Subj : FidoNews 39:10 [02/09]: General Articles To : All From : FidoNews Robot Date : Mon Mar 07 2022 11:40:40 ================================================================= GENERAL ARTICLES ================================================================= FTSC Election Ward Dossche - 2:2/1000 All RCs in all zones please be advized there is an election going on for FTSC Standing Members. Your participation is important. All RCs are entitled to vote. Each voter may cast one "yes" or one "no" vote for each candidate. Voters need not vote for all can- didates, a non vote will be regarded as "abstain" for that candidate. Candidates must receive more "yes" than "no" votes to be elected. The voting started Sunday, 27 February, 2022 and will conclude Sunday, 20 March 2022, 20:00 UTC. If you were listed as an RC in your zone's version of the world nodelist.028 for 2022 then you're good to go. These are the nominees. Candidate Node nr. Nmntd by Accepted Rob Swindell 1:103/705 ZCC(NC) Yes James Coyle 1:129/215 ZCC(NC) Yes Tim Schattkowsky 2:2/29 ZCC(NC) Yes Voters are requested to copy and paste the form below, mark a cross for each candidate in the "yes" or the "no" column for all candidates they wish to cast a vote for and post it in FTSC_PUBLIC addressed to "Election Coordinator with a subject of "Vote". Voters need not vote for all candidates. ---------------------------------------------- | Name | Node nr | Yes| No | |----------------------|-------------|----|----| | | | | | | Rob Swindell | 1:103/705 | | | | James Coyle | 1:129/215 | | | | Tim Schattkowsky | 2:2/29 | | | ---------------------------------------------- Ward Dossche IC ----------------------------------------------------------------- History repeats itself again and again Ward Dossche - 2:292/854 From a prosperous, modern, well organized European-style democracy and economy; an enemy without scruples has turned Ukraine into a Moon-landscape reminiscent at how Berlin looked at the very end of WW2. War crimes have been committed, the proof is obvious but that doesn4t make much impression on the rogue-state which Russia now is. In spring 2019 I went to visit Oradour-sur-Glane in France, near Limoges. On June 10 1944, 4 days after D-Day in Normandy, a unit of the German SS entered the village and murdered hundreds of men, women and children. The destroyed village has been preserved as a monument. I could not wrap my mind around it that these German SS soldiers also had fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers and pretty well were aware of the atrocity which they were committing without giving it a second thought. I urge everyone to try and go to Oradour at least once in their life ... 78 years later soldiers are again uselessly killing innocent civilians because they were ordered to do so. Soldiers are good at obeying orders, that's what they are paid for. Switching off the brain. Follow the order and do not question. It is 2022 ... a million and a half Ukrainian refugees, mostly women and children, the largest refugee crisis since WW2 the UN calls it and Europe is opening its mind and heart and its bank-account for these people in need fleeing from ... from "what" exactly ... A regime which has lost all sense for normalcy intent on annihilating a peaceful well organized European-style democracy and economy ... The refugees will be safe and taken care of, but can you imagine what the fate will be of the ones that remain behind in the homeland? Rape is a weapon for submission, it is recognized as a war-crime. But Russia has already committed war crimes the past week, which they know are as good as unable to become prosecuted, and they will not stop at this one. And Ukrainian women have already been raped by Russian troops, Russian propaganda will call it ... propaganda ... but Western human rights watchers still on-site paint the actual story. Hundreds of Russian soldiers have died and their families are without news, mothers having lost a child and unable to mourn it or bury it. It's all kept out of the media. And please do not call it "a war" or you risk 15 years of imprisonment ... It seems that during the darkest days of hard-core Russian Communism people had more rights than in ... 2022 ... Eventually Russia is going to do exactly as the Chinese did with Tibet where the native polution was overwhelmed by an influx of Han-Chinese and that way trying to destroy the age-old culture and traditions of the Tibetans. The same will happen in Ukraine, as a nation ... a people ... a civilisation will be wiped-out. The country will be rebuilt by ethnic Russians and hundreds of years of culture and civilisation will be destroyed by the fire on pyres reminiscent of May 10 1933 when works of Ernest Hemmingway, Bertold Brecht, Heinrich Mann, Ernst Glaeser, Erich Kaestner, Erich Maria Remarque and others were deemed corrupted and decadent presaging an era of state censorship and control of culture. In the end the so-called de-Nazification by Putin will be carried-out by strictly Nazi methodologies and policies ... To stay mentally healthy, you look for rational explanations. But some things are inexplicable. Western culture in the decades since the Second World War has tried to explain everything, to be tolerant and always to understand the other. But sometimes the other is simply evil. Pure and simple. We had forgotten the existence of that evil. Now we see the outcome of that mistake. It is unbearable to see war as a simple product of an insane mind. There must be a plan behind it, it must mean something. Who sets up a catastrophe with their own hands, just because they can? There's an interesting book explaining how Hitler could continue his horrible policies against his own population ... "Hitler's willing executioners" ... Who will write its sequel "Putin's willing executioners" ? Putin has noticed that his number of followers has dwindled in the last two years, and does not know how to save his presidency in a country that is largely integrated into the Western world. So he does something so horrific that the whole world shuts itself off from him. Then locks the door from the inside. People are arrested for standing on the street with a blank sheet of paper in their hands, it is enough to hold it and get beaten. Perhaps Putin will soon reach for an Iranian or North Korean scenario. If the country is locked down, explicit protest is almost impossible. Then every discourse, like the minds of the people, will be divided into two versions, as in Soviet times. You stick to the official story if they can see and hear you. In addition, there is the story that is told within the family. We need separate what is happening in Putin's head and what is happening in Russia. Russia is not a collective brain. All polls, even those of loyalist sociologists, clearly show that the country is not united. Support for the war varies in a country where people aren't exactly open to a man with a microphone asking them what they think of Putin or the war. Russia needs a change of leadership real bad but a revolution is not really possible anymore there. Putin's state has been preparing for such a scenario since 2011. They are ready to consolidate its power. Putin claims he is realigning a brother nation in Ukraine after being led astray by a "fascist" leadership. How long can that story last in Russia? It's the style of newspaper articles from the 1930s and 40s. In a sense, there is already a civil war raging in Russia and the riot-police are already there. Putin is trying to drag the people into a dark past and forcing them to think as if the ideas and circumstances of eighty years ago still hold true today. Half of all Russians know someone in or outside Ukraine who can paint the real picture for them. So it will be difficult to sell the idea of Ukraine as a Nazi state or historical slave state, as Putin is trying to do. Russians cannot continue to pretend that nothing is wrong and to avoid "war" as the subject. Not talking about it but making its presence inaudibly known is also a way to protest. Sometimes silence is a statement on its own. ----------------------------------------------------------------- --- Azure/NewsPrep 3.0 * Origin: Home of the Fidonews (2:2/2.0) .