#which was made still under the communist regime

[oldtvandcomics]

So I am operating with a pitifully small sample size, but a thing that keeps striking me is how queer movies coming from conservative / homophobic countries these days are still so... happy. We have got Kenya with a teen lesbian romance (Rafiki), we have India and a comedy about lavender marriage (Badhaai Do), and Morocco with The Blue Caftan, that very much is a movie about dealing with death, but also very sweet about it.

And like, it isn’t as if they were completely detached from reality, these characters very much have to deal with homophobia and are shown to be in danger for being queer. But compared to the stuff that has been going on in Western movies not even that long ago, think Brokeback Mountain? The homophobia is being balanced by so much JOY. No queer characters die horrible deaths, they don’t have to sacrifice their relationships along the way, and there is always a happy ending, if not overt, then implied.

[alexanderwales]

I've been trying to get a good overview of communist art, and it's difficult, partly because of the language barrier, but also partly because I think what I want isn't the art itself, it's a comparison of how the landscape of art-making shifts.

Movie-making, in particular, is a massive undertaking that requires a fair amount of time and money if you want to do it right. You need someone to write it, someone to direct it, someone to act in it, a cinematographer, some lighting, sound and music ... under a communist model, none of this would actually change. You would still need to acquire the personnel and make sure they were housed and fed. You would still need sets to be built and artists to devote their time and energy.

So one of the common criticisms of capitalism is that it produces Bad Art, that everyone is just trying to make a buck and they don't care about the product unless it finds consumers who will pay out cash. Everything is geared for the lowest common denominator. This gets worse as you involve more and more capital.

But I've always wondered: is this not also true under communism?

I don't mean in practice, that question is simple, all you have to do is read up on the film production processes from a number of different communist and formerly communist countries, whose source materials are often not accessible in English, mired in propaganda and disputes, and cover many decades. Easy peasy. I did what I think is a surface skim, but the common threads were that film studios were state-owned, scripts were approved by party officials, there were regular reviews during production, and a final review before release. You usually have to promote socialist values, or at least not criticize the current regime, and you have reviews for "ideological content". In spite of all this, some good movies got made, some bad movies got made, and some movies were banned for lack of ideological conformity or "frivolity". There are different eras to filmmaking in every country, times when the industry was thriving and times that it crashed to the ground in spectacular fashion as the government involved itself. A lot depended on who was in power and what the then-current ideology was. I think it's tempting to say that the widely agreed upon "great films" got made in spite of having ideological overview, but it's hard for me to evaluate that claim, and if someone said "the great American films were made in spite of capitalism" I think that also would be a difficult claim to evaluate, even though I've actually seen a pretty substantial amount of the canon and speak the language most often used in analysis of production processes.

No, what I mean is that in theory there's someone that has to be running the numbers. The film studio is state-run, sure, everyone is in state housing or whatever, they're getting food somehow ... but someone, somewhere, is authorizing all this. You don't make a film without a plan, so those plans have to be submitted to someone, or a committee, and that committee has to decide which films will get made and which will remain a dream. And if they're doing that, then they're either trying to make the film that they think benefits the country the most, or they're applying their own taste and judgment, but probably both.

And if you're under some kind of model where no one runs the numbers, where film-making is entirely volunteer work, then you still have problems, because you need this large volunteer organization, and you need to bring them in on your vision, and if they can just walk away, you need to maintain that energy and vision through the whole process.

I guess what I'm saying is that yes, capitalism presents problems when it comes to this specific artform, but I feel like as soon as you're out from under the yoke of the dollar, you're immediately under some other yoke. And I do wish that when people saw a bad film and said "the problem is capitalism" they would take a moment to consider that maybe there is always necessarily going to be oversight and compromise, just because of the nature of the enterprise.

This does not apply nearly so much to other forms of art, like those that can be done by a single person sitting in a room all alone.

[komsomolka]

The GDR’s record on internationalism was exemplary and it took the idea of solidarity with other, struggling nations seriously. Undoubtedly the internationalism demonstrated by German communists before the Second World War, in solidarity with the Soviet Union and particularly the role they played in Spain during the 1930s, also had some influence on its foreign policy. A number of ex-International Brigaders had leading positions in party and state.

Many of the struggles of colonial and former colonial countries for liberation and national independence received vital material and ideological support. The GDR sent doctors and other medical staff to the front line in Vietnam, Mozambique, Angola and other countries. It provided logistical support and training for SWAPO, the movement for independence in Namibia, as well as to the ANC in South Africa, printing Sechaba, its official newsletter for many years. Numerous foreign students from countries struggling to free themselves from the legacy of colonialism were given free training and education in the GDR itself. Refuge was also offered to those fleeing oppressive regimes; many Chileans in enforced exile from Pinochet’s fascist regime found asylum there, including its current president, Michelle Bachelet. [...]

Between 1964 and 1988, there were 60 friendship brigades made up of around 1,000 young people working in 26 countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. In Algeria a brigade built houses for the homeless, in Mali they trained agricultural workers, in Nicaragua they built a training school for mechanics and, in 1980, a hospital financed in large part by donations made by GDR citizens. By September 1985, the Karl Marx Hospital, as it was named, had treated 10,000 patients, among them 3,000 children, and another 10,000 were supplied with medicines. The hospital is still working today, but now under the more innocuous name of ‘German-Nicaraguan Hospital’. In 2005 it celebrated its 25th anniversary. [...] A number of GDR schools were named after leading freedom fighters including a Nelson Mandela school in Ilmenau which was immediately renamed in 1989 because Mandela was then still deemed to be a terrorist by the West German government.

Stasi State or Socialist Paradise? The German Democratic Republic and What Became of It by Bruni de la Motte & John Green with Seumas Milne (Contributor), 2015.

[thetepes]

"Fuck it, I'm going to go back to calling people Nazis if they look at me funny." - 4:20 is the timestamp.

