Communist state in Europe and Asia that lasted from 1922 to 1991
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Want to reach out to us? Want to leave a comment or review? Want to give us a suggestion or berate Anthony? Send us a text by clicking this link!A 500-foot granite cross rises north of Madrid, and underneath it lies a story most of us were never taught to see straight. The Spanish Civil War is usually packaged as a clash between fascist generals and a democratic republic, with Hemingway and Orwell standing in for the whole moral picture. Today I walk through historian Warren Carroll's counterclaim from The Last Crusade: that the core conflict is faith against revolution, and that once you follow the evidence, the familiar narrative starts to invert.We trace the five-year runway to 1936: church burnings, anti-Catholic laws, and the Popular Front's own revolutionary promises, followed by a country slipping into open political violence. Then we hit the moment that makes “normal politics” feel impossible: the murder of opposition leader José Calvo Sotelo by state security forces. From there the focus shifts to Navarre's Carlists and the religious framing that turns a rising into what Carroll calls a crusade, complete with confession, Communion, hymns, and the Sacred Heart.The hardest section is the one Carroll says the modern world prefers to minimize: the systematic persecution of the Catholic Church in Republican zones, the disappearance of public Mass, and the martyr stories, including Barbastro. We also look at the siege of the Alcazar of Toledo and why symbolic promises can outweigh tactical advantage, then follow Carroll's documentation of Soviet influence, the NKVD presence, and Spain's gold shipped to the Soviet Union. Finally, I deal directly with Nationalist abuses and Carroll's argument about judging a war's original cause versus the sins committed within it.If you care about Spanish Civil War history, Catholic persecution in Spain, Franco-era memory, or how propaganda shapes what becomes “common knowledge,” this one will stick with you. Subscribe, share the episode with a friend who thinks they already know this war, and leave a review with the question you can't stop turning over.Support the showGet 10% off an amazing Black Monk Rosary by going to https://www.blackmonkrosaries.com/?ref=AVOIDINGBABYLON and using code AVOIDINGBABYLON at checkout!Check out our sponsor, Nic Nac, at www.nicnac.com and use code "AB25%" for 25% off of your first order!Please subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKsxnv80ByFV4OGvt_kImjQ?sub_confirmation=1https://www.avoidingbabylon.comMerchandise: https://avoiding-babylon-shop.fourthwall.comLocals Community: https://avoidingbabylon.locals.comFull Premium/Locals Shows on Audio Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1987412/subscribeRSS Feed for Podcast Apps: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/1987412.rss
In the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse, Kazakhstan inherited the remnants of one of the world's most contaminated landscapes: the Semipalatinsk Test Site, known locally as the Polygon. Resigned to dispossession, residents have chosen to remain on the abandoned nuclear test site, despite the isolation and the radioactive environment, rather than face marginalization or the rigors of a neoliberal world. Atomic Collective: Radioactive Life in Kazakhstan (University of Toronto Press, 2025) examines this nuclear legacy through a decade-long ethnographic examination of the village of Koian, situated on the border of the test site. Facing residual radiation all around them and isolation, Koianers persist, reshaping their pastoral existence among the ruins and scientific debates surrounding genetic damage. Drawing on first-hand accounts and archival research, this book explores the resilience and everyday survival strategies of a community left behind to fend for itself in the shadow of nuclear testing. It offers a unique perspective on life in a nuclear zone and poses fundamental questions about human resilience and the impact of historical events on a collective identity. Atomic Collective sheds light on a community overlooked in the larger Cold War histories of atomic testing. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology
In 1962, the Soviet Union was winning the Space Race. To inspire the nation, President Kennedy announced, “We choose to go to the Moon.” He admitted that this wouldn't be easy, but that we would succeed.President Kennedy was right. Achievement is built on the backbone of hard work. But it's competition that spurs us to even greater heights of progress. That's why it's unfortunate that today's socialistic society tells parents that competition harms a boy's self-esteem when they lose.Even though losing isn't fun, it's by trudging through the valleys of loss that we can then enjoy the mountaintops of victory. By inspiring your son to conquer obstacles, he'll develop the knowledge, skills, and fortitude to succeed in life.To learn more about growing boys into godly men, download the free ebook Raising Godly Boys: A Proven Process at Trail Life USA or RaisingGodlyBoys.com.
In the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse, Kazakhstan inherited the remnants of one of the world's most contaminated landscapes: the Semipalatinsk Test Site, known locally as the Polygon. Resigned to dispossession, residents have chosen to remain on the abandoned nuclear test site, despite the isolation and the radioactive environment, rather than face marginalization or the rigors of a neoliberal world. Atomic Collective: Radioactive Life in Kazakhstan (University of Toronto Press, 2025) examines this nuclear legacy through a decade-long ethnographic examination of the village of Koian, situated on the border of the test site. Facing residual radiation all around them and isolation, Koianers persist, reshaping their pastoral existence among the ruins and scientific debates surrounding genetic damage. Drawing on first-hand accounts and archival research, this book explores the resilience and everyday survival strategies of a community left behind to fend for itself in the shadow of nuclear testing. It offers a unique perspective on life in a nuclear zone and poses fundamental questions about human resilience and the impact of historical events on a collective identity. Atomic Collective sheds light on a community overlooked in the larger Cold War histories of atomic testing. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology
In this episode, David shares powerful testimonies of healing from his ministry in Dewsbury, Kiev, and across the former Soviet Union. Drawing from James 5 and the words of Jesus, he explores the biblical call to preach the gospel, pray for the sick, and expect God to work miracles. With personal stories of blind eyes opened, cripples walking, and his own battle with throat cancer, this message is a stirring reminder of the power of faith-filled prayer. 'When I moved to Harrogate things changed and I saw my first powerful miracle of healing. After we had prayed, I continued to visit Mr Corker, and soon, I began to see something which I came to realise was the cancer coming away from his body. His catheter tube kept getting blocked so that, even in front of me, he would be trying to clear it. Not long after this, the doctors confirmed something unusual was going on and sent him back into hospital, hopefully even to restore his body functions and remove the two bags. But he was so difficult and cantankerous in the hospital, that they threw him out without any operation. But God had miraculously healed his body – he pulled his tubes out himself at home – and soon he was back in church. The cancer never returned.' For more information on the Ministry of David Hathaway http://eurovision.org.uk Watch the video on YouTube https://youtu.be/Yr4kwA34izg
If you enjoy this episode, please take out a subscription to 10 Percent True at: https://www.10percenttrue.com/pricing-plans/list.10PCT EP88 Dave “Khan” Carr – F-15, F-16, Weapons School & AggressorsDave “Khan” Carr joins 10 Percent True to discuss an extraordinary fighter career flying the F-15 Eagle and F-16 Viper.From Cold War intercepts over Alaska and Iceland, to the Fighter Weapons School, Red Flag Aggressors, and teaching the next generation of fighter pilots, Khan offers a rare insight into the reality of high-end air combat.This is a deep dive into how the USAF prepared to fight the Soviet Union, how air combat tactics evolved through the Cold War and beyond, and what it really takes to become a top-tier fighter pilot.Along the way, Khan shares stories of Arctic alert missions, Weapons School pressure, Aggressor training, massive Red Flag battles, Soviet threat replication, and how the Eagle and Viper compared in a fight.If you've ever wanted to understand what really happens behind the scenes in elite fighter aviation, this is one you won't want to miss.⸻0:00 Intro Teaser – Eagle vs Viper Differences2:20 A Quick Word from Steve4:04 Welcome Khan4:50 Khan Introduces Himself6:40 First Tour at Elmendorf – Flying the Eagle in Alaska8:38 Early Career Challenges and Encounters12:12 Discussing Losses in the Early Days14:08 Dealing with Loss15:34 Eyeing the Next Career Step – and Making It Happen17:17 Keflavik – CFTs and Diversions to Scotland19:47 Steve Geeks Out on CFTs21:14 The Mission at Keflavik – Bears, Tomcats and Lightnings (with Tankers)23:04 Honing Air-to-Air Skills as the Eagle Matured25:28 Dialling Up the AoA – “It Depends…”26:55 Rudder Use, When to Use It, and Evolving Tactics28:32 Weapons School – Selection, Work-Ups and Challenges32:40 A Memorable Weapons School Sortie – Vark Speed and Perfect Execution35:58 Why No “Super Squadrons”?37:24 The Benefits of Weapons School Graduation40:30 Expertise Across All Facets of the Mission41:52 Tyndall and the FTU44:35 Does It Get Better Than This?46:18 Eagle Culture – and Did It Change?49:52 Peak Performance or Room for Improvement? The Importance of COMMS54:12 Getting Granular – What It Takes to Make It in the Eagle Community56:34 Regrets About Missing Desert Storm?58:12 Joining the Aggressors59:48 Being a “True” Aggressor1:04:25 Gloves Off?1:06:10 Simulating the Threat as Accurately as Possible – Who Sees Who?1:09:48 Maintaining Situational Awareness1:10:55 Becoming a Threat System SME – The Process1:13:05 Expectation vs Reality as More Information Became Available1:15:50 “Natural” Bias?1:17:54 Views on Threat Advantages and Capabilities1:21:45 Eagle vs Viper Comparisons (Intro Teaser Topic)1:25:02 The “Bad Bob” (VX-9 F-14D) Encounter1:26:55 Toughest Opponent as an Aggressor?1:30:19 When Things Don't Go to Plan – Scaring Yourself1:34:10 Eating Shit as an Eagle Guy Flying Vipers?1:34:54 Twilight of a Career – Guard Life, MSIP A Models, NVGs and Iraq1:39:32 Young vs Old Eagle Driver1:42:14 Keeping Up with Evolving Tactics and Changes1:49:30 Fini Flight1:53:15 Do You Miss It?1:53:54 Thanks Khan – Till Next Time
In the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse, Kazakhstan inherited the remnants of one of the world's most contaminated landscapes: the Semipalatinsk Test Site, known locally as the Polygon. Resigned to dispossession, residents have chosen to remain on the abandoned nuclear test site, despite the isolation and the radioactive environment, rather than face marginalization or the rigors of a neoliberal world. Atomic Collective: Radioactive Life in Kazakhstan (University of Toronto Press, 2025) examines this nuclear legacy through a decade-long ethnographic examination of the village of Koian, situated on the border of the test site. Facing residual radiation all around them and isolation, Koianers persist, reshaping their pastoral existence among the ruins and scientific debates surrounding genetic damage. Drawing on first-hand accounts and archival research, this book explores the resilience and everyday survival strategies of a community left behind to fend for itself in the shadow of nuclear testing. It offers a unique perspective on life in a nuclear zone and poses fundamental questions about human resilience and the impact of historical events on a collective identity. Atomic Collective sheds light on a community overlooked in the larger Cold War histories of atomic testing. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 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
