s, China has undertaken massive socialist reforms, specifically in infrastructure, and in basic (mother) industries, such as steel, petrochemical and chemical and, of course, power
The primary weakness of this argument is that being true, historically speaking, it is just false in the context of American politics where the “communism” label has been so over-used (and misapplied) that it lost all of its former power:
“We want X”
“No, that is communism”
“We want communism”
Basically, when you use a label like “communism” as a deus ex machina winning you every argument, you simultaneously re-define its meaning. And when you use it to beat off every popular socio economic demand (e.g. universal healthcare), you re-define communism as a synthesis of all the popular socio economic demands
Historical communism = forced industrial development in a poor, predominantly agrarian country, funded through expropriation of the peasantry
(With the most disastrous economic and humanitarian consequences)
Many are trying to explain his success with some accidental factors such as his “personal charisma”, Cuomo's weakness etc
Still, I think there may be some fundamental factors here. A longue durée shift, and a very profound one
1. Public outrage does not work anymore
If you look at Zohran, he is calm, constructive, and rarely raises his voice. I think one thing that Mamdani - but almost no one else in the American political space is getting - is that the public is getting tired of the outrage
Outrage, anger, righteous indignation have all been the primary drivers of American politics for quite a while
For a while, this tactics worked
Indeed, when everyone around is polite, and soft (and insincere), freaking out was a smart thing to do. It could help you get noticed
People don’t really understand causal links. We pretend we do (“X results in Y”). But we actually don’t. Most explanations (= descriptions of causal structures) are fake.
There may be no connection between X and Y at all. The cause is just misattributed.
Or, perhaps, X does indeed result in Y. but only under a certain (and unknown!) set of conditions that remains totally and utterly opaque to us. So, X->Y is only a part of the equation
And so on
I like to think of a hypothetical Stone Age farmer who started farming, and it worked amazingly, and his entire community adopted his lifestyle, and many generations followed it and prospered and multiplied, until all suddenly wiped out in a new ice age
1. Normative Islamophobia that used to define the public discourse being the most acceptable form of racial & ethnic bigotry in the West, is receding. It is not so much dying as rather - failing to replicate. It is not that the old people change their views as that the young do not absorb their prejudice any longer.
In fact, I incline to think it has been failing to replicate for a while, it is just that we have not been paying attention
Again, the change of vibe does not happen at once. The Muslim scare may still find (some) audience among the more rigid elderly, who are not going to change their views. But for the youth, it is starting to sound as archaic as the Catholic scare of know nothings
Out of date
2. What is particularly interesting regarding Mamdani's victory, is his support base. It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that its core is comprised of the young (and predominantly white) middle classes, with a nearly equal representation of men and women
What does Musk vs Trump affair teach us about the general patterns of human history? Well, first of all it shows that the ancient historians were right. They grasped something about nature of politics that our contemporaries simply can’t.
Let me give you an example. The Arab conquest of Spain
According to a popular medieval/early modern interpretation, its primary cause was the lust of Visigoth king Roderic. Aroused by the beautiful daughter of his vassal and ally, count Julian, he took advantage of her
Disgruntled, humiliated Julian allied himself with the Arabs and opens them the gates of Spain.
Entire kingdom lost, all because the head of state caused a personal injury to someone important.