She is such a fascinating streamer, no? Dead air, no music, bringing up a cosplayer who killed themselves over accusations after saying it's perfectly fine and good to make flippant accusations. Telling her viewers to mass report Ant's videos, something which youtube found her so inert and completely fucking unable to meaningfully achieve they automatically considered his report solved because there was never any meaningful threat to begin with.

Anyway, it means nothing. This accusation. These words. Nothing, but meaningless piss from a person who so loudly declares their victimhood and cries about their status as a poc, a transwoman, a disabled person who lives off government assistance.

These things that all of which would have made you a victim of this meaningless regime to you. Let's look at who they targeted!

Black people

Civilians accused of disobedience, resistance, or partisan activity

Gay men, bisexuals, and others accused of deviant sexual behavior

 whose religious beliefs conflicted with Nazi ideology, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses

people with disabilities 

Slavic People

Political opponents and dissenters in Germany such as communists

Roma and other people derogatorily labeled as “Gypsies” 

Social outsiders in Germany derogatorily labeled as “asocials” or “professional criminals”

Soviet Prisoners of War. 

Hm, would you look at that? It seems we both meet the measure of those who would be eradicated. We would be victims of Nazis, Lily. Both of us.

Most estimates place the total number of deaths during the Second World War at around 70-85 million people. Approximately 17 million of these deaths were due to crimes against humanity carried out by the Nazi regime in Europe. In comparison to the millions of deaths that took place through conflict, famine, or disease, these 17 million stand out due to the reasoning behind them, along with the systematic nature and scale in which they were carried out.

They were 17 millions of us. A number not one of us can begin to fathom the actual scale of.

So why do only I know the weight of this between us, Lily? Are you really so disconnected from what you are that that multi generation eradicating horror is something you can't comprehend? Nazi isn't some flighty term like Republican that can mean anything from a out of touch grandma who thinks a house can still be bought for 25k to a man holding a tiki torch saying we should nuke downtown Atlanta. Nazis are one thing. They are the thing I struggle to describe as people, but they were and are people and we must remember the great evil people are capable of.

These are not the same thing. You can't just fling Nazi out like it's meaningless. To do so demeans not just the victims, but people still living. You belittle us. You belittle yourself. When you reduce Nazi to a buzzword you take away the sheer magnitude of the violence and loss they caused. Nazi is a word with meaning. It should hurt to say because of how heavy it is.

Have some pride. Have some dignity. Some grace. Have some respect for our lost kin and those that would have been our friends, for the strangers that would have been connected to us by the single thread of this group's hatred.

Give that word it's meaning.

This part is for all of us who have grown too casual with our language, not just her,

Stop calling people Nazis unless they are. Nazis aren't fairytale creatures or monsters under the bed. They're human. They're your brother, your father, your cousin, your next door neighbor. That's what's so scary about them. They're just people. Hateful people. They look like you and me. Look at what a Nazi is. Look at their beliefs. Look at what they did. Memorize it. We all must look even though it hurts because we need to be able to identify them and half of that is giving that word weight so when we see the danger we can name it. For our own safety.

It's time to demand better. It's time to have meaning. It's time to use our words and use them accurately.

[angeltreasure]

“Stojan Adasevic, a Serbian abortionist when Serbia was still a communist country, managed to kill 48,000 children in utero in his 26 years as a purveyor of death.

Sometimes up to 35 per day.

But that's all on the past, as Stojan is now one of Serbia's most important pro-life voices.

As explained in a recent interview with the Spanish daily newspaper, La Razon:

The medical textbooks of the Communist regime said abortion was simply the removal of a blob of tissue. Ultrasounds allowing the fetus to be seen did not arrive until the 1980s, but they did not change his opinion. Regardless of what he believed, or thought he believed, Stojan began to have nightmares.

In describing his conversion to La Razon, Adasevic "dreamed about a beautiful field full of children and young people who were playing and laughing, from four to 24 years of age, but who ran away from him in fear. A man dressed in a black and white habit stared at him in silence. The dream was repeated each night and he would wake up in a cold sweat.

One night Stojan asked the man in black and white in his frightening dream as to his identity.

"My name is Thomas Aquinas," he responded. Stojan, educated in communist schools that pushed atheism instead of real learning, didn't recognize the Dominican saint's name.

Stojan asked the nightly visitor, "Who are these children?"

"They are the ones you killed with your abortions," St. Thomas told him bluntly and without preamble.

Stojan awoke in shock and fear. He decided he would refuse to participate in any more abortions.

Unfortunately, that very day in which he made his decision, one of his cousins came to the hospital with his four months-pregnant girlfriend―they had hoped for an abortion. Apparently, it wasn’t her first which is not uncommon in countries of the Soviet bloc.

Stojan reluctantly agreed, but, instead of the usual Dilation and Curettage (D&C) Method in which the fetus is torn apart with the use of a hook shaped knife called a curette, he decided to chop it up and remove it as a single mass.

Horrifically and providentially, his little cousin's heart came out still beating.

It was then that Dr. Adasevic realized that he had indeed killed a human being.

Stojan immediately notified his hospital that he would no longer perform abortions.

No physician in communist Yugoslavia had ever before refused to perform an abortion. The hospital and government's reaction was swift and severe.

His salary was cut in half and his daughter was immediately fired from her job. In addition, Stojan's son wasn't allowed to matriculate into the state university.

After many years of surviving the many privations orchestrated by pro-abortion/pro-death fundamentalist atheist government, Stojan was about to buckle under the pressure and give into its demands.

Fortunately, Stojan had another dream about St. Thomas.

St. Thomas assured Stojan of his friendship and Stojan was in turn inspired.

The physician became involved in the pro-life movement in Yugoslavia. In fact, he was able to get the state-run Yugoslav television station to twice broadcast Bernard Nathanson's anti-abortion film The Silent Scream.