In the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse, Kazakhstan inherited the remnants of one of the world's most contaminated landscapes: the Semipalatinsk Test Site, known locally as the Polygon. Resigned to dispossession, residents have chosen to remain on the abandoned nuclear test site, despite the isolation and the radioactive environment, rather than face marginalization or the rigors of a neoliberal world. Atomic Collective: Radioactive Life in Kazakhstan (University of Toronto Press, 2025) examines this nuclear legacy through a decade-long ethnographic examination of the village of Koian, situated on the border of the test site. Facing residual radiation all around them and isolation, Koianers persist, reshaping their pastoral existence among the ruins and scientific debates surrounding genetic damage. Drawing on first-hand accounts and archival research, this book explores the resilience and everyday survival strategies of a community left behind to fend for itself in the shadow of nuclear testing. It offers a unique perspective on life in a nuclear zone and poses fundamental questions about human resilience and the impact of historical events on a collective identity. Atomic Collective sheds light on a community overlooked in the larger Cold War histories of atomic testing. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history
In the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse, Kazakhstan inherited the remnants of one of the world's most contaminated landscapes: the Semipalatinsk Test Site, known locally as the Polygon. Resigned to dispossession, residents have chosen to remain on the abandoned nuclear test site, despite the isolation and the radioactive environment, rather than face marginalization or the rigors of a neoliberal world. Atomic Collective: Radioactive Life in Kazakhstan (University of Toronto Press, 2025) examines this nuclear legacy through a decade-long ethnographic examination of the village of Koian, situated on the border of the test site. Facing residual radiation all around them and isolation, Koianers persist, reshaping their pastoral existence among the ruins and scientific debates surrounding genetic damage. Drawing on first-hand accounts and archival research, this book explores the resilience and everyday survival strategies of a community left behind to fend for itself in the shadow of nuclear testing. It offers a unique perspective on life in a nuclear zone and poses fundamental questions about human resilience and the impact of historical events on a collective identity. Atomic Collective sheds light on a community overlooked in the larger Cold War histories of atomic testing. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/central-asian-studies
We examine the aspects that are bringing the evil empire back from the dead. YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpGltSjHrlo Channel Support - https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/FGHPVTVAPRUNU Jeff Nyquist - www.jrnyquist.blog Trevor Loudon - www.trevorloudon.com and www.keywiki.org Lee Wheelbarger - www.klwworldnews.com Follow us on X: @Anderson10x3 @JRNyquist @TrevorLoudon1 @KLWNews1
In the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse, Kazakhstan inherited the remnants of one of the world's most contaminated landscapes: the Semipalatinsk Test Site, known locally as the Polygon. Resigned to dispossession, residents have chosen to remain on the abandoned nuclear test site, despite the isolation and the radioactive environment, rather than face marginalization or the rigors of a neoliberal world. Atomic Collective: Radioactive Life in Kazakhstan (University of Toronto Press, 2025) examines this nuclear legacy through a decade-long ethnographic examination of the village of Koian, situated on the border of the test site. Facing residual radiation all around them and isolation, Koianers persist, reshaping their pastoral existence among the ruins and scientific debates surrounding genetic damage. Drawing on first-hand accounts and archival research, this book explores the resilience and everyday survival strategies of a community left behind to fend for itself in the shadow of nuclear testing. It offers a unique perspective on life in a nuclear zone and poses fundamental questions about human resilience and the impact of historical events on a collective identity. Atomic Collective sheds light on a community overlooked in the larger Cold War histories of atomic testing. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies
In the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse, Kazakhstan inherited the remnants of one of the world's most contaminated landscapes: the Semipalatinsk Test Site, known locally as the Polygon. Resigned to dispossession, residents have chosen to remain on the abandoned nuclear test site, despite the isolation and the radioactive environment, rather than face marginalization or the rigors of a neoliberal world. Atomic Collective: Radioactive Life in Kazakhstan (University of Toronto Press, 2025) examines this nuclear legacy through a decade-long ethnographic examination of the village of Koian, situated on the border of the test site. Facing residual radiation all around them and isolation, Koianers persist, reshaping their pastoral existence among the ruins and scientific debates surrounding genetic damage. Drawing on first-hand accounts and archival research, this book explores the resilience and everyday survival strategies of a community left behind to fend for itself in the shadow of nuclear testing. It offers a unique perspective on life in a nuclear zone and poses fundamental questions about human resilience and the impact of historical events on a collective identity. Atomic Collective sheds light on a community overlooked in the larger Cold War histories of atomic testing. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society
On Thursday's Mark Levin Show, Spain has seen a massive influx of over 80,000 illegal immigrants from Morocco and Northern Africa, with humanity as far as the eye can see breaking into the country while its socialist, radical leftist, anti-American and anti-Israel president does nothing. This mirrors the rapid destruction possible in a single government cycle, as occurred under Biden in America. Communists in the Democrat Party, Democratic Socialists of America and their allies oppose immigration enforcement and attack ICE precisely because they seek such open-border circumstances as a regular occurrence to replace the current citizenry with people from the Third World. This is revolution by immigration that will destroy the country; there is no discussion of assimilation or the true purpose of immigration. Americans must fight for our country by explaining its greatness and rejecting Marxism as totalitarianism and Islamism as contrary to civilization due to its embrace of murder, rape, and other evils. Also, a new Texas poll shows Republicans in trouble ahead of the midterms, with Democrat James Talarico leading Ken Paxton by five points in the Senate race and Governor Greg Abbott leading by only three points against Gina Hinojosa. Close races also appear in the attorney general contest and other key states. Republicans fail to effectively counter Democratic messaging on affordability despite improvements in gas prices, food costs, incomes, and inflation, while open borders and demographic shifts threaten long-term Republican prospects in Texas. Later, a Free Press piece details individuals around the President seeking to dissuade him from a more aggressive posture in the coming weeks that would significantly weaken or destroy the regime; such efforts amount to treachery that undermines the original reasons for involvement. President Trump should evaluate his advisers and rely on those who favor victory and reject isolationist or appeasement voices. It is time to arm and train the Iranian people with air and military support, and to capture or destroy Kharg Island—the regime's economic core—since eliminating its ability to fund the IRGC, army, police, and militias would create power struggles and collapse the police state, even after the elimination of dozens of top leaders. Finally, if the Isolationists had prevailed, Iran would already possess workable nuclear weapons. Trump has long recognized that Iran cannot obtain nukes, but isolationists claim he is manipulated by warmongers and RINOs; in reality, the isolationists themselves are the RINOs—a throwback to 1950s conservatism that Reagan rejected in favor of victory over the Soviet Union. Isolationists are stupid because they refuse to study the enemy, which seeks to wipe America off the earth, destroy its faiths, civilization, and Constitution alongside Marxists, and originates from Islamist regimes in the Middle East and places such as Pakistan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
"Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich" by Stephen Leacock is a humorous exploration of the lives of the upper crust in a bustling American metropolis, serving as a follow-up to his beloved "Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town." Through a series of interlocking stories, Leacock captures the absurdities and quirks of affluent society, offering a satirical lens on wealth and privilege that remains relevant today. Originally published in 1914, the book was a significant success in its time, even finding an audience in the Soviet Union after the 1917 revolution.
Much like the bleak life in the Soviet Union that it depicts, Star City is tense, bleak, violent and rather cold.Read our full reviewPluggedIn Facebook PageIf you've enjoyed listening to Plugged In Reviews, please give us your feedback.
A major thank you to Robert for sponsoring today's stream, in it I die deep into the history and persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church during the communist era of the Soviet Union. Make sure to leave a comment and let me know what you think. God Bless Join Logos Cinema Here: https://www.logoscinema.com/cotel
Much like the bleak life in the Soviet Union that it depicts, Star City is tense, bleak, violent and rather cold.Read our full reviewPluggedIn Facebook PageIf you've enjoyed listening to Plugged In Reviews, please give us your feedback. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1005/29?v=20251111
Hey there, Believers! This week's episode is super important, and I hope that you'll share it with everyone you know... I'm bringing on Eric Mock, VP of Slavic Gospel Association, along with Pastor Valenytn, who lives and ministers in Ukraine. Founded in 1934, Slavic Gospel Association (SGA, www.sga.org) helps “forgotten” orphans, widows and families in Ukraine, Russia, the former Soviet countries of Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Russian-speaking immigrants in Israel – caring for their physical needs and sharing the life-transforming Gospel. SGA supports an extensive grassroots network of local evangelical missionary pastors and churches in cities and rural villages across this vast region.For many Ukrainian children, their earliest memories are marked by war. Summer Camps sponsored by Illinois-based Slavic Gospel Association (SGA) offer them a glimpse of the childhood they were meant to have.Key facts:More than 80,000 children are expected to attend SGA-supported summer Bible camps across Ukraine and the former Soviet Union this year.Since 2022, 279,058 children and teenagers have attended the camps.Camps provide meals, games, friendships, Bible teaching and practical support for children affected by war, displacement, loss, hunger and food insecurity.At one recent camp in southern Ukraine, nearly 100 children knelt in prayer. Some parents were so moved that they joined them.Camp activities continue under the threat of air-raid alerts and missile and drone attacks.God BlessHave an experience that you'd like to share?Holler at me: thebumppodcast@gmail.comFeel led to donate to The BUMP Podcast?Check out www.buymeacoffee.com/thebumppodcastPick up my books!Army of God- https://a.co/d/0S3HttWTerror by Night- https://a.co/d/2tIy8yYMeet all your survival and EDC needs here!www.squatchsurvivalgear.comUse Promo Code BUMP26 to save 15% sitewide! Outro Song:"Oh, My Soul" Written and Performed by Ray Messer Jr.
