#fifty-four countries in Africa

[angelsaxis]

"The police that had opened fire on the school children were part of a special unit to quell protests over the course of several months. During South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation process decades later, government officials explained that the police's Riot Unit was set up in the country with the help of Israel a year and a half before the Soweto Uprising:

The Riot Unit was initially based in several centers around the country and Drew on the skills of the Special Task Force--a new elite unit--set up with Israeli assistance. The crits were drawn from those with counterinsurgency training. One such recruit was Colonel "Rooi Rus" Swanepoel who led a fifty-eight-strong task force into Soweto during the first twenty-four hours of the 1976 riots and took charge of operations in Alexandria during the same period."

-- Becoming Abolitionists, Derecka Purnell. Second paragraph cited TRC Final Report

[dragoneyes618]

When asymmetrical warfare is discussed, the focus is usually what happens on the battlefield. So, for instance, when the Viet Cong snuck out of the jungle to attack Americans or when Hamas terrorists leave their tunnels to shoot at Israeli troops or hide their weapons while they pretend to be innocent civilians, the battlefield is the subject of unequal or asymmetric warfare. But I want to discuss some other aspects of the asymmetries – the inequalities – in the current Gaza/Hamas war against Israel. These asymmetries are essential parts of the situation and culture of each combatant and so they appear off the battlefield rather than on it.

First, there is a striking asymmetry in numbers of people aligned with each side. There are only approximately seventeen million Jews in the world today and only one Jewish majority country. There are about six-and-a-half to seven million Jews in the U.S., about seven to seven-and-a-half million in Israel, and the rest are scattered around the world, with the largest concentrations of Jews being in France, the English-speaking countries, and then in smaller pockets throughout the world, including Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, and elsewhere. There are, however, approximately four hundred million Arabs in the world and approximately two billion (with a B) Muslims in the world, and fifty-two Muslim majority countries.

Those numbers matter not only regarding the ability of Israel to raise the money and troops to fight in its defense, but also because Israel’s enemies do not ever have to work hard to obtain a majority in the United Nations and to vote along religious-ethnic lines. Add to the Muslim countries in the United Nations the Russian and Chinese allies and puppets like Tajikistan and Khazakstan, and the “post-colonial” sewers that fester under ideologies of hatred of Western civilization, hatred of democracy, and hatred of Israel’s ally, the U.S. – countries like Myanmar, South Africa, Nicaragua, Malawi, and Chad. When Israel-haters and Jew-haters say that the whole world hates Israel, they are partly correct because most of the world lives under nasty regimes that have no freedom of speech, no freedom of religion, no free press, and no fair and free elections. The pressure of that asymmetry of numbers is always upon us.

Besides the asymmetry between Israel and much of the rest of the world because Israel is a liberal democracy, with its many freedoms, the contrast becomes even more stark with Gaza/Hamas. Even while at war, Israeli politicians are squabbling and posturing, Israeli newspapers are attacking the government’s policies and conduct of the war, reporters are exposing flaws in governmental operations, and people are “leaking” news to reporters so that there is a vast array of negative information, as well as positive information, about the Israeli leadership even during the war. In Israel even now there are public demonstrations against certain government policies. Contrast that with Gaza/Hamas which is a theocratic dictatorship run by an armed group that took power in 2006 and has never held another election. Because it is a dictatorship, there is no opposition party to challenge Hamas or to point to its flaws. Because Gaza/Hamas is a dictatorship, there are no newspapers whose editorial stance is to challenge the government’s policies or to advocate that the government take better care of its citizens. Because it is a dictatorship, there are no public discussions of policy, no demonstrations, no public admissions that mistakes have been made, no acknowledgement that the Gaza/Hamas government has ever done anything wrong.

Hamas does not have to respond or explain why they use the population of Gaza as they do because no one questions Hamas. When Israel makes a mistake or does something untoward, it is on the front page of every newspaper in the world. When Hamas shoots its own civilians, rapes, tortures, or murders a hostage in a tunnel, or steals money or other international aid intended for the population, it is a secret. While all of Israel’s imperfections are exposed, very few of Hamas’ are.

There is also an asymmetry in the conception of time that the combatants have. Because Israel is a democracy, its leaders have to respond to the public and respond to them at relatively frequent intervals. Politicians in democratic countries are usually focused on the next election in a year, or two or three. That conception of time as being related to the next election tends to make for short-range planning and pleasing the electorate now. That may be as much a problem for Israel’s most important ally, the United States, as it is for Israel. In a theocratic dictatorship with no elections, such as Hamas and such as Hamas’ major ally, Iran, which bars most opposition candidates from running for office, satisfying voters is simply not an issue. Hamas and Iran plan for the long term, free from any concern about what the citizens want.

Israel largely has to finance its own wars, although it does receive significant aid from the United States. That financing largely comes from internal taxation and some import duties. Israelis pay income taxes and a high “value-added tax” (VAT) to defend our country and provide necessary services such as schools and medical care. That is significantly different than Hamas/Gaza, which finances its war with money from Iran, Qatar, UNRWA, Syria, and Russia. Iran’s interest, like Hamas’, is in destroying Israel and killing all the Jews. Qatar largely shares that interest. Russia wants to embarrass the United States and have more influence in the Arab world. UNRWA, besides giving fake “refugee” status to third- and fourth-generation descendants of Arabs who left Israel in 1948, 1967, and at other times, teaches hatred of Jews and of Israel in its schools, gives “day jobs” to Hamas operatives and their family members so that Hamas does not have to pay their operatives a living wage, and provides schools and clinics which also sometimes double as Hamas weapons storage facilities, command centers, barracks, and entrances to the Hamas tunnels. By providing these schools and clinics, UNRWA relieves Hamas of what would ordinarily be the governmental responsibility of building and operating schools and clinics for Gazans. The “international community” thereby frees Hamas from having to pay for ordinary government services and allows Hamas to spend more on making war on Israel.

Last, and perhaps most important of all the asymmetries between the combatants, is their ideologies. Israel wants to live in peace and security inside her current borders. If Israel had that result, it would be the end of the almost constant warfare that Israel has suffered these last seventy-six years. Hamas, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Houthis, and other governments and quasi-governments want to kill all the Jews in the Middle East or, at least, expel all the Jews from the Middle East. They are not interested in peace. They will, at times, consider a truce or a ceasefire for strategic reasons, but not real, lasting peace. Different authorities in the field give different reasons for Arab and Muslim hatred of Jews and the little Jewish state (which Arabs and others try to disguise as “anti-Zionism”). One authority argues that because of their different value system, most Arabs do not believe in living together with other groups in peace and harmony but rather they believe that a group must either dominate or be dominated, oppress or be oppressed. They believe that Israel has dominated and oppressed but that they can right that wrong.

Another authority has contended that in Muslim doctrine, land has a character and that once it is conquered by Muslims, as Israel was in the seventh century, it always retains the character of Muslim land. Other thinkers in the field urge the simple religious explanation for the Arab hatred of Jews and unwillingness to live in peace with us: that Muslims believe that they have received the final word and prophecy as revealed by Mohammed and that we Jews have come to Israel, humiliated them in war, built a nation far more prosperous than any of theirs (at least until the extraction of large amounts of oil in some Arab countries), and have openly and explicitly rejected their prophet and their god. The one thing that is clear is that it is not about “Palestine,” a little corner of the world smaller than many American counties.

Despite those asymmetries between the combatants, there is one more that matters – an asymmetry that weighs very heavily in Israel’s favor. In all the polls and surveys of “happiness” by country, Israel consistently ranks as having a very happy population, much more so than any Arab or Muslim country. It is surely not because of material prosperity that Israelis feel this way. Most Israelis care about the land, about each other, about the fate of the Jewish people, and about Jewish tradition. I suspect that even many secular Israelis, deep in the recesses of their thoughts, no matter their outward protestations, believe that a benevolent G-d watches over the world and over us. What else could explain the happiness of a people constantly under threat, woefully outgunned and outnumbered in a hostile world?

So we will go on as well as we can. We have always faced asymmetries like these throughout our history. We have always been a comparatively small people, a people who had to make our way in a hostile world, a people who had to struggle to survive. We have gotten through these crises before, even if it has been painful to do so. We will get through this one also. Am Yisrael Chai.

[immemorymag]

Dominique Darbois

Dominique Darbois (1925-2014) was the daughter of a major specialist of Asian arts and a novelist. She participated in the Free French Forces during the Second World War in 1941. Being a member of the resistance and Jewish, she was arrested and imprisoned at the Drancy camp for two years. In 1944, she continued to fight against the occupiers and received the Resistance Medal. In 1945 France was liberated and Darbois left for Indochina via Shanghai. Although she was only twenty, she had already lived several lives. After the war ended, she came back to France and became the assistant of the French photographer Pierre Jahan, which prompted her career as a photographer.

In 1951, she organized an expedition to Amazonia and Guyana with Francis Mazière and Wladimir Ivanov, from which originated four publications: “Parana le petit Indien” (1952), “Les Indiens d’Amazonie” (1954), “Mission Tumuc-Humac” (1954), “Yanamalé village of the Amazon”. The first publication was translated into eight languages. She then began the collection "Enfants du monde” [Children of the world], a series of twenty volumes containing images and texts by Darbois herself. This collection offered a world tour not from an ethnographic standpoint but rather as a photographer committed to meet children in a world where not everyone was born equal. She surveyed over fifty countries.

If she spent only a few days in Mongolia in 1957, she actually stayed much longer in China during the Hundred Flowers period [during which the Communist Party encouraged its citizens to openly express their opinions of the communist regime]. Thanks to the French photojournalist Henri Cartier-Bresson – who photographed the last days of the political party Kuomintang in 1949 – she obtained a visa only a few people would get at that time. She accompanied an archaeological expedition that led her to photograph the Maijishan Grottoes in Gansu province as well as the Gobi Desert. She captured daily life in both cities and the countryside, while seizing traditions: acrobatics, games of chance, operas, puppets shows… and the new oil refineries around Lanzhou, oil wells around Yumen, political posters, and even the lives of prisoners in labour camps.

In 1960 she published “Les Algériens en guerre” [Algerian at war]. She completed reportage on the maquis and the training camps of the National Liberation Front [the socialist political party in Algeria] in Tunisia. This reportage was forbidden in France. Darbois was interested in the moving world and in ancient civilizations. She published “Kaboul, le passé confisqué. Trésors du musée de Kaboul, 1931-1965” [Kabul, the confiscated past. Treasures of the Kabul Museum, 1931-1965] (2002).

While she could have put aside her cameras, started to manage her archives, once again she committed herself to women in France and in Africa. She published then “Afrique, terre de femmes” [Africa, land of women] (2004) and “Terre d’enfants” [Children's Land] (2004), with a text written by Pierre Amrouche. This was her ultimate work

Written by Françoise Denoyelle

[cincinnatiredshawaiianshirt]

What are some examples of countries which went rapidly from rich to poor?

The one I can think of is Myanmar. Back in the 1960s, Myanmar income per capita was one of the greatest in South East Asia. It was US$ 250 at that time, twice of Thailand and around four times of Indonesia. Only slightly below Cincinnati Reds Trending Hawaiian Shirt, Cincinnati Reds Hawaiian Shirt. Myanmar was one of the richest and a very influential nation. It is one of the founders of the Asia-Africa Union along with Indonesia and India. But then it closed down its economy, led by military junta, and the rest is history.

Fifty years later, it is the poorest nation in South East Asia, with the GDP per capita around US$ 1,000. Only a quarter of Indonesia and even lower than Laos and Cambodia.

Other examples, I think would be Nauru and Afghanistan.

[gfablogs]

GFA’s Work in the 10/40 Window

The 10/40 window is a rectangular area between approximately 10 degrees and 40 degrees north latitude, covering North Africa, the Middle East and Asia.[1] This window is home to some of the world’s most remote people, and includes most of the world’s Muslims and also Asia’s traditional religions, earning the region another nickname— “The Resistant Belt.” A recent revision to the official list of countries has included several more that are close to the area rather than completely within the 10- and 40-degree latitude lines because they also have large populations who have never heard the good news of God’s love for them.

With the revised list of the 10/40 window, facts and statistics have become even more troubling. As many as 5.32 billion individuals from almost 9,000 different people groups live in the 10/40 latitudes. Over 69 percent of those groups are considered to be unaware of God’s Good News, such as the Shaikh, Yadava, Moroccan Arabs, and Burmese.[2] This means 3.28 billion people in this region have never heard the Gospel.

The need for truth is great in this window, even more so because the region is historically significant in God’s plans. Indeed, much of Scripture takes place in this global rectangle. Israel is in the middle of the window: God’s Promised Land and God’s chosen people. Biblical history shows that, even with God’s direction, the people of the region drifted away from Him from the very beginning, with Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, to the actions that led to the Flood, to the Tower of Babel, the building of which caused the people to be dispersed and eventually led to the formation of the very peoples and groups that remain in this area today.

Thus, ministering in this cradle of so many civilizations is a major goal for various organizations. There is no shortage of work in the 10/40 window. Missionaries may minister in one of the fifty least reached megacities in the world, or they could make efforts to help the poorest of the poor. Combating the teachings and beliefs of the four religious blocs that split the region is extremely challenging. Islam spreads across the top of Africa and the Middle East. Traditional Asian religions reign over South Asia as well as Southeast Asia. While China is officially an atheistic country, it too has deep traditional Asian religious roots.[3] The sheer and growing size of these populations—Asia alone holds over 35 percent of the world’s people[4]—and their devotion to traditional Asian religions makes missionary work in the region difficult but increasingly vital.

Click here, to read more about this article.

Click here, to read more blogs in Gospel for Asia.Net

[belokhvostikova]

𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐁𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐥𝐝

𝐒𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬 | 1989, and Eddie Munson has branded himself the playboy of Indianapolis... particularly to your best friend, Winnie Ambrose. Finally sick of being manipulated by his eight inch cock, Winnie looks to you to take down the man. It was simple: make him fall in love, and break his heart. Only, is it ever really simple?

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 | Swearing, yelling, arguments, mentions of alcohol/ alcohol consumption, some rude friends, mentions of insecurities, a lot of disrespect and gross behavior (fuckboy-ary), I don't know how to tag this, but Eddie literally runs into traffic, not in a "I wanna die" type of way, but... you'll see, and explicit sexual content: mentions of sex toys, fondling, mentions of sex, and oral (male receiving).

𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐞 | Prepared to be grossed out, you're not like other girls. Also, I need y'all to seriously envision Cher and Dionne making over Tai from Clueless in one particular scene in this... just a lil more chaotic, por favor. Also, Reader over here is making latte art! I don't drink coffee, so it's probably wrong, but that's not on me (it is). Oh, and some John Tucker Must Die/ The Notebook references!

𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 | 10.7K

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 | One. Two.

𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐨𝐫𝐬, 𝐃𝐨 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭.

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐎𝐧𝐞: 𝐀𝐧𝐨𝐧𝐲𝐦𝐨𝐮𝐬, 𝐀-𝐍-𝐎-𝐍-𝐘-𝐌-𝐎-𝐔-𝐒

It didn’t match. For the fifth time in a row, the piece didn't match. 

You huffed, flinging the illustrated paperboard piece to the once organized pile of others alike, as your back felt the relief of falling against the fluff of your carpet. Stupid puzzle. The clock breached 11:07 P.M, and as promised, something bad was bound to happen for your lack of completion by midnight. 

Why you set yourself up for failure, you don’t know. But the premise of speaking potential consequences into the universe seemed to be your only motivation in life at the moment. And it, too, was a fun game. One that had your back aching against the four hours of stationary sitting on your floor, as your fingers cramped to piece together one thousand segments of the world map. Though, at this given moment, you were losing hope in Africa ever gaining its southern countries, and Asia was a lost cause. 

Your eyes twirled to the low oscillation of your ceiling fan. What if it just fell? At least it’d give you a moment of excitement. Something to finally say when thirty pairs of eyes would scrutinize you during the horrific experience of ice-breakers, before the mortifying revelation would dawn upon you that you really were just… boring. 

Your fingers dug into the sockets of your eyes. One harsh sufficient rub was enough to cut whatever impeding yawn short. You still had fifty-three minutes, and if the past twenty-one years of good deeds meant anything, maybe the universe would lighten up and spare you of any reprimand for the non fulfillment of puzzle promises. 

Your head turned. Hey, what do you know, there was Yugoslavia under your bed all along-

“C’mon, c’mon, don’t got all day.” Your hair scrunched under the swift turn of your head, as you listened to the blatant disregard of respect, hearing your front door slam into shuttering vibrations. 

A scoff. An all too familiar scoff. “Geez, Eddie, way to a get a girl goin’.” Winnie Ambrose.

Your face contorted in despair, with quiet gruffs of whines softly pleading to yourself. “Please go to the bedroom, please go to the bedroom, pl-” 

“Just do it right here, seriously, got no time, baby.” Oh, no. Suddenly, you were slapping yourself silly for the stupid mistake of not investing in headphones. And as much as you could try to muster, the completion of Angola would not be satisfactory enough to distract from the lewd noises that defiled your living room couch. “Yeah, yeah, put it in your mouth, go on, finally shut you up.”

Your endeavors prompted you to the cushioning of your bed, where you found the will to rather die of asphyxiation under the thickness of your pillows, than listen to the onslaught of moans that were about to proceed the thinness of your apartment walls. Four hundred thirty-seven a month to have your ears violated by the uncomfortable noises of your best friend and her weekly endeavors. 

His voice hummed faintly. “Mm, yeah, just like you fucking know how to do it.” A month of cohabitation with Winnie Ambrose brought you the glorious gift of Eddie Munson, an enigma. There was never a face painted to the stumper that was Eddie Munson, but the details alone left your mind spiraling to the paradox of a man that infested your friend’s life. 

“Like that?”

“Sh, sh, no talking, just suck.” Your face scowled. 

Should the night go as it always does, Winnie would have her rendezvous, his heavy footsteps would proceed with a quick leave, her shouting voice of insults would follow before the slam of the front door silenced her, and her tears of complaints would flow down your shoulder. 

For a man like that, you had viable reason to believe he’d never step foot back into your apartment, and yet, every week proved you wrong. Her constant, “god, I could just kill him, do you know how much of an asshole he is?!” would presumably follow up with an, “okay, I know what you’re thinking, don’t give me that look, it’s just this one time!” 

It never was just one time. 

Eddie Munson had the chokehold of a python on Winnie Ambrose… and apparently a third of Indianapolis’ female population. Though, where you could criticize her for her poor choices, you could also applaud her in the fact that she even had a choice to begin with. Her Friday nights were actually spent living her youth with the liveliness of freedom, whilst you were evidently stuck being “piece” maker for the United Nations. 

No guy was ever making you a choice.

But you know, it’s not like you couldn’t be a choice. Yeah, you totally could be. You just… you know, had to put yourself out there more. You weren’t totally invisible. People acknowledge you, like in high school! There was always a polite ‘m’sorry’ to come whenever shoulders were knocked in the crowdedness of halls. Granted, it’s not like any of those people ever knew your name. That notion was really cemented when watching teachers wrack their brains on the potential name you owned after seeing your hand raised, settling on that ‘miss’ that followed you around for four years. But you were totally there. Otherwise they would have never called on you. Then again, it’s not like anyone else in class ever raised their hand. 

There. Perceived. Maybe even acknowledged. Just not known.

Just anonymous. 

But maybe things worked best as such. Safe, at least. You’d been safe ever since you were seen. Actually seen. Seen by him. Or, you thought he saw you. Your eyes scrunched at memories that felt too vivid for the years it had been since they transpired in reality. But as quick as your eyes were to close, they shot open against the abrasive clash of glass splattering against the floor. “Winnie.”

Your legs worked before your brain, jostling you out of the comfort of your bed to swing your bedroom door open to the expanse of your living room. “God, you are such a pig!” Couch pillows of ammunition went flying into the arms of the figure before you, his back turned to you to catch the onslaught of fluffy attacks. “You’re just a no, good, lying scumbag! Ugh!” Hurling over his shoulder, you ducked to avoid the incoming stuffed bullet.

His boots crunched against shattered glass. “Christ, you’re fucking crazy, would you fucking relax?!” His smirk—unbeknownst to you—only spawned that thumping vein in Winnie’s forehead to accentuate; a sick pride in being able to elicit this reaction from her. “Call me all the fucking names you want, you were still desperate enough to suck me off.” 

“AH! GET OUT!” Her still-heeled feet stomped to shove him back. Nothing but his sinister laughter echoed against the clash of her vocal frustrations, as he let her ardent pushes barely sway him from his stance. “You piece of shit!” Having gotten everything he needed for the night, Eddie took to her persistent shoves, and turned on his heels. All energy lost for his time. “GO!” In a split second, his eyes caught yours, and the sight of his face hit you like a ton of bricks. That was Eddie Munson. Nothing but confusion lingered upon your face, as the tense air became tainted by the complaints of Winnie. “I’m never calling you again, you dickhead! Get out!” His legs, for once, stumbled to her strength, and you watched his eyes fall to the length of your body, before the slam of your front door vanished his existence.  

Winnie huffed. Her back straightened against the door handle, breath regulating, throat clearing, and hands pushing away unruly hair.

You stared in awe. “What the hell was that?” You implored. 

“That asshole is to never step foot into this apartment again.” Wide eyed crazy, her finger came pointing at you. “I mean it, Y/N, if I so much as speak his name, you need to slap me straight.”

“Okay, but do you wanna explain what the hell happened, why our vase is shattered on the ground?! Winnie, our vase! My vase!” Thirty-seven bucks wasted on that antique shop. So gaudy, yet so beautiful. Tragic. 

Your face frowned. “That asshole happened!” Winnie groaned, raking harsh fingers through the length of her auburn extensions. “God, I’m over here giving him the best head of his life,” your face scrunched in disgust, “and that asshole has the nerve to forget my name. My name?!” 

Your shoulders deflated under the pretense of a disappointed parent. “So, what?! You took it out on my vase?! Win, come on, you’ve been saying the worst thing about this guy for a month, what were you expecting?” 

“Y/N, for the love of God, I bumped into it.” She deadpanned. “And you know what, I ask myself the same damn thing, god, I’m so stupid!” She plopped onto the couch. “That bastard knows exactly what he’s doing,” an incredulous laugh rips through her throat, “sweet-talking girls, getting in their pants, only to stutter out some bullshit name that isn't yours- god, Y/N, he called Therese!” She gagged. “That bitch who works on 4th Avenue East, he’s fucking her, too!”

So sullen. “My vase.”

