Is it just me or does none of this tweet make sense?
If you were trying to raise money for a military truck why would you give a discount? How does giving away Russian language books raise money? If the bookshops are reselling those Russian language books and then donating those profits to the military truck, how is recirculating those books sticking it to Putin? If they're actually recycling them, how is that raising money? Why would Putin care about a truck or second hand books or any of this?
Yeah, it made very little sense when they did it during the beginning of the SMO. It was just a dumb propaganda stunt in two parts to eliminate Russian language media in Ukraine and simultaneously drum up support for the war machine. The main goal was to destroy any media in the Russian language and build support for that book destruction by saying that it would in some way help the military, even though the connection there is tenuous at best.
About a year ago the Ukrainian government also banned (and destroyed) about 19 million books for either being in the Russian language, being Soviet literature, or for covering history they don't like (unsure what history exactly the ban referred to as I cannot find the official list or any media in a language I can read or search in that has covered that aspect of the ban) all the while claiming that the Russian military has been indiscriminately confiscating and burning all books.
The evidence given was the relatively empty shelves in libraries after they themselves banned and destroyed approximately half of the books in libraries and schools throughout the country without any real plans to even replace those books with Ukrainian-language books for the maybe 60% of people in the nation who speak that language.
Thanks for the extra context. I remember the government book banning and destruction last year. Is this just bookshops continuing the trend then or a government backed thing?
Masterfully. As @keepcarrot@hexbear.net says, a true entrepreneurial spirit. They were watching Hamas hedge against Israeli stocks and thought, 'Wouldn't it be cool if we could do something similar?'
This kind of virality is so interesting. Where there's this photo and it's definitely a photo of something, but it's immediately obvious what's claimed in the caption is mostly-to-entirely fake... just because it doesn't hold up to a single thought. It's not even a good lie.
It wants to act as background noise that you half-remember, but not as something you actually read into. It reminds me of the scams with intentional misspellings to bring in the most gullible.
It was the same with the DPRK trial photo with prop cuffs, or a bunch of stuff Israel churns out, or a million other stories.
They recycle books which . . . . generates money? To purchase a truck with? By recycle do they mean you give them a book for free and then they resell it? I actually agree with the tweet, I definitely do not understand.
You give them a non-government approved book which they give to the government for destruction. They may or may not be paid a bounty by the government. In exchange for your book, they offer you a small discount towards buying a different book from them which is government approved. Even if the government doesn't pay a bounty for these books, they take a slight reduction in profit but sold a book you otherwise wouldn't have bought netting them a profit nonetheless. As part of the propaganda stunt they also give a chunk of the profits to the military to buy a truck.
The goal here is coercing the nation into willingly destroying huge quantities of books that the government wants destroyed for being in Russian, for being Soviet or communist literature, or for having an accurate portrayal of history prior to the current mass propaganda campaign.
you get a euro from the recycling center for every kilogram of paper recycled. if a military truck costs €500,000, you just need 500 metric tons of Russian books. that’s like 20 Tolstoy novels
I think the bookstore is basically having a sale and donating the profits towards the tank. It's like bringing a soda can to get a discount at Six Flags except the profit for that day goes towards war. The soda can has no actual value to Six Flags, it's just a weird kind of coupon.
Russian, Ukrainian and Polish are the same language.
The idea that Slavic languages are just different dialects of each other was actually one pushed by some Ukrainians chauvinists in the early 1900’s trying to get Rusyns to speak and write in Ukrainian.
Mutual intelligibility with Russian of around ~75% isn’t bad, and the difference between a sister language and a dialect of the same language is admittedly blurry, but this just strikes me as a weird place to make such a strong claim.
They aren't just blurry, it's pretty much impossible to objectively determine what is a dialect and what is a 'separate' language, because those things are always politically motivated. "A language is a dialect with an army and navy", as Max Weinreich said.
It doesnt matter if these languages are mutually intelligible or not, it helps Russia to say they are. If it helped Russia to say the languages were different then the languages are different. The truth does not matter, Russia steamrolling through Europe destroying NATO and US hegemony is all that matters. As long as Russia doesnt become more right wing as the United States it’s the lesser of evils.
i would also like to understand the Ukrainian economy. my guess is it would be akin to something like the economy of Iowa if it declared itself separate from the United States, banned all economic associations with Chicago, and started buying weapons from a right-wing militia of Sovereign Citizens based out of Alberta using a line of credit extended from some bank in the Panama Papers.
You don't understand. Once Russians are completely erased from Ukrainian life, the Westerners that pillaged the country for the past 30+ years will change course and decide to make the place very prosperous.
Russian, Ukrainian and Polish are the same language.
Unhinged take. I do not understand Russian or Ukrainian in the slightest beyond single words, besides one's a west Slavic language and the other two are eastern Slavic!
You probably said that because you disapprove of Polish and Ukrainian nationalism, but that's no reason to abandon investigation and speak with confidence anyway.
To indulge in personal attacks, pick quarrels, vent personal spite or seek revenge instead of entering into an argument and struggling against incorrect views for the sake of unity or progress or getting the work done properly. This is a fifth type [of liberalism].
...
Liberalism...is a corrosive which eats away unity, undermines cohesion, causes apathy and creates dissension. ... It is an extremely bad tendency.
Liberalism stems from petty-bourgeois selfishness, it places personal interests first and the interests of the revolution second, and this gives rise to ideological, political and organizational liberalism.