This week we continue our series on republicanism by returning to an episode we did on the complicated legacy of the American Revolution. This older episode now has a 40 minute preface where we discuss the episode and how much things have changed since the original, enjoy! Like the bourgeois project as a whole, the historical consequences of the American Revolution have had mixed results. Simultaneously spurring on the cause of human freedom and stifling it, the American Revolution was pregnant with a creative and destructive spirit. As the American Empire appears to be in decline, we ask whether or not things could have gone, or could still go, in another direction. Check out Matthew and Jason's Podcast About the History of the Soviet Union: https://regrettablecentury.podbean.com/e/introducing-the-unbreakable-union-podcast-the-contemporary-importance-of-soviet-history/ War and Revolution: Rethinking the 20th Century https://thecharnelhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/domenico-losurdo-war-and-revolution-rethinking-the-twentieth-century.pdf Historical Revisionism and Delegitimation of the Revolutionary and Anticolonial Tradition—A Review of War and Revolution https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21598282.2016.1172752 Liberals and Reactionaries http://www.leninology.co.uk/2011/10/liberals-and-reactionaries.html From Karl Marx to the Fourth of July https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2010/07/inde-j03.html THE MYTH OF THE “CONSERVATIVE REVOLUTION” https://socialistworker.org/2011/12/14/myth-of-the-conservative-revolution Communist and Neo-Babouvist readings of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution https://www.academia.edu/38110441/_Communist_and_Neo_Babouvist_readings_of_the_Enlightenment_and_the_French_Revolution_in_E_Vallance_ed_Remembering_Early_Modern_Revolutions_London_Routledge_2018
Dr. Juliette Engel is a living witness and victim of some of the most vile hidden Intelligence programs ever devised. She has survived and even thrived since her brutal childhood, going on to offer brave eyewitness testimony to the depravity that can result when persons in power decide that they can violate any morals and acceptable behavior in the pursuit of control. The justification, as warped as it can be, is to say that we must sacrifice some people/children in order to preserve the greater good. From being delivered by her parents into the arms of CIA handlers at the age of six, to meeting Jeffrey Epstein on the San Juan Islands in the 1980s, when he was talking of buying islands in the Caribbean, Dr. Engel has encountered evil and survived. On this week's “Breggin Hour,” Peter and I had the privilege of sitting with Dr. Juliette Engel. At 77, she carries herself with a quiet radiance that Peter described as angelic. After hearing her story, I understood why. What was done to her as a child would have broken most people. What she has done with her life since then is a testament to the best of the human spirit. Juliette was born into a family of OSS, CIA, and NSA operatives. At the age of six, in 1955, her own father sold her into the MKUltra Monarch program. There she endured mind control, satanic ritual abuse, and the deliberate fracturing of a child's mind through repeated trauma. The program's goal was to create a dissociated, highly controllable person—someone who could later be used as a prostitute or intelligence asset. She was trained in what she calls “sex magick,” prepared for a future of exploitation. She escaped at seventeen. With no memory of her childhood, she put herself through university and medical school and became a physician in Seattle. For decades the past remained locked away. Only later, in her sixties, after twenty years of extraordinary humanitarian work in Russia, did she begin the long, painful process of opening those sealed rooms in her mind. What she discovered there is almost unbearable. Yet she has chosen to tell it—first in her memoir *Sparky: Surviving Sex Magick as I Lived It*, written from the magical thinking of the ten-year-old child she once was, and later in *Angels Over Moscow*, the story of her twenty years building an underground railroad for trafficking victims across the former Soviet Union. While working to improve medical care for children in Russian orphanages, Juliette uncovered a trafficking network that moved young girls to Scandinavia and the United States. She followed the trail. What she found changed the course of her life. With the MiraMed Institute and the Angel Coalition she founded, she helped create a network of villagers, police, educators, journalists, and officials who rescued more than 70,000 children and young women. She did this at great personal risk, often traveling alone through dangerous territory. She did it because she knew, in a way few of us can, what it means to be a child with no one coming to save you. In our conversation, she spoke of creating “Sparky”—an internal role model, a tough, courageous little girl warrior she invented at age ten because she had no trustworthy adults. Sparky was everything Juliette longed to be: strong, pretty, smart, able to stand up for herself and others. That imagined self became her compass. Decades later, when Jeffrey Epstein and his brother approached her at a private gathering on the San Juan Islands—offering her a house, naming the exact amount in her bank account, inviting her into their world—something deep inside said no. She credits Sparky. The protective programming that had once kept her silent also, in that moment, kept her safe. She spoke, too, of the suicide programs that are deliberately installed in survivors—the overwhelming voices that rise up when a person begins to remember or to speak. She has faced them more than once. She has learned to recognize the attack when it comes and to pull it through what she describes as the eye of a needle until it becomes manageable. She offers this knowledge freely to other survivors, because she does not want another person to be lost to a programmed death. Peter reminded us that whether intentionally programmed or programmed by traumas of childhood and tragedies of life, one must resist an urge toward suicide. He said: “First of all, somebody probably put that idea in your head on some level. And also it is something you can definitely leave behind. People can leave being suicidal behind, but you can't leave dead behind. So you've got to work to overcome the pain. And we're getting a wonderful lesson today in how a fine person can overcome that pain. Dr. Engel actually has done amazing work in setting up networks to save children in different parts of the world. What an amazing outcome for somebody who's been about as abused as a person can survive.” How to Help the Suicidally Depressed Person—Dr. Peter Breggin's 5th Simple Truths About Psychiatry' Once again we see a pattern that Peter and I have seen throughout our decades of work: the same systems that harm children also work hard to keep the truth from being believed. For years, people who reported MKUltra experiences were told they were delusional. People who tried to expose the dark operations of the CIA were called “conspiracy theorists.” But now that the CIA has finally released thousands of pages admitting the program's existence, survivors can no longer be so easily disparaged. The scale of what was done and, many believe, continues today, is coming into the light. Despite the horrors Juliette endured and witnessed, she persevered. A child who was meant to be broken became a doctor. A woman who had every reason to remain silent spent twenty years rescuing other people's children. A woman recovering her own stolen memories continues to stand with those still finding theirs. Dr. Juliette Engel found the courage and created the safety net for herself that made it possible to survive and build a life of compassion, science, healing, and reform. Her courage opens a window which we must look through. From facing the suffering of children through the hidden programs of the past or the open trafficking of the present, we must refuse to turn away. We need to build our empathy, not our defenses. And we need to remember that the human spirit, even after the most deliberate attempts to destroy it, can still choose love, courage, and service. We are grateful to Dr. Juliette Engel for trusting us with her story. Listen to the full interview on “The Breggin Hour.” Her books Sparky and Angels Over Moscow are available for those who wish to go deeper. You can learn more about her work at www.JulietteEngel.com. May her example strengthen every person who has ever felt broken by forces larger than themselves. Survival is possible. Healing is possible. And sometimes, out of the worst soil, the most luminous lives grow.
Liza Libes is a writer and literary critic at Pens and Poison. Her parents escaped the Soviet Union. She went to Columbia. She found that Columbia's English Department had replaced literature with Marxist theory, postcolonial studies, and critical theory. She's been pushing back ever since. We talked about: the teachers who made us both writers; reading Wallace Stevens's The Snowman — out loud, in full — and the seventh grade class that made Liza stand in the snow for an hour to understand it; Hemingway, Ezra Pound, and the fascism problem; what happened to Columbia's English Department and why it matters for publishing; why Marxism is fundamentally an ideology of resentment (Bertrand Russell said it 100 years ago); the novel Yesteryear and what it reveals about contemporary literary self-righteousness; why writing characters who disagree with you is the whole point; the Emily Wilson translation of the Odyssey and what "a complicated man" does to Odysseus's character; and Christopher Nolan's Odyssey film — specifically the Cyclops scene he cut, why it was the scene that defined Odysseus, and why its absence drains the heroism from the entire story. Follow Liza at Pens and Poison on Instagram → @pensandpoison TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 — Intro — who is Liza Libes and what is Pens and Poison? 1:20 — Looking back on your 18-year-old writer self 2:51 — The teachers who made us writers — Brother Patterson and Poetry Friday 5:34 — Standing in the snow to understand Wallace Stevens — The Snowman read aloud 10:31 — The Lost Generation: Hemingway, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot — and the fascism problem 13:03 — Shakespeare and Co., Paris, and missing Notre Dame before the fire 14:57 — Columbia's English Department: literary theory replaced literature 16:58 — Marxist literary theory, critical theory, and postcolonial studies explained 18:28 — Her parents escaped the Soviet Union — why she takes Marxism personally 19:28 — What literature used to be — humanistic inquiry vs. class consciousness 21:41 — Academia made literature esoteric — and publishing followed 23:01 — The DSA voter: overeducated, underpaid, and resentful 24:44 — Yesteryear — the trad wife novel, Anne Hathaway, and literary self-righteousness 26:03 — When the author's voice drowns out the character's voice 27:14 — Dostoevsky, Lionel Shriver, and characters the author disagrees with 30:23 — Writing outside your experience — her trans character, Lou's gay character 33:22 — Lou's story published alongside Joyce Carol Oates and Junot Diaz 35:20 — Her new novel — exploring faith and Jewish theology 37:32 — Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter in Waiting for Godot 39:03 — The Emily Wilson Odyssey translation — "a complicated man" vs. "cunning" 41:10 — What makes Odysseus great — the Cyclops, the cunning, the hubris 43:25 — Nolan's film: the Cyclops scene is gone — and why that ruins everything 45:42 — Greek hubris — Icarus, Arachne, and why pride destroys heroes 47:24 — The sirens scene: what it should have felt like vs. what Nolan did 48:30 — The overall verdict on Nolan's Odyssey — heroism is missing 49:46 — Outro — find Liza at Pens and Poison Watch full episodes on YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4Vb53s4I0A&list=PLb5trMQQvT077-L1roE0iZyAgT4dD4EtJ Listen on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-lou-perez-podcast/id1535032081 Listen on Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/2KAtC7eFS3NHWMZp2UgMVU Co-host of Happy Hour Econ → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/happy-hour-econ/id1863476697 Lou's book — That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore: https://amzn.to/3VhFa1r TheLouPerez.com | info@thelouperez.com Newsletter: https://substack.com/@louperez #Literature #LiteraryFiction #LizaLibes #PensAndPoison #Odyssey #ChristopherNolan #Columbia #MarxistTheory #ClassicLiterature #LouPerezPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Last time we spoke about the Japanese offensive at Changsha. In late September 1941, fighting in China had become a brutal struggle of endurance. Japanese forces kept pushing forward, but China—though battered by heavy losses—refused to yield. Help from abroad was slowly beginning to matter. American aid reached China through groups like the Red Cross, and volunteers later associated with the Flying Tigers offered crucial support to Chinese operations. Against this backdrop, Changsha in Hunan became the center of a dangerous autumn campaign. Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist leadership treated the city as strategically vital, knowing that its fate could influence the wider course of the war. In the end, the resistance at Changsha showed China's key advantage: resilience. The city's defense helped slow the Japanese advance, break up momentum, and create uncertainty as the campaign continued. #212 The Autumn Battle of Changsha, 1941 Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. In late September 1941, the war in China had already entered its fifth year. By then the conflict had lost whatever remained of novelty and had settled into something harsher and more exhausting: a long war of attrition fought across enormous distances, under conditions of chronic shortage, strategic uncertainty, and repeated local catastrophe. Japan still possessed formidable military strength. Its armies could strike hard, move fast, and exploit superior firepower, air support, and communications in individual campaigns. Yet the larger shape of the war had begun to change. China had not collapsed. The Nationalist government still stood. Chinese armies, however battered, still held the field. The line between survival and defeat remained dangerously thin, but it had not broken. This was the situation in which the autumn campaign in Hunan and Hubei unfolded. The struggle around Changsha did not occur in isolation. It belonged to a wider military and political moment. In Europe, the war had already expanded into a continent-wide convulsion. Germany and the Soviet Union were locked in a massive struggle after the German invasion in June. Leningrad was under threat, Kiev had become the scene of disaster, and the approach of the battle for Moscow suggested that still greater bloodshed lay ahead. Stalin had pressed Churchill to open a second front in Europe and had been refused. The global balance of war was shifting, but not yet in any way that guaranteed relief to China. In Asia, Japan continued to press forward. The pressure on China remained immense. Yet by mid-1941 China's position, though still precarious, no longer looked quite as desperate as it had in earlier years. International sympathy had grown. Material aid, however limited, was beginning to take more concrete form. In July, the American Red Cross sent China medical supplies worth millions of dollars. In August, more than a hundred retired American pilots and mechanics came together to aid China against Japan. The air unit they formed, later celebrated as the Flying Tigers, meant more than aircraft and personnel alone. It signaled that China's war was no longer quite so isolated. That change in atmosphere did not produce calm in Chongqing. It sharpened urgency. For Chiang Kai-shek, the possibility that the international situation might slowly improve for China carried with it a hard implication: China had to endure long enough to benefit from it. That meant surviving not in abstract terms, but in particular places, against particular offensives, at moments when a local