Since then, Stojan has told of his anti-abortion stance and his reversion to the Orthodox faith of his childhood to newspapers and television stations throughout Eastern Europe. In fact, he has a strong devotion to St. Thomas Aquinas and is rarely, if ever, without the saint's books―his constant reading material.

Stojan often reminds his listeners that in his Summa Theologiæ, St. Thomas wrote that human life begins forty days after fertilization. Perhaps, Stojan would opine, "the saint wanted to make amends for that error."

Today Stojan continues to fight for the lives and rights of the unborn.”

[omgthatdress]

Oh, look, another blonde hair, blue eyed doll from AG. I watched the cute little stop-motion short film AG made for Courtney, and I have to admit, it was fucking cute and her charm won me over.

There’s *some* actual historical engagement with the popularization of video games. The biggest thing is that her mom is running for mayor of their fictional town in California (because of course Courtney has to be a Valley Girl) and faces a bunch of sexist BS on a TV interview. It covers the space shuttle era of space travel, Challenger disaster and the emotional impact that had on the United States.

In her second book, Courtney has a classmate with AIDS. I’m glad that was included, because putting AIDS and HIV-positive kids in schools was a huge fight in the 80s. Here in Tampa, the mother of Eliana Martinez, a disabled girl who had contracted HIV in a blood transfusion at birth, went to court to get her daughter into school, and a federal judge ruled she could go to school as long as she spent the day in a glass cage like an animal. It was that bad. Eventually, Eliana was able to attend school without the cage because her mother, Rosa, was amazing.

In spite of everything I like about Courtney’s story, let’s be real. AG’s 80s doll should have been Latina. A Cuban-American girl living in Miami, with at least one parent who’s an Operacíon Pedro Pan adoptee, and with relatives who came over during the Mariel Boatlift. And I’m not just saying that because my parents were living in Miami in the 80s, I’m saying it because Miami was an incredible place in the 80s.

Operacíon Pedro Pan was a program by the U.S. State Department and Catholic Church for Cuban children to be sent to America when parents feared they would lose their parental rights and their children would be sent to communist indoctrination camps. It was a chance for their kids to be raised as Catholic in free America instead of atheists under the brutal Castro regime. About 14,000 children were removed from Cuba to be mostly re-settled in Miami.

You may be familiar with the Mariel Boatlift if you’ve seen the opening scene of Scarface, which actually sums up the situation pretty well.

Now, granted, Mariel only happened between April and October of 1980. Even after the boatlift officially ended, people seeking to flee Cuba continued to come on boats. The “wet foot, dry foot” policy meant that anyone fleeing Cuba who managed to set foot on American soil was guaranteed asylum. However, they had to face the US coastguard trying to intercept them and turn them back on the water. Refugees from Haiti fleeing the Duvalier regime also flocked to Miami, but since Duvalier was right-wing, Haitians weren’t granted the same protections as Cubans were and it was absolute bullshit.

On top of all that, Miami also had thriving African-American, Afro-Caribbean, Colombian, Jewish, and gay communities. There was just SO MUCH incredible stuff going on in Miami in the 80s, and I mean, hello, Miami Vice was a whole aesthetic!

You could include all the stuff that’s going in in Courtney’s books and STILL pack in so much more amazing history. The overall vibe I get with Coutney’s collection is that even though there’s some good stuff in her stories, it’s more about selling 80s nostalgia than actually teaching 80s history, which is a travesty. I know it’d be hard to engage with 80s politics and Ronald Reagan without pissing off a *lot* of people, but you can still engage with some serious 80s history if you just look outside of the blonde hair, blue eye box.

[southeastasianists]

Cambodia has a long history of performing arts that share commonalities with what is grouped under the "circus" banner nowadays. And like many of the country's ancient artforms, these traditions of acrobatics found themselves oppressed and vilified by the Khmer Rouge regime of dictator Pol Pot during the late 1970s. Inspired and supported by Maoist China, the Khmer Rouge intended to replace the country's old culture with a completely new one based on communist ideals. As such, traditional craftsmen and artists were routinely executed along with any dissidents, their relatives and even acquaintances. Cultural persecution thus became a part of one of the worst genocides of the 20th century.

Decades after this genocide, Cambodia still grapples with its consequences, not just in psychological terms but also the economic ripples of missing almost entire generations. As such, cities like Battambang, which was close to the border with Thailand and teeming with refugees, found themselves with high rates of poverty and children living on the streets. It was in this context that Phare Ponleu Selpak (PPS) was born in 1994.

A team of now adults, who had spent their childhood in refugee camps in Thailand, found themselves inspired by an art therapy program. This made them see their PPS initiative as a way to give other generations of disadvantaged children and young people the tools necessary to change their lives. While PPS's headquarters continue to be based in Battambang, their international flagship is Phare, the Cambodian Circus.

Most Phare performers may have originally lived in Battambang, but they now perform several shows per week in Siem Reap, the country's main tourist city. Their circus style takes some queues from the world-renowned Cirque du Soleil, highlighting human acrobatics and an artistic approach to their shows. Phare does not shy from references to the country's troubled history along with universal themes of strife. Phare has several shows that rotate on their performances. "Khmer Metal," for example, starts in a tourist pub the morning after a wild night, and features imagery like beer towers and drunk brawls, while "Influence" shows an authoritarian antagonist in a Mao-collared shirt.

Phare's aesthetic is a bit more DIY than Cirque du Soleil's current shows, but it is all part of their social enterprise aspects. Funds from their performances support PPS's other initiatives, which not only train future performers but also assist schools, art programs, and current performers' families. Following the massive negative impact of COVID-19 in tourism-focused Siem Reap, PPS needed an extreme act to raise additional funds for its reestablishment. It was this that led to their March 2021 performance. Including members of their Battambang and Phare crews, the show lasted just over 24 hours, earning them the still-standing (as of mid-2024) Guinness World Record for longest circus performance.