“He’s not getting away with this.” Winnie stood on sore feet and knees, a stern finger directed at you, as if you suddenly became the perpetrator. “Something, c’mon, I gotta think of something to get that piece of shit back.” 

“How ‘bout stop speaking to him?”

“No!” Her whines viciously penetrated your ears. “I have to make him suffer! God, for all the shit he puts us girls through, he has to pay!” You watched her face cinch with perplexity to the ideas her mind was too tipsy to conjure. The advice of letting it go was burning at the tip of your tongue, but too hard-headed to accept, you knew your words would be dismissed for a punishment up to par to Winnie Ambrose’s standards. “Ugh, I’ll think of something later.” She gave up. “But right now, I’ve gotta make an order.”

Her ankles turned with the thickness of heels, and you watched her stomp off into the direction of her bedroom. “Order what?”

“A vibrator. I’m done with men.” Liberation. 

You sighed. “My vase.”

-

“Um… hm, um…” 

Your eyes discreetly rolled, an impatient finger repeatedly tapping the end of your pen; a click for how close your sanity was thinning. “Sir, I can come back whenever you’re re-”

“Just a moment, um…” 

Your back straightened with frustration. The sheets of your notepad wrinkled under the humid perspiration of your hands, as your entertainment was now left with nothing more than to mindlessly wander your gaze about, as the customer before you took waitstaff a little too seriously for your liking. On cue, the alerting bell of the front entrance piqued your interest, where your eyes widened at the sight of his familiar silhouette, and suddenly the elderly customer taking his sweet time became more of a priority. 

“How ‘bout a cappuccino? Cappuccino sound good? Great! I'll grab that cappuccino for you!” Rushing behind the counter, you discreetly watched him take his usual place. Back corner, by the window. Eddie Munson’s chair- or what was formerly known: cute guy with the long hair’s chair. 

“I-”

But, now, the events of last night had tainted the little crush that became your only source of motivation to show up to work every day to serve rude people, who didn’t have the skill set of self control to manage their crankiness before their morning cup of coffee. 

Suddenly, everything clicked. 

From the first moment you saw him, your eyes lingered on the strut of confidence that defined his nature; dark and mysterious, claiming his chair with a notebook that never left his hand. You never would have expected “your” guy to actually have been Winnie’s guy, and apparently the majority of other women’s guy. You should have seen it sooner. When one day, a frown etched upon your face seeing your crush waltz in with a girl in hand, presumably a girlfriend. But when said girl never accompanied him again, that smile was right back on your face. 

Until the cycle continued. Repeatedly. Numerously. 

And yeah, maybe the obvious signs of Eddie Munson being the biggest player was slapping you right in the face, but nothing could touch that idealized fantasy you’d like to curate. What the hell else was supposed to make the hours go by? It’s not like it was anything serious. Just a crush. Like Timmy Plyth in the eighth grade, after lending you a much needed pencil. God forbid someone was nice to you, you’d plan out both your futures together. Delusional sure, but the sincerity of it all was never a foundation. Suddenly, watching Timmy Plyth overly use the word ‘bro’ was enough to have your insides cringing, and quickly, he was nothing. 

Eddie Munson was nothing. 

So, it was effortless for you to easily chalk up the array of beautiful women by his side as second cousins coming to visit, though, the flirtatious way he’d play with their hair was surely too gross; perhaps an innocent friend looking for a catch up, then again, there was nothing innocent about the way his lips would glue to hers; or hell, maybe a first date gone bad, because he couldn’t keep his eyes away from the waitress that took his breath away, though Eddie Munson had never once actually looked at you. 

Until, he did. 

Tuesday, three weeks ago, had been a particularly gloomy evening, with regulars skipping their usuals to avoid the downpour of dark clouds over city skylines. Quiet and peaceful, the coffeehouse hummed with the white noises of pages turning from worn books and lips sipping upon the enriching black warmth that filled colorful mugs. Like clockwork, his boots squelched with wetness, a leather jacket clinking against metal, water droplets that refused to soak up the material, and his notebook in hand.

Though, this time alone.

Taking his designated seat in the back, you located your coworker who adorned that customer service smile, as she busied herself elsewhere. Your nervous hands rubbed against your waist apron, as you quietly approached him. 

The scrape of his pencil against the pages tickled your ear, as his scent collided with the deep coffee beans and baked goods that surrounded you. Bats. Scribbled and sketched against the great expanse of drawings that tied to the plethora of words that creatively polluted the once blank canvas. 

“Those, uh, those are nice drawings.” 

His head spun to yours, and your soft smile allowed a matching one to invade his face. “Uh, thanks… yeah, thanks, they’re not really, y’know, anything special.” At the time, your innocent heart pattered at his obvious gaze that lingered too intently to be ever “just friendly,” though now, your stomach turned at the realization that something more impure was causing those dimples to flaunt. A smile so devilish it sickly resembled his… Dalto- “But, uh, means a lot coming from you.” Barf. You should have told him to fuck off, now knowing what you know. 

But your lovesick mind shyly giggled and flushed your cheeks with heat. “Just because you don’t think they’re special doesn’t mean they aren’t great. Seriously, they are. A-And why does it mean a lot coming from me?” Your brow pointed. 

“Nice people give out genuine compliments.” His shoulders shrugged like it was simple. “See you given’ that lady and her baby free food all the time, no? That’s you.” 

He has seen you. “Oh, yeah, Margaret, she’s, um, super sweet, lives in my building. Times are just a little hard for her s’all, so I don’t mind having a couple sandwiches taken out of paycheck for her.” 

“Yeah, see, nice. You wouldn’t lie to me.” Eddie stated factually, face hardened, no longer brandishing whatever smirk he played to swoon his next hookup. 

Such stoicism left you confused in the wake of a brief ten second quietness. Perhaps you had misread that first interaction, and he had no interest in pursuing you. Wouldn’t be the first time. Sure as hell wouldn’t be the last. “Um, so, w-what would you like to order, sorry?”

“Just a latte will do if that’s fine.” He gave a light smile your way, as your head nodded in confirmation. 

“Yeah, yeah, of course, I’ll have that right out for you, sir.” Your feet moved with no thought, mentally cursing yourself for the embarrassment of referring to him as an older man. And you heard those airy chuckles of amusement huff through his nose, dissipating in the wind, as you made your escape. But you’d become oblivious to the round eyes that softly stuck to your swaying body, adorned in the combination of rain boots and skirt that had his fingers painting the pages of his notebook with a particular figure in rain boots and skirt. 

Steamed milk had an interesting way of gluing the fabric of your shirt to your skin with the humidity that matched that of the sticky drizzle outside. Like watercolors, the cedar espresso collided with pearl milk, and with a quick glance to your left, his broadened back met you, as his arm flexed to the rhythm of his drawing. 

Creamy foam met the tawny caffeine, and your barista skills concocted a small bat to ripple into his latte. Sufficed with your art, you gently maneuvered your way to his direction, where the delicate clicks of your small pumps informed your arrival. 

But before Eddie could muster out any form of conversation, you dropped off your service with a polite, “enjoy your drink,” to save you from the inevitable embarrassment your mouth would spew. 

But as you looked back, you watched the phlegmatic corners of his lips turn to a genuine smile at the sight of your curated artwork… for him. 

“Seeing Miss Long Legs now, huh?”

The bustling cacophony of the crowded coffeehouse snapped you back to reality. “Huh?” You looked at your coworker. 

Your eyes caught sight of the wedges that announced themselves to the tall woman, so modelesque, with a sundress that complimented her complexion. “Save yourself the trouble, and don’t involve yourself with that man.” Maude, grabbing a lemon-raspberry muffin for the man across the counter, grumbled under her breath. 

“What? Oh, no, I’m not, like- I was just zoning out, sorry.” You resumed your position to formulate an unwanted cappuccino, as your eyes slyly peered to the intimate greeting Eddie shared with the beautiful woman. 

“Right, well, still, sooner or later, that man is gonna swoon you over whenever you get the chance to wait on him, and it’s gonna be really tempting to say yes, but you better say no.” Your brows furrowed. Eddie Munson hadn’t explicitly made a move on you. Were you really that unappealing that even he didn’t want you? God, how pathetic were you to stoop that low? “It’s what he does. Works you up, get you all flustered, takes you out on some cheap date, but makes up for it with the love bombing, and before you know it, he’s got you right where he wants you: his bed.” Her gum smacked to the intensity of her accent. 

“Yeah, uh, I bet. My roommate, she, uh, kinda had a thing with him.” You grimaced. 

Maude laughed, her gold jewelry jingling to the waves of her expression. “Oh, no, honey, Eddie Munson doesn’t do “things.” That’s what he makes you believe, but soon you realize he never actually had feelings for you.”

Your stomach plummeted at her words, an overwhelming sense of discomfort suddenly hitting. Memories. Bad ones. You sucked in a heavy breath, and attempted to blink away the negative pictures that began infesting your mind. “Oh. Um, how do you know?”

You worriedly watched her face contort into anguish. “Oh, y’know-” her voice cracked, tears brimming her eyes, “just heard around.” The muffin became mush in her hand, as she ran into the back. The awaiting customer blankly stared at you.

Eddie Munson was Dalton Barron. 

And you wouldn’t go down that road again. 

-

Blisters had been bubbling on your feet. Seven hours and thirty minutes of standing left you contrite on this morning’s choice of attempting to be stylish by breaking in your new flats—all too cute not to be worn. Coffee had stunk itself into your hair, and you were verging on the brink of tears after a shift of being yelled at, after the inevitable occurred when you misheard a customer's eight step instruction to their frappe. And to make matters worse, your key was taking too long to slot into the doorknob. 

But the clashing of brassy metals that clung from your keychain announced themselves before you could, alerting your very own kidnapper to haul you into your apartment, with a purity ring—for the sake of her—that dug into the skin of your arm. “I got it!” 

You swore your wrist popped with the pull Winnie had on you, as she dragged you into the space of her bedroom. “Got what- wait, if it’s this new vibrator you were talking about, I don’t wanna-”

“No, it’s not a vibrator!” You dropped with a bounce on her bed, as her hands shoved themselves upon your shoulder. “That doesn’t come till Wednesday.” She collected herself straight. “Anyways, I got it, I got my revenge plan! You know, for Eddie?” 

Your fingers pushed themselves into your temple, as your eyes felt too heavy for this conversation. “Oh, Winnie…”

“I’m serious, Y/N, I’ve got the perfect plan!”

“You know, he actually came by the coffeehouse, met up with this really pretty girl-”

“Ugh, what a slut.”  Winnie grumbled with disgust, a deeply offensive eye roll to pair, as well. “God, I swear, that penis is going to fall right off, and then he’ll truly be left with nothing.” She sighed, fluffing her hair from her face. “But back to business, Y/N, I… am going to ruin his manhood.”

You dryly blinked. “...By making his penis fall off…?”

“No!” Her petulant mewl came with a frustrated stomp that made your giggle. “By making him fall in love!” That look never left your face, in fact, worsened to the oddity of her scheme. “Stop looking at me like that, I’m serious! We have to make him fall in love!”

You incredulously chortled. “I thought the whole Eddie Munson thing was not falling in love? And wait a minute, you promised not to speak to him anymore, I don’t want to have to slap you, Winnie.”

“I’m not going to do it, you are!”

You promptly stood from the bed, matching her height with an urgency in your eye that challenged her crazy ones. “I am not talking to Eddie Munson, are you insane?!” 

“No, but you have to!” Winnie desperate beseeched. “Y/N, c’mon, do this for me! Just hear me out, okay? You don’t actually have to, like, y’know, date him. Just lead him on! It’s that ego of his, we have to crush his ego!”

“Winnie,” you sighed, “Eddie wouldn’t even go for me-”

“Of course, he would! You’re hot shit!” Your face dropped entirely unconvinced. “And Eddie’s totally going to see that when you go to his gig tonight.”

“I’m not going to anyone’s gig tonight!” 

“Hold on, wait! Before you say no…” Winnie stopped your incoming decline with a cold finger hoisted to your lips to hush your words, before she childishly scampered her way into the closet. Rummaging through the mountain of clothes she was adamant to hang up yesterday, her hands finally grappled onto her last hope. “Okay, ready? Ta-da!”

So sensationally lurid, with yellows, greens, and purples that didn’t match not one bit. So tacky it was beautiful. Your hands grabbed for it. “My vase!”

“Ah- no!” So offended, your mouth dropped, as Winnie denied you the right to receive your child. “You can only get this,” waving the delicacy around to taunt you, “if you agree to go to the gig tonight.”

You scoffed. Well played. “T-That is, like, literal coercion.”

“C’mon, look, Eddie’s got a big thing with pride, okay? I highly doubt that man’s ever seen rejection in life, so, when he expects all the girls to be flaunting themselves at him, he’ll see that everyone is except you.” Winnie was beginning to get that crazy look in her eyes. “Eddie’s gonna want what he can’t have, so, he’ll automatically go for you! But you, Y/N, you’re stronger than I am, and you are going to turn him down in every which way, only giving a little and taking away, until he is some desperate, little puppy following you around. And then, he’ll finally, FINALLY understand what it's like. Asshole…”

Winnie puffed her chest, catching her breath, as her hands fervently clutched to your vase. You could see it in her face how desperate she was just to have him hurt, even if it was just a little bit. Just to feel what she and many other girls did, because of him. You sighed. “Winnie, he’s not going to look at me.”

Without a word, she shoved the vase into your hands, before marching into her closet once more, where hangers scraped against the rack, as Winnie aggressively shuffled through the array of clothes she possessed. Retrieved was a dress of angelic white satin and lace that cascaded just enough to save you from a public indecency charge. “Not if you wear this!” She beamed.

Beauty is pain came with such candor.

“God, Winnie, he’s not seeing my underwear, why do I have to wear these?” So tight and lodged in the crevices of your lady parts, disturbing you to no avail. “It’s about feeling sexy! If you feel sexy, you’ll exude sexy!” The next travesty to come came in the form of said dress, by a sadistic designer who found much gratification in the torture of stomachs through the depths of lustrous material hell. With a corset to secure, Winnie was hoisting the attached strings into oblivion. 

“C’mon, just suck in for me!” Her grip tightened around the lacing. “My lungs are going to explode if I suck in anymore!” You’d never felt your body more accentuated, with your boobs practically grazing your chin with how much Winnie was able to lift them with the right bra and a bruised rib cage. 

And before you knew it, a suffocated squeal was burrowed out of your throat, when Winnie pushed your stiff body onto the softness of her bed. “Shoes, shoes, shoes! You need the perfect shoes!” Suddenly, strappy platforms of six inches were being shoved on your newly painted toes. “Hey, wait, slow down, Win, I’m gonna break an ankle, I don’t do anything over three inches.” But clasps were being secured around your ankles before your protest could be of any success. Winnie snorted. “Well, maybe that’s why you’re so uptight.” Your jaw dropped. 

-

On the outskirts of Alcona Drive, under city lights and bustling traffic, a tattoo parlor sits next to a bar of proverbial rock and metal. Corroded Coffin play here every Saturday night. You were here Saturday night. 

You clung to Winnie’s arm like a child, maneuvering through the sea of people who found vacancy in the open air parking lot for intermission breaks. With rough asphalt embedding itself to the outsoles of your heels, Winnie became your only support after bubbling anxiety worsened the wobble that an additional six inches to your height had had on you. 

Had you been calm, you would have accepted the gentle zephyr of the night that now suddenly felt as though it was biting at your skin with the uneasiness of your tummy. As a compromise, Winnie, at least, gave you the grace of sporting a leather jacket to hide behind. 

“Okay, just remember,” I.Ds flashed to the bouncer, “be cool and collected. Eddie’s not going to approach you if you’re fawning over him.” 

“I’m not going to fawn over him.” Your body flinched at the rattle of conversations that mushed into deafening discordance that blared into your ear. Strobes of stage lights blew up your pupils, as you observed the Saturday night lives of people who found hedonistic liberation through buzzing music and weightless drinks. 

Had your heart not sank to your ass, you would have understood why Winnie Ambrose loved going here. 

But for you, your nails were sinking into the skin of Winnie’s arm, but she would endure the bitter sting, as long as it would appease your silent suffering. She was, in fact, the reason you were dragged here. 

“Look, we’ll do a lap before we settle.” Winnie screamed into your ear. 

Before you could question her motives, a drunken screech interrupted your train of thoughts. “Winnie!” You’d forgotten she had friends outside of you. 

Your legs jostled at the strength of Winnie’s pull, hauling you to a group of strangers whose overpowering perfumes skirmished with the breaths of cocktails that lingered in their vicinity. Squeals of greetings were exchanged, as you timidly stepped back, watching what an actual social interaction was between people who had real lives. 

“This is,” her jewelry-ridden hand clasped to your wrist, “this is Y/N!” Small smiles with the company of tiny waves and head nods was all that was proffered to you, and you wondered if Terry Werner’s unsolicited words of you being “standoffish” as the reason as to why you sat alone in the middle school cafeteria were actually true. Then again, you couldn’t fault Winnie’s friends for how quickly they turned away from you, when you stood with nothing but a precautious stare with lips so tightly inward. “Y/N, this is Janet! Janet’s dating Walker! This is Walker’s sister, Karey! Karey’s dating Danaisha! This is Peneolope! Oh, that’s Jaiden- uh, Jaiden’s roommates with Sebastian! And my friend Carly!” Abruptly, Winnie’s warm breath was fanning against your ear. “And Janet is secretly hooking up with Seb, so don’t say anything, because he’s also doing it with Pen, who quite literally just had a threeway with Jaiden and another girl, who happened to Danaisha’s ex, who she claims not to be hung up on, yet still frequently talks to behind Karey’s back, so...” God, is this what adulthood was?!

Perhaps you were the wrong person to tell, as a series of confused looks were thrown your way when your freshly plucked eyebrows—upon Winnie’s request—severely sold your face away to the unnerving settlement you earned from the incestuous ties that happen to hold this group together.

But their judgements didn’t hold for too long, as Winnie’s dramatic recollection of the past week left her friends violently ignoring your presence.

At an attempt to wave off the awkwardness you were certain people could feel, you faintly bobbed your head to the music that lowly vibrated from the speakers; an appeasement to bar goers who drunkenly waited for the performance intermission to pass. 

Your eyes darted, jumping from corner to corner, swiftly locking eyes with strangers who maneuvered every which way. Your teeth began to anxiously gnaw into your glossed lips, as deep unsettlement bubbled in your belly at the realization your eyes were searching for a specific face, one’s who you truly had no business festering upon. 

Winnie Ambrose was completely out of her mind if she even thought for a second Eddie Munson would fall for this. 

This wasn’t self-deprecation. This was utter reality. 

Heels of different heights, all styled to the zeitgeist of the blooming 90s, complimented the women of the bar so beautifully. So many kinds of smiles brightened the dimly lit setting, with colors brandishing their lips from enticing, deep plums to the beauty of a natural hue. With an array of bodies on display just for him, Eddie Munson wouldn’t even fathom the idea of you.

A guitar riff ripped through the dense air.

Drenched in the center spotlight, the blinding shine illuminated that signature smile that etched itself onto his face upon seeing the crowd flock to his feet. So below him. “Hope y’all had enough time to rest,” his voice buzzed, amplified into your ears, as his lips kissed the mic, “‘cause we’re about to put you through the fucking wringer!”

You watched Winnie roll her eyes in your peripheral, too accustomed with the aggression of cockiness that seemed to have every woman hollering at his command. Eyes scowling, lip twitching, and a hand searing its print onto your wrist, it became quite obvious that even the presence of Eddie Munson brought her anger. 

Wrath, even. 

There was no talking Winnie Ambrose out of this. She had a plan. And it was cemented. 

Winnie Ambrose was taking Eddie Munson down. 

And you were complicit. 

His voice, so deep with husk it had beautiful women practically throwing themselves for his attention, caused a ripple of goosebumps to invade your skin. Something about Eddie Munson had caused a leach of perturbation to suck the life out of you. So dark, his eyes silently sang to the ladies below him, as nothing became more alluring than the sinister blackness that specialized each girl with eye contact so intimidating. If only they knew it meant absolutely nothing. 

Every gaze. Every smirk. Every touch. Every lyric dedicated to the busty blonde with curly hair, or the sun-kissed beauty with a look so delicate. 

It all meant absolutely nothing.

And Eddie Munson loved it. 

Reveling in the control he had, nothing but a smile and wink to get whatever he wanted out of a desperate girl who urged him to make her feel good. And he did. Never a moment passes, where Eddie didn’t have a lady crying in rapture of his orgasmic touch. No matter the mind, no matter the body, Eddie Munson had a truly remarkable talent to blank the conscious of any thought, washing a woman’s worries away with his fingers, tongue, and cock, as his filthy voice kissed their ears with the sweet nothings that had them believing they were one of a kind. 

But it was nothing but a ruse. 

And they’d come to find that, as the once pleads to make them feel good, left them with tears staining the makeup he ruined. No one ever talks about the detriment of having your body used. Furthermore, no one talks about the utter humiliation of running back to the man that did so. 

Nothing but a lousy phone call or run in at the club was enough to have you reeled back into his loving arms that were only loving for forty minutes, before they rejected you like you were nothing. And he affirmed it with a smile so sickening, as he watched the torment twist their face in disgust at his actions. 

But not that it mattered, they’d be crawling right back at the snap of his fingers. 

With a sudden yank, your heels were clicking to catch up with Winnie’s steps. “Hey, wait, what are you- what are you doing?!” Your voice barely became audible under the thunder of Corroded Coffin’s thrashing. 

“C’mon, just follow my lead!” Was all she gave you to work with, before her aggressive hands were shoving strangers out of the way, until you made it into the front sea of men and women who handbanged their body to the clash of the music. 

It didn’t take long for Eddie to make his usual way around the stage edge, where those desperately interested flaunted what they had to offer; breasts pooling from the hazard that was an overtly low-cut top—much to Eddie’s liking—or tongues hungrily circling their lips to potentially entice the metalhead for quickie. 

And then there was you: stood gracelessly behind the stature of your friend, as you gawked at the foreignness of a Saturday night out. 

It became inevitable when Eddie’s gaze fell upon Winnie, who you actually had to give props to, as she stood her ground with an ardent cross of her arms over her chest. A mocking wink was thrown against her scowl, but Winnie quickly graced him with a tight-lipped smile, as you watched with confusion. Her fingers waved in his direction, as his egotistical smirk grew wider.

Winnie Ambrose was a genius. 

