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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/28/russia-wins-by-losing-timothy-snyder-on-raising-funds-for-ukrainian-drone-defence>
"When the Yale historian Timothy Snyder was asked by Ukraine’s government to
fundraise for the war effort, he considered a project to restore Chernihiv
library. It would have been an obvious choice for the bestselling author, who
has visited the ruined library – a gracious gothic terracotta structure that
survived two world wars but was smashed to rubble in March by Russia’s 500kg
bombs.
Yet he soon decided that a fundraiser for a library would be “kind of morally
self indulgent”. When he asked his friends in Kyiv what was most urgently
needed, nobody hesitated: anti-drone defence. “I thought I should do the thing
which is most urgent now,” Snyder told the
Guardian in a phone interview from
the Yale campus. “The ruins of the library are going to be there. I can raise
money for that later. But right now, what’s happening is that the Russians are
trying to freeze millions of people out by destroying the power grid. And so
what I should be trying to do is try to stop that.”
So this is how the professor came to be leading a crowdfunding campaign to
raise $1.25m to fund a “Shahed hunter”, an anti-drone system to detect enemy
devices and jam signals, with the aim of destroying the weapons in the sky. For
months, Russia’s Iranian-made Shahed drones have sown terror in Ukrainian towns
and cities, killing civilians, destroying homes and power plants.
Snyder joins celebrities such as the
Star Wars actor Mark Hamill and the
singer superstar Barbra Streisand, who have embarked on separate crowdfunding
campaigns for drones and medical aid respectively, via the Ukrainian
government-backed group, United24. By 22 November, around one eighth of the
money for the Shahed-hunter had been raised, through “lots and lots and lots of
small donations”, Snyder said."
Via Kevin O'Brien.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
