Podcasts about Bosnians

In this episode of The Backstory, host Anne Hancock Toomey sits down with the Global Head of Healthcare for Blackstone, Ram Jagannath, to trace the path that led him from a childhood as a first-generation American to the upper echelons of finance and healthcare investing. Jagannath shares how his formative years shaped his perspective, weaving through early influences, first jobs, and pivotal experiences—none more striking than his time working in a Croatian refugee camp with Bosnians displaced by the war. From navigating Wall Street to surviving the stock market crash and exploring a career in private equity, Jagannath unpacks lessons on why intellectual curiosity and purpose matter as much as strategy. And in a fast-paced lightning round, he gets personal – family, golf and a little love for Taylor Swift. 4:20 First Jobs and Early Lessons 11:44 College Years and Discovering Fulfillment 13:28 Life-Changing Experience in Croatia 20:09 Transition to Finance and Wall Street 22:42 Discovering Private Equity 25:10 Journey into Healthcare Investing 30:29 Founding a New Firm and Personal Loss 34:52 Leadership Qualities and Values 39:14 Lightning Round: Personal Insights Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, we're talking with veteran activist and theologian, the one and only, Lisa Sharon Harper! The conversation covers:-        Lisa's journey finding Jesus outside of Whiteness and White evangelicalism-        The centrality of advocating for political and institutional policy change to our faith in Jesus-        How respecting the image of God in all people is the starting point for following Jesus to shalom-        The unavoidable job we have to speak truth, even when it is costly-        Where Lisa finds her hope and motivation to keep going-        And after that, we reflect on the interview and then talk all things Springfield, Ohio and Haitian immigrants.Mentioned on the episode:-            Lisa's website, lisasharonharper.com/-            Lisa's Instagram and Facebook-            The Freedom Road Podcast-            Lisa's books, Fortune and The Very Good Gospel-            Make a donation to The Haitian Community Support and Help Center in Springfield, Ohio via PayPal at haitianhelpcenterspringfield@gmail.com.Credits-            Follow KTF Press on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Subscribe to get our bonus episodes and other benefits at KTFPress.com.-        Follow host Jonathan Walton on Facebook Instagram, and Threads.-        Follow host Sy Hoekstra on Mastodon.-        Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.-        Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.-        Editing by Multitude Productions-        Transcripts by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra.-        Production by Sy Hoekstra and our incredible subscribersTranscript[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes in a major scale, the first three ascending and the last three descending, with a keyboard pad playing the tonic in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.”]Lisa Sharon Harper: I would lose my integrity if I was silent in the face of the breaking of shalom, which I learned in Bosnia and Croatia and Serbia, is built on earth through structures. It doesn't just come because people know Jesus. Two thirds of the people in the Bosnian war knew Jesus. The Croats were Christian and the Serbs were Orthodox Christian, and yet they killed each other. Massacred each other. Unfortunately, knowing Jesus is not enough if you have shaped your understanding of Jesus according to the rules and norms of empire.[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/ That it will roll in abundance/ And that you're building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]Jonathan Walton: Welcome to Shake the Dust, seeking Jesus, confronting injustice. I'm Jonathan Walton.Sy Hoekstra: And I am Sy Hoekstra. We have a great one for you today. We are talking to veteran organizer and theologian Lisa Sharon Harper, someone who a lot of you probably know and who was pretty big in both of our individual kind of stories and development as people who care about faith and justice when we were younger people, which you will hear about as we talk to her. We are going to be talking to her about the centrality of our voting and policy choices to our witness as Christians, the importance of integrity and respecting the image of God in all people when making difficult decisions about where to spend your resources as an activist, where Lisa gets her hope and motivation and a whole lot more.And then after the interview, hear our reactions to it. And we're also going to be getting into our segment, Which Tab Is Still Open, where we dive a little bit deeper into one of the recommendations from our weekly newsletter that we send out to our subscribers. This week it will be all about Haitian immigrants to America in Springfield, Ohio. You will want to hear that conversation. But before we get started, Jonathan.Jonathan Walton: Please friends, remember to go to KTFPress.com and become a paid subscriber to support this show and get access to everything that we do. We're creating media that centers personal and informed discussions on politics, faith and culture that helps you seek Jesus and confront injustice. We are resisting the idols of the American church by centering and elevating marginalized voices and taking the entirety of Jesus' gospel more seriously than those who narrow it to sin and salvation. The two of us have a lot of experience doing this individually and in community, and we've been friends [laughs] for a good long time. So you can trust it will be honest, sincere, and have some good things to say along the way.If you become a paid subscriber, you'll get access to all of our bonus content, access to our monthly subscriber Zoom chats with me and Sy, and the ability to comment on posts and chat with us. So again, please go to KTFPress.com and become a paid subscriber today.Sy Hoekstra: Our guest today, again, Lisa Sharon Harper, the president and founder of Freedom Road, a groundbreaking consulting group that crafts experiences to bring common understanding and common commitments that lead to common action toward a more just world. Lisa is a public theologian whose writing, speaking, activism and training has sparked and fed the fires of reformation in the church from Ferguson and Charlottesville to South Africa, Brazil, Australia and Ireland. Lisa's book, Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World, and How to Repair It All was named one of the best books of 2022 and the book before that, The Very Good Gospel, was named 2016 Book of the Year by The Englewood Review of Books. Lisa is the host of the Freedom Road Podcast, and she also writes for her Substack, The Truth Is…Jonathan Walton: Alright, let's jump into the interview.[The intro piano music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out.]Sy Hoekstra: Lisa Sharon Harper, thank you so much for joining us on Shake the Dust.Lisa Sharon Harper: Yay, I'm so excited to be here, and I'm here with a little bit of a Demi Moore rasp to my voice. So I'm hoping it'll be pleasant to the ears for folks who are coming, because I got a little sick, but I'm not like really sick, because I'm on my way, I'm on the rebound.Sy Hoekstra: So you told us you got this at the DNC, is that right?Lisa Sharon Harper: Yes, I literally, literally, that's like what, almost three weeks ago now?Sy Hoekstra: Oh my gosh.Jonathan Walton: You've got a DNC infection. That's what that is.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Lisa Sharon Harper: I have a DNC cough. I have a DNC cough, that's funny.Jonathan Walton: [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: So before we jump into our questions, I wanted to take a momentary trip down memory lane, because I have no idea if you remember this or not.Lisa Sharon Harper: Okay.Sy Hoekstra: But in January of 2008, you led a weekend retreat for a college Christian fellowship that Jonathan and I were both in.Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah, I do remember.Sy Hoekstra: You do remember this? Okay.Lisa Sharon Harper: Absolutely.Jonathan Walton: [laughs].Lisa Sharon Harper: I remember almost every time I've ever spoken anywhere.Sy Hoekstra: Wow, okay.Lisa Sharon Harper: I really do. And I remember that one, and I do remember you guys being there. Oh my gosh, that's so cool.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Lisa Sharon Harper: Okay.Jonathan Walton: Yeah.Lisa Sharon Harper: You remember that. That's amazing.Sy Hoekstra: No, no, no.Jonathan Walton: Oh yeah.Sy Hoekstra: Hang on. Wait a minute [laughter]. We don't just remember it. Because, so you gave this series of talks that ended up being a big part of your book, The Very Good Gospel.Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: And you talked specifically about the difference between genuine and pseudo-community and the need to really address each other's problems that we face, bear each other's burdens, that sort of thing. And you did a session, which I'm sure you've done with other groups, where you split us up into racial groups. So we sat there with White, Black, and Latine, and Asian, and biracial groups, and we had a real discussion about race in a way that the community had absolutely never had before [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yep.Sy Hoekstra: And it actually, it is the opening scene of Jonathan's book. I don't know if you knew that.Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh my God, I didn't know that.Jonathan Walton: It is.Lisa Sharon Harper: Which one?Jonathan Walton: Twelve Lies.Lisa Sharon Harper: Wow, I didn't know that. Oh my gosh, I missed that. Okay.Sy Hoekstra: So it was a… Jonathan put it before, it was a formative moment for everybody and a transformative moment for some of us [laughter] …Lisa Sharon Harper: Oooooo, Oh my goodness.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: …in that we learned a lot about ourselves and what we thought about race, what other people thought about race. I will tell you that in the five minutes after the session broke up, like ended, it was the first time that my now wife ever said to me, “Hey, you said something racist to me that I didn't like.” [laughs] And then, because of all the conversation we just had, I responded miraculously with the words, “I'm sorry.” [laughter].Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh my God!Sy Hoekstra: And then we went from there.Lisa Sharon Harper: Miraculously [laughs]. That's funny.Sy Hoekstra: So I have lots of friends that we can talk about this session with to this day, and they still remember it as transformative.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh my Gosh. Wow.Sy Hoekstra: All of that, just to lead into my first question which is this, a lot of people in 2016 started seeing kind of the things about White evangelicalism that indicated to them that they needed to get out. They needed to escape in some way, because of the bad fruit, the bad political fruit that was manifesting. You saw that bad fruit a long time ago.Lisa Sharon Harper: A whole long time ago.Sy Hoekstra: You were deep in the Republican, pro-life political movement for a little bit, for like, a minute as a young woman.Lisa Sharon Harper: I wouldn't… here's the thing. I wouldn't say I was deep in. What I would say is I was in.Sy Hoekstra: Okay.Lisa Sharon Harper: As in I was in because I was Evangelical, and I identified with itbecause I was Evangelical and because my friends identified with it. So I kind of went along, but I always had this sense I was like standing on the margins looking at it going, “I don't know.”Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Lisa Sharon Harper: You know what I mean? But I would say literally for like a minute, I was a believer. Maybe for like, a year.Sy Hoekstra: But my question then is, what were the warning signs? And then, separately from what were the warning signs that you needed to get out, who or what were the guiding lights that showed you a better way?Lisa Sharon Harper: My goodness. Wow. Well, I mean, I would say that honestly… Okay, so I had a couple of conversations, and we're talking about 2004 now. So 2004 also, this is right after 2000 where we had the hanging chads in Florida.Sy Hoekstra: Yep.Jonathan Walton: Yep.Lisa Sharon Harper: And we know how important voting is, because literally, I mean, I actually believe to this day that Gore actually won. And it's not just a belief, they actually counted after the fact, and found that he had won hundreds more ballots that were not counted in the actual election, in Florida. And so every single vote counts. Every single vote counts. So then in 2004 and by 2004, I'm the Director of Racial Reconciliation for greater LA in InterVarsity, I had done a summer mission project that wasn't really mission. It was actually more of a, it was a pilgrimage, actually. It was called the pilgrimage for reconciliation. The summer before, I had done the stateside pilgrimage. And then that summer, I led students on a pilgrimage through Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia asking the question, “How is shalom broken? And how is shalom built? How is it made?”And through both of those successive summer experiences, it became so clear to me, policy matters, and it matters with regard to Christian ethics. We can't say we are Christian and be, in other words, Christ-like if we are not concerned with how our neighbor is faring under the policies coming down from our government. We just can't. And as Christians in a democracy, specifically in America, in the US where we have a democracy, we actually have the expectation that as citizens, we will help shape the way that we live together. And our vote is what does that our vote when we vote for particular people, we're not just voting for who we like. We're voting for the policies they will pass or block. We're voting for the way we want to live together in the world.So in 2004 when I come back from Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, I'm talking with some of my fellow staff workers, and I'm saying to them, “We have to have a conversation with our folks about voting. I mean, this election really matters. It's important. ”Because we had just come through the first few years of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Like Iraq had just erupted a couple years before that, Afghanistan the year before that. And we were seeing young men coming back in body bags and this war, which had no plan to end, was sending especially young Black men to die because they were the ones…and I know, because I was in those schools when I was younger, and I alsohad been reading up on this.They're the ones who are recruited by the Marines and the Army and the Navy and the Air Force, especially the army, which is the cannon fodder. They're the ones who are on the front lines. They are recruited by them more than anybody else, at a higher degree than anybody else, a higher percentage ratio. So I was saying we have to have a conversation. And their response to me in 2004 was, “Oh, well, we can't do that, because we can't be political.” I said, “Well, wait, we are political beings. We live in a democracy.” To be a citizen is to help shape the way we live together in the world, and that's all politics is. It's the conversations we have and the decisions that we make about how we are going to live together.And so if we as Christians who have an ethic passed down by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, and we have the 10 Commandments, which is like the grand ethic of humanity, at least of the Abrahamic tradition. Then, if we don't have something to say about how we should be living together and the decisions we make about that every four years, every two years, even in off year elections, then what are we doing here?Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Lisa Sharon Harper: Who are we? Like, what is this faith? What is this Christian faith? So that was my first real rub, because I had experienced the pilgrimage to reconciliation. I had seen, I had rolled through. I had walked on the land where the decisions that the polis, the people had made, had killed people. It had led to the death of millions of people. Thousands of people in some case. Hundreds of people in other cases. But when coming back from Bosnia, it was millions. And so I was just very much aware of the reality that for Christians, politics matters because politics is simply the public exercise of our ethics, of our Christian ethic. And if we don't have one, then we're… honest, I just, I think that we are actually turning our backs on Jesus who spent his life telling us how to live.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Lisa Sharon Harper: And so that was, for me, literally that conversation with that staff worker was kind of my first, “Aha! I'm in the wrong place.” I needed to learn more about how this public work works. How do systems and structures and policies and laws work? So that's what actually brought me, ended up bringing me a year later, to Columbia University and getting my master's in human rights. And I knew, having had the background in the two pilgrimages and the work that we did on the biblical concept of shalom at the time, which was nascent. I mean, it was for me, it was, I barely, really barely, understood it. I just knew it wasn't what I had been taught. So I started digging into shalom at that time, and then learning about international law and human rights and how that works within the international systems.I came out of that with a much clearer view, and then continued to work for the next 13 years to really get at how our Christian ethics intersect with and can help, and have helped shape public policy. And that has led me to understand very clearly that we are complicit in the evil, and we also, as Christians, other streams of our faith are responsible for the redemption, particularly in America and South Africa and other places in the world.Jonathan Walton: Yeah. So I think I'm placing myself in your story. So I think we intersected in that 2005, 2008 moment. So I've traveled with you.Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah, we had a good time. It was so much fun.Jonathan Walton: We did. It was very good. So getting to follow, watch, learn, just for me, has been a huge blessing. First with the book, with New York Faith and Justice, reading stuff with Sojourners, grabbing your books, gleaning different wisdom things for… it's something that I've wondered as I'm a little bit younger in the journey, like as you've operated in this world, in the White Evangelical world, and then still White Evangelical adjacent, operating in these faith spaces. And now with the platform that you have, you've had to exercise a lot of wisdom, a lot of patience and deciding to manage where you show up and when, how you use your time, how you manage these relationships and keep relationships along the way. Because you didn't drop people.Lisa Sharon Harper: I have. I have dropped a few [laughter]. I want to make that really clear, there is an appropriate space to literally shake the dust.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah [laughs].Jonathan Walton: I think what I have not seen you do is dehumanize the people in the places that you left.Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah, thank you. Yeah.Jonathan Walton: And that's hard to do, because most people, particularly my generation, we see the bridge we just walked across, and we throw Molotov cocktails at that thing [laughter].Lisa Sharon Harper: Y'all do. Your generation is like, “I'm out! And you're never gonna breathe again!” Like, “You're going down!” I'm like, “Oh my God…” [laughs].Jonathan Walton: It's quite strong with us [laughs]. And so could you give any pieces of wisdom or things you've learned from God about navigating in that way. Things that we can and folks that are listening can hold on to as things shift, because they will shift and are shifting.Lisa Sharon Harper: They always shift, yeah, because we are not living on a book page. We're living in a world that moves and is fluid, and people change, and all the things. So I think that the best advice that I got, I actually got from Miroslav Volf. Dr. Miroslav Volf, who is a professor at Yale University, and he wrote the book that really kind of got me into, it was my first book that I ever read that was a book of theology, Exclusion&Embrace. And when we went to Croatia, we met with him. We met with him in the city of Zadar on the beach [laughs], literally over lunch. It was just an incredible privilege to sit down with him. And I've had many opportunities to connect with him since, which has been a privilege again, and just a joy.But he said to our group, our little InterVarsity group. And that's not at all to minimize InterVarsity, but we had a real inflated sense of who we were in the world. We thought we were everything, and we thought we were right about everything. And so here we are going through Croatia, which had just experienced a decade and a little bit before, this civil war. And it wasn't really a civil war, it was actually a war of aggression from Serbia into Croatia, and it was horrible. And it turned neighbor against neighbor in the same way that our civil war turned neighbor against neighbor. So literally, these towns, you literally had neighbors killing each other, you just were not safe.So basically, think Rwanda. The same thing that happened in Rwanda, around the same time had happened in Croatia. And so Miroslav is Croatian, and the lines by which things were drawn in Croatia was not race, because everybody was White. So the lines that they drew their hierarchy on was along the lines of religion. It was the Croats, which were mostly Catholic, mostly Christian. Some not Catholic, they might have been Evangelical, but they were Christian. And then you had the Bosniaks, which were Muslim, and the Serbs, which were Orthodox. So that was the hierarchy. And when you had Milošević, who was the president of Yugoslavia, who was trying to keep that Federation together, Yugoslavia was like an amalgamation of what we now understand to be Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia.So he was trying to keep all of that together, and when he then crossed the lines, the boundary between Serbia and Croatia and invaded and just began to kill everybody, and the Serbs then went to his side, and the Croats went over here, and the Bosniaks were caught in the middle, and people just died. And they chose sides and they killed each other. And so we sat down to do lunch with Miroslav Volf, and in that context, interfaith conversation was critical. It was and is, it continues to be. One of the main markers of where you find healing, it's where you find interfaith conversation in Croatia and also Bosnia and Serbia. And so we, in our little Evangelical selves, we're not used to this interfaith thing.We think of that as compromising. We think of that as, “How can you talk to people and gain relationship with and actually sit down and…?” And he was challenging us to study this scripture with other people of other faiths, and study their scriptures. He was like, “Do that.” And so our people were like, “How can you do that and not compromise your faith?” And here's what he said. He said, “It's easy. Respect. It's respect, respecting the image of God in the other, the one who is not like me. That I, when I sit down and I read their scriptures with them, allowing them to tell me what their scriptures mean.” Not sitting in a classroom in my Evangelical church to learn what the Muslim scriptures say, but sitting down with Imams to understand what the Muslim scriptures say and how it's understood within the context of that culture.That's called respect for the image of God. And there's no way, no way for us to knit ourselves together in a society, to live together in the world without respect. That's baseline. That's baseline.Jonathan Walton: As I'm listening, I'm thinking, “Okay, Lisa made choices.” She was like, “We are gonna not just do a trip. We're gonna do a trip in Croatia.” And so as you're going on these trips, as you were having these conversations, you're making choices. There's decisions being made around you, and then you get to the decision making seat. And how that discernment around where to place your energy happens. So something that's at the top of mind for me and many people listening is Palestine.Lisa Sharon Harper: Oh, yeah.Jonathan Walton: So how did you decide at this moment that, “Hey,this is where my energy and time is coming. I'm going to Christ at the Checkpoint. I'm going to talk with Munther. I'm going to be there.”How did that rise to the surface for you?Lisa Sharon Harper: It's funny, because I have, really have been advised, and in the very first days of the conflict, I was advised by some African American leaders, “Don't touch this. Don't do it. You're going to be blacklisted.”Jonathan Walton: I heard the same thing, yeah.Lisa Sharon Harper: “Don't do it. You're gonna find you're not invited to speak anywhere.” Da da da da. Sometimes these decisions are just made to say, “I am going to act in the world as if I don't know what the repercussions are, and I'm just going to do the thing, because my focus is not focused on the repercussions.” I mean, in some ways, in that way, I do think that my constitution is the constitution of a warrior. Warriors go to battle knowing that bullets are flying all around them, and they just choose to go forward anyway. Somebody who cared, and not just cared, but I think there's a moment where you begin to understand it's that moment of no turning back. It's the moment when you stand at the freshly buried graves of 5000 Muslim boys and men who were killed all in one day by bullet fire in Srebrenica.It's the moment that you drive through Bosnia and you see all of the graves everywhere. Everywhere, especially in Sarajevo, which experienced a siege, a multiyear siege by Serbia. And they turned the soccer field, which at one point was the focal point of the Sarajevo Olympic Games, they turned that into a graveyard because they ran out of space for the graves. When you roll through Georgia, and you go to Dahlonega, Georgia, and you go to the Mining Museum, which marks the very first gold rush in America, which was not in California, but was in Dahlonega, Georgia, on Cherokee land, and you hear the repercussions of people's silence and also complicity.When they came and they settled, they made a decision about how we should live together, and it did not include, it included the erasure of Cherokee people and Choctaw people and Chickasaw people, Seminole people, Creek people. And you walk that land, and the land tells you. It's so traumatic that the land still tells the story. The land itself tells the story. The land bears witness. When you stand on that land and the land tells you the story, there's a moment that just happens where there's no turning back and you have to bear witness to the truth, even with bullets flying around you. So with regard to Palestine, having done what now goodness, 20 years of research on this biblical concept called shalom, and written the book, The Very Good Gospel, which really lays it out in a systematic way.I would lose my integrity if I was silent in the face of the breaking of shalom, which I learned in Bosnia and Croatia and Serbia, is built on earth through structures. It doesn't just come because people know Jesus. Two thirds of the people in the Bosnian war knew Jesus. Two thirds. The Croats were Christian and the Serbs were Orthodox Christian, and yet they killed each other. I mean, massacred each other. Unfortunately, knowing Jesus is not enough if you have shaped your understanding of Jesus according to the rules and norms of empire. So we actually need international law. We need the instruments of international law. That's what stopped the war there. And they failed there too, but they also have been an intrinsic part of keeping the peace and also prosecuting Milošević. Solike making sure that some measure of justice on this earth happens, some shadow of it.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Lisa Sharon Harper: And what are we told in scripture in Micah 6:8, walk humbly with God. Do justice. Embrace the truth. So I think that when I saw on October 7, the breach of the wall, the breach of the gate and then the massacre at the festival, I grieved. I really grieved. And I was scared, really scared for the nation of Israel, for the people who were there. And I began to ask questions, because I've learned the discipline of not dehumanizing. Because to dehumanize is to break shalom. It's one of the first things that happens in the breaking of shalom and the eradication of it. And so part of what I had to do if I was going to consider Palestinian people human was to ask what has happened to them that would cause them to take such violent and radical action. How did we get here? Is the question.And the narrative that I heard from Israel, from the state of Israel, from the leaders of the state of Israel, which had been marched against by their own people just the week before that, and weeks for like a month or two before that, they were trying to depose the leadership of Israel because they were trying to turn their state into a fascist state. I was watching that as well. Trying to take the power of the judiciary away so that they could increase the power of the Prime Minister. So what does it mean then? What does it mean that this happened? And I was listening to the way that the narrative that Netanyahu was giving and his generals and the narrative they were giving is, “These are monsters. They are terrorists. They are evil. They are intrinsically, they are not human.”And I knew when I saw that, when I heard that, I thought Bosnia. I thought Rwanda, where they called the other cockroaches. I thought South Africa, where they called Black people not human, monsters, who need to be controlled. I thought Native Americans, who were called savages in order to be controlled, in order to have the justification of genocide. I thought of people of African descent who were brought in death ships across the Atlantic to South America and Central America and Mexico and North America in order to be used to build European wealth and they were called non-human. And even according to our own laws, our constitution declared three fifths of a human being.So when I heard Netanyahu and his generals dehumanizing the Palestinians, I knew, that for me was like the first signal, and it happened on the first day. It was the first signal that we are about to witness a genocide. They are preparing us. They are grooming us to participate in genocide. And I, as a theologian, as an ethicist, as a Christian, would lose my credibility if I remained silent and became complicit in that genocide through my silence. Because having studied the genocides that I mentioned earlier and the oppressions that I mentioned earlier, I know that most of those spaces were Christian spaces.Sy Hoekstra: Right.Jonathan Walton: Yeah.Lisa Sharon Harper: And they happened, those genocides and those oppressions were able to happen because Christians were silent.Jonathan Walton: Gathering all that up, I think… I mean, we've had Munther on this podcast, we've talked with him throughout the years. When he said, “The role of Christians is to be prophetic, to speak prophetic truth to power,” something clicked for me in that as you're talking about our witness being compromised, as you are saying, “Hey, let's ask this question, who does this benefit? What is happening?”Lisa Sharon Harper: That's right.Jonathan Walton: The reality that he said, “All of us are Nathan when it comes to empire. We are supposed to be the ones who say this is wrong.” And that resonates with what you said, like how can I have integrity and be silent? Genocide necessitates silence and complicity in that way from people.Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah. And here's the thing. How are you gonna go to church and sing worship songs to Jesus on Sunday and be silent Monday through Saturday witnessing the slaying of the image of God on earth. You hear what I'm saying?Sy Hoekstra: Yes.Lisa Sharon Harper: Like my understanding of shalom now is not just we do these things in order to be nice and so we live together. It is that shalom is intricately connected with the flourishing of the kingdom of God.Sy Hoekstra: Right.Lisa Sharon Harper: It is the flourishing of the kingdom of God.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Lisa Sharon Harper: And the kingdom of God flourishes wherever the image of God flourishes. And the image of God is born by every single human being. And part of what it means to be made in the image of God is that humans who are made in the image of God exercise agency, stewardship of the world. And the most drastic example or practice of warfare against the image of God is war.Jonathan Walton: Yes [laughs]. Absolutely.Lisa Sharon Harper: War annihilates the image of God on earth. It is a declaration of war, not only on Palestinians or Gazans or even Israel or the empire anywhere. It is a declaration of war against God. It is a declaration of war against God.Sy Hoekstra: A phrase that has stuck in my head about you was from one of the endorsements to your last book Fortune. Jemar Tisby described you as a long-distance runner for justice.Jonathan Walton: [laughs] That's awesome.Sy Hoekstra: That always struck me as accurate.Jonathan Walton: That is great.