Many thanks to everyone who donated yesterday! The military and the volunteers who are helping them already got significant contributions . One reaction:
"We have got $1200 within 2 hrs, are shocked and already buying headsets, uniform parts etc. We are thankful unlimitedly"
This help is more important than many presume. Much of the Ukrainian armed forces are essentially the citizen levy, like the territorial defence. For example Borden Markovskyi used to work as a recruitment lead in a software company before the war started linkedin.com/in/bohdan-mark…
You can read his account with google translate. Much of the territorial defence is decentralised acting as the guerrilla troops. They know what equipment/clothes/medicine they need much better than the central command does. You can donate them directly
There's another reason for direct private donations. Many exaggerate how easy it is for Ukraine to get a material support from the Western governments. Consider this misleading statement about the "largely unimpeded support" from the yesterday's article warontherocks.com/2022/05/would-…
The argument about Ukraine getting the "largely unimpeded materiel support from the West" is misleading, whether intentionally or unintentionally. In fact, this war demonstrated that there is no "West". There are various Western governments with very different policies and agenda
Consider Europe. While the United Kingdom provided quick and well-targeted material support for the Ukrainian armed forces, Germany largely sabotaged it and is still sabotaging, breaking its own promises. See the article: welt.de/politik/auslan…
The argument about the supposed United West, providing massive and unimpeded support to Ukraine is wrong because no such West exists in reality. It's cheap propaganda. The war revealed the inner divisions within the West that had previously remained invisible for the public
The private donations to the Ukrainian armed forces are necessary largely because *some* Western governments are not really willing to help. They are not even willing to fulfil their own promises made earlier. That's why individual citizens have to step up
Once again thanks a lot to everyone who donated to the links I posted yesterday (all collected and verified by @sumlenny). In the future I am planning to post more of such threads to collect more help for the armed forces and for the volunteers
PS here's a yesterday's thread with the links for donations
There's a subtle point here that 99,999% of Western commentariat is missing. Like, totally blind to. And that point is:
Building a huuuuuuuuuuge dam (or steel plant, or whatever) has been EVERYONE's plan of development. Like absolutely every developing country, no exceptions
Almost everyone who tried to develop did it in a USSR-ish way, via prestige projects. Build a dam. A steel plant. A huge plant. And then an even bigger one
And then you run out of money, and it all goes bust and all you have is postapocalyptic ruins for the kids to play in
If China did not go bust, in a way like almost every development project from the USSR to South Asia did, that probably means that you guys are wrong about China. Like totally wrong
What you describe is not China but the USSR, and its copies & emulations elsewhere
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