THEY DESPISED US PROFOUNDLY
We will perish them
My confession is this: I believe Gaza will become a memorial of rubble. It will become a desert of monuments dedicated to the erased. The memorial will act as a reminder, a 'never again' for future children of democracy and learning. I doubt they, the youthful future, will learn, I doubt they won't make the same mistakes we make, the same mistakes we have made when previous deserts warned us the same. I have been in mourning for the Palestinians of Gaza since December. I am not hopeful. And yes there is 'always' hope in the fight, in the moral human spirit, and I would never take that away from anyone. But this time, I don't see it. I see myself: 16 years old, Beirut, 2003, after Operation Defensive Shield, believing it could never be worse. How could it be? Praying and praying for their freedom. Now 37, 2024, I pray the people of Gaza go swiftly, I pray for a painless and a righteous departure. We have failed them, all of us, and we are left holding our heads in our laps asking questions. We are left with our prayers, our failures. Tomorrow's youth will be left with the books that have warned us, the books that will preserve their memories.
THE KATYUSHAS ARE COMING!
Vladimir Putin’s plan is to conquer Ukraine. After conquering Ukraine, he will conquer Poland and Germany, then France and the United Kingdom, then after he subjugates Spain and Portugal, he will sail across the Atlantic Ocean and land in New York, where he will begin his campaign of conquering the United States of America.
Sike!
The US Congress recently passed a bill sending $61bn worth of aid¹ to the Ukrainians. There are three points to this development: The Secret, The Tragic and The Fun! The Secret is $28bn (almost half) of that money will go towards the US manufacturing weapons and replenishing their own stocks expended in the process of supplying Ukraine in the past, so: not weapons for Ukraine but weapons that will stay in the US. The Tragic is that this injection of military reinforcement to Ukraine will guarantee another 100 thousand Ukrainian boys to perish in an inevitably doomed war. The Fun is none of it makes sense! Like a wild spin on the ringišpil² : you pay for a ticket, survive the thrill of going round and round in circles, vomit your breakfast, then do it all over again!
The fact is Ukraine has a serious problem with their military draft. Many young men are avoiding being drafted because they don’t want to die in a losing war (what!? how come!?) and many others who work and live in other European countries don’t want to go back to Ukraine to fight and die in a losing war (what?! but how come?!), and the US, the UK, France and Germany are not prepared to put actual boots on the ground. Could you imagine? Vladi Poot would go HAM. However to combat (mask) this and in the hopes of beefing up the Ukrainian forces, threatening further escalation, the Americans secretly sent long range artillery (ATACMs) to Ukraine (something they've never done before). The artillery has been for the most part ineffective; these missiles were deployed only days ago, targeting airfields, but were mostly shot down by Russian air defences. The thing about the Russian power is just that, it is powerful. They have the capability of adapting and defending themselves against such missiles, they have the capability of withstanding attacks and retaliating a hundred times over. This has been proven over and over again in the last two years. More importantly, Russia manufactures weapons a lot faster than the US does, Russia has many more men enlisted to fight in their army than Ukraine does in theirs and Russia, contrary to what the US has been trying to sell to its people and to the rest of the world, is a much more powerful army and can wage a war for years without a problem. It is inevitable that in the coming months the Russians will conquer a lot more territory and kill many more Ukrainians in the process. So the question then is, why? Why the insistence of the Americans and the Western countries to force NATO into Ukraine and Georgia? This has been a clear red line for Putin since 2008 and the West has known all along the Ukrainians have no chance of winning this war. What is the purpose? Why the further escalation? Ukraine has been losing this war for over two years now, and it's not even close. A hundred thousand more Ukrainian boys will be killed. Why does the US care so little for Ukrainian life? Why are they trying to destabilise the region? Why are they trying to destabilise the Middle East? Why are those Congress cunts celebrating waving Ukrainin flags inside their chambers? Those men who don’t know death. Those men who don’t know war. Those men who are safe and powerful, who eat takeaway in their cars with their families and bounce their nephews on their knees, what are they celebrating? The Western idea of freedom has been propagandised into accepting the mobilisation of mass brutal assaults thousands of miles away, it is the idea of freedom that has transformed from meaning free into a chaos regardless of consequence, heart or logic.
And by the way, if the Iran shit pops off with Israel, Russia has said it will back Iran. Fun fun! Vomit! Repeat!
¹ Military aid of course! To suggest any other aid like diplomatic (as if!), rebuilding destroyed homes (who needs those?!) or food and supplies for the innocent civilians who have lost everything (innocent whats?!) would be out of the question.
² Ringišpil is one of many Germanized words that has tragically found its way into the Serbo-Croatian language. It means 'Carousel' (the type that has a single seat attached to some string and it spins around high in the air). There is a famous song by Serbian singer-songwriter Djordje Balašević where he refers to the ringišpil inside his head, spinnin round n round. double meaning!
6.5.24
THIS TOP OF THE HOUR AD BREAK IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY ZIONISM
WHAT IS THIS WORLD?
