Monthly Archives: August 2023

The essence of freedom At the intersection of liberty and language, one of Ukraines leading writers contemplates his literary identity

By Andrey Kurkov

As Ukraine struggles against the current Russian invasion, it may seem strange to spend time remembering the collapse of the USSR in 1991. And yet I find it useful to reflect on that event. New, unexpected thoughts appear that provoke a shift in my attitudes, allowing me to reassess the past from the point of view of todays tragedy.

In 1991, the USSR was physically disintegrating, crumbling like an old, abandoned building. Now Russian President Vladimir Putins dream of restoring the USSR is crumbling, and nostalgia for the Soviet past is dying.

Donate to the Rotary Foundation Ukraine Disaster Response Fund.

I have always believed that the most important thing in life is to have a choice. This is the essence of freedom. Choice gives the opportunity to better understand yourself, the purpose of life, and your own role in it. In Soviet society, I could not choose a role that would suit both me and the Soviet system.

In my student years, I was an anti-Soviet Soviet person, as were many of my peers. I disliked many things about the USSR. I often argued with my communist father about the wrongness of the Soviet regime. And yet, I did not believe that this regime could be changed, that it could be made correct.

My father did not like to argue, although he always defended the Soviet system, in his calm, lazy manner. His positive attitude toward it grew from his belief that the Soviet system had allowed him to realize his dream. Since childhood, he had wanted to become a military pilot and he became one. He rose to the rank of captain, spending several years in Germany with the Soviet occupying forces after World War II. He returned to the USSR, and had it not been for the Cuban missile crisis and Nikita Khrushchevs unilateral disarmament policy, he would have risen to the rank of colonel. Having faced the threat of a third world war, Khrushchev wanted to demonstrate that the USSR was a peace-loving state. This meant that my father, along with tens of thousands of other military men, was sent into the reserve army and a peaceful life. I am still grateful to Khrushchev for this beautiful peacekeeping gesture. Without it, I would not be a Ukrainian today.

Illustrations by Oksana Drachkovska

After leaving the army, my father began to look for work in civil aviation. He was fortunate. My paternal grandmother lived in Kyiv, where one of the largest aircraft factories in the USSR the Antonov factory produced civilian passenger and cargo aircraft. It was this plant that invited my father to work as a test pilot, and our whole family moved to Ukraine. More precisely, we moved to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

I was not yet 2 years old when we moved. Budogoshch, my mother's home and the Russian village where I was born, is preserved in my memory only through the stories told by my mother and maternal grandmother. In my memories of early childhood, only Kyiv features Kyiv and Yevpatoriia in Crimea, where our family spent the summer holiday every year.

I have no non-Ukrainian childhood memories, though truthfully it is difficult to call the memories I have "Ukrainian." They were Soviet, geographically connected with Ukraine. The country's "Ukrainianness" at that time was expressed only in folk songs and dances, as if the Soviet republics differed from one another only in those narrow areas.

My parents considered themselves Russians all their lives, but in fact they were people of "Soviet nationality." They were brought up in Soviet, not Russian, culture. They did not sing Russian folk songs; they liked Soviet songs from popular Soviet films.

Vladimir Lenin, one of the founders of Soviet Russia, dreamed of creating a special "Soviet man," a person cut off from his ethnic roots, from the history of his specific, small homeland. Of course, Lenin took the Russian person as the basis of the "Soviet person": someone with a collective mentality who was loyal to the authorities and who valued stability more than freedom. And, of course, the Soviet person had to speak Russian. Without one common language, the system of control would not function. Therefore, the Soviet political system, which had initially abandoned the tsarist policy of Russification in the early 1920s, returned to this policy in the mid-1930s. The dramatic flourishing of distinctly Ukrainian culture in the 1920s ended in 1937-38 with the mass executions of those who had powered the Ukrainian cultural revival.

In Kyiv in the 1970s, most schools were "Russian," in that all subjects were taught in Russian. "Ukrainian schools" were considered to be institutions for the children of janitors and cooks, students with no ambition.

At Russian school number 203, only one of my friends was from a family that spoke Ukrainian at home. But at school, he spoke Russian, like everyone else. If someone in Kyiv spoke Ukrainian, it was assumed that they had come to Kyiv on business from some outlying village, or that they were nationalists.

