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WASHINGTONThe power of memoryto honor, to console, to teach, and to warnwas evoked on the morning of June 9 at the award and wreath-laying ceremonies at the Victims of Communism Memorial.

The event began with the passionate violin playing of Wuilly Moiss Arteaga, a 23-year-old from the socialist state of Venezuela. Arteaga had been flown in from Caracas and promptly outfitted with a new violin. The police in Caracas, where Arteaga has regularly played in protests against the repressive Maduro regime, had smashed his previous instrument.

Perhaps the raw energy of Arteagas playing drew in part on grief for the recent death of his friend and fellow violinist Armando Caizales, who was killed in the Caracas protests.

Arteaga played on a stage facing the memorial statue, a bronze replica of the Goddess of Democracy figure assembled from papier-mch by the students on Tiananmen Square in 1989. The statue dominates a small plaza on a busy Washington street corner that is an easy walk from the Capitol.

This was a day for remembering the victims of communism, which is easier to do for one individual at a time, than for a group whose size strains our understanding.

(Kitty Wang/NTD Televsion)

The keynote speaker, Vytautas Landsbergis, said the enormity of the crimes of communism is astonishing, difficult to comprehend. Landsbergis noted the scale of the crimes can invite the remark,attributed to Josef Stalin, that while one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.

On its website, The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation refers to there being more than 100 million deaths and says its memorial is the only one in the world dedicated to every single victim of communism.

Jos Gutirrez-Solana attended the first of the foundations memorial ceremonies 10 years ago and has attended every yearsince. He spent 10 years in Fidel Castros jails.

Gutirrez-Solana was a law student who had joined with Castro to oppose the dictator Fulgencio Batista. Then Castro said there would be no law and no constitution. That is not what we were fighting for, Gutirrez-Solana said, and so he began using his words to oppose the soon-to-be communist tyrant.

After Castro seized power, Gutirrez-Solana was rounded up. He says he comes to this event each year to pay tribute to our friends and brothers who lost their lives for freedom in Cuba.

Gutirrez-Solana escaped Cuba decades ago. Chi Lihua and her daughter, Xu Xinyang, escaped China only four months ago, in February.

Chi and Xu practice the spiritual discipline Falun Gong, which the Chinese Communist Party set out to eradicate in 1999. Chis husband died in 2009 after being tortured during an 8-year prison sentence for practicing Falun Gong. Chi said she has also lost her brother, father, and mother due to the persecution in China.

(Kitty Wang/NTD Televsion)

After her fathers death, Xu was forced to quit school, and several of her classmates, who also practiced Falun Gong, were arrested. Chi and Xu came to the foundations ceremony to ask for help for Falun Gong practitioners and in particular for Xus classmates. They dont speak English, but brought with them a laminated poster in Chinese that tells about the persecution of Falun Gong. When asked to pose for a photo, they unfolded the poster and held it between them.

The foundation runs several activities meant to further its vision of a world free from the false hope of communism. Prominent among these is the awarding of the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom, given to those individuals and institutions that have demonstrated a lifelong commitment to freedom and democracy and opposition to communism and all other forms of tyranny, the website says.

At this ceremony, the foundation awarded the medal to Mart Laar, Estonias first prime minister after the countrys independence from the Soviet Union. The award was accepted by Estoniasdeputy chief of mission, Marki Tihhonova-Kreek, as ill health kept Laar from making the trip to Washington.

In his acceptanceremarks, Laar wrote that Estonians know precisely what communism is. This is why our task is not to let it happen again. This demands that we all keep memory alive.

Landsbergisskeynote address struck a different tone. He began, Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, combatants. Landsbergis, the first head of state of a Lithuania freed from Soviet domination, spoke as one warrior to other warriors.

(Kitty Wang/NTD Televsion)

For him, communism is alive. It is a monster or a plague that seeks to destroy all of humanity.

While one might be pardoned on a sunny morning in Washington for feeling far from these terrible things, Landsbergis warned, The epoch of mass extermination is not yet over.

Landsbergis sees the evil of communism mutating and appearing in new forms. Murderous Islamists and what he called Russo-fascism are new faces of an old enemy.

The mixture of speculative communist teaching and fanatic delirium, Landsbergis said, goes on like an endemic illness.

Landsbergis sees a love based on thebelief in God as a way for humankind to avoid this contagion.

The climax of the mornings events was the roll call of nations. Wreaths were presented by the representatives of 22 nations, four other governmental entities, and 30 private associations (from the union representing Voice of America employees to the World Uyghur Congress).

