#i REFUSE to become interested in the history of central europe leave me ALONE the mediterranean is more than enough for me (this is a lie)

[quia-nominor--leo]

decided to read some Schiller so that I can keep up with beloved @burritofriedrich (and also take a break from classics) and Wallenstein's Death blew me away so much that I now, unfortunately, have opened the wikipedia page for the Thirty Years War.

[alexsmitposts]

Europe in Irreversible Decay, EU Elections are Proof of It! Europe, an “old” colonialist continent, is decaying, and in some places even collapsing. It senses how bad things are going. But it never thinks that it is its own fault. North America is decaying as well, but there, people are not even used to comparing. They only “feel that things are not going well”. If everything else fails, they simply try to get some second or third job, and just survive, somehow. On both sides of the Atlantic, the establishment is in panic. Their world is in crises, and the ‘crises’ arrived mainly because several great countries, including China, Russia, Iran, but also South Africa, Turkey, Venezuela, DPRK and the Philippines, are openly refusing to play in accordance with the script drawn in Washington, London and Paris. In these nations, there is suddenly no appetite for sacrificing their own people on the altar of well-being of Western citizens. Several countries, including Venezuela and Syria, are even willing to fight for their independence. Despite insane and sadistic embargos and sanctions imposed on them by the West; China, Russia and Iran are now flourishing, in many fields doing much better than Europe and North America. If they are really pushed any further, China, Russia and their allies combined, could easily collapse the economy of the United States; an economy which is built on clay and unserviceable debt. It is also becoming clear that militarily, the Pentagon could never defeat Beijing, Moscow, even Teheran. After terrorizing the world for ages, the West is now almost finished: morally, economically, socially, and even militarily. It still plunders, but it has no plan to improve the state of the world. It cannot even think in such terms. It hates China, and every other country that does have progressive, internationalist plans. It smears President Xi Jinping and his brainchild, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), but there is nothing new and exciting that the West is able to offer to the world. Yes, of course, those regime changes, coups, military interventions and theft of natural resources, but anything else? No, silence! * During my two weeks long working visit to Europe, in the Czech Republic (now renamed to Czechia), a country that enjoys a higher HDI (Human Development Index defined by UNDP) than Italy or Spain, I saw several young, decently dressed men, picking through garbage bins, right in front of my hotel, looking for food. I saw young Europeans kneeling and begging in Stuttgart, the second richest city in Germany (where both Mercedes and Porsche car are produced). What I observed in all seven countries of the EU that I visited, was confusion, but also indifference, extreme selfishness and almost grotesque idleness. In great contrast to Asia, everybody in Europe was obsessed with their ‘rights’ and privileges, while no one gave a slightest damn about responsibilities. When my plane from Copenhagen landed in Stuttgart, it began to rain. It was not heavy rain; just rain. The Canadair jet operated by SAS is a small aircraft, and it did not get a gate. It parked a few meters from the terminal and the captain announced that ground staff refused to bring a bus, due to lightning and the downpour. And so, we stayed inside the plane, for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, half an hour. The lightning ended. The drizzle continued. 40 minutes, no bus. One hour later, a bus appeared. A man from the ground staff emerged leisurely, totally wrapped in plastic, protected hermetically from rain. Passengers, on the other hand, were not even offered umbrellas. “I love myself”, I later read graffiti in the center of the city. The graffiti was not far from the central train station, which is being refurbished at the cost of several billion euros, and against the will of the citizens. The monstrous project is marching on at an insanely lazy pace, with only 5-6 construction workers detectable at a time, down in the tremendous excavations. Stuttgart is unbelievably filthy. Escalators often do not work, drunkards are all over, and so are beggars. It is as if for decades, no one did any face-lift to the city. Once free museums are charging hefty