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs] Not a sprinter.Jonathan Walton: No.Sy Hoekstra: Not a sprinter.Lisa Sharon Harper: That was really pretty cool. I was like, “Oh Jemar, thank you.” [laughter]Jonathan Walton: I need that. We just in here. That's great [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: So here's the question then, where does your hope and sustenance, how do you get that? Where does it come from?Lisa Sharon Harper: Honestly, it comes from focusing on the kingdom. Focusing on Jesus. Focusing on doing the kingdom of God. And when you do it you witness it. And when you witness it, you get hope. I mean, I've learned, even in the last year, an actual life lesson for me was hope comes in the doing. Hope comes in the doing. So as we do the kingdom, we gain hope. As we show up for the protests so that we confront the powers that are slaying the image of God on earth, we gain hope. As we speak out against it and form our words in ways that do battle with the thinking that lays the groundwork for ethics of erasure, we gain hope because we're doing it. We see the power.The kingdom of God exists wherever there are people who actually bow to the ethic of God. Who do it. Who do the ethic of God. You can't say you believe in Jesus and not actually do his ethic. You don't believe in him. What do you believe? He never said, “Believe stuff about me.” He said, “Follow me.” He literally never said, “Believe stuff about me.”Sy Hoekstra: Yeah [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Right.Lisa Sharon Harper: He said, “Follow me. Do what I do. ”And that's ethics. That's the question of, how do we live together in the world?? So we do and we gain hope.Jonathan Walton: Amen.Sy Hoekstra: I like that. That reminds me of Romans 5: There'll be glory in our suffering. Suffering produces perseverance, character, and character hope. It's like, it's not an intuitive thing necessarily, if you haven't done it before. But that's great, and that's a really, I like that a lot as a place for us to end [laughs]. To get out there and do it, and you will find the hope as you go.Jonathan Walton: Amen.Sy Hoekstra: Can you tell us where people can find you or work that you would want people to see of yours?Lisa Sharon Harper: Absolutely. Well, hey, first of all, thank you guys so much for having me on, and it's been really a joy to start my day in conversation with you. Y'all can follow what I'm up to at Lisasharonharper.com. I live on Instagram, and so you can [laughter], you can definitely follow on Instagram and Facebook. And Freedom Road Podcast is a place where a lot of people have found the conversation and are tracking with it. And I'm always trying to have guests on that are pushing me and causing me to ask deeper questions. And so I really, I welcome you to join us on Freedom Road.Sy Hoekstra: Yes. I wholeheartedly second that.Lisa Sharon Harper: And of course, the books [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: And of course, the books.Jonathan Walton: [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: Fortune, Very Good Gospel, all the rest.Lisa Sharon Harper: Yeah, exactly.Sy Hoekstra: Lisa Sharon Harper, thank you so much for joining us. This has been a delight.Jonathan Walton: Thank you so much.Lisa Sharon Harper: Thank you Sy. Thank you, Jonathan.[The intro piano music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out.]Sy Hoekstra: Jonathan, that was a fantastic discussion. Tell me what you are thinking about coming out of it?Jonathan Walton: Yeah, I think one, is just it's just really helpful to talk with someone who's been around for a while. I think most of us… I'm 38 years old, but let's just say millennials and younger, we don't consume or receive a lot of long form content.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: And we don't also engage with people who are willing and able to mentor us through difficult situations. We're getting sound bites from TikTok and Instagram and YouTube, and we don't get the whole of knowledge or experiences. So listening to Lisa talk about, “I grabbed this bit from L.A., I grabbed this bit from Palestine, I grabbed this bit from Croatia, I grabbed this bit.” We cannot microwave transformation. We cannot have instant growth. There is no, let me go through the side door of growing to maturity in my faithfulness and walk with Jesus.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: There is just doing it. And so when she said, “I find the hope in the doing,” you don't learn that unless you have done stuff. That's a big takeaway. I also appreciated just her take on the genocide in Palestine. And because she was mentored and has talked with Miroslav Volf, she knows what it smells like, because she's done the work in her own history of her own background. If you have not read Fortune, go read the book. The reason Black folks cannot find who we [laughs] come from is because they were enslaved and killed. The reason we cannot find the indigenous and native folks we were related to is because there was genocide. So there's these things.And she goes through that in her book, and to talk about how to wield our stories when we don't have one, or how to wield a story of tragedy to turn it into something transformative, is something I admire, appreciate and hope that I can embody if and when the time comes for myself, when I have collected and grown and have asked similar questions. I'm appreciative of what she had to say. And you know, I know I asked her the question about not burning things down, and so I appreciated that [laughs] answer as well. Like, there's just a lot of wisdom, and I hope that folks listening were able to glean as well.Sy Hoekstra: I totally agree with all that. I think all that was very powerful. And there isn't it… kind of reminds me of when her book we've mentioned a few times, The Very Good Gospel, came out. It came out in 2016, but like I said, when we were talking to her, the stuff that was in that book she had been thinking about for more than a decade at that point. And it was very clear. When I was reading it, I was like, “Oh, this is Lisa's bag—this is what she was talking to us about when we were in college in 2008.”Jonathan Walton: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: At that camp, but she'd been thinking about it for even longer than that. It was just like, you can tell when something isn't like, “Oh, I had to research this because I was gonna write a book about it, so I had to learn about it.” You know what I mean? You can tell when someone does that versus when someone's been soaking in a subject. It's like marinating in it for 12, 15, years, or whatever it was. She just has a lot of that stuff [laughs]. You know what? I just used the image of marinating and marinating and microwaving are very different things [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yes, that is true.Sy Hoekstra: One takes a lot longer.Jonathan Walton: Put a steak in a microwave, see if you enjoy it [laughter].Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, so I totally agree with all that. I came out of it thinking a lot about how the things that she said thematically kind of connected to some thoughts that I've had, but also just in terms of historical events. Because I told her this after the interview, when I moved to Switzerland in 2001 I was 13, my family moved over there. It was just at the end of the Yugoslavian Civil War, which was what she was talking about Bosnia and Croatia and Serbia. And Switzerland took in a ton of refugees from that war.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: So my neighborhood, there was a big apartment complex. I mean, big for Swiss standards, kind of small honestly for American standards. But there's an apartment complex around the corner from my house that they had put a bunch of Bosnian refugees in. And their school was right down the road, the public school. And so my neighborhood in high school was like the kids playing around in the streets and in the playground or whatever were Bosnian refugees. And the combination of the three countries, Serbian, Croatia and Bosnia, used to be one big thing called Yugoslavia, right.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: And the first two syllables of the word Yugoslavia were in Switzerland, a slur for anyone who was from that country. And there was just a ton of bigotry toward them, basically because they displayed poverty [laughter]. Like they were one of the most visible groups of poor people in Zurich. And again, like Lisa said, this wasn't about racism. Everybody's White. But you're talking about like there were ethnic differences and there was class differences. And people dismissed them for their criminality, or for how the young men would get in fights in bars and on the streets or whatever, and all that kind of stuff. And then, you know how a lot of refugees from the Somalian war ended up in Minneapolis and St Paul, just like where a lot of them were placed in the US, and then a lot of them moved into North Dakota.It's like, a lot of… which is where my family's from. I've been there a lot. I hear a lot of people talking about the politics in that region. And you would hear similar stuff about them, except that it was about race. That it was, “Oh, we have crime now because we have Black people and we haven't before.” I mean, obviously Minneapolis, they did, but not really in the parts of North Dakota that my family's from. And so it was this lesson for me about the thing that Lisa was talking about, respect for the image of God in all people and how when you bring people who are somehow differentiable [laughter] from you, somebody who's from another grid, you can call them a different class, a different race, whatever, we will find any excuse to just say, “Oh, these are just bad people,” instead of taking responsibility for them, loving our neighbor, doing any of the stuff that we were commanded to do by Jesus, to the stranger, the foreigner, the immigrant in our midst.We will find whatever dividing lines we can to write people off. It can be race, it can be poverty, it can be, it doesn't matter. It's not what we should actually be saying about poverty or violence, or the fact that people are getting mugged or whatever. What we should be saying is we have a bunch of people who just got here from a war torn society. They were cut off from education and job skills and opportunities and all kinds of other things. And this is, when you just stick them in a society that treats them like garbage, this is what happens every single time, without fail. And so what we need to do is [laughter] be good neighbors.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: Treat people well and forgive when people wrong us and that sort of thing. And we just will find any excuse in the world not to do that. And it's because we are not starting from that place that Miroslav Volf, who I love by the way, said to Lisa, is the place where you have to start everything when it comes to these kinds of conflicts, which is respect for the image of God in other people. The fact that they didn't do that in Yugoslavia led to slaughter en masse, but it still happens when you leave and you put yourself in a different context. There's still that lack of respect, and it's still harming people, even when there's quote- unquote, peace.Jonathan Walton: This opens up another can of worms. But I thought to myself…Sy Hoekstra: Go for it.Jonathan Walton: …it's much easier to say, “I just don't want to help,” than it is to say, “This person's evil,” or, “These people are bad.” Because I think at the core of it, someone says, “Is this your neighbor?” Jesus says, “Is this your neighbor?” And the Jewish leader of the day does not want to help the Samaritan, whatever the reasoning is. Right?Sy Hoekstra: Right.Jonathan Walton: We're trying to justify our innate desire to not help our neighbor. As opposed to just dealing with the reality that many of us, when we see people who are broken and messed up, quote- unquote broken, quote- unquote messed up, quote- unquote on the opposite side of whatever power dynamic or oppressive structure that is set up or has just made, quote- unquote poor choices, some of us, our gut reaction is, I don't want to help them. And if we would just, I think just stop there, be like, “My first inclination is, I'm not interested in helping them.” And paused it there and reflected on why we don't want to do that internally, as opposed to turning towards them and making them the reason. Because they were just sitting there.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: The person on the street who's experiencing homelessness was just sitting there. The one in 10 students in New York City that is homeless is just sitting there. They're just there. And so if we were able to slow down for a second and say, “Why don't I want this person to live in my neighborhood, in my own stuff? Well, I don't like change. I'm afraid of this being different. I'm uncomfortable with different foods. I'm afraid of my favorite coffee shop or restaurant being taken away. I'm uncomfortable around people of different faiths. I feel weird when I don't hear my language being spoken.” If we were able to turn those reflections inward before we had uncomfortable feelings, turned them into actions, and then justified those actions with theology that has nothing to do with the gospel of Jesus, then I wonder what would be different. But that that slowing down is really hard, because it's easier to feel the feeling, react, and then justify my reaction with a divine mandate.Sy Hoekstra: Or just plug those feelings into stereotypes and all of the existing ways of thinking about people that we provide for each other so that we can avoid doing that very reflection.Jonathan Walton: That's all that I thought about there [laughs]. I'm going to be thinking about that for a while actually. So Sy, which tab is still open for you? We're going to talk about a segment where we dive a little bit deeper into one of the recommendations from our newsletter. And remember, you can get this newsletter for free just by signing up for our mailing list at KTFPress.com. You'll get recommendations on articles, podcasts and other media that both of us have found that will help you in your political education and discipleship. Plus you'll get reflections to keep us grounded, from me and Sy that help keep us grounded every week as we engage in just this challenging work and together in the news about what's happening and all that.You can get everything I'm just talking about at KTFPress.com and more. So go get that free subscription at KTFPress.com. So Sy, want to summarize that main story point for us?Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. I mean, this is interesting, because when I wrote about this, which is the story about Haitian immigrants in Ohio, it was two days after the debate, and the story has only exploded since then, and I think a lot of people kind of probably have the gist of it already. But some completely unfounded rumors based on fourth hand nonsense and some blurry pictures of people that have nothing whatsoever to do with Haitian immigrants started spreading online among right wing conspiracy theorists saying, for some reason, that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating pets.Jonathan Walton: [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: Stealing, kidnapping and eating the resident's pets.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: And the absurdity of this story was immediately apparent to me being someone who married into a Haitian immigrant family, Haitians do not eat cats and dogs [laughs]. It's a ridiculous thing to have to say, but I say it because I understand, maybe you have no, maybe you know nothing whatsoever about Haiti and you think, “Well, I don't know. There are some cultures around the world where they eat animals that we think of as pets or that we don't think of as food or whatever.” And like, okay, fine, that's true. It's not Haiti, though.Jonathan Walton: Right [laughter].Sy Hoekstra: The idea of eating a cat or a dog to a Haitian is as weird to them as it is to us. I promise you, I've had so much Haitian food [laughter]. So basically this rumor spread, Donald Trump mentions that the debates and now there are Proud Boys in Springfield, Ohio, marching around with cat posters and memes. There are people calling in bomb threats to schools and to government buildings, to all other institutions in Springfield. The Haitian population is very afraid of Donald Trump. At this point, we're recording this on Friday, September 20, he has said that he will travel to Springfield, and basically everyone there has said, “Please do not do that. You're only going to stoke more problems.”And every last piece of evidence that has been offered as evidence, which was always pretty weak in the first place, has been debunked at this point. There was one, the Vance campaign just recent, the past couple days, gave a police report to the Washington Post and said, “See, we found it. Here's a woman who actually filed a police report that says that my Haitian neighbors took my cat and ate my cat.” And the Washington Post did what, for some reason Republicans never expect journalists to do, and actually did their job and called up the woman who said, “Oh, yeah, I filed that report, and then I found my cat in my basement, and they were fine.” [laughs]Jonathan Walton: Yes. In her house.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. And so I don't know, there have been a couple of blips like that where somebody is like, “See, I found evidence,” and then someone was immediately like, “That's not actually evidence.” There have been rumors of other rallies or whatever. It's basically just becoming a focal point and a meme for all of Trump and his supporters, immigration resentment.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: There was a story today about people in Alabama being concerned about, some small town in Alabama being concerned about becoming the next Springfield because they had 60 Haitian immigrants in their town of 12,000 people [laughs]. I don't know. It's all just bizarre. The main actual point though, around the actual immigration policy stuff, Gabrielle and a few other people, my wife's name is Gabrielle, and a few other Haitians that I've seen comment on this, keep bringing up the Toni Morrison quote about how racism is a distraction from actual issues.Jonathan Walton: That is literally what I was gonna read.Sy Hoekstra: There you go. Okay [laughs]. So the actual issue here is that there's this community of about 60,000 people in Ohio that has had an influx of about 15,000 Haitian immigrants, and so it's a lot of strain on the schools and housing and stuff like that, which those are real questions. But also, the Haitian immigrants are there because the local economy revitalization efforts led to a bunch of manufacturers coming into Springfield and having more jobs than laborers, and explicitly saying, “We need you to bring in more laborers.” And so they were Haitian immigrants who are legally in the country [laughs], who have social security numbers and temporary protected status at the very least if not green cards or whatever, have been filling these jobs, and not remotely even a majority of these jobs.They're just filling in the extra 10, 15 percent or whatever the workforce that these manufacturers thought they needed. And the story has become, “Haitians are taking our jobs,” which is absolute nonsense.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: So those are the main points of the story. Sorry, I talked a while. I have a lot of feelings about this one [laughs].Jonathan Walton: No, I mean…Sy Hoekstra: But Jonathan, what are your thoughts?Jonathan Walton: For a good reason. Let me just say this quote by Toni Morrison, “The function, the very serious function of racism, is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again your reason for being. Somebody says your head isn't shaped properly, and you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.” So along with that Toni Morrison quote, I want to put that side by side with this quote from Robert Jones Jr.'s National Book of the Year, The Prophets.“To survive this place, you had to want to die. That was the way of the world as remade by the Toubab.” Toubab is a Western and Central African word for colonizer, European. “They push people into the mud and then call them filthy. They forbade people from accessing knowledge of the world, and then called them simple. They worked people until their empty hands were twisted and bleeding and can do no more, than they called them lazy. They forced people to eat innards from troughs, and then called them uncivilized. They kidnapped babies and shattered families and then called them incapable of love. They raped and lynched and cut up people into parts and called the pieces savages. They stepped on people's throats with all of their might and asked why the people couldn't breathe.”“And then when people made an attempt to break the foot or cut it off one they screamed, “Chaos,” and claimed that mass murder was the only way to restore order. They praised every daisy and then called every blackberry a stain. They bled the color from God's face, gave it a dangle between its legs, and called it holy. Then when they were done breaking things, they pointed to the sky and called the color of the universe itself a sin, [black]. And then the whole world believed them, even some of Samuel's [or Black] people. Especially some of Samuel's people. This was untoward and made it hard to open your heart to feel a sense of loyalty that wasn't a strategy. It was easier to just seal yourself up and rock yourself to sleep.”That to me, like those two quotes together. So the Son of Baldwin, Robert Jones Jr, great follow on Substack and that quote from Toni Morrison, an iconic Black female writer, wrote Beloved, The Bluest Eye, those two things together, like what racism does to a person. The giving up, the I just, “What can I do?” and the distraction for the people who do have effort, are just two roads that I wish we just didn't have to go down. But most people will spend our energy either resigned because we've spent too much or pushing against the lie as the powers that be continue to carry out genocide, continue to extract limestone from Haiti, continues to extract resources from Haiti, continue to destroy African economies through extraction in the Congo and Benin and all the places.And so my prayer and longing is that the resilience of the Haitian people and the legacy of Toussaint and all of that would be present in the people that are there and the diaspora. And I believe that is true. And I pray for safety for all of the people that still have to live in this, what is fastly becoming a sundown town.Sy Hoekstra: Right.Jonathan Walton: It's a very real thing. And I talked to someone else. Oh, actually [laughs], it was a DM on Instagram that I sent to Brandy, and she agreed that there's a lot of PTSD from when Trump was president, because things like this got said every day.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: All the time. And downstream of rhetoric are real actions, like lawyers and taxi drivers being mobilized to go to the airport to try and get the, quote- unquote, Muslim banned people now representation and get them to their destinations. You had very real terrible child separation that happened, that children are still separated from their families right now. And so downstream of all this stuff, are real, real concrete actions. And I am praying that… my daughter asked me this morning, Maya, she said, “Do I want Trump to win, or do I want Harris to win?” And I said, “Maya, I hope that Trump does not win.” She goes “Well, if Harris wins, will it be better?”I said, “It depends on who you ask, but I think there will be a better chance for us to move towards something more helpful if Trump does not win.” And then she said she knew some people who are supportive of Trump, and I told her things that her eight year old brain cannot handle.Sy Hoekstra: But wait, what does that mean? [laughs]Jonathan Walton: I just started breaking down why that is because I couldn't help myself.Sy Hoekstra: Oh, why people support him.Jonathan Walton: Why people would support him.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, okay.Jonathan Walton: And then she quickly pivoted back to Story Pirates, which is a wonderful podcast about professional improvisational actors telling kid stories like Cecily Strong and things like that. It's hilarious. But all that to say, I think this is a prime example of the type of chaos and environment that is created when someone like Trump is president and the cameras are on him at all times. And I hope that is not the reality, because he absolutely does not have any meaningful policy positions besides Project 2025. I don't know if you saw… I'm talking a lot. He was in a town hall in Michigan, and someone asked him what his child care policies were. Like what actionable policy does he have? And he said a word salad and a buffet of dictionaries that you don't know what he was talking about.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: It was nonsense that somehow ended up with immigration being a problem.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: And so I think that the worst factions of our country will have a vehicle to live out their worst fantasies about deportations and violence and racism, White supremacy and patriarchy and all those things, if he becomes president. And that's really sad to me, and I think it's a preview of that is what's happening in Springfield right now.Sy Hoekstra: Here's another angle on this. And it fits into everything you just said, but it's just from a different angle, bringing a little bit of Haitian history here. The Haitian Revolution is probably, I can't say that I've read everything to guarantee this, is probably the greatest act of defiance against White supremacy that the world has ever seen. For those who don't know, it happened right after the American Revolution, it was just the enslaved people of the island of Saint-Domingue, which is now Haiti in the Dominican Republic, rising up and overthrowing the French and taking the island for themselves and establishing, like writing the world's second written constitution and establishing basically the world's second democracy.Really the world's first actual democracy [laughs] if you think about how American democracy was restricted to a very small group of people. If you read things that people in colonial governments or slave owners throughout the Western Hemisphere wrote and like when they spoke to each other about their fears over the next decades before slavery is abolished, Haiti is constantly on their minds.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: They never stop talking about it. It's actually mentioned in some of the declarations of secession before the Civil War. When the states wrote why they were seceding, it was like, “Because the Union wants Haiti to happen to us.” For the plantation owners to be killed. It was an obsession, and so the colonial powers in Europe, you may have read some of the work that the New York Times did in the New York Times Magazine last year, maybe it was two years ago, about this. But the amount of energy from European powers that went into making sure that Haiti as a country never had access to global markets or the global economy, that they were constantly impoverished.They were still finding ways to extract money from Haiti, even though it was an independent country. The fact that the US colonized Haiti for almost 20 years in the early 20th century, like the ways that we have controlled who is in power in their government from afar. We've propped up some of the most brutal dictators in the history of the world, honestly. We have been punishing and making sure that everybody knows that the defiance of white supremacy that Haiti showed will never be tolerated.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: And so it is so easy for Haitians at every stage to become a scapegoat for whatever anxiety we have about the world becoming less White, the world becoming less of like under our control. Haitian immigrants were the reason that we started using Guantanamo Bay as a prison. They were the first people that we ever imprisoned there. We changed our policies, we like… Do you know for a long time, they wouldn't let Haitian people donate blood in America?Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: Because we said they'd had HIV. They had dirty blood, is what we said about them for years. Haiti is not at the bottom because of its choice. That's what we're constantly telling ourselves. Pat Robertson went on his show after the earthquake in 2010, and said the reason that these things still happen to Haiti is because they did Voodoo before their revolution, because they're pagans or whatever. We will make up any reason to not just take responsibility. Again, like with the Bosnians, the Somalis, we make up any reason to not just take responsibility for our actions.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: And this is just a continuation of that. And I don't know that I have a further point beyond that, other than to say, everything that Trump and Vance and the Proud Boys and all of them are doing in Springfield right now is just a continuation of that. “You're immigrants that we will call illegal, even though you're not right and you are Black. Your whole pride in your culture and your history is about the way that you defied White supremacy, and you're foreign to us, and you are strange. And we will say that you do things like eat cats that you don't do, and we will just believe it, because we don't actually want to know anything about you other than that you are a monster who defies the way that the world should be ordered.”Jonathan Walton: Yep.Sy Hoekstra: I'm trying to stop myself from tearing up right now, and I don't know that I have points beyond this. Do you know what I mean? I'm just angry because this is like people, this is my wife and my daughter. I'm probably just taking time now to do what I should have done earlier in this process, which is just feel all the sadness and the anger. But that is what I feel. The Trump and Vance and the people that are a part of his movement are just horrifying. The fruit of their way of seeing the world is just evil, and I think that's where I'm leaving it for now [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities and spiritual wickedness in high places. And the very thing that Haitian people are called, evil, voodoo all those things, is what White supremacy is.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: That is evil, and that is wicked, and it has been at work for centuries. And in Jesus name, as Connie Anderson would pray in the work she does with White people around White supremacy and leaving that behind, and she says she just prays that it would be overthrown. That demonic power would be overthrown, and people would be disobedient to that leaning.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: And I pray the same would be true for many, many people before and after the polls close on November the 5th.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. So in the newsletter, I put an email address where you could send a PayPal donation to the local Haitian community center. We'll have a link to that in the show notes too. The Haitians on the ground, especially some of the pastors and the churches there, are doing some incredible work to try and keep the peace. I think people have been overlooking that. There was a decent Christianity Today article on kind of what's going on the ground in Ohio, but it really focused on what the local White churches are doing to help [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: And I really need people to focus on the Haitians, like what is actually happening there, and the fact that there are White supremacists marching around the town. And how terrifying that has to be for them, and how the people who are doing the work to keep the peace there are heroic, and they should not have to be. And they deserve all of our support and all our prayers. So I appreciate anything that you can, any intercession that you can do, any money that you can give. Any support that you can be. Any help that you can be just spreading the truth to people who may not be wanting to hear it or who might not be hearing it from their news sources right now,Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: We're gonna end there, then. Thank you so much for listening. Please remember to go to KTFPress.com and become a paid subscriber and support everything we're doing, the media that we're making here. Get the bonus episodes to this show, come to our monthly Zoom calls to have a chat with me and Jonathan about everything that's going on in the election. Bring us your questions, get access to comments on our posts and more pl