In the solemn ceremony, one or a few individuals would carry a wreath to the space in front of the statue of the Goddess of Democracy and briefly bow their head in respect for the many victims who have been slaughtered. The wreath would then be arranged with the others in rows behind the statue.

After the memorial ceremony ended, the foundations executive director, Marion Smith, reflected on the significance of the days events for Americans. An October 2016 poll commissioned by the foundation on Americas views on communism was an eye-opener.

Among other findings, younger generationsmillennials and Generation Zwere found to be more likely to underestimate the death toll of communism, to have less appreciation for the lasting threat of communism, and to be more likely to have favorable attitudes toward socialism and communism.

Smith said the results of this poll reflected an overall failure of American education. He sized up our younger generations as having a lack of historical awareness, a frustration or inability to participate in the free enterprise system, and then a weariness at the messiness of democracy.

Smith characterized this as very fertile soil for dictatorship and totalitarianism.

To respond to this situation, the foundation has several educational initiatives: seminars for high school teachers; outreach programs on college campuses, where the foundation teaches the basic facts about communism; and symposia for college professors to discuss difficult issues involving communism, socialism, totalitarianism, and collectivism. In addition, the foundation has run a series of ads in New Yorks Times Square.

Next on the foundations agenda is to build the InternationalMuseum on Communism in Washington.

Smith said that understanding and celebrating the lives of those killed by communism is very important for us as a society in terms of justice, of who we are.

Remembering the victims of communism and seeking to defend others from it, even if our situation only allows us to do so with words, is essential to the American character, Smith said.

If we dont defend the great ideas of individual liberty and self-government around the world, then we lose the capacity to affirm those ideas at home, Smith said.

See the original post:
Remembering the Victims of CommunismFor Them, and For Us - The Epoch Times

Dear DJ:

You write of the east. I am from the east, born in 1957. My parents and their friends were beatniks. As an avid hipster watcher I enjoy reading your recent field guide series. Especially useful for identifying a casual! However, I notice that, while todays hipsters remind me so much of the beatniks I grew up around, one amazing difference stands out. Long ago, once beatniks had removed themselves to more rural locales, they couldnt remain beatniks. They naturally and steadily evolved into craftsmen, hippies, farmers, or squares. Beat-ness was helpless against the forces of nature. How does the hipster do it? To endure in all environs? What is his secret? How does he adapt and thrive, yet retain his hipness in whatever territory he finds himself?

David A.

Even though I cant be 100 percent sure of what you mean by a casual, I absolutely hope that I am not one, and I accept your comment as the shining compliment I know it is.

bows graciously

Okay. Having expelled the last vestiges of residual smugness that linger after a hard day of eating grass-fed burgers and arranging my substantial collection of 1980s Japanese dub singles that even Ive never heard of before, I believe your inquiry merits a substantive answer.

Giving credit where credit is due, the 1950s Beatnik was absolutely the hipster of his day. He even hated being called a Beatnik. Roaming free and unfettered throughout the concrete jungles of the mid-Twentieth Century, the Wild Beatnik hungered for the freshest innovations of a youthful and rebellious culture: non-rhyming poetry, color field paintings, modern jazz, occasional homosexuality, inklings of communism, and primitive strains of marijuana. But Beat culture lived in the cities, and died somewhere along the county line, because it was an academic, top-down revolution. Fed up with a hundred years of industrialization and nothing to show for it but two world wars and growing discontent in Asia, the Beats were going to change the world with their ideas, man! Unless you control the means of production, ideas dont get a lot of traction without a lot of like-minded people to share them with.

By contrast, the modern hipster, fed up with 150 years of industrialization, two world wars, and growing discontent in Asia (plus bonus Middle Eastern instability) is just fucking, like, over it, man. Stick him in a cabin in the woods somewhere and nothing changes except its actually slightly easier to roll your eyes at the worlds absurdity when youre not actively participating in it. Even so, the modern hipster cannot endure indefinite separation from the hipster community, which is why, like the astronaut terraforming Mars from within the antiseptic confines of his biosphere, the hipster slowly remakes the world around him in his image. Unlike the generations of cool kids who came before him, the hipster is a colonist, not an exile. Perhaps its evolution, or perhaps Im a filthy liar and an apologist, but I suspect the hipster owes his social tenacity to this very facet of his nature.

Time will tell, but unlike the Beatniks (remember beatniks?), Hippies (remember legit hippies?), Greasers, Punks, Mods, Riot Grrls, and Juggalos (remember all of them?); something about the hipster suggests that he will always be with us, rather than fading to a cultural ghost.

