kava @ kava @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Euromaidan was a confluence of a lot of different factors. It's virtually impossible to quantify and categorize it under one umbrella term. Some call it a coup, some call it a revolution.

I think it's complicated. For example, there was a a genuine discontent among the population- with a lot of emphasis on the item you mentioned, the decision to not move closer to the EU. But there was more at play. Far-right organizations orchestrated and escalated the protests and intentionally provoked more violence. They understood, as many on the far-right do, that violence begets more violence. And violence is a great way to start a chain-reaction that topples the establishment.

It's something that's been increasing in frequency, some successful and some failing. Ie Jan 6th in the US and Jan 8th in Brazil. both right-wing storming of the capital in an attempt to disrupt the democratic process. In the US and Brazil, where there are stronger and more stable Democratic institutions... the establishment remained intact.

In Ukraine, it toppled like a house of cards.

Here's some leftist reading material

https://jacobin.com/2022/02/maidan-protests-neo-nazis-russia-nato-crimea

https://voxukraine.org/en/denial-of-the-obvious-far-right-in-maidan-protests-and-their-danger-today

and here's a research article looking at the violence that led to the eventual dismantling of the government

https://www.jstor.org/stable/26532701

It appears that the far right Svoboda party was the most active collective agent in conventional and confrontational Maidan protest events, while the Right Sector was the most active collective agent in violent protest events. The Maidan protest events where the far right groups were mentioned were also larger (more participants reported) than the Maidan protest events where the far were not mentioned indicating that the far right were not on the periphery of the Maidan protests but in the center of the events.

Lots of this was funded by opposition parties

According to Ihor Kryvetskyi, the main Svoboda sponsor, who bought the main stage of Kiev Maidan camp, three major opposition parties spent approximately $6,000,000 to support the Kiev camp with Svoboda’s share of roughly 30%.

Which likewise received a lot of funding by the US - through organizations like NED. With billions spent in Ukraine since their independence in 91, roughly $200M annually, a lot of this money ultimately trickled down to the correct sources.

So here's the rub-

You talk about your anarchist comrades, so I'm guessing you're a leftist. But what Euromaidan was, if we're going try boil down a complex multifaceted event into a single sentence: a far-right coup supported by the US that toppled a democratically elected government and allowed a new government to be appointed unconstitutionally. That same government immediately started cooperating with the CIA after which Russia invaded literally only a couple days later.

Do you see why I think Ukraine is not some beacon of democracy? Of course Russia is a hellhole. But Ukraine is a banana republic. It's like Guatemala in the 50s or Cuba before the revolution. It's a government propped up for a purpose and it will be disposed of when it's no longer useful. And that moment is coming soon.

So if I put myself in the shoes of some joe schmoe, why should I risk my life and my family's life for this? It's a joke. The bigger the lie, the more people believe.

We're seeing such a large right-wing resurgence all over the globe that even self-identified leftists are supported right-wing causes. We're starting to see this in the US, for example, with the left becoming progressively more and more anti-immigrant. I don't know. I think we're doomed, if I'm being honest

We pay anywhere from $200_{$300 per day. 8}10 hour days, 5 days a week. roughly $25~$30 an hour for people that have more than a few months of experience. from my research it's a fairly high wage for unskilled work relative to other jobs

it's just a few things

a) our work is mostly nomadic. it involves staying at hotels all across the US for months at a time and then packing up and moving when finished. we pay for room & board, as well as provide a truck & gas. but even so, most Americans do not want to live like this. juan and pablo don't mind at all though.

b) it's hard labor. pretty much digging holes all day. again, most Americans do not want to do this. they either perceive it as below their station or they don't have the willingness to do hard labor in the sun for hours a day

i've been doing this nearly a decade now. it's pretty well known in the industry. you need a laborer, you get a central american (mexican, guatemalan, nicaraguan, etc). you need a supervisor, you get an americanized / assimilated latin american (typically Mexican). you need someone for the office, you get an American

I don't believe Elon's post was exclusively about H1B, please correct me if I'm mistaken.