We were taught Ukrainian twice a week. Some of my classmates were excused from these lessons. All you needed to be exempt from Ukrainian lessons was a letter from your parents stating that, in connection with a possible future move to another region of the USSR, their child did not need to learn Ukrainian.

I went to Ukrainian language and literature classes, but I do not remember that I enjoyed them. Strangely, I cannot now remember either the name or the face of our Ukrainian language teacher. I do not even remember if the teacher was a man or a woman. But I remember my Russian teacher very well. Her name was Bella Mikhailovna Voitsekhovskaya. She taught us Russian literature with great enthusiasm, constantly reciting Pushkin, Lermontov, and even the officially frowned-upon Anna Akhmatova. Now, when I think about the Ukrainian language and literature teacher who has disappeared from my memory, I suspect that he or she did everything possible to remain unremarkable, as if there was some shame in teaching the subject.

The Ukrainian language was not banned during those years. There were Ukrainian-speaking communists and university professors. When I was a student at the Kyiv Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages, we had a professor who lectured in Ukrainian, the legendary translator Ilko Korunets, who translated into Ukrainian books by Oscar Wilde, James Fenimore Cooper, Gianni Rodari, and others. Strangely, of all the professors who taught me, he is the only one whose name I can still remember.

After university, I worked for half a year as an editor at the Dnipro publishing house. I edited translations of foreign novels into Ukrainian. Inside the publishing house, everyone spoke Ukrainian that was the unwritten rule of the place. I remember walking to work with my colleagues. As we approached the doors of the publishing house, we would be talking about something in Russian, but as we went inside, we automatically continued the same conversation in Ukrainian.

Knowing the Ukrainian language did not automatically make me a Ukrainian. Even though I had lived in the capital of Soviet Ukraine since early childhood, "Russian" was written in the nationality column of my Soviet passport. When I received a passport from independent Ukraine, I discovered that there was no "nationality" column in it, only the name of my new homeland, "Ukraine," embossed in gold on the cover.

Without crossing any borders, I found myself in a new country. I did not change much, and my attitude toward freedom of choice did not change. I continued to write literary texts in Russian, but I called myself, and considered myself, a Ukrainian writer. Some of my Ukrainian-speaking colleagues treated my self-identification with hostility. They stubbornly called me a Russian writer and insisted that if I wanted to call myself a Ukrainian author, I should switch to writing in Ukrainian. From the mid-'90s to the mid-2000s, I participated in dozens, if not hundreds, of debates on this topic, and I do not remember any of the participants shifting in their opinion. But at the same time, some Russian-speaking writers did start using Ukrainian as their language of creativity. The current war has caused a new wave of language migration. The most famous Russian-speaking writer from Ukraine's Donbas region, Volodymyr Rafeyenko, turned his back on the Russian language last year. This war has made many ethnic Ukrainians begin using Ukrainian in everyday life. They no longer feel any need of Russian.

The concept of identity is usually associated with belonging being at home in a particular community with a shared culture, history, and language. Although I cling to my native language as a writer, I feel that I am part of the Ukrainian community and therefore I need to know the Ukrainian language and understand Ukrainian history and culture.

Now the issue of self-identification has become one of the main themes of public discussion. Soldiers from the front are asking friends to send them books on Ukrainian history. We have seen an explosion of interest in classical Ukrainian literature and modern Ukrainian poetry. Putin, with his statements that Ukrainians do not exist, provoked in us a desire to feel and act as Ukrainian as possible. The process of Ukrainization is now unstoppable. "Ukrainianness" has become a powerful weapon in the defense of our country.

Ukrainian has long been the language I use for public communication for radio and television interviews and meetings with readers. I also write articles for newspapers and nonfiction in Ukrainian. But I still write novels in my native language. Now, when most bookstores refuse to sell books in Russian, my books are immediately translated into Ukrainian for the domestic market. Morally, I am prepared for the fact that my books will not be published in the language in which I write them. Russian will become my "internal" language, just as Ukrainian was the internal language of my school friend, who was forced to speak Russian at school, while at home with his parents, he used Ukrainian.

If I am honest with myself, I can see that my self-identification as a Ukrainian is more important to me than my native language. To be Ukrainian, especially now, means to be free. I am free. And, using this freedom, I reserve the right to my native language even though, thanks to Russian policy, it has gained the status of "the language of the enemy."