Zdravo! Andrew and Adam are with you to provide a comprehensive (as can be) preview to the upcoming crucial international break! Ukraine face Bosnia in a Euro 2024 Q Play Off Semi Final in Zenica on Thursday so who better than friend of the pod - Bosnian sports journalist Haris Mrkonja – who works for broadcaster N1 to join us to talk about it all from BOTH sides of pitch! A massive thank you to this episode's sponsor WatchUPL.com  (more info below) In this week's episode we talk: Ukraine dissected Ukraine squad – who's in it / who isn't? Injury concerns – Stepanenko and Tsyhankov.. Form of other players? Some good, others worrying, unknown? Lunin or Trubin? Marbella training camp latest How will Ukraine set up – the usual formation? The Bosnia Perspective What's the feeling in Bosnia ahead of this game? Savo Milosevic – What kind of manager is he? What can Ukraine expect – stylistically Key players to watch What form are Dzeko and Pjanic in? 4 russian based players in the squad - why? and why have Bosnians chosen to move there? Atmosphere at sold out Zenica – Bilino Polje General problems with Bosnian association atm and its impact on the team? The future? The Zbirna Vertical U17's make the Euros! U19's with Kristian Shevchenko included get underway this week! U21's - how will they cope with no Brazhko or Vanat? U23's – A friendly in Japan Listen to the above and MUCH, MUCH MORE in our latest episode! ********************************************** This episode is sponsored by WatchUPL.com WatchUPL.com is the only official place to watch the majority of UPL games in the UK, USA, and CANADA!   There's no better place to watch LNZ v Minaj this upcoming weekend or 7 of the 8 UPL games coming up in MD 22 after the international break! ********************************************** Want to help the families of fallen ultras cope through the first difficult months without their husbands, partners, fathers, brothers and sons? More Info & ways to donate here: standsofheroes.com ************************************************ Please subscribe to Ukraine + Football on your favoured podcast provider and leave a review if you are able to! You can also RATE us on Apple Podcasts & NOW Spotify - please give us 5 stars if you are able to! We are also now on YOUTUBE - for vlogs and live streams please subscribe here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyiNMhP18iGwwov5FkcMY7Q Please email any questions, feedback or ideas to: ukraineplusfootball@gmail.com

Christine Evans' Nadia (U Iowa Press, 2023) is a dark novel about how the trauma of war follows people no matter how far they've fled. A few years after the Balkan War, two refugees from Sarajevo are temping in the same questionable London office. Nadia, who is Bosnian, is unhinged by memories of starvation, deprivation, and losing everyone she loved, including her family and her girlfriend, Sanja. She sees potential snipers and visions of Sanja throughout London, sometimes becoming unhinged by it. All she has is her office friends, and the Indian family where she has tea with buns every day. Iggy was a Serbian sniper who gunned down Bosnians as part of a militaristic street gang, but he justifies all the innocent people he kills by weighing them against the people he saved by distracting his friends or purposefully missing. They're both forced to confront their choices during the chaotic days of the war, but Nadia still struggles with survivor's guilt, the ethical choices she made in taking a job in a shady office, and her queer sexuality. Christine Evans writes internationally produced plays, opera libretti, and fiction. Christine's theater and opera work has been staged at the Sydney Opera House, the American Repertory Theater and many other venues, and her plays are published by Samuel French. She is a multiple MacDowell fellow, VCCA fellow, and a recipient of several DC Council on the Arts & Humanities Fellowships. Originally from Australia, she is a Professor of Performing Arts at Georgetown University, and lives in Washington, DC. She loves the ocean beyond all reason, dreams of dividing her time (as they say on the book jackets) between DC and Australia and has just dusted off her mandolin to start playing music again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Christine Evans' Nadia (U Iowa Press, 2023) is a dark novel about how the trauma of war follows people no matter how far they've fled. A few years after the Balkan War, two refugees from Sarajevo are temping in the same questionable London office. Nadia, who is Bosnian, is unhinged by memories of starvation, deprivation, and losing everyone she loved, including her family and her girlfriend, Sanja. She sees potential snipers and visions of Sanja throughout London, sometimes becoming unhinged by it. All she has is her office friends, and the Indian family where she has tea with buns every day. Iggy was a Serbian sniper who gunned down Bosnians as part of a militaristic street gang, but he justifies all the innocent people he kills by weighing them against the people he saved by distracting his friends or purposefully missing. They're both forced to confront their choices during the chaotic days of the war, but Nadia still struggles with survivor's guilt, the ethical choices she made in taking a job in a shady office, and her queer sexuality. Christine Evans writes internationally produced plays, opera libretti, and fiction. Christine's theater and opera work has been staged at the Sydney Opera House, the American Repertory Theater and many other venues, and her plays are published by Samuel French. She is a multiple MacDowell fellow, VCCA fellow, and a recipient of several DC Council on the Arts & Humanities Fellowships. Originally from Australia, she is a Professor of Performing Arts at Georgetown University, and lives in Washington, DC. She loves the ocean beyond all reason, dreams of dividing her time (as they say on the book jackets) between DC and Australia and has just dusted off her mandolin to start playing music again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

One in three Bosnians live outside of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Most Bosnians outside their country, about 87 percent, are dispersed around Europe. Though only about 10 percent live in the United States, the country is home to the biggest Bosnian city abroad.With Akif Cogo, Patrick McCarthy, and Gino Srdjan Jevdjević. Featuring music by Kultur Shock.The Remembering Yugoslavia podcast explores the memory of a country that no longer exists. Created, produced, and hosted by Peter Korchnak. New episodes one to two times per month.Show notes/transcript: RememberingYugoslavia.com/Podcast-Sarajevo-USA/Instagram: @RememberingYugoslaviaSUPPORT THE SHOW: Patreon :: PayPal :: SubscriptionSupport the show

A special edition for patrons: We examine the unique and complex history of Bosnia, at once a borderland and a world unto itself, and the only Slavic country in which Islam has ever been the majority faith. With the help of readings from the classic novel, "The Bridge on the Drina," we trace how Bosnians' confused search for a national identity and a national destiny led ultimately to the fateful assassination that triggered a world war. Image: Travnik Mosque, Bosnia Suggested further reading: Noel Malcolm, "Bosnia: A Short History"; Ivo Andric, "The Bridge on the Drina." Please support this podcast to hear the whole lecture: https://www.patreon.com/posts/origins-of-first-86366245

Released in November of 2001, Behind Enemy Lines came out in a totally different time in history. 9/11 had just happened, and tensions were high all over the world, especially in the U.S. This movie is a little dose of “rah-rah NATO” rescuing an American navigator from…Yugoslavians? No, Serbs. But there are Bosnians there too, and Croats? What _exactly _was going on over there? Don't worry, this movie doesn't really cover that, and there is no quiz at the end. Loosely based on the 1995 downing of U.S. Air Force pilot Scott O'Grady (who sued the production for not getting his permission to tell the story), the film is a pretty straight-forward action movie. Owen Wilson's Lt. Burnett is shot down by Serb militia, the U.S. pushes to go rescue him, and all the while NATO is concerned about the rescue threatening the tenuous cease-fire agreement and the war starting back up. This is not a complex political thriller, but more of a popcorn war movie that is equally as good as it is bad. Join us for Tyler's return to the show as he uses his training and expertise you heard all about in our last episode to analyze what the film got right and what it got wrong. Kt and Liam will be back next episode, we promise! Next Episode: The Woman King (2022) Feel free to contact us with any questions or comments! Our website: www.dangerclosepod.com Or join our Facebook group at: Danger Close - Podcast Discussion Group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1442264899493646/) If you like the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify If you would like to support the show and get extra episodes where we discuss sci-fi, fantasy, and comedy war movies, go to our Patreon page at: www.dangerclosepod.com/support warmovies #warfilms #war #film #films #movies #history #africa #benin #dahomey

Patreon Preview: chaos reigns again. It's been a year but if you haven't listened to the previous Bosnians Built the Pyramids then none of this will make sense. LISTEN TO THE FULL EP: https://www.patreon.com/cornerspaeti HOW TO REACH US: Corner Späti https://twitter.com/cornerspaeti Julia https://twitter.com/KMarxiana Rob https://twitter.com/leninkraft Nick https://twitter.com/sternburgpapi Uma https://twitter.com/umawrnkl Ciarán https://twitter.com/CiaranDold Special Guests: Josie Parkinson and Matthew Healy.

The Bosnian diaspora in St. Louis is preserving their culture while learning The American Way.

Kit Klarenberg returns to the progreamme to talk about his recent article for Mint Press News which covers the collapse of the US trained and quipped Afghan army.  We take in the levels of delusion within the government of Ashraf Ghani, the enormous fraud carried out by many "contractors" and the similarities to Ukraine. Along the way we also take in the Balkan wars and how the Bosnians were manipulated and then discarded by US imperialism. Be sure to follow Kit on twitter  Outro Music is 'The Banner of the Party' performed in the five languages of Socialist Yugoslavia Performed by the Choir and Orchestra of Radio Novi Sad in 1977 Composer: Oskar Danon (1948)

No strangers to conflict, a small contingent of Bosnian have deployed to Helmand Province to assist their Danish colleagues in Gereshk. This version includes title graphics and reporter voiceover.

St. Louis Bosnian population is influencing the region's religious life, building economic and civic organizations and partaking in recreation. (Think soccer.)

On the occasion of the Independence Day of BiH, which Bosnians and Herzegovinians celebrate in their homeland and around the world every March 1, we spoke with the Ambassador of BiH for Australia and New Zealand, Mr Kemal Muftić. New initiatives, relations with communities... are some of the topics. - U povodu obilježavanja Dana nezavisnosti BiH kojeg Bosanci i Hercegovci proslavljaju u domovini ali i širom svijeta svakog 1. marta, razgovarali smo sa ambasadorom BiH za Australiju i Novi Zeland, gospodinom Kemalom Muftićem. Nove inicijative, odnosi sa zajednicama... neke su od tema.

We look at the top sites where you can experience firsthand the groundbreaking contributions of Spain's greatest artists. Then tour guides from Wales and Bosnia share the facets of their nationalities that mean most to them — such as the Welsh fortitude for enduring the blustery climate that produces such beautiful landscapes, and Bosnians' knack for using humor to defuse the thornier aspects of life in the Balkans. For more information on Travel with Rick Steves - including episode descriptions, program archives and related details - visit www.ricksteves.com.

There is little about the Western Balkans that its inhabitants agree on. Land, language, religion and belonging are all contested between Serbs, Bosnians, Croatians and Albanians, who live beside one another, next to borders they don't always recognise. One such group is the Kosovo Serbs; a largely Orthodox Christian group who live in Kosovo but identify with and are loyal to Serbia, often putting them at odds with the Albanian Muslim majority. For centuries, the Serbs have seen Kosovo as their homeland, and see the replacement- their word, not mine- of Serbs in the region by Albanian Muslims as an example of a regional- and since the wars of the 1990s, international- conspiracy against Serbia. It is the Kosovo Serbs, their beliefs and grievances, that are the subject of today's conversation.My guest for this conversation is Bojan Elek, a researcher at the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy, a Serbian think tank dedicated to covering goings-on in the Western Balkans. Bojan himself is Serb but was born in Kosovo, so his insights on this minority group not always treated well by their Albanian neighbours were fascinating to hear. 

He belongs to the younger generation of BH community activists in Australia, characterized by love for Bosnia, perseverance, and efficiency. Business-minded and successful, but his thoughts focused on the prosperity of his ancestral homeland. Mr. Jackman's greatest wish is for Bosnians and Herzegovinians of the world to unite, to invest in Bosnia, to strengthen it so that they can enjoy it. - Pripada mlađoj generaciji aktivista BH zajednice u Australiji koju karakteriše ljubav prema Bosni, ustrajnost i efikasnost. Poslovan i uspješan ali razmišljanjima okrenut prosperitetu domovine predaka. Najveća želja gospodina Jackmana je da se Bosanci i Hercegovci svijeta ujedine, da ulažu u Bosnu, da je ojačaju kako bi u njoj mogli uživati.

A documentary about Bosnians who took refuge in St. Louis during the Bosnian War, “A New Home,” can now be streamed on Amazon Prime Video. We spoke with the film's director Joseph Puleo as well as two Bosnians featured in the film, Nejla Mustafic and Nedim Ramic, about their experiences.

"Serbia is not yet ready for the Franco-German proposal Regarding the Franco-German proposal for a Serbia-Kosovo solution, which includes the acceptance of Kosovo's independence, we must take into account the notion of Serbian superiority which has been cultivated since the beginning of the 19th cen" "--START AD- #TheMummichogblogOfMalta Amazon Top and Flash Deals(Affiliate Link - You will support our translations if you purchase through the following link) - https://amzn.to/3CqsdJH Compare all the top travel sites in just one search to find the best hotel deals at HotelsCombined - awarded world's best hotel price comparison site. (Affiliate Link - You will support our translations if you purchase through the following link) - https://www.hotelscombined.com/?a_aid=20558 “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets."""" #Jesus #Catholic. Smooth Radio Malta is Malta's number one digital radio station, playing Your Relaxing Favourites - Smooth provides a ‘clutter free' mix, appealing to a core 35-59 audience offering soft adult contemporary classics. We operate a playlist of popular tracks which is updated on a regular basis. https://smooth.com.mt/listen/ Follow on Telegram: https://t.me/themummichogblogdotcom END AD---" "tury, writes Driton Tali. Driton Tali was a member of the AKR Parliamentary Group in Kosovo's Parliament at the time Kosovo declared independence in 2008 and was a political advisor for parliamentary Speaker Glauk Konjufca. Serbia has been raising tensions in Kosovo's northern municipalities for several days, most recently over the legal obligation of citizens of Kosovo to obtain vehicle plates with the RKS registration. Many citizens of the Serbian community in the northern municipalities of Kosovo continue to hold registration plates of the former Yugoslavia under Serbia's direction. Meanwhile, other citizens of the Serbian communities living in settlements all over Kosovo are using RKS registration plates with no issue. This is the latest in a continued pattern of Serbia refusing to recognise Kosovo's independence while trying to enforce its hegemony. But it comes with increased radical views among Serbians in the nationalist media. They accuse and attack other nationalities, such as Croatians, Bosnians, and Montenegrins, not just Kosovo citizens. This rhetoric has even increased towards Macedonians and the Macedonian Orthodox Church. This current situation is reminiscent of the late 1980s, when Slobodan Milosevic, with his propaganda apparatus, began the campaign against all non-Serbian people in the former Yugoslavia, resulting in the wars of the 90s. Russia's influence is also rife, and when combined with nationalism, we see a Serbian population that is 84% in favour of Putin's Russia and 88% of them against NATO and the West. The reality of these statistics is made clear when looking at the fact that there have also been mass protests in Belgrade and other Serbian cities in Putin's support. Russian flags, banners with Putin's face, and pro-Russian graffiti have become commonplace since the war started. This can be considered a form of “hybrid warfare”, and there are concerns this is intensifying across the region. There is also a strong feeling that Russia is trying to spread conflict in the Western Balkans, through Serbia, in the hope that it will relieve some of the international pressure it is currently facing. This also appears to have acted as a dog whistle for nationalist Serbs. Today, Serbia is led by Alexander Vučić, who, worked as the Minister of Information in the Government of Milosevic, otherwise known as the “Hitler of the Balkans”, during the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. He has since refused to recognise war crimes and even genocides carried out during regimes he is a part of. You also have the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ivica Dacic, known as “Little Sloba” in reference to Slobodan Milosevic, who was the lead