Flaunting a smile that had Eddie believing he was right back on her good side for another fuck. Eddie’s gonna want what he can’t have… having Winnie left you. 

His eyes fell upon your figure, as his lips continued to serenade into the mic. “Walk away.” Winnie gritted next to you.

“What?” Your brows furrowed, unbeknownst to you, a look Eddie hadn’t expected.

“Just walk away. Now.” 

Not wanting to be on the receiving end of Winnie’s wrath, your legs stumbled back until you found your footing, and left the crowd, as you strutted back to the bathrooms. Because what you failed to notice was Eddie Munson had glued his eyes to your disinterest, stuck to your descending silhouette, as his voice lowly sung to the women who screamed for him. 

But all he saw was you. 

The buzzing light fixture of a limeade yellow made it nearly impossible for the women of the bar’s bathroom to adequately reapply their makeup. You stood back, watching the delicate precision of lipstick to lips, tissue to eyeliner, and fingertips to skin. 

So effortlessly pretty, you took your turn at the crowded mirrors, and followed the movements of every other girl to fix up your look. You quite liked the black liner that ran the perimeter of your eyes that Winnie had applied. She paired it so nicely with a shimmer that didn’t intimidate you, and, in fact, blossomed your eyes to a vivid awakeness. 

But the perspired air had blinked your makeup to a light smear.

“Need some tissue?”

“What?”

Her cheeks plumped with a smile on her face. “Tissue? Don’t use the ones here.” Her head pointed to the brown tear of paper that lingered in the dispenser. “It’s rough, and it’ll probably cause you to contract herpes.” She joked, as her hand reached to extend you a sheet of soft tissue that came from its designated travel case from her purse. 

“Thank you.” You gently smiled, as your finger cleared your eye of the blackened stain that darkened your undereyes. 

“Girls night out or you bankin’ on seeing someone?” The rich brown lined her ample lips.

“Oh, uh, I guess both… kinda.” You meekly answered, as the tainted tissue disposed itself in the overflowing bin. 

“Same, girl.” Her finger of a deep burgundy acrylic smoothed out the creaminess of her lip liner. “Desperately need to feel somethin’ tonight. See, after my ex, ugh, it’s been a dry spell. Tried that whole celibacy thing, but, nuh-uh, not for me, lemme tell you, it is not for the weak, y’know?”

Perhaps you were God’s strongest soldier then. 

You dryly blinked a lie. “Y-Yeah, totally know… wh-what, uh, you mean.” You softly chuckled. 

“God, and that front man up there with his little guitar.” 

Your brows jumped into the creases of your forehead, as you blankly stared at her. “E-Eddie?”

“Yeah, you know him?” Her lips smacked the thick gloss with a pop. 

“Uh, no, n-no, not really. Just, um, you know, heard of him, I guess.” You shrugged, as you eyed yourself in the murky mirror, fingers prodding at your face, as an excuse not to look at her. 

“Oh, yeah.” She giggled, face coming up close to her reflection. “Everyone and their mother has ‘round here. But honestly, with a guy like that you just need’a put a leash on him, y’know? Eddie needs someone who’s not gonna put up with his bullshit, and when he sees that’s me, all these other girls will see they were never the one. And I plan on making him mine.”

You were royally fucked.

The tension—whether made up in your head or actually there—had fortunately been broken by Winnie bustling into the bathroom. “Ah! Did you see how well that worked?! Well, actually, you didn't, you were walking away, but it totally did!”

“Ha ha, okay, um, why don’t we head out, yeah?” You directed her to the bathroom door, not before flashing the beautiful girl a small smile, as she winked you goodbye. You were met with the generic music that was once blaring upon your first entrance, as you took notice of the now empty stage that left people to mingle around the bar. “Okay, what? What are you-”

“Eddie! He totally checked you out when you left! I told you this would work!” She geeked with the surprising ability to joyfully jump in five inch stilettos. “God, I wish you could have seen his face, Y/N, he was totally like ‘huh?’” You laughed at her over exaggerated facial expression. “He so wants you now.”

Winnie began guiding you back to the table of her friends. “See, um, Winnie, I think we may have run into a little problem. You know that girl in the bathroom, she’s totally gunning for-”

“Aye, your back!” Karey’s voice rang into a cheerful greeting… until her eyes landed upon you. “Oh, you, too.”

Oh. Leave it to you to be deduced to an oh. 

Winnie dragged an obnoxiously loud chair—that didn’t help your attempt to potentially win her friends over—to the unwelcoming table, and patted you down. “Duh, of course, she’s here, she’s with me.” Winnie smiled a smile that did little to appease that burdening feeling that resided within you, though, you knew she was trying. 

As the table fell into a conversation of inside jokes and personal stories that you had no clue about, and you found your eyes whisking away to the rowdiness around you. Had you actually caught the eyes of Eddie Munson, or had Winnie just been flattering you? Bless her, you know she feels a lot, but three years of friendship that felt like a lifetime taught you that her uniquely Winnie Ambrose mind had a knack for twisting events in favor of her.

Narcissism? No, not really. Perhaps crazed in the nicest way possible? Would you be a bad friend to say yes?

Her one sided relationship with Eddie Munson truly stamped itself as exhibit A. Then, of course, there was the whole sugar daddy incident, where Winnie swore up and down that the older gentleman on the train was about to make her rich. Turns out, his compliment about her shoes was solely based on the fact that his wife would love the same pair. 

So maybe, just maybe, Winnie became an A.P Literature teacher’s favorite example of an unreliable narrator, as what she saw as a gaze of piqued interest from the metalhead was  most likely a swift gaze that meant absolutely nothing. 

Sudden voices erupted through the bar’s casual buzz, and you turned your head to the commotion, where the familiar members of Corroded Coffin marked their way through the crowding praises. Inexorably, a flock of women came hurtling as the sweaty lead singer and guitarist made his way out to sift through the potential suitors of a good time. 

His hungry hands found a way to delicately graze the skin of every woman, giving them a lightning rush of whatever fun he could proffer for the night. 

Shifting in your seat at the sudden wave of heat that burned you, you swallowed deeply watching the long strut of the mystery girl in the bathroom make a beeline to Eddie. It became easy to rationalize that pit in your stomach as the inevitable downfall of your best friend’s plan. Nothing more. 

And yet, your eyes couldn’t steer away from them. 

She was unbelievably gorgeous with an aura that captivated his attention in a split second. Over your shoulder, you watched her long lashes bat at his emerging smile, her gold rings complimenting the clash of his heavy silver ones, as his hand slipped into hers, raising it to a height that left her twirling before him, as he gawked at her body that fitted perfectly to her outfit.

And it was when his nose skimmed the skin of her cheek, lips whispering into her bejeweled ear, when his eyes unexpectedly caught yours across the bar. 

An action so abrupt, you swiftly turned away to the ongoing conversation that had no interest in including you, but even that was better than staring Eddie Munson directly in the eye, as he worked up another woman. 

Your pattering heart of anxiety became too heavy for your chest, forcing you to suffer in silence, heaving steadily until those rampaging butterflies finally calmed themselves in your stirring belly. 

“Hey, you alright?” Winnie’s voice came close to your personal space. 

You straightened your back, forcing a smile to appear. “Yeah, yeah, just, uh… I don’t know, getting used to things, I guess.” Her nods urged you to proceed. “But also, what I was trying to say earlier, that girl-”

“Hey.” You turned your head to the direction of the piercing blue eyes that scrutinized you with deep thought. Janet clung to his arm, as his body leaned over the table, as if to have you hear loud and clear. Walker Brauchman. “I know you from somewhere?” 

“Um-”

“Your face, you got the face of someone I know, or at least, knew of.” His finger, so accusatory, pointed you out, adding seven more pairs of eyes to peruse you. “I thought it when I first saw you, but I can’t seem to put my finger on it.”

“Oh,” you stared around with a nervous laughter that rippled through your throat, “I don’t, uh, I don’t think so.” His face had been nothing but new when first approached, and surely those crystal eyes and broad brow bone would stick out in the memory of the past had you actually run into him before.

But he refused that answer, sticking with a fervent shake of his head. “Nah, nah, I’ve seen you before.”

Janet’s tense chuckles bursted out, as you watched her hands tighten around his bicep. “What’s going on here?” Her wide eyes ran down you. “Have you been with my boyfriend before?” Despite the flashy smile never leaving her face, nothing but hatred passed through her words.

“N-No, I don’t-”

“God, Walker, just drop it. How many beers have you had?” Winnie’s eyes rolled. “She’s not wandering around nightclubs where you techie, trust fund boys hang around. And Sebastian, when was the last time you got laid?”

You watched Janet’s eyes bug, and it became more evident that the glue holding these people was a deep loathing for one another. “Didn’t even say anything.” Sebastian’s voice quietly muttered, as he drowned his mouth in bourbon. 

You sighed, sinking back in your chair. The entire night out was becoming a bust, and you were forced to revel in it. “Winnie.” You quietly spoke. “Maybe I should just head home, you stay and have fun.” You offered a weak smile in return to her concern. 

“What? No.” She urged. “Look, just ignore them, okay? They’re a bunch of stuck up assholes, who I literally just use to get into that upscale bar on Saint Exn, you know, where they have those really uncomfortable performances that are supposed to be artsy, but really it’s just a bunch of weirdos bumping into walls.” 

With a smile on your face, your soft giggles got lost in the murmur of the bar. At the very least, you had Winnie by your side. You leaned close to her vicinity. “Listen, Win, I know I said I would help you with this plan to, um, get back at Eddie, but I don’t think this is really gonna work out- or at least, I’m probably not the right person to do it.”

“What? How come?” Her arched brows pinched into her forehead. “No, you’re totally perfect, Y/N, I mean it, he was completely eyeing you.”

“Winnie, it’s just-” You adjusted in your seat to face her. “I feel like you may need someone with, um, more edge, I guess. I can’t- c’mon, Win, you know I can’t talk to a person like Eddie, it wouldn’t- it just wouldn’t work.” You rationalized. “You know, l-like her?”

Winnie followed the slight gesture that directed her behind you, where Eddie’s hand nursed a beer, as his right was occupied with groping at the fat of the woman’s ass. Winnie’s face scrunched into a scowl of disgust. “That perv does that to everyone. Trust, he’ll leave her as fast as it takes to finish in her.”

While appreciated, her words did little to provide you any comfort. 

You peered back, and that inevitable pull left Eddie’s eyes gazing into yours, as his lips clung to the rim of his glass cup. Your eyes nervously met back to Winnie’s, and suddenly she had a smile on her face, as your periphery showed you the distant movements of Eddie guiding his group of band members and their pick of night to the large table behind you. 

“God, he is so trying to make me jealous.” Winnie’s hushed voice complained to you. Eddie was beginning to approach with his new girl in tow. Nothing but a loud clatter from his friends who were securing spots around the table. “Okay, next part of the plan, we gotta move.” Winnie aggressively tapped your arm. 

“Move? Move where?” You softly panicked. 

“No, not move, like move onto the next- okay, just forget, just get up.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now!” Her demands spat on you through her harsh whispers. “Quick, quick! Just go get a drink.”

“I don’t want a drink, though.” Your brows furrowed. 

Winnie deadpanned. “Oh, for the love of god, Y/N, just go to the bar. Just walk, no matter what, just walk, okay?”

Standing on your wobbly feet, you turned to face the busy bar. It only took one step for Winnie’s hand to suddenly shove your body forward in a belligerent manner that had your shoulder colliding with Eddie’s. But Winnie’s words were battering at your head. Just walk. And you never met the stunned state of Eddie Munson, as the entirety of his attention was stolen by you. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…” Your legs worked faster than your mind, hastily navigating you through the packed sardine of bodies, before you managed to squeeze yourself into a spot at the bar. Your finger tapped to the beat of your heart, clicking your nail to the slick wooden countertop that became more fervent by the second. 

Through the swarming patrons, the bartender’s eyes locked with yours, which prompted your request. “Just a water, please.” With nothing but a nod handed back, your shoulders slumped to the whatever degree of fresh air the bar provided that wasn’t as suffocating as Eddie's presence.

You wondered if Eddie had said something to Winnie. They were nothing but a few feet apart, and seeing as what you had just done, you thought of the potential outcomes that could proffer themselves. The most blaring one being that Eddie probably told Winnie off about her creep of a friend who needs to back off. Oh, god, why did you ever agree to this? Embarrassment was coursing its burning way to your cheeks, which only worsened with the densely hot atmosphere that was beginning to be overwhelming. One look back would save you from the overbearing thoughts that were consuming your head, that Eddie Munson was, in fact, not at all engaging with Winnie Ambrose, but your eyes stayed glue to the whisking hands of the bartender, as concoctions were made before your water could ever be served. 

Ice clanged, and you became captivated by the rapid shake of the mixer, until-

“Shoulder check back there was a bit rude, no?” Your eyes rose to the voice, only for a lump to lodge itself in the sudden tightness of your throat, hurriedly forcing your head away from him. 

With a nearly empty cup, a simple gesture to the bartender for a refill sufficed as a wordless transaction for Eddie and the worker. “Sorry. Just crowded.” You managed to muster out, refusing his eyeline, despite his searing into your profile. 

The answer should have served, but Eddie’s presence lingered for that awaiting refill, much like your water being tossed to the backburner for the numerous cocktails that were coming in for the sole bartender. Silence ensued, nothing but the minimal sounds of his body leaning forward were somehow becoming the lone focus of your attention. “You must think I’m some real jerk off, huh?”

You hadn’t registered how close his face had come, when your head turned and a pair of noses nearly bumped, with a smile eating at his face with just how fast you jumped back. “What?”

“Red-ish hair, bit of a loud mouth back there, that’s your roommate, no?” He eyed your silence. “I know I saw you yesterday. At her place. I saw you-”

“Her name’s Winnie.”

“Winnie.” Eddie’s tongue clicked. “Yeah, yeah.” His head nodded, as if recollecting the memories of whatever strained history he had of her. 

A tense quietness was arising. If intently studying the abrasive nature of the bartender’s mixing was what it took to avoid his dark eyes, then you’d keep your focus trained, until a free moment was given to finally provide you with a water bottle. 

But Eddie Munson, of course, had other plans. 

“So, how’s Margaret?”

Such a casual grin swept his face, as he awaited the answer, but he was met with nothing more than a perplexed face of judgment, that had a cute way of flexing your brows together, he noted. “You remember Margaret but not Winnie?” Eddie Munson truly was just a load of bullshit.

“Well, if it came from your mouth, sweetheart, I’m gonna remember.”

Nothing but pathological lies spewing from that sinister grin. With luck on your side, the bartender found a moment of time to thrash a cold bottle of water upon you, giving you an escape, as you left him with nothing but a “right” to end the conversation. 

His eyes stuck to the movement of your hips, his itching fingers have to splay themselves on the stubble of his chin, as his gaze diverted to the expanse of your body. 

Had he seen your face, though, he would have relished in the panic that showcased itself, as you quickly stumbled your way back to Winnie, who was gladly slurping down her martini at the entertainment she witnessed from afar. 

“Oh, my god, oh, my god, what did- ugh, what did he say?!” Winnie choked on her olive. 

“Y’know, Winnie, I think it actually may be best if we just call it a night.” You quickly gathered your jacket over your shoulders, as Winnie stood from her seat. 

Not one to tell twice, the contents of her martini glass were swigged down in a second, as she gathered her scattered belongings of a purse that was riffled through to retrieve her needed lipstick prior to your arrival. “Okay, but what did he- bye guys!” She waved off her friends. “What did he say?!”

Your hand clutched to hers, as you persevered through the endeavor of snaking your way through the crowd for a beeline to the exit. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?! Oh, c’mon, it’s Eddie, he had to have said something!” She prodded. 

“Winnie, genuinely, he gave me some bullshit one liner, and that was it-”

“Leavin’ already? Could’a sworn y’all just got here?” With a gentlemanly hand holding the door open, both you and Winnie froze in place, as Eddie had abandoned that refilled beer all just to smile down at you. But you took the initiative to yank Winnie back to reality, tugging on her arm to let the cool breeze consume you in the loitered parking lot. But the god forsaken sound of the heavy crunch of boots against the asphalt had followed your movements. “Oh, c’mon now, things are just gettin’ a little interesting.” Eddie managed to speed up his steps, coming straight for your direction, where he fell in step ahead of you. “Kinda left me hangin’ back there.”

His eyes dropped to your bouncing body with each ardent step, and you left the warmth of Winnie’s hand to cross your jacket over. “There was nothing left hanging.” 

“Now, wait, hold on.” His ringed hand buzzed your body, as it came to halt your movements with a gentle squeeze to your waist. “Kinda feel like you’re not getting the best first impression out of me here.”

Winnie chuckled. “You’re doing that to yourself.” 

Eddie smiled. “Long time, no see, Wendy, still using too much teeth with your blowjobs?” 

Her rum raisin lips pried open with a gasp of disbelief, as without a thought, her purse came flying to his arm. “It’s Winnie, you asshole!” Smack! “And unlike you, a piece of vibrating plastic can actually make me cum!” Winnie stormed off, violating her purse with her violent hands that aggressively searched for her car keys. 

A sardonic laugh rippled out of his chest, as he happily smiled down at. “What a fucking liar, babe, don’t trust a word out of her. She always comes crawling back.” His sly grin whispered, as you felt his thumb caress you. You scoffed in revulsion, shoving his hand off of you to make your way around him. “Wait, wait, scratch that, alright? Forget I said that about your little friend, and we can start on a clean slate.” His legs followed you.

“Not interested.”

“Don’t tell me this is because of Red, sweetheart.” Your silence only egged him on. “Okay, look, whatever happened between me and your friend is in the past, alright? Just one little date will prove that I’m not usually like this, just got caught up in the wrong crowd, c’mon you gotta feel a little sympathy for me.”

“I don’t feel a thing actually.” 

“Trust me, baby, after one date, I can make you feel a whole lot’a things.” His teeth flashed in a wicked smile that had your stomach anxiously turning. “What’s your pretty name, sweetheart?”

“I don’t think you really need to know that.”

“Kinda important to know the name of the girl I’m takin’ out.” You wouldn’t even be able to count on hand how many times Eddie’s forgotten his date’s name. 

But you gulped the stress down, as you approached Winnie’s car. “Hasn’t a girl ever told you no?”

“Don’t you have a mind of your own?” Do you? Your body paused at his words, fingers lingering on the car door handle. “Don’t let your little friend influence this, use that head of yours for yourself. And for the record, sweetheart, no, a girl’s never told me no.” Eddie mockingly smirked in your face. 

You swallowed thickly, as you faced the unbearable confrontation of Eddie Munson. Something you never even knew you had the confidence to do. “Well, I am, so accept it.”

“Look, darling, under any other circumstance, absolutely, but I got this funny, little feeling in my heart that you’re too special to let go.” His casanova smile ate at his face. “Just one little date s’all I’m askin’ for. Whatever you want, I’ll cater to your needs.”

Your eyes slung at Winnie’s through the car window, only to fall back on Eddie. Overwhelmed with feelings you’ve never felt before, you wanted to violently vomit, but stuck to the endeavor of standing your ground.

“Shove it.”

You cut Eddie off with the slam of Winnie’s door, where he stood watching you, as she keyed the ignition. In the distance, the entrance rang with the exit of Eddie’s friends. “Yo, Ed!” 

But his eyes never left yours. “What?!”

“C’mon, we’re heading to the diner down east!” His friend called for, as Winnie reversed from the parking spot. 

In the lively night, Eddie Munson watched you pull away, your chest heaving with just as much anxiety as the beating of his heart with the adrenaline you coursed through his veins. And maybe Eddie was lying at the mention of you being special, it wouldn’t be the first those words were spoken to get into the pants of a naive girl, who Eddie couldn’t have a single care for. Or maybe, just maybe, the craziness of Winnie Ambrose had managed to infiltrate your mind, forcing a sliver of you to believe his words to be true, as you festered on the subtle call out Eddie had managed to strike a nerve with. Something no one else has. Unless you were that easy to read to a practical stranger, how did Eddie know enough to be able to pick you apart with one sentence? 

But you were urging yourself to understand this wasn’t his first rodeo. 

Eddie watched Clara Dunn hide her tummy with her knit sweater, inevitably leading to his praises about her body that had her opening up her legs to him. Evil. Eddie watched Fernanda Pajaro conceal the hormonal bumps of her skin with creamy concealer, giving him the in to compliment her flawless complexion that got her mouth on his cock. Vile. Eddie watched Winnie Ambrose search for the validation of others, leaving him to whisper those sweet nothings in her ear that had her entangled in his sheets. Nefarious.

To Eddie Munson, you were absolutely noth-

“Ah! What the hell?!” Winnie’s foot slammed on the brakes, forcing your head to jolt at the sudden stop. 

Behold, Eddie Munson’s hands perched against the hood of Winnie’s car, as the headlights of her Honda casted a sinister smile on his delighted face. “One date.” His muffled voice echoed. 

Winnie rolled down the window of her car. “What the fuck are you doing?! You’re gonna get yourself killed!” 

His shoulders shrugged, as his stare never left yours. “I won’t as long as you agree.”

Consternation was eating away at you, as the honking of cars was beginning to erupt, overstimulating you into a fright, that only worsened with the active traffic that was speeding on the other half of the four-lane highway. 

“Are you crazy?! Get out of the road!” Your head peaked from the window, urging Eddie to leave. 

You envied, yet despised the collection of calmness that he was able to generate, as his face never faltered from the clash of vehicles that sped by. “Just one date s’all I’m askin’.” 

“Y/N, just do it!” Winnie begged you.

“No! I’m not about to be forced into this just because he’s insane!” 

“Y/N is it? That’s real pretty.” Eddie smiled. “Y/N, will you go out with me?”

“No!” A car flew by. “God, please just get out of the road!” You desperately pleaded. 

Eddie’s face playful faltered. “Why not? Why won’t you go out with me?”

“Because I don’t want you!”

A honk, louder than the usual, blared to warn its impending arrival, as Eddie’s palms were quickly beginning to moisten at the semi truck coursing down the road. “It’s just a date, just do it!” Winnie implored. 

“Okay, okay! I’ll go out with you!” You hastily gave in, but the stubborn ego of Eddie Munson was rampantly becoming your sworn enemy. 

“Nah, c’mon, don’t do me any favors-”

“No, no, I want to!” You beseeched, as the worry lines of your forehead deepened at the sight of the truck. 

“Say it.” His smug smile infuriated you beyond compare.

“I wanna go out with you!” You angrily exhorted on the shortness of breath that weasled its way from your constricting throat.