In the end, Ukraine was and remains a multiethnic state with dozens of active national minorities, each with their own culture and literature written in Crimean Tatar, Hungarian, Gagauz, and other languages. I need to see all these languages and cultures as part of my Ukrainianness.

Tolerance in interethnic relations is a Ukrainian tradition, and the harmony that flows from such tolerance should flourish in my country once we have peace.

Andrey Kurkov is the author of more than two dozen books, including the novels Death and the Penguin and Grey Bees. His novel Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv will be published in North America in January 2024.

This story originally appeared in the August 2023 issue of Rotary magazine.

Continue reading here:

The essence of freedom - Rotary International

A caravan of over a dozen cars, with six Luna County Sheriffs Office units escorting them, made its way from the Starmax entertainment center on Country Club Road west on Pine Street and south on Gold Avenue to the Luna County Courthouse Sunday afternoon.

Messages painted on the vehicles windows or displayed on signs bore messages such as, Gods children are not 4 sale, Ride for freedom and End child trafficking!

At least two vehicles flew small flags bearing a logo, resembling three links of a chain, spelling out the initials of Operation Underground Railroad, the nonprofit organization whose founder, Tim Ballard, is depicted in this summers hit movie, Sound of Freedom.

Local Ride for Freedom caravans were encouraged by the organization to mark July 30 as a day of protest against human trafficking. The Deming event, including an hour-long gathering of about 20 people on the lawn at Poplar Street and Platinum Avenue, was organized by Sara Williams. (Williams recently spent several months as a marketing consultant for the Headlight.)

Among those in attendance was Mayor Benny Jasso.

Angel Studios released Sound of Freedom on July 4 and grossed $19.6 million in its opening weekend already surpassing its $14.5 million budget. By July 28, it posted a gross exceeding $130 million.

The PG-13-rated thriller dramatizes Ballards work as a former federal agent rescuing children from a Columbian child trafficking operation. It has received mixed reviews from critics and subject experts, who have variously called it a solid action movie with disturbing scenes while some criticize it for fictionalizing some events. The studio acknowledged creative liberties in its depictions of child trafficking.

A spokesperson for Starmax said Monday the film had grossed $15,876 in Deming since opening on July 4.

Jim Caviezel portrays former federal agent Tim Ballard in Sound of Freedom. (Courtesy of Angel Studios)

It has been our highest grossing movie for the month of July, the spokesperson said, adding that the only movie to outsell it in 2023 has been The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which ran at Starmax for seven weeks.

The theater reported that, nationwide, Sound of Freedom already ranked 13th for the year with a gross of $136,907,547 as of Aug. 1.

Among the groups promoting the movie are adherents of the widespread conspiracist movement known as QAnon, which Angel Studios, Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad have vaguely disavowed.

Flyers for Sundays caravan did not address the cause directly, referring readers to a social media hashtag, #RiseUpForFreedom, and showing the chain-like logo of Operation Underground Railroad, which is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Ballard founded the organization in 2013 after a career at the Department of Homeland Security where, according to his bio, he worked on teams addressing internet crimes against children and child sex trafficking. Ballard stepped down as the companys leader just ahead of the movies release.

According to its website, OUR works with local law enforcement agencies to conduct extensive undercover work and intelligence gathering to rescue victims of human trafficking and bondage while providing recovery services to victims. From its name to its abolitionist club donor tier, the organization links its mission to the historic Underground Railroad consisting of safe houses and covert routes aiding escaped American slaves in the 19th century.

The organization has a rating of four out of four stars on the Charity Navigator website, which assesses nonprofits based on their financial transparency, adherence to mission and leadership among other rubrics, while noting that data used for some of its metrics were not available.

Sound of Freedom star Jim Caviezel has amplified QAnon claims while promoting the film. At the same time, Angel Studios, Ballard and OUR have all distanced themselves from conspiracy theories in general terms.

OUR states on its website: Accurate information about child exploitation and human trafficking is imperative to effectively confront these issues. We encourage anyone who wants to join the fight to stay informed and use care when engaging around these issues to not hurt the cause.