[mesetacadre]

The story that emerged was that of a plot to seize power by assassinating several government leaders through agents, who, if caught, would not even know the identity of their chiefs, but would appear to be ordinary agents of the German Gestapo. The chief conspirators, their reputations still intact, would call for “party unity” and the burying of all past hatchets to meet the emergency, and in the confusion would gain leading posts. One of them, Bakayev, was slated to be chief of the G.P.U. and would use the post to liquidate the agents who had done the actual murders, thus burying all evidence of the higher-ups’ crime. Some of the lesser agents apparently first learned in court the fate that their chiefs had reserved for them, and this greatly added to the venom with which they denounced those chiefs.

The reason for the conspiracy was given by Kamenev, brother-in-law of Trotsky, and himself a prominent leader in earlier years, who had been sidetracked by his long opposition to Stalin’s policies, especially to the Five Year Plan. Kamenev said that by 1932 it became clear that Stalin’s policies had been accepted by the people and that all hopes of overthrowing him by political means had failed. “There remained two roads... either honestly to end the struggle against the government, or to continue it... by means of individual terror. We chose the second road. We were guided in this by boundless bitterness against the leadership... and by a thirst for power to which we had once been near.” Zinoviev, former chief of the Communist International and later dropped because of unwillingness to follow the Stalin policy of noninterference by the Soviet government in other nations’ internal affairs, said that he had grown so accustomed to giving orders to large groups of people that he could not endure life without it. Several of the minor agents connected the group with the German Gestapo; N. Lurye claims to have worked “under the practical guidance of Franz Weitz, personal representative of Himmler.”

In subsequent trials of related groups, the hand of Nazi Germany was several times exposed. Pyatakov, former chief of Soviet state industry, said that he had met Trotsky abroad in 1935 and learned that the latter had made a deal with Rudolph Hess for Nazi support in the overthrow of the Stalin regime. In return for this, Germany was to get opportunities for investments throughout Russia and a special sphere of influence in the Ukraine through a puppet state. Other indications of German plotting came almost simultaneously from an entirely different quarter in far away Novosibirsk. In November, 1936, eight Soviet executives and one German engineer pled guilty to sabotage, which had wrecked coal mines and caused the death of miners; the German engineer’s testimony implicated the German consul in Novosibirsk.

The Soviets Expected It (1941), Anna Louise Strong

[horsesarecreatures]

Book review: I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys

This book is grim, but I’m glad I read it. It is a very eye-opening look into Romania under the rule of it’s communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. The main character is a 17 year old boy named Cristian Florescu, who lives with his parents, sister, and grandfather in a one bedroom apartment in Bucharest. One day while he is at school, he is pulled aside by a Securitate agent. The agent somehow knows that he accepted American stamps from the son of his mother’s employer, an American diplomat, which is illegal. The agent blackmails him into becoming an informer on the diplomat family, first by threatening to arrest him, then by threatening to arrest his whole family, and finally by promising him medicine for his grandfather with “leukemia” (is is later discovered that the grandfather was actually poisoned with radiation by the government). Cristian has to decide whether he will fully comply, partially comply, or try to sabotage his missions. 

................................................................................................................................

I knew from watching travel shows like Globe Trekker that things were pretty bad in Romania during that time, but the things I read in this book still shocked me. Ceausescu in some senses put Stalin to shame, and the fact that he was critical of other communist leaders made the West turn a blind eye to the atrocities that were happening under his rule.  Before Romania became the last country in the soviet bloc to have it’s revolution, some things that became normalized in there included:

- Extreme food restrictions that were more severe than the rations during World War II. People had to stand in lines for hours in the cold after their 12 hour work shifts just to get something like a small piece of bread, or cooking oil. If a person over purchased food, they could be imprisoned for 6 months to 5 years.

- Due to Ceausescu wanting to increase the worker population, he encouraged women to have 10 children. They had to undergo forced, unsanitary monthly gynecological exams at work. If they were pregnant, the state tracked their pregnancy. Birth control and abortions became banned.

- The majority of orphans in the state weren't parentless; they just had parents that couldn't afford them. Most orphans were indoctrinated by the state to become Securitate agents. Others were deemed "deficient” and kept in concentration camp-like conditions. 

- It is estimated that about 1 in every 10 people in Romania was an informer at the time. Everyone informed on everyone, and people’s homes were bugged and had hidden cameras in them. It wasn't enough for Ceausescu to isolate the country from the rest of the world; he also had to isolate citizens from each other by creating an atmosphere is mistrust. 

- Children of political dissenters were also at risk of being sent to prisons were they were tortured along with adults. 

- Citizens went years without ever eating fruit. All of Romania’s “good” agricultural products were exported to pay off the debt Ceausescu plunged the country into with his failed oil investments.

- People never knew when they were going to have electricity. This wasn't just due to energy shortages; it was a strategy of the regime to keep citizens powerless through the unpredictability of their lives. Babies in incubators died at hospitals all the time when the power went out without warning. It was also illegal for temperatures to be heated above 16 degrees in the winter.

- Citizens had to report all contact they had with foreigners. It was illegal to own many items, from foreign currency to sofas to unregistered typewriters. 

- Romanians could not leave the country or apply for passports without the risk of being arrested. They also could not choose their own homes, or freely change jobs.

- When Bucharest’s historic buildings were raised and replaced with cement apartment buildings, the dogs that previously lived in the destroyed homes were forced to the streets. As they were starving, they often brutally attacked and killed citizens in packs. 

