#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.

[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. 

[bobemajses]

my family is from three known places: targu neamt, schedrin and a place called taboschnik (?) somewhere in belarus that i can’t find when i look it up anywhere. id be very interested if you could find anything out about targu neamt or especially taboschnik!

my paternal zayda worked in a labor camp during the war but came home when he could, on sundays. it was on one of those rare days home that he married my bubbe. they fled from targu meant to a displaced persons camp in germany in 1947, fleeing the russians (either present or encroaching?) in the middle of the night. there’s a note on the back of an old photo, that they wrote to my eldest aunt (who was an infant at the time): ‘this picture was taken a few days before leaving romania for a long, hard and unknown trip. decision to leave: july 16 at 2pm. departure: july 17 2am. baggage: none, except our sweet daughter’. my zeida and bubbe made it to the camp, and he sold cigarettes illegally to make money. then they came to canada, and had three more children.

i don’t know much about my mom’s maternal family, from schedrin and taboschnik. they (my maternal great grandparents) likely came over in the 1920’s. the family myth is they met on the boat to america, where they would go on and settle down in chicago after encountering each other again years later. we do know that one of my grandma’s parents was VERY religious, though. that probably comes from the fact that schedrin was founded by the third chabad rebbe. it always had a strong lubavitcher presence.

i want to say i really love your account. it breathes so much life into our past, and makes my heart warm. i hope this ask isn’t too long, im on mobile so it’s hard to see. much love <3

Much love to you also <333 And thank you for your support!

I searched Taboshnik and Tabashnik in Russian and found the village Tabachniki (Tabačniki) in Belarus, 8km of the town Jeziaryšča in the Vitebsk region. I am not sure if this is really your village and I couldn't find anything about the Jews from there. The Vitebsk region in general was full of them.

But I can tell you surely something about Targu Neamt. Jews were a constant presence in the town’s life until the end of World War II. Following WWII (which did not affect them to a large extent) and the installation of the communist regime, most of them decided to leave, thereby leaving behind a wonderful heritage that is slowly disappearing.

Jews were first mentioned in Targu Neamt in a document from 1660s, and the oldest tombstones in the Jewish cemetery are dated 1677 and 1689. Under the Ottomans, Jews in Târgu Neamț were organized into an isnaf (guild) led by a staroste.

The first blood libel allegation in all of Romania occurred in Targu Neamt in 1710: Jews were accused of killing a Christian child and using his blood for ritual Passover use. Consequently, 5 Jews were killed and another 22 arrested, “denounced” by a monk and two Jewish converts. After an appeal to the prince of Moldavia, the case was investigated, its falsity demonstrated, and the arrested Jews freed.

In 1821 Greek rebells, in a violent uprising against the Turkish rule (Zavera), crossed Moldavia, set fire to the town, and murdered half the Jewish population. In 1899 the Jewish population reached 3,671 (42% of the total). After Jews achieved emancipation in 1919, they participated in municipal life, electing two members to the municipal council in 1930 through the Union of Romanian Jews. In July 1942, the Romanian forest engineer Gheorghe Cojoc arranged with authorities for Jews from the town to work in forests near Targu Neamt, saving them from deportation to Transnistria.

In 1947, some 2,900 Jews lived in Targu Neamt. Their numbers then diminished due to communist persecution and emigration, mainly to Israel. Until 1985 there were nine synagogues still standing in the town, but then eight of them were torn down in the urban renewal that transformed Targu Neamt into a carbon copy of almost every other town nearby. In 1992, just 34 Jews lived there; and in 2004 there were 30, with one beautiful functioning synagogue.

[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.

[smellenoftroy]

Argentina and Never Ending LIES of Privatization

Of all the things that infuriate me about Western coverage of Latin America, none are so angering than the way the West and the Neolib bootlickers across the world talk about every U.S.A backed anti-Communist, Neoliberal despot as if any of their violent, greedy, economically destabilizing "Reforms" are in any new.