 Bios:Ernest Gray Jr. is the pastor of Keystone Baptist Church located in the West Garfield Park neighborhood of Chicago.  He is a graduate of the Moody Bible Institute with a degree in Pastoral Ministries, and a graduate of Wheaton College with a Master's Degree in Biblical Exegesis.  He completed his PhD coursework at McMaster Divinity College and is currently completing his thesis within the corpus of 1 Peter. Mr. Gray has taught in undergraduate school of Moody in the areas of Hermeneutics, first year Greek Grammar, General Epistles, the Gospel of John and Senior Seminar. It is Mr. Gray's hope to impact the African American church  through scholarship. Teaching has been one way that God has blessed him to live this out.  Ernest is also co-host of the newly released podcast Just Gospel with an emphasis upon reading today's social and racial injustices through a gospel lens. www.moodyradio.org    Jen Oyama Murphy  "My love of good stories led me to Yale University where I received a BA in English. Upon graduation, I felt called to bring individual stories into relationship with the Gospel Story, and I have worked in the areas of campus and church ministry, lay counseling, and pastoral care since 1989. Over the years, I sought a variety of ongoing education and training in the fields of psychology and theology, including graduate classes at The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology and Benedictine University. I also completed the Training Certificate and Externship programs at The Allender Center, and I previously held roles on their Training and Pastoral Care Team, as Manager of Leadership Development, and most recently as the Senior Director of The Allender Center. Believing that healing and growth happens in the context of relationship, I work collaboratively to create a safe coaching space of curiosity and kindness where honesty, care, desire, and imagination can grow. Using my experience and expertise in a trauma-informed, narrative-focused approach, I seek to help people live the story they were most meant for and heal from the ones they were not. I am passionate about personal support and development, particularly for leaders in nonprofit or ministry settings, including lay leaders who may not have a formal title or position. I'm especially committed to engaging the personal and collective stories of those who have felt invisible, marginalized, and oppressed. I love facilitating groups as well as working individually with people. I currently live in Chicago with my husband, and we have two adult daughters.Rebecca Wheeler Walston lives in Virginia, has completed  Law School at UCLA, holds a Master's in Marriage and Family Counseling, is also a licensed minister. Specializing in advising non-profits and small businesses. Specialties: providing the legal underpinning for start-up nonprofits and small businesses, advising nonprofit boards, 501c3 compliance, creating and reviewing business contracts.TJ PoonDr. Ernest Gray (00:41:40):Absolutely. Absolutely. There will be stories told in the next five, no, two or three years now about, this is the fascinating thing I'm trying to wrap my mind around is that it is this, I need to do a more research upon the Ukrainian Russian thing wherein you have, um, my ignorance, you have an apparent Eastern European, you have, uh, you know, have an eastern European kind of, this isn't anything about pigment autocracy, but culturally, I'm op I'm opposed to you because you have Russian descent, and I'm a Ukrainian descent. So upon the, upon the outside, it's not anything that has to do with the, with the merits of, of, of, uh, racial, racial, a racialized racialization. It has more to do with the cultural, um, ethnicity kind of, um, indicatives that create this hostility between the two. And to hear the atrocities that are ongoing right now against, you know, each o against the, the Ukrainian Russian conflict, right now, we're gonna hear about those things and, and, and hear just how egregious they are or whether it's the, um, the tusks and the Hutus in the Rwandan conflict, or whether it's the Bosnians versus the, um, the Serbians. I mean, there's gonna be a lot of that. There's, we, we find that these things occur, um, and that, and that it's, it's all because of these notions of superiority and, and tools of the enemy in order to, to, to divide and conquer. Um, and then coupled with power create, you know, devastating effects. I, I I, I, I think that there's a, um, there's a, there's a, the, the collectivist idea of seeing us all in the same boat with various facets is something that we need to strive. It's not easy to always to do. Um, but it's gotta happen. If we're going to create a, a better human, if we're not creative, if the Lord is gonna work in a way to, to help us, uh, move toward a better humanity, one that is at least honoring may not happen in our lifetime, may not happen until we see the Lord face to face. But at the same time, that's the work that we're, I'm called to is to be, uh, or, you know, to, to be the embodiment of some type of re repa posture, um, modeling for others what it could look like. Danielle (00:44:19):Sure. Yeah. Um, Rebecca and I put this in here, Hurt versus harm. Um, hurt being, and, and again, these, these are definitions coming from us, so I recognize that other people may have a different view and we can talk about that. Um, hurt being in, in, when Rebecca and I were talking about it inevitable in any relationship may cause painful feelings and hurt someone's feelings. Um, harm violating a person's dignity, and it takes energy non consensually from someone So how do individual hurts add to or cement structural power structures and our perspective and experience of harm? How do individual hurts add to or cement structural power structures and our perspective and experience of, of them? Dr. Ernest Gray (00:45:31):Yeah. Um, it's cuz you've got muscle memory hurt, um, over and over and over and over and over of sorts provides a muscle memory, a knee jerk, a kind of , Oh, this is familiar, here we go again. Ow. So I think that's one way, I'll, I'll step back now, but I think that, that it's the body that maintains a powerful memory of the feeling and it feels, and it's gonna be a familiar kind of triggering slash re-injury that until it's interrupted, can create, can see this as, um, broadly speaking, a a, a more, um, yeah, a reoccurring thing that is, that needs to be interrupted. TJ Poon(00:46:27):I'm really mindful of this in my relationships because there's a lot of horror from white people, from white women towards different communities. And so, like in my relationships, you, there's a, there's a mindfulness of like, maybe we have a disruption and at the level of me and this other person, it is a hurt, but it, it reinforces a harm that they've experienced or it feels like, um, feels similar to. And so it's not like we, I it's not like we opt, we can opt out. Like it can't opt out of that collective narrative. I can't say, Oh, well I'm just, you know, this one person. Um, so I, I think that is complex because the individual hurts do contribute. They feel like what Dr. Gray was saying, like it is muscle memory. It's some sometimes where something can feel or just reinforce, I guess, um, what has already happened to us in contexts. Jen Oyama Murphy (00:47:36):I mean, I think the complexity of the relationship between hurt and harm, um, contributes to how hard it can be to actually have meaningful repair. Because I, my experience sometimes, and I, I know I do this myself, that I will lean into the hurt and apologize or try to do repair on a personal one to one level and somehow feel like if I do that, it will also, it also repairs the harm. And that doesn't, that's, that's not true. I mean, it can perhaps contribute to a restorative process or a repair process around the harm, but Right. Just me, um, in charge of a small group repairing for a particular hurt that may have happened in the small group doesn't necessarily address the structure, the system that put that small group together, the content that's being taught, you know, the, the opportunity for those participants to even be in the program, Right. That there is something that's happening at a, at a harm level, um, that my personal apology for something that I did that hurt someone in the group isn't actually addressing. But we can hope that it does or act like it does or even have the expectation, um, that it will. And so the, I love the new, the nuance or the, the clarity between the two definitions that you guys are, um, asking us to wrestle with. I think that's, that's good's making me think just for myself. Like where do I go first, you know, out of my own, um, training or naivete or just like wishful thing, thinking that, that I can't repair systemic harm by apologizing or repairing like a personal hurt. Danielle (00:49:36):Um, I mean, Jen, I've been wrestling with that and, and when I, when I, in my experience, when someone apologizes to me, and I know they're apologizing for personal hurt, but I feel like they haven't said in, in, in a way I can understand often I'm not understanding how do I actually get out of this so we're not pitted against each other again. Mm-hmm. , when I feel trapped in that space and I receive an apology, I often, I, I feel more angry even at, even if I know the person sincerely apologizing, if I'm telling a more true story to you all as a Latinx person, and I've noticed this in my family, I receive the apology, and yet when I have to continue to function in the system, I am more angry afterwards. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. , there's a frustration that happens, which then of course is bottled down and it, I often talk to my clients about this, but I was talking to my husband about it. It's like we threw all this stuff in the pressure cooker cuz we do a lot of pressure cooking and put a plastic lid on it. And now the s h I t spread sideways. And that's kind of how it feels when we, now I'm not saying we can do this perfectly or I even know how to do it, but when we address hurt, that's part of systemic harm without addressing the system. I think in my experience, it feels like I'm feeling my own pressure cooker mm-hmm. and I'm not able to contain the spray at different times. Mm-hmm. . Dr. Ernest Gray (00:51:20):Yeah. I think I think about for, I think about for me, the, my, my the, you know, systemizing, systematizing the way in which I associate things, what the right environment, the way in which my, you know, my senses have associated things. I'll have dejavu because I had a certain smell from my childhood and it'll, it could be triggering, right? I smell something and I'm like, Oh man, that reminds me of this moment. All that categorization to me tells me how my brain functions and how mm-hmm. associative. Mm-hmm. , it is for instances, smells, places, um, things that occur. And it's, it's the, it's the ongoing sense of that, especially if we've come out of, um, houses or, um, families where this was it, it was normative for us to experience these things on a regular basis so that any, any hint of it elsewhere outside of that, outside of the confines of that can reignite that same kind of shallow breathing and response. And I don't wanna, um, but, but definitely the advancing of hurt versus harm. It, it, it, the harm the those in whatever that instance is that creates, that, that response outta me lets me know that more that it is, it was the ongoing nature of those things which created the harm. Um, and so it almost asks, I it's first acknowledgement and then secondly saying, What do I need to do to take care of myself in this instance? Where do I need to go? What do I need to give myself in this moment so that I'm not going down this road of, here we go again. I'm in a corner . I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna kind of check out. But, um, I think about the west side of Chicago where I'm ministering, um, and I'm thinking about, you know, just this community that it doesn't really affect them. It, it really doesn't to hear gunshots, to hear, um, to hear, uh, sirens and things like that. These are everyday occurrence so that the, so that the, so that the ongoing nature of what they're used to just has evolved into this kind of numbing sense. But I, but I guess in going back, it is interrupting that, that delicate, um, sequence of events so that it does not cause me to shut down in that moment that I've, that I'm still learning how to do for myself. Right. And I think that in our interpersonal relationships, especially, here's where it meets the road, is in our interpersonal, or even our most intimate relationships, the ongoing hurt and does eventually, uh, you know, cross the line into harm because it has taken away the energy out of that, out of the other person, uh, or or out of us. Um, after such a long time after repeated, repeated instances. Rebecca W. Walston (00:54:31):I, I think what I think I'm hearing everybody alludes this sense of like, can there be an awareness of, of the, where the interpersonal and the individual kind of collides with the collective and the systemic, right? And, and just a more complex understanding of how any incident, however big or small the rupture is. Where is the interplay of those two things? So, so that a comment between two people can actually have this impact that's far more and reverberates with the kind of generational familiarity that that all of a sudden, it, it, it, it, um, we're, we're out of the category. My feelings are hurt and into this space of it feels like something of in me has been violated. Um, and I think it takes a, an enormous amount of energy and awareness on the part of both people, both the person who perpetrated something and the person who was on the receiving end of that, to have a sense of like where they are and where they are and where the other person is to kind of know that and build all to hold it, um, with some integrity. There was a point in which we brought a group of people, uh, to, to view the equal justice initiative, um, landmarks in Montgomery, Alabama, and the conversation and a processing conversation between a white woman and a black woman. And, you know, after having come from the, the National Memorial and Peace and Justice and witnessing the history of lynching, understandably, this black woman was deeply angry, like profoundly angry, um, and trying to manage in the moment what that anger was and, and, and turned to the white participant and said like, I, like I'm really angry at you. Like, I kind of hate you right now. Mm-hmm. , um, two people who are virtually strangers. Right. And, and, and, and for the white woman to have said to her a sense of like, um, I get it. I got it. I'm, I'm white and I'm a woman.And there's a sense in which historically white women called this particular place in the lynching of black bodies mm-hmm. . Um, and also can, can I be in this room in the particularity of my individual story and know that I personally, Right. Um, don't, don't agree with that, stand against it, have not participated actively in it. Kind of a sense of like, you know, and it may have been an imperfect or, or generous engagement, but you can hear the tension of like, how can we both be in this room and hold the collective historical nature of this? And the particularity of the two individuals in the room together hadn't actually been the active participant interrupter. So Yeah. I think it's hard and messy. Danielle (00:57:51):I, I love what, uh, Rebecca wrote. There was, you know, been talking to me about do we imagine Shalom as a return to where we started? Cause the very nature of the disrupt disruption being we cannot return from Eden to the city of God. Um, and Rebecca, I'll let you elaborate on that a little bit more, but when we were talking Rebecca and I, you know, as a mixed race woman, and in those mixes, you know, is indigenous and Spanish and African, and, you know, just this mix, I'm like, where would I return to? Right? Mm-hmm. , what community does a Latinx person returned to? If, if it's a return to Eden, where is, is Eden lost? And so, um, yeah, Rebecca, I don't know if you wanna expand on what you were thinking. Rebecca W. Walston (00:58:43):Uh, I mean, I I've just been wrestling with this in particular, you know, we talk about individual hurt. It's easy to talk about like the disruption that happened in Eden, that what God meant for me individually, what you know, is reflected in the Garden of Eden. The kind of peace and the kind of generosity and the kind of, um, uh, just more that, that is in the Garden of Eden. And, but when I, when I try and so, so there's a depend in which I can step into this work and have this individual sense of like, Oh, you know, I wasn't meant for the fracture and my relationship between myself and my parents, Right? I was meant for something that was more whole than that. So how do I, how do I have a sense of what that was like in Eden, and how do I have a sense of going back to that kind of, that kind of space? But when I translate that into like collective work around racial trauma, I get lost like Danielle, right? In this, this sense that like, um, in, in her book, Born On the Water, um, the author sort of makes this argument that though these African people got on the ship at the beginning in Africa, while they made the journey across the Atlantic and before they landed in the United States, something happened on the water. And there's something in that hyphenated existence that created a new people group in, in a way that like, I can't actually go back to Africa. I like, I can't, I mean, I will go there and for half a second somebody might mistaken me for a, a colored person, right? And if you're inside Africa, that means I'm not fully African. I'm not fully white, I'm somewhere in the middle. But the second I open my mouth, they, they know I'm not African. I'm something else, right? And there's a sense in which I can't actually go back to Eden. There, there's something that happened in the rupture and the displacement that actually makes it impossible for me to return for that, right? And, and I still have that sense of being displaced in the hyphenated existence in the US that makes me, in some ways not fully American either. So what, what is the answer to that? And as I started to wrestle with that theologically, you know, I'm looking at the text going, actually, the, the journey for the Christian is not back to Eden . Like the end game is not back to Genesis, it's to revelation in the city of God. And so that's my sense of this comment is like, do do I pivot and start to imagine repair as not a return to Eden, but onto something else? And, and, and, um, you know, then I begin to suspect that, uh, that, that there's something even in the journey of, of that, that that is a far more value to me that I would want more than just the return to Eden. There's something sweeter having made it onto the city of God. So this is my wonderings. Curious how, how that hits for any of you. Dr. Ernest Gray (01:02:09):I think the, I think you're spot on. And I guess I, I guess it's a maturity mark that says that this continuum, this, this, um, I think you get to a certain and you just realize you never really arrive. And I think this fits within that same conceptual framework of like, you know, hey , you know, you, you could reach the pinnacle of your career. And, um, and yet, you know, it's still not be ultimately satisfying because it's like, is that it? You know, I think I'm on top of the mountain and I, and I guess that's the, that's inherent of human, of human of humanness for me is that I'm, I'm, I'm resigned to thinking about completion and absolute perfection. I'll be perfected when I meet Jesus. They'll be the more work for me to do or work in me to be done. But in the meantime, um, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna be striving, blowing it, striving, um, gaining some, you know, gaining some, um, some skills and learning how to navigate better life and figuring out what works and doesn't work any, uh, as I go, as I age, as I, and hopefully in growing wisdom. Um, but I, I like this idea because there's a sense of, of jettisoning your experiences as though they're irrelevant. No, they're what brought me to this place and they're what's propelling me forward. Um, there's this sense of I might as well give them a hug and bring them with me on the journey, uh, because then they create a sense of meaning and value for me and for those of, uh, you know, for me, uh, as I'm, as I'm making my progress through, through life. So, so, so, um, that to me shows marks of, uh, a sense of maturity and, you know, some restore some restoration. I think, you know, and, and again, it comes down to like this sense of like, you know, the things that have value for us are can, can be worn. You know, Like, my son's got a got, you know, a favorite stuffed animal that is horrible. I wanna wash it every time I see it. You know, it's just like, we get rid of this thing. No, it's just, there's something about this particular stuffed animal that I just cannot part ways with. And so that's, that's kind of how we don't wanna get rid of our vinky or you know, our blanky, whatever it is. We got . Cause we love itself. , TJ Poon (01:04:53):I was really moved when I read this slide and listened to Rebecca and Danielle talking, I think, um, so I named my daughter Eden. And, you know, the, the meaning of pleasure, delight, just that, that the nature of what we were meant for. And in the end, we find it in the city full of people that look like us and not like us. And the image of that is represented there. And just kind of that shifting from like, our delight is found in this garden where it's just as in God, um, to our delight is in this city and, you know, the lamb of God is their light. All these different images that are really powerful and revolution, I think about that. Like that, that has meaningful too. Uh, just a shifting, um, where is our, where is our pleasure? Where is our delight? How do we come to experience that shaone? And who are the people that we experience that through? Dr. Ernest Gray (01:05:53):That's huge. And I, and I, yeah, and I, it's those people that are really part of that, you know, that space for us, that that really kind of helps us to, you know, experience the full, the sum, the full sum of what shalom means for us. I think that that's really important for us to really, for me especially to, to not shy away from that because I, I I, I, my ma my natural inclination would be to just be very isolated and monastic as opposed to engaged in community . But it's experienced in community and it's experienced together, and it's experienced with other shattered people too. Right. Um, and that to me is where I draw strength and energy and, um, you know, peace from as well. So, thank you, tj. I think yours mm-hmm. , I like what you share there. Danielle (01:06:57):I, I guess I would add like, to that, like, I think so much of my experience is being like in this very moment when I feel joy or maybe shalom or a sense of heaven, even in the moment, because unaware of what, I'm always not aware of what will come next. I don't know. Um, yeah. So just the feeling of heaven is in this moment too, with, you know, in the moment that I get to sit with the four of you, this is a piece of heaven for me, a reflection of hope and healing. Although we haven't even explored the ways we might have, you know, rubbed each other the wrong way. I have a sense that we could do that. And in that sense, that feels like heaven to me in spaces where there could, there are conflict. I'm not saying there isn't just a, just, I think in my own culture, the, that's why Sundays feel so good to me. For instance, when I'm with a couple of other families and we're eating and talking and laughing and, you know, the older kids are playing with the younger kids, like, to me, that feels, oh, that feels good. And, and if, if that was the last thing I felt, I would, that would feel like heaven to me. So I, I think there's also that, I'm not saying we're not going to the city of God, but there's just these momentary times when I feel very close to what I think it, it might mean. Mm-hmm. , Rebecca W. Walston (01:08:41):I, I do think, Danielle, I mean, I resonate with what you're saying. I think, I think the text is very clear that there are these moments, um, along the way. Right? I think that's that sense of, yay, do I walk through the valley of the shadow, Right? I, I will be with you. I, I think like wherever you are in the process, along the journey, the moments where you have a sense of, um, I am with you always. Right? And however that shows up for you in a faith, in a person, in a smile and an expression, in deed, whatever, however that shows up, it definitely, like, if I, I do have a sense of like, things we pick up along the way and, and a sense of final destination all being a part of the, the, the healing, the, like, the journey of repair. Um, and, and I start to think about, um, You know, the story of Joseph is a very significant one to me, has very reflected my own story, and then, then will know what that reference means, um, to me in particular by, you know, the, the sense in, in Joseph of like, what sad to meant for evil, God meant for good, right? And the sense of him naming his two sons, Manas and Efram, and one of them, meaning God has caused me to forget the toilet of my father's house. Um, and God has caused me to prosper in the land of my infliction is the meaning of the other son. And so I do think that there's, there's something in the text even that, that is about the journey and the destination being sweeter and holding something more, um, that than had our, our soul existence only been in Eden, Right? I mean, and, and that isn't to say like, I don't wish for that, you know what I mean? Or that I wouldn't love to be there, but, but I, but I mean like, leave it only to God to, to assert this idea that like, um, all of the rupture holds something more, um, that than life without any, without there ever being any sense of rupture. Right? And I think we're in the category of like, the mysteries of God by I, I think. I think so I think there's, there's such value in the journey in the valleys and what we pick up there about ourselves and God and people in it with us. Um, you know, Yeah. Like that, that feels aspirational to me and also feels true in some senses. You're muted, Ernest. I can't, can't hear you. So I said Dr. Ernest Gray (01:11:33):I was low, I was very low when I said that resonates. I, um, I was thinking about, um, you know, for me in the last few years, you know, Covid has done a, has done an, an immeasurable service in many ways. It has been incredibly harmful for a lot of us, but it's been a, it's done an immeasurable service at the same time, um, to reorient us. Um, for me it is increased my, depend my creaturely dependence on God in a way that here to four I would not have been focused upon. Right? I, you know, I spent 12, 13 years in the, in, in the classroom as a professor teaching, uh, on autopilot, um, from God's word, from, um, and teaching students how to study and think and what, what these words in the Bible say and what they could potentially mean, um, to the best of my ability. But that was autopilot stuff. And I felt insulated, if you will. But, but the repair and the why of the repair, why it's important, why, why the, um, the rupture is necessary, and we can call I, I, I would call covid and the time prior to, and subsequent to be very rupturing, I, I would call it as necessary, because it helped me to see my why and why dependence upon God had it be reframed, refocused, re you know, recalibrated so that I could not, so I could get out of a sense of, um, oh, my training prepared me for this to know my, you know, what I am and who I, what my journey has been, did not prepare me for this, and all the attendant features that have come as a result, the relationships that are broken and realizing that they were jacked up from a long , they were jacked up. I just couldn't see them during all those years. Um, but these remind me of the need for God to be embodied, uh, in my life in a way that, um, I had been maybe not as present with. And I think that that's part of the reason why, um, this is my re my why for repair, is that it creates a better, more relational dynamic between me and God that had I not gone through some rupturing event, I would not have appreciated the value of where I'm at with him now. More than that. I think one other thing is that I think that there's a sense too that there's a, um, there's a heightened awareness of all these other aspects that are coming, that are coming about. My eyes are now not as with, you know, blinders on. Now I can look around and say, Wow, this is a really jacked up place. Where can I help to affect some change? Where could I, you know, where can I put my stubborn ounces? Where can I place you know, who I am and what God has put in me, um, in the way so that I can, um, be a part so that I can help, you know, groups that are hurting, people that are hurting communities that are struggling, Um, and the, like, Jen Oyama Murphy (01:15:19):I'm trying to work this out. So I'm just working it out out loud for you all. But, um, I think kind of pi backing off of Rebecca, your, um, juxtaposition between Eden and City of God, and like, why for repair? I think for me, it's the invitation to both humility and hope. And, and for me, humility, um, often in my story and experience has led to what I felt like was humiliation, right? And the way that I learned culturally to avoid that was, um, to not need to repair, to do everything perfectly. To do everything well, to always get the a plus, you know, to, to not make a mistake where I would need to repair. But there's a desperation and hopelessness that comes with that kind of demand or pressure where, um, it's, it is dirty and painful, and it doesn't have that sense of like, Oh, there can be something of the goodness of God that can restore these parts that are dying or dead back to the land of the living. And, um, I think that the idea of that we're move, it's not binary. I'm not completely broken, and I'm not totally healed, and that there can be, um, hope and humility in making that journey. And if I'm able to make that journey with all kinds of different people, um, how much richer and deeper and broader that experience, that growing of humility, I think that can lead to growth and restoration and learning and healing. That just feeds into the hope, right? The hope that yes, I, I will reach the kingdom of God at the end, and there will be kind of the way that what we'll all be who we were meant to be. And there will be such goodness there, all that will continue to grow. Um, if I can stay kind of on that journey and not feel like, um, not give into the poll to be at one place or the other, you know, where I'm either totally broken and there's no hope or completely healed and there's no humility Dr. Ernest Gray (01:17:54):Sounds like a dash to me, a hyphen space, very much so that that hyphen space does so much, it preaches a better word, really does. Then the opposite ends of those two, those two realities are consum, consum, you know, conclusionary kind of places you wanna be. It's the hyphen that where we, where we ought to be. Rebecca W. Walston (01:18:25):Did you, is that word hyphen intentional? I Dr. Ernest Gray (01:18:31):Think so. I think so. It's the interim, well, we call hyphen the interim, you can call it all of that good stuff. Um, I, I think it's because, you know, whether, you know, whenever we, wherever we frequent a cemetery, we always think about how stoic it is to see the name and the date of birth and the date of death. And that hyphen is, that's what preaches the better word, is the hyphen in between what this person and how they went about their, their lives with their, their ups and downs, their navigation through the world for people like, um, people, for people who have been on the receiving end of, um, of trauma pain, um, and racialized, um, uh, this ambi or dis disor dis dis dis disorientation or trauma , we, we realize that they have a lot more weight to bear and that their experiences were far more complex. Um, and so this makes their stories even more winsome and more intriguing for us to learn and know about because we're, we're in relationship with them. Um, but the hyphen is the best place to be. And I find that in many ways, um, that is where real life occurs, and that's where I'm at right now. Um, as, as, as a matter of fact, Rebecca W. Walston (01:19:59):I, I mean, I've, I've heard that it has a very black sermon right there about the hyphen and the dash, right? But it hit me in particular because Danielle knows I often introduced myself as African hyphen American. So that your, that word hyphen hit me in that, in that context. Right. And as I was listening to Jen talk about humility and hope and how she, what she learned of how to settle into that space in her Japanese nest or her Japanese Hy American, I just, it just hit me, it hit me about the hyphenated racialized experience in the US and what you might be suggesting consciously or subconsciously Right. About that being a good place to be. Danielle (01:20:50):Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Jen, when you were talking, I was like, wanting to cry. I can still feel the tears. And I was just like, I felt the literal pull, I think at both end of that spectrum, when you talked through them for yourself, I was like, Oh, yeah, that's where I'm, Oh, wait a minute. Then you described the other end, and I was like, Oh, that's where I am . And I was, I think I was like, I was like, Oh, to sit in that, that interim space, you know, the hyphen space, sometimes I have felt like that space would kill me. Mm-hmm. the shame of not knowing how to be one or the other. Mm. Or to try to hold, or to try to explain to someone, you know, I, I think, what is your wife or repair, Why wouldn't I repair? I think of my own, you know, body. And, and, and when Rebecca's talked about not earnest, and, and you, I, I think like I have to be doing that internal work. I mean, because, you know, as you know, if you live in the body of the oppressor and the impressed , how do you make, how do, how do what repair has to be happening? It it, it's, it's happening. And, and if I'm fearful and wonderfully made, then God didn't make me like this on a mistake. It wasn't like, Oh, crap, that's how she came out. Let me see if I can fix it. Hmm. Um, indeed. So those are the things I was thinking as you were talking, Jen. Hmm. Rebecca W. Walston (01:22:47):I, I think Danielle, you're, you're in that sense on the slide of like, any version of repair must work towards the salvation and their redemption of the oppress, the oppress onlooker. Right. And that there has to be, we, we have to have a sense of categories for all of those things. Dr. Ernest Gray (01:23:10):And the work by each, I wonder, which, you know, I'm always trying to determine which one is gonna be the easier to repair, which, which person are you, the pressor or onlooker? And we would just assume that the onlooker would have the least amount of, but they might actually bear the biggest burden is because they're gonna have to deal with assumptions and biases that they have accumulated that are entrenched and that they don't wanna deal with and come to terms with. That's why it's easier to simply, you know, just lull their response or, or stay silent as the, as the notion below here says it's, it's easier to stay silent, to be, you know, resign, say it's not my issue than it is to get in and, and, and to really unearth whether or not this is actually something in internally that they're wrestling with that's far more scary to do. Um, and the majority of people might have some, this is a generalization, but it seems to me like the majority of people don't wanna really, really do that work, Danielle (01:24:19):Um, because all of us have been onlookers to one another's ethnic pain, whether we like it or not. I know I have absolutely. I've been an onlooker mm-hmm. , Yep. Mm-hmm. . Yep. And, and just, and then that's where you have where to step in is just like, Oh, that does not feel good. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. try to own that. My part in that, Dr. Ernest Gray (01:24:45):Ladies, it's almost a sense of a little bit of a reunion that I've had with you this afternoon, but I do need to go and pick up my two boys. And so for this part, I'm gonna need to jump off of the, um, of this, of this great time together, and hopefully I'll be invited back again so that my, um, so that we can, we can continue the conversation. Danielle (01:25:37):I will. Did you all have any final thoughts? TJ Poon (01:25:44):I've been noodling something since the very first slide, which is just like this distinction. I don't know if it's a useful one between disruption and rupture And how like rupture needs to be repaired, but a lot of times repair can't happen without sub disruption. And, you know, that first slide talks about how we kind of pathologized or like said negative anything that has to do with rupture, but you can't, like, you literally can't, um, repair without disrupting the systems. And I think in white imagination, those things are often made equivalent. Like anything that's disruptive is rupturing uncomfortable. Like, I need, I, I need to fix it as fast as possible. Um, versus no, actually this disruption is an invitation to something different. It's a disruption that actually will lead to an authentic repair or real repair as opposed to like, what calls dirty pain, like silence avoidance. Um, so I've just been thinking about those two different words and what they can mean. Mm-hmm. , Rebecca W. Walston (01:27:07):I like that distinction a lot. It, it feels almost like trying to get at like harm versus hurts, right? And, and try to have a sense of like, um, you know, are we always in the category of this is bad and awful and it needs to see immediately, Right. Or are there places where actually good and we need to let it play it itself out, So, yeah. Jen Oyama Murphy (01:27:35):Mm-hmm. Well, I think that also connects maybe fun too to Rebecca. You are, um, differentiating between like the demand to return to Eden or the like blessing of being on the journey to the city of God. Cause if the demand is to return to Eden, then anything disruptive is gonna feel, not like Eden, Right? But if, if it is about growing and learning and healing and developing on the road to the city of God, then disruption is part of that process, then it's something that may be hard, um, but it's necessary and hopeful or has the potential to be that. Rebecca W. Walston (01:28:22):Yeah. It, it does pivot something for me pretty significantly to be, to be talking about like the, my destination isn't actually Danielle (01:28:40):New ladies are really smart. can bottle all that up. I like that. TJ Poon (01:28:53):I mean, Jen, when you were like, I'm just working this out. And then you said something super deep and profound. I think what I was, what I was struck about what you said was like, um, just the demand to not ever need to repair like that internal pressure demand. And that's, that's how I feel all the time. Like, just, just be perfect and then you all need to repair mm-hmm. . Um, and just what, uh, yeah, just what a demand. What a, a burden. I don't, I don't know all the words, but like, it, it's dehumanizing cuz what it means to be human on this earth is to have disrupt, is to repair. Like you are going need to because we're all, we're all humans. And so there, when you said that, I was like, Oh, that's so important. Danielle (01:31:07):Because everything feels so lost. But I hope that this will be an encouragement to people about a conversation. Hopefully it'll feel like they can access something in themselves where.  