[leportraitducadavre]

You know, I'm not sure if I've ever told this story (I probably have, so I apologize for repeating it), but I was browsing Twitter when I came across a story about an academic who received a new book on the Argentine dictatorship, published by a U.S. university, which had as its title "Dirty War," a denialist take on state-sanctioned genocide:

Many will not care, but the authoritarian regime that was responsible for the death and disappearance of thousands of people, that plunged a stable economy into chaos by instituting neoliberal policies (since the U.S. instigated these dictatorships in order to experiment with such economies in Latin America to get a report on how they might work), and defended itself from accusations under the premise they were "fighting communism" (a premise by which many U.S. academics are surely attracted to defend their methods), it never has an equal position against its "opponents".

The term "Dirty War" is used to delegitimize the crimes against humanity carried out by the government of the time against all those it considered "reactionary", including mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters - pregnant women whose children were taken away from them to be given to families that would guarantee that the "communist" gene would not be propagated. It's a way of equating the small, tiny reactionary groups with the immense power of the military state that they decided to confront in order to defend themselves from an oppressive system established by force.

I am not surprised that today there are people defending this term so fervently within the academy since their own political and moral ideology is biased by an irrational hatred towards a form of government of economic and social thinking that differs from their capitalist worldview.

The Argentine military dictatorship did not happen centuries ago, in fact, barely 40 years have passed since its dismantling, those who celebrated such military intervention, civilians and businessmen who fervently looked to Europe and denigrated our native roots, are still alive today, propagating their mentality while supported, still, by the country that continues to call itself the "cradle of democracy".

[In fact, seeing this, I am not surprised either why the fandom of several series that barely touch upon political affairs about a repressive and oppressive system is so fervently anti-revolutionary.]

I still remember when my mom told me that one of her best friends from high school, Mauricio Fabian Weinstein, disappeared. His story is heartbreaking and gut-wrenching, as they all are, in his case, the military entered his personal home, kidnapped his father (Marcos), and forced him to tell them the whereabouts of his son while they were holding his daughter, Mauricio's sister, Dina kidnapped:

Mauricio's mom: "Marcos prior to this, at one point, said to Mauricio; 'Mauricio, don't make me choose, Dina is at home and she has nothing to do with this'. To which Mauricio replied: 'Dad, choose.'"

Documentary

Mauricio disappeared and was never heard from again. It is believed that he was a victim of the infamous "death flights" - a method of murder that consisted in carrying the unconscious victims into an airplane and throwing them into the sea. (x)

Linked above there's a documentary dedicated to him, Juan Carlos Mártire (disappeared), and Rubén Adrián Benchoam (executed in his home), all classmates, none of them older than 18; Alejandra Naftal, kidnapped (released in 1978) and friend of Juan Carlos and Mauricio, who was the last one to see them, mentions that before they were taken away she managed to adjust Juan Carlos's shirt as a farewell gesture.

I will even expose myself a bit personally, but here are some articles about the three of them, where there is a photo of all the classmates, where my mother appears at her tender 17 years of age (it made me incredibly emotional as I wasn't expecting her image to be plastered on different articles or even a documentary): here and here -they're in Spanish, I'm sure you'll be able to translate it.

In case you want to know a little more, and please keep in mind this movie is fictionalized, so there're details left out in lieu of it being a movie, I'll recommend watching 1985.

[erzsebetrosztoczy]

Okay gals and pals this is for the Fender lovers.

So- me as a hungarian- Im going crazy cause we having a rep in COD made me be just a little bit obsessed with Fender. And i was just wondering...that the math ain't mathing in his bio. I mean i can be stupid but here me out

So we kinda got his birth date, but i don't think the creators meant this like DECADES before 1989 right? I guess he was born soemwhere in the 80s.

BUT.

A revolutionary in Soviet Pest? Ma'am, that is true that Hungary was in fact under communist control but.....what revolution? Where? Our last revolution was in the 50s 💀

And so. Even if his parents (idk if his mother was too, or it just refers to his unknown father but) even if they were already alive by 56 they at least should have been teens. Or in their 20s cause the Pesti Srácok, the youth who fought againt the communist were aged mostly from 15 to 20-something. And if their parents were in their teens, young adulthood in the 50s then +30 years before having a child is massive.

Let's say they were 15 in 1956, and Fender was born in 1980 (which as i said is unlikely, why would they write a decade range for his birth) then by the time Fender was born they are 39. Which is not very ideal for a first child. Maybe if it was his father, but still. Mentioning the revolution in his bio that his parent(s) were/was a part of it is useless by this logic.

Or am I the fool and it's all good? It is weird just for me? They could have easily write something like "a RESISTANT parent in communist times" cause yeah, there were always some who rebelled and resisted the regime. But to link them back to the 56's revolution is just too strange for me. If any other person who knows about this time period in hungary has any idea about this please help me out cause I'm a bit helpless with this right now.

[deadpresidents]

The sad fate of the Vietnamese, Cambodian and Lao people since 1975 is not fault of the anti-war movement. It is the consequence of disastrous political and military decisions made first by the French and then by the US. If the French and Americans had accepted Vietnam’s declaration of independence in 1945, the Indo-China wars would not have happened. It is still probable, though far from certain, that a communist-dominated government would have been imposed on Vietnam – Ho Chi Minh’s leadership of an independent Vietnam would have been hard to challenge. But under Ho’s leadership it might well have been a less brutal regime than the one which Le Duan led until his death in 1986. The war forced North Vietnam into dependence on the Soviet Union and China. Without it, Ho might have become Vietnam’s Tito (as Stalin feared at the time). It is very unlikely that the Cambodian and Lao communist parties (which barely existed in 1945) would have come to power at all. Vietnam and its neighbors would have been spared the horrors of 30 years of warfare, as well as the war’s tragic aftermath.

Hot take. I'm so glad I solicited this opinion -- although I must have done so unconsciously, possibly while I was sleeping, considering the fact that it's one-half of a discussion that I was never a part of.