Around 10:50, the Ghoul on the right asked Ramiro Tosi, Economist, ex-Argentina Undersecretary of Finance, if Milei's "Fiscal Responsibilty" (Social Mass Murder) is even possible in Argentina. As if overwhelming neoliberalism has not been the defacto economic policy since the Junta took control in 1976.

Not a single Peronista that has been able to win an election has even had the courage to undo any of the damage that the deregulatory regime of the Martinez De Hoz. A man with connections to David Rockefeller and Henry Kissenger and U.S business ties, who was given carte balance to reshape the Argentine economy after the Military took over.

The Ghoul then, corroborates Milei's schizo-speech about "The fall of the west" to "orientalism" and "Weakness" tip-toeing around his nationalist warmongering, to focus on his statements about *his kind of government being a rare species in the West and In Europe.

Psychotic lies, all of it.

Are we operating under the assumption that in a decade that has brought about monstrously unpopular rightist economic restructuring in just about every polity, from France to Brazil, that Milei is some sort of lone wolf?

Are we not seeing a Internationalized class realestate exploiters destroy the housing market of every Liberal nation on earth, while the Politicians just continuously pass legislation to make it easier for them to continue this murder? Aren't European Farmers on strike due to "economic restrucuring" that includes removal of tax credits and subsidies for agriculture, but completely keeps subsidies for Coal barons and Financial Speculators under the guise of, "incentivizing innovation"

The ease with which Liberal institutions simply shift their language into one that implies that we're all living under a Socialist Bloc, you'd think Gorbachev's reign was still just a glint in the Pizza Hut's wet dreams.

It is important to note this rant is about the coverage from Deutsche Welle, a German State News organization with that often Hosts American/ British news anchors when covering international topics. (to sucker in the yankees, and feed them their slop)

Side Track==>

I have long since stopped paying attention to American News outlets, since the veil of strategic disinformation is so transparent, media coverage is closer to dinner theatre than journalism. Anyone watching and engaging with anything that comes out of an American Journalist's mouth has to have suspended their disbelief in order to enjoy the show.

Much like how a Superman fan knows that Superman's disguise being easily seen through is something done for the audience's benefit; and thus they willing ignore it's unbelievability in order to enjoy the show, Informed News watchers willing engage with the blatant lies and doublespeak of their preferred News source in order to enjoy the slow dissent into hell that Fox and NYT narrate over. Ultimately European News agencies are no different. But their priorities are slightly different, and thus are able to things like "socialized healthcare is an undeniable good" and "Not every immigrant is a criminal rapist" without being sent before the House of UnAmerican Activities.

Side Track over==>

The "Economist" (Monetary Astrologer) ecchos the Ghoul's statement.

The ready made liar, as images of labour strikes and bread lines appear, says that there has never been economic deregulation in Argentina.

A BOLD FACE LIE, Anyone living in reality can discredit.

So often we are forced to put up with stories about right wing dictators in the Global South who are willing to give the people "Tough Love" and make "harsh decisions", as if everyone living south of the United States is a child who needs a parent to spank them.

But all of these stories are deliberately divorced from any reality or history that has actually happened in the Global South.

The Financial Astrologer, those German Ghouls propped up to sell out his people, likely for more money than the Union leadership who are so desperately trying to prevent this catastrophe, make in a years worth of Union dues, happens to have been Undersecretary of Finance (keynesian make-work for pathological exploiters) in a previous government.

Let's see what policies his party spearheaded when it was power.

What kind of blind Utopianism has he spearheaded that lead Argentina down such a decline.

The First result for his name is some kind of Think tank he directs. There doesn't appear to be a wikipedia article on him so we'll go with this as our first insight.

