"When the communism comes back..."

That's often a convenient excuse when it's an immigrant (not saying that it is, in this case).

 

All the pieces are falling into place for our Chastisement. A plague seems appropriate for all houses concerned.

 

When Taiwan legalized Same-Sex Marriage in 2017, I knew they were making a very big mistake, and that God will make a response to this government ruling, I just don't know then what His response will be, but it looks clearer now...

 

Russian Anti-War Poets Jailed for ‘Inciting Hatred’ Toward Troops


Two Russian anti-war poets, one of whom accused police of rape, have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms on charges of “inciting hatred” toward soldiers, the independent news website Novaya Gazeta Europe reported Thursday.

Artyom Kamardin and Yegor Shtovba were detained in September 2022 after criticizing President Vladimir Putin’s “partial” mobilization for the war in Ukraine during poetry readings on central Moscow's Triumfalnaya Ploshchad.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Triumfalnaya Ploshchad — then known as Mayakovsky Ploshchad after the renowned poet — served as a key gathering spot for unofficial poetry readings and subsequently for expressing dissent.

Kamardin was reported to have been hospitalized following his arrest after police allegedly beat him and raped him with a dumbbell.

Moscow’s Tverskoy District Court found Kamardin and Shtovba guilty of “inciting hatred” toward pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine and “calls for actions against state security,” according to Novaya Gazeta Europe.

Shotvba was sentenced to 5.5 years in prison and Kamardin received a 7-year prison sentence. Both poets deny the charges against them.

“What have I done that’s illegal? Read poetry?” said Shtovba in his closing speech Wednesday, according to the independent Mediazona news website.

Kamardin told the judge: “I fear that neither my physical nor mental health will withstand prolonged imprisonment.”

“My convictions will not change, as they didn’t under torture, they wouldn’t with a real sentence, and they wouldn’t even under the threat of death,” Kamardin said.

Prosecutors had requested longer sentences for Kamardin and Shtovba.

A third defendant, Nikolai Daineko, was earlier sentenced to four years in prison after entering a plea deal and testifying against Kamardin and Shtovba.

After the verdict, authorities detained journalists from several state-affiliated and independent news outlets outside the courthouse, according to several publications.

Kamardinov’s wife Alexandra Popova, who was dragged out of the courtroom after she started chanting “shame,” filmed herself alongside the detained journalists inside a police van.

“We’re sitting here next to NTV [state broadcaster journalists], so at least we’re equal in some areas,” Popova said on video.

Popova was also detained following the September 2022 anti-war poetry readings. She alleged at the time that authorities superglued her face and threatened her with gang rape.

“My convictions will not change, as they didn’t under torture, they wouldn’t with a real sentence, and they wouldn’t even under the threat of death,” Kamardin said.

Prosecutors had requested longer sentences for Kamardin and Shtovba.

-

Source:
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/12/28/russia-seeks-arrest-of-exiled-opposition-politician-bryukhanova-a83593

 

Russia is the same it seems whether ruled by the Czar or the polit bureau or a "strong man" dictator.

 

Do forum readers think that a young man, 14 years old, should be allowed to read '1984'? Thanks for your feedback.

 

I think it is not an appropriate book for this age. However, there are 14-year-olds who are much more mature than others who are 18 or 20, depending on the case. 'Animal Farm', by the same author, would be much more suitable for that age.

 

That's the age I read it, I don't remember it being age inappropriate. I read Brave New World the same year and I remember that one being a bit shocking, but I don't remember specifics. Same year I read A Canticle for Leibowitz, which I've been meaning to revisit. I took a class in like dystopian fiction or something similar (Leibowitz wasn't part of the class tho).

 

Sure.

 

Thank you very much. I appreciate your thoughts.

 

Some of Russia's errors are indeed previous to communism.

 

Catholic journalist and blogger imprisoned three years ago by the Belarusian regime is uncontactable. He is serving a 15-year sentence for criticizing the regime.

Imprisoned RFE/RL journalist Ihar Losik held incommunicado for one year

Ihar Losik's parents say the last time they received a letter from their son, who was placed in a cell-type premises where letters, parcels from relatives, and visitations are banned, was on February 20, 2023.