entrance fees, and most of the public benches have disappeared from parks and avenues. The decay is omnipresent. The German rail system (DB) has virtually collapsed. Almost all trains are late, from the ‘regional’; to the once glorified ICE (these German ‘bullet trains’ are actually moving slower, on average, even in comparison to some Indonesian inter-city expresses). The services provided everywhere in Europe, from Finland to Italy, are grotesquely bad. Convenience stores, cafes, hotels – all are understaffed, badly run and mostly arrogant. Humans are often replaced by dysfunctional machines. Tension is everywhere, the bad mood omnipresent. Demanding anything is unthinkable; one risks being snapped at, insulted, sent to hell. I still remember how Western propaganda used to glorify services in the capitalist countries, when we were growing up in the Communist East: “The customer is always treated like a god”. Yes, right! How laughable. For centuries, “European workers” were ‘subsidized’ by colonialist and neo-colonialist plunder, perpetrated in all non-white corners of the world. They ended up being spoiled, showered with benefits, and unproductive. That was fine for the elites: as long as the masses kept voting for the imperialist regime of the West. “The Proletariat” eventually became right-wing, imperialist, even hedonistic. I saw a lot this time, and soon I will write much more about it. What I did not witness, was hope, or enthusiasm. There was no optimism. No healthy and productive exchange of ideas, or profound debate; something I am so used to in China, Russia or Venezuela, just confusion, apathy and decay everywhere. And hate for those countries that are better, more human, more advanced, and full of socialist enthusiasm. * Italy felt slightly different. Again, I met great left-wing thinkers there; philosophers, professors, filmmakers, journalists. I spoke at Sapienza University, the biggest university in Europe. I lectured about Venezuela and Western imperialism. I worked with the Venezuelan embassy in Rome. All of that was fantastic and enlightening, but was this really Italy? A day after I left Rome for Beirut, Italians went to the polls. And they withdrew their supports from my friends of the 5-Star-Movement, leaving them with just over 17%, while doubling the backing for the extreme right-wing Northern League. This virtually happened all over Europe. UK Labor lost, while right-wing Brexit forces gained significantly. Extreme right-wing, even near-fascist parties, reached unexpected heights. It was all “me, me, me” politics. An orgy of “political selfies”. Me had enough of immigrants. Me wants better benefits. Me wants better medical care, shorter working hours. And so on. Who pays for it, no one in Europe seems to care. Not once did I hear any European politicians lamenting about the plundering of West Papua or Borneo, about Amazonia or the Middle East, let alone Africa. And immigration? Did we hear anything about that nuisance of European refugees, millions of them, many illegal, that have descended in the last decades on Southeast Asia, East Africa, Latin America, and even Sub Continent? They are escaping, in hordes, from meaninglessness, depressions, existential emptiness. In the process, they are stripping the locals of land, real estate, beaches, everything. “Immigrants out”? Fine; then European immigrants out from the rest of the world, too! Enough of the one-sidedness! The recent EU elections clearly showed that Europe has not evolved. For countless dark centuries, it used to live only for its pleasure, murdering millions in order to support its high life. Right now, it is trying to reshuffle its political and administrative system, so it can continue doing the same. More efficiently! On top of it, absurdly, the world is expected to pity that overpaid and badly performing, mainly right-wing and lethargic European proletariat, and sacrifice further tens of millions of people, just in order to further increase its standard of living. All this should not be allowed to happen. Never again! It has to be stopped. What Europe has achieved so far, at the expense of billions of lives of “the others”, is definitely not worthy of dying for. Beware of Europe and its people! Study its history. Study imperialism, colonialism and the genocides it has been spreading all over the world. Let them vote in their fascists. But keep them away. Prevent them from spreading their poison all over the world. They want to put the interests of their countries first? Wonderful! Let us do exactly the same: The people of Russia first, too! China first! And, Asia, Africa, Latin America first!