To save you all some scrolling all you need to know is that this man is currently the "independent Director" of Banco Macro, which is the

"the second largest domestically-owned private bank in Argentina, and the sixth-largest by deposits and lending"

Naturally is a graduate of Applied Capitalist Thought from a Prestigious University in Argentina so this man has always been a professional profiteer, but what about his tenure in government?

Surely directing a massive bank didn't interfere with his duties, carrying out the Marxist agenda of the pre-Milei Argentine government?

Westerners have created in their mind this idea of the whole of Latin America socialist dystopias that haven't learned about the greatness of the Free market.

When in reality the FIRST PLACE that those PSYCHO CHICAGO BOYS set up a government was in Latin America under the auspices of a military dictatorship funded by the United States.

None of this is new, none of this has worked, and yet the show continues. The slow dissent is lovingly guided by a friendly voice.

[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.

[nagy-bari]

spy x family chp 83 musing

heavy spoiler territory

we got a glimpse into Twilight’s work on the field, how he deals with a problem and a little bit of Yuri’s view as well we’ve seen how Twilight hesitates and realizes it himself, questioning it, questioning himself in a judgmental tone. he has baby gloves on for the whole first part of the fight because it is Yuri Briar, the annoying baby brother of his fake wife. but as Yuri bounces up punch after kick after crack he decides to take them off, to deal with him as he would with anyone else, with any other real threat because he’s proving to be more and more annoying and scary with each attack. in the end he almost moves to bash his head in with a pipe because that would solve his problem.

only Yuri mumbles an apology to Yor and Twilight’s eyes are not sparkling with regret or recognition, they are dark and far far far too deep in his face, it’s the knowledge sinking in. he makes a decision that will help and hinder the same.

now for my angsty little middle european soul.

reminders: 

- yuri is still a young adult, basically a kid. he has the same move-set as a basic SSS agent which is probably more built to their numbers and weapons than Yor’s assassin moves or Loid’s spy tactics. His only one up on anyone is the strange pain tolerance mostly fueled by the sheer wish to see his sister for a day longer. he’s still learning how to do all these anti-intelligence business and the most action we’ve seen him in before was interrogation where the power balance is nonexistent. he’s used to people being afraid on principle of his uniform and maybe his intense hate for anyone standing between a better future in his head and him.

- twilight was similarly blinded when he was young, blinded enough to take up weapons and go to war. he had anger, grief and revenge as his fuel. seeing the Briar siblings made him jealous of having someone living and smiling at you to fight for. he may have the wrong idea on what did Yor do to support Yuri but now he sees the other side in action. if Twilight figured Yuri out he will see that behind this freakish pain tolerance is a sheer wish to do his job right to help Yor live in a safe country. (that is also a sour topic to all of them and a strange conversation option once in the far future) Twilight probably fought many rebellious teens and young adults as a spy (the bomb-dogs and the university students) but now he fight someone who wormed himself into his day to day ‘play-pretend’ life. and he has to deal with it. and deal with it he does.

- secret police in real history, work with emotion driven people a lot. people who wish to prove something to someone, may it be that they hold power over others, or that they will avenge others. kids and teens with strong sense of justice that can be manipulated to fit ideals and regimes. scarred people crying out for revenge for the war or atrocities done by a different government ( our country had the same people work in the secret police when it was under nazi rules and then when it switched to communist regime. some were left alone because they did a good job. some were sold out to new recruits seeking revenge. some changed ideals to fit the part.) Yuri is a kid with a lot of love and a buzz of energy to help his big sister. to pay back her help, her bloodied hands and smile.

at the same time we see Wheeler found out by Fiona.

an agent of the west selling out the WISE to the East and we still need to know why. Why would someone decide to help the other side?

family? ideals? the ‘why the hell not’ attitude Frankie has sometimes?

we’ll see more of Fiona in action, and we’ll see how Yuri’s found (reprimanded? because he went alone and without order and did not manage to get the everellusive Twilight? but he did wound him. and he has a hunch that Twilight might know him personally. and he still needs to see if that annoying husband of his sister is a cheater. he might be on a trail there) we’ll see how Twilight paches himself up enough to tailor a lie fit for an emergency work accident. We’ll see how much Yor belives him. if she even notices how beaten up her little brother is.

or not, since Endo is the one writing but i wish to see more on these, if not in the manga then mayhaps some lovely fanfic or analysis.