[martinwilliammichael]

"Medjugorje is of major importance to the life of the Church"

Religious women and men speak of the special quality of what they call Medjugorje spirituality. Here is their testimonies: 

"Medjugorje is of major importance to the life of the church here," said Franciscan Fr. Svetozar Kraljević in Mostar. "It means a lot to Catholics in so many ways. There is a spark of what could be — the desire of the human being to fulfill dreams."

One sister who speaks about the many dimensions of the Medjugorje experience is Sr. Janja Boras, 75, who is also a School Sister of St. Francis of Christ the King in Mostar. She believes the pilgrimages to Medjugorje are largely marked by "miracles more spiritual than physical," with the site being a place of confession and renewal for the many pilgrims visiting the hilltop village. She describes Medjugorje spirituality as having elements of fasting, prayer, the desire for reconciliation and the search for peace.

In seminars she leads for parishioners in Mostar, Sr. Ljilja Pehar, also of the School Sisters of St. Francis of Christ the King, said the connections between spirituality, fasting, prayer and silence are all made in the awareness "that a fullness of joy is only that which God can provide." That echoes throughout the life experiences of sisters working and living in the proximity of Medjugorje. 

That is certainly the case with Boras, who said her own sense of call has been deepened by her experiences with Medjugorje. "Even though I am a nun and a Christian, I've been changed — ready to give my life to Christ," she said, something she feels more fully now than she did before the reports of visions in 1981. 

The testimony of sightings of Mary "came like thunder" to her and others amid increasing unhappiness in the early 1980s with the communist-led regime in the former Yugoslavia.  "Communism oppressed those who believed," she said. The six children — two boys and four girls — who said they experienced the apparitions all said the figure they said addressed them spoke of being "the queen of peace" and also spoke of coming to testify that "God exists," a balm for Catholics who had chafed under communist rule.

Boras eventually spent 14 years in Medjugorje, five years doing parish work and eight years in a convent. She still feels "with my soul, body and spirit that my whole being is still there."  "I've left Medjugorje but it has never left me," she said.

She feels the power of the place — and of Mary — in recalling the 1990s wars in Bosnia and neighboring countries, saying Our Lady "was crying out" and "begging us to help her" in efforts to battle the evil in those wars.

"Satan is never at peace," she said. But by contrast, "Our Lady will win, because she is the spouse of the Holy Spirit."

But Our Lady also commands attention because of veneration of performing the deeds of merciful acts. Without an awareness of that, said Pehar, "praying and fasting are in vain. It's all connected." And part of that connection is to "help others in need."

Chris Herlinger, March 28, 2024

Adapted from www.ncronline.org

[cccambodia]

Eco Friendly Lady Purses, ethically handcrafted

Fair trade Cambodia. Eco Friendly Lady Purses, ethically handcrafted by Disabled Home Based Workers in the community. www.craftworkscambodia.com

Craftworks Cambodia's insight:

The people of Cambodia have endured a great deal in a span of time shorter than my lifetime. Here is a very brief history; after the Vietnam War spread to Cambodia, the communist Khmer Rouge regime took power. What followed was years of devastation, mass killings, torture and fear. From 1975 to 1979, led by the Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, there was a reign of terror in this small country. In 4 years, nearly 2 million Cambodians were murdered. Under the government that followed a full pardon was given to all members of the Khmer Rouge for the genocide and atrocities they had committed, this was a slap in the face to the surviving Cambodian People. In 1993, a mere 20 years ago, peace came to Cambodia. Since then, the country has struggled to find growth and prosperity while surrounded by the remnants of war, the rule of a dictator and a communist government. The endless list of challenges they still face include land mines, extreme poverty, lack of infrastructure, lack of jobs and a population left deeply wounded both physically and psychologically. We also have a brilliant selection of bags made from recycled materials, which make ideal gifts for people who love all things earth-friendly. Each bag is crafted by hand in an ethical manner under the Fair Trade Cambodia initiative. Beautifully made, fair-trade and environmentally friendly. You can't get better than that! www.craftworkscambodia.com

[tehuti88-art]

4/12/24: r/SketchDaily theme, "Free Draw Friday." This week's character from my anthro WWII storyline is "Saint Olga" (real name never given), without garrison cap (top drawing) and with garrison cap (bottom drawing). She's a character too new to be on my "to-draw" list yet (sigh) though some backstory has emerged. She's a Red Army sniper whose single-minded motivation for revenge earns her the nickname St. Olga, after Olga of Kiev/Kyiv, who BTW is my 33x great-grandmother. There'll be more about her later in my art Tumblr and Toyhou.se.

Regarding her design, I wanted interesting/distinctive colors, these were inspired by the black/gold theme in some of St. Olga's art. Her hairstyle is loosely based on Roza Shanina's.

TUMBLR EDIT: Saint Olga is more of an occasionally appearing character, I can't really call her a background character, so I haven't delved a lot into deep development for her. What little info is available is given by characters like Boris, who've heard stories that she lost her husband to the Germans, who tortured and killed him (a sticking point for Boris, who was himself tortured and assaulted by Sgt. Lange and his guys). Her husband was a Red Army sniper; following his death, Saint Olga took up the rifle and assumed the role. Thus her nickname. German sniper Lt. Ratdog, who isn't especially big on book learning, doesn't understand the relation, so Capt. Himmel, who IS big on book learning, fills him in: Olga was a Viking princess, wife of Igor the Prince of Kiev (I'm using the historic name rather than the modern Kyiv, this was in the state once known as Kievan Rus'), who, following her husband's assassination by enemy forces, engaged in a brutal campaign of revenge which killed thousands. "And they made her a saint...?" Ratdog inquires, perplexed; Himmel tersely replies, "The church can be forgiving."