“Say it again.”

You practically screamed your head off to satisfy the liking of Eddie Munson. “I want to go out with you!” 

And he smiled, so proudly at his actions, but even more so at your words. “Alright, alright, we’ll go out, no need to beg.” 

Running off road, you settled back into the seat with heavy breaths, as you finally watched Eddie safely return to the bar’s parking lot. Your sweaty hand burned itself on the hotness of your tense forehead that was beginning to welcome an ache from the strain of your voice and worries. 

If only you knew the worsened matters of your situation, as Santina Rodrigo, with her burgundy acrylics and brown lips of gloss, watched in a fury at the events that transpire between her man and you.

Not to promote the imperial idealization of the American government, but you were beginning to loathe the contents of Africa and Asia that made them so large you were left unable to complete your puzzle by 12:00 A.M Saturday. 

As spoken, this was the universe's punishment.

[abhrodeepnag-posts]

14 February 2024 18:03

Briefing by Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, Moscow, February 14, 2024

Cancellation of postage stamp series Russian Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Missions

Today, the Foreign Ministry will be holding a ceremony at its Mansion to cancel postage stamps from a new series titled Buildings of Russian Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Missions. Published at the Foreign Ministry’s initiative and in cooperation with the Russian Post and Marka, the series presents a collection of stamps showing the most famous Russian diplomatic missions, which are also architectural landmarks. The first four stamps issued in the series depict the Foreign Ministry’s Reception House, the Ambassador’s Residence in Paris, and the Russian embassies in Vienna and Beijing.

Notable is the stamp featuring Sergey Morozov’s former mansion, which now serves as the Reception House, where major treaties and agreements have been signed. You can see it almost every week during talks between the Foreign Minister and his foreign colleagues.

During his visit to France, Emperor Nicholas II stayed at the Residence of the Russian Ambassador to Paris, while the Russian Embassy in Vienna hosted the Soviet-American summits in 1961 and 1979.

Built relatively recently, the Russian embassy building in Beijing opened in 1959, which coincided with the 10th anniversary of diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. Let me remind you that this is the largest building, as far as its floor space is concerned, as well as one of the most outstanding in terms of its grandeur, among embassy structures of all the world powers.

The stamp depicting the Reception House has augmented reality built into it, which enables those who download the mARka mobile application to discover the building’s lush interiors.

Senior officials from the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media, Foreign Ministry staff, as well as representatives of the Russian Post and Marka will attend the ceremony.

Sergey Lavrov to take part in the Forum of Campaigners against Modern Practices of Neo-Colonialism

On February 16, 2024, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will address the plenary session of the Forum of Campaigners against Modern Practices of Neo-Colonialism. Representatives of the leading political forces from over fifty countries in Africa, Eurasia and Latin America are expected to take part in this event.

President Vladimir Putin supported the initiative by the United Russia party to hold this inter-party forum in Moscow. Its key objectives include developing meaningful and comprehensive measures for countering neo-colonialism and establishing a permanent international mechanism to enable major political forces from across the world to plan and coordinate their actions on the anti-neo-colonial front.

Sergey Lavrov’s visit to Cuba

On February 19, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will visit the Republic of Cuba.

Meetings are scheduled with President of Cuba Miguel Díaz-Canel and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla to discuss current issues of bilateral cooperation, as well as the global and regional agenda.

Participants in the talks will focus on the key aspects of further strengthening Russian-Cuban strategic partnership based on a consistent deepening of political dialogue and boosting ties in the trade, economic, finance, investment, scientific, technical, cultural, humanitarian and other areas.

The parties will discuss fostering collaboration to prevent the undermining of universally accepted principles and norms of international law, the UN Charter, counteracting the use of neo-colonial practices and illegitimate unilateral restrictions in inter-state relations.

Sergey Lavrov’s visit to Venezuela

On February 20, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will visit Venezuela as part of his trip to Latin America. During the visit, he will meet with President of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro and Executive Vice President Delcy Rodríguez and will hold talks with Foreign Minister Yván Gil.

The parties will discuss the current state and development prospects of bilateral strategic partnership, including the deepening of political dialogue, and the implementation of major joint projects in the trade, investment, cultural and humanitarian areas. They will also exchange opinions on the key issues on the international and regional agendas, and on bilateral interaction within the UN and other multilateral platforms.

Sergey Lavrov’s upcoming participation in G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting

On February 21-22, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will take part in the G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Rio de Janeiro.

The upcoming meeting, the first one held this year as part of Brazil’s presidency, will be devoted to the current issues of the contemporary international agenda with a focus on overcoming geopolitical discord and initiating reforms within global economic institutions.

Our Brazilian friends consider progress in this field an essential prerequisite and a necessary condition for steering the global economy towards gradual development and sustainable growth.

In his remarks, Sergey Lavrov will provide Russia’s comprehensive perspective on the challenges confronting the international community, including an in-depth analysis of both their internal causes and dynamics. He will also outline the steps necessary to overcome these challenges.

Sergey Lavrov will note the special importance of utilising the entire range of diplomatic tools, as well as ways to peacefully resolve disputes, with mutually respectful dialogue and cooperation in order to provide indivisible and sustainable security. Considering all the geopolitical realities, we will urge our G20 partners to fully support the process of building a truly democratic multipolar, polycentric world and adhering to the legitimate interests of all countries and peoples.

We will speak against the militarisation of international economic relations, hybrid means of waging wars, undermining of sovereignty and independence of autonomous states, and interfering in their domestic affairs.

We will insist on upholding the supremacy of international law and its basic principles outlined in the UN Charter, and advocate a return to collective decision making with the participation of all interested countries while strictly adhering to consensus and the shared goal of finding common ground.

On the sidelines of the G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, Sergey Lavrov will have a busy agenda filled with bilateral meetings. The minister’s contacts with his colleagues from the countries with emerging markets are being discussed.

The 90th anniversary of the Diplomatic Academy

February 14 marks the 90th anniversary of the Diplomatic Academy’s establishment. In 1934, the Institute for Training Diplomatic and Consular Workers was established at the People’s Commissariat (Ministry) for Foreign Affairs. It aimed to provide highly skilled and patriotic human resources for the foreign-policy service, an objective the Academy successfully accomplished throughout its 90-year history.

During its existence, the Academy won a reputation as a reliable educational platform for training foreign affairs specialists, including about 800 ambassadors and representatives attached to international organisations. Every year, about 750 Russian diplomats, as well representatives of diplomatic agencies from over 40 states, improve their skills at the Diplomatic Academy. Additionally, the Academy is a major academic centre that continually builds upon its conceptual research, which focuses on topical international processes ongoing worldwide.

Faculty members of the Diplomatic Academy have received a presidential citation for their science and education successes and in connection with the Academy’s 90th anniversary. Many of the Academy’s professors and lecturers have received state and departmental awards.

On this day, we would like to join all those congratulating the Diplomatic Academy, an education organisation affiliated with the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Voting from abroad in the Russian presidential election

We are organising the process for casting votes in foreign countries. On February 8, Chair of the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation Ella Pamfilova held a briefing at the Foreign Ministry Press Centre for representatives of the diplomatic corps accredited in Moscow. Heads of the diplomatic missions from more than 130 countries attended the event.

Ella Pamfilova explained the specifics of the Russian electoral system and the election process in Russia and introduced foreign diplomats to the new technologies used in the elections. She spoke about international observers, usually invited by the Federal Assembly, the Central Election Commission, and the Russian Foreign Ministry. There was also information about media accreditation.

We are expecting the arrival of 500 to 1,000 (we do not know the exact number yet) observers from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. Accredited by the Central Election Commission, they will be able to visit any place in Russia to observe the election. When we receive official responses from international organisations, we will release the full list of those involved.

As I said during my previous briefing, we are opening around 270 polling stations in all the countries with Russian diplomatic missions. It should be noted, though, that we are seriously concerned about the security at the polling stations. Several countries in Europe and America have not responded to our requests for assistance in ensuring security and public order during the election.

Therefore, in unfriendly states, we cannot organise off-site voting beyond cities where our foreign missions are based, in locations with a low population of Russian nationals. We used to be able to organise off-site voting at Russian cultural centres, trade missions, honorary consuls’ offices, and at venues provided by local officials as part of our friendly cooperation. To ensure the security of our nationals wishing to vote while abroad, we are opening polling stations only at our Russian diplomatic missions.

I would like to remind you that, at the request of unfriendly countries, 26 Russian diplomatic missions have been closed recently and dozens of Russian diplomats have been expelled from their countries of presence. As a result, there are fewer opportunities for opening more polling stations in the countries with large Russian communities, such as the Baltic states, Moldova, Germany, the United States, the Czech Republic, Finland, etc. There are also logistical and organisational obstacles that have been created for us. For example, it is difficult to transfer election campaign funding.

We have noted a growing number of calls for sabotaging the vote. We would like to warn all extremists about the administrative and criminal liability for attempting to disrupt the normal course of this election.

We are currently forming election commissions that will be primarily headed by representatives of our diplomatic missions abroad. We are about to receive voting ballots and are preparing to send them abroad.

The Foreign Ministry is doing everything to ensure that Russian nationals abroad have full access to the voting process. We will continue to inform you about preparation for the Russian presidential election at these briefings, on the Foreign Ministry website, on our official social media pages, and in our interviews and comments for the media from the Foreign Ministry headquarters and our foreign missions.

Ukraine update

February 18 will mark ten years since what turned out to be a turning point in the Euromaidan wave of unrest in Kiev.

On this day in 2014, the ostensibly peaceful anti-government demonstrations rapidly devolved into massive violence. The headquarters of the ruling Party of Regions was seized and burned down. Two of its employees were killed. The rioters ruthlessly attacked the Berkut police unit and other law enforcement forces, which refrained from using weapons in response. The Western masterminds and orchestrators of those “rallies” (atrocities in fact) urged the rioters on, causing further escalation. Meanwhile, the collective West leaders were openly interfering in Ukraine’s internal affairs and threatening the country’s government, literally saying that if the president or the security forces used weapons to restore constitutional order, the state of Ukraine and all decision-makers would be punished.

Twenty-nine Maidan rioters and 11 law enforcement officers were killed and hundreds were injured in just two days of clashes, February 18 and 19, 2014.

In essence, these events launched the escalation of violence, which subsequently claimed many thousands of lives and maimed millions of lives. Ukraine was rapidly heading for a disaster, a brutal anti-constitutional putsch/coup. All these years, the Kiev regime has been trying to distort the truth about those terrible events.

February 12 was another recent memorable date. Exactly nine years ago in Minsk, thanks to the titanic efforts of the international mediators – Russia, Germany, and France – an agreement was reached on the Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements, intended to end the civil war triggered by the February 18, 2014 events. I am referring to the civil war that the Kiev regime unleashed against its own population in south-eastern Ukraine, sending tanks to suppress the people who stood up to defend constitutional order.

That package of documents, the Package of Measures, was signed by all parties to the conflict including Kiev, Donetsk, and Lugansk. The document was approved by UN Security Council Resolution 2202, becoming the sole framework for an intra-Ukrainian settlement and an integral part of international law.

The Package of Measures was a unique opportunity to preserve peace in Ukraine, but the Kiev regime missed it.

Kiev did not even consider starting to fulfill the agreements reached, deliberately ignoring its own commitments. The key condition for ensuring a comprehensive, long-term, and sustainable settlement was the establishment of direct and mutually respectful dialogue between Kiev, Donetsk, and Lugansk. But both Petr Poroshenko and Vladimir Zelensky categorically rejected the very idea of direct negotiation with those who represented the interests of Donbass. They continued to refer to those people as their citizens and yet refused to talk to them. Apparently, they did not even think of the region’s population as human beings, openly calling them “scum” and “species.”

That the clique in Kiev was sabotaging the Package of Measures never evoked a proper response from the deals’ European guarantors, Germany and France, although we have repeatedly brought the Kiev regime’s inaction to their attention. It did not emerge until later that Berlin and Paris did this deliberately. They had no interest in a peaceful settlement; they were preparing the Ukrainian army for an armed struggle against Russia. Ex-Chancellor Merkel and former President Hollande, who used to be proud of their co-authorship of the Package of Measures and their co-sponsorship of the Minsk process, announced this without a shadow of regret. So, they deceived the whole world – everyone who craved peace in Ukraine, their citizens who voted for them, and the parties they represented, also because they played the role of peacekeepers, when in fact, they had no intention of being peacekeepers. They deceived the UN Security Council. They never mentioned their plan to never implement the Package of Measures when it was presented and became a binding document before the eyes of the entire international community. Which was forgery.

Seeing Kiev’s preparations for the forceful suppression of Donbass, which would have led to numerous casualties among civilians, Russia could not stand back and watch. We did not have any other choice but to begin the special military operation to protect civilians in the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter. We could not abandon Russian people, Russian-speaking people of various ethnic backgrounds and beliefs, who associated themselves with Russian history and culture, to be butchered by Banderite cutthroats. They were people who wanted peace but who were given not simply a war, but the Kiev regime’s literal attempt to annihilate them.

The Ukrainian neo-Nazis continue their barbaric, indiscriminate shelling of civilians in these Russian regions. According to the DPR’s authorities, 58 people have been killed, 204 injured, and 390 houses have been destroyed since the beginning of the year.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces are also using drones. Thus, on February 9, 2024, the Russian air defence forces shot down 19 drones in four Russian regions and above the Black Sea. On February 11, 2024, 33 Ukrainian drones were destroyed in the Kherson Region.

Meanwhile, the West continues to overlook the terrorist actions of the Kiev junta, turning a blind eye to all their criminal activities and the threats to commit them. Ukrainian Minister for Digital Transformation, Mikhail Fyodorov, attracted attention by making a brigandish statement that resembled the rhetoric of Al-Qaeda and ISIS (organisations that are banned and globally recognised as terrorist). He went as far as promising major explosions throughout Russia.

I have one request to the representatives of the Kiev regime who make such statements. Please refrain from attempting to disavow your words, claiming they are fake, or that you did not make such statements. The reality is, you did utter those words. We observe and remember all this. Our law enforcement agencies are doing the same; a topic I will address shortly.

There should be no illusions that the Kiev regime will escape accountability for such statements and malevolent actions. Russian law enforcement agencies are closely monitoring and documenting all these incidents. Everyone complicit to terrorist attacks will inevitably be brought to justice. Do you want examples? We have them.

The Russian courts continue to sentence Ukrainian militants who committed felonies against civilians, based on proof collected by the Russian Investigative Committee.

Thirty three Ukrainian neo-Nazis were sentenced to 27-29 years in prison for committing crimes against civilians in the Donetsk People’s Republic.

Ukrainian militant Maxim Chernushenko was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the attempted murder of two residents of Mariupol in March 2022.

No criminals will be able to escape punishment. They will be found and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Today, on February 14, Brussels will host a regular, 19th meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group (also known as the Ramstein group). Its agenda will focus on providing Kiev with air defence systems, munitions, and other weapons that the Ukrainian Armed Forces need.       

Even the United States cannot decide whether they should continue sponsoring the Kiev regime. The US’s desire to shuffle off the unbearable burden of funding Zelensky on to Europe is becoming clearer. First of all, to Germany, which is the leader in this sense. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Washington on February 9, 2024, to receive instructions. It was he who emotionally urged the Western countries to do everything in their power to prevent Russia from winning.

Let me remind you that their initial goal was to inflict a strategic defeat upon Russia. However, the rhetoric has shifted, and now they say that they cannot let Russia win. I must disappoint them; they have failed to fulfill both of their threats. We will persevere.

In his remarks, Olaf Scholz mostly noted that, in the event of a Russian victory, the Golden Billion run the risk of finding itself in an unpredictable world, one that would be much more dangerous than during the Cold War era.

He should have been more straightforward: it will prove more dangerous than during World War II. The thing is that neo-Nazism is reincarnating in Germany. We can see members of the German Government talk about their Nazi ancestors with great respect. We can see how neo-Nazism is staging a comeback all over Germany. They are reprinting Adolf Hitler’s most fiendish legacy called Hitler, Mein Kampf: A Critical Assessment. I will discuss this in greater detail today.

It may be surprising that, despite the corrupt and criminal nature of the Kiev junta, European politicians are saying that Ukraine is allegedly saving Europe from Russia. In reality, the regime of Vladimir Zelensky resembles a stone tied to the neck of a drowning person. It is dragging the European Union to the bottom and devastating a formerly thriving and prosperous territory. European functionaries do not care what their own citizens (who finance Ukrainian elites, the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and the personal expenses of Ms Zelensky out of their own pocket) think of this. They disregard the disintegrating economy of a formerly thriving and flourishing Europe, and they also overlook the deteriorating social situation there. It is hardly surprising that against such a backdrop hard-working farmers are protesting in EU countries. They do not get their hard-earned money from speculative stock trading, securities machinations, or from the creation of new “bubbles” on real estate and digital technologies markets. No, the farmers provide agricultural produce and food that keeps everyone alive. Today, they are losing profits as cheap Ukrainian foodstuffs are being imported. They face skyrocketing fuel and energy expenses, due to the EU’s criminal energy policy with regard to its own citizens. They are counting their losses brought on by tax hikes. Where are these taxes heading? They are spending these tax proceeds on carnage managed by Vladimir Zelensky, whom the United States has installed.  

His regime continues to show its true face; in reality, this is just a snout. On February 11, 2024, Maxim Ostapenko, Director of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra Museum-Reserve, voiced his intention to swap the remains of the Russian Empire’s Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin, a reformist, for Ukrainian prisoners of war. Stolypin was killed in Kiev in 1911 and buried at the Kiev Pechersk Lavra; this resting place is now turning into a museum. This is not the first time when Ukrainian nationalists are trying to perform a Danse Macabre. 

The media has published multiple stories showing how they sell holy relics and deliver them abroad. They have now come up with a new initiative. Earlier, they suggested using the remains of General Nikolai Vatutin, who liberated Kiev (who is buried in central Kiev) and legendary Soviet secret agent Nikolai Kuznetsov (whose grave is in Lvov) for these purposes.

That nothing is sacred for Vladimir Zelensky’s regime is also further evidenced by the ongoing barbaric actions against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. It has recently become known that on the night of January 22, Kiev neo-Nazis brutally beat Metropolitan Longin of Bancheny. During his life, the metropolitan has actively been involved in charitable activities.  Since the 1990s, hundreds of orphans and children deprived of care have been saved thanks to his efforts. For this, he was awarded the Hero of Ukraine title in 2008 (we have talked about this). The Vladimir Zelensky regime is offended by the fact that the metropolitan will not renounce his faith and instead remains devoted to the canonical church, which the Kiev regime is shamelessly and so zealously destroying. Last year, a criminal case was opened against him, accusing him of allegedly inciting interreligious hatred.

The story is again about children. For some reason, anything related to children, attempts to save them and protect from destructive logic, evokes such a reaction from the Kiev regime. Or literally without reason. Why? Because for the Kiev regime, children are also a commodity.

We call on relevant international organisations to strongly condemn the ongoing inhumane repressions of the Kiev regime against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and force it to stop this arbitrariness.

The above facts confirm the relevance of the tasks of the special military operation to denazify and demilitarise Ukraine and eliminate threats emanating from its territory. These objectives, as the Russian leadership has stated, will definitely be fulfilled.

Developments in Moldova

We continue to monitor developments in this country. We can see its leadership take feverish actions to increase the attractiveness of the European integration project, which Moldova itself more often calls European colonisation. An entire range of tools is being used: from primitive tales to clear falsification.

On February 7, Foreign Minister of Moldova Mihai Popsoi said on television that “the CIS was conceived in order to limit the independence of the so-called post-Soviet countries.” Chisinau does not provide arguments to support these fables. This is nonsense that can be dispelled with a few facts.

– The CIS is a popular and constantly developing mechanism for countries to interact, coordinate their positions, and implement initiatives in a wide range of areas, such as politics, economics, military, security, cultural and humanitarian cooperation. Interaction in the CIS space is built on real, rather than declarative, principles of mutual respect, equality, and mutual consideration of interests.

– The CIS, unlike the EU and NATO, does not force anyone to do anything. The Commonwealth mechanisms are structured in a way that allows each state to take into account each other’s interests and participate in those projects and decisions that meet its needs and national interests.

– The economies of CIS countries are developing dynamically. The results for an incomplete 2023 showed a GDP increase of 3.2 percent.

– The CIS has established effective mechanisms to counter traditional, as well as new challenges and threats, such as crime, terrorism, and extremism.

– The CIS’s cultural and humanitarian dimension is a priority, which makes it possible to annually implement many large projects, including forums of creative and scientific communities, cultural, youth, and sports events.

This is the reality supported by facts: in terms of the number of events, economic indicators, and feedback from members of the CIS.

If we speak about beneficial cooperation in the CIS, the structure of Moldova’s apple exports is a case in point. According to the Association of Moldovan Fruit Producers and Exporters, Moldova exported around 190,000 tonnes of apples in 2022, including only 5 percent to Romania. Where do these exports go then? About 74 percent go to Russia, 8 percent to Kazakhstan and 6 percent to Belarus. Moldova’s media report that during the first six months of 2023, our country accounted for 50 percent of Moldova’s apple exports.

Residents of Moldova can see this. They realise what their officials are pushing them to do. Speaking plainly, they want their citizens to abandon the mutual benefits of cooperation in the CIS in favour of the European Union. Moldova’s citizens know what the EU countries have done to their own agricultural producers, as well as industrial and other manufacturers. Farmers in Poland and other EU countries have been trying to communicate the problem to their officials. Moldova’s officials in Chisinau are condemning their producers to the same fate because NATO paid them to promote this agenda. Their rise to power was arranged and now, they receive daily instructions on how to throw the country under the bus to meet NATO’s needs.

Let me remind you that this is a deeply ideology-driven bloc that falls in line with the confrontational goals of the United States and NATO. This bloc is pushing its own rules and standards on other countries in violation of the fundamental principle in the UN Charter on the sovereign equality of states and other international formats involving Moldova, such as the OSCE. This bloc’s miscalculated macroeconomic policy and illegitimate restrictions have led the EU into economic stagnation, industrial decline, and social tensions. The EU’s notorious solidarity has been reduced to political servitude while the principles of freedom and democracy have been replaced by double standards and direct censorship. Moldova’s officials are actively adopting all these “European values” and implementing them in their country.