In this episode, Dan interviews Joey Puleo,  the director of the feature length documentaries  America's Last Little Italy: The Hill and A New Home. They discuss the perils of being an independent documentary filmmaker and how Joey managed to make money with his documentary in creative ways even during a pandemic. They also discuss his short film that kicked off his career, screening at Hollyshorts and meeting Kevin Hart. This episode gets into the real details of what it takes to market a film yourself, find your audience and creative ways to sell your film in this current world of distribution.His newest film, A New Home, tells the story of the Bosnian refugees who fled to St. Louis in the early '90s and made St. Louis the 2nd largest home for Bosnians outside of Bosnia. It is screening as part of the St. Louis Intl. Film Fest. Get tickets here: https://www.cinemastlouis.org/sliff/new-home.This podcast is sponsored by the MO Film Office (https://mofilm.org) and Shock City Studios (www.shockcitystudios.com) and is brought to you by Speak Up Productions (www.speakupproductions.com) and the In Motion team (www.inmotionconference.com) Music by Courtney Orlando Peebles of So Hot Productions (https://www.linkedin.com/in/courtney-jr-peebles-05a2a19/)

Support us: buymeacoffee.com/colemansdream Dai and Ruth discuss Wales' heartbreaking extra time defeat to Switzerland in the moments after the match. A raw and emotive chat. We do also look at the positives from this campaign, and especially Jess Fishlock's wonder goal against the Bosnians. We also take a look at the draw for Euro 2024 qualifying and discuss how the men will fare.

People from Bosnia are very diverse and different with many influences and it is difficult to stereotype these people. But when travelling across Sarajevo, you'll notice that there are certain features that you encounter again and again, no matter what street you're in. Bosnians are friendly people. Bosnians generally have a pretty relaxed sense of time and that's why they easily start conversations in cafes offering their help to confused travellers. Popular places to meet among locals are "kafanas" (traditional cafes) and "kafiches" (modern café-bars) According to them, coffee is poured three times, and each serving even has its name: "Welcome coffee", "Talk coffee", and the third portion, "Farewell coffee", politely signalling that it's time to say goodbye. This soundscape was recorded while having a cafe in one this "kafiches" (modern café-bars), capturing the essence of the city among the music of a street artist playing the santur. Recorded by Rafael Diogo.   Part of the Well-Being Cities project, a unique collaboration between Cities and Memory and C40, a global network of mayors of nearly 100 world-leading cities collaborating to deliver the urgent action needed right now to confront the climate crisis. The project was originally presented at the C40 Cities conference in Buenos Aires in 2022. Explore Well-Being Cities in full at https://citiesandmemory.com/wellbeing-cities/

On Sunday, October 2nd, Bosnians will again head to the polls to elect a new president. The last month has meant many long and tireless days for presidential candidate Mirsad Hadžikadić. He has been canvassing the country, sometimes two to three cities and towns per day, meeting with the people and once again sharing his message of hope and change for the country. During these last four weeks, Hadžikadić has also appeared in five presidential debates, which were quite interesting. With two days left before the election, I got his take on the debates and his personal thoughts about the journey. 

Dominic Roberts, Head of Corporate Affairs for Adriatic Metals, joins the podcast from Beaver Creek to provide a general update of the building process of the Vares Project in Bosnia. He also highlights the incredible stories of how the company and the project are welcoming back Bosnians formally trained in mining and heavy industry.

A documentary by St. Louis filmmaker Joseph Puleo tells the story of thousands of Bosnians who built a new community in the city after fleeing civil war. A surplus of affordable housing in the 1990s made St. Louis a good destination for Bosnians looking for a new home.

"https://cinemastlouis.org/new-home (A New Home)" is an informative documentary that tells the story of the Bosnian refugees who fled to St. Louis in the early '90s. It examines their impact on our community and offers a retrospective overview of the war and resulting genocide. The St. Louis area is home to more displaced Bosnians than any other city in the world — perhaps more than 75,000. This 30-year diaspora has benefited the metro area in a multiplicity of ways. “A New Home” is director https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7246008/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm (Joseph Puleo)'s much-anticipated follow-up to his wildly popular “America's Last Little Italy: The Hill,” which screened virtually during the 2020 editions of both the Showcase and the https://cinemastlouis.org/ (St. Louis International Film Festival). This is Season 5! For more episodes, go to https://stlintune.com/ (stlintune.com)

Today is June 20th, and it is World Refugee Day. It has prompted me to reflect on my most recent episode, where I recorded an update on the situation in Ukraine with guests Arne and Mike. I'm heartened to see the interest the conversation has received—not for bragging rights, but because it helps, ever so slightly, to keep the attention on those who must live with the consequences of this invasion, including the more than 7 million individuals who have already been forced to flee, and whose real battle has only just begun. An unfortunate reality of our current times is that conflicts around the world are forgotten almost as quickly as they begin. Since the world took notice of the Russian invasion of Ukraine almost four months ago, outrage and interest has subsided such that any updates on the war feature less and less frequently on most major news sites. But we shouldn't be surprised. We only need to look at other ongoing conflicts—take Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Ethiopia, or Sudan, for example, where hundreds if not thousands of lives have been lost just this year alone—to see how quickly conflicts disappear from our collective consciousness. Aside from the difficulties faced by the estimated one hundred million refugees fleeing various conflict zones across the globe, one of the aspects that affects and saddens me the most is the recognition that for these people, it is only after they are long forgotten by the rest of us that their true battle begins. These conflicts are so deeply personal to me because, as most of you by now know, I am a product of the Bosnian war from the early 90's. When the war broke out in my home city of Sarajevo, I was 10 years old. Before the war, we lived a completely regular, or even a privileged life. My mum worked as a physics professor at one of the country's best high schools and my dad was an engineer working at one of the biggest and most-prominent engineering companies in former Yugoslavia. This was the same company that brought Russian gas into the Balkans, as well as the company that engineered Saddam Hussein's personal bunker in Baghdad. In short, my brother, who is three years older than me, and I, weren't left wanting for much. Apart from school, our weekdays included lots of playing and running around the neighbourhood with the dozens of other children living on our street. Weekends always included visits to my paternal grandmother, who lived in the centre of Sarajevo, as well as my cousins, both from mum's and dad's side. We'd escape Sarajevo to our weekend home my parents were building not far outside of the city, or to the one that my maternal grandfather built all by himself a few hours' drive out of the city. Winter holidays were spent skiing on one of the nearby Olympic mountains dominating the Sarajevan horizon. In summer, we travelled to a beautiful coastal town in Croatia, where we kept a fully equipped trailer a stone's throw from a secluded pebbled beach. Life was good. As I now watch events unfold in Ukraine, I am reminded of the naivety and innocence of not only my parents, but also the rest of the country, that war could simply not occur. I mean, Bosnia is in the heart of Europe. Four hours drive and you're in Austria, seven and you're in Germany.  No way would the rest of the world let the Bosnian Serbs, supported intimately by Serbia, start a war. The world had moved on, Europe had moved on, from large scale military confrontations. I remember in those final days before all hell broke loose, ordinary citizens, including my parents, neighbours, teachers and just about everyone else, going to huge anti-war protests. I was glued to the TV watching as they sang ‘Give Peace A Chance', with every Sarajevan who had a lighter, which was just about every one of them, holding it lit above their head and swaying their arms in synch with the song. Although a powerful sight, and one that I get emotional over, even today, I now realise how foolish and naïve it was to hope that Bosnians could stop the inevitable march to war. Those in power had already decided, plans had been drawn up, troops gathered, weapons and supply lines prepared. All that was necessary was a spark to kick it all off. As I sit here and watch the millions of refugees pouring out of Ukraine, I remember the sense of helplessness of not being able to change your destiny. The night before our suburb was occupied by Serb forces, my mum had a terrible feeling that something was about to happen. It was the first night in 20 years of living in the same house that she could hear the flow of a river, a kilometre away. It was an eerily quiet night. So, the next morning, the four of us, my dad, mum, brother and I, packed a backpack each and left our house to go and stay with my aunt, uncle and two cousins a little further into town. That day, the barricades around Sarajevo went up, and my suburb fell into Serb hands, with many of our neighbours who were left behind experiencing grave abuse by the invading forces. Fighting-age men were detained and taken away as prisoners. Some were never heard of again. Our house, the home I grew up in, was taken over by a police commander who threw my brother's and my toys out into the backyard to rot. Our neighbour, the angel of a lady who also spent hours teaching me how to read and write, managed to wrestle some of our most-treasured possessions from the intruder, including some our family photo albums. Years later, during her first visit since the war, my mum was able to recover those cherished mementos of a life long gone. We stayed with my aunt and uncle for those first few days of hell breaking loose. I remember watching tanks occupy positions on top of a small hill about 500m opposite of my aunt and uncle's house. They weren't shooting yet, but their command of the entire suburb from an elevated position was daunting as it was perplexing. How is this possible? These were our people? Not even two years ago we all sang the same anthem as Yugoslavia qualified for the semi-final in the FIFA World Cup in Italy. We all speak the same language. Hell, most of us didn't even know that there was such a thing as different ethnicities. And yet here we were, cowering in the shadow of their barrels awaiting the inevitable. And it didn't take long. Several times in those first days, air raid sirens echoed around the city, forcing us into bomb shelters scattered around the suburb. We were lucky that my aunt and uncle's house was literally meters away from one of these, where we spent a number of anxious hours waiting for the threat to lift. A few days later, as the bombing really started, my parents decided that we'd be safer at my grandma's house, whose apartment was in the heart of the city. We would spend the following few months there, until our escape from Sarajevo. I remember sitting in the cellar for hours on end, waiting for the shelling to stop. My grandma's building had about 10 apartments, and just about all of the occupants would hide below ground when the shelling would start. By now, it was occurring frequently enough that the cellars had to be cleaned up, chairs and tables were brought in, as well as candles, food and water. Power would frequently go out, as would water and getting basic supplies was becoming a serious challenge. To pass the time, I remember how my brother and I used a picture of Slobodan Milosevic, the President of Serbia at the time, that had a bull's eye superimposed on it, for target practice. We had a couple of straws and bits of rolled up paper that we would dip in some water, pretending it was poison. We'd then shoot our weapons at Milosevic's face, who was smugly smirking at our abysmal efforts from his place of prominence on one of the cellar walls. Ultimately, I was lucky to have had to live in a besieged Sarajevo for only a few short months. I had recently had a serious ear surgery due to a tumour behind the eardrum of my right ear. My parents knew that I would imminently need another surgery to replace my eardrum which had 13 raptures in it, but they kept this from me at the time as they wanted me to focus on my recovery before worrying about the next time I'd be going into hospital. However, the fragile state of my eardrum, and the now near-constant shelling of the city were a bad combination. At one point, my mum told me to keep my mouth open while the bombs are falling as this would allow me to easier equalise the pressure on my eardrum from any artillery and mortar blasts. I can still hear my brother making fun of me for sitting in the cellar with my mouth permanently open out of fear of my eardrum bursting. The moment mum and dad broke the news to my brother and I that the three of us would be leaving Sarajevo the next day on a UN convoy, I remember an insatiable rage coming over me. I did not want to leave. I did not want to leave my dad behind; I did not want to leave the rest of our family behind, all my friends. I did not want to leave my city, especially not now when its mere survival was in question. My ten-year old brain could not comprehend what was happening. Only weeks ago, we lived a normal life. I was going to school. We had picnics on the weekend. We were talking about our next holiday on the Croatian coast. It all vanished overnight. As the next day dawned, one of our neighbours, Raza, sister of one of the nation's most prominent poets Kiko Sarajlic, gave me a hand-made Pinocchio figurine she once picked up in Italy. It was aimed to give me something to play with, she said, and that we'll play together upon our inevitable, and surely imminent, return to Sarajevo. The irony of her words, while handing me a Pinocchio figurine, was lost on me until much later. Looking back, my reflection upon these memories has always had a certain nonchalance; a certain detachment from the reality of what they truly represented of my childhood. Now, as a father, the thought of any child, or in fact any person, having to flee their home after being innocently caught in conflict, much less conflict at the hands of an egomaniacal dictator attempting to assert regional, if not global, dominance, brings tears to my eyes. Years later, my heart hurts for the fear my parents must have felt. The fear of not knowing what the next day would bring. The fear of not knowing how or if they could keep their young children alive and safe. The fear of the future that would befall their children should they be left without a parent or guardian to look out for them. The fear of the trauma and scars that may imprint on them in the days, weeks, months, and years of hardship to come. As a father, the thought of my children having to live through such events sends a heaviness through me. But that heaviness is quickly replaced by anger. Because so many of these conflicts are unnecessary. Avoidable, even. And yet we enter into them so lightly. Far too lightly. Thinking back to my own experiences, I know that what I lived through was easier than what my parents lived through. Childhood resilience is a wonderful thing. But, having to help your wife and children flee while you stay back to defend your homeland, as was the case for my father, or having to seek refuge in a foreign country where you don't speak the language or have any of your qualifications recognised, as was the case for my mother, seem like far more challenging experiences. Watching your children become marginalised as they're branded the poor foreigners in a new school. Having to rely on government handouts for the food, clothing and shelter you once provided in abundance for your family. Lining up for hours on end at an Immigration Office to apply for the less-than-welcoming residence status known as ‘Duldung', which roughly translates to ‘tolerating or bearing you'. Many mistook this for a residence permit. It wasn't! It was merely the suspension of the state's obligation to deport you. It was a tactical pause, in your otherwise precarious existence and statelessness. After all that, there are the next 30 years coming to terms with never knowing the final resting place of friends and family, or the trauma associated with seeing your loved ones killed in front of your eyes. There is the loss of your identity, your history, your memories, yourself. These are the unspoken, unseen, unaccounted costs of war. As the discussion around the invasion of Ukraine moves onto what a decisive victory looks like and how an end may come about, I urge those that care, those who are angered by needless acts of violence, to remember that for millions of innocent survivors, both in Ukraine and Russia and around the world, often, the immediate costs of these conflicts are the lightest and most superficial. The real costs—those which our children, families, and our communities bear, will play out in the months, years, and decades to come. I only need look to my own experience, where almost 30 years on, the balcony and building from which I watched those tanks roll in, still carry the scars from rockets and artillery of my childhood, to know that these are costs that humanity we'll be paying for generations to come. On this Refugee Day, take a moment to pause and look around. Take stock of what you have, and not of what you're missing. Take comfort in the relative safety of your country, of a roof over your head, your job, or the car you might be driving right now. Think about the family dinner you get to enjoy tonight, or your child's birthday party you get to organise. Think about the bar you'll go to for ‘knock-off drinks'. Think about all of that, and then remember the 100 million refugees who won't be thinking those thoughts. And for those of you in positions of authority, or those who might command troops in war, take a moment to think about the next order you'll give. Think about the impact that bomb, rocket, shell, or round will have. Not just on your target, but on those you might write off as collateral damage. Remember that the few minutes it took you to give, or to carry out an order, might leave physical, psychological, and spiritual scars on a child lasting a lifetime. What might be your acceptable collateral damage, might be someone's mother, father, sister, or brother. It might be someone's husband, wife, boyfriend, or girlfriend. It might be someone's friend. And one of those your bombs force to flee, might be a child facing a life of uncertainty and instability. A child, just like me. Finally, and where I hope this thought bubble to land, think about what you can do to help. Can you forgo a few coffees or drinks, and donate the money to the UNHCR, or another of the many amazing organisations helping those most in need? Can you donate your time to help in a shelter? What about old clothing? Can you donate some of it? How about attending one of the many activities marking the day? If nothing else, use your voice on social media or elsewhere to increase awareness of this growing need. But whatever you do, don't just turn away.   Music: Adagio For Strings, by Samuel Barber  

Series about nothing and everything, unlocked because Josie has a show in Berlin and Ciarán has a Victorian orphan disease. JOSIE SHOW: https://www.comedycafeberlin.com/event/josie-parkinson-is-not-a-sex-robot-anymore/ HOW TO SUPPORT US: https://www.patreon.com/cornerspaeti HOW TO REACH US: Corner Späti https://twitter.com/cornerspaeti Julia https://twitter.com/KMarxiana Rob https://twitter.com/leninkraft Nick https://twitter.com/sternburgpapi Ciarán https://twitter.com/CiaranDold Special Guest: Josie Parkinson.