Man wears a T-shirt aligning with QAnon. (Marc Nozell/Wikimedia Commons)

QAnon is a wide-ranging mythos originating circa 2017 on the internet, initially attributed to an alleged intelligence operative posting anonymously as Q hence, QAnon. The central story is that an international, Satanic organization with roots through governments, the Democratic Party, Hollywood and news media, is molesting and/or murdering children on an industrial scale. According to the story, President Donald Trump and his administration were fighting a covert battle against the cabal and preparing to arrest thousands of conspirators in an event referred to as the Storm.

While these outlandish claims have been widely mocked, they have also inspired criminal acts among believers including violence. In 2016, a Washington, D.C. pizzeria named in QAnon-related social media posts received a visit from Edgar Maddison Welch, wielding an AR-15, to investigate online rumors that child sex slaves were harbored there. Welch fired three shots in the restaurant but did not injure anyone. He pleaded guilty to transporting his firearm across state lines and to assault with a deadly weapon, was sentenced to four years in prison and has subsequently been released.

One way QAnon spread into the mainstream and recruited believers was through signs at political demonstrations and hashtags on social media such as #SaveTheChildren.

QAnon has been compared to a cult in the way it seeks to alienate recruits from conventional agencies that vet information, accusing the medical establishment, tech companies and media organizations of suppressing evidence that would substantiate its claims; and in the way it presents adherents with an insular community of the like-minded.

Caviezel has aired claims from the QAnon storybook that young victims are being farmed for a substance called adrenochrome, which, as the story goes, is used by politicians and celebrity performers as an elixir of youth.

While the films producers and OUR have attempted to put space between the movie and QAnon, there is little argument that the movements embrace of Sound of Freedom has sold tickets.

The main speaker at Sundays gathering was Ernie Holguin, owner of a downtown business, whom Williams said she invited to offer data about human trafficking and child exploitation as a serious law enforcement concern.

Following a group prayer with participants standing in a circle, Holguin spoke from the bed of a pickup truck into a microphone, consulting notes from his personal research into the issue, citing a number of data points before moving beyond the movie into some of the wilder claims associated with QAnon, including those about adrenochrome.

Holguin denied to the Headlight that his remarks were connected with QAnon, but rather came from his own online research over five years.

His speech referred to a rumor nicknamed frazzledrip, which claims the existence of a video showing Hillary Clinton murdering a female child and wearing her skin as a mask. Somehow, this video has never been found and published.

Ernie Holguin was the main speaker at a World Day Against Human Trafficking rally in Deming on July 30. (Algernon DAmmassa/Deming Headlight)

Some members of the group appeared taken aback by these claims but listened politely, and some nodded as Holguin called on them to pray for the deliverance of victims and protection for law enforcement officers.

When asked for his evidence of the frazzledrip videos existence, Holguin obliged with a link to a seven-minute video that presents no footage of the incident, sources or any verifiable evidence.

Nonetheless, Holguin said he sincerely believes the story as well as claims about adrenochrome. The hard part is they keep removing videos and pics of the whole sacrifice, he wrote. If I was to keep searching for the video, pics and even the audio Im sure I could find it if I had the time.

As the gathering concluded, Williams, who said she was not familiar with the QAnon phenomenon, offered a few words about maintaining awareness of human trafficking, as New Mexico is situated on the border and the junction of crucial interstate highways. She said she hoped for more participation at a future event.

The Headlight reached out to the mayor for comment about the gathering, but he did not respond.

Algernon DAmmassa can be reached at algernon@demingheadlight.com.

Read the original:

Locals organize 'Sound of Freedom' caravan - The Deming Headlight

Court Upholds First Amendment rights of Libraries, Librarians, Booksellers, Publishers,Authorsand Readers in Commanding Opinion

Washington, D.C. On July 29, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas granted a Preliminary Injunction, barring the implementation of two provisions of Arkansas Act 372, one of which would have subjected librarians and bookstore owners to criminal prosecution unless they removedfrom shelves serving older minors and adultsmaterial deemed unsuitable for the youngest minors. The other provision would have mandated a library book challenge procedure in public libraries whereby individuals may challenge books based on appropriateness (an undefined term not based on constitutional standards). In addition review boards would have been allowed or even invited to engage in viewpoint and content based discrimination. The ruling came in response to thesuitfiled by a coalition of plaintiffs that includes local Arkansas libraries, as well as authors, publishers, booksellers, librarians, and readers. The bill was signed by the Governor of Arkansas on March 30, 2023 and had been slated to go into effect on August 1.