defeat might have consequences far beyond the immediate battlefield. In the autumn of 1941, one of those places was Changsha. Changsha had long occupied an outsized place in the military geography of the war. It stood as the capital of Hunan, a hinge between regions, and a vital position in the defense of central China. Its security affected the Xiang River basin, communications across the province, and the broader defensive posture shielding approaches toward the wartime capital. To lose it, even temporarily, would be more than a symbolic blow. It would threaten the larger balance of the front in south-central China and test whether Japanese offensives could still force dramatic strategic results. At the same time, the battle for Changsha was not a simple contest between one Chinese army and one Japanese army facing each other across a fixed line. It was part of a larger operational struggle linking the Ninth War Zone with supporting actions from the Third, Fifth, and Sixth War Zones. It involved frontal resistance, hurried reinforcement, mobile defense, rear harassment, and the constant effort to turn Japanese momentum into Japanese overextension. Chinese commanders were trying not merely to survive a blow, but to absorb it, stretch it, and eventually strike back against an enemy whose speed could become a liability once supply lines lengthened and formations dispersed. This was the burden resting on the Military Commission in Chongqing. There, while reports arrived in fragments and maps were revised hour by hour, Chiang Kai-shek spent long stretches in the operations room watching the situation in Hunan and Hubei develop. He had already ordered the various war zones to support the Ninth War Zone's operations, and now he followed the campaign with intense concentration. His attention moved repeatedly toward reports from the Sixth War Zone and Chen Cheng's counteroffensive toward Yichang, for Yichang was tied not only to local fighting in Hubei but also to the defense of the Yangtze approach and therefore to the security of Chongqing itself. In his mind, Hunan and Hubei had become the focal point of China's war effort in that season. Meanwhile at the front, the situation was deteriorating fast. Japanese forces pressing into northern Hunan had already imposed severe strain on the Chinese defense. Blocking units had been battered back. Communications were uncertain. Some formations fought stubbornly but could not hold; others dissolved more quickly than hoped. The Japanese advance toward Changsha created exactly the kind of crisis Chinese commanders feared most: one in which the enemy moved with enough force and speed to threaten a major city before a coherent defensive response could be reassembled. Chinese units had to be thrown into action as they arrived, often after exhausting marches, often with incomplete knowledge of the situation, and often under immediate pressure from artillery, aircraft, and aggressive infantry assaults. Yet even at this dangerous stage, the campaign contained an opportunity as well as a threat. The deeper Japanese units pushed into Hunan, the more exposed their rear became. Supply depots, transport lines, and communications stretched farther behind the spearhead. Chinese formations that had been driven aside were not always destroyed; some remained capable of reappearing to strike roads, depots, and isolated detachments. If Changsha represented the visible center of the struggle, the enemy rear represented its hidden vulnerability. The Chinese aim, therefore, was not simply to defend passively around the city. It was to combine stubborn resistance in front with harassment and disruption behind, so that Japanese advance would become increasingly difficult to sustain. The battle that followed unfolded under these pressures: a threatened city, a strained but unbroken defense, commanders forced to improvise under severe danger, and a wider international war that made every local decision feel heavier than the ground on which it was taken. This subtle improvement in China's larger situation did not mean safety. China was still battered, under-resourced, and vulnerable. Japanese forces still possessed enormous advantages in mobility, firepower, and air power in many sectors. Large parts of the country remained occupied or threatened. Yet by mid-1941 something in the atmosphere had changed. In July, the American Red Cross sent China medical supplies worth millions of dollars. In August, more than a hundred retired American pilots and mechanics came together to aid China in its struggle against Japan. The air unit they formed would become famous under the name by which China knew them: the Flying Tigers. Their significance exceeded their immediate tactical value. They represented a visible sign that China was not entirely abandoned to isolation. For Claire Chennault, romantic, aggressive, and optimistic by temperament, the new situation encouraged increasingly bold thoughts. For the first time he included in his planning the idea that Japanese home territory might one day be bombed from bases in China. Such schemes were ambitious and perhaps premature, but their very existence reveals an altered horizon of possibility. A country that imagines striking back is already psychologically in a different position from one concerned only with preventing collapse. Yichang mattered directly to the fighting in Xiangbei, but it also mattered independently. It was tied to the security of the Yangtze approach and therefore to the defense of Chongqing. It belonged not only to the immediate problem of battlefield maneuver but to the larger question of whether China could do more than absorb Japanese offensives. Could Chinese forces exploit enemy overstretch? Could Japanese advances be turned into liabilities? Could local counterattacks and rear harassment generate effects greater than the raw size of the forces involved? By September 1941, these questions were no longer hypothetical. They were urgent. In Chiang's mind, Hunan and Hubei had become the focal point of China's war effort in that season. The struggle around Changsha was central to that effort. From Chongqing, Chiang telegraphed Commander Xue Yue of the Ninth War Zone with instructions that made both the danger and the opportunity plain. The message emphasized that the enemy in northern Hunan, though still pressing hard, had already been bravely intercepted by Chinese units and was now exhausted, with lines of advance increasingly difficult to sustain. This, Chiang argued, created an excellent opportunity for Chinese forces to strike at the enemy's rear and seek annihilation rather than mere delay. He urged officers and soldiers alike to remain determined to destroy the enemy. Even if Japanese troops advanced to the vicinity of Changsha itself, Chinese forces were to renew their efforts, maintain their confidence in victory, and prevent the enemy from establishing a foothold. The telegram also pointed to the broader operational picture. Japanese troops drawn from the sectors of the Fifth and Sixth War Zones had been committed to the invasion of northern Hunan, leaving their rear areas dangerously exposed. The Third, Fifth, and Sixth War Zones had launched supporting offensives on the twenty-third. Therefore, the Ninth War Zone had to strike resolutely and fiercely, preventing the Japanese from coordinating their forces and frustrating any attempt to occupy Changsha. The message was at once exhortation and operational logic. It reflected the core Chinese problem in the campaign: the Japanese thrust was dangerous and had to be blocked, but the very speed and depth of that thrust could also expose the attacker. Yet by the time Chiang sent his instructions, the danger around Changsha was already severe. After the 74th Army had been beaten back, there was no major Chinese force north of the city that could confidently block the Japanese advance in a straightforward, stable line. The Japanese 4th Division, together with the Hayabuchi Detachment, had defeated the 95th Division of the Chinese 37th Army and pushed toward Changsha. The prospect that the city might fall, at least temporarily, was no longer remote. In response, Xia Chuzhong's 79th Army from the Sixth War Zone was ordered to move toward the city. Its vanguard was Wang Jiaben's 98th Division. That movement was a forced march in the literal sense. It was not a flourish of language but an admission of emergency. Troops were pushed beyond ordinary endurance because there was no time to gather strength under favorable conditions. Changsha could not wait for convenience, rest, or ideal concentration. Either reinforcements arrived in time to fight immediately, or they arrived too late to matter. Wang Jiaben was no stranger to battle. A veteran officer from the Yunnan Army, he had fought the Japanese repeatedly—more than twenty times since the outbreak of the War of Resistance. He belonged to that generation of commanders who had been shaped by the fragmented military politics of Republican China but whose careers were now being rewritten by the national emergency of the anti-Japanese war. During the First Battle of Changsha, he had already distinguished himself. He led troops in a counterattack along the Tongcheng line in southern Hubei and intercepted retreating Japanese forces at Longmenchang and Changshoujie, killing more than a thousand enemy soldiers. He had experience, reputation, and a sense of what it meant to fight in the Changsha theater. This time he marched from Changde, driving his division forward with all possible speed. By noon on September 26 the 98th Division reached a position about two kilometers northeast of Changsha. There was scarcely time to settle the men. No careful preparation was possible. They had arrived because the city was in danger, and battle began almost at once. At dusk the division engaged the Hayabuchi Detachment. The fighting continued until late in the night without decisive result. That in itself was costly enough. Troops who have just completed a punishing march are already close to the limits of their endurance. To be thrown immediately into combat magnifies every weakness: thirst, fatigue, confusion, and the difficulty of building fieldworks under pressure. What the soldiers of the 98th Division could do that night, they did with their hands and whatever tools they had. They scraped positions out of the earth. They assembled makeshift cover. Officers moved along the line trying to impose order on terrain that had become a battlefield almost as soon as it was occupied. At dawn on September 27 the Japanese intensified the pressure from the air. More than twenty aircraft bombed the 98th Division's positions, tearing apart the earthworks that officers and soldiers had spent the night constructing. Bombing had a double effect. Physically, it damaged positions, wounded men, and disrupted preparations. Psychologically, it reminded defenders that they were being observed from above and struck by an enemy against whom they could often do little in the sky. Immediately after the bombing came a fierce infantry assault. Wang Jiaben and several other commanders went down to their respective regiments to supervise the fighting personally. This was dangerous, but under such circumstances commanders often believed that presence itself mattered. When fieldworks are collapsing, shell bursts are continuous, and communications are unreliable, authority must sometimes be carried by a body rather than a wire. The defenders held. Again and again the Japanese attacked. Again and again they were repulsed only to reorganize and come on once more. Every minute the Chinese line remained in place was bought with blood. Fallen and wounded men were carried rearward in what seemed an endless stream. The cost of resistance accumulated visibly before the eyes of those still fighting. By noon even water could no longer be delivered to the front. That detail reveals the intensity of the battle more clearly than many grander statements could. A line that cannot be supplied even with water has reached a condition of severe strain. During brief pauses in the fighting, officers and soldiers pulled out dry rations and chewed them slowly, swallowing with difficulty while they waited for the next attack. Such moments are among the most characteristic in battle: not the long, smooth continuity imagined in peacetime rhetoric, but brief interludes of miserable necessity between explosions. At two in the afternoon the crisis deepened sharply. A unit of the Japanese 4th Division worked its way behind the 98th Division's position and attacked from the rear. This was the kind of tactical development every defending commander dreads. A force can endure heavy frontal pressure if its line remains coherent and its rear reasonably secure. But when enemy troops appear behind a position, the entire structure of defense begins to dissolve. There, behind the line, were more than a hundred Chinese wounded awaiting evacuation. Japanese soldiers attacked them with bayonets. One of the wounded Chinese soldiers, already beyond ordinary capacity for resistance, rushed forward and detonated a grenade against a Japanese attacker. It was an act of desperation, but also of defiance. The episode captures something essential about the tone of the battle around Changsha. This was not a neat engagement between organized lines alone. It was a desperate collision in which even the badly wounded were drawn into last resistance. For Wang Jiaben, however, the tactical reality was impossible to deny. If he stayed where he was, the division might be annihilated. Personal courage could not alter encirclement. Resentfully, bitterly, and under the kind of pressure that leaves permanent scars on a commander's memory, he ordered retreat. When he led the survivors off the battlefield, fewer than half his men remained. Reinforcements from another direction now entered the struggle. The Provisional 2nd Army of the Seventh War Zone dispatched the Provisional 8th Division under Zhang Junsong. At seven in the evening on September 27, Zhang's force arrived at Zuojiatang on the eastern outskirts of Changsha. Personnel of the Ninth War Zone waiting there reported grim news: a Japanese detachment had already entered the city that afternoon, and another detachment was only three kilometers away. The situation invited rashness. A commander arriving near a threatened city at dusk, with reports that the enemy is already inside, may feel compelled to hurl troops forward immediately in a gesture of resolution. Yet night fighting in an urban approach without adequate reconnaissance can turn courage into waste. Zhang Junsong considered the matter carefully. He concluded that to rush blindly into the city at night would likely produce confusion and heavy losses. Instead he first sought to strike the enemy outside the city. His troops deployed quietly and crept forward through the darkness, launching a probing attack. But they soon discovered that the Japanese were fully prepared and not vulnerable to easy surprise. The line could not be broken. With no prospect of success, the force withdrew. The moment is revealing because it shows how narrow the margin had become. Chinese commanders were trying to recover initiative while still groping through uncertainty. Reports were incomplete, Japanese dispositions difficult to fix, and every hour dangerous. On the evening of September 28, the 79th Army's 6th Provisional Division occupied Yuelu Mountain west of Changsha. From that height officers and soldiers looked across the Xiang River toward the city. Changsha, for the first time, was in Japanese hands. The emotional force of that sight can only be imagined. Changsha had lived for years under threat. It had been defended, contested, prepared, and feared. The possibility of its loss had hovered over military planning and public consciousness alike. Now the danger had become fact. A city that had stood as an object of effort and anxiety was visibly occupied by the enemy. No single feeling could have governed the men who saw it. There must have been anger, shame, weariness, and dread—but also stubbornness. For in war a city seen in enemy hands is not always simply lost. Sometimes it is a summons. Late that night Zhao Jiping, commander of the 6th Provisional Division, received a telegram from Xue Yue. He