[southeastasianists]

The story Southeast Asia likes to tell itself is that, by the late 1990s, it had something like its “end of history” moment.

By 1999, the region was free of colonialism, with the last push made by Timor-Leste, which that year held a referendum to throw off Indonesian imperialism. With that development, the region’s national borders appeared to be finally decided and revanchism, although it was still voiced on the fringes, had ended. 

All Southeast Asian countries, except Timor-Leste, were members of ASEAN. Communist Vietnam and Laos were stable and internationally accepted. Anti-communist tyrants like Indonesia’s Suharto, Burma’s Ne Win and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines had either resigned or been ousted. 

And the worst crimes of the Cold War-era, including the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia, were not just over but there was to finally be some sort of justice. In 1999, the holdout Khmer Rouge leaders finally surrendered and Ta Mok, its former army chief, was symbolically arrested by the local authorities. 

Today, however, Southeast Asia finds itself trapped by history. 

On the one hand, it became evident in February 2021 that not all of 20th-century history was over. The military coup in Myanmar that month awakened many to the reality that some elements of the pre-Cold War period had not been solved. 

Indeed, Myanmar has been trapped in the early 20th century since independence from Britain in 1948. Whereas all other Southeast Asian threw off their colonial powers and then resolved their internal battles over what form of government would follow, Myanmar did not. 

Myanmar as outlier

Anti-colonial struggles are conflicts against a foreign aggressor and civil wars at the same time. It is not enough to claim self-determination; it must be determined what sort of self you want once free. 

The partition of Vietnam was both things at once. Many historians date the Cambodian Civil War as beginning in either 1967 (with the Samlaut Uprising) or 1979 (with the Lon Nol “coup”) but those same political schisms were latent, though blanketed, under Nordom Sihanouk’s regime that ruled after independence. 

The People’s Power uprising in the Philippines in 1986 was essentially the answer to the question — constitutional or personalist rule — that was posed when the country gained independence from Spain in 1898, and, indeed, was the internal debate within almost all of José Rizal’s writings. 

But Myanmar never went through this process — or, rather, successive military juntas never allowed the question to be seriously explored. The 1962 coup effectively froze in time the question of self-determination of Myanmar’s myriad ethnic minorities, a remnant of colonial rule.

In two ways, Myanmar under the military remained a colonial holdout: The Bamar center colonized the ethnic periphery and the anti-colonial struggle was never allowed to fully run its course. The cataclysm of the 2021 military coup appears to be the event that will finally bring this historical question to a proper solution. 

The answer offered by the anti-junta movement, centered on the National Unity Government, is a revolutionary federal state, in which Myanmar maintains its same territorial borders but vastly more power and autonomy is given to the ethnic areas, while at the same time the national army, a product of anti-colonialism, will be dissolved and something (perhaps a network of militias) will take its place. 

The junta’s answer, the same that its predecessors offered, is devolution based on the permission of a central authority, implemented through peace talks. The problem with this answer, as has been the case in the past, is that it is dependent not upon rules or laws but the whims of whichever general is sitting in Naypyidaw, so essentially yet another delay in answering the post-colonial civil war question.

Yet, for now at least, according to some hopeful observers, the forces of revolution are prevailing over the forces of reaction in Myanmar.

Baked-in crisis

Alas, the rest of Southeast Asia seems unwilling to accept that a historical reckoning must happen in Myanmar for there to be any progress. 

One can put aside the fatuousness of permitting Myanmar entrance into ASEAN in 1997 before those civil-war conflicts were solved, yet ASEAN still doesn’t accept that by doing so it institutionalized those conflicts into the regional system.