(And yes, this scary lady is one of my direct ancestors, through Anna Yaroslavna's/Anne of Kiev's marriage to Henry I of France, via a gateway ancestor of my maternal grandfather. Alas, I am not, so far, descended from Otto the Great...I'm descended from his sister Hedwig. *grumbles*)

Olga makes repeat, brief appearances throughout the story, never sticking around for long. She's fueled by nothing other than hatred and rage. She has a run-in with Ratdog, who is actually not much different from her--he's motivated to take up his rifle as a weapon following the death of his son, which he incorrectly blames on the Americans (based on false info fed to him by Wehrmacht sergeant Udo Eisen--actually, his employer General Schavitz is to blame)--yet, even though he empathizes with her for this reason and avoids killing her, she expresses no such magnanimity in return--her shot misses when her gun malfunctions, but she vows that she'll kill him the next chance she gets. Ratdog has a strict honor code that prohibits him from killing others under certain circumstances; Olga has no such honor code. Cross her, and you're dead.

Her relationship with other Allied characters is complicated in that she refuses to collaborate with them, and considers even some of them the enemy. Romani sniper Didrika is basically on her side, but Didrika is also German, and Olga despises Germans. Even worse is that Didrika, Ratdog, and Ratdog's companion PFC Klemper, despite being enemies, share a grudging respect for and occasionally even assist each other (Ratdog opposes the Nazi regime, and Klemper follows wherever he goes); to Olga, this makes Didrika a Nazi sympathizer, even though neither Ratdog nor Klemper is a Nazi. Lie down with (rat)dogs, as they say. Then there's Boris, a literal Red Army Russian. It isn't bad enough that he's taken up with Didrika. He did so after deserting the Red Army with some of his men, so although he's still loyal to the communist cause and hates most of the Germans himself, to Olga, he's no better than a traitor. Olga does give these two one pass, but just to give them a warning, that the next time they meet, they shouldn't expect any mercy. Didrika's reaction is much like Ratdog's; Boris, on the other hand, understands where she's coming from, and says that if he were in her shoes, "I would kill me, too."

Olga's spite isn't limited to combatants, either. When a German target uses a civilian woman as a human shield, Olga shoots and kills both without a second thought. On another occasion, she opens fire on a public gathering and just misses hitting Leopoldine Jäger (Himmel shields her and is slightly wounded in the process). Ratdog and company even come across evidence that she set fire to a homestead, shades of what Lange's company did to Klemper's and some other homes; difference is, even Lange never gunned down the fleeing occupants. Olga? She has no such qualms. The Germans and even the Americans (who are equally unsuccessful in getting her to work with them) find her brutality breathtaking.

Result of all this is that most of the other characters, Axis and Allied alike, are frequently mystified by Saint Olga's morals, since most of them have certain lines they won't cross, while Olga appears willing and ready to kill anyone at a moment's notice. There's no appeal to her better nature, no way to get on her good side, no means of working with her. She will either pass on by or consider you a target. Almost everyone learns to outright avoid trying to interact with her for this reason. Essentially, she's a chaos agent, and even the rest of the Red Army doesn't bother trying to rein her in.

Olga pops up at random throughout the story to target...pretty much anyone, and throw everything in disarray, which occasionally helps one party or other depending on who she's targeting, though of course this is never intentional. She never succeeds in killing Ratdog though this is based far more on blind luck and his own sniper skills combined. She does ALMOST kill him one time when he declines to try the same since she's wounded, and is spared only when Klemper tries taking the shot instead; Klemper is not a sniper, so he misses, and Olga escapes to go tend to her injuries. Klemper scoffs at the rattled Ratdog, "Your heart is too soft."

Olga eludes death numerous times, sometimes just barely, but at last, during a confrontation where Ratdog finally attempts to shoot her yet runs out of ammunition, someone else takes the shot--Olga lets out a small noise and drops to the ground. She's still alive, making it clear that her shooter isn't a sniper; Ratdog and Klemper hear bootsteps, and Maj. Jäger and Capt. Himmel appear. Jäger's gun is drawn--he's the shooter. The look on his face makes it pretty clear he hasn't forgotten nearly losing his beloved Leopoldine. He approaches the wounded Olga and looks down at her coldly. When he says, "This crusade you have, to avenge your husband at any cost; what exactly has it gotten you? Has it brought him back?" Olga, panting and bleeding, gives a weak laugh and replies, "You...you know nothing about family."

Jäger stares at her a moment, then lifts his pistol and shoots her in the forehead. Himmel and Ratdog flinch at the report. They and Klemper stand by silently as Jäger holsters his gun and turns away from Olga's body, saying, "And that's how you take care of pests," heading back toward his vehicle. Himmel hesitates briefly before crossing himself and following. Ratdog and Klemper are left behind; after a moment Ratdog approaches Olga's body and kneels to look her over. He carefully removes the medals from her breast; Klemper comes forward now and asks, "What are you doing...?"

"Maybe she has family somewhere," Ratdog muses, looking at the medals. "Maybe they'll want these back. Someday."

Klemper is briefly silent before saying, "She's probably like us, and has no family anymore," and turning away. Ratdog feels a pang--thinking of just how many of them have no one left, why Saint Olga fought as hard and as viciously as she did--then stands, pauses a moment more (he feels like he should offer a prayer, except he doesn't believe in God and doesn't know any prayers, so all he can do is offer a moment of silence), and follows Klemper away.

I don't know what becomes of Saint Olga's body. Some time after the war has ended, Ratdog--now mourning Klemper's death (by sniper fire) and going by his civilian name, Adel--at last has the chance to return the medals to Olga's cousin, the closest member of her family still surviving. He asks the woman what was Olga's real name. She pauses before replying that Olga is now her real name; her cousin effectively died when she lost her husband, so Saint Olga is who she became. Adel, who gave up his own name while his heart was full of hate, understands, and doesn't press further. Before she leaves with the medals, Olga's cousin pauses and addresses him by his German nickname, Rattenhund--this was the name Olga had used to refer to him, as an exact translation was lacking in Russian. She had mentioned her enemy and counterpart, the German sniper, before; while it couldn't be said that she respected him, still, she'd heard of the death of his son, and she understood him. "One thing that make you two different," her cousin says in stilted German, "she lose her heart for good...you get your heart back." She taps her fingers against Adel's chest. "Look after it," she says, thanks him again for the medals, and leaves.