As for my experience, it's hard to find Americans to fill certain types of jobs. They are not as motivated to work. My hiring experience is more in low-skilled work, but I've witnessed at a company I was a part of before at just how hard it was to find qualified chemists.

Why not just offer people full citizenship with no strings attached to any corporate entity?

I personally support this.

i appreciate the detailed write up and the effort in the comment. i'll try to address some specific points, although I feel like we agree on a lot

In Ukraine, the president changes, in Russia,... [dictatorship]

Russia is of course a dictatorship or very close. that much we are in agreement on. but Ukraine isn't a beacon of democracy either. look at Euromaidan. a series of violent protests led to the democratically elected president being forced into fleeing the country, afterwards a government was appointed into power unconstitutionally and without an election

this is not the peaceful transition of power you see in stable democracies

In Ukraine, you can campaign and demonstrate against the government

In Russia simply standing around with a blank white sign will get you thrown into jail. but also, Ukraine banned a political party that over 10% of population supported early on in the war. they just recently banned the ukrainian orthodox church

I guess what this ultimately boils down to is that I don't think the difference is worth dying for. I think even in stable democratic countries like the US or France or England or what have you- the people have relatively little control over the political process. yeah, they have some protests every once in a while and things change marginally

but generally speaking, the power is concentrated in the hands of the wealthy and they ultimately decide what policies get passed and which get passed over

so if I'm a regular joe schmoe. why should I risk traumatizing my children and wife when the material conditions for my life ultimately remain identical? i don't care about protesting as much as I care about putting food in the mouths of my kids

i understand your perspective and i don't mean to demean it, I just think that the idealism is a trap and it's propagated largely by old white guys who stand to gain from young men going off to die. lockheed martin stock jumped over 30% after feb 2022. the shareholders were ecstatic. and right now, over 100,000 men have been annihilated from existence.

i find no beauty in this. no valor, no nice feeling. just brutal cynical death and greed.

And what happens to us who were born here? Where are we supposed to go when all the jobs that we could fill are being taken by H1Bs and Optimus robots?

these immigrants are not taking the jobs that most Americans work. high-skilled Indians and Chinese are filling shortages in engineering, doctors, etc. vast majority of Americans are not competing with these groups

that's ok. you think lofty ideals is something to die for. i support you. go sign up for the fight, they will accept you

Russia's casualties are probably in the 3x range as is typical for attacking armies.

But the point isn't the total number of casualties but the possibility of being thrown in situations where leadership essentially throws your life away. There are plenty of examples on both sides of this happening.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/19/europe/ukrainian-avdiivka-soldiers-messages-intl/index.html

example, the withdrawal from Adviivka. They knew they were going to be overrun and there was plenty of time to get away. But the political apparatus wants to maintain a strong image, they want to hold land as long as possible instead of retreating and saving manpower.

So instead of just losing it now, you lose it a week later and you throw away 300 lives for virtually no tactical benefit.

politics > strategy > real breathing human beings

I will never be willing to die for a politician. I don't care how nice their cause sounds. I'm not a nationalist, I'm not a patriot. They can find some other koolaid drinker who wants to sacrifice themselves for the greater good

What difference does it make to me and my family? I am ruled by one oligarchic society versus another?

Is it worth me dying and my family violently and traumatically losing their main breadwinner? Wife having to struggle to make ends meet, kids growing up without a father?

What if Ukraine loses anyway? I valiantly risk my death, permanently damage my family, and there is absolutely zero benefit.

Seriously, there is no scenario where this is a good decision. I would have gotten out the moment it looked like a war was potentially gonna happen. If you wait too long, now you can't leave the country and they're kidnapping people off the street and throwing them in vans to force them into serving.

That's how they try to sell you a violent death. Some sort of altruistic idealism. Defend your country. Valor and honor. Bla bla bla

Reality is much more brutal and cynical. There are no winners in war.

From the perspective of the foot soldier, the ethical or moral difference hardly makes any difference. Whether you're defending hopelessly lost positions as a Ukrainian or a Russian being recklessly thrown into a meat grinder - you're dead either way.

