DRAGI ZMIJANAC: “It is a challenge to be the leader of this great global movement!” Founder and President of the First Children's Embassy in the World MEGJASHI - MACEDONIA
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INTERVIEW
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DRAGI ZMIJANAC: “It is a challenge to be the leader of this great global movement!”
*Being a pillar and the head of the First Children’s Embassy in the world MEGJASHI is a feeling and experience that only you a familiar with. There were no working conditions, you were the one who created them over all these past years completely oriented towards children, you were alone against the established rules and patterns of behavior, prejudices, discriminations, institutions, loopholes in the law, and above all the mentality of the environment that we live in, as a transitioning society. MEGJASHI is grounded by the milestones of your struggle for children's rights, you leave values ​​behind you, and traces. What motivated you to embark on this great struggle, maybe the fact that you are a parent yourself?
- In the beginning, we were the three pillars - Gorde, Kole and I, and as time passed, more pillars were built into this global children's movement called the First Children’s Embassy in the world MEGJASHI, which represents children and has been fighting for a fairer world for children for 30 years. Since you already asked me about the feeling and experience that I have experienced throughout all these 30 years, the one thing that I can emphasize is that you cannot build something significant and motivating only if you want it, if you are dedicated and believe in what you are doing. It takes persistence and courage in order to see the outlines of the structure, from the very beginning and in the first few years. Now when I look back, I have to admit to myself that everything has to be earned, through work, belief, perseverance and honesty. When you strongly want something and believe in what you are doing, the Universe has your back. Change does not happen overnight. You need to stand strong, be mobile, resilient to attacks and blows and come out stronger after every battle. Defending and fighting for a fairer world for children is not only difficult, but also inspiring. I saw this challenge as an opportunity to be a driver and leader in this great worldwide movement called the First Children’s Embassy in the world. Recognizable and recognized all over the world. It is the pillar of success. Everything else builds upon it, complements it, changes it and pushes it forward. We are here and exist because we are needed. I often joke when I say that if this embassy, ​​the first one in the world, whose heart is in Macedonia, did not exist, it would have to be invented. And, since it exists and continuously proves itself, creates, creates, it should be selflessly supported and helped. In one of UNICEF's manuals, the author, Ms. Sue Gilbert wrote: “Macedonia is famous for children’s rights, because that’s where the First Children’s Embassy in the world, MEGHASHI, was formed”.
The conditions when we started working to help and support children affected by the war in former Yugoslavia were tense, the war had started. Gordana Pirkovska Zmijanac, who is the initiator and founder of the First Children’s Embassy in the world MEGJASHI, appealed for the care of children affected by the war. At her strong insistence, the editor Ljubisha Nikolovski allowed her to make an appeal for solidarity, for help and care for the children affected by the war, on the prime news block of the Macedonian national television. The appeal reached Macedonian citizens. And that's how it all started. It was on April 12, 1992. While Gordana was on MTV, I was at home, I recorded her appeal, the phone rang continuously, I registered all the calls and requests from citizens to take a child under their in their homes. It was real solidarity and humanity in action. That's how we started, as an informal citizen initiative. Due to the fact that we agitated and mobilized all state institutions and demanded the opening of children's resorts, hotels, etc., we realized that we had to get formalized as an organization. On April 29, we had the Founding Assembly in the “Karposh” Youth Home (Pionerski dom), and we got officially registered as a civil soviety organization at in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, back then, on May 25, 1992. Otherwise, I draw the main motive, inspiration and incentive in this struggle from my childhood. I grew up in conditions of social and educational injustice and neglect. I grew up in a family with a single mother. I grew up in a dysfunctional family. The conditions were hrash. Not to mention bordering on poverty and social injustice. But for me as a person it posed a major challenge - to either become strong or to break down. I chose the fight for justice and it has been my guide all these years in my life. It is my life energy, mission and vision. I know that I was not born by accident and I have a task to do something. At least to change and improve things a little. Injustice affects me. And that's why I'm often rebellious, I speak loudly about it and I'm not afraid to raise my voice. My voice is the echo of millions of children. That's how I bring myself up and enter from one battle to another. I know it's difficult, painful, uncertain, but I'm waiting, I'm patient and I'm watching even the smallest changes as a big step forward towards a fairer world for children.
*It is subtle job to deal with children's rights, first of all you need be familiar with all the laws, as well as the mechanisms of their functioning in reality. At the same time, it is not easy at all, because we live in conditions in which society, instead of facilitating, gives resistance against the citizens and their needs, many rights are violated, and many crimes against children are concealed in a well-organized manner. Did all that resistance scare you, this entire situation around you that created pressure, did it discourage you at times?