read it and then stood before the map for a long time. Days of anxiety began to lift. He was not alone in that reaction. Many Chinese generals involved in the campaign had felt that they were fighting a confused and chaotic battle. Japanese movements had been broad, rapid, and difficult to pin down. The Ninth War Zone had thrown numerous units into blocking actions, yet both well-regarded formations and weaker, improvised units had repeatedly failed to hold. After ten days of combat, Chinese losses were heavy. But Japanese forces too had been worn, stretched, and damaged. Only now, as the Japanese reached the apparent culmination of their advance, did the Ninth War Zone begin to recover rhythm. Chaos did not disappear, but it became more legible. The possibility of a more ordered counteroffensive emerged. In the early hours of September 29, Zhao Jiping issued the order to force a crossing of the Xiang River and attack the enemy in Changsha. The preparations consumed the entire day. River crossings under combat conditions are among the most delicate operations in war. Boats must be assembled or found. Units must be organized into waves. Timing matters. Surprise matters. The location of landing points matters. The men themselves matter most of all, because they must sit exposed in fragile craft knowing that the real test will begin not in the middle of the river but at the far bank. Late that night the division crossed secretly by boat in six groups. The crossing itself went well enough. The river did not betray them. The groups made progress in darkness. Yet everyone involved understood that smooth movement on the water did not guarantee success. The crucial question was what waited at the landing points. It was expected that the troops going ashore at Daximen would be first to meet the Japanese. Once battle began there, the rest of the crossing accelerated. Chinese soldiers landed, attacked fiercely, and drove the enemy back from the riverbank. The momentum of the assault mattered. In such moments hesitation on shore can doom an entire crossing, but aggression can seize a foothold before the defender fully stabilizes. By the time Chinese forces entered the city, dawn was breaking. Then came street fighting. Changsha had ceased to be an objective on a map. It became again what cities become in war: a place of corners, walls, alleys, debris, smoke, and sudden death. Fighting in a city strips away much of the abstraction through which campaigns are often remembered. Streets channel movement. Buildings become cover, obstacles, or traps. Distances shrink but danger multiplies. A few men behind masonry can delay many more. Noise magnifies confusion. The city itself seems to fragment into a hundred separate battlefields. For Changsha, the long season of anxious anticipation ended in direct flame. Yet to understand the campaign only through the struggle at Changsha would be incomplete. While the city drew attention as the central prize, another set of operations was unfolding across Hunan and Hubei—less dramatic in appearance perhaps, but strategically significant. These were the actions of the 27th Army Group under Yang Sen. If the fighting around Changsha demonstrated the pressure of frontal battle, Yang Sen's operations illustrated another principle entirely: the stubborn, opportunistic use of weaker forces to harass, sting, and trouble a stronger enemy from behind. The 27th Army Group was composed largely of Sichuan troops. Their presence speaks to one of the larger political transformations of the war. Republican China had long been fractured by regional militarism. Armies had often owed stronger loyalty to commanders, provinces, or local power structures than to any unified national command. Yet the anti-Japanese war compelled a partial reordering of those loyalties. Many warlord forces, however imperfectly integrated, now turned their weapons outward under Nationalist command. There were exceptions. Some men, like Han Fuqu, had preserved their own strength at the cost of military responsibility and lost both opportunity and honor in doing so. But in the main, especially among middle and lower-ranking officers and ordinary soldiers, the imperative of national survival overrode provincial identity. Men from distant regions marched and fought in terrains not their own because the war no longer permitted a narrow conception of interest. Yang Sen himself was an old warlord soldier, one of those figures formed in the fractured military world of earlier decades. By 1941 he was deputy commander of the Ninth War Zone and commander-in-chief of the 27th Army Group. Along the Hunan-Hubei-Jiangxi border he had long been cautious in his operations. At the beginning of the northern Hunan battle, his troops proved unable to withstand the force of the Japanese offensive and retreated in disorder into mountains and forests. That fact should not be softened. They were pushed back. But retreat did not mean disappearance. This is where Yang Sen's role became important. Once the main Japanese force had advanced far ahead, the troops that had scattered began to reemerge. They knew the terrain. They knew the roads, villages, passes, and wooded approaches. If they could not defeat the Japanese in a grand collision, they could search for openings behind the advancing columns. On September 20, as the Japanese main force drove into the heart of northern Hunan, Yang Sen led elements of the 4th, 58th, and 20th Armies in pursuit for an entire day. The main body of the 4th Army had already been badly beaten at the Xinqiang River line, and only the 60th Division, recently transferred from the 37th Army, remained relatively intact. That single fact sharply defined the weakness of his means. He was not pursuing with fresh and powerful forces prepared for a decisive encounter. He was pursuing with fragments, survivors, and such units as still retained some offensive potential. But the Japanese, intent on rapid advance southward, paid too little attention to what followed behind them. That was the opening Yang Sen needed. On the morning of September 21, the 60th Division acted on information supplied by an old beggar. Such details often sound almost literary, but they remind us that war in China was never fought by armies alone. Villagers, refugees, peddlers, guides, boatmen, and the destitute all participated in the circulation of military knowledge. A beggar could see what a reconnaissance officer had missed. On the basis of that tip, the 60th Division launched a surprise attack on the supply depot of the Japanese 40th Division at Zhangjiayuan. Division Commander Dong Yu led the action. The Chinese quickly overwhelmed the more than three hundred Japanese troops guarding the depot. Once they broke in, they discovered an astonishing quantity of matériel: shell boxes, ammunition, food, medicine, gasoline, explosives, protective clothing, telephone wire, body bags, stretchers, and more, all stacked beneath heavy canvas. For men accustomed to scarcity, it must have seemed almost unreal. Dong Yu, delighted, is remembered as exclaiming to his deputy commander, "It's practically a department store!" The line has a momentary comic brightness in the middle of war, and that is part of why it survives. But its deeper significance lies in what it reveals. A modern army advancing deep into hostile territory is sustained by accumulation—ammunition, fuel, wire, medicines, rations, transport materials. To seize such a depot is not merely to take objects. It is to grasp the hidden skeleton of movement. Dong Yu then issued a one-word order: "Move." At once the whole division became a swarm of carriers. Officers and soldiers grabbed whatever they could and began hauling the captured supplies away. The scene must have been one of extraordinary improvised energy—riflemen transformed into laborers, war reduced for a moment to the brute physical act of lifting, dragging, and carrying. They moved like ants dismantling a storehouse. But there was too much to remove and too little time. Before even two regiments had completed the work, the Japanese returned in force. Enraged, they sent more than a dozen aircraft to bomb the troops carrying off the captured crates, while over a thousand infantrymen rushed in on the ground. Dong Yu immediately ordered the men to abandon what remained and destroy it. Amid deafening explosions, the 60th Division withdrew from Zhangjiayuan. The Japanese pursued hard, driving them back into the mountains before finally stopping. Measured purely in terms of territorial occupation, the action changed little. The Chinese did not hold the depot. They were forced back again. But judged in operational terms, the raid mattered. Supplies had been captured, destroyed, or disrupted. Japanese rear security had been embarrassed. Time and energy had been consumed in response. In a campaign where the Japanese were racing south and depending increasingly on stretched lines, such harassment was not trivial. After September 23, Yang Sen expanded these efforts. He sent whole divisions to harass the Japanese rear while also dispatching battalions and companies to ambush supply columns and disrupt transport lines. This was not the kind of warfare that produces neat dramatic maps in conventional military histories. The actions were scattered, local, opportunistic, and often inconclusive. Yet precisely for that reason they can be misunderstood. Not every useful military action ends in the destruction of an enemy division. Sometimes its value lies in forcing a stronger opponent to spend attention where he had hoped to spend only momentum. These operations were costly and uncertain. Small Chinese units striking roads and depots risked encirclement or aerial punishment. Yet they possessed one advantage: they did not need to win a grand battle to matter. They needed only to make movement harder, supply more precarious, and the rear less secure. On September 25, even after the 26th and 37th Armies had suffered defeat elsewhere, Yang Sen gathered the troops that still retained some offensive capacity and launched another attack. In these actions, the 90th Division captured Wukou; the 59th Division reached the north bank of the Miluo River; the 60th Division advanced to Donggang; and elements of the 58th Army controlled the Yuanba–Zheyangqiao highway line by the twenty-sixth. These gains were not the dramatic centerpiece of the campaign. But they formed part of the cumulative pressure on Japanese operations. Every road contested from the rear, every convoy threatened, every depot exposed, and every forced diversion of troops weakened the enemy's ability to convert tactical advance into stable success. The battlefield was fluid enough that Yang Sen's headquarters itself had to keep moving—from the Miluo River northward to Pingjiang. Mobile headquarters in such conditions lived under constant uncertainty. Reports arrived late or contradictory. Rumors outran facts. The front could bend in unpredictable ways. A command post that seemed safely behind the line in the morning might by afternoon lie only a few kilometers from enemy forces. Years later Mao Jiuyin, who had then served as an operations staff officer under Yang Sen, recalled the old commander's outward behavior in those dangerous days. Yang Sen, Mao remembered, was always joking with the people around him and could still laugh and talk during battle. On one occasion he even joked with his bodyguard about putting chili oil in his tea. To younger staff officers, such behavior appeared almost absurd. Yet they knew how dangerous their situation often was. Sometimes they were only a few kilometers from the main Japanese forces. There is more than anecdote in this memory. Old commanders often cultivated a style of ease under danger not because they felt no fear, but because they believed visible calm itself was part of command. Men take emotional bearings from those above them. A commander who panics spreads panic faster than any enemy breakthrough. Yang Sen was sixty years old during the Second Battle of Changsha, and he liked to remark that he was five years older than Chiang Kai-shek. Age had not removed him from the front. His function in the campaign was not to shatter the enemy in one decisive frontal blow. It was to persist, reappear, sting, and remain troublesome. The 27th Army Group followed the Japanese nearly all the way to the outskirts of Changsha. They did not fight many large set-piece engagements. That was never their main value. But the Japanese could not ignore them. If Japanese units turned and tried to hit them directly, they tended to dissolve into the landscape. If the Japanese pushed on and ignored them, they reappeared to sabotage roads, hit supply lines, and create alarms in the rear. Even Japanese official histories later described them memorably. They called them "like a swarm of annoying flies." The phrase was meant as contempt. But as so often happens in war, an insult became an accurate description of effect. If these Chinese troops could not be tigers in formal battle, they could still become intolerable as flies. And under certain conditions—fatigue, heat, uncertainty, stretched supply, shaken morale—flies can become more oppressive than an enemy would like to admit. When later generations look back on campaigns, they often search for a single explanatory image. But the fighting of September 1941 resists reduction to one symbol alone. What gives the campaign its force in memory is not one isolated episode, but the convergence of several pressures at once: a city under threat, a command trying to coordinate multiple fronts, exhausted reinforcements thrown directly into battle, Japanese forces advancing quickly but becoming increasingly vulnerable the farther they pushed, and Chinese troops in the rear refusing to disappear after defeat. Seen from Chongqing, the campaign was a matter of telegrams, maps, and the management of strategic risk. Seen from the front, it was a matter of thirst, mud, broken fieldworks, sudden bombing, exhausted marching, and the uncertainty of whether the next order meant reinforcement, retreat, or death. Seen from the Japanese side, it was initially an aggressive advance toward an important objective, but one increasingly troubled by stretched supply, difficult terrain, and the persistent reappearance of Chinese forces behind the line of movement. At the same time, the campaign reveals a Chinese war effort that had become more resilient than in the earliest years of the conflict. The Japanese advance toward Changsha was dangerous and at moments appeared close to success. Chinese blocking forces suffered severe defeats. Units arrived exhausted and were hurled into action at once. Commanders lost men at devastating rates. Changsha itself briefly fell into enemy hands. And yet the city was not simply surrendered as an accomplished fact. Chinese forces regrouped. Orders were coordinated across war zones. Reinforcements marched at desperate speed. Counterattacks were mounted. Forces west of the Xiang prepared and crossed back into the city. Elsewhere, troops under Yang Sen gnawed at the Japanese rear and made advance more costly than a map of front lines alone might suggest. This combination of desperate frontal resistance and incessant rear harassment was one of the characteristic strengths of China's resistance in this stage of the war. China could not always match Japanese power in one concentrated blow. But it could absorb, delay, fragment, and trouble that power across space and time. That is why the struggle around Changsha in late September 1941 deserves to be remembered not merely as a sequence of engagements, but as a layered event in which tactical battle, morale, logistics, political endurance, and international context all converged. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. In late September 1941, Japan pushed deeper into China, but Chinese forces—supported gradually by international help—kept resisting. Changsha in Hunan became the central point of the conflict, seen as vital to strategic control in south-central China. Meanwhile, elsewhere in Hunan and Hubei, Yang Sen's 27th Army Group—often using smaller, opportunistic actions—reappeared behind Japanese lines to disrupt depots and convoys. Even when Chinese gains were temporary, the cumulative pressure delayed Japanese momentum.