I'd have gone AWOL a long time ago. Both the Ukrainians and the Russians have repeatedly had moments where they showed very little regard for human life.

yes of course there are many different data points you can use. along with complex math you can also feed a lot of these data points in machine learning models and get useful systems that can perhaps red flag certain accounts and then have processes with more scrutiny that require more resources (such as a human reviewing)

websites like chess.com do similar things to find cheaters. and they (along with lichess) have put out some interesting material going over some of what their process looks like

here i have two things. one is that lichess, which is mostly developed and maintained by a single individual, is able to maintain an effective anti-cheat system. so I don't think it's impossible that lemmy is able to accomplish these types of heuristics and behavioral tracking

the second thing is that these new AIs are really good. it's not just the text, but the items you mentioned. for example I train a machine learning model and then a separate LLM on all of reddit's history. the first model is meant to try and emulate all of the "normal" human flags. make it so it posts at hours that would match the trends. vary the sentiments in a natural way. etc. post at not random intervals of time but intervals of time that looks like a natural distribution, etc. the model will find patterns that we can't imagine and use those to blend in

so you not only spread the content you want (whether it's subtle product promotion or nation-state propaganda) but you have a separate model trained to disguise that text as something real

that's the issue it's not just the text but if you really want to do this right (and people with $$$ have that incentive) as of right now it's virtually impossible to prevent a motivated actor from doing this. and we are starting to see this with lichess and chess.com.

the next generation of cheaters aren't just using chess engines like Stockfish, but AIs trained to play like humans. it's becoming increasingly difficult.

the only reason it hasn't completely taken over the platform is because it's expensive. you need a lot of computing power to do this effectively. and most people don't have the resources or the technical ability to make this happen.

$20 for a chatgpt pro account and fractions of pennies to run a bot server. It’s really extremely cheap to do this.

openAI has checks for this type of thing. They limit number of requests per hour with the regular $20 subscription

you'd have to use the API and that comes at a cost per request, depending on which model you are using. it can get expensive very quickly depending on what scale of bot manipulation you are going for

There's that infamous quote from Putin- "Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain"

People who actually grew up during the Soviet Union and went through the process of collapse and liberalization as an adult experienced quite a chaotic period of time. Your way of life was violently changed, the ideology you were taught disposed of, and you went through economic troubles. It's no wonder some look back fondly

I've seen similar statements from both Cubans and ex-Soviets. One of the main themes is how under liberal societies you are "addicted to money", so to speak. For example in Cuba, you could not get what you wanted. For example you go to the store one day, there's no shoes. Tomorrow, there's no batteries. You could not eat beef, you could not just leave. There were many restrictions.

But you were sort of guaranteed a certain minimum quality of life. You would have a place to live, you would have food. You would have a steady job without worrying about losing it.

Whereas in the US, you have an exponentially higher purchasing power- even the lowest segments of the population. But there's a catch. You have to be working all week to sustain that lifestyle. And the employer can more easily fire you- it's not as stable.

So they look back with nostalgia at what to them seems likes simpler and calmer times. Less stressful

anyhow, to back up my anecdotal experience with data: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/06/29/in-russia-nostalgia-for-soviet-union-and-positive-feelings-about-stalin/

78% of older Russians think collapse of Soviet Union was a bad thing. Majority of Russians view Stalin favorably.

It depends on the country you're from, but it's safe to say many older people have nostalgia and look back at the Soviet Union fondly. I've seen the same thing with Cubans

here's a thread on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/esy6i5/russians_of_reddit_what_is_the_older_generations/

where people share their experiences. Few of the top comments basically mirror what I referenced above

honestly i'm a little radical here. i think we should totally eliminate prisons

there should be two fundamental types of crimes

1. ones that are forgivable and we deem the individual capable of rehabilitation
2. ones that are unforgivable and we deem the individual incapable

in the 2nd case, we should just execute quickly and quietly. this should be reserved for the extreme cases. you know, those guys that chop up their parents and start eating their ears or the ones that abduct little girls for who knows what. what qualifies for this can be debated, i'm not surely exactly where we draw the line. for example should rape count? should a murder of passion count? i don't know

in the first case, we should take all the money we spend on prisons and instead focus it into rehabilitation programs. so for example let's say an addict is caught shoplifting. instead of hauling them off to prison, forcibly put them in a rehab center to detox. then put them in some sort of public housing and give them a job, give them free methadone, etc.