Excerpts from the Order and Opinion

Joint Statement of the Organizational Plaintiffs

Allison Hill, the CEO of the American Booksellers Association; Maria Pallante, President and CEO of the Association of American Publishers; Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild; Deborah Caldwell- Stone, the Executive Director of the Freedom to Read Foundation; Jeff Trexler, the Interim DirectorofComic Book Legal Defense Fund; Pearls Books; Kandi West, Lia Lent and Lynne Phillips, owners of WordsWorth Books:

The court has moved decisively to protect the First Amendment rights of Arkansas book community, consistent with the rigorous analysis that freedom of speech has always required. In barring theimplementation of the challenged provisions of ArkansasAct 372, the court has preserved the constitutional right of the states readers to receive information, including viewpoints that state legislators may find disagreeable. Just as profoundly, the court has shielded the states booksellers and librarians from extreme punishments for performing their essential function of making books available to the public.

What the Bill Would Have Done

The lawsuit challenged two provisions of Act 372 that would have violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments. One component made it a crime for libraries, booksellers, and any brick-and-mortar establishment to display or make available works that might be harmful to minors. This would have required libraries and booksellers to limit all readers to books appropriate for minors or exclude all minor readers from their premises. The second provision made it possible for any person in Arkansas to demand the removal of a book the person deemed inappropriate, limiting readers to one persons opinion about what books should be in the library, and it would have permitted or encouraged review boards to engage in viewpoint- and content-based discrimination.

Plaintiffs

The plaintiffs in the suit include the American Booksellers Association, Association of American Publishers, Authors Guild, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Freedom to Read Foundation, and two local bookstores WordsWorth Books in Little Rock and Pearls Books in Fayetteville, as well as a consortium of local libraries, librarians, and library advocates, which includes Fayetteville Public Library, Eureka Springs Carnegie Public Library, Central Arkansas Library System (CALS), Arkansas Library Association, Advocates for All Arkansas Libraries, Nate Coulter (Executive Director of CALS); Adam Webb, a librarian from Garland County; Olivia Farrell, an adult CALS patron; Hayden Kirby, a 17-year-old CALS patron; and Leta Caplinger, a patron of the Crawford County Public Library.

Counsel

Counsel for the various plaintiffs includeJohn T. Adamsof Fuqua Campbell, P.A.;Michael Bambergerof Dentons;Bettina Brownsteinof the ACLU of Arkansas; and Benjamin Seel and Will Bardwell ofDemocracy Forward.

Read the opinion here.

Go here to read the rest:

Freedom to Read Foundation welcomes preliminary injunction ... - ala.org

Hugh Odneal, Jefferson City

Dear Editor,

One definition from the Webster Dictionary; "the quality or state of being free: such as; the absence of necessity, coercion or constraint in choice or action." Another is the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint:"

Does this sound like the freedom's we experience in the United States? Where is the coercion or constraint in choice or action coming from? Is it from the Christian seminary that uses Biblical authority for its guidelines of admittance and conduct, the Christian baker, Christian photographer, Christian web-designer, Christian florist ... whose desires are to use their God-given talents to glorify God with the talents he gave them? They are not using coercion to force anyone to accept their Christian values; they are being coerced to compromise their Christian values.

Freedom cannot exist without tolerance, true tolerance. And what is true tolerance? Again from Webster, "sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one's own."

Notice tolerance does not require acceptance or agreement with the other's belief or lifestyle; in fact acceptance or agreement would not be tolerance. Tolerance requires compassion and love.

Freedom is not for the pacifist, from Gov. Reagan's Jan. 5, 1967, inaugural address, "Freedom is a fragile thing, and it's never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation.

"With all the profound wording of our federal Constitution, probably the most meaningful words are the first three, 'We, the People.' Now, it is inconceivable to me that anyone could accept this delegated authority without asking God's help."

Jesus was not a pacifist nor did he compromise. Matthew 21:13: "My house will be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it 'a den of robbers.'"

Franklin Graham gave the simple solution 2 Chronicles 7:14, "ifmy people who are called by my name will humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land."

Notice God only asks for "my people who are called by my name," Christians, to humble themselves. So why is our nation and world in the chaos we see all around us? Is it because we are those God called stiff-necked and rebellious?

See the rest here:

COMMENTARY: What is freedom? - Jefferson City News Tribune