Chisinau is making systematic “pre-sale” preparations in Moldova to meet NATO standards. Fortunately, the majority of Moldovans (around 58 percent, according to recent polls) disagree with their leaders’ destructive course. Despite the efforts of officials and EU support, the number of European integration supporters in Moldova is falling. The EU’s granting Chisinau candidate status in June 2022 did not help; nor did the announcement of pre-accession talks in December 2023. People understand everything.

We hope that officials in Chisinau finally realise why the people of Moldova do not wish to break off their historical ties with Russia, or lose their long-term markets, for the sake of ambiguous prospects of closer alignment with the aggressively-minded European Union.

Tensions escalate at Armenian-Azerbaijani border

We are seriously concerned about the escalating tensions on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border near Armenia’s Syunik Region and Azerbaijan’s Zangilan District.

Between February 12 and 13, a series of armed incidents occurred near Nerkin Hand, which have resulted in casualties and injuries. We strongly encourage both Baku and Yerevan to show restraint, implement de-escalation measures, and refrain from any actions that may contribute to further deterioration of the situation. All issues should be resolved by peaceful political and diplomatic means.

These incidents yet again confirm the urgency of Azerbaijan and Armenia’s return to the implementation of the comprehensive set of trilateral agreements adopted at the highest level in 2020-2022.

We are confident that territorial claims should be resolved within the bilateral Commission on the Delimitation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Border. We are ready to provide consultative assistance to this process.

Events in Japan as part of Northern Territories Day

On February 7, 2024, we saw another “puppet show” in Japan under the name of Northern Territories Day. Unlike traditional art forms, like Kabuki or other Japanese theatrical traditions, this event lacked high artistic merit. Once again, Japanese officials exhibited their primitive revanchist rhetoric. Ultra-right nationalists gathered to yell their slogans near the Russian diplomatic and consular missions, a familiar backdrop for such activities involving extremist elements in Japan.

Through such actions, official Tokyo has yet again confirmed its course towards historical revisionism that is hostile to Russia; this approach involves cultivating Russophobia and militaristic sentiments within society and undermining the post-war international order. An indirect indication of Japan entering a dangerous path of aligning with neo-Nazism was evident in equating anti-Russian sentiments regarding the developments in Ukraine with legally void territorial claims for the southern Kuril Islands.

We never tire of reminding the Japanese authorities of the need to fully acknowledge the results of the Second World War, which are outlined, in particular, in the UN Charter. At the same time, we strongly encourage the authors of the petition, adopted at the nationwide rally on February 7, 2024, to channel their demands to the resumption of talks on a peace treaty and visits to the Japanese cemeteries on the southern Kuril Islands toward the administration of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. While trying to appease Washington, the current administration is meticulously dismantling the remains of bilateral relations created by its predecessors.

Attacks on Russian Orthodox Church congregations in Denmark

We have noted provocations in the Denmark’s media targeting Russian Orthodox Church communities in their country. Russia’s Ambassador to Denmark has commented on the groundless accusations against those communities subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate.

We consider these publications a part of a purposeful campaign to discredit the activities of Orthodox communities, incite hatred on the basis of religion and ethnicity.

These materials are a vivid example of the anti-Russian hysteria that has engulfed Denmark and the West in recent years. This witch-hunt unleashed by official Copenhagen has already caused severe damage to multifaceted bilateral co-operation. Now the persecution has reached Orthodox communities engaged in fully legal activities in Denmark.

In particular, the Russian Orthodox Church in Denmark plays not only a spiritual and humanitarian role, but also a unifying role: its services are attended by a variety of ethnic groups living in that country.

For our part, we will continue to defend Russian Orthodox believers’ freedom of religion and the Russian Orthodox Church communities’ right to provide the necessary assistance to our compatriots and anyone practicing this religion. We will also use the potential of the relevant international organisations.

The recent concluding observations of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child

On February 8, the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which is a United Nations body, published its concluding observations following its 95th session where the combined 6th and 7th periodic reports of the Russian Federation on the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child were presented.

We cannot help but note that this body has carried out its mandate in an unprofessional and politicised manner. In this connection, I should like to remind you that the job of the Committee is to assist state Parties to the Convention in fulfilling their obligations under that international treaty.

The Russian Federation is committed to strict compliance with international laws on the protection of children's rights. For 35 years now, the Convention on the Rights of the Child has been the main reference point and unquestionable authority for the entire international community in this area. With this in mind, we took a responsible approach to the project and dispatched a high-ranking interdepartmental delegation to Geneva. Experts from Russia spent almost six hours answering more than 100 questions, providing comprehensive details on a wide range of problems related to ensuring the rights of the child.

However, a brief analysis of the CRC’s concluding observations shows that there was no constructive dialogue with the Committee members. The assessments and conclusions voiced clearly reflected political bias, especially in the context of Russia’s special military operation. One gets the impression that the recommendations were drawn up in advance and the review during the country session was a mere formality to comply with the rules of the game. Namely, some of the concluding observations are deliberately negative. Some others demonstrate a one-sided approach in assessing the information provided by the official delegation. Anything that did not meet a certain benchmark was patently censured. Moreover, some of the recommendations are actually unsubstantiated accusations based on the use of unverified data from biased NGOs.

The Committee's failure to carry out its mandate in an impartial manner is of particular concern in this context. Before the start of the special military operation, the plight of the children of Donbass, who, as a reminder, have been living in mortal danger and dying since 2014, was of no interest to anyone, despite the materials we provided to that body. After 2022, this issue has been raised exclusively in the context of “Russian aggression,” while the casualties among children in Russia inflicted by a neighbouring state’s airstrikes have been shamelessly ignored, as were the types of shells that killed those children.

The Interdom International Boarding School

I would like to give you an example from history. Far from all obvious things that are corroborated by facts become part of the general global information accepted as truth. A certain period of time has to elapse.

In Russia, the Interdom International Boarding School was established more than 90 years ago. It was an asylum for children whose parents were serving prison terms in countries with reactionary or fascist regimes. When this institution was created in 1933, what was the press writing about it in the West? The response to how Russia was protecting children’s rights was identical to what it is today.

The school was created at the initiative of the workers’ unions of the city of Ivanovo and with support from the International Organisation for Assistance to Fighters for Revolution and its chair was Elena Stasova.

Creating this children’s home was a sign of internationalism and the goodwill of Soviet citizens with regard to orphaned children of anti-fascist fighters in Spain, fighters against dictatorial regimes in Africa and Latin America, as well as children of many progressive figures from all over the world.

Its first students were children of anti-fascists from Germany, Greece, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, and many other countries. Does anyone in these countries, members of international organisations, know that 90 years ago, Russia, currently a target for their present accusations, saved and put on their feet many of their prominent politicians and public figures? Russia demonstrated how to take care of someone else’s children. For us there is no such thing as “someone else’s” child. They don’t remember this. But we and those children do.

Numerous Spanish children arrived in Interdom during the Civil War in Spain. There were many Chinese students in consequence of the revolutionary developments in China. Interdom in Ivanovo became their second homeland. None of these children was ever ashamed of this biographical fact.

Until the late 1990s, Interdom was a home for children from countries affected by wars, conflicts, or natural disasters. During its 91-year history, the boarding school was a second home for 5,000 foreign children from 86 countries. 

Interdom has developed a system of upbringing providing maximum care and devoid of attempts to re-educate these children and turn them into Russians by mentality and culture. It never dawned on anyone in Russia to make them renounce their countries of origin. Alongside Russian, the foreign students learned their native languages and maintained contacts with their fellow countrymen. The majority of them returned to their countries, while preserving ties with Russia, their school, and school friends. 

It is difficult to overestimate the role of Interdom in educating children of different ethnic backgrounds in the spirit of friendship, comradeship, and mutual respect, and in developing such qualities as determination and mutual assistance. The versatile knowledge obtained by the graduates of this unique educational institution allowed them to find a worthy application for their talents and abilities and to achieve success in various fields. Many Interdom graduates have occupied prominent positions in national governments and have made great contributions to national culture and science.

Here are some examples. Zaur Dakhta, a famous student of the school from a family of political immigrants, after graduation forged a brilliant career in the film industry. As a cameraman-director of fiction and documentary films, he shot about 100 films. As a director of photography he made the films Hafez Shirazi (1971), Registered in the Sky (1982), and Interview (1983). He holds the title of Honoured Worker of Culture of the Tajik SSR, is an academician of the Academy of Arts and an honorary citizen of Tajikistan. He is known in the republic as a bright photographer and organiser of numerous international exhibitions. The famous pupil of Interdom remembers his native school even 65 years after graduation. In early February 2024, Zaur Dakhta sent Interdom his book of memories written in two languages – Tajik and Russian.

Another Interdom alumnus Aldo Canestri, son of Italian trade unionist and communist Aldo Canestri, became an outstanding linguist. After school he entered the Philological Faculty of Moscow State University, graduating in Russian language and literature. After graduating from Moscow State University, from 1962 until his death in 2014. Aldo Canestri worked as a teacher of Italian at the Translation Department of the Maurice Thorez Moscow State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages (now Linguistic University). He raised several generations of translators and specialists in the Italian language in Russia and the former Soviet Union. He wrote a large number of teaching aids, phrasebooks, dictionaries, including a unique Italian-Russian language and country studies dictionary. The main work of his life was the Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms of the Italian Language.

Zhu Min, the daughter of Zhu De, one of the ten marshals of the People’s Republic of China, an associate of Mao Zedong, ended up in Interdom during the Great Patriotic War. She later graduated from the Lenin Teachers Training Institute in Moscow and returned to China, where for 30 years she lectured at the Russian Language Department of the Beijing Normal University, bringing up a generation of Chinese Russian scholars.

After graduating from Ivanovo Interdom Roza Yu Bin at the age of 17 joined the Russian editorial staff of the China monthly magazine as a style editor. The first issue of the illustrated edition of China was published in 1951. The publication of this magazine helped to deepen mutual understanding between the two countries. I have seen many different publications in my life. But in my opinion, this magazine is one of the benchmarks, designed to inform, educate, unite, and preserve freedom of opinion. It’s a terrific publication. You can look it up in libraries and archives. I sincerely advise you to do so.

Alexander Karastoyanov, the son of Bulgarian revolutionaries, Alexander and Georgica Karastoyanov, took part in the defence of Smolensk and received the Medal for Combat Exploits. After obtaining his officer’s commission, Karastoyanov served with the 1st Cavalry Corps commanded by General Pavel Belov. In 1944, Karastoyanov, then a Red Army Captain, returned to Bulgaria. He commanded a military unit and headed the Operational Intelligence Department of the Bulgarian People’s Army. Karastoyanov eventually worked his way through the ranks to become a Major General. He defended his DSc (Military Science) thesis and served as a military attaché in Hungary and Vietnam. In 1983, Interdom marked its 50th anniversary, and Karastoyanov visited the international school in Ivanovo together with other Bulgarian graduates. 

Graduates of the Ivanovo boarding school still maintain ties with Russia. All of them make their contribution to strengthening trust and mutual understanding in international affairs.

I would also like to note that everyone can see archive photos, part of an online exhibition, posted on the website. To mark Interdom’s 90th anniversary, we digitalised black-and-white photos, as well as related comments and titles, in a multi-colour format. I sincerely suggest that you take a look at this online exhibition. Every image of this large family photo album radiates warmth, joy, and conveys a special atmosphere of Interdom in Ivanovo.

This implies historical roots and our country’s attitude towards children who temporarily lose their families due to the international situation and circumstances linked with conflicts in their home countries. We have historical evidence showing how we dealt with such situations in the past, and how we address these issues today.

Do those who are now levelling accusations at us have such historical evidence? Let them show it to us, and we will have a look. The West claims that they can do this because they have done it in the past. Yes, we had done this in the past, we helped children who were left without parents in their countries. Their parents fell victim to fascist and Nazi regimes. We helped those children survive, preserve their human qualities and return to their home countries, while retaining their native language, culture, and love for their homeland. At the same time, they received additional knowledge that our country lavished on them.

Promoting Adolf Hitler’s legacy in Germany

There is another topic that has to do with someone doing something somewhere in the past and continuing to doing it today. I have already mentioned a wave of revelations disclosing that the families of several German politicians have Nazi roots. They have no choice now that archival documents have been unearthed. This explains why Germany and the Olaf Scholz government are sponsoring Vladimir Zelensky’s neo-Nazi regime. In fact, many cabinet members there come from Nazi families and have never condemned or rejected what their ancestors, covered in blood as they are, did.

All this is happening while several German research institutions, led by the Institute for Contemporary History Munich – Berlin, undertook a joint project to compile and publish Adolf Hitler’s public speeches and statements in 1933-1945. Those who initiated this project describe it as releasing the collection in book and audiobook formats for a wide audience, including school students. What a great choice. After all, school students must know what permeates the ideology guiding the Olaf Scholz government these days.

It seems like the effort to inject Adolf Hitler’s literary legacy into the public space and minds has reached an industrial scale. Since the 1990s, over the past 30 years, the Fuhrer’s speeches and orders dating back to 1925-1933 appeared in print after a similarly thorough research effort in a 17-volume publication, accompanied by a two-volume edition titled Hitler, Mein Kampf. A Critical Edition, which has had as many as 12 print runs since its initial release in 2016.

Instead of condemning everything that is connected with the criminal legacy of one of the most heinous monsters in the history of humankind, present-day Germany chooses to publish the works and speeches of this deranged Fuhrer, with the government’s consent, all while pretending that it is done for the purpose of research, education and awareness building. We believe that there is only one plausible explanation: the German authorities seek retribution for the Third Reich’s defeat. This sentiment has taken hold within a certain segment of German society and manifests itself in the deliberate effort to obscure Germany’s criminal past.

Germany’s position regarding Russia’s traditional resolution at the UN General Assembly, titled “Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance,” confirms this. After abstaining for many years during the vote on this resolution, Germany has been casting its vote against it since 2022.

This naturally raises questions for the German authorities, but to be honest with you, I would like to pose these questions to the people of Germany: What does the future hold? Do you understand what to expect from yourselves? What’s next? How about praising Adolf Hitler for his achievements as an outstanding statesman or something along those lines?

Recognising the genocide of the Soviet peoples during the Great Patriotic War

For me, this is the most important material not just of today’s briefing but of the past few years.

I just said that books with Adolf Hitler’s remarks and speeches are published in Germany. These books do not contain a critical analysis of Adolf Hitler’s remarks and speeches but rather present the original speeches. Perhaps Germans should publish a book about the genocide of the Soviet peoples during the Great Patriotic War.  Or perhaps, for every new edition of Hitler’s propaganda speeches, they should publish an equal number of copies of books, brochures and materials about what he did to the peoples in the USSR. Maybe those who still stand in the way of anti-Nazism in Germany will ponder it or present proposals. Allow me to present you with an extensive analysis of this matter.

Nowadays, politicians and public figures, mainly in the West, tend to cast a veil over the horrors that the Soviet people were subjected to during World War II and the Great Patriotic War. Some attribute the suffering of millions of people to just one country or one nation, essentially banning others from considering themselves victims. Others are proud of their “heroic” ancestors, like German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and some of her colleagues (recently, Bild published an entire list of these people who take pride in their family members, former representatives, activists and supporters of the Nazis and the Third Reich). There are people like Canadian officials who consider it impossible to extradite a Nazi criminal, referring to the lack of an extradition agreement between our countries. These actions directly or indirectly encourage neo-Nazis, including in Ukraine and in the Baltic states, and we talk about this regularly during these briefings.

All these public figures in the West ignore or fail to recognise the sacrifice made by Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War. Even when these public figures speak about the 27 million victims of that war, they forget about the tens of millions of ruined lives of Soviet families (if they survived), relatives and loved ones. Some politicians ignore these facts defiantly while others refer to a lack of information.

Now, especially for those who did not know or see, I will present information so that nobody can say that they were unaware of it or did not have access to it. Of course, it is impossible to cover the entire scale of this tragedy at this briefing but I will quote some horrendous figures.

According to the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office, during the occupation of Soviet territory between July 1941 and August 1944, the Nazi invaders and their accomplices deliberately eliminated more than 7.3 million people, including more than 18,000 children, through executions and using an extensive network of concentration and labour camps. Almost 2 million Soviet citizens were kidnapped into Nazi slavery. Half of the population of Leningrad, or 1,093,000 people, died during the Siege of Leningrad.

Based on the overall statistics, the tragic occupation affected the lives of almost 80 million people in the Soviet Union. Some 13,684,692 were killed by the Nazis, enslaved or starved to death.

In his conversation with Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Romania Mihai Antonescu in Berlin on November 27, 1941, Adolf Hitler openly declared his plan to eradicate Slavic ethnicities. Here is a direct quote of his words that everybody should know about because the Nazis’ true goals may be literally buried under the amount of political husk and other political statements today. People will pretend that none of this ever happened. But yes, it did. This is what the fuehrer plotted as of November 1941: “Only two races must remain in Europe in the future, Latin and German.  These two races must work together in Russia to eradicate the Slavs. The Slavic problem is biological rather than ideological, as you said, and all Europeans must fight the Slavs. If I succeed, my mission is to destroy Slavdom.”

The significance of the directive to the Navy on September 29, 1941, concerning the destiny of the city on the Neva River is equally illustrative. In the directive, Hitler said about Leningrad: “In this war for our very existence, we can have no interest in maintaining even a part of this very large urban population.”

There is incontestable, documented evidence of a deliberate, premeditated policy by the political, economic and military officials of Nazi Germany, on the extermination of civilians and war prisoners in order to destroy the statehood of the USSR and capture new territories for subsequent colonisation and exploitation in accordance with the expansion concept, or as the Third Reich put it, “the conquest of living space for Germany.”

1. According to Hitler’s speech at a meeting with Reich officials on July 16, 1941, the Lebensraum strategy was based on the following principles: “Never again must it be possible to create a military power west of the Urals, even if we have to wage war for a hundred years in order to attain this goal… The entire Baltic area must become Reich territory. Likewise the Crimea, including a considerable hinterland… the Volga colony too will have to become Reich territory, also the district around Baku…The Kola Peninsula must become Reich territory…Leningrad must be razed to the ground in order to hand it over to the Finns… Undoubtedly, Ukraine is the most important territory for the next three years.”

In his testimony at Nuremberg on November 13, 1945, one of highest-ranking officers of the German Army, Walter Warlimont, said regarding the goals of the Nazis in the war against the Soviet Union that Germany planned to expand its living space far to the east. To that end, new military borders needed to be established: the Trans-Caucasian region was supposed to be included in the new territories, then the border would go along the western shore of the Caspian Sea to Astrakhan, then up north along the Volga River and then from the head of the Volga River to Arkhangelsk.

German leadership set a goal for the mass extermination of the population long before the war against the USSR. This was reflected in various instructions, orders, and later in practical actions. In accordance with the General Plan Ost, death camps were one of the main ways to “free the occupied territories from the native population.” Such documents as Generalplan Ost, Instruction On Special Regions to Directive No. 21 (Barbarossa Plan) of March 13, 1941, Decree on the Exercise of Military Justice in the Barbarossa Area and on Special Measures by the Troops, signed on May 13, 1941 by Chief of the High Command of the German Armed Forces Wilhelm Keitel, and others elevated the atrocities against civilians to a state policy and freed Nazi soldiers from responsibility for their crimes.

On March 30, 1941, Adolf Hitler, speaking to high-ranking officers, said that “it necessary to exterminate the Bolshevik commissars and the Bolshevik intelligentsia.”

The directive of the Supreme High Command of the German Armed Forces dated May 12, 1941 ordered the death of captured political officers of the Red Army and employees of Soviet state, utility and economic institutions, who were declared especially dangerous, in implementing plans to colonise the Soviet Union. An act was passed stating that political officers were not considered prisoners of war and were to be killed immediately, preventing them from being evacuated to the rear. For prisoners of war whose lives were spared, a hard labour regime was declared, dooming them to slow death.

In particular, the Decree on Exercising Military Jurisdiction in the Area of Barbarossa and Special Measures by the Troops dated May 13, 1941, stipulated that with regard to offences committed against enemy civilians by members of the Wehrmacht or by its auxiliaries, prosecution was not obligatory, even where the deed was at the same time a military crime or misdemeanor. In populated areas, where the armed forces had been subjected to “insidious or treacherous attacks,” collective coercive measures were required to be immediately applied if the circumstances would not allow for quickly identifying individual perpetrators.

By the Order on the Behaviour of Troops in Russia dated May 23, 1941, the military command of Nazi Germany directly called on the troops to “mercilessly and energetically fight against Bolshevik instigators, resisting saboteurs and Jews, including the unconditional suppression of any active or passive resistance.”

Mass executions of civilians, concentration camps, burning villages with people – all this was part of everyday life for the German occupation regime.

2. At the behest of Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goering, the number two man in the German hierarchy, developed a plan for exploiting the territories to be conquered in the East. If implemented, this plan would have led to death by starvation of millions of Slavic people, mass killings of prisoners of war, and seizing food on the occupied Soviet territories to be used by the Germans. According to the German Hunger Plan drafted by State Secretary and Minister of Food and Agriculture Herbert Backe, the German armed forces were to be fully supplied with resources from the Soviet Union, without consideration for the needs of the Soviet people.

According to materials from the Generalplan Ost (Master plan for the East) dated May 23, 1941, the Nazis sought to rearrange Europe demographically and have the fertile lands of what they saw as former Russia supply food to occupied Europe.

In his speech at the Castle of Wewelsburg in early 1941, Reichsführer SS and head of the German police Heinrich Himmler spoke about reducing the Slavic population by 30 million people as one of the goals of the Russian campaign, as evidenced by former head of the SS and police in Central Russia and Belarus Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski in Nuremberg in 1946.

In November 1941, Goering shared with Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano his thoughts about “20 to 30 million people in Russia dying of hunger within the next year, which is good, because some peoples must be significantly reduced in numbers.” Hitler also predicted a “national disaster” for “Muscovites” and made it clear that lack of food in many Soviet regions would lead to “millions of people dying.”

Throughout 1941, Joseph Goebbels stated that “Russia should expect nothing from us ... we will let it die of hunger.” During his tours of the occupied Soviet territories, General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment Fritz Sauckel stated that “all German authorities are absolutely certain that this year, that is, this winter, at least 10 to 20 million of these people will succumb to hunger.” Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories Alfred Rosenberg also repeatedly stated that the famine affecting millions of people was a “cruel necessity... that is not subject to compassion.”

Do you now see the terrible substitution of the Holodomor issue in Ukraine? Who exactly was condemned to hunger and who condemned them? Everything is mixed up in their heads courtesy of the Westerners.