On this weeks episode of RAOP we talk about Kanye having another contender his strange love triangle, the end of the Maury Show, Bosnians with brass knuckles, 2 hunnid dollar haircuts and more. Also we answer voicemails and questions from the listeners. Remember to send in your listener questions, #TheyNeedTheirAssBeat or #RealNiggaOfTheWeek submissions, email us at MAIL@RAOPodcast.com or call 424-260-RAOP to leave a voicemail.

On this weeks episode of RAOP we talk about Kanye having another contender his strange love triangle, the end of the Maury Show, Bosnians with brass knuckles, 2 hunnid dollar haircuts and more. Also we answer voicemails and questions from the listeners. Remember to send in your listener questions, #TheyNeedTheirAssBeat or #RealNiggaOfTheWeek submissions, email us at MAIL@RAOPodcast.com or call 424-260-RAOP to leave a voicemail.

Since the Taliban took power last year, more than half a million Afghans have lost their jobs, and the country now faces a severe economic crisis. There was a glimmer of hope for secondary school girls this week though as they prepared to go back to school - but it was short-lived, says Secunder Kermani. Allan Little reflects on the parallels between this war and a previous conflict, in the former Yugoslavia, where cities also came under siege as Serbian nationalists sought to take back control of the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Bosnians, like the Ukrainians, while out-powered, put up a courageous resistance, and, in that conflict, Nato ultimately decided to intervene. International observers are increasingly worried that a cash-strapped Palestinian Authority could face financial collapse. Earlier this month, the International Monetary Fund described the fiscal outlook as “dire." Meanwhile vital healthcare services are being dramatically affected. Yolande Knell visited a hospital in East Jerusalem. Texas has the most restrictive abortion law in the United States. But for some Texans the law doesn't go far enough – they want a complete ban. The campaign to outlaw abortion altogether is being played out in towns across this huge state led by evangelical Christians. Linda Pressly visits west Texas to meet some of the activists. Oaxaca city in Mexico has become a much-desired location for destination weddings for both Europeans and North Americans. But the community there is divided over whether this is a helpful source of income for the locals, or an exercise in exploitation which ends up eroding the indigenous culture and customs finds Louis Harnett O'Meara. Presenter: Kate Adie Producer: Serena Tarling Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Become A Patreon Supporter! - http://bit.ly/RAOPPatreon

For me some of the most satisfying episodes we do are when we talk to book lovers from other countries. What is it like to be a book lover from far-reaching places around the world? In the past we have talked to readers and writers from Ireland, Somalia, Germany, and Saudi Arabia. This week, we are headed to Croatia to speak with Ivana Murk who gives us a window into her life as a child growing up, learning to read both the Cyrillic alphabet which Slavic languages are based on and the Latin alphabet. She learned English in school starting in 3rd grade and now she now reads books in both Croatian and English. We talk with her about Croatian authors who you might want to find translations for if possible, why the skill of a book translator is so important, and what authors you have probably heard of who are particularly popular in her country. We feel it would be helpful to give you just a brief little summary of Croatian history in the last 50 years that is most relevant to this episode. Croatia was a part of the former Yugoslavia, which also included Serbia, Bosnia, Hercegovina, Slovenia, Macedonia, and Montenegro. In 1991, Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia. This did not happen peacefully. This was followed by the Bosnia War from 1992-1995 which pitted Croatians, Bosnians, and Serbians against each other and has been called the bloodiest event in Europe since World War II. Geographically, Croatia is very close to Italy to the West by way of the Adriatric Sea, Austria and Hungary to the north, and Bosnia to the West. You can find Ivana on instagram at @books.with.tutus_and_sons and at her blogsite books.with.tutusandsons.com - Follow us on Facebook at The Perks of Being a Book Lover - Instagram at @perksofbeingabookloverpod - For show notes for any episode, go to our website at www.perksofbeingabooklover.com. Books Mentioned in this Episode: 1- Girl at War by Sara Nović 2- Chasing a Croatian Girl by Cody McClain Brown 3- The Famous Five by Enid Blyton 4- The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis 5- Grimm's Fairy Tales 6- Croatian Tales of Long Ago by Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić 7- Various poetry by Dobriša Cesarić 8- Various poetry by Vesna Parun 9- Gordana by Marija Jurić (pen name: Zagorka) and other series 10- Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón 11- Various works by Elif Shafak 12- Beartown by Fredrik Backman 13- Anxious People Fredrik Backman 14- Various works by Colleen Hoover 15- Dark Mother Earth by Kristian Novak 16- The Gypsy, But The Most Beautiful by Kristian Novak 17- Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore 18- This is How it Always Is by Laurie Frankel 19- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak 20- A Boy's Life by Robert R. McCammon 21- Shantaram by Gregory Davis Roberts 22- Odin's Child by Siri Pettersen 23- Love Stories by Trent Dalton 24- The Guncle by Steven Rowley 25- Every Bone a Prayer by Ashley Blooms 26- Where I Can't Follow by Ashley Blooms

For me some of the most satisfying episodes we do are when we talk to book lovers from other countries. What is it like to be a book lover from far-reaching places around the world? In the past we have talked to readers and writers from Ireland, Somalia, Germany, and Saudi Arabia. This week, we are headed to Croatia to speak with Ivana Murk who gives us a window into her life as a child growing up, learning to read both the Cyrillic alphabet which Slavic languages are based on and the Latin alphabet. She learned English in school starting in 3rd grade and now she now reads books in both Croatian and English. We talk with her about Croatian authors who you might want to find translations for if possible, why the skill of a book translator is so important, and what authors you have probably heard of who are particularly popular in her country. We feel it would be helpful to give you just a brief little summary of Croatian history in the last 50 years that is most relevant to this episode. Croatia was a part of the former Yugoslavia, which also included Serbia, Bosnia, Hercegovina, Slovenia, Macedonia, and Montenegro. In 1991, Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia. This did not happen peacefully. This was followed by the Bosnia War from 1992-1995 which pitted Croatians, Bosnians, and Serbians against each other and has been called the bloodiest event in Europe since World War II. Geographically, Croatia is very close to Italy to the West by way of the Adriatric Sea, Austria and Hungary to the north, and Bosnia to the West. You can find Ivana on instagram at @books.with.tutus_and_sons and at her blogsite books.with.tutusandsons.com - Follow us on Facebook at The Perks of Being a Book Lover - Instagram at @perksof beingabookoverpod - For show notes for any episode, go to our website at www.perksofbeingabooklover.com. Books Mentioned in this Episode: 1- Girl at War by Sara Nović 2- Chasing a Croatian Girl by Cody McClain Brown 3- The Famous Five by Enid Blyton 4- The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis 5- Grimm's Fairy Tales 6- Croatian Tales of Long Ago by Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić 7- Various poetry by Dobriša Cesarić 8- Various poetry by Vesna Parun 9- Gordana by Marija Jurić (pen name: Zagorka) and other series 10- Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón 11- Various works by Elif Shafak 12- Beartown by Fredrik Backman 13- Anxious People Fredrik Backman 14- Various works by Colleen Hoover 15- Dark Mother Earth by Kristian Novak 16- The Gypsy, But The Most Beautiful by Kristian Novak 17- Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore 18- This is How it Always Is by Laurie Frankel 19- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak 20- A Boy's Life by Robert R. McCammon 21- Shantaram by Gregory Davis Roberts 22- Odin's Child by Siri Pettersen 23- Love Stories by Trent Dalton 24- The Guncle by Steven Rowley 25- Every Bone a Prayer by Ashley Blooms 26- Where I Can't Follow by Ashley Blooms

We look at how Islam came to Bosnia and the impact of Ottoman and Islamic culture on Bosnia.

Yugoslavia continues to disintegrate. There's Kosovo, there's lingering territorial and financial disputes among successor countries...and there's Republika Srpska. Last month, Milorad Dodik, the Serb member of Bosnia and Herzegovina's tripartite presidency and Republika Srpska's strongman leader, announced the entity would annul a number of state laws and withdraw from the country's institutions in order to establish the entity's full autonomy under the original Dayton Peace Agreement. While these steps would fall short of outright secession, the announcement sent chills across Bosnia and the region; the internationals and many Bosnians are worried at the prospect of partition and conflict. The situation remains tense.How did we get here? How did Dayton's gendered nature impact Bosnia and Herzegovina in its 26 years? What are the broader international and geopolitical implications of the current crisis? And how can the Dayton problem be solved? With Aida Hozić, Valery Perry, and Tanja Topić.The Remembering Yugoslavia podcast explores the memory of a country that no longer exists. Created, produced, and hosted by Peter Korchnak. New episodes two to three times per month.Shownotes/transcript: RememberingYugoslavia.com/Podcast-Specter-of-Dayton/Instagram: @RememberingYugoslaviaSUPPORT THE SHOW ›Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/rememberingyugoslavia)

Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik is taking steps that international leaders warn are “tantamount to secession” and there are fears his threats could dismantle the delicate agreement holding the country together. The war in Bosnia from 1992-1995 was the bloodiest one in Europe since World War II, and for many Bosnians, the trauma still lingers. In this episode: Majda Ruge (@majda_ruge), Senior Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (@ECFRBerlin) Mersiha Gadzo (@MersihaGadzo), Producer for Al Jazeera Digital (@AJEnglish) Riada Asimovic Akyol (@riadaaa), Contributing Editor, News Lines Magazine (@NewsLinesMag) Connect with The Take:  Twitter (@AJTheTake), Instagram (@ajthetake) and Facebook (@TheTakePod)

*ep starts at 18 mins The Serbian mafia has its origins in the arrival of increasing numbers of Yugoslavian immigrants to Western Europe in the 1970's and 1980s. Operating in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and France, groups of Serbian expatriates engaged in a pattern of robberies and thefts. Much of this was supported by the communist Yugoslavian intelligence service, who employed gangsters overseas as informants and assassins, and in exchange provided them with firearms and legal protection. The combination of Yugoslavian government support and the money earned from brazen heists, made Yugoslavian criminals some of the most powerful in Western Europe in the 1980s. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and its allies in Eastern and Southern Europe, many Serbian criminals overseas returned to Yugoslavia, taking advantage of the chaos to embark on new criminal careers. Many served in paramilitary and militia organisations created ostensibly to protect ethnic Serbs and government property, but quickly they became known for criminal activity and their role in the ethnic cleansing of Bosnians, Croats and Slovenes from Serb territories. With the end of the Yugoslav wars, these militias became entwined with the criminal “clans” of Serbia, with both enjoying the support of the former communist intelligence and security forces. With the overthrow of Slobodon Milosovic, a period of reform was ushered in. In response, the most violent and powerful Serbian crime group - the Zemun Clan - partnered with Serbian special forces to assassinate the Prime Minister, in order to protect the status and privilege that they are garnered during the bloodshed of the 1990s Guest is Dave Williamson @davewcomedy Spaic, Igor. The Long Trial of the Balkan Cocaine King. Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. 9 February 2016. https://www.occrp.org/en/blog/4910-the-long-trial-of-the-balkan-cocaine-king Anastajevic, Dejan. “Ljubisa Buha Cumet: Great Paving.” VREME. 25 June 2009. https://www.vreme.com/cms/view.php?id=872105 Partos, Gabriel. “Marathon Djindic Trial.” BBC News. 23 May 2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6683133.stm Ciric, Milos. “The Third Bullet and the Political Background of the Assassination of Zoran Dindic.” ANTIDOT: Independent Media and Campus Network. 11 March 2017. https://www.anti.media/en/istrazivanja/files/treci-metak-i-politicka-pozadina-atentata-na-zorana-indic a/ Stonajovic, Dusan. “Group Named in Plot on Serbia Chief.” Global Policy Forum. Associated Press. 9 April 2003. https://archive.globalpolicy.org/intljustice/tribunals/yugo/2003/0409plot.htm

*ep starts at 26:30 The Serbian mafia has its origins in the arrival of increasing numbers of Yugoslavian immigrants to Western Europe in the 1970's and 1980s. Operating in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and France, groups of Serbian expatriates engaged in a pattern of robberies and thefts. Much of this was supported by the communist Yugoslavian intelligence service, who employed gangsters overseas as informants and assassins, and in exchange provided them with firearms and legal protection. The combination of Yugoslavian government support and the money earned from brazen heists, made Yugoslavian criminals some of the most powerful in Western Europe in the 1980s. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and its allies in Eastern and Southern Europe, many Serbian criminals overseas returned to Yugoslavia, taking advantage of the chaos to embark on new criminal careers. Many served in paramilitary and militia organisations created ostensibly to protect ethnic Serbs and government property, but quickly they became known for criminal activity and their role in the ethnic cleansing of Bosnians, Croats and Slovenes from Serb territories. With the end of the Yugoslav wars, these militias became entwined with the criminal “clans” of Serbia, with both enjoying the support of the former communist intelligence and security forces. With the overthrow of Slobodon Milosovic, a period of reform was ushered in. In response, the most violent and powerful Serbian crime group - the Zemun Clan - partnered with Serbian special forces to assassinate the Prime Minister, in order to protect the status and privilege that they are garnered during the bloodshed of the 1990s Guest is Dave Williamson @davewcomedy Spaic, Igor. The Long Trial of the Balkan Cocaine King. Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. 9 February 2016. https://www.occrp.org/en/blog/4910-the-long-trial-of-the-balkan-cocaine-king Anastajevic, Dejan. “Ljubisa Buha Cumet: Great Paving.” VREME. 25 June 2009. https://www.vreme.com/cms/view.php?id=872105 Partos, Gabriel. “Marathon Djindic Trial.” BBC News. 23 May 2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6683133.stm Ciric, Milos. “The Third Bullet and the Political Background of the Assassination of Zoran Dindic.” ANTIDOT: Independent Media and Campus Network. 11 March 2017. https://www.anti.media/en/istrazivanja/files/treci-metak-i-politicka-pozadina-atentata-na-zorana-indic a/ Stonajovic, Dusan. “Group Named in Plot on Serbia Chief.” Global Policy Forum. Associated Press. 9 April 2003. https://archive.globalpolicy.org/intljustice/tribunals/yugo/2003/0409plot.htm

Bosnians are leaving their country in droves. Why? And what can be done about it?With Samir Beharić, Elma Hodžić, Danijela Majstorović, and Nela Porobić Isaković. Featuring music by Dubioza Kolektiv.The Remembering Yugoslavia podcast explores the memory of a country that no longer exists. Created, produced, and hosted by Peter Korchnak. New episodes two to three times per month.Shownotes: RememberingYugoslavia.com/Podcast-Bosnian-Emigration/Instagram: @RememberingYugoslaviaSUPPORT THE SHOW ›Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/rememberingyugoslavia)

Bosnians and Mladic – Why are war criminals still given a voice? by Radio Islam

Monday, 28 June 2021, 7 – 8pm A panel discussion organised by the School of Linguistic Speech and Communication Sciences in association with the Bosnia Herzegovina Association of Ireland, and hosted by Trinity Long Room Hub. Over twenty-five years since the end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, atrocities such as the Srebrenica genocide, in which over 8000 boys and men were killed by Bosnian Serb armed forces in a UN ‘safe area' in July 1995, continue to impact the lives of survivors. In this panel discussion, international academics and advocates will reflect on the aftermath of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-1995). They will share perspectives on post-conflict Bosnia and consider the impact of trauma and displacement on the region. They will also explore the significance of remembering Srebrenica and other crimes against humanity perpetrated across Bosnia and Herzegovina during the war. The event involves engagement with the Bosnia Herzegovina Association of Ireland, a voluntary group representing the Bosnian community in this country. It will share the lived experience of the Bosnian community in Ireland, which developed from a refugee resettlement programme in the 1990s. This will provide an opportunity for reflection on the reception of Bosnians who arrived in Ireland almost a generation ago and current attitudes towards refugees and asylum seekers.

Latin America's particular relation with death implies something even worse: the practice of disappearing people in connection with State terrorism. The disappearance of rituals, which has reached an unprecedented extent, further exacerbated in times of pandemic, only increases contemporary anxiety. In this context, the analyst's role is to function less as archaeologists—as Freud imagined—than as forensic anthropologists.”     Mariano Horenstein has published three books (Psicoanálisis en lengua menor; The compass and the couch. The necessary strangeness of Psychoanalysis; and Funambulistas. Travesía adolescente y riesgo). He has received some awards, among them Lucian Freud, Ángel Garma, Elise Hayman and FEPAL. He has given seminars and conferences in institutions  from Latin America, Europe, EEUU and Asia. Former chief editor of Calibán-Revista Latinoamericana de Psicoanálisis. Current Training Director of the Asociación Psicoanalítica de Córdoba.   I If we had to pick just two words as the focal points of an ellipse that might serve as an approach to comprehend the subjects comprising the human species—at least the human species as conceived by psychoanalysis—they would be sex and death. Not only are these words focal points in terms of two points equidistant from the center of the ellipse; they are also sources of illumination that shed light on a large part of the phenomena that psychoanalysis has always engaged with, those inherent to clinical practice, and to daily life.     The center of the ellipse can remain empty. There we can put Lack, Castration, and the hole that sex is insistent on refuting, only to encounter it again and again. There also can go death, almost a mute echo of that hole, an impossible representation of the only certainty that inhabits within us. Although psychoanalysis has usually been identified with sex, almost to the point of caricature, death is no less present in its theoretical structure. With his habitual insight regarding psychoanalysis, Woody Allen once said “There are only two important things in life. The first is sex and the second I don't remember.” Of course he doesn't remember the second one. And the artist himself offers a clue when he says “My relationship with death remains the same. I'm strongly against it.” It's well worth approaching the topic of death with humor, because there is nothing funny about what I'm going to discuss.   II Sex and death then: Psychoanalysis' Two Crucial Themes There is no place here for generalizations, because what matters from a psychoanalytical standpoint are the particularities—even more so in a project that emphasizes the value of a Geography of Psychoanalysis, like the one that Lorena Preta imagined—the place where enunciation occurs. Although I have the good fortune to work in different geographical contexts, I speak from one in particular: Latin America, a continent that has proven to be fertile ground for psychoanalysis. Unfortunately, the same has shown to be true for death, to the point that we can consider Latin America to have a certain particularity in relation to death. Here I do not refer to folklore of any kind or to how the Extreme West—as we have sometimes been named—may look through European eyes, from a perspective habitually tinged with a degree of ethnocentrism. This has nothing to do, then, with the greater or lesser visual impact of Mexican culture's festivities or with the extreme melancholy in some our tango or zamba music, or with sacrificial rituals or anthropophagy practiced by some of this land's original inhabitants. I want to talk about a particular contribution—if you will permit me a bit of irony—that Latin America's recent history has made to the human species, showing that it is as capable of committing marvelous gestures as it is of committing abhorrent crimes. Here I am referring to something even worse than death: disappearance. Specifically, I mean the forced disappearance of people, which became a specialty of this continent and my country in particular during the dictatorships in the 1970s. After briefly commenting on why I think this Latin American “contribution” of sorts is even worse than death, I hope to be able to infer several consequences that are important for psychoanalysis as a whole and for the position of the analyst, moving from specifics to generalities. For any geography of psychoanalysis, the same should apply.   It isn't that we Latin Americans are the ones to have invented disappearing people on our own accord. With different variants, Latin American dictators have looked upon the Nazi regime or at least the Prussian military tradition with admiration. It is no coincidence that many Nazi war criminals found refuge in Chile, Argentina, Brazil or Paraguay. The idea that it is possible to make an Other disappear without a trace is not ours. Thucydides had already testified to how Sparta, fearing an uprising, made the Helots disappear from the face of the earth. Nor was torture, as the tempestuous prelude to disappearance that was turned into an administrative policy of the State, invented in this region of the world. Latin American military personnel were trained in these practices by their French and North American peers. In a somewhat perverse strain of anthropophagy--a process that has allowed us to digest knowledge, make it our own and produce something original as a result—a similar procedure has taken place here with massacre technology.   That originality, Latin America's barbarity, consists of disappearance as a messy State practice, imposing a sort of limbo that is even worse than death for thousands of victims, shutting them up inside an impossible space—as if they were condemned souls or zombies unable to die—the space of tragedy. As Lacan articulated in his studies, it is the place that Antigone demonstrates with her courage, while combating it at the same time. Mourning relatives exist all over the world, but in Latin America, bodies nec nonine, buried—in the case that they were buried, many were thrown into the sea or the dark depths of man-made reservoirs—who knows where, are mourned. Latin America saw the advent of mothers who have passed decades asking to be informed of the whereabouts of their children; it was in Argentina and Chile that the Mothers of Grief would march in their endless circles in main squares, or would impotently search, digging in the desert, confronting the authors of the genocide, demanding to know where their disappeared children are. The mothers of the Bosnians massacred in Srebrenia under European safe haven came afterward. As a result, our forensic anthropologists had the dubious privilege of becoming the world's most experienced team in this field. They gained so much expertise in my country that people from all over the world called upon them to identify remains in mass graves. And they taught us psychoanalysts that there is something worse than physical death: symbolic death, because symbolic death can also lead to biological death, but by being made impossible to name, it generates an anguish that is infinite. Death that cannot be named permits no jokes, nor does it leave any room for grief work, the particular manner that Freud chose to refer to the task that every human must undertake in the face of loss.           III On more than one occasion, Freud identified with Heinrich Schliemann, the man who discovered Troy, and assimilated the analyst's task to that of the archaeologist. However, maybe we should admit instead that as psychoanalysts we work more like forensic anthropologists than archaeologists. If we agree that a progressive loss of ritual exists in a large portion of the West, and that practices of mourning as collective ways of dealing with death are insidiously dissolving away, we must be aware that it cannot occur without bringing subjective consequences along with it.     French psychoanalyst Jean Allouch has studied the implications of this desritualization, allowing a glimpse of the extent to which the cases reaching psychoanalytical practice today have to do with this disappearance of rituals. There are very few places that currently respect timeframes for the mourning process, the prescriptions all religions have developed in order to accompany those who have suffered a loss and which is the closest way we humans have to imagine our own deaths, always without a unconscious inscription. Contemporary wakes are a formality; almost no one dresses in black, mirrors are not covered and lloronas (funeral wailers) are a thing of the past. Obituaries are very seldom published in the newspapers, and if they are, they are seldom read. Death has ceased to be a collective question and has gone on to be—just like everything else in the mass individualism we live in—a personal issue. It is an issue that each person has to manage as best they can, and the quicker the better. The less evidence there is of the fracture that the loss of a loved one causes in us, the better; the sooner that the utilitarian logic of capitalism is reestablished, the better.   Not to mention this era of the pandemic; on the one hand it has multiplied the scale of death, the number of bodies piling up in morgues and the never-ending digging of graves that never suffice, while contemporary society also suddenly finds itself practicing medieval forms of protection. On the other hand, the same virus that shows how fragile the human species is with minimalist simplicity also makes a hug impossible, the accompaniment owed to any survivor along with the rituals of paying last respects. The Other—even dead—has turned into a source of danger. Here as well, the lack of rituals intensifies grief and diminishes the efficacy of the symbolic tools we have constructed over time in order to face horror.                     If at least part of the contemporary angst and anguish, the existential void, widespread anxiety and profusion of addictions that currently reach our offices is an articulation of this desritualization of our lives and of the degradation of the symbolic that invades our selves, perhaps we should ask ourselves about what we are losing when we believe we are winning. A few ancient verses from Ecclesiates, attributed to Salomon, are usually recited during Jewish funerals, when the deceased's relatives tear apart a garment as a visible sign that something within them has been rent asunder:     All things have their season, and in their times all things pass under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted. A time to kill, and a time to heal. A time to destroy, and a time to build. A time to weep, and a time to laugh. A time to mourn, and a time to dance. A time to scatter stones, and a time to gather. A time to embrace, and a time to be far from embraces. A time to get, and a time to lose. A time to keep, and a time to cast away. A time to rend, and a time to sew. A time to keep silence, and a time to speak. A time of love, and a time of hatred. A time of war, and a time of peace.   Any intent to shorten the time to weep has its consequences. The same is true for not paying due attention to having been advised that, almost like a premonition, there is “a time to be far from embraces”… A psychoanalyst today offers patient, archaeological listening, but not that alone. We function as forensic anthropologists, unearthing pieces, helping those who come to us for consultation to reconstruct lost or impossible identities. The invention and consolidation of analytical methods practically coincided with the degradation of an empire that used to give meaning to its inhabitants and with the disasters of a war that left those who survived it speechless, incapable of assembling an account of their experience, which had also been destroyed. Freud's invention, then, was offering a space in order to restore that destroyed experience. Without proposing to do so, Freud may well have invented a new secular ritual as well, one that remains valid even in an era that is determined to leave them behind.        