In other words, by accepting Myanmar into the ASEAN bloc, the rest of the region (perhaps) unwittingly accepted a share of responsibility for solving those historical conflicts. This point is still not appreciated by ASEAN in its continued insistence that the solution to the current crisis is to return to a point in time: the status quo ante. 

Yet, even if that return was feasible, which it isn’t, ASEAN would still be left with the situation of Myanmar’s 20th-century conflicts sparking another similar crisis at some point in the future. 

ASEAN is, therefore, trapped in apparently thinking that Myanmar is unique in that it won’t have to go through the same bloody processes that the rest of the region did — a final reckoning of post-colonial civil wars — and clearly thinks that the region’s responsibility is to forestall, not assist, this process.

On the other hand, Southeast Asia is also in a history trap of believing that the post-Cold War era is still alive. 

It can be fairly said that the region, aside from China, was the biggest beneficiary of the world order left after the collapse of communism in Europe. A cursory look at how the region has developed economically, culturally and socially since 1989 is enough to make that argument. 

But what should we call the period between 1989 and, roughly, 2019? The “Chimerica Era”, that chimera when the United States and China thought they could get along and when the West thought that Beijing was playing by the same rules? Or, perhaps, the “Inter-Cold War Era?”

Nostalgia not enough

In any case, that period is now over. Yet, Southeast Asia’s leaders still think that they can deny its disappearance by repeatedly stating their opposition to what has come after – a “New Cold War” – as if denying something’s existence makes it not exist.

They hold onto the hope that Washington and Beijing will finally see sense and agree that because things were much better for all in the 2000s that should be their shared vision for the future. 

If there is a purpose to “hedging��, it is presumably to play both superpowers off against one another to extract the most benefits. Yet the downside is that you make yourself dependent on both sides, as has been the case: As a share of overall ASEAN trade, the United States and China have taken on a larger, not smaller, percentage in recent years. 

Hedging, as manifested today, is to take both sides, rather than to take neither side. That is problematic, to say the least, if there is a possibility of both sides going to war, when you will be forced by events outside your control and at a time not of your choosing to decide which side to take.

None of this is unreasonable from an emotional level; it’s only natural for Southeast Asian leaders, by 1999, to have been jubilant that the horrors of the 20th century were over and that their societies could finally have the stability to become prosperous – thanks to the Inter-Cold War Era. 

It’s only natural to want the good times to continue. Sadly, they’re over and the world is once again a far more unstable and unpredictable place, including in ASEAN’s northwest. Nostalgia for times past will only get you so far. 

David Hutt is a research fellow at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS) and the Southeast Asia Columnist at the Diplomat. As a journalist, he has covered Southeast Asian politics since 2014. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of Radio Free Asia and RFA sister organization BenarNews.

[sa7abnews]

Shielding Israel: Germany is still drawing the wrong lessons from the Holocaust

New Post has been published on https://sa7ab.info/2024/08/16/shielding-israel-germany-is-still-drawing-the-wrong-lessons-from-the-holocaust/

Shielding Israel: Germany is still drawing the wrong lessons from the Holocaust

Berlin’s own history with genocide suggests it should know better than to shut down any protest against the mass deaths in Gaza