A letter sent by head of the NSDAP Chancellery Martin Bormann dated July 23, 1942 to the Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories Alfred Rosenberg regarding the policy on the occupied territories contained the following instruction: “We have an interest in reducing the population growth in the occupied eastern regions by using abortions... The threat of the populace in the occupied eastern regions reproducing faster than before is high, because, clearly, its well-being has so far been much better. That is why we must adopt necessary measures to prevent the non-German population from reproducing.”

3. The International Military Tribunal held in Nuremberg from November 20, 1945 to October 01, 1946 ruled that the crimes committed by Nazi criminals were crimes against peace and humanity. The Nuremberg verdict stated that the killings and cruel treatment of civilians peaked in Nazi dealings with Soviet citizens, among others. In the East, mass killings and atrocities were committed not only to suppress opposition and quell resistance to the German occupation forces. In the Soviet Union and other countries, these crimes were part of a plan aimed at disposing of all local people by banishing and exterminating them in order for the Germans to colonise the vacated territory. Crimes against civilians were of outrageous proportions.

Since the Nuremberg Trials, which explicitly condemned Nazism as a criminal ideology and political practice, the volume of available documents corroborating the facts of numerous atrocities committed by the German occupiers and their accomplices has increased several times over.

In 2019-2022, Russia’s Investigative Committee initiated criminal cases under Article 357 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“genocide”) related to mass killings of Soviet civilians and prisoners of war during the Great Patriotic War within the borders of modern Russia. Eleven of them have been completed. The rulings adopted in recent years by the courts of St Petersburg, the Leningrad, Novgorod, Oryol, Pskov, Belgorod, Bryansk, and Rostov regions, the Republic of Crimea, the Krasnodar and the Stavropol territories clearly qualify the criminal acts committed by Nazis and their accomplices as crimes against humanity and the genocide of national and ethnic groups that represented the people of the Soviet Union.

In the run-up to the 75th anniversary of Victory, work started on the Federal archival project “Crimes committed by Nazis and their accomplices against civilians of the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War.” This package of documents continues to be supplemented and contains over 5,000 documents as of today.

Our foreign missions will circulate this information as official documents at UN agencies and other international organisations in accordance with the instruction issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia.

The collective West’s neo-colonial policy towards Bosnia and Herzegovina

We would like to draw your attention to the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. As one of the guarantors under the 1995 General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina and a member of the Steering Board of the Peace Implementation Council, Russia has serious concerns regarding the illegal actions by the Western parties’ multilateral efforts to promote a post-conflict settlement in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They are seeking to substitute the core principles set forth in the peace treaty with their own self-serving provisions in keeping with the glorious traditions of Western neo-colonial policies.

They are guided by a Less Dayton – More Brussels motto, and acting in gross violation of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s constitutional provisions, which guarantee equality for the three state-forming peoples and the country’s two entities. They are pressuring the country into accepting a Western neo-liberal pseudo-civilian social model while failing to take into account the historical, political, cultural, religious and administrative factors that have defined the way the state in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been developing. They are open about imposing their priorities on sovereign Bosnia and Herzegovina, leaving it no option other than to follow the EU and NATO in their policies while sacrificing ties with third parties. High-ranking Western visitors have been showing up in Sarajevo more and more, but they never focus on facilitating social and economic development for Bosnia and Herzegovina, encouraging inter-ethnic reconciliation or promoting inter-ethnic dialogue. Instead, they have made unconditional compliance with EU and NATO objectives their highest priority by pretending that the country has no alternative other than to join these blocs.

This is colonialism at its worst. We can clearly see the true objective of this policy, which is to draw the country into its exclusive sphere of influence and reduce its role to a supplier of raw materials and a political subject. The West does not need anything from Bosnia and Herzegovina other than obedience and lack of leadership on behalf of its senior government officials who must blindly follow the orders coming from Washington and Brussels and ensure a steady supply of natural and human resources for the European Union. It is for this reason that the West focuses on developing so-called civil society institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, imposing an alien LGBT agenda, and easing requirements to allow qualified workers to enter the EU, thereby intentionally draining the national economy of its resources.

At the same time, mechanisms relying on the diplomatic missions to the country, including the delegation of the European Union, the Council of Europe and OSCE missions, and the Office of the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, have a tight grip over the political situation in the country. In fact, people there do not have a say when it comes to running their own country. Bosnia and Herzegovina was literally stripped of its sovereignty by those who posed as its staunch supporters based on the Dayton Accords. The collective West turned Bosnia and Herzegovina, a European state, into its colony and continues its experiments on its people, who have already suffered from the NATO aggression in 1995.

As a responsible contributor to post-conflict settlement in Bosnia and Herzegovina and permanent member of the UN Security Council, while also keeping a close eye on the situation in the country, Russia upholds its support for the Dayton constitutional principles stipulating the equality of the three peoples and two entities. We call on the international community and political forces inside Bosnia and Herzegovina to abide by the principles governing Bosnia and Herzegovina’s statehood and the distribution of power there as coordinated and approved by the UN Security Council. This is the only way we can expect the country and the Balkans in general to live in peace and stability.

World Conference on Culture and Arts Education 2024

The World Conference on Arts and Culture Education opened in Abu Dhabi on February 13, co-organised by UNESCO and the Government of the United Arab Emirates.

This is an intergovernmental forum of UNESCO member states and its associate members and observers, which also includes its partners such as invited NGOs and other international agencies.

The Russian delegation consisting of representatives of relevant ministries is led by the Minister of Culture Olga Lyubimova.

Participants from 130 countries, including 89 ministers and deputy ministers, will discuss the problems of and prospects for the promotion of creative education in the context of contemporary challenges, including the rapid development of information and communication technologies and artificial intelligence. They will particularly focus on ways to broaden the scope of culture and arts learning, to integrate a cultural dimension into national education systems and to enhance relevant international cooperation.

The Russian Minister of Culture addressed the thematic session on Equitable Access to Culture and Arts Education. She spoke about the traditions of the national school of arts, as well as national plans for the development of modern higher education in creative fields, shared her experience in identifying young talent and creating an accessible learning environment for people with disabilities. She also met with representatives of the UAE and the UNESCO Secretariat.

Deputy Minister of Education Denis Gribov will deliver a report on the achievements in secondary and general education related to culture and arts during the session on Skills to Shape Resilient, Just and Sustainable Futures.

Dina Kirnarskaya, Vice Rector for Public Relations of Gnessin Russian Academy of Music, will give a lecture on the benefits of general music education as a side event.

The conference will last until February 15 and will end with the adoption of the UNESCO Framework for Culture and Arts Education.

Lack of reaction from the OSCE to discrimination against Russian and the Russian-speaking population in the Baltic States

The systematic violation of the rights that Russians and Russian-speakers face in the Baltic States continues to cause the most serious concern. We regularly highlight such violations on the OSCE platform, at meetings of the Permanent Council and in other formats, pointing to the gross deviation from the commitments undertaken by the Baltic States as participating OSCE states. We emphasise that for decades, the authorities in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have been pursuing a distinct state policy imbued with hatred of all things Russian, aimed at dividing people and promoting Russophobia to the point of extremism.

Among the most egregious recent examples are the deportation of 82-year-old Russian military pensioner Boris Katkov from Latvia on January 12 under the discriminatory law On Immigration; attempts by the Lithuanian authorities to manipulate citizenship by using their new legislation allowing citizenship to be revoked on vague grounds such as a “threat to national security” and “support for Russian aggression;” Estonia (which has not lost its illusions of becoming the acting president of the OSCE) has expressed a groundless refusal to extend Metropolitan Eugene's residence permit; and official Tallinn's intention to “temporarily” deny Russian and Belarusian citizens the right to vote in local government elections.

However, the OSCE’s specialised executive bodies pretend not to notice what is happening. Even in response to our direct written appeals, we receive a perfunctory reply at best, saying they are “closely monitoring the situation.” In most cases, our demands are simply ignored, in particular by Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, Matteo Mecacci.

The term of office of the OSCE's leading “quartet” expires in September. We will insist that the candidates to replace them work in a completely different manner – impartial and complying with their mandates.

Day of Remembrance of Russians who Served Abroad

Every February 15, the people of Russia mark the Day of Remembrance of Russians who Served Abroad. The Federal Law dated November 29, 2010 set this date marking the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan. The country is marking the 35th anniversary of their withdrawal today.

Afghanistan probably ranks among the most graphic examples highlighting different Russian and Western approaches towards the Global South. This is particularly evident if we compare the ten-year deployment of Soviet forces in Afghanistan (1979-1989) with NATO’s 20-year “peacekeeping operation” (2001-2021) that ended in August 2021 in a total fiasco.

The 20-year military campaign in Afghanistan that involved the United States and its NATO allies produced no results, if we mean positive, and the one result it did produce was negative.  Washington’s attempt to “civilise” and “acculturate” the population of this country, to introduce its values, narratives and opinions differing from local traditions proved a complete failure. 

The reckless Western gamble in Afghanistan destroyed the country’s economy. Moreover, the West used the most powerful conventional munition in history called the Mother of All Bombs there, a dubious achievement. The world has witnessed similar developments not only in Afghanistan but in many other regions of the world during 30 military interventions involving the United States and its allies since the early 1990s, specifically, in Kosovo, Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc. 

Our country has traditionally taken different approaches and helped other countries and nations resume peaceful life while facilitating their socioeconomic development. This is what we are now witnessing in full measure in the special military operation zone.

Over 140 industrial enterprises, built with Soviet financial and economic assistance in Afghanistan, still form the mainstay of this country’s economy. According to independent international experts, the Soviet Union helped create over 70 percent of Afghan economic capacity. Incidentally, the Soviet Union did not involve its Warsaw Pact allies in its Afghan operation. Just like in the special military operation zone, Soviet soldiers fighting in Afghanistan faced extremists trained and armed by US and British special services.

Ahead of the 35th anniversary of withdrawing Soviet forces from Afghanistan, I would like to address all Afghan War veterans and all our citizens who are now honourably doing their military duty in Syria and in the special military operation zone. Please accept our sincerest gratitude. You remain faithful to the oath of allegiance until the end, you defend the interests of the Motherland, and you are the hope and salvation of other nations in the direct sense of the word. For this we humbly thank you.

Day of Remembrance of Russians who Served Abroad

Every February 15, the people of Russia mark the Day of Remembrance of Russians who Served Abroad. The Federal Law dated November 29, 2010 set this date marking the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan. The country is marking the 35th anniversary of their withdrawal today.

Afghanistan probably ranks among the most graphic examples highlighting different Russian and Western approaches towards the Global South. This is particularly evident if we compare the ten-year deployment of Soviet forces in Afghanistan (1979-1989) with NATO’s 20-year “peacekeeping operation” (2001-2021) that ended in August 2021 in a total fiasco.

The 20-year military campaign in Afghanistan that involved the United States and its NATO allies produced no results, if we mean positive, and the one result it did produce was negative.  Washington’s attempt to “civilise” and “acculturate” the population of this country, to introduce its values, narratives and opinions differing from local traditions proved a complete failure. 

The reckless Western gamble in Afghanistan destroyed the country’s economy. Moreover, the West used the most powerful conventional munition in history called the Mother of All Bombs there, a dubious achievement. The world has witnessed similar developments not only in Afghanistan but in many other regions of the world during 30 military interventions involving the United States and its allies since the early 1990s, specifically, in Kosovo, Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc. 

Our country has traditionally taken different approaches and helped other countries and nations resume peaceful life while facilitating their socioeconomic development. This is what we are now witnessing in full measure in the special military operation zone.

Over 140 industrial enterprises, built with Soviet financial and economic assistance in Afghanistan, still form the mainstay of this country’s economy. According to independent international experts, the Soviet Union helped create over 70 percent of Afghan economic capacity. Incidentally, the Soviet Union did not involve its Warsaw Pact allies in its Afghan operation. Just like in the special military operation zone, Soviet soldiers fighting in Afghanistan faced extremists trained and armed by US and British special services.

Ahead of the 35th anniversary of withdrawing Soviet forces from Afghanistan, I would like to address all Afghan War veterans and all our citizens who are now honourably doing their military duty in Syria and in the special military operation zone. Please accept our sincerest gratitude. You remain faithful to the oath of allegiance until the end, you defend the interests of the Motherland, and you are the hope and salvation of other nations in the direct sense of the word. For this we humbly thank you.

Multipolarity Forum

On February 26, Moscow will host the Multipolarity Forum under the auspices of the International Russophile Movement. It is expected to be a large-scale event involving several hundred delegates, including prominent thinkers, political scientists, philosophers and opinion leaders from all regions of the world.

The Forum is positioned by the organisers as a platform for exchanging views and jointly seeking a common course for the Global Majority wishing to participate with Russia in the formation of a fairer multipolar world based on the principles of equality, mutual respect and cooperation.

Second Congress of the International Russophile Movement

On February 27, Moscow will host the 2nd Congress of the International Russophile Movement. It will confirm the creation of the Movement, founded last year, as an established, popular and effective international public organisation.

It is expected that this event will gather several hundred foreign delegates from all over the world and will become an important platform for exchanging views for all those who are interested in what is happening in the world, in our country, and who want to associate themselves with Russia’s cultural and spiritual and moral values.

The leadership of the International Russophile Movement expects the 2nd Congress to bring together new supporters of the movement and create additional opportunities for establishing horizontal ties between Russia and foreign countries, for popularising the cultural heritage of our country in different parts of the world.

Answers to media questions:

Question: Following a meeting of the Weimar Triangle countries on February 12, 2024, the foreign ministers of France, Poland and Germany accused Russia of creating complex chains of websites for spreading pro-Russia propaganda, as they put it, aimed at undermining Western governments and warned of the appearance of such materials in particularly large amounts ahead of EU elections. What can you tell us about this?

Maria Zakharova: This has become a deliberate campaign of witch-hunting and mudslinging at Russia and at all those who are looking for the truth or at least pursuing information and journalistic analysis, if not investigation. This rabid information harassment is taking on new forms and dimensions in EU capitals. In my opinion, it borders on paranoia. They are feeding people with myths about the “threat from the East” on which they blame the poor decisions and political machinations of their own regimes.

I don’t know what threats they see in the East, from which their countries, in particular, Germany, received gas. This was not a threat but a resource. It looks as if the threat has come from the West in the form of terrorist attacks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines. It was not from the East that sanctions and trade wars came. The East offered markets and the possibility to trade on mutually beneficial conditions. It is the West that has hobbled the EU’s economic space with legally binding obligations and weights to prevent it from developing. What threat from the East are they talking about? It is the other way around.

I would like to remind you that in June 2023 the French authorities accused Russia of a mythical “digital disinformation campaign” allegedly waged by Russian government agencies and affiliated organisations. We called on Paris to share available facts and materials so we could assess them and draw our own conclusions. If they had the facts, they would have either published them or forwarded them to us or to international organisations. They did neither.

It is not surprising that while advancing a new collection of absurd claims our former partners have not provided any credible proof of Russia’s allegedly malicious activities. This scheme has been used in the West for ages. They invented and spread myths and used politically motivated censorship because of the alleged “threat from the East” in order to control their media and communications, which we see clearly now, and to prevent their civil societies and audiences from getting access to the “undesirable” sources of reliable information, seeking to plunge everyone into an information vacuum deliberately created by their aggressive propaganda. But this time the abovementioned foreign ministers, who reflexively blame everything on Russia, have inadvertently spilled the beans and exposed themselves.

According to the French media, Foreign Minister of France Stephane Sejourne has accused Russia of “spreading information from Russian social media, news agencies and organisations’ websites.” In other words, they have admitted to trying to prevent Russia from circulating any information provided by either government agencies or common people. What is this? In the past, they accused us of spreading disinformation and of allegedly interfering in their elections and internal affairs, which they used as a pretext for censoring news, closing media outlets and blocking access to online resources. This time they have been straightforward. They have said that everything that comes from Russia, including Russia’s stance, must be prohibited.

As a US representative said into a microphone at a UN Security Council meeting, “Why do we have to listen to Russia at all?” The heads of France, Poland and Germany didn’t even bother to mention their “unrelenting struggle” against disinformation. They routinely used it to explain the establishment of a NATO and EU infrastructure for countering disinformation, which actually tried to disorient their own citizens. In fact, they have admitted that they don't want anyone in the West to hear Russia's stance and opinion at all. More than that, they want to place a media “iron dome” over Europe.

Such statements are clear proof of the irreversible departure of these countries’ authorities from their international obligations to protect media pluralism and the freedom of opinion and expression. They have been made by a representative of the country where the freedom of speech has been declared a basic value. This is cynicism pure and simple. Any unbiased observer can see that it is the latest deliberate propaganda attack in the French authorities’ campaign to discredit Russia and also an attempt to deflect public attention away from growing domestic problems. There is nothing surprising in that, other than they have shamelessly threw their fig leaves away.

They no longer need the fig leaf of “Russian interference,” Russian trolls and hackers, and Russian manipulations. They have said it out loud: There can be no information from Russia. It is an interesting downward turn on the path of their degradation.

Question: Foreign Minister of Australia Penny Wong did not support the petition to close Russia’s Consulate General in Sydney saying that it was important to maintain diplomatic channels with Moscow in terms of protecting the country’s national interests and serving the Russian diaspora. What does Moscow think about Australia’s decision?

Maria Zakharova: First, I think that Canberra understands that we will not leave any action like this without a response, as we have shown many times. All they will get is an appropriate response with the Australian embassy in Russia.

Let me reiterate that this would not be our choice. Should Australia go down this road, we will respond in kind. So far, this situation has been confined to the media, and it may well be that it stays this way.

However, as a matter of principle, we do not see any change in terms of the current anti-Russia position that dominates the Australian political establishment.

Canberra continues to obediently follow the collective West in its policy. It has contributed about $600 million to supporting the Kiev regime, including $500 million in military aid. Both the current Labour government with Anthony Albanese as Prime Minister, and the previous liberal-national government led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison have been firm in their anti-Russia position and regularly reaffirm their loyalty to Washington as Russophobes.

To demonstrate their unfriendly attitude, the Australian authorities have made life much harder for Russian foreign missions, and have gone so as far as to seize diplomatic property and target our staff members with provocations. In this context, we regularly see planted media stories about closing our missions in Australia and expelling the Russian ambassador.

Let me reiterate that if this happens, we will respond in kind.

Question: Foreign Minister of Australia Penny Wong said she wanted to keep diplomatic channels open, but despite that, Australia has been keeping pace with its Western partners in terms of imposing sanctions on Russia. Do you see any contradiction in what officials in Sydney say and what they do?

Maria Zakharova: Please, refer to the preceding answer. This does not change anything. I do not see any contradiction here. It is obvious that they have a plan and they are sticking to it, even if they have not gone the whole way with it because they know that we would respond. Without this understanding, or had we failed to respond, they would follow through on their Russophobic agenda.

Question: February 15 marks the 35th anniversary of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. As we look back at these events today, was there a possibility for these events to take a different turn? Whose interests played the decisive role in the way the conflict unfolded in this country?

Maria Zakharova: I will not remind you of the fact that the conditional tense has no place in history.

Historians and those who took part in these events offer a wide variety of views, interpretations and conclusions. There are so many memoires, books and research papers on this subject. Instead of asking us to offer our take on this matter, I suggest that you read what these people wrote.

Anyway, the Soviet Union did a lot for Afghanistan, laying the foundation for its economy, as I have said many times.

Question: Former President of the United States Donald Trump said that US President Joe Biden has enough time to unleash a third world war before his presidential term ends. We can understand that with the election approaching the United States is engulfed in intense political infighting, but Americans are not the only ones who can be intimidated by these statements. How would you comment?

Maria Zakharova: I agree with what you said. We must treat statements of this kind as electoral rhetoric, since the presidential election in the United States is a peculiar show.

That said, if we add up all the bloody conflicts over the past decades masterminded by the United States, with Democrats and the conservative movement playing a comparable role, and considering that the American elite and the White House clearly played a role in these conflicts – if we consider all this as a single whole in terms of the number of victims, human suffering and the extent to which they shattered the statehood of other countries, this could well amount to a global conflict.

Question: Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin explained Russia’s principled approach to the Ukraine crisis to Israeli Ambassador to Russia Simona Halperin. How does the Foreign Ministry assess the Israeli policy towards Ukraine? What makes it so different compared to Russia’s interests?

Maria Zakharova: We regret that representatives of the Israeli political establishment and other government officials there misinterpret the causal links underpinning the current situation in Ukraine, what is happening there today, and what has been going on for decades.

We regularly use our bilateral contacts to inform Israel about our position, including on the Ukraine crisis, all while respecting Israel’s sovereignty and independence in its foreign policy choices.

Our position on the situation in and around Ukraine is a matter of principle. It is based in fact and immune to momentary considerations. We explain it whenever we contact our Israeli colleagues via diplomatic channels, as well as through civil society institutions. It is strange that the Israeli leadership and its political forces do not understand that the situation in Ukraine was years in the making and can be traced back directly to World War II, Nazism and the way it manifested itself in a new way in present-day Ukraine. This is where the historical roots stem from. Israel must know this better than anyone else.

Question: This year’s Munich Security Conference opens on Friday, but Russia will not be represented. What does the Foreign Ministry expect from it, and how does the ministry assess this platform’s effectiveness before and after February 2022?

Maria Zakharova: We have no expectations whatsoever since we have watched the Munich platform consistently go downhill over the past years. We will release a detailed material with a historical retrospective and quotes by our representatives. I clearly remember how these crisis moments began, including the time when only one side – the United States – assumed dominance over the Munich Conference.

I remind you that its very name indicates that it is about security policy in Europe. It's absurd to see the United States, representing another continent, dictate to its satellites the agenda and the outcomes the conference must arrive at.

I remember how the situation in Ukraine in 2014 made the participants in this conference laugh.

The downhill slide has lasted a long time. We did everything we could to get the discussion back on the genuine political, historical, and diplomatic track. Apparently, they chose a different path.

Russia saw its participation in the Munich Conference as a chance to let our position on Eurosecurity and international security in general be known to a broad audience of politicians and analysts, as well as to explain our views on a wide range of items on the global agenda. As you know, the principle of indivisible security is at the centre of Russia’s approach. We believed efforts to form a single security system in Europe and the Euro-Atlantic region must be united.

In Munich, Russian representatives always openly spoke about our red lines and drew attention to the unacceptability of NATO's creeping expansion and other Western steps to create threats at our borders. Back in 1999, speaking at the Munich Conference, Deputy Foreign Minister Yevgeny Gusarov made it clear that NATO’s eastward expansion was unacceptable and strongly urged NATO to take Russia’s concerns into account.