Benjamin Netanyahu, the MIT graduate, called the college kids protesting his genocide ‘Nazis’. What is this world? For us, culturally Eastern raised Western, this is no news at all; the strange dichotomy of existence and inherent blame. For the West this might be radical, for us it is not. This (Western) world is a spinning of narratives, a recycling of justifications for militarily eradicating a peoples. ‘They hate our freedom!’ Remember that? Americans were taught this was why 9/11 happened, why Arabs are such radical extremists, this was and has been the justification for ‘freeing’ Iraq and Afghanistan, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. What is this world? It is that of the Western ‘Democracy’. the East has to accept Western presence because Western presence is acting in the name of freedom, of good. In this world a Prime Minister of a state can flippantly call college kids ‘Nazis’ while simultaneously receiving billions in funding for a genocide. And we in the West all think ‘well yes, that’s the price of freedom!’ It is not. Israel is not a Democracy. You cannot claim to be both; a Democracy and a Theocracy. Dostoevsky was very clear on this. Americans love Dostoevsky. But not when he betrays their narrative. Ben Shapiro loves freedom of speech. But not when it concerns Israel. The spinning narratives is a way to continuously blindside the public, the West, into thinking they are on the side of the good guys. it is Star Wars. it is the Marvelverse. What is this world? It is a Hollywood blockbuster. But the Darkside, the villains, are in fact the good guys. Darth Vader is a protector of freedom, a spreader of Democracy. the East hates his freedom. the East, in its intrinsic barbaric lust for blood, has not been liberated yet. Vader is simply on a path to enlighten, to make the galaxy a safe haven for humanity’s existence in the realm of his own making.
Don’t believe me? click here
ANALYSIS OF CONTEMPORARY SERBO-BOSNIAN RAP SEQUENCES
1 of 2
Venok’s six bars from his appearance on Faberge’s song CP
Venok:
Zaključavaj vrata
Banja Luka divlji zapad
Rupe od metaka, Dejton estetika
Ali se skuplja za Maybach
Tu sam sa ciganima kao Kusturica
Šuteri luđi od Gudurića
Lock your doors
Banja Luka, the Wild West¹
Bulletholes, Dayton aesthetic²
But we’re saving for the Maybach
I’m with the Gypsies like Kusturica³
Shooters crazier than Gudurić⁴
¹ Banja Luka is a major city in Bosnia and Herzegovina with a Serbian majority.
The Wild West conjures up cowboys, guns, a vast plain of lawlessness and gunfire. The comparison of Banja Luka to The Wild West here is not only superficial, it is also a juxtaposition of East and West; The global Western prominence and the comparative Eastern ambition.
² The Dayton Agreement, or Dayton Accords, (named after Dayton, Ohio, where the agreement was conceived but ultimately signed in Paris, France) was the peace agreement formally signed on 21 Novemeber 1995, officially ending the Bosnian war. With two words Dayton Aesthetic the listener is attuned to what bulletholes the artist is referencing. What once was an active war, a genocide, a bloody bogged-down repetition of gunfire, decades later has left its imprint in the buildings of future generations. This aesthetic is not only a reminder of the history but also an evolving form of normalised architecture.
With the Americanised braggadocios rapping about luxury cars like Maybachs and Bentleys we’ve all come to know, comes a capitalist reality which ex-Communist countries have come to face : Among the normalised bullethole aesthetics, they attempt to not only survive on low incomes but to over-accomplish, over-project wealth and capitalistic success. This value is best signified by the amount of desperation and zeroes that follows the comma in one’s bank account and by nothing else.
³ Kusturica is a Cannes Award-winning Serbo-Bosnian director best known for his films depicting Gypsy Romani life in Yugoslavia.
⁴ (Marko) Gudurić is a Euroleague MVP-winning professional Serbian basketball player known for his shooting prowess. The word shooters is a ‘double’ referencing to both Gudurićs deadly shooting ability on the basketball court and the alleged deadly crazy shooters the artist must surround himself in the streets of Banja Luka.
The artist, typical of rap music, mixes pop culture with violent life in short and clever schemes; the hanging out in The Wild West of Banja Luka surrounded by the bullethole Dayton aesthetics with Gypsies like Kusturica and deadly shooters like Gudurić paints a picture of both overwhelming globalised American culture and local references designed to hype and hit the listener; hype with bravado and hit with reality. Rap music is after all folk music with beats, and the folk genre only requires two things: colloquial relevance and poetic prowess. It’s almost as if the artist here, in his pursuit of making music his people will feel and bump to for generations to come, hopes that one day his clever rhyme schemes will not only make the Western world proud, but paint an Eastern portrait of it in a way the Western eye could appreciate and understand.
Wild West, Bulletholes, The Dayton Accords, Saving for Maybachs, Gypsies, Deadly Shooters.
In this short six bar series the artist, a Serbian from Bosnia, effectively combines the braggadocios overconfidence of Capitalistic and poetic street-life norms found in similar songs with the Ethno-importance of ex-Yogoslavian children; a dichotomy of ambitious overachievement through the American C.R.E.A.M (Cash Rules Everything Around Me) and the normalisation and real-life implications of the post-war day to day.
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This verse is also a shoutout and reference to another song called TENZIJE (TENSIONS) by Danza which features this and another Serbo-Bosnian artist. I will discuss a section of this verse in the next edition.
The analysis of both of these songs and artists is important not because they are children of war but because they are children born after the war. These children have been saddled with the decisions and misgivings of generations that came before them; the hard survival of everyday life, the daily witnessing of buildings with bulletholes and half-finished houses as living monuments of the past and the current normalised capitalistic hyper-ambition. These artists effectively achieved all this in six to eight rhyme schemes, one needs not wonder which side of history they are on : The architecture of genocide is still genocidal, regardless of reason or faith.
The ending of Mayakovsky's A CLOUD IN TROUSERS IV
in several translations
The universe sleeps
And its gigantic ear
Full of ticks
That are stars
Is now laid on its paw
- Vladimir Mayakovsky
The universe sleeps,
Its huge paw curled
Upon a star-infested ear.
- Vladimir Mayakovsky
The universe sleeps.
Placing its paw
Under the black, star-infested ear.
- Vladimir Mayakovsky