Adel, whose heart is no longer full of hatred yet is still raw from loss, finds he has no words left to say.

[Saint Olga 2024 [‎Friday, ‎April ‎12, ‎2024, ‏‎12:00:17 AM]]

[Saint Olga 2024 2 [‎Friday, ‎April ‎12, ‎2024, ‏‎12:00:28 AM]]

[warningsine]

In the past two weeks, the Unesco World Heritage Committee has discussed more than 50 natural and cultural sites worldwide, deciding which ones to add to its World Heritage List and providing legal protections to those deemed “of outstanding value to humanity”. Among the newly inscribed sites is the ESMA Museum and Site of Memory in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a former clandestine centre turned memorial, where major human rights violations occurred between 1976 and 1983, during the country’s military dictatorship. Reaching World Heritage status has been a goal since the museum’s inception in 2015, during the government of then-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. But, if the ultra-right presidential candidate Javier Milei and his running mate Victoria Villarruel are elected on 22 October (they won the primary in August with around 30% of the vote), their tendency to question established historical facts and distort the legacy of the dictatorship may put the ESMA museum at risk, just eight years after it was inaugurated.

In 1977, a year after the right-wing military junta declared martial law in Argentina, a 40-acre property belonging to the Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA) was turned into one of the country’s more than 600 clandestine centres of detention, torture and extermination. That same year, 25-year-old Ana María Soffiantini was kidnapped with her two children and brought, blindfolded, into the ESMA building. She was imprisoned for a year, experiencing and witnessing countless acts of torture committed by members of the military—who would murder and “disappear” 30,000 people nationwide over the course of the regime. “The ESMA was a place inhabited by horror,” Soffiantini tells The Art Newspaper.

Witness testimony

Soffiantini’s story is now part of the ESMA museum exhibition Being Women at ESMA. Through film, photography and recorded archives of the 1985 judicial testimony of more than 130 survivors, the exhibition tells of rape and other horrific violations. “But it is also our attempt to talk about life once we survived the ESMA, to make a reconstruction together and move forward,” Soffiantini says. The exhibition, which began in 2019, is ongoing and continues to evolve as more survivors add their testimonies. It has also travelled to Bilbao and Washington, DC.

Soffiantini was among 5,000 students, workers, activists and other civilians labelled “subversives” or “communists” who passed through ESMA, and one of less than 200 who made it out alive. Others were sedated and dropped into the river or Atlantic Ocean in the infamous “death flights”. Pregnant women gave birth in the building before they were murdered, their babies taken away and handed to other families who hid their origins. (Today, hundreds of people who were born in captivity are in their 40s and live with false identities—still disappeared in life.)

The ESMA officers’ club building, where some of these harrowing events occurred, now houses the ESMA museum, a national monument that includes permanent and revolving exhibitions and archives related to human rights. The building has not been altered, and the space still serves as judicial proof in cases against murderers who remain at large. (The ESMA mega-case, against dozens of people accused of crimes against humanity, has proved that atrocities were committed inside the building.) The museum’s permanent exhibition includes archival film projected on its walls, documents, recorded testimony from trials, photographs and objects from victims left behind. The walls themselves, left intact with marks made by the imprisoned, create a sense of suffocation and inescapable eeriness.

“What is unique about this museum is that, to understand Argentina, it is indispensable to know what happened in the last dictatorship,” says Mayki Gorosito, the museum’s director. “This helps us realise causes and consequences. But it is also a view towards the future.” Becoming a Unesco World Heritage site grants the ESMA museum “symbolic and material protection”, she adds. “The government will have a responsibility to sustain internationally that these realities happened. The world will have more awareness about our necessity to preserve social memory, so that these events never happen again.”

Depending on who wins Argentina’s presidential election next month, the history that the ESMA museum seeks to safeguard may be at risk. Milei is a libertarian economist who rose to prominence as a television commentator, and his goal of dollarising the economy (getting rid of the peso and making the US dollar the country’s sole legal currency) has attracted people of different ages and socio-economic statuses. Yet the ideology his party promotes veers into the ultra-right, with negationist narratives regarding history and climate change. Identifying with leaders such as Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump, Milei has declared countless times that he detests “leftists” and “communism”, and he has described socialists as “garbage” and “human excrement”. Milei has also publicly questioned the number of people murdered by state terrorism and mocked those with jobs at human rights organisations.

Villarruel, Milei’s vice president and a military apologist, holds even more extremist views of Argentina’s history. She is the daughter of a colonel who participated in a violent military operation to repress workers in 1975, and she, too, has publicly doubted the number of disappeared people, stating that the “victim” narrative is fake and a “construction of the Left” and that the military was “fighting subversives” at the time. Recently, Argentinian media discovered that Villarruel had organised visits to the late junta dictator Jorge Rafael Videla while he was under house arrest in the early 2000s. Earlier this month, she staged a tribute to the “victims” of 1970s leftist groups.

Social consensus

Regardless of political polarisation, there is a strong social consensus in Argentina about what happened during the dictatorship due to legal proof. In 1985, Argentina became the only country in Latin America where a civilian government went to trial against its own military junta—part of this testimony is what appears in the exhibition Being Women at ESMA.

“I remained silent for years,” says Soffiantini, who spoke up for the first time when she testified as a witness in the 1985 trial. “It was too painful to talk about what happened there, but now, we won’t stop advocating for truth, memory and justice. When I was imprisoned at ESMA, I could never hear birds. Now, I go in there, and the museum is full of visitors, young people, human rights organisations and art. Some survivors and family members of disappeared friends returned to work there and are now my dear friends. The birds are back. Beyond all the death, I now encounter life.”