Vladimir Putin’s famous Munich Speech of 2007, in which the President warned the West against continuing the thoughtless policy of ensuring its own security at the expense of the security of other countries, has gone down in history. Here is just one quote: “Clearly, NATO expansion has nothing to do with upgrading the Alliance or ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it is a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust.” The speech turned out to be prophetic: the man-made crisis that we are experiencing today could have been averted had Western politicians listened to the President’s warnings back then. I would encourage our colleagues to refresh their memory of President Putin’s Munich speech. It has remained relevant, and it contains answers to many of their questions.

The last time our country was officially represented in Munich was four years ago when the Russian delegation was led by Minister Lavrov.

Over the past few years, we have seen the analytical component of the Munich platform disappear, and the forum lose its status as a discussion club and turn into a Russophobic propaganda gathering. President Zelensky’s speeches devalued Munich altogether and reduced it to the level of a talk show.

The same fate befell the reports that were prepared in the run-up to the conference. The quality consistently worsened giving way to dogmatism. The analysis became increasingly politicised and flawed. Most issues were viewed through the prism of confrontation. The intellectual process driving the conference zeroed in on countering the “undesirable actors” thus becoming part of the West's course on containing Russia and other independent centres of power in the spirit of their ruled-based order. Today, the masterminds and ideological gurus of the conference are no longer able to offer anything of value when it comes to serious intellectual scrutiny of international processes.

The Munich era is a thing of the past. There are many alternative platforms – both our own with an international dimension and foreign ones – in which we participate at various levels. There are good alternatives to what, unfortunately, has become dysfunctional.

New discussion platforms are coming to the fore such as the Valdai Forum, the Minsk High-Level Conference on Eurasian Security, the Raisina Dialogue (India), the Sir Bani Yas (UAE), the Anatolia Forum (Türkiye), and the Doha Forum (Qatar), as well as other conferences that provide opportunities for equal and open exchanges of views on current issues of international relations. It is not surprising that all these platforms are located in the countries of the Global Majority.

The world is moving forward leaving Munich to stew in its own juice and to continue on its path – together with the rest of the collective West – towards self-isolation from the rest of the world.

Question: Is Moscow making any effort to settle the differences between Baku and Yerevan after tensions escalated on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border? What caused the escalation, in view that Yerevan has permanently acknowledged Karabakh being part of Azerbaijan, and the parties were actively working on drafting a peace treaty?

Maria Zakharova: I have already given a detailed comment in the first part of the briefing.

Question: Russia’s Ambassador to Azerbaijan Mikhail Yevdokimov said that Moscow and Baku have agreed on the dates of talks on the future of the Russian peacekeeping contingent in Karabakh. What is Moscow’s current negotiating position on this matter?

Maria Zakharova: I can say that the preparations for regular Russian-Azerbaijani contacts regarding the Russian peacekeeping contingent are underway. Our dialogue in this area is regular and is built in a constructive manner. Among the issues we discuss are the prospects of returning the Armenian population to Karabakh while ensuring their rights and security are safeguarded. We are also exploring the coordination of joint patrolling efforts and the preservation of cultural, historical, and religious landmarks.

Question: Can you comment on the demand of former US President Donald Trump for NATO, urging an increase in spending on aid to Ukraine to match the levels provided by the United States? Does this mean that if elected, Donald Trump will continue combat operations in Ukraine?

Maria Zakharova: It is up to American voters to decipher what one or another candidate means. Honestly, I feel sorry for them because it is practically impossible to do so. In recent years, candidates made numerous promises and statements during their campaigns, aiming to secure votes from voters, dead or alive. But if you compare their words with their subsequent actions, you will see a huge gap. 

In this situation, it is necessary to understand that we are talking about the heat of an election campaign. Traditionally, nobody cares whether the candidates keep their promises. What matters is emotions and the external spectacle of American elections. The rest does not matter. It is for US citizens to deal with it.

Question: I would like to know more about the request that NATO increase spending on helping Ukraine to the level of the United States. Is there a real chance?

Maria Zakharova: This sounds like something out of fairy tales, ancient myths and Oriental stories about a labourer compelled to sell everything, left without house, food or clothes. And there is still an expectation of further sacrifice. What else is left to give?

America’s NATO partners have nothing left. Maybe they will be able to shake something out of Britain, and another diamond egg will roll out of Buckingham Palace. There is nothing left to take. The EU countries are providing assistance to the Kiev regime not in the form of tranches and sums but promises. They cannot provide what the US wants them to because they will collapse. The promises must be backed by something (not just a cheque, but something more tangible). There is nothing left.

All of this gives insight into US policy which comes down to harassing its NATO partners in the EU in order to bleed them dry in the economic sense. Their ultimate goal is to eliminate competition, given the horrendous economic and financial performance of the US.

Question: The European Council approved a resolution providing a legal basis for using profits from frozen Russian assets for Ukraine. It explained that central securities depositories  “holding more than one million euros of CBR's assets must account extraordinary cash balances accumulating due to EU restrictive measures separately and must also keep corresponding revenues separate." The document also bans depositaries from disposing of net proceeds. What measures will Russia take in response to this EU decision?

Maria Zakharova: Indeed, on February 12, 2024, the EU Council announced the adoption of legal acts to legalise its earlier declared intention to place on separate accounts profits accrued from the Russian frozen sovereign assets in accordance with the EU’s arbitrary illegal decision. Brussels emphasised that this step opens the road to confiscating such incomes in the future. They are supposed to be channeled into the EU budget and later on, probably, on the support of the Zelensky regime and the prolongation of the conflict in Ukraine.

Russia’s position remains unchanged. We call it stealing regardless of all eloquent verbiage and wordings. Any EU actions to freeze and potentially confiscate the funds and property of Russian citizens and companies or our sovereign reserves are a flagrant violation of the standards and principles of international law and the existing contractual commitments. I want to separately focus on the laws of specific countries.

The European Central Bank and other agencies have noted more than once that the theft of Russian assets by the EU at Washington’s prompting may open a Pandora’s box. The fact that the EU is ready to rewrite its own laws for this purpose only confirms that this idea fully contradicts the EU’s internal laws.

The EU and its political leaders will bear exclusive responsibility for all consequences of the confiscation (stealing) of Russian assets. Russia reserves for itself the right to take necessary response measures as regards the EU and its member countries to protect its lawful interests.

We would like to warn once again the EU officials that in case of stealing funds that by right belong to Russia the EU will suffer inevitable long-term damage that will exceed the potential momentary profits by many times. This happened with its anti-Russia sanctions that caused in the EU unprecedented inflation, an energy shortage and declining incomes for its citizens. They led to economic stagnation, de-industrialisation and recession. Germany – once the driver of the EU economy – has sunk into an economic crisis. At the same time, the Russian economy has more than made up for the minor decline in 2022 and continues steadily developing and strengthening its financial, industrial and technological sovereignty.

We are warning the EU countries against committing violations of law in all areas. Russia will make full use of its own legislation for a powerful response.

Meanwhile, the EU will lose forever what will be left of its reputation as a reliable jurisdiction for business and investment in the eyes of third countries. This will make Washington happy. It is already willingly offering a “safe harbour” for high-tech and profitable forms of manufacturing that are rapidly fleeing Europe. Apparently, foreign capital recklessly placed in the EU is the next in line for “emigration.” The Brussels kleptocratic elite may pocket them any time.

Question: On February 12, Israeli aircraft attacked Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. A few hours later, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell told a news conference in Brussels that the authorities in countries that were supporting Israel should stop pleading with it to refrain from killing Palestinians in the Gaza Strip; rather, they should start doing something, like curtailing their arms supplies. US President Joe Biden, for his part, declared that the United States and its partners were working on a deal between Israel and the radical Palestinian movement Hamas for a pause in hostilities to last for no less than six weeks. Earlier, Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited several Middle East countries in order to settle the conflict in the region. How do you assess the US efforts to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict?

Maria Zakharova: To assess the US efforts, we should see at least some of their results. So far, we see an “anti-result” showing that the United States as totally incapable of bearing responsibility for this region and those international conflicts which it thinks it has the right to moderate. 

For our part, we reaffirm that it is necessary to consolidate the international efforts with a view to achieving a speedy resolution of the unprecedented crisis in the zone of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of victims. In their overwhelming majority, they are peaceful civilians from the Gaza Strip, many of whom are women and children (more than a half, according to some estimates).

We are extremely alarmed by the Israeli statements that they are planning to extend the military operation to Rafah. This dangerous scenario will lead to a disastrous expansion of the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe that will engulf more than a million Gaza residents, who have fled the fighting to this city on the border with Egypt. We must do all in our power to prevent this development. Our common aim is to stop the bloodshed as soon as possible and ensure conditions for establishing stable channels for humanitarian supplies to local residents.

Russia has said repeatedly that it will not be possible to achieve a durable peace in the conflict zone unless a clear “political horizon” for resolving the Middle East problem is restored. Therefore, with the violent phase of the crisis over, we think it necessary to start shaping conditions enabling a re-launch of the political dialogue between the Palestinians and Israelis, aimed at a comprehensive resolution of all disputed issues within the well-known international legal framework outlined by the resolutions of the United Nations and its Security Council. This negotiating process should result in the creation of an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with the capital in East Jerusalem, a state existing in peace and security with Israel. The tragic events underway in the region show that there is no reasonable alternative to this approach.

Question: Russia often mentions that it would respond if the EU took action to use or expropriate income from Russian frozen assets. Nevertheless, what would the response be? You said that Russia would use its own legislation with all its might. Will this involve confiscation of European assets that have been under the control of the Russian Government since foreign investors left? Or will it be some other action? Please specify.

Maria Zakharova: I understand that you want specifics. But you know that actions can be responded to. This decision was made, therefore, the Russian Government is currently considering several options for exerting legal and economic influence on unfriendly countries, and on individuals and legal entities in these countries in the context of the possible seizure of Russian funds and property.

Among other issues, reciprocal options are being worked out and action algorithms are being formed for use in the event of Russia being deprived of its accumulated reserves. This work is carried out away from cameras and microphones. The official position is indicated. We will respond to the extent of the unrestrained behaviour by EU Brussels. Can you imagine if they rejoiced ahead of time? It would also be wrong.

Question: This week there were reports from Russian news agencies that terrible discoveries had been made in Mariupol and it was said that Western Big Pharma corporations conducted experiments using the services of the Ukrainian Ministry of Health’s unscrupulous officials for medical experiments on children. What do you have to say about this?

Maria Zakharova: We have seen this news. The information is shocking. It is currently being verified. I do not want to even speculate before we get precise details from experts, to avoid any accusations that we are speculating on unverified information.

At the same time, we have repeatedly talked about American biological laboratories around the world and mentioned that the entire territory of Ukraine was being used for Western experiments. These are medicines, biologicals and weapons that are literally being tested on the Ukrainian armed forces and those against whom they use these untested weapons.

Let us wait for official confirmation. I will not be surprised if this information is confirmed.

Question: Despite the international court’s decision to prevent the risk of genocide in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army is continuing with its military action, in which civilians are killed. How do you regard Israel’s actions that run counter to international decisions?

Maria Zakharova: I have just commented on this in the context of the developments in Rafah which are being discussed throughout the world. The Foreign Ministry and Russia as a whole have repeatedly called for all parties to fulfil their international obligations. The settlement process should be the goal. That is why we focus on the international legal component of the settlement process.

To be continued...

Additional materials

Photos

The main foreign policy news

08.02.2024 19:20Press release on Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s meeting with President of the Republic of Abkhazia Aslan Bzhania

24.01.2024 22:57Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks and answers to media questions following a UN Security Council meeting on Ukraine and an open debate on “The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question,” New York, January 24...

24.01.2024 01:00Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s statement at the UN Security Council Ministerial Meeting on the Situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian Question, New York, January 23, 2024

International security

16 February 2024 18:41Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks and answers to questions at a conference on the 10th anniversary of the coup in Ukraine, Moscow, February 16, 2024

14 February 2024 16:22Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks and answers to questions during Government Hour at the State Duma of the Federal Assembly, Moscow, February 14, 2024

13 February 2024 16:54Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks at the 13th Middle East Conference of the Valdai Club, Moscow, February 13, 2024

[mamun258]

I write novels for foreigners, and my monthly salary is 20,000 yuan

As the publication of online articles matures, more and more translators and creators are seeking opportunities to make money by HE Tuber writing online articles. But everyone knows how difficult it is. With the popularity of short dramas and the help of AI, what is the current situation of online articles overseas? Let’s read this article together.

In 2011, a novel with the theme of "forced love" became popular all over the United States. In 2015, the novel was adapted for the big screen and became popular around the world due to its large scale.

This work is "Fifty Shades of Grey".

After harvesting a wave of North American audiences, "Fifty Shades of Grey" landed in China. Chinese readers shouted, "Isn't this the Jinjiang literature I secretly read in high school?"

Since that time, everyone has understood one thing - everyone likes to see Boss Ba.

Back to today, 12 years later, China’s online articles have become popular overseas. The "2023 China Online Literature Overseas Trend Report" was released. The total revenue of China's online literature industry in 2022 is 31.78 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 18.94%; overseas revenue is 4.063 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 39.87%. During the same period, the cumulative total of Chinese online literary works reached 34.5884 million, a year-on-year increase of 7.93%. Chinese online works have been translated into more than 20 languages, covering more than 40 countries and regions including Southeast Asia, North America, Europe and Africa. Among all types of online articles, romantic love online articles with female readers as the main audience have become the favorites of overseas readers.

As the publishing of online articles overseas gradually matures, more and more translators and creators want to seek opportunities in this process. However, they do not know that there are also many difficulties behind "writing online articles and making US dollars"...

1. As an online writer, it’s not easy to earn more than 10,000 yuan a month.

A few years ago, Mengmeng, who had been repeatedly tortured by life in a large 996 factory, accidentally saw a tweet that basically introduced how a group of people working remotely were earning first-world wages while living in the third world. This is the first time Mengmeng has heard the term "digital nomad".

"At the end of 2021, I began to formally think about the possibility of becoming a digital nomad. At that time, I was a marketing leader at a major Internet company, and I was very troubled by the boss's pie and the PUA from my superiors. Because I usually like to write something, I thought I might as well try to be a digital nomad," Mengmeng told Xiaguang News.

With the introduction of a friend, Mengmeng found a website that specifically provided remote work. However, several applications for remote marketing planning positions came to nothing, and only one recruiter for a translation position contacted her. "The job responsibilities were not clearly described when submitting. I thought it was a translation of documents from a foreign trade company. However, the translations given to me during the written test were all proper nouns and passages from science fiction and fantasy novels, such as 'internal force' and 'controllable fusion device' 'Hidden traps' and so on."

This was Chu Chu's first exposure to the profession of online text translation. After passing the written examination, she was quickly assigned a formal job. "At that time, the price was 80-100 yuan per thousand words. When I was a part-time translator, I could only translate two to three thousand words a day, and my monthly income was four to five thousand yuan."

The company where Chu Chu works part-time specializes in translating various online articles, short plays and other films and TV shows. She later learned that the high-quality translators with whom the company has long-term cooperation have higher hourly wages. Some full-time translators can even earn up to 20,000 yuan per month, but Mengmeng always feels that this job is unlikely to be a long-term meal ticket.

"First, I am not sure how long the trend of online texts going overseas can last; second, I feel that with the popularity of various translation software, pure manual translation will gradually be replaced." In fact, this year, Mengmeng has seen a significant drop in the quotations for online text translation. “Many recruiters made it clear that human labor is only responsible for verification after batch machine translation, and the quotation for translating a thousand words has been reduced from 80-100 yuan to 30 yuan.”

Although Mengmeng finally gave up the idea of ​​making a living as a digital nomad by translating online articles, overseas online articles became more and more popular.

Currently, there are three well-known platforms for publishing online articles overseas - Web Novel owned by China Literature Group, Goodnovel owned by Xinyue Technology, and Dream owned by Stary Singapore. It is understood that the three companies have similar incentive mechanisms for authors. The basic perfect attendance award is US$200-250 per month. This translates into an average attendance award of writing 1,500-1,700 words per day. The signing method is almost always applied by the author himself.

"Similar to writing online articles in China, the threshold is not high, but it is very difficult to do well." Newbie writer Pineapple concluded, "The perfect attendance award is just a basic incentive. Most full-time writers definitely want to have higher income, but there are specific income rules. It’s not very clear, you need to explore by yourself. For example, I signed a contract with Web Novel, and they will reward me with an additional $200 when my monthly income exceeds $200. But through my experience and exploration in the past few months, I want to get this money , the number of writing words may exceed 100,000 words, and the collection may exceed 1,000. These algorithms will not be fully disclosed."

"If you write 300,000 words, you can get up to 4,000 US dollars, not counting other shares." Overseas editor Vivian estimated based on experience, "In RMB conversion, a monthly income of more than 10,000 US dollars is a very good income among overseas online writers. In fact, This situation is similar among online writers in the domestic market.”

Only by catching up with popular products can you achieve a monthly income of tens of thousands.

Vivian believes that it is indeed a blue ocean for Internet articles to go overseas at present, and more and more Internet articles are being remade into short dramas. "If your copyright is bought out, it can be said to be a success. However, this requires the author to have a deeper understanding of the tastes of foreign readers." Palace, Werewolf, and Overlord are all published online. Popular themes, different platforms have different preferences, this kind of exploration of cultural tastes is very important. "

2. Internet articles go overseas, bosses and werewolves each have their own interests.

Internet articles are published overseas, each showing his or her special abilities.

As early as 2005, domestic online articles began to explore the way to go overseas. According to public reports, from 2009 to 2013 alone, Vietnam translated and published more than 800 Chinese books, of which 617 were translated from Chinese online literature. By 2017, WebNovel, the overseas reading website under China Literature Group, was officially launched, and online articles overseas began to be exported on a large scale, entering the "2.0 era."

Southeast Asia, because it has a large number of Chinese and is culturally similar to China, has become the first experimental field for online articles to go overseas.

The majority of online readers in Southeast Asia are women between the ages of 18 and 30. Female romance themes such as "Marriage First, Love Later", "Rebirth and Time Travel" and "Contract Marriage" which are very popular in China are also very popular in Southeast Asia. Most of Thailand's most popular film and television works in the past two years are exaggerated and even romantic dramas with a bit of a "bloody" color.

A student studying in Southeast Asia told Xiaguang News: "Many domestic students will recommend their favorite online books to their classmates. Many of my friends have similar tastes to me, and are especially interested in palace, campus, and city themes."

And when domestic online articles gradually enter the European and American markets, they face another environment.

Xiao Fei, an international student from North America, believes that European and American paper media culture is still quite popular today. People often read newspapers and paper books on buses, and physical bookstores can often be seen on the streets. The European and American book markets are actually very receptive to foreign literature. Even in small private bookstores on the roadside, there will be translations of authors from other countries, and those books are not necessarily hits. "I remember buying an English-translated novel by a Japanese author when I was in school. It was about a girl dealing with her mother's death. I haven't seen this book on any platform since then. In fact, it's not famous at all."

Unlike Southeast Asian readers whose literary tastes are similar to those of China, European and American readers have different tastes. "The 'Werewolf' concept is a very popular concept in North America." Vivian said, "Since the popularity of "Twilight", countless novels with vampires and werewolves have emerged in North America. Any time you walk into a bookstore, Among the books displayed on the facade, there must be one or two vampire versus werewolf plots.``

However, Vivian also pointed out that unlike traditional print media, online readers read more in fragments, and their desire for "sensation" and "explosiveness" is actually similar to that of domestic readers. Therefore, compared to the noble stereotype of vampires, werewolves seem to be more direct, simple and rough. "Many of the short dramas and online articles that are very popular now are in the shell of a werewolf and tell the story of the boss, so they are collectively called the 'Werewolf' model."

In the European market, influenced by its own culture, readers prefer the "palace +" model. The core of male videos is "diaosi counterattack" and "dragon king's son-in-law", while the core of female videos can be "cool heroine" or "time travel book".

Although readers have different needs for background setting and scene conception in different local cultural soils, the underlying needs that online articles meet overseas have not changed - to kill time, have a low reading threshold, and have full emotional value.

In addition to Southeast Asia, Europe and the United States, with the continuous improvement of AI translation functions, more and more small-language countries such as Spain and Mexico have become target markets for online publishing.

3. The short drama became popular + AI boosted, and online articles went viral

In 2023, AI and short dramas will be extremely popular and are expected to have a considerable impact on the pattern of online articles going overseas.

Short drama overseas will explode in the second half of 2023. The short drama "Never Divorce a Secret Billionaire Heiress", which is less than 2 minutes in each episode, became popular after the launch of ReelShort, and drove the download volume of ReelShort to soar. As of November 11, ReelShort has successfully ranked among the top three App Stores in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada.

In the entire film and television chain, short plays and online articles belong to the upstream and downstream relationships. Purchasing online texts, or purchasing Chinese online texts and then translating them, is one of the important sources of scripts for overseas short plays. The popularity of this wave of overseas short dramas will influence more producers to start arranging overseas short dramas, driving the corresponding demand for online articles and increasing the income of overseas online article authors, and positively stimulating the overall industry.

The explosion of short dramas has fed back the demand for online articles going overseas, while the advancement of AI capabilities has improved the efficiency of online articles going overseas from the technical side.

As GPT continues to surge, generative AI will be widely popularized in 2023, and efficiency will be greatly improved from the perspective of creation and translation.

Different authors have different attitudes towards the application of generative AI in the creative field. Mengmeng believes that on the one hand, the advancement of AI translation technology will reduce the income of pure manual translation, but from the perspective of overall industry development, the more mature AI translation is, the more efficient it will be to publish online articles overseas, but it is limited by areas where small language translations are scarce. The layout can also be accelerated. Overall, the impact is more positive.

Pineapple is less receptive to content created by generative AI. "There are indeed some editors who have already acquiesced in the GPT + manual writing mode when signing contracts. I myself have also tried AI continuation in my creation. It is undeniable that sometimes the things written by AI are really good, but I personally think that AI writing will From a creative perspective, I personally don’t like to put my ideas into a framework.” However, she did not deny the positive role of AI in promoting the publication of online articles overseas. “From an industry perspective, I think generative AI will be used in the future. It can be used as an assistant to the creator, and can help the author to complete the work very efficiently in some non-creative aspects, such as background information collection, key document extraction, naming of unimportant supporting characters, etc."