Read more from the original source:
Inklings of communism, and primitive strains of marijuana - San Diego Reader

Thrissur: The Indian Communist parties must focus on building their movement on the basis of Indian social context and traditions, said C K Saji Narayanan, national president of the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) at a press meet held here on Thursday. He questioned the views expressed by Sitaram Yechury and Prakash Karat during their talks at EMS Smriti, organized in memory of E M S Namboodiripad, in Thrissur recently. "The argument that the October Revolution changed the world has been proved wrong. Perestroika and glasnost (restructuring and openness) brought about by Mikhail Gorbachev before the 90s proved that there was wide-spread poverty in the USSR. In Poland, people had to go on strike for food. The fall of the Berlin Wall bared the poverty that prevailed in East Germany," he said. In which Communist country did democracy and secularism prevail, he asked. The Indian communist party made several grave mistakes, especially in 1942 and 1962. The party must correct itself and focus on Indianness. In Russia, Lenin gave shape to Russian Communism as Mao gave shape to Chinese Communism and Ho Chi Minh to Vietnamese Communism. In India alone, communist parties failed to create Indian Communism, he said. Talking at the press conference, B Gopalakrishnan, BJP state secretary said the Communist parties were haunted by 'inferiority complex' about their ideologies. The Communist leaders were selling a pipe dream by promising to bring about Socialism in India, he said. tnn

Read more:
Communist parties must focus on Indianness: BMS - Times of India

How many additional millions of people have to die before intentional fools like Bernie Sanders will acknowledge that socialism quickly destroys any society that it takes over?

The death toll is easily at least 75 million when you add up all the innocent people who were starved to death, worked to death or shot in the back of the head like weve witnessed in the last 100 years in the Soviet Union, Cambodia, China, North Korea, Cuba and now Venezuela.

In 1999, when the socialists took control of Venezuela it was the wealthiest country in Latin America.

Venezuela still has the greatest petroleum reserves of any country in the world but children now needlessly die there because hospitals dont have very basic medicines. The average Venezuelan has lost 20 pounds because there is no food, beverages, dairy products or cooking oil. All the farms and food-processing facilities were nationalized by the government. Basic hygiene products arent to be found.

An uncharismatic socialist Venezuelan dictator ignores the will of 85 percent of the people there. The capital has been locked in daily violent demonstrations for several months. Scores of demonstrators have been murdered by roving gangs of para-military goon squads, funded by the socialist dictator.

Socialism is always quickly destructive.

View post:
Harry Griswold: Keep deadly socialism in check - La Crosse Tribune

Posted by Paul Anthony Melanson, June 13, 2017

Robert P. Barnidge noted that, Pope Francis has made his social and economic tendencies clear since the early days of his pontificate. In his 2013 apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis criticizes the notion that reducing the disproportionately-high income tax burden on high-income earners can stimulate investment and economic growth as a crude and nave trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. For the Holy Father, inequality is the root of social ills, though he fails to explain precisely why a society of unequal wealth but a relatively high standard of living would somehow be less reflective of Gospel values than a society that shares equally in poverty.

Going further still, Evangelii Gaudium calls for structural transformation that would restore to the poor what belongs to them. If, as Pope Francis suggests, property is possessed not by its owners, then, truly, property is theft, to quote 19th-century French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhons famous phrase.

Contrast this embrace of Socialism with the thought of Pope Saint John Paul II:

the fundamental error of socialism is anthropological in nature. Socialism considers the individual person simply as an element, a molecule within the social organism, so that the good of the individual is completely subordinated to the functioning of the socio-economic mechanism. Socialism likewise maintains that the good of the individual is completely subordinated to the functioning of the socio-economic mechanism. Socialism likewise maintains that the good of the individual can be realized without reference to his free choice, to the unique and exclusive responsibility which he exercises in the face of good or evil. Man is thus reduced to a series of social relationships, and the concept of the person as the autonomous subject of moral decisions disappears, the very subject whose decisions build the social order.

The Popes have consistently condemned Socialism because it is intrinsically evil. See here.https://www.tfp.org/what-the-popes-have-to-say-about-socialism/

But Francis promotes it.

If youre not concerned about Francis as a Catholic, you should be.

http://lasalettejourney.blogspot.com/2017/06/francis-property-is-theft-and-socialism.html

Here is the original post:
Francis: Property is theft and Socialism is the answer - Catholic Citizens of Illinois (press release)