Apollo 11 is known as the “purpose mission” of all the NASA space missions. The goal was to get boots on the moon, and Apollo 11 was the big moment when NASA finally gave it a try. The journey of an astronaut to the moon is an amazing parallel with the Christian life—it is fraught with resistance. The enemy always seeks to offset, discourage, and hamper the “purpose mission” in our lives. In 1968, the Soviet Union launched Luna 15 with the singular agenda of stealing the thunder of NASA's biggest accomplishment. ------------» Take these studies deeper and be discipled in person by Eric, Leslie, Nathan, and the team at Ellerslie in one of our upcoming discipleship programs – learn more at: https://ellerslie.com/be-discipled/» Receive our free “Five Keys to Walking Through Difficulty” PDF by going to: https://ellerslie.com/subscribe/» For more information about Daily Thunder and the ministry of Ellerslie Mission Society, please visit: https://ellerslie.com/daily» If you have been blessed by Ellerslie, consider partnering with the ministry by donating at: https://ellerslie.com/donate/» Discover more resources, books, and sermons from Eric Ludy by going to: https://ellerslie.com/about-eric-ludy/
Christians in much of the world today face pressures. Few, however, face anything as intense as those Christians who lived under the first few decades of authoritarian rule in either the Soviet Union or Communist China. At least not yet.While freedom and opportunity still remains, Christians today would be wise to consider the experiences of Christians under the Soviets and Chinese Communists. Though both situations shared many similarities, they developed in starkly different manners. Why did they differ so much? What lessons can we glean and apply in our own situations? And what cautionary flags can we recognize and avoid?On this encore episode of the Christian Emergency Podcast, Andy examines a helpful case study of the Christian experience under the Soviets and Chinese. This comparison, produced originally by Nik Ripken in his book The Insanity of Obedience, provides many helpful insights for Christians today.If you find this material helpful, please share it with your friends and leave us a five-star rating wherever you listen to your podcasts. Also, don't forget to subscribe to the show, so you'll never miss out when new episodes drop.To learn more about resources mentioned in this episode, see the following.The Insanity of Obedience: Walking with Jesus in Tough Places, by Nik Ripken (book): https://www.christianbook.com/insanity-obedience-walking-jesus-tough-places/nik-ripken/9781433673092/pd/673090Christian Emergency Alliance: https://www.christianemergency.com/Follow the Christian Emergency Alliance on Twitter: @ChristianEmerg1Follow the Christian Emergency Alliance on Facebook: @ChristianEmergencyThe Christian Emergency Podcast is a production of the Christian Emergency Alliance.Soli Deo Gloria
Dimitri and Khalid continue wading through the Caribbean shell companies and Swiss bank accounts of Bruce Rappaport in Alan Block's “All Is Clouded By Desire”, specifically his network's activities in and around the late Soviet Union/new Russian economy starting in the late 1980s. Topics include: The Iran-Contra “Brunei money” that Rappaport stole with the help of neocon superstars Elliot Abrams, Richard Secord, Oliver North, Albert Hakim, and Michael Ledeen, Lake Resources Inc., Rappaport's “odd reputation” among lawyers in the late 80s and penchant for “deals” where he'd screw his partners, his involvement in a dispute over MINE Liberia and bauxite mining projects on the Guinea-Liberia border… The Bank of New York (now BNY-Mellon) and Rappaport's Inter-Maritime Bank together at last, the LITCO-Bill Casey assist, Western Holdings Limited, BONY chairman J. Carter Bacot's hostile takeover of Irving Trust in 1985 and their Micro-Ca$h Register securities processing software, Burt Kanter putting together the Deal… BONY and Rappaport using Irving Trust's long-established correspondent accounts with eastern bloc banks to penetrate Warsaw Pact economies, establishing joint ventures in the Soviet Union, Rappaport meeting personally with Gorbachev in August 1990 about the Soviet cruise/shipping industries, the ill-fated Sudopromimpex, Soviet Inter-Ship Builders, and Global Sovcruise, speculating about why China survived its capitalist turn and the USSR didn't… Burt Kanter & Co. marketing the MoneyFacts magazine in the USSR to facilitate capital flight, the rise of the spetsbank or “zero bank”, the function of American Depository Receipts (ADRs) in international money laundering, Rappaport's “literary man” Matthew Stevenson, BCCI/Keating associate Alfred Hartman, Riggs National Bank, Valmet-Riggs and Menatep Bank, Mikhail Khodorkhovsky's meteoric rise from Komsomol computer nerd to Russian mega-oligarch, WACL libertarian Christian Michel and the cult of Friedrich von Hayek in the New Russia, Alton G. Keel, and more… Original air date: 10/01/24 For access to weekly premium SJ episodes, upcoming installments of DEMON FORCES, and the Grotto of Truth Discord, subscribe at https://patreon.com/subliminaljihad.
This week on the Mark Levin Show, an armed lunatic set off an incendiary device in an apparent anti-ICE attack outside a federal building housing FBI and ICE offices in NYC. Violence against ICE is up 1,300%. This is what happens when Democrats repeatedly demonizing ICE as Nazis who “disappear” people, along with similar rhetoric against Trump, Republicans, Netanyahu, and Israel. Afterward, the ICC is a complete political setup job that the United States and Israel do not recognize. No, Zohran Mamdani cannot arrest Benjamin Netanyahu while he's at the UN in NYC – it's a crime to attempt to arrest an elected head of state. Mamdani is hypocritically targeting only Netanyahu while giving a pass to mass-murdering dictators and leaders from Arab, Muslim, and other regimes. Zohran Mamdani and the growing cabal of Marxist Islamists, who want to destroy America, will swallow the Democrat leadership. They continue to claim they are for the “working people.” Marxist policies enslave the working people. The mass grave in in communist China, the Soviet Union, and North Korea were all filled with hardworking people who rejected those systems. Later, communism is all about working people -- killing them, enslaving them, and brutalizing them. It's amazing how the Communists talk up "the working people." For communists, working people exist to serve the state and its centralized masterminds rather than as sovereign individuals. Only in free societies, especially America, are working people the heart and soul of society—the backbone of freedom. Communism is the most defective ideology ever imposed because it requires no knowledge or experience—only an iron fist and a destructive ideology that ignores human nature for an undefined “general good.” Also, New Jersey officials and a software vendor IDEMIA are publicly disputing responsibility for a glitch that registered about 6,600 non-citizens to vote. Between New Jersey, the election mess in California, and such historic examples as the Chicago political machine and LBJ in Texas, it's clear Democrats want to legalize fraud and give permanent power to the Democratic party. Senator Tim Sheehy delivered a compelling Senate floor speech explaining the long-running war with Iran's radical Islamist regime in Tehran. Sheehy stressed that the regime, which seized power 47 years ago through brutality and has never stopped, cares nothing about American politics or faith; it seeks to kill Americans and other atrocities it celebrates and rewards. The United States did not start the conflict but must finish it so another generation is not forced to fight the same murderous adversary. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jamison R. Firestone is an American lawyer and businessman, born in Los Angeles in 1966, raised in New York, educated at Tulane University and Tulane Law School, and admitted to the New York Bar. He moved to Moscow in 1991, during the collapse of the Soviet Union, and co-founded Firestone Duncan, the first independent foreign law firm in Russia. He lived and worked in Russia for eighteen years, serving foreign investors and companies during the chaotic transition from late Soviet collapse to gangster capitalism, Yeltsin-era oligarchy, and Putin's consolidation of state power. He was also a director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia for six years. Firestone was the employer and colleague of Sergei Magnitsky, the Russian tax adviser who uncovered a massive tax-refund fraud involving corrupt officials and criminal networks, was arrested after exposing it, and died in custody in 2009. Firestone later became one of the public campaigners for Magnitsky sanctions, working with Bill Browder and others. He now lives in London and works on efforts to seize Russian state assets for Ukraine.----------LINKS:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamison_Firestonehttps://www.amazon.co.uk/Rule-Lies-Corruption-Murder-Putins/dp/0008753237----------SUPPORT THE CHANNEL:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.gofundme.com/f/scaling-up-campaign-to-fight-authoritarian-disinformation----------TRUSTED CHARITIES ON THE GROUND:Car4Ukrainehttps://car4ukraine.com/en-US/campaignsDzyga's Pawhttps://dzygaspaw.com/projectsSuperhumans - Hospital for war traumashttps://superhumans.com/en/UNBROKEN - Treatment. Prosthesis. Rehabilitation for Ukrainians in Ukrainehttps://unbroken.org.ua/Come Back Alivehttps://savelife.in.ua/en/Chefs For Ukraine - World Central Kitchenhttps://wck.org/relief/activation-chefs-for-ukraineUNITED24 - An initiative of President Zelenskyyhttps://u24.gov.ua/Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundationhttps://prytulafoundation.orgNGO “Herojam Slava”https://heroiamslava.org/----------PLATFORMS:Substack: https://substack.com/@siliconcurtainTwitter: https://twitter.com/CurtainSiliconLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finkjonathan/Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/4thRZj6NO7y93zG11JMtqm----------
Silicon Bites Ep365 | 2026-07-10 | Why Chernobyl? Of all the targets available to Russian planners, why does this state return, again and again, to the site of the 1986 catastrophe? Because Chernobyl is not just a place. It is the single most potent symbol in the Ukrainian national story — the lie that killed the Soviet Union, the wound out of which, as the liquidators themselves say, Ukrainian independence was born. Striking it is not targeting. It is messaging.----------ACTIVE CAMPAIGN:We are raising funds for 5 of 15 Vampire DronesSilicon Curtain for Kupiansk Vampires. Dzyga's Paw, together with Jonathan Fink, is joining forces to raise $40,000 to provide the Khartiia Brigade with Vampire Drones.https://dzygaspaw.com/silicon-curtain-for-kupiansk-vampiresThese heavy bombers are designed to destroy manpower and equipment, as well as for remote mining. The Vampire UAV, manufactured by Skyfall, has proven itself to be one of the most effective weapons in the Kupiansk direction. Skyfall is one of Ukraine's largest defense tech companies, producing Vampire bomber drones, various modifications of Shrike FPV drones, P1-SUN, Shahed drone interceptors, communication systems, and components.----------SUPPORT THE CHANNEL:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.gofundme.com/f/scaling-up-campaign-to-fight-authoritarian-disinformation----------TRUSTED CHARITIES ON THE GROUND:Save Ukrainehttps://www.saveukraineua.org/Superhumans - Hospital for war traumashttps://superhumans.com/en/UNBROKEN - Treatment. Prosthesis. Rehabilitation for Ukrainians in Ukrainehttps://unbroken.org.ua/Come Back Alivehttps://savelife.in.ua/en/Chefs For Ukraine - World Central Kitchenhttps://wck.org/relief/activation-chefs-for-ukraineUNITED24 - An initiative of President Zelenskyyhttps://u24.gov.ua/Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundationhttps://prytulafoundation.org----------SOURCES:----------
The Constitution Study with Host Paul Engel – The New York Times used to advertise itself as “All the news that's fit to print.” Sadly, it seems more like the Soviet Union propaganda rag called “Pravda” or “Truth.” At least two TV networks failed to cover Trump's recent speech. Now, there's nothing illegal about these private entities deciding not to cover a presidential speech, but were they...
The Constitution Study with Host Paul Engel – The New York Times used to advertise itself as “All the news that's fit to print.” Sadly, it seems more like the Soviet Union propaganda rag called “Pravda” or “Truth.” At least two TV networks failed to cover Trump's recent speech. Now, there's nothing illegal about these private entities deciding not to cover a presidential speech, but were they...