Data shows that online writers currently cover more than 100 countries and regions around the world, among which the United States ranks first in terms of number of online writers. The rapid growth of online writers has led to a flourishing original ecology of overseas online articles. As of October 2023, Qidian International has launched approximately 610,000 overseas original works, a year-on-year increase of 280% three years ago.

Judging from the overall trend of going overseas, the overseas export of culture must be behind and more difficult than the overseas export of products. Nowadays, as the three crucial elements of platform, author, and technology become increasingly mature, a new chapter for the publication of online articles overseas is being written...

[brookston]

Holidays 1.2

Holidays

Ancestry Day (a.k.a. Ancestors' Day; Haiti)

Arbor Day (Ukraine)

Berchtoldstag (a.k.a. Berchtold's Day; Alsace, Liechtenstein, Switzerland)

Blacks & Whites' Carnival begins (until 7th; Colombia)

Boo Boo Bear Day

Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy Day

Bridge Day (New Caledonia)

Carnival Day (Saint Kitts and Nevis)

Carnival of Riosucio (a.k.a. Carnival of the Devil; Colombia) [Every Odd Year]

Dainichi-do Bugaku (Japan)

Day of Portuguese Pavement

Drinking Straw Day

Earth at Perihelion

Fifty-Five Day

Granada Day (Spain)

Happy Mew Year For Cats Day

International Day of Police

International Stop Spam Day

Jour des Aieux (Haiti)

Kaapse Klopse (Cape Town, South Africa)

Kakizome (First Writing; Japan)

Mannam Jayanti (Kerala, India)

Mars Day Day

Miniature Golf Day

National Breast Appreciation Day

National Erika Day

National Motivation and Inspiration Day

National Science Fiction Day

New Year Holiday (Scotland) [If Sunday, celebrated on 3rd]

Nylio (a.k.a. Nyinlong; Winter Solstice; Bhutan)

Personal Trainer Awareness Day

Pet Travel Safety Day

Positive Postcard Day

Procrastinator’s Day

Reconquest Day (Spain)

Run It Up the Flagpole and See If Anybody Salutes It Day

Sam Day

Scour Day (Elder Scrolls)

Second Day of New Year (a.k.a. ...

Bank Holiday (Multiple Countries)

Day After New Year’s Day (Cuba, Japan, Mauritius, New Zealand, North Korea, Russia, Romania, Serbia, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and Quebec, Canada)

New Year’s Second Day (Romania; Taiwan)

Second Day of the New Year (Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Switzerland, Ukraine)

Second New Year’s Day Holiday (Russia)

Tweede Neue Jaar (Second New Year; Captain, South Africa)

Shigoto Hajime (Beginning of the Work Year; Japan)

Slate Day (French Republic)

Stop Spam Day

Takai Commission Holiday (Niue)

Thrift with Flair Day

Victory of Armed Forces Day (Cuba)

Waldmaennchentag (Germany)

World Introvert Day

World Population Control Day

Food & Drink Celebrations

National Buffet Day

National Chocolate Fondue Day

National Creampuff Day (a.k.a. Cream Puff Day)

Pabst Blue Ribbon Day

Swiss Cheese Day

1st Tuesday in January

Finalize Your Resolutions Day [1st Tuesday]

Independence & Related Days

Cliff Island (Declared; 2010) [unrecognized]

Georgia Statehood Day (#4; 1788)

Posaf (Declared; 2018) [unrecognized]

United States of Ackerman (Declared; 2018) [unrecognized]

Feast Days

Advent of Inanna (Ancient Sumer)

Advent of Isis (Ancient Egypt)

Basil the Great (Catholic Church and Church of England)

Birthday of Inanna (Sumerian Goddess and Patroness of Tavern Keepers)

The Building Inspector (Muppetism)

Cassé Gateau (Voudon)

Celebrate Surviving 2022 Day (Pastafarian)

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg (Artology)

Day of Ekadashi (Hinduism)

Day of Victory of Love (Unification Church)

Defendens of Thebes (Christian)

Ernst Barlach (Artology)

Failure of Will Day (Church of the SubGenius)

Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus (varies between 1.2 and 1.5; Roman Catholic Church)

Fenris’s Day (Pagan)

Festival of Fetishes

Festival of Sleep Day [begins at sundown]

Festival of Four Winds & All Sky

Gaspar del Bufalo (Roman Catholic)

Gregory of Nazianzus (Catholic Church)

Hercules (Positivist; Saint)

Isaac Asimov Day (Jayism)

Johann Konrad Wilhelm Löhe (Lutheran Church)

Macarius of Alexandria (a.k.a. Macarius the Younger; Christian; Saint)

Mange Loa (a.k.a. Jan Case Gateaux or Breaking of the Cakes)

Ninth Day of Christmas

Ray Harryhausen Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Seraphim of Sarov (Repose; Eastern Orthodox Church)

Slava Raškaj (Artology)

Swiss Cheese Day (Pastafarian)

Twelve Holy Days #8 (Scorpio, the generative system; Esoteric Christianity)

Twelvetide, Day #9 (a.k.a. the Twelve Days of Christmas or Christmastide) [until 1.5]

Vedanayagam Samuel Azariah (Episcopal Church)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Dies Ater (Unfortunate Day; Ancient Rome)

Fortunate Day (Pagan) [2 of 53]

Good Luck Day (Ancient Macedonia)

Perilous Day (13th Century England) [2 of 32]

Prime Number Day: 2 [1 of 72]

Sensho (先勝 Japan) [Good luck in the morning, bad luck in the afternoon.]

Tycho Brahe Unlucky Day (Scandinavia) [1 of 37]

Unglückstage (Unlucky Day; Pennsylvania Dutch) [2 of 30]

Unlucky Monday (when Cain killed Abel; Philippines) [1st Monday] (1 of 4)

Very Unlucky Day (Grafton’s Manual of 1565) [2 of 60]

Premieres

Billie Jean, by Michael Jackson (Song; 1983)

Bob Cummings Show (TV Series; 1955)

Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, by The Andrews Sisters (Song; 1941)

The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Novel; 1879)

Dog Pounded (WB LT Cartoon; 1954)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Film; 1932)

The Flying Dutchman, by Richard Wagner (Opera; 1843)

He Was Her Man (WB MM Cartoon; 1937)

Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach (Novella; 1970)

Last Angry Moose, Part 1 (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S3, Ep. 139; 1962)

Mind and Matter, by Erwin Schrödinger (Philosophy Book; 1958)

My View of the World, by Erwin Schrödinger (Philosophy Book; 1951)

Nine Tomorrows, by Isaac Asimov (Short Stories; 1959)

Oscar and Lucinda (Film; 1998)

A Punch in the Snoot or The Nose Tattoo (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S3, Ep. 140; 1962)

Senses Working Overtime, by XTC (Song; 1982)

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (Novel; 1865)

The Secret Adversary, by Agatha Christie (Mystery Novel; 1922) [2]

Wisdom (Film; 1987)

The Worm Turns (Disney Cartoon; 1937)

Today’s Name Days

Basilius, Dietmar, Gregor (Austria)

Bazilije, Grgo, Grgur (Croatia)

Karina (Czech Republic)

Abel (Denmark)

Algi, Esme, Esmi (Estonia)

Aapeli (Finland)

Basile (France)

Beatrix, Dietmar, Gregor, Makarius, Otfried (Germany)

Seraphim, Silvestros, Sylvester (Greece)

Ábel (Hungary)

Basilio, Modesto (Italy)

Ābels, Indulis, Ivo, Orests (Latvia)

Fulgentas, Gailutė, Mažvydas, Stefanija (Lithuania)

Dagfinn, Dagfrid (Norway)

Abel, Izydor, Makary, Odil, Strzeżysław (Poland)

Serafim, Silvestru (Romania)

Alexandra (Slovakia)

Basilio, Gregorio (Spain)

Svea (Sweden)

Sylvester (Ukraine)

Abel, Abelard, Abella, Abner, Adalhard, Adelard, Marsten, Marston, Rave (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 2 of 2024; 364 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 2 of week 1 of 2024

Celtic Tree Calendar: Beth (Birch) [Day 8 of 28]

Chinese: Month 12 (Jia-Zi), Day 21 (Yi-Chou)

Chinese Year of the: Rabbit 4721 (until February 10, 2024)

Hebrew: 21 Teveth 5784

Islamic: 20 Jumada II 1445

J Cal: 2 White; Twosday [2 of 30]

Julian: 20 December 2023

Moon: _63%: Warning Gibbous

Positivist: 2 Moses (1st Month) [Hercules]

Runic Half Month: Eihwaz or Eoh (Yew Tree) [Day 8 of 15]

Season: Winter (Day 13 of 89)

Zodiac: Capricorn (Day 12 of 31)

[brookstonalmanac]

Holidays 1.2

Holidays

Ancestry Day (a.k.a. Ancestors' Day; Haiti)

Arbor Day (Ukraine)

Berchtoldstag (a.k.a. Berchtold's Day; Alsace, Liechtenstein, Switzerland)

Blacks & Whites' Carnival begins (until 7th; Colombia)

Boo Boo Bear Day

Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy Day

Bridge Day (New Caledonia)

Carnival Day (Saint Kitts and Nevis)

Carnival of Riosucio (a.k.a. Carnival of the Devil; Colombia) [Every Odd Year]

Dainichi-do Bugaku (Japan)

Day of Portuguese Pavement

Drinking Straw Day

Earth at Perihelion

Fifty-Five Day

Granada Day (Spain)

Happy Mew Year For Cats Day

International Day of Police

International Stop Spam Day

Jour des Aieux (Haiti)

Kaapse Klopse (Cape Town, South Africa)

Kakizome (First Writing; Japan)

Mannam Jayanti (Kerala, India)

Mars Day Day

Miniature Golf Day

National Breast Appreciation Day

National Erika Day

National Motivation and Inspiration Day

National Science Fiction Day

New Year Holiday (Scotland) [If Sunday, celebrated on 3rd]

Nylio (a.k.a. Nyinlong; Winter Solstice; Bhutan)

Personal Trainer Awareness Day

Pet Travel Safety Day

Positive Postcard Day

Procrastinator’s Day

Reconquest Day (Spain)

Run It Up the Flagpole and See If Anybody Salutes It Day

Sam Day

Scour Day (Elder Scrolls)

Second Day of New Year (a.k.a. ...

Bank Holiday (Multiple Countries)

Day After New Year’s Day (Cuba, Japan, Mauritius, New Zealand, North Korea, Russia, Romania, Serbia, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and Quebec, Canada)

New Year’s Second Day (Romania; Taiwan)

Second Day of the New Year (Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Switzerland, Ukraine)

Second New Year’s Day Holiday (Russia)

Tweede Neue Jaar (Second New Year; Captain, South Africa)

Shigoto Hajime (Beginning of the Work Year; Japan)

Slate Day (French Republic)

Stop Spam Day

Takai Commission Holiday (Niue)

Thrift with Flair Day

Victory of Armed Forces Day (Cuba)

Waldmaennchentag (Germany)

World Introvert Day

World Population Control Day

Food & Drink Celebrations

National Buffet Day

National Chocolate Fondue Day

National Creampuff Day (a.k.a. Cream Puff Day)

Pabst Blue Ribbon Day

Swiss Cheese Day

1st Tuesday in January

Finalize Your Resolutions Day [1st Tuesday]

Independence & Related Days

Cliff Island (Declared; 2010) [unrecognized]

Georgia Statehood Day (#4; 1788)

Posaf (Declared; 2018) [unrecognized]

United States of Ackerman (Declared; 2018) [unrecognized]

Feast Days

Advent of Inanna (Ancient Sumer)

Advent of Isis (Ancient Egypt)

Basil the Great (Catholic Church and Church of England)

Birthday of Inanna (Sumerian Goddess and Patroness of Tavern Keepers)

The Building Inspector (Muppetism)

Cassé Gateau (Voudon)

Celebrate Surviving 2022 Day (Pastafarian)

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg (Artology)

Day of Ekadashi (Hinduism)

Day of Victory of Love (Unification Church)

Defendens of Thebes (Christian)

Ernst Barlach (Artology)

Failure of Will Day (Church of the SubGenius)

Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus (varies between 1.2 and 1.5; Roman Catholic Church)

Fenris’s Day (Pagan)

Festival of Fetishes

Festival of Sleep Day [begins at sundown]

Festival of Four Winds & All Sky

Gaspar del Bufalo (Roman Catholic)

Gregory of Nazianzus (Catholic Church)

Hercules (Positivist; Saint)

Isaac Asimov Day (Jayism)

Johann Konrad Wilhelm Löhe (Lutheran Church)

Macarius of Alexandria (a.k.a. Macarius the Younger; Christian; Saint)

Mange Loa (a.k.a. Jan Case Gateaux or Breaking of the Cakes)

Ninth Day of Christmas

Ray Harryhausen Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Seraphim of Sarov (Repose; Eastern Orthodox Church)

Slava Raškaj (Artology)

Swiss Cheese Day (Pastafarian)

Twelve Holy Days #8 (Scorpio, the generative system; Esoteric Christianity)

Twelvetide, Day #9 (a.k.a. the Twelve Days of Christmas or Christmastide) [until 1.5]

Vedanayagam Samuel Azariah (Episcopal Church)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Dies Ater (Unfortunate Day; Ancient Rome)

Fortunate Day (Pagan) [2 of 53]

Good Luck Day (Ancient Macedonia)

Perilous Day (13th Century England) [2 of 32]

Prime Number Day: 2 [1 of 72]

Sensho (先勝 Japan) [Good luck in the morning, bad luck in the afternoon.]

Tycho Brahe Unlucky Day (Scandinavia) [1 of 37]

Unglückstage (Unlucky Day; Pennsylvania Dutch) [2 of 30]

Unlucky Monday (when Cain killed Abel; Philippines) [1st Monday] (1 of 4)

Very Unlucky Day (Grafton’s Manual of 1565) [2 of 60]

Premieres

Billie Jean, by Michael Jackson (Song; 1983)

Bob Cummings Show (TV Series; 1955)

Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, by The Andrews Sisters (Song; 1941)

The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Novel; 1879)

Dog Pounded (WB LT Cartoon; 1954)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Film; 1932)

The Flying Dutchman, by Richard Wagner (Opera; 1843)

He Was Her Man (WB MM Cartoon; 1937)

Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach (Novella; 1970)

Last Angry Moose, Part 1 (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S3, Ep. 139; 1962)

Mind and Matter, by Erwin Schrödinger (Philosophy Book; 1958)

My View of the World, by Erwin Schrödinger (Philosophy Book; 1951)

Nine Tomorrows, by Isaac Asimov (Short Stories; 1959)

Oscar and Lucinda (Film; 1998)

A Punch in the Snoot or The Nose Tattoo (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S3, Ep. 140; 1962)

Senses Working Overtime, by XTC (Song; 1982)

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (Novel; 1865)

The Secret Adversary, by Agatha Christie (Mystery Novel; 1922) [2]

Wisdom (Film; 1987)

The Worm Turns (Disney Cartoon; 1937)

Today’s Name Days

Basilius, Dietmar, Gregor (Austria)

Bazilije, Grgo, Grgur (Croatia)

Karina (Czech Republic)

Abel (Denmark)

Algi, Esme, Esmi (Estonia)

Aapeli (Finland)

Basile (France)

Beatrix, Dietmar, Gregor, Makarius, Otfried (Germany)

Seraphim, Silvestros, Sylvester (Greece)

Ábel (Hungary)

Basilio, Modesto (Italy)

Ābels, Indulis, Ivo, Orests (Latvia)

Fulgentas, Gailutė, Mažvydas, Stefanija (Lithuania)

Dagfinn, Dagfrid (Norway)

Abel, Izydor, Makary, Odil, Strzeżysław (Poland)

Serafim, Silvestru (Romania)

Alexandra (Slovakia)

Basilio, Gregorio (Spain)

Svea (Sweden)

Sylvester (Ukraine)

Abel, Abelard, Abella, Abner, Adalhard, Adelard, Marsten, Marston, Rave (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 2 of 2024; 364 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 2 of week 1 of 2024

Celtic Tree Calendar: Beth (Birch) [Day 8 of 28]

Chinese: Month 12 (Jia-Zi), Day 21 (Yi-Chou)

Chinese Year of the: Rabbit 4721 (until February 10, 2024)

Hebrew: 21 Teveth 5784

Islamic: 20 Jumada II 1445

J Cal: 2 White; Twosday [2 of 30]

Julian: 20 December 2023

Moon: _63%: Warning Gibbous

Positivist: 2 Moses (1st Month) [Hercules]

Runic Half Month: Eihwaz or Eoh (Yew Tree) [Day 8 of 15]

Season: Winter (Day 13 of 89)

Zodiac: Capricorn (Day 12 of 31)

[the-firebird69]

they are at the area called the yucatan all those countries have twnty complexes and there are seven countries including mx. now we flow in and work tons of us. and contain it. solidly. we find a way yes. those twnety are sixties and by 80 four are two hundrd though and three one hudred. yes. all are deep brazil is next but the whole north expalined yes. but Bitol and Goddess Wife say there are ten more and towards the interior of the north and recently added all are sixties by two hundred. and loaded with explosives. true too. and we did see it checked they hold off no. are at them shortly are at the ones there now and are at fifty percent msotly the same globally but in africa are at sixty and then the inner ring.

-and the south it is full of them still yes. and they are at it. and tons of them. and harsh the say nad hard do it and were encouaged and move now. tons say it out of the way no we do it no. are at fifty perent there no are at twenty an in africa late. we have there well psuedo empire ten n eachcountry roughly most are sixties by oneh unred and there are 80 total ten twho hundred ten one hunred. each five big ones six structured. on purpose and smart dangerous and loaded up down south did it recenlt nope. tons of it we need and or can use but a threat. now ew help have to

Bitol and Goddess Wife

Lobo and Proxima Midnight God and Goddess

and us of course but we have more publish now

Thor Freya

Olympus

and this is huge tons of it and yeh smeone there is yeling at me and we looka t it and geet hiel to and now

Hera

the do i t a lot Hera we tell you already and yo see but ok it is harsh she hears it and ok we see

Frank Castle Hardcastle

we do this now have to

Duke Nukem Blockbuster looking for any of ours to sign on and sign up and newly now to do this work the bomb stuff now ok every cruscial and respected. he called me our saviour and nobody elsse due to teh nature of it. mostly that is what they threaten with Thor Freya too did they say do. and the two say now we do a lot. it is greatness and nothing less. must be revered by all. coveted.

[rabbitcruiser]

The International Day of the Air Traffic Controller

The International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers' Associations (IFATCA) is the worldwide organization representing, in 2011, more than fifty thousand air traffic controllers in 137 countries.

The goals of the Federation are: to promote safety, efficiency, and regularity in international air navigation; to assist and advise in the development of safe and orderly systems of air traffic control and new procedures and facilities; to promote and uphold a high standard of knowledge and professional efficiency among air traffic controllers. To achieve this, IFATCA closely cooperates with national and international aviation authorities, and institutions concerned with air navigation; it sponsors and supports the passage of legislation and regulations which will increase and protect the safety of air navigation.

The Federation is still registered in Switzerland (its historic base), but has its headquarters situated in Montréal, Canada, close to ICAO’s headquarters. IFATCA enjoys a worldwide reputation amongst all partners in air traffic management, with representation in many areas including ICAO and EUROCONTROL working groups.

Air traffic control has developed from the humblest beginnings into a highly sophisticated and technology-dependent occupation. First proposed in 1956 by Mr. Jacob Wachtel, founder and first chairman of the Israel Air Traffic Controllers’ Association, the idea of a world federation of air traffic controllers’ associations became visible in 1961, when a working group of representatives from 12 different countries was formed and met in Amsterdam, the Netherlands from 19 to 20 October 1961 to prepare the foundation of the European Federation of Air Traffic Controller’s Associations (EFATCA). Quickly, many other national organizations expressed an interest in joining such a federation. So the representative body founded by 12 European countries has grown to the worldwide federation. The Federation has been structured around four areas: Europe, Americas, Asia and Africa-Middle East; each zone can focus on local issues. At the same time, there is also a structure with fields through three committees: the technical committee, the professional committee, and finally the finance committee. Members meet in their region at annual regional meetings and globally at annual conferences.

The International Day of the Air Traffic Controller (sometimes named the acronym: ATCO Day), celebrated on 20 October each year, not only marks the anniversary of IFATCA (which was founded on 20 October 1961), but also reminds the vision of the founding members; it also celebrates the men and women who 24/7 help make air travel the safest possible mode of transport. It is also a day to learn more about the job and profession of the Air Traffic Controllers, who work day and night, including weekends and holidays, to keep pilots and their passengers safe. They must also direct planes during inclement weather and a variety of emergency situations. The job of Air Traffic Controllers is extremely difficult and their job requires intense concentration. On the ground at airport runways, these specialists direct air traffic. The movement of planes through airspace is also monitored and directed by Air Traffic Controllers. Pilots are also given landing and takeoff commands by the Air Traffic Controllers.

Source

[altrbody]

Aboubakar Fofana, Ka Touba Farafina Yé (Africa Blessing). 2017

fifty-four sheep, fermented vegetable indigo, the African continent

"This installation uses 54 live sheep, one for each of the countries that make up the African continent, dyed with natural indigo. In Africa, the sheep is a revered animal, providing meat and wool in areas where there is often sparse resources for stock. Once, nomadic shepherds roamed across the continent with huge herds of sheep, but now there are so many boundaries and rules that many nomadic peoples have found their lives and livelihoods severely restricted. I see a parable between these African sheep, and the diverse peoples of my continent."

[gyamfieric]

Opening on the 27th of January 2023 at Spazju Kreattiv in Malta curated by Bernard Akoi-Jackson

including the works of:

Akwasi Bediako Afrane (Ghanian) Blick Bassy (Cameroonian) Christian Guerematchi (Slovenian- Dutch) Dereje Shiferaw (Ethiopian) Eric Gyamfi (Ghanian) Patrick Tagoe-Turkson (Ghanian) Priscilla Kennedy (Ghanian) Nelago Shilongoh (Namibian) Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson (Ghanian)

[valleyfthdolls]

The other day I found a surprisingly good way of shutting down the whole “Africa is a primitive third world location that doesn’t even have basic sanitation and everyone there is starving to death due to lack of technological or social advancement” argument. Literally just look them in the eye and tell them to specify where in Africa. The second they have to address Africa as an entire goddamn continent with fifty four countries and tons of different populations and cultures they will freeze up.