Through a postcolonialist lens this is pretty clever. Use of civilized as a term to excuse the racist and expansionist actions of one’s own country, expansion which happens to have coincided with railways being central to industrial power. Now the colonized are civilized, are we the barbarians?

Unironically thinking like that is the real ape-brained behavior.

This reads different if the woman is an economist.

Or you could read the article and see that’s not even remotely the issue, and the title is as per usual misleading.

Germany planned 8 billion eur financial support for Ukraine this year. That’s been used up. So, no more monetary (!) aid unless they find some spare change in the budget, which they won’t.

And to preempt the next headline: Germany’s spending next year on Ukraine will be halved, yes… Because there’re plans for an international fund.

Also while “Olaf” is the one naying further spending, he’s not doing so independently of the ruling coalition. He has little agency.

Obligatory fuck Lindner and fuck the FDP.

They phrased it as “NATO allies are prosecuting a war they would like to win, while Russia is prosecuting a war it believes that it has to win” but yeah pretty much.

It’s wild that they’re spinning this as an economic failure for the west. Anything else - humanitarian, political? I’d totally agree with. But even the article gives the impression of an adult holding a flailing child at arm’s length. How blindly anti-west does one have to be to see that as a win for the child.