[peeringthroughthe4thwall]

Under The Shadow: Horror, War and Family Life

It has always been my contention that a good horror film has to be about something. There should be a theme, a discussion going on with the horror acting as an extension. The fear, the terror, the reactions, should emerge from something tangible, something real.

Yes, there is a certain attraction to mindless horror but I never feel these films last. As a teenager some friends and I once watched all the Friday the 13th films in one summer, each of us trying to predict beforehand how many unlucky victims will be dispatched (if I remember correctly Jason Takes Manhattan got the record). This was fun, not because the films were any good (they weren't) but because of the social aspect. We laughed throughout enjoying the naffness of the films and sharing the joke.

Similarly I watched a few of the Final Destination films a few years ago. The attraction there, of course, is the increasingly ridiculous ways another group of victims are dispatched. Ask me today and I admit I can't remember exactly what happened or who was who because the pleasure was completely ephemeral.

Compare these with the best horrors – The Exorcist, The Innocents, The Devil's Backbone or the 2014 Australian film The Babadook. These are all genuinely scary films with memorable highlights, great characters, and, crucially, very strong and relatable themes.

The Exorcist – probably my all time favourite horror – had two thematic motifs. The first focused on the struggles of a successful actress coping with single-parenthood and a high profile career; the second concerned a priest suffering a crisis of faith, intensified by the death of his mother who regains his faith not through proof of God but because he is confronted with the most diabolical evil. The first theme, the strained relationship between a mother and daughter, is a common one in horror. The Babadook explored a mother's attempt to bring up a very troubled child and we ask whether the creature who terrorises them is real or just a figment of a strung out and exhausted mind. In The Innocents Deborah Kerr plays a surrogate mother coming up against a history which just won't let go of the present.

It is a theme which is also explored in the 2016 British film Under The Shadow. It opens up with Shideh, a Iranian woman who dreams of becoming a doctor but is told by the authorities that the dream will never come true because she had once been political in college. She struggles to reassert her femininity and her personality in a country that doesn't value women and she is married to a man who has achieved exactly what she dreams of. The film is set during the Iran/Iraq war and soon her husband, Iraj, is called to serve close to the front line. He implores Shideh to leave Tehran because the Iraqis have promised to bomb the city but, of course, Shideh refuses.

This is the theme of Under The Shadow – a woman, constrained by politics, gender and convention – who is struggling to be independent. She wants to succeed on her own so much, to look after her home and provide for her daughter, Dorsa, that leaving is just not an option.

Of course, once she's alone the bombs do fall, ripping a hole in the building's roof, damaging her neighbours home upstairs and cracking her ceiling. It is the moment that her terror becomes real. There is an Iranian superstition that suggest that 'When bad things happen and a wind blows' a Djinn may come into your life. The Djinn, a malevolent spirit, focuses on Shideh and Dorsa, attacking them where Shideh is most vulnerable and undermining the very things that the mother holds most dear - her independent spirit and her ability to look after her home and child.

Under the Shadow has a good share of scares, it can be creepy, tense and there was one moment which actually made me jump but it does this not by manipulating the viewer with loud music and putting its protagonists in preposterous situations, but my making us really care for the characters. Despite Shideh's reactions and insistence on being in control when she clearly isn't, we do not judge her. Instead we sympathise with her.

What makes the film special though is that it affords us with a glimpse into the everyday lives of Iranian people. Yes the start seems to follow the usual path of government control, but this is a McGuffin of sorts. As soon as Shideh gets home we see how ordinary and universal family life is. We could easily believe there is no difference between Iran and Europe but, occasionally, we are shown just how fragile this façade is: The fear of letting anyone know they own a VCR, the fact that, anytime someone knocks the door Shideh has to put her head scarf on. One stand out scene is when mother and daughter flee the spirit in the house only for Shideh to be arrested for not wearing a headscarf (you have to wonder what would happen if a building caught fire and the women had to escape quickly or perish – would they be arrested for not having enough time to cover their hair?). The Djinn, of course, is the embodiment of the flimsiness of the façade.

Under The Shadow is an interesting mixture of a film – a British Production, set in Iran, filmed in Jordan and in the Farsi Language. It is excellently directed by Babak Anvari with a great central performance by Narges Rashidi as Shideh. It was the UK submission for Best Foreign Language film at this year's Oscars and although it didn't get nominated, it is still an excellent addition to the Horror genre.