Turkey finds itself in the middle of the latest Russia-Ukraine flare-up — Who could succeed Angela Merkel as German chancellor? — Bosnians protest their government's poor handling of the COVID pandemic — Britain's royal family mourns the death of Prince Philip — and more!

Chile has become a global example of how a high vaccine rollout may not mean the end of the Covid-19 pandemic. Numbers of infections and deaths are higher than ever, and a strict new lockdown has been imposed. BBC Mundo contributor Paula Molina explains how this situation arose. Egypt's new Coptic speakers Coptic can be traced back to the language spoken in Ancient Egypt, but only survives today in the liturgy of the Coptic Orthodox Church. Apart, that is, from a growing number of Egyptians who want to reconnect with their history. Rana Taha of BBC Arabic explains how they're bringing the language back to life. South Korea's Olympic diplomacy North Korea's announcement that it will not take part in the Tokyo Olympics, in order to protect its athletes from Covid-19, has disappointed South Korea. Julie Yoonnyung Lee of BBC Korean explains why the Games are seen as such an important opportunity for South Korea to engage with the North. Meeting the female 'kolbars' The 'kolbars' or porters, who illegally carry heavy loads across the Iran-Iraq border, are mostly Kurdish people, who turn to this dangerous work because it's impossible to find other employment. It is thought of as a man's job, but Parham Ghobadi of BBC Persian tells us there are also women taking part. Bosnia's forgotten king Tvrtko I, the first King of Bosnia, ruled over Serbs, Croats and Bosnians in the 14th century, and expanded Bosnian territory to the greatest it's been before or since. Today, he's largely forgotten. BBC Serbian's Nataša Anđelković tells us why she wanted to remind her audience about him. Image: A Chilean woman shows an identification card during the vaccination against Covid-19 Credit: Claudio Santana / Getty Images

People from Bosnia themselves are very diverse and different with many influences and it is difficult to stereotype these people. But when travelling across Sarajevo, you’ll notice that there are certain features that you encounter again and again, no matter what street you’re in. Bosnians are friendly people. Bosnians generally have a pretty relaxed sense of time and that’s why they easily start conversations in cafes offering their help to confused travellers. Popular places to meet among locals are "kafanas" (traditional cafes) and "kafiches" (modern café-bars) According to them, coffee is poured three times, and each serving even has its name: "Welcome coffee", "Talk coffee", and the third portion, "Farewell coffee", politely signalling that it's time to say goodbye. This soundscape was recorded while having a cafe in one this "kafiches" (modern café-bars), capturing the essence of the city among the music of a street artist playing the santur.  Recorded by Rafael Diogo as a city sound guide for Cities and Memory - see more at https://citiesandmemory.com/city-sound-guides 

The city is sometimes affectionately called ‘Little Jerusalem’ or the ‘European Jerusalem’. Here you will find mosques, Serbian Orthodox churches, Roman Catholic churches and synagogues all nestled within close proximity to one another demonstrating the myriad of different faiths and beliefs that exist in this special city. Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque is located in the Baščaršija neighbourhood and has the locals say it become an imperial place in the renewal of the Islamic faith after years of Communist rule during which religion did not play a prominent role in the daily lives of Bosnians. As more mosques and other Islamic structures are built-in Bosnia, it will remain critical that Bosnia, and Bosnians, retain and build their own “Islamic identity” through these endeavours. Recorded by Rafael Diogo as a city sound guide for Cities and Memory - see more at https://citiesandmemory.com/city-sound-guides 

In episode 135 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed considering the importance of being nice, telling the story of a photographer that became a baker, and reflecting on the jet-set lifestyle of one of the greats of British photography. Plus this week photographer Paul Lowe takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which he answer's the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?' Paul Lowe is an award-winning photographer who has covered breaking news the world over, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, Nelson Mandela's release, famine in Africa, the conflict in the former Yugoslavia and the destruction of Grozny. His images have been published in Time, Newsweek, Life, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Observer and The Independent amongst others. His book, Bosnians, documenting 10 years of the war and post-war situation in Bosnia, was published in April 2005 and Lowe's research on the photography of conflict, has led to him contributing chapters to Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis (2012) and Photography and Conflict. His most recent books include Photography Masterclass, Understanding Photojournalism, co-authored with Dr. Jenny Good and Photography Rules: Essential Do's and Don'ts from Great Photographers. Lowe is a Reader in Documentary Photography and the Course Leader of the Masters program in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts, London, UK. He is a member of the VII Agency. https://viiphoto.com/authors/paul-lowe/ Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Taylor Francis 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Taylor Francis 2019). His book What Does Photography Mean to You? including 89 photographers who have contributed to the A Photographic Life podcast is on sale now £9.99 https://bluecoatpress.co.uk/product/what-does-photography-mean-to-you/ © Grant Scott 2020

In today's episode we will be joined by Adnan Mahmutovic to discuss his recent article: Black Moses Matters. In this article, Adnan investigates the location of Bosnians within the contemporary racial hierarchy. Key to his investigation is the assertion that Moses was black. Today, we will talk about the writing process that went into the essay and discuss the importance of a writer's relationship with their audience.

Introductory speeches from a meeting of the same name, which outline the complex events that led up to the war, left responses and legacies of the war. Sarah Correia is a researcher at LSE, researching memories of the Bosnian war. Martin Thomas talks about the response of much of the left at the time. A recent interview on this topic with Sarah Correia: https://workersliberty.org/story/2020-09-09/bosnian-war-25-years-later And an article by Martin Thomas: https://workersliberty.org/story/2020-09-09/left-and-bosnia December 2020 marks 15 years since the end of the Bosnian war. In 1992 after Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence, a Serb-backed military assault took place, bringing ethnic cleansing, rape and destruction of mosques. Under the banner of “peace” and opposing Western intervention many on the left sided with, or failed to oppose, the Serb nationalists. Workers' Liberty argued an international arms embargo should be lifted so that the Bosnians could defend themselves. This meeting will outline the complex events that led up to the war, the left responses and the legacies of that war.

This week, Bosnia is marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Srebrenica Massacre – Europe’s worst atrocity since the Second World War. Those who ordered the executions were convicted of genocide. Today Bosnia is deeply divided, impoverished, and governed by politicians who stir up the remaining ethnic enmity. Now young Bosnians are leaving in droves, says Guy De Launey. Turkmenistan is a secretive and authoritarian state, and has not registered a single case of Covid-19. But independent media organisations, based outside the country, say their sources are reporting numerous cases of people falling ill with Covid-like symptoms. Now experts from the World Health Organisation have visited. What did they find, asks Rayhan Demytrie? Tanzania announced that it had defeated the coronavirus last month, but it has not released full data on infections or deaths for many weeks. There was no lockdown, as the president declared that God would protect the country. But the US embassy warned that hospitals were overwhelmed. Where does that leave Tanzanians, like Sammy Awami? Singapore pressed ahead with a general election despite the pandemic last week. The People’s Action Party has ruled for decades and won again, but with a reduced majority. The opposition Worker’s party had its best result to date. Could there be change in the air? Sharanjit Leyl visited a woman in a poorer district. Germany already made the wearing of face-coverings in shops compulsory in April and has been seen to handle the pandemic well. Germans have adapted to having to wear masks quite creatively, with designs ranging from leopard skin to bridal lace and denim. So what style did Damien McGuinness go for in Berlin? Presenter: Kate Adie Producers: Arlene Gregorius and Serena Tarling

Present and past world leaders have been addressing Bosnians and dignitaries gathered at Srebrenica, as part of ceremonies marking the 25th anniversary of the massacre of about 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys. Also in the programme: President Trump commutes sentence of Roger Stone, longtime friend and adviser; and we hear from a front-line doctor about coronavirus in Yemen. Picture: Bosnian Muslim women mourn next to gravestones during a funeral ceremony at the Potocari Memorial Center and Cemetery, in Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 11 July 2020. Credit: EPA/FEHIM DEMIR.

In 1995, between July 11-22, Serbian forces murdered 8,327 defenseless Bosnians in an act of genocide. What's happened to international law and outrage over crimes against humanity?

It has been 15 days since our Los Angeles Lakers last took the court. Why does it feel so much longer? Alen Ramić joins Ricky’s Den for another chapter of Until Further Notice: Quarantine Days. We talk about his life in the UK, Bosnians love for basketball, and simulate the 1st round of the Western conference playoffs. Crazy times. Thanks for listening. Enjoy! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/late-night-lake-show/message

Jai Alia Brewing gets a shout out. Tim commits to honesty shots. Chris talks about his massive amount of vacation time. The Bosnians begin their invasion of Site 6. A breakdown of people fighting monkeys. Eric Swalwell farts on TV. Tim talks about stuff he hates, and Chris eats a moldy pie.

Where would we be without immigrants? RefugePoint founder and executive director Sasha Chanoff and Chickadee owner and executive chef John daSilva join host Billy Shore in Boston to discuss the hardships faced by immigrants and refugees and the promise and strength they bring to their new homes. “Refugees do revitalize cities - like Lewiston, Maine, or St. Louis, Missouri - that were on the decline and Somalis and Bosnians moved in and started businesses,” Chanoff explains. “Immigrant workers make up 30% of the workforce [at Chickadee]. If you take away 30% of the workforce in a workforce-depleted industry, the effects would be devastating,” observes daSilva. Chanoff shares a harrowing tale about rescuing hundreds of massacre survivors in war-torn Congo early in his career. “I was struck viscerally by this idea that if I could play a very small role in helping somebody who had gone through a lot of trauma and terror, and often lost so much in their lives… that was the most important thing I could do,” he says. “These people working for me are just doing the best that they can, working as hard as they can. How could we turn our backs on them? We need them,” concludes daSilva. Join in this engaging conversation between two guests who share their personal perspectives on how immigrants and refugees make us all stronger.

Is the upcoming Bosnian Pride a socio-political game changer in the region's central polity? Can the struggle for LGBT rights help deliver greater civil rights for all Bosnians and Herzgovinians? And how do we square the bigoted comments of North Macedonia's PM with his government's recent reform push? It's all LGBT topics on Sarajevo Calling's jubilee 10th episode. To help celebrate, remember to check us out on Twitter, Facebook, Spotify, and TuneIn, while also visiting our Patreon page. Sarajevo Calling is a podcast about Southeast European affairs, focusing in particular on the contemporary politics of the Western Balkans. Hosted by journalist Aleksandar Brezar and political scientist Jasmin Mujanović, and with graphics provided by Boris Stapić, Sarajevo Calling posts new episodes every two weeks.

The Inaugural Golazo Perth Podcast sees hosts Sean and Louie discuss Stirling's recent relegation 6 pointer with Rockingham along with interviews from Stirling's Captain Dean Cummings and manager Trevor Morgan. The rest is in the run sheet. Enjoy!1:35 - Feature match (Stirling lions vs Rockingham City)11:00 - Dean Cummings (Stirling Captain)14:30 - Trevor Morgan (Stirling manager)18:30 - NPL review/Goal of the round 25:00 - WA Division 1 and Division 2 28:20 - European news 33:55 - FIFA tournaments (13thof August, Mt Henry Tavern)37:15 - Pro clubs chat

On Saturday, the 5th Annual Bosnian and Herzegovinian Heritage Day will be held at Kleiner Park in Meridian. Idaho Matters talks about the history and traditions of the region's Bosnian and Herzegovinian communities. George Prentice visits with Maya Duratovic and Patty Miller from the Basque Museum and Cultural Center in Boise on the role of the city's Basques in helping these European communities settle in Idaho.

A recent trip to the United States proved quite fruitful for Mirsad Hadzikadic and the Platform for Progress Movement.  In his US home for over 30 years, Charlotte, the first Constitutional Assembly in the US was formed.  This same process was also begun in St. Louis, the largest population of Bosnians in the US and outside of Europe, in addition to Chicago.  I had an opportunity to sit down with Mirsad in Charlotte before he headed back to Sarajevo to talk about the significance of these latest developments. Održana prva izborno-osnivačka skupština u SAD-u Nedavno putovanje u Sjedinjene Američke Države bilo je korisno za Mirsada Hadžikadića i Platformu za progres. U američkom gradu Charlotte, u kojem Mirsad živi već više od trideset godina, održana je prva izborno-osnivačka skupština u SAD-u. Taj je proces započet i u St. Louisu u kojem, uz Chicago, živi najveća zajednica Bosanaca u Sjedinjenim Američkim Državama i uopšte izvan Evrope. Sa Mirsadom sam se sreo u Charlotteu prije njegovog povratka u Sarajevo i razgovarali smo o značaju tih dešavanja. 20.05.2019. Kliknite ovdje da pročitate intervju sa Mirsadom Hadžikadićem na službenim jezicima Bosne i Hercegovine

For Mirsad Hadzikadic beginning the process of formally establishing the Platform For Progress Movement in the US has been a primary focus during his recent trip stateside. He and his wife Mirzeta traveled to St. Louis where the largest population of Bosnians in the US resides.  Other formal activities are planned for Chicago and Charlotte.  We spoke following his trip to St. Louis, discussing how key it is for the Movement to become organized there as well as other key cities around the US, and the challenges moving forward with such an effort.  Nastavlja se osnivanje pokreta Platforma za progres s obje strane Atlantskog okeana Za Mirsada Hadžikadića, početak procesa formalnog osnivanja pokreta Platforma za progres u SAD-u bio je u centru pažnje tokom njegovog nedavnog puta u SAD. On i njegova supruga Mirzeta posjetili su St. Louis, u kojem živi najveći broj stanovnika iz BiH. Dodatne formalne aktivnosti planirane su za Chicago i Charlotte. Nakon njegovog puta u St. Louis, razgovarali smo o važnosti organizovanja Pokreta u tom gradu, ali i u drugim većim gradovima širom SAD-a, kao i o izazovima s kojima se sreću tokom realizacije tih aktivnosti. 02.05.2019. Kliknite ovdje da pročitate intervju sa Mirsadom Hadžikadićem na službenim jezicima Bosne i Hercegovine

Hej vänner! I det här avsnittet går vi igenom era frågor från Instagram, Leni pratar om sin hip-hip-period med allt vad det innebär. Haris berättar om hur ett inte så konstigt sms kan bli konstigt om det kommer till fel person. En av oss ska bli pappa (obs ej skämt), vi pratar mycket om det och faderskapet i stort. Sist men inte minst vill vi slänga in en brasklapp om att avsnittet spelades in med hjälp av våra kompisar Peroni, Karlovacko, Corona, Laphroaig och Meza. 

This episode on the assassinations of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie Chotek introduces the players. The empires of Europe squabbled over colonies while Serbian and Bosnian nationalists struggled for independence. Six young Bosnians spotted the perfect opportunity to strike a blow against Austria-Hungary. And if that that sounds too boring, come for the murder-suicide.

Last year, Alex Cruikshanks came on the show to talk about Belgrade, a really detailed and wide-ranging episode. And we had such a great time, he's back again to talk about more recent history in Yugoslavia, specifically the brutal massacre at Srebrenica. Yugoslavia, as anyone who was alive in the 1990s knows, was falling apart in the early part of the decade. The Bosnian War was raging, and in 1995, some 8,000 Bosniaks, mostly men and boys, were killed. What led up to this genocide, how could something like this happen in our recent history, and what has been the fallout since? Alex is the perfect person to about this, not just because of his podcast, but he just made a trip to participate in a peace march in the region. How the massacre began As Alex told me this episode, in the late 1980s, a sort of coalition-by-default formed as Yugoslavia held elections, as the parties that represented the various ethnic factions of the country won a majority. But they soon realized that all that was holding them together was an anti-Communist stance, so the coalition immediately began dissolving. In a referendum in 1992, Bosnians voted for independence, and in the Spring and Summer of 1992, Serbian nationalists begin staging coups throughout the country, placing Serbs in power, and begin massacring non-Serb populations. Srebrenica stronghold But while all of this was going on, there were pockets where Bosniaks were able to hold off the Serbian nationalists from taking over. One such stronghold was the small town of Srebrenica, which was able to maintain its autonomy for three years. As Alex says, it only had about 6,000 people before the war, but because so many have been killed or expelled throughout the region, it swells to an unsustainable population of 40,000. In 1993 a militia forms in Srebrenica to try to fight back, and the Serbian army takes notice, planning an invasion. But just as that was heating up, UN peacekeepers visited the town, and ended up putting a small force there, keeping the violence at bay for two years. How the UN peacekeepers couldn't keep the peace But in 1995, Slobodan Milosevic decides it's time to try to shut down the enclaves, and he issues what becomes known as Directive 7, which orders the separation of Srebrenica from the other enclaves and “by planned and well-thought-out combat operations, create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival or life for the inhabitants of Srebrenica.” That's about as grim and awful as it gets, but as Alex says, it's likely Milosevic was not thinking of massacre, but rather starving the residents until they give up. The Serb national army then takes UN peacekeepers as hostages to ward off UN airstrikes, and in July they begin their combat operations in earnest. Unfortunately, the Bosnian militia were not well-trained fighters, and they ended up falling back. How the massacre happened, and what happened after As the Serbian army advanced, many hoped the UN would step in and be able to save the Bosniaks. But many men and boys had a feeling that if they stayed, they would be killed. So they fled, but unfortunately, the Serbs were able to ambush them. It's a truly horrific story of ethnic cleansing that happened not that long ago. But as Alex and I discuss in this week's episode, the Bosnian people are actually some of the most liberal and optimistic people we've met. It's an incredible story, and it's important that we never forget it. Outline of This Episode [1:30] The beginnings of war [7:17] Bosniaks able to hold off Serbs [12:45] The difference between Croats and Serbs [21:09] How the massacre happened [35:00] Conditions during the war [40:45] How the conflict resolves [43:33] The war crimes tribunal [51:40] Alex's trip to Bosnia Resources Mentioned The History of Yugoslavia Podcast Belgrade: The Rise of the White City Connect With Stephanie stephanie@historyfangirl.com https://historyfangirl.com Support Stephanie on Patreon Featuring the song “Places Unseen” by Lee Rosevere. More info and photographs for this episode at: https://historyfangirl.com/the-massacre-at-srebrenica/