On 6 August, a court in Berlin sentenced a young woman called Ava Moayeri to a fine of €600 for shouting “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.” One of Moayeri’s lawyers, Alexander Gorski, deplored this as “a rather dark day for freedom of expression in Germany.” He’s right, even if his comment is an all too understated response to a scandalous miscarriage of justice. Indeed, it is hard to answer the question of what is wrong with this sentence, because, quite literally, everything is. Judge Birgit Balzer’s reasoning, for one thing, was embarrassingly shoddy, irresponsibly misinformed, and ethically and legally misguided, about which more below. Beyond Balzer’s failure to do justice to the important issue she had to adjudicate, the case and sentence also represent a larger problem, in Germany and beyond: the West’s perverse pampering of Israel. One form taken by this pampering is to allow the Israeli regime to abuse the memory of the Holocaust, a genocide targeting Jews, to claim impunity for its own crimes against humanity, including genocide targeting Palestinians. Balzer, too, explicitly invoked the Holocaust to justify her sentence. Yet Moayeri, the daughter of Communists from Iran, made clear that she has nothing to do with either glorifying violence or antisemitism. On the contrary, her concern is with showing solidarity to the Palestinian victims of Israeli violence and standing up for their rights. Balzer felt entitled to disregard this perfectly plausible position, attribute entirely unproven motives to Moayeri, and, on that fundamentally flawed basis, punish her. In effect, it is clear that Moayeri’s right to peaceful protest and a perfectly legitimate political position was suppressed to protect Israeli narratives from any challenge. And these narratives, in turn, are used to shield Israel from accountability for its crimes, and thus they also withhold help from Israel’s victims. The facts of Moayeri’s case are not complicated. On 11 October 2023, she participated in a small protest outside a Berlin school, where she used the slogan “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.” There was no violence – indeed, the demonstration explicitly criticized violence that had occurred at the school – and she was not charged with anything else. The prosecution argued that merely by shouting these words, Moayeri committed the crime of condoning another crime. By that, the prosecutor was referring to the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October.

Read more

Thousands join ‘peace’ rally in Berlin (VIDEO)

Yet, in reality, Palestinians have an incontestable right to armed resistance under international law. While the attack also involved crimes – though far fewer than claimed by Israel (see below) – Palestinians do not commit a crime when fighting Israeli soldiers, which is what Hamas did to a large extent on 7 October. In Berlin, neither the prosecution nor the judge, however, seemed to care about this legal fact. Judge Balzer instead agreed with the prosecution and added several arguments of her own: According to Balzer, the slogan “From the River to the Sea” denies “Israel’s right to exist.” Balzer also believes that the context of Moayeri’s use of the slogan – a few days after the Hamas attack – allows for only one interpretation, namely that Moayeri meant to condone the attack and “downplay its monstrous quality.” Balzer’s argument about context is not only absurd but astoundingly complacent, betraying an almost pitiable lack of self-awareness, but we will get back to that. First, let’s look more closely at her other points: One issue that should surely have complicated Balzer’s simplistic approach is the fact that we by now know – including from Israeli media – that, on 7 October, many Israelis were deliberately killed not by Hamas but by Israeli forces, in an application of the so-called “Hannibal Directive”. A typically perverse and cynical policy, originally designed to allow Israeli soldiers to kill other Israeli soldiers so that they cannot be captured by Palestinian resistance fighters, on 7 October the Directive was used indiscriminately – in effect, against Israeli civilians, too. Therefore, much of Balzer’s “monstrous quality” of the events on 7 October actually came from the Israeli military. That is a well-established fact, not an opinion. So, basing her sentence on a biased, uninformed, and one-sided attribution of all the violence to Hamas alone already undermined its plausibility. Regarding Israel’s “right to exist,” it is astounding to hear a judge dare advance this argument. Every jurist knows – or should know – that it is an incontrovertible fact of international law that states do not have such a right. Diplomatic recognition by other states is a matter of maintaining international relations, but it confers no “right to exist” to the recognized state. For instance, while one may regret their disappearance, absolutely no such “right” was infringed when, for instance, the former East Germany, the Soviet Union, or Czechoslovakia ceased to exist. In reality, peoples or nations – not states – have a right to self-determination. And it is Israel that has violently deprived the Palestinian people of that – actually existing – right as well as, of course, their land, and often lives. Israel has, it is true, blanketed the global public sphere with such a barrage of disinformation about this basic fact (as about so many others) that ordinary mainstream media consumers are likely to be confused. Yet anyone with a claim to keeping informed and certainly a trained judge must know that this is merely an Israeli talking point, not a right. Generally, Balzer, it seems, has a severe problem keeping political categories out of what should be her legal reasoning. She also brought that notorious German “Staatsräson” (reason of state) into play. In particular, she invoked the idea, formulated in public speeches in 2007 and 2008 by former Chancellor Angela Merkel, that, for Germany, what it misunderstands as Israel’s “security” and protecting Jews in Germany are part of that “Staatsräson.” Yet while that notion has influenced several German laws, it has still no place in a court of law. For speeches, even by a state’s leader, do not establish law. Even the German parliament recognizes that “the concept of ‘Staatsräson’ is not employed either in the Basic Law [that is, the German constitution] nor in elementary legal precepts of German law. Therefore, it cannot be construed as a legal term. Rather, in German state practice today, it is understood as a political key principle.”