two major things to keep in mind

a) majority of hispanics in the US have been there multiple generations. while they may hold some varying level of ties to their family's home country, they've more or less been mostly americanized and are effectively just a different flavor of "american"

add in the fact that these are a more socially conservative people who more likely to be religious and it makes sense why they have been moving to the right. GOP could have taken advantage of this a long time ago. I think it's strange that Trump is the one to finally harness this group of people, but I guess reality is stranger than fiction

b) the US isn't stupid and it imports right-wing anti-left people. For example from Cuba or Venezuela. Miami has a massive Cuban population and they're all descendants from people fleeing the communist Castro regime. The Cubans are bred from birth to believe the Castro regime was evil and they're told all about the horrors (conveniently nobody remembers the just as brutal Batista regime, coincidentally supported by the US).

So all it takes is for there to be a connection between "democrats -> left wing -> communist" and all the Cubans turn against the DNC.

what I find fascinating is that you talk to a young Cuban who is one or two generations separated from Cuba, they have all sorts of horror stories and hatred for the Castro regime.

But you talk to an old-timer, someone in their 60s or 70s and they have nostalgia and nuanced views. Sort of like how people view the Soviet Union.

If we're gonna summarize all of this I'd just say this- assimilation. We're watching the process of how Irish went from "ethnic minority" to "white" and hispanics are going through a similar process

To be fair, it's virtually impossible to tell whether a text was written by an AI or not. If some motivated actor is willing to spend money to generate quality LLM output, they can post as much as they want on virtually all social media sites.

The internet is in the process of eating itself as we speak.

lol what? tariffs and protectionism have been the policies of the republican party and conservatism forever

since Reagan it's been the party of pro-business and free market capitalism. it wasn't until the right wind populism that slowly started during the tea party and eventually led to Trump that we started seeing protectionism

And I have a bridge to sell you

I'm not claiming he is going to do this, I'm saying I think he has an opportunity to do it. The fundamental question is what Trump has in mind. Is his goal to just extract as much money as possible for him and his friends while keeping everything else more or less the same? Or does he have a more radical vision?

Certain individuals connected with the new Trump administration (looking at Vance and his financier Peter Thiel) have some radical beliefs in a new sort of technocratic authoritarian state. If this is really their goal, I think universal healthcare is a useful stepping stone to popular support for more radical items.

I'd probably prefer a laptop with a larger battery capacity than weight. Ultimately though what are you using it for? To check your email? Are you gonna be browsing youtube on your wifi hotspot? I'd probably not bring a laptop at all and instead prefer just the phone unless I'm planning on making pitstops at places with wall outlets and wifi.

Trump took over GOP. It's not the same party as before.

Tariffs and deporting millions of people are both quite radical changes of the status quo. Illegals have been a fundamental part of our labor market for decades. GOP historically has been pro-illegal immigrants even if they've kept mostly quiet about it. It's good for business. Reagan, the GOP quasi-religious symbol, legalized millions of illegals.

Tariffs fly in the face of established free market capitalism economics. Milton Friedman would be turning in his grave. You are artificially repressing the market through strong government regulation. Again, a radical reshaping of American policy.

I think Trump actually has a short window of action for very dramatic change. For example, if he comes out and says he believes we need universal healthcare because of the corrupt elites and whatnot, I think people will rally behind him. His popularity would jump up 20 points overnight. I think his voters are actually expecting some type of radical change.

The country is hurting and when people elect populists, it means they're at the end of their ropes. Some of the class consciousness needs to be released with a pressure valve otherwise we're headed for some murky and potentially ugly consequences.

People like Bannon understand this. I think they see the way the winds are blowing and want to be in a position to benefit