Human settlement goes back thousands of years in the region of the Baltics that would become Lithuania. Like so many Baltic states, it went from being a significant regional power to one that was subjugated by the Soviet Union for decades. This is a proud land that has its own legends and haunted locations. Join us for the history and hauntings of Lithuania. This Month in History features Boris Yeltsin elected. Check out the website: http://historygoesbump.com Show notes can be found here: https://historygoesbump.blogspot.com/2026/07/hgb-ep-647-haunted-lithuania.html Become an Executive Producer: http://patreon.com/historygoesbump Music used in this episode: Main Theme: Creepy Carnival Theme Created and produced by History Goes Bump Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (This Month in History) "In Your Arms" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Pod wiejskim słońcem by Sasha Ende at ende.app Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Full Title Name: Card. Burke: We must stop Synodality - but what is it? Modeled after Soviet Union. St Pius X exposed and condemned Synodality. Modernism's “god” of multiple personality disorder. SSPX ambivalence. World Noahide Congress in Jerusalem this November: founding the world religion: ruling the nations from Israel. Must we feed hungry? Where are we in the Apocalypse? Married deacons? The Rome of Saint Praxedes. Fr. Jenkins Pascendi Series: https://www.wcbohio.com/categories/pa... This episode was recorded on 7/21/2026. Our Links: http://linkwcb.com/ Please consider making a monetary donation to What Catholics Believe. Father Jenkins remembers all of our benefactors in general during his daily Mass, and he also offers one Mass on the first Sunday of every month specially for all supporters of What Catholics Believe. May God bless you for your generosity! https://www.wcbohio.com/donate Subscribe to our other YouTube channels: @WCBHighlights @WCBHolyMassLivestream May God bless you all!
Join me on Coaching Call as I bring you an inspiring conversation with Max Emma, a Certified Franchise Executive and accomplished entrepreneur. Together, we'll explore the fascinating world of franchising, the challenges and triumphs of entrepreneurship, and the resilience it takes to succeed.Host: Sifu Rafael, master instructor, public speaker, and founder of Speaking Prowess. I combine expertise in communication and leadership to help individuals unlock their full potential, empowering personal and professional growth.Guest: Max Emma is a powerhouse in the franchising industry. From offering bookkeeping services to over 100 franchise brands to building his own successful brand, BooXkeeping, Max has mastered the art of entrepreneurship. Now a franchise consultant and the CEO of three companies, Max helps others franchise their businesses or navigate the franchise world to achieve success.Max's incredible story—from immigrating from the former Soviet Union 32 years ago and teaching himself English to becoming a thriving entrepreneur—is packed with lessons in perseverance, innovation, and grit. Despite facing challenges like bankruptcy, Max has built a legacy of success and continues to lead with vision and purpose.Join me as we uncover Max's insights, strategies, and the journey that shaped his entrepreneurial path. You won't want to miss this episode!#coachingcall #sifurafael #maxemma entreprenuer #franchise
The International Brigades and the Fight for Spain**In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we are joined by Tony Fox, organiser of the Northeast Volunteers for Liberty and the International Brigades Memorial Organisation, to discuss the newly published collection, *Remember Me to My Comrades: Letters from Spain to Britain*.**The book emerged from a remarkable collaboration with the families of volunteers from the North East of England – one of the industrial heartlands hit hardest by the Great Depression. Through letters, diaries, and previously unpublished documents from the Russian archives, it brings to life the voices of men who went to Spain to fight fascism.Tony explains how the International Brigades were formed in response to the Non-Intervention Treaty signed by Britain, France and other powers. While Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy poured troops and weapons into Franco's Nationalist forces, the Soviet Union organised volunteers through the Comintern. In Britain, the Communist Party – not the Labour Party, which supported non-intervention – recruited and vetted two-and-a-half thousand men.We discuss the diverse motivations of the volunteers: from committed communists who had already fought Oswald Mosley's fascists on the streets of Britain, to idealists who saw Spain as the front line of a wider war against fascism. We explore the unique political character of the International Brigades – an army of working-class activists who knew why they were fighting, and whose morale was sustained through political education, including an essay competition held in the middle of the war.Tony also shares the story of Sam Wild, the last and finest commander of the British Battalion, and the chaotic, heroic rear‑guard actions that defined the British experience – from the defence of Madrid to the bloody retreats across the Ebro.**Topics covered:**- The Non-Intervention Treaty and its consequences- The formation of the International Brigades- The role of the Communist Party in recruitment- The social and political character of the volunteers- The Battle of Jarama and the defence of Madrid- Sam Wild and the British Battalion- Letters from the Russian archives- The human cost of the Spanish Civil War---*Tony Fox's *Remember Me to My Comrades* is available from Barnfather Publishing and independent bookshops. Please consider buying from an independent retailer or directly from the publisher.**If you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting us – we are migrating from Patreon to Substack. Details in the show notes.*Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Community & Continue the ConversationFacebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcastSubstack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com▸ Read Articles & Go DeeperWebsite: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode of Liberty + Leadership, Roger Ream sits down with Dr. Ekaterina Brancato, a member of the TFAS faculty who teaches Economics for the Citizen in the D.C. Academic Internship Program.Dr. Brancato reflects on growing up in the Soviet Union, coming to the United States through the Bill Bradley Future Leaders Exchange Program and later returning to the United States to study economics and business at Hillsdale College. She explains how her experience living under socialism shaped her understanding of freedom, responsibility, institutions and the rule of law.Roger and Dr. Brancato discuss how she brings these lessons into the TFAS classroom, helping students understand that economics is not just a subject but a way of seeing the world. She shares how field trips, classic economic texts and personal stories help students connect abstract ideas to real life, from incentives and spontaneous order to preference falsification and the dangers of institutional collapse. The conversation also explores the promise of TFAS students and the importance of preparing young people to become thoughtful, courageous leaders to contribute to a free and flourishing society.The Liberty + Leadership Podcast is hosted by TFAS president Roger Ream and produced by Podville Media. If you have a comment or question for the show, please email us at podcast@TFAS.org. To support TFAS and its mission, please visit TFAS.org/support.Support the show
On Monday's Mark Levin Show, the Iranian regime's ballistic missiles have caused more American casualties -this regime must be destroyed with no further timeouts, negotiations, or delays, as it's their nature is to string out conflicts while rebuilding just enough capacity to outlast the Trump administration and complicate matters through the midterms via Democratic impeachment threats. The Army identified two soldiers killed in from Iran's attack at Mufuak Salti Air Base in Jordan—1st Lt. Tyler James Freean, and Private Isabella Gonzalez. President Trump has directed that Iran will pay many times over for every American killed. Also, an armed lunatic set off an incendiary device in an apparent anti-ICE attack outside a federal building housing FBI and ICE offices in NYC. Violence against ICE is up 1,300%. This is what happens when Democrats repeatedly demonizing ICE as Nazis who “disappear” people, along with similar rhetoric against Trump, Republicans, Netanyahu, and Israel. Later, the Tate brothers, once celebrated and applauded by figures in the Woke Reich like Tucker Carlson, and Steve Bannon, are now detained on a UK provisional arrest warrant seeking extradition for dozens of rapes, human trafficking, and related charges. These are scumbags running a slave sex operation and are not conservatives or people to promote or defend. These thugs and their enablers should be rejected - MAGA supporters want nothing to do with them. Afterward, the ICC is a complete political setup job that the United States and Israel do not recognize. No, Zohran Mamdani cannot arrest Benjamin Netanyahu while he's at the UN in NYC – it's a crime to attempt to arrest an elected head of state. Mamdani is hypocritically targeting only Netanyahu while giving a pass to mass-murdering dictators and leaders from Arab, Muslim, and other regimes. Finally, the growing cabal of Marxist Islamists, who want to destroy America, will swallow the Democrat leadership. They continue to claim they are for the “working people.” Marxist polices enslave the working people. The mass grave in in communist China, the Soviet Union, and North Korea were all filled with hardworking people who rejected those systems. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Yakov Smirnoff, is an American comedian, actor and writer. He began his career as a stand-up comedian in the Soviet Union, then immigrated to the United States in 1977 in order to pursue an American show business career, not yet knowing any English. Visit Official Yakov Smirnoff Website Here: https://yakov.com/ Howie Mandel Does Stuff available on every Podcast Platform Visit the Official Howie Mandel Website for more: https://www.howiemandel.com/ Howie Mandel Does Stuff Merchandise available on Amazon.com here https://www.amazon.com/shop/howiemandeldoesstuff Join the "Official Howie Mandel Does Stuff" Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/HowieMandelPodcast/ Thanks to our sponsors: Most “upgraded” golf carts look like a DIY experiment that didn't quite work out… but Botero Carts builds street-ready rides the right way from day one. Fully equipped with headlights, turn signals, seatbelts, and powered by lithium for smooth, reliable performance, the 2026 TEKO EV Turbo is designed for real everyday use. Add in a touchscreen, sound system, nationwide service, and a warranty, and it's a completely different level of ride. For qualified buyers, take advantage of 0% financing on the TEKO and use code ‘HOWIE' for free shipping within 100 miles at BoteroCarts.com. Ever open your gym bag or take off your shoes and instantly regret it? Some smells don't just go away—but this is where Z-Smell comes in. Instead of covering things up with heavy fragrances, it targets the source and is made for real life, from shoes and gym gear to cars and pet areas. For a limited time, use code ‘HOWIE15' for 15% off your entire order plus free shipping on orders over $39 at tryzerosmell.com. Ever pull out a full trash bag, spot that swampy mess at the bottom of the bin, and realize you're out of liners? That everyday nightmare has a smarter solution. Bingi keeps a refillable dispenser right inside your trash can, so a fresh bag is ready the second you take one out—no bulky boxes, just unwind and snap, with bags that are taller and thicker than average. Try Bingi at getbingi.com and get Free Shipping on your 1st Purchase or find Bingi today on Amazon. Ever wonder if your dishes are truly clean or just covered in things you can't see? For those who care about what's in their cleaning products, this is a simpler approach worth a look. These concentrated, pre-measured detergent sheets are made with plant-derived ingredients, dissolve completely when used as directed, and work in both your dishwasher or sink. Head to lucentglobe.com and use code ‘HOWIE15' for 15% off. Say Hello to our house band Sunny and the Black Pack! Follow them here! YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BlackMediaPresents TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@blackmediapresents Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/01uFmntCHwOW438t7enYOO?si=0Oc-_QJdQ0CrMkWii42BWA&nd=1&dlsi=a9792af062844b4f Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SunnyAndTheBlackPack/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blackmediapresents/ Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/blackmediapresents Twitter: twitter.com/blackmedia @howiemandel @jackelynshultz @yakov
Yet another batch of UFO files, the fourth, has been released. A cursory glance of the first few pages reveals documents, technically declassified, but about subjects ranging from Project Sign to green fireballs over Los Alamos national laboratory, all of which have been in books, newspapers, magazines, etc. for over half a century. One document details green fireballs witnessed in the Soviet Union by members of the US government, which were unidentified. Although in both cases they were likely meteors, during the Cold War any potential threat would've been classified, especially if the same green fireballs witnessed in the Soviet Union were also witnessed over sensitive government installations in the United States. UFOs aren't the only thing making the rounds, as there have been recent hearings on MK Ultra, celebrities talking about how Dairy Queen is not real ice cream, and talk about Sumerian tablets being decoded for the first time. But none of this is new; the Church hearings were back in the 70s, Dairy Queen has on their website an FAQ about the lack of actual dairy in their ice product, and Sumerian tablets were decoded for the first time in the mid-19 century. So what is happening here? Framed narratives, or pictures, worth 1000 lies.*The is the FREE archive, which includes advertisements. If you want an ad-free experience, subscribe below.