In her new book, Health and Wealth on the Bosnian Market: Intimate Debt (Indiana University Press, 2017), Larisa Jašarević traces the odd entanglements between the body and the economy in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In the new post-war, post-socialist market, the feeling of being indebted is a condition shared by many, and the struggle to achieve a good life can make a person “worry themselves sick.” At the interface of health and wealth, Jašarević follows the many detours ordinary Bosnians take in order to try to achieve financial and medical well-being. In the process, she offers ethnographic insights on the informal gifting economy, the enigmatic power of alternative healers, and the political potential of the fleeting communities that form and separate as people try to live well, and to be well. Jelena Golubovic is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Simon Fraser University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In her new book, Health and Wealth on the Bosnian Market: Intimate Debt (Indiana University Press, 2017), Larisa Jašarević traces the odd entanglements between the body and the economy in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In the new post-war, post-socialist market, the feeling of being indebted is a condition shared by many, and the struggle to achieve a good life can make a person “worry themselves sick.” At the interface of health and wealth, Jašarević follows the many detours ordinary Bosnians take in order to try to achieve financial and medical well-being. In the process, she offers ethnographic insights on the informal gifting economy, the enigmatic power of alternative healers, and the political potential of the fleeting communities that form and separate as people try to live well, and to be well. Jelena Golubovic is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Simon Fraser University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In her new book, Health and Wealth on the Bosnian Market: Intimate Debt (Indiana University Press, 2017), Larisa Jašarević traces the odd entanglements between the body and the economy in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In the new post-war, post-socialist market, the feeling of being indebted is a condition shared by many, and the struggle to achieve a good life can make a person “worry themselves sick.” At the interface of health and wealth, Jašarević follows the many detours ordinary Bosnians take in order to try to achieve financial and medical well-being. In the process, she offers ethnographic insights on the informal gifting economy, the enigmatic power of alternative healers, and the political potential of the fleeting communities that form and separate as people try to live well, and to be well. Jelena Golubovic is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Simon Fraser University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In her new book, Health and Wealth on the Bosnian Market: Intimate Debt (Indiana University Press, 2017), Larisa Jašarević traces the odd entanglements between the body and the economy in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In the new post-war, post-socialist market, the feeling of being indebted is a condition shared by many, and the struggle to achieve a good life can make a person “worry themselves sick.” At the interface of health and wealth, Jašarević follows the many detours ordinary Bosnians take in order to try to achieve financial and medical well-being. In the process, she offers ethnographic insights on the informal gifting economy, the enigmatic power of alternative healers, and the political potential of the fleeting communities that form and separate as people try to live well, and to be well. Jelena Golubovic is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Simon Fraser University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In her new book, Health and Wealth on the Bosnian Market: Intimate Debt (Indiana University Press, 2017), Larisa Jašarević traces the odd entanglements between the body and the economy in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In the new post-war, post-socialist market, the feeling of being indebted is a condition shared by many, and the struggle to achieve a good life can make a person “worry themselves sick.” At the interface of health and wealth, Jašarević follows the many detours ordinary Bosnians take in order to try to achieve financial and medical well-being. In the process, she offers ethnographic insights on the informal gifting economy, the enigmatic power of alternative healers, and the political potential of the fleeting communities that form and separate as people try to live well, and to be well. Jelena Golubovic is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Simon Fraser University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In her new book, Health and Wealth on the Bosnian Market: Intimate Debt (Indiana University Press, 2017), Larisa Jašarević traces the odd entanglements between the body and the economy in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In the new post-war, post-socialist market, the feeling of being indebted is a condition shared by many, and the struggle to achieve a good life can make a person “worry themselves sick.” At the interface of health and wealth, Jašarević follows the many detours ordinary Bosnians take in order to try to achieve financial and medical well-being. In the process, she offers ethnographic insights on the informal gifting economy, the enigmatic power of alternative healers, and the political potential of the fleeting communities that form and separate as people try to live well, and to be well. Jelena Golubovic is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Simon Fraser University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

An interview package produced for the Subversion #1312 program/podcast.  The Balkan route is the path many refugees choose or basically are forced to take to get the safer countries in Europe. It is a hazardous journey which involves crossing the sea and remote dangerous areas on land. Also as this mass migration from war torn and brutal countries continues to grow it has prompted countries along the Balkan route to shut their borders, and deploy police to enforce them. Bosnia has emerged as a new underground route for travel to Europe. At least 7000 have arrived in the country this year. Bosnia does not have adequate facilities to accommodate this number of people. Remembering their recent conflict some Bosnians are sympathetic to the travellers but many don't want to be reminded of the pain they endured during the civil war in the 1990s. The Bosnian government is becoming less and less welcoming, with the foreign minister saying last last month the country can not become a migrant reception centre. Our correspondent Riot Turtle from Enough is Enough is in a camp near the Bosnia/Croatia border, with Cars of Hope building facilities for the camp and helping in whatever way they can. He is also doing interviews and reports and sent me this interview with an Iranian mother, who with her family is trying to reach Europe. As part of a small group the family crossed into Croatia, but were intercepted by police after a farmer reported them. This interview is distressing and listener discretion is advised. The mother's voice has been altered for her safety.

Michael Miller, a solo practitioner in the area of trusts and estates and president of the New York State Bar Association, talks about supervising elections in Bosnia, just nine months after the war’s end in 1995. Amid the ruins and casualties of war, and despite persistent rain, Bosnians stood for hours proud and eager to vote in a democratic election. Miranda Warnings is hosted by past NYSBA President David Miranda. www.nysba.org/podcast

This is part two of a two part chat with Dr. Paul Lowe. Paul is a Reader in Documentary Photography and the Course Leader of the Masters program in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts, London. Before elected to put his cameras away in favour of a life in academia, Paul was an award-winning news and documentary photographer with several World Press Photo awards under his belt and many years of experience covering breaking news the world over, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Romanian revolution, Nelson Mandela’s release, famine in Africa, the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, and the destruction of Grozny during the conflict in Chechnya. His pictures have appeared in such esteemed publications as TIME, Newsweek, Life, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Observer, and The Independent, amongst others. His book, Bosnians, documenting 10 years of the war and post-war situation in Bosnia, was published in April 2005 by Saqi books. His research interest focuses on the photography of conflict, and he has contributed chapters to the books Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis (Reaktion, 2012) and Photography and Conflict. His most recent books include Photography Masterclass (buy on Amazon) published by Thames and Hudson, and Understanding Photojournalism, co-authored with Dr. Jenny Good, published by Bloomsbury Academic Press (Buy on Amazon). THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY THE CHARCOAL BOOK CLUB - THE LATEST AND GREATEST PHOTOBOOKS, EXPERTLY CURATED AND DELIVERED TO YOU DOOR WITH FREE SHIPPING AND NO HASSLES. **VERY SPECIAL LISTENER OFFER** USE CODE 'ASMALLVOICE' TO CLAIM A 10% DISCOUNT WHEN YOU JOIN!!! https://charcoalbookclub.com - INFORM THE MIND, INSPIRE THE SOUL

This is part one of a two part chat with Dr. Paul Lowe. Paul is a Reader in Documentary Photography and the Course Leader of the Masters program in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts, London. Before elected to put his cameras away in favour of a life in academia, Paul was an award-winning news and documentary photographer with several World Press Photo awards under his belt and many years of experience covering breaking news the world over, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Romanian revolution, Nelson Mandela’s release, famine in Africa, the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, and the destruction of Grozny during the conflict in Chechnya. His pictures have appeared in such esteemed publications as TIME, Newsweek, Life, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Observer, and The Independent, amongst others. His book, Bosnians, documenting 10 years of the war and post-war situation in Bosnia, was published in April 2005 by Saqi books. His research interest focuses on the photography of conflict, and he has contributed chapters to the books Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis (Reaktion, 2012) and Photography and Conflict. His most recent books include Photography Masterclass (buy on Amazon) published by Thames and Hudson, and Understanding Photojournalism, co-authored with Dr. Jenny Good, published by Bloomsbury Academic Press (Buy on Amazon). THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY THE CHARCOAL BOOK CLUB - THE LATEST AND GREATEST PHOTOBOOKS, EXPERTLY CURATED AND DELIVERED TO YOU DOOR WITH FREE SHIPPING AND NO HASSLES. **VERY SPECIAL LISTENER OFFER** USE CODE 'ASMALLVOICE' TO CLAIM A FREE PHOTOBOOK WHEN YOU JOIN!!! https://charcoalbookclub.com - INFORM THE MIND, INSPIRE THE SOUL

La barb

In the fifth episode of the Series, Theo Davies-Lewis speaks to former president of Trinity College Sir Ivor Roberts. Among the topics discussed are his diplomatic career, the relevance of the British foreign office and the difference between negotiating with the Bosnians and negotiating with Trinity's JCR.

It seemed that everyone wanted Bosnia in the late nineteenth century: Serbian and Croatian nationalists; Ottoman, Habsburg, Muslim and Yugoslav movements. At the same time, they all felt frustration with the Bosnian peasants for not living up to their nationalist and political imaginations. In Whose Bosnia? National and Political Imagination in the Balkans (Cornell University Press, 2015),Edin Hajdarpasic makes a number of arguments about how we understand nationalism and political movements in contested spaces. By exploring how these different movements defined Bosnia and Bosnians, crafted narratives of suffering and engaged youth, he argues that nationalism was a productive, open-ended force even in the face of seeming failures to achieve the nationalists’ goals. Hajdarpasic discusses these themes, as well as “nation-compulsion” which he defined as “a set of political and moral imperatives that one grapples with as part of becoming and maintaining oneself as a proper patriot.” Edin Hajdarpasic is Associate Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago, where he teaches courses in Western Civilization; the modern Balkans; nineteenth-century Europe; and the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It seemed that everyone wanted Bosnia in the late nineteenth century: Serbian and Croatian nationalists; Ottoman, Habsburg, Muslim and Yugoslav movements. At the same time, they all felt frustration with the Bosnian peasants for not living up to their nationalist and political imaginations. In Whose Bosnia? National and Political Imagination in the Balkans (Cornell University Press, 2015),Edin Hajdarpasic makes a number of arguments about how we understand nationalism and political movements in contested spaces. By exploring how these different movements defined Bosnia and Bosnians, crafted narratives of suffering and engaged youth, he argues that nationalism was a productive, open-ended force even in the face of seeming failures to achieve the nationalists’ goals. Hajdarpasic discusses these themes, as well as “nation-compulsion” which he defined as “a set of political and moral imperatives that one grapples with as part of becoming and maintaining oneself as a proper patriot.” Edin Hajdarpasic is Associate Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago, where he teaches courses in Western Civilization; the modern Balkans; nineteenth-century Europe; and the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It seemed that everyone wanted Bosnia in the late nineteenth century: Serbian and Croatian nationalists; Ottoman, Habsburg, Muslim and Yugoslav movements. At the same time, they all felt frustration with the Bosnian peasants for not living up to their nationalist and political imaginations. In Whose Bosnia? National and Political Imagination in the Balkans (Cornell University Press, 2015),Edin Hajdarpasic makes a number of arguments about how we understand nationalism and political movements in contested spaces. By exploring how these different movements defined Bosnia and Bosnians, crafted narratives of suffering and engaged youth, he argues that nationalism was a productive, open-ended force even in the face of seeming failures to achieve the nationalists’ goals. Hajdarpasic discusses these themes, as well as “nation-compulsion” which he defined as “a set of political and moral imperatives that one grapples with as part of becoming and maintaining oneself as a proper patriot.” Edin Hajdarpasic is Associate Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago, where he teaches courses in Western Civilization; the modern Balkans; nineteenth-century Europe; and the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It seemed that everyone wanted Bosnia in the late nineteenth century: Serbian and Croatian nationalists; Ottoman, Habsburg, Muslim and Yugoslav movements. At the same time, they all felt frustration with the Bosnian peasants for not living up to their nationalist and political imaginations. In Whose Bosnia? National and Political Imagination in the Balkans (Cornell University Press, 2015),Edin Hajdarpasic makes a number of arguments about how we understand nationalism and political movements in contested spaces. By exploring how these different movements defined Bosnia and Bosnians, crafted narratives of suffering and engaged youth, he argues that nationalism was a productive, open-ended force even in the face of seeming failures to achieve the nationalists’ goals. Hajdarpasic discusses these themes, as well as “nation-compulsion” which he defined as “a set of political and moral imperatives that one grapples with as part of becoming and maintaining oneself as a proper patriot.” Edin Hajdarpasic is Associate Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago, where he teaches courses in Western Civilization; the modern Balkans; nineteenth-century Europe; and the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It seemed that everyone wanted Bosnia in the late nineteenth century: Serbian and Croatian nationalists; Ottoman, Habsburg, Muslim and Yugoslav movements. At the same time, they all felt frustration with the Bosnian peasants for not living up to their nationalist and political imaginations. In Whose Bosnia? National and Political Imagination in the Balkans (Cornell University Press, 2015),Edin Hajdarpasic makes a number of arguments about how we understand nationalism and political movements in contested spaces. By exploring how these different movements defined Bosnia and Bosnians, crafted narratives of suffering and engaged youth, he argues that nationalism was a productive, open-ended force even in the face of seeming failures to achieve the nationalists’ goals. Hajdarpasic discusses these themes, as well as “nation-compulsion” which he defined as “a set of political and moral imperatives that one grapples with as part of becoming and maintaining oneself as a proper patriot.” Edin Hajdarpasic is Associate Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago, where he teaches courses in Western Civilization; the modern Balkans; nineteenth-century Europe; and the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Starting with Metternich’s declaration that the Balkans begin at Rennweg (a street in the Third District of Vienna), Ana Foteva draws on novels, plays, librettos and travelogues from the 19th through the 21st century to explore the various forms the Balkan region has taken in Europe’s political and cultural imagination. Her analysis of these literary works reveals concepts of belonging, multi-belonging and unbelonging among Serbians, Bosnians, Croatians, Slovenes and even Austrians. Ana Foteva applies postmodern geography, literary, and colonial theories to demonstrate the relationship between the development of national identity, the pull of Habsburg imperial identity, the shaping of Yugoslav identity, and the fracturing of the Balkans in the 1990s. In our podcast conversation, she discusses and challenges stereotypes of the Balkans as a region of perpetual conflict. Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? The Geopolitical and Imaginary Borders Between the Balkans and Europe (Peter Lang, 20speaks to complex identities in the region rarely seen in contemporary media accounts. Ana Foteva received her PhD in German literature at Purdue University. Currently she holds the position of Visiting Assistant Professor in German Studies at St. Lawrence University. Amanda Jeanne Swain is executive director of the Humanities Commons at the University of California, Irvine. She received her PhD in Russian and East European history at the University of Washington. Her research interests include the intersections of national, Soviet and European identities in the Baltic countries. Recent publications include articles in Ab Imperio and Cahiers du Monde Russe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Starting with Metternich’s declaration that the Balkans begin at Rennweg (a street in the Third District of Vienna), Ana Foteva draws on novels, plays, librettos and travelogues from the 19th through the 21st century to explore the various forms the Balkan region has taken in Europe’s political and cultural imagination. Her analysis of these literary works reveals concepts of belonging, multi-belonging and unbelonging among Serbians, Bosnians, Croatians, Slovenes and even Austrians. Ana Foteva applies postmodern geography, literary, and colonial theories to demonstrate the relationship between the development of national identity, the pull of Habsburg imperial identity, the shaping of Yugoslav identity, and the fracturing of the Balkans in the 1990s. In our podcast conversation, she discusses and challenges stereotypes of the Balkans as a region of perpetual conflict. Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? The Geopolitical and Imaginary Borders Between the Balkans and Europe (Peter Lang, 20speaks to complex identities in the region rarely seen in contemporary media accounts. Ana Foteva received her PhD in German literature at Purdue University. Currently she holds the position of Visiting Assistant Professor in German Studies at St. Lawrence University. Amanda Jeanne Swain is executive director of the Humanities Commons at the University of California, Irvine. She received her PhD in Russian and East European history at the University of Washington. Her research interests include the intersections of national, Soviet and European identities in the Baltic countries. Recent publications include articles in Ab Imperio and Cahiers du Monde Russe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Starting with Metternich’s declaration that the Balkans begin at Rennweg (a street in the Third District of Vienna), Ana Foteva draws on novels, plays, librettos and travelogues from the 19th through the 21st century to explore the various forms the Balkan region has taken in Europe’s political and cultural imagination. Her analysis of these literary works reveals concepts of belonging, multi-belonging and unbelonging among Serbians, Bosnians, Croatians, Slovenes and even Austrians. Ana Foteva applies postmodern geography, literary, and colonial theories to demonstrate the relationship between the development of national identity, the pull of Habsburg imperial identity, the shaping of Yugoslav identity, and the fracturing of the Balkans in the 1990s. In our podcast conversation, she discusses and challenges stereotypes of the Balkans as a region of perpetual conflict. Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? The Geopolitical and Imaginary Borders Between the Balkans and Europe (Peter Lang, 20speaks to complex identities in the region rarely seen in contemporary media accounts. Ana Foteva received her PhD in German literature at Purdue University. Currently she holds the position of Visiting Assistant Professor in German Studies at St. Lawrence University. Amanda Jeanne Swain is executive director of the Humanities Commons at the University of California, Irvine. She received her PhD in Russian and East European history at the University of Washington. Her research interests include the intersections of national, Soviet and European identities in the Baltic countries. Recent publications include articles in Ab Imperio and Cahiers du Monde Russe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Starting with Metternich’s declaration that the Balkans begin at Rennweg (a street in the Third District of Vienna), Ana Foteva draws on novels, plays, librettos and travelogues from the 19th through the 21st century to explore the various forms the Balkan region has taken in Europe’s political and cultural imagination. Her analysis of these literary works reveals concepts of belonging, multi-belonging and unbelonging among Serbians, Bosnians, Croatians, Slovenes and even Austrians. Ana Foteva applies postmodern geography, literary, and colonial theories to demonstrate the relationship between the development of national identity, the pull of Habsburg imperial identity, the shaping of Yugoslav identity, and the fracturing of the Balkans in the 1990s. In our podcast conversation, she discusses and challenges stereotypes of the Balkans as a region of perpetual conflict. Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? The Geopolitical and Imaginary Borders Between the Balkans and Europe (Peter Lang, 20speaks to complex identities in the region rarely seen in contemporary media accounts. Ana Foteva received her PhD in German literature at Purdue University. Currently she holds the position of Visiting Assistant Professor in German Studies at St. Lawrence University. Amanda Jeanne Swain is executive director of the Humanities Commons at the University of California, Irvine. She received her PhD in Russian and East European history at the University of Washington. Her research interests include the intersections of national, Soviet and European identities in the Baltic countries. Recent publications include articles in Ab Imperio and Cahiers du Monde Russe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Starting with Metternich’s declaration that the Balkans begin at Rennweg (a street in the Third District of Vienna), Ana Foteva draws on novels, plays, librettos and travelogues from the 19th through the 21st century to explore the various forms the Balkan region has taken in Europe’s political and cultural imagination. Her analysis of these literary works reveals concepts of belonging, multi-belonging and unbelonging among Serbians, Bosnians, Croatians, Slovenes and even Austrians. Ana Foteva applies postmodern geography, literary, and colonial theories to demonstrate the relationship between the development of national identity, the pull of Habsburg imperial identity, the shaping of Yugoslav identity, and the fracturing of the Balkans in the 1990s. In our podcast conversation, she discusses and challenges stereotypes of the Balkans as a region of perpetual conflict. Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? The Geopolitical and Imaginary Borders Between the Balkans and Europe (Peter Lang, 20speaks to complex identities in the region rarely seen in contemporary media accounts. Ana Foteva received her PhD in German literature at Purdue University. Currently she holds the position of Visiting Assistant Professor in German Studies at St. Lawrence University. Amanda Jeanne Swain is executive director of the Humanities Commons at the University of California, Irvine. She received her PhD in Russian and East European history at the University of Washington. Her research interests include the intersections of national, Soviet and European identities in the Baltic countries. Recent publications include articles in Ab Imperio and Cahiers du Monde Russe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the midst of one of the worst genocides of our time, a group of Jews, Catholics and Muslims – Serbs, Croats and Bosnians – joined forces to provide humanitarian relief to anyone in need in Sarajevo. Journalist Ed Serotta, director of Centropa, describes “La Benovolencia” the extraordinary community that he witnessed in action, and covered, during the Bosnian War.

Is the Turkish prime minister Mr Erdogan listening to the demonstrators? James Reynolds has been following the protests in Istanbul and other cities. Chris Morris is in historic Mostar learning how difficult it is for Bosnians to forget about the past. People in the Golan Heights have been telling Wyre Davies they are concerned the fighting over the border in Syria is about to spill over into their territory. Lucy Ash has been to Yaroslavl in Russia to examine whether the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, really was the proletarian heroine she's made out to be. From Our Own Correspondent is produced by Tony Grant.

Dan's back and has news from Europe, Mongolians re-enact 19th Century Mormon exodus across the US plains, critical thinkers lose faith, and the Virgin Mary helps some Bosnians rip off pilgrims. 

2011-09-18-0830 Pastor Loran Livingston is the speaker this morning September 18th 2011 in the 8:30 service. Scripture: Romans 2:11, 28-29; 9:6-7; Acts 10:34-35; James 2:1-9; Matthew 25:35-46 Topic: Evangelism Notes: - God shows no favoritism; whoever calls on His name is accepted- Our calling is to preach the gospel, make disciples; if you do not share Jesus then you do not have the Holy Ghost- We are not to love one group more than another; we cannot choose who to give the gospel to; anybody who needs my help is my neighbor- Jonah hated the Ninevites; God’s love is not up to you- The Jews felt they were the chosen of God and would not associate with anyone else- Unbelieving Israel hurting believing Arabs; I don’t have to support an unrighteous nation: nations and governments are called to support Israel, not individuals- When you are chosen you proclaim the light, obey and serve God (apostles)- You must be born again; not a Jew who is outwardly but inwardly- Margaret Gaines excerpt on rebuilding the temple- Serbs, in the name of Christianity, murdering Bosnians who never heard the gospel- People so happy about Jesus but disinterested in people without Jesus...

2011-09-18-1030 Pastor Loran Livingston is the speaker this morning September 18th 2011 in the 10:30 service. Scripture: Romans 2:11, 28-29; 9:6-7; Acts 10:34-35; James 2:1-9; Matthew 25:35-46 Topic: Evangelism Notes: - God shows no favoritism; whoever calls on His name is accepted- Our calling is to preach the gospel, make disciples; if you do not share Jesus then you do not have the Holy Ghost- We are not to love one group more than another; we cannot choose who to give the gospel to; anybody who needs my help is my neighbor- Jonah hated the Ninevites; God’s love is not up to you- The Jews felt they were the chosen of God and would not associate with anyone else- Unbelieving Israel hurting believing Arabs; I don’t have to support an unrighteous nation: nations and governments are called to support Israel, not individuals- When you are chosen you proclaim the light, obey and serve God (apostles)- You must be born again; not a Jew who is outwardly but inwardly- Margaret Gaines excerpt on rebuilding the temple- Serbs, in the name of Christianity, murdering Bosnians who never heard the gospel- People so happy about Jesus but disinterested in people without Jesus...

More homeopathy (!), treating impotence, victimising Bosnians and permanent gastric fistulas. Diagnosed by passages from the Koran, it’s Skeptics with a K.