Read more

Allowing two million Gazans to starve ‘may be moral’ – Israeli minister

Balzer even regurgitated Israeli propaganda about decapitated babies and systematic mass rape by Hamas. Both stories are untrue and have been comprehensively disproved, as has been widely reported even in mainstream media. In fact, even US President Biden had to “walk back” his reckless repetition of these false atrocity tales. It is shameful to see a German judge not only repeat them but make them part of her reasoning in a legal finding. For these are not “merely” untruths but what we now call “weaponized disinformation” – or deliberate lies – that have been used to generate political cover and support for Israel’s Gaza genocide. Finally, Balzer claimed that demanding a free Palestine on all its territory is necessarily the same as calling for the end to Israel. Frankly, and so what? Interestingly enough, the incoming head of EU foreign policy, Kaja Kallas from Estonia, has, in effect publicly and recklessly called for the end of Russia as a state, which seems not to provoke any objections in the West. And while Kallas is a catastrophe of incompetence and Russophobia, it is, actually, not a criminal offense to call for the end of a state because states do not have any right to exist (see above). Moreover, in reality, the call for a free Palestine can also be understood as demanding not an end to Israel but a very different Israel, one that has abandoned its horrific racist and murderous regime and been absorbed into a successor state Palestine in which all inhabitants will have equal rights. Among well-informed and dispassionate contemporaries, we call this the one-state solution, and it has nothing to do with ethnic cleansing or antisemitism. It is also, in reality, the only way forward, because Israel’s endless bad faith and horrendous crimes have discredited all other models. In sum, the sentence against Moayeri is a narrow-minded, politically motivated absurdity, and a disgrace for a country that prides itself on being a “Rechtsstaat,” a state of the rule of law. The law requires reason and abstention from bias. Both have been sorely lacking here. Fortunately, this sentence can be appealed, and it is as good as certain that it will be. Let’s hope that higher German courts won’t let this shameful gagging order pass. Yet there is a larger point, an absurdity overshadowing all the other absurdities: Balzer, recall, based much of her unjust speculation about Moayeri’s motives on context. For the judge, the fact that Moayeri shouted “From the River to the Sea” several days after the Hamas attack of 7 October was proof that Moayeri must have meant it as supporting atrocious violence. Of course, that is nonsense. But, for a moment, let’s accept the judge’s flawed premise and apply it to Balzer herself: What is the context of her sentence, then? She has punished a young woman for daring to show solidarity with victims of Israel’s settler-colonial land stealing, its apartheid, and many other atrocities. But not just at any moment, but in the context of the ongoing crimes against humanity, transmitted from Gaza in real time into every home with a TV set and an internet connection. Punishing those siding with victims of ongoing mass killings? Quite some context there for judge Balzer herself. One that a German should have recognized, precisely because, historically, Germany is also, historically, a country of genocide perpetrators. Because of that guilt, Germany’s “Staatsräson” should be to always side with the victims and never with the killers, not even indirectly. A pity Germany’s elites still can’t grasp even that much.

[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