Ghost welcomes War Hamster Brady back to the Badlands for a deep dive into a name most people have never heard but probably should: Yevgeny Primakov. Political mentor to both Putin and Lavrov, Primakov drafted a doctrine in the 1990s that Brady argues is basically the blueprint for everything unfolding on the world stage right now. The two trace it all back to the fall of the Soviet Union, that famous "not one inch" NATO promise, oligarch chaos, and the long game of building a Eurasian counterweight to Western dollar dominance. Expect maps, a rescued 1997 Heritage Foundation article, a tour through reserve currency history from the Dutch Guilder to today, and a healthy dose of "how does the world actually work" energy. Heavy on geopolitics, light on hand waving. If you like your history with receipts and a few dots connected, this one delivers.
Robert Hanssen was a veteran FBI counterintelligence agent who decided to start selling U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union. Hanssen's spying peaked at the height of the Cold War, with his activities responsible for the deaths of at least three spies overseas. They included a Soviet Army general code-named "Top Hat," who was one of America's best intelligence sources and executed in 1986. His story, and others, are told on FOX Nation specials 'Spy Nation: Spies on the Inside' and 'Spy Nation: The Invisible Enemy', that are now available. FOX's Eben Brown speaks with Eric O'Neill, former FBI counterintelligence and counterterrorism agent, and author of 'Gray Day' and 'Spies, Lies and Cybercrime,' who shares his personal stories about Hanssen and what he feels motivated him to turn on his own country. Click Here To Follow 'The FOX News Rundown: Evening Edition' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
neorealism, neoliberalism, US-Chinese relations, China's break with the Soviet Union, China as a US proxy, the Third Indochina War, China's links to Apartheid South Africa, Tiananmen Square as a color revolution, the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), China's subversion of multilaterism, the influence of China's approach to asymmetric warfare, China & the Clinton/Bush II administrations, Center for a New American Security (CNAS), CNAS' influence, CNAS and neorealism, Kurt Campbell, Campbell and the "Pivot to Asia," the Bush II regime as a catalyst for neorealism, the disaster Bush II left, Obama's mixed legacy in the Middle East, the Transpacific Partnership (TPP), Obama's efforts to drawdown troops from Europe and rebalance relations with Russia, Bush II's disastrous policies towards Russia, Trump's failure to restore relations with Russia, Trump's push for war with Iran in first administration, Trump's weakness on China, Elbridge Colby, the historically unparalleled disaster of Bush II and the neoconsMusic by: Keith Allen Dennishttps://keithallendennis.bandcamp.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Education On Fire - Sharing creative and inspiring learning in our schools
Zafra Lerman is a scientist, educator and humanitarian. She received a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel and conducted research on Isotope Effects at Cornell and Northwestern Universities in the U.S. and the ETH, Zurich, Switzerland. She developed an innovative approach of teaching science through art, music, drama, dance, and rap which was successful with underprivileged students around the globe. She worked on human rights cases in the former Soviet Union, Russia, China, Guatemala, Cuba, Peru, and South Africa and was successful in preventing executions, releasing prisoners from jail and bringing dissidents to freedom. She is the President of the Malta Conferences Foundation, which uses science diplomacy as a bridge to peace in the Middle East by bringing scientists from all countries in the Middle East together with Nobel Laureates. This five-day conference puts scientists under the same roof to develop collaborations and friendships that overcome the chasms of distrust and intolerance. She received over forty international awards, including the Presidential Award for Mentoring from President Clinton (1999), AAAS Award for Science Diplomacy (2015), American Physical Society Andrei Sakharov Prize for Human Rights (2016), Peace and Justice prize from the UN NOVUS summit (2016), Distinguished Women in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering Award from the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (2017), and she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by a member of the US Congress and a member of the French Parliament (2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023, 2025). Her book “Human Rights and Peace: A Personal Odyssey” was published in August 2024. On March 6, 2025 she received in New York the International Advocate for Peace Award from the Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution. Previous awardees include Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Paul McCartney.Chapters:00:19 - Innovative Approaches to Teaching Science01:05 - The Journey into Education and Science20:49 - Innovative Teaching Methods in Chemistry36:46 - Human Rights and Science Education44:33 - Focusing on the Middle East: A New Directionhttps://zafralerman.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/zafralerman
Charles Spicer recounts how, in September 1936, Lloyd George met Hitler at the Berghof, where the dictator successfully charmed the aging statesman. Hitler was so delighted by the initial meeting that he invited Lloyd George's entourage, including his children, back for a second day. Lloyd George proposed extending the Locarno conference to address grievances regarding the Versailles Treaty. However, observers noted Hitler's visceral, twitching physical response whenever the Soviet Union was mentioned. Although Lloyd George was later castigated for praising Hitler in the press, Spicer argues he was effectively attempting the diplomacy that subsequent Prime Ministers failed to master. (5)19451
In an episode we first ran back in 2014, we explore how a sunken nuclear submarine, a crazy billionaire, and a mechanical claw gave birth to a phrase that has hounded journalists and lawyers for 40 years and embodies the tension between the public's desire for transparency and the government's need to keep secrets. Whether it comes from government spokespeople or celebrity publicists, the phrase “can neither confirm nor deny” is the perfect non-denial denial. It's such a perfect deflection that it seems like it's been around forever, but reporter Julia Barton takes us back to the 1970s and the surprising origin story of what's now known as a “Glomar Response.” With help from David Sharp and Walt Logan, we tell the story of a clandestine CIA operation to lift a sunken Soviet submarine from the ocean floor and the dilemma they faced when the world found out about it. It's an episode we first released in 2014, but given some things in the news recently, it resonated with us again. In the 40 years since that operation, the Glomar Response has become boilerplate language from an array of government agencies. With help from ProPublica editor Jeff Larson and NPR's Dina Temple-Raston, we explore the implications of this ultimate information dodge. ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer explains how it stymies oversight, and we learn that, even 40 years later, governmental secrecy can be emotionally painful. More information about Glomar: After 40 years, many of the details of Project Azorian are only now coming to light. The US government's default position has been to keep as much of it classified as possible. It took three years for retired CIA employee David Sharp to get permission to publish his account of Project Azorian. And FOIA played an indirect role in that, as Cold War historians got the CIA to release, in redacted form, an internal history of the mission. After that and a threat of legal action, Sharp was finally able to publish his manuscript in 2012. We mentioned conspiracy theories that have swirled around Project Azorian filling the void where official silence has reigned. One of them is promulgated in the 2005 book “Red Star Rogue” by Kenneth Sewell and Clint Richmond. They posit that the K-129 was taken over by rogue Stalinist KGB agents in order to start a nuclear conflict. But the conflict was to be between the US and China, as, according to the authors, the sub had powers to disguise its sonic signature as a Chinese Navy vessel. This book is the basis of the 2013 drama “Phantom,” which features Ed Harris and David Duchovny as Soviet military officers who sip vodka in a very un-Russian way. Russian Naval historians, like Nikolai Cherkashin, are not only insulted by this take on the cause of the K-129's demise, they say the true cause is much easier to pinpoint: They say an American vessel, possibly the USS Swordfish, collided with the Soviet submarine. Despite the fact that the US government has turned over many documents about Project Azorian and what it found to the Russian government, many in the Russian Navy stand by their theory that it was far too easy for the US to locate the K-129 on the bottom of the Pacific, given the technology of the time. According to these theories, Project Azorian was nothing more than an elaborate cover-up disguised as ... an elaborate cover-up. We can neither confirm nor deny that we exactly understand how that would have worked in practice or execution. It's one of the more solemn moments of the Cold War, and one that the Glomar Response helped keep a secret for a very long time.LATERAL CUTS:What Lies Beneath (https://radiolab.org/podcast/what-lies-beneath) EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Julia Barton Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Signup (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Savage exposes how Bernie Sanders and other anti-American Democrats must be defeated by American patriots. He calls for an investigation into Sanders' background and his visits to the Soviet Union. Savage discusses Sanders' radical proposals and the growing influence of leftwing groups like Antifa, calling for it to be labeled a terrorist group. He speculates as to why there is a resurgence of socialism in the Trump era. He then warns that the United Kingdom is a bellwether for what could happen to America. Listeners tell Savage how London, Munich, and other European cities have been transformed by communists using radical Islamists.
3 hours and 13 MinutesPG-13Thomas777 is a revisionist historian and a fiction writer.This is the complete audio to the series exploring the research of Viktor Suvorov (Vladimir Rezun) and Joachim Hoffmann.Thomas' SubstackRadio Free Chicago - T777 and J BurdenThomas777 MerchandiseThomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"Thomas on TwitterThomas' CashApp - $7homas777Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.
In the early years of the Cold War, fear of communism and nuclear war swept across the United States. In this environment, one married couple from New York soon found themselves at the center of one of the most controversial trials in American history. They were accused of giving nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. Their conviction divided public opinion, inspired protests around the world, and left questions that would remain unanswered for decades. Learn more about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Shop the store at Shop.Everything-Everywhere.com Sponsors Hexclad Get 10% off your order at hexclad.com/DAILY Mint Mobile Save 50% on Unlimited premium wireless plans starting at $15/month at MintMobile.com/EED Quince Go to quince.com/daily for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order! DripDrop Go to dripdrop.com and use promo code EVERYTHING for 20% off your first order! Subscribe to the podcast! https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Austin Oetken & Cameron Kieffer Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Discord Server: https://discord.gg/Ds7Rx7jvPJ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Disce aliquid novi cotidie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oggy Boytchev is a former BBC journalist with more than three decades of experience reporting from conflict zones across the Middle East, the Balkans and the former Soviet Union. Born in 1955, Oggy grew up under the shadow of a family secret. His father had been branded an “enemy of the people” and interned without trial in a remote Bulgarian town, where he spent years under police supervision and forced labour. Even after his release, the family lived under the constant fear of surveillance, informers and political persecution. From secretly listening to the BBC World Service through crackling radio signals to navigating a school system steeped in communist ideology, he shares what it was really like to come of age in one of the Soviet bloc's most tightly controlled societies. Along the way, he reveals the lasting psychological impact of growing up unable to speak freely, the privileges and pitfalls of studying among the children of communist elites, and the shockwaves caused by the 1978 murder of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in London. This is a remarkable story of resilience, caution and quiet resistance—offering a deeply personal perspective on everyday life in Cold War Bulgaria Oggy's latest novel, 'The Istanbul Connection ', is a gripping, morally complex thriller that explores the blurred lines between ideology and manipulation Enter the book giveaway here https://coldwarconversations.com/giveaway1/ Check outOggy's books here https://amzn.to/4wyGHjT Curated episode extras https://coldwarconversations.com/episode465/ Help me preserve Cold War history via a simple monthly donation, You'll become part of our community, get ad-free episodes, receive a sought-after CWC coaster as a thank-you, and you'll bask in the warm glow of knowing you are helping to preserve Cold War history. Just go to https://coldwarconversations.com/donate/ If a monthly contribution is not your cup of tea, we also welcome one-off tips via the same link. Find the ideal gift for the Cold War enthusiast in your life! Just go to https://coldwarconversations.com/store/ CONTINUE THE COLD WAR CONVERSATION o BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/coldwarpod.bsky.social o Threads https://www.threads.net/@coldwarconversations o Twitter/X https://twitter.com/ColdWarPod o Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/coldwarpod/ o Instagram https://www.instagram.com/coldwarconversations/ o Youtube https://youtube.com/@ColdWarConversations Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
1942 was a year of extraordinary contrasts for Nazi Germany. As the year began, Hitler's armies appeared unstoppable. German forces dominated much of Europe, Rommel was advancing across North Africa, and a new offensive in the Soviet Union promised the prospect of victory in the East. Yet by the end of the year, Germany's fortunes had changed dramatically. Defeat at El Alamein and the encirclement of the Sixth Army at Stalingrad marked major setbacks. What had seemed a year of opportunity had become a year of crisis. How did this transformation occur? What was Hitler hoping to achieve in 1942? And to what extent did the events of that year shape the remainder of the conflict? Joining me to discuss this is Richard Hargreaves, author of 1942: Hitler's Gamble for Victory, which is also available on Audible and Spotify. patreon.com/ww2podcast