The parents of RFE/RL journalist Ihar Losik, who is serving 15 years term on charges that he, RFE/RL, and foreign governments have called politically motivated, say their son has been held incommunicado in a Belarusian prison for a full year.

Losik's parents say the last time they received a letter from their son, who was placed in a cell-type premises (PKT) where letters, parcels from relatives, and visitations are banned, was on February 20, 2023.

The 31-year-old was arrested in June 2020 and sentenced to 15 years in prison in December 2021 on several charges, including organizing mass riots, incitement to social hatred, and several other charges that remain unclear. He has maintained his innocence and calls all charges against him politically motivated.

Losik and some 150 other Belarusian political prisoners, including another RFE/RL journalist, Andrey Kuznechyk, and former would-be presidential candidate Viktar Babaryka, are serving their terms in the same correctional colony No. 1 in the northern city of Navapolatsk.

Correctional colony No. 1 is known as one of the most restricted and notorious penitentiaries in the country.

Initially, the territory of the colony was occupied by a number of temporary houses built for workers at a then newly built oil refinery in 1958.

The territory was later turned into correctional colony No. 10, where mostly members of organized criminal groups, noted crime kingpins, and so-called thieves-in-law served their terms.

Belarusian authorities started sending political prisoners to the correctional colony in 2010, In 2017, the penitentiary changed its name to correctional colony No. 1.

In October last year, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has found Belarus violated international human rights law by imprisoning Losik, concluding that his arrest and detention were "based solely on his journalistic activity and his exercise of the freedoms of expression and of association.”

The U.S.-based rights group Freedom Now said at the time that the conclusion was made in response to a legal petition it filed along with the international law firm Dechert LLP.

The husband of exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Syarhey Tsikhanouski, as well as four other bloggers and opposition politicians and activists, were sentenced to lengthy prison terms along with Losik at the time.

In January 2023, Losik's wife, Darya Losik, was sentenced to two years in prison on a charge of facilitating extremist activity. The charge stemmed from her interview with the Poland-based Belsat television channel that has been officially labeled as an extremist group by Minsk.

The couple's 4-year-old daughter, Paulina, is currently in the custody of Darya Losik's parents.

The U.S. State Department, U.S. Helsinki Commission, Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, several U.S. and EU politicians have called several times for Losik’s immediate release.

Source:
https://www.rferl.org/a/imprisoned-rferl-journalist-belarus-losik-incommunicado/32827593.html


Catholic blogger remains detained in Belarus after criticizing regime

Ihar Losik, a Belarusian political prisoner and Catholic. | Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Catholic blogger and father Ihar Losik remains incarcerated in Belarus more than three years after being arrested for criticizing the country’s regime. Prior to his sentencing, Losik wrote to Pope Francis to ask for prayers and support for himself and other political prisoners.

Losik, 31, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in December 2021 following a five-month trial. He joins an estimated 1,400 other political prisoners in the country, many of whom have reportedly been subjected to various forms of mistreatment, including torture.

In his August 2021 letter to Pope Francis, Losik described the hopelessness he has experienced while languishing in prison, even to the point of contemplating and attempting suicide. He has undertaken two hunger strikes while in prison, and has only been allowed to see his wife on a single occasion and his young daughter not at all.

“Threats were made to my family, my 2-year-old daughter — these people hold nothing sacred. They just decided to finish me off. They left me no other option but to prove my innocence posthumously. I tried to cut open my veins,” he told the pontiff. “Fifteen years in prison for nothing, without seeing my daughter is worse than death.”

The rest of the article here:
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/...-detained-in-belarus-after-criticizing-regime

 

This is truly horrible:

Your Holiness,

My name is Ihar Losik. I work for the Belarusian programmes of Radio Liberty/Free Europe. I am a Catholic, the father of a beautiful little girl Paŭlina. Sadly, she has been growing without her dad for more than a year. I have not seen my daughter for more than a year either. I did not hear her first words, nor I saw her first drawings. I am very anxious that she will forget me or even forget the word ‘dad’.

Why did this happen? Why has this been going on for over a year? I do not have the answer, nor I know why more than 600 others are currently suffering in the same way, and thousands more are in real danger. Some will never see their fathers and sons, because they are no longer alive.

I will not be describing the situation in my Belarus. You are probably aware of everything that is happening, especially after Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz was not allowed back into the country just because he had a kind heart and could not ignore injustice and violence. Nor will I be explaining the details of my unlawful and absurd criminal prosecution. I just want to tell that many, countless people who found themselves in the same situation are so desperate that the only resolution to everything happening to them, to the suffering from never-ending mental and physical pressure and torture they see in a suicide.

It is hard for me to admit, but I have also been brought to the point where I will just think for days on how to leave this world and stop suffering. I could never imagine that for many months I would be falling asleep and waking up with this thought in the middle of the night.

At first, I tried to prove my innocence by all legal means. Later, out of desperation I went on a hunger strike for 42 days. My wife joined my hunger strike too. Every day for two months now she has been standing under the prison walls while I was tried behind closed doors. Threats were made to my family, my two-year-old daughter – these people have nothing sacred. They just decided to finish me off. They left no other option to prove my innocence but posthumously. I tried to cut open my veins – fifteen years in prison for nothing, without seeing my daughter is worse than death.

I am not asking to advocate for me. I am asking to stand up for good, truth and justice, for thousands of Belarusians who have despaired in the same and even worse situations. I am asking Your Holiness to call on these terrible people who do not care about the lives of others and hundreds of grief-stricken families to stop.

Maybe I am too naive, and this letter will never reach you. Nevertheless, I am writing it completely sincerely and from the bottom of my heart. I believe that I am writing it for a reason. I really want to believe that God has not abandoned us, that this senseless cruelty will stop, that no one else will die and everyone will return to their families.

With faith and hope, I am asking Your Holiness for blessing, in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[August 2021, Homiel pre-trial detention centre No. 3]​

Source: https://belarus2020.churchby.info/ihar-losik-pope-francis/​

As bad as the so-called Western democracies are - and they are very bad - it is difficult to understand how so many Western conservatives and Catholics want this type of regime to win in Ukraine, in Europe and in the world in general. This can only be the result of a major psychological operation, as Italian journalist and historian Roberto de Mattei recently wrote. Among all the errors that Russia has spread throughout the world, this must be the most difficult to understand.

 

It’s not about anyone wanting Ukraine or Russia to win or lose. It’s about the death of 445,000 children, women, and men. Why would any conservative or Catholic not want a peaceful resolution?

 

This is all deplorable, but it is not definitively communism. It's common-garden totalitarianism, which is also despicable, but unsurprising in a part of the world with no tradition of democracy or of civil liberty. I think the communism is in the West. A look over at Padraig's 'Gemini' thread provides a chilling taste of what we're facing. I think the West is on an accelerating path of self-destruction, which is going to leave us as sitting ducks for a Russian invasion.

 

I think what is happening in Russia is the apostasy of a blasphemous cult of Russian nationalism. I say apostasy because this cult of nationalism goes beyond the barrier of common sense and disrespects the first commandment by placing icons from the history of the Russian people as objects of worship, and this is equivalent to the “Pachamama” of the Russian State Church. I understand that this differs from Bolshevik communism in that it presents a cult of God; however, it overlaps what belongs to Caesar with what belongs to God.

 

In the history of the people of Israel, God always raised evil empires to punish the apostasy of his people: Babylon, Egypt, Assyria, and finally the Roman Empire, which later followed a glorious path of conversion. Our hope is that Our Lady of Fatima promised us that the conversion of the Russian people will occur: a vessel of wrath that will become an instrument of glorification of God, as happened with the Roman Empire; and in my humble opinion, it will not be in a democracy or in a dictatorship like Putin's but rather in the reign of a new tsar.

 

Catholic Priest Explains The New World Order, Lucifer and the Book of Revelation

 

This question could be asked of thousands of people who have died unjustly throughout history. Even many of the Catholic saints could have lived longer... I am also very disturbed to see so many Ukrainians preferring death to subjugating themselves to a foreign dictator. I don't know if I could, honestly.