- Sometimes I feel that our work stagnates. That's the initial impression. There is an improvement in the defense of children's rights, but the state institutions sometimes seem to shift the responsibility between each other. They are not sufficiently efficient and mobile, they do not implement violence prevention in time, they only impose sanctions when there is a case of incest or death, which is a belated measure. The level of abuse of children in Macedonia is constantly increasing, and this is due to the aggressiveness, loneliness and alienation of children, they are increasingly left to fend for themselves. First of all, the most important thing is that we broke the silence surrounding children's suffering, we spoke publicly about all the problems that children in Macedonia face, which were previously shameful and scary to talk about, we encouraged children to talk about violence, to recognize us as protectors of children's rights, as their advocates. Of course, we have instruments, indicators, how to reach information about the problems that children encounter. In 1993, we opened the SOS telephone line for children and youth, now known as “Hello, Bushavko” 070 390 632. This hotline for children has been operating for 29 years, so far over 21,000 children, parents, guardians, relatives have contacted it to report child abuse, violence, violation of children's rights. We use our mechanisms to resist and often with the help of the media we exert pressure, sometimes we can be even louder than what is expected of us, to push the state institutions into working with maximum functionality and efficiency, in defense of children's rights. To respect the best interest of the child. The motto of the Children’s Embassy MEGJASHI is that “All the ideals in the world are less important than the tears of a child”.
*It has been proven that in order to improve a child's right or at least to initiatite a change, unfortunately, one has to see or experience the worst example or incident. After all, we can't do anything about those sad and devastating facts or terrible statistics, but we can build a fairer children's world on their foundations and on the basis of lessons learned.
- In the fight for a fairer world for children, we upturned many taboos, stereotypes, opened up and initiated the solution to many problems affecting children, prioritized the importance of respecting children's personality and their best interests. We broke the silence about the children suffering from sexual abuse, from physical violence, from the problems they have when their parents’ divorce, from the sadness due to the secrecy of adopted children not having access to their biological parents, from the everyday problems that children encounter, from bullying, from the fact that there are still children without a birth certificate, children whose labor is abused, children who are not included in primary education or are prevented from completing their education. But what worries me the most in recent years is air pollution and the carcinogenic particles that children breathe. Air pollution is one of the leading causes of death in children because that air permanently crosses the blood-brain barrier and permanently damages a child's developing brain. Due to the negligence and absence of measures against the extremely polluted air in Macedonia, the most basic right of the children is violated and threatened - the right to life according to Article 6 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was ratified by the Republic of Macedonia in 1993.
*You were a scanner and with your work you brought to light the fact that, in fact, children are not deviant towards society, but that society is completely upside down towards them. That what they do is, in fact, only a response to the irresponsible behavior of adults and that all of us together bear responsibility.
-Society and state institutions are often deviant towards children. Instead of being their support and help, they often act against their needs and interests. Very often when they do not act properly or act wrongly, the state does not have a mechanism to sanction those who are responsible, but rather protects them. And so the problems only deepen, and the state and institutions become complicit in the dysfunctionality of the system. There are many examples in practice. The alienation between the child and the parent is a deviation that adults and society are responsible for, and such direct and irresponsible behavior affects the proper growth and development of the child. It is difficult for parents from dysfunctional and broken former marital relations after leaving the marital union to be participants in functional and responsible parenting. Joint and responsible parenting even after divorce should be focused on what is most important, which is the best interest of the child. The child should not feel guilty about the divorce and should live a normal life, receiving attention from both parents equally, because the termination of the marital union puts an end to the marriage, but not to the process of parenting. The mother and the father are equally important and significant for the correct growth and development of the child and under no cirscumstances should a child be put in a situation to choose between them. Divorce is the end of marriage, not the end of parening, the child needs love from both parents during the process of growing into a healthy individual to avoid deviant phenomena in adolescence. The child is not to blame for the divorce and must not feel any remorse. The child should not feel guilty about the divorce and should live a normal life, receiving attention from both parents equally, because the divorce of the marital union is the termination of the marriage, but not the termination of parentage. The mother and the father are equally important and significant for the correct growth and development of the child and it should not be put in a situation to choose under any circumstances. Divorce is the end of marriage, not the end of parenthood, the child needs love from both parents during the process of growing into a healthy individual to avoid deviant phenomena in adolescence. The child is not to blame for the divorce and must not feel any remorse.
*Society really swallows up children's rights. The youngest seem to be the most discriminated against and have no way to defend themselves from the adults, unless another adult helps them. Young people need to know that there is a solution to their problem, even though it seems like the whole world has collapsed on them. You indicated this through numerous engagements and campaigns. What would you single out in particular?
- We live in a completely divided society along ethnic, social, educational and any other lines. We live with rude and aggressive, violent behaviors towards those different from ourselves. We live in a segregated society in which students from different ethnic communities study in different schools. Although we each speak our own language, we rarely understand each other when it comes to building trust, shared values ​​and life. That's why we decided to launch the campaign “Foster Peace”, to stir things up and be part of the change, acting both individually and as a civil organization, and on a collective level. At the same time, let's ask the state to be more mobile in terms of what we ask of it, to nurture, build and promote values ​​such as empathy, solidarity, responsibility, dialogue and non-violence.
*Generally, it is a great injustice - with their existence, children paint the world with the warmest and most cheerful colors, and the world often shamelessly paints their childhood in the darkest, gray, sad colors, in the color of tears. We all need to change our attitude towards
children and we must educate them about their rights. You have done a lot in this direction. What is most valuable in all of this?
- One of the most difficult traumas that can happen to a child is sexual abuse. And this trauma is shrouded in silence for many years. But we raised our voices and spoke clearly and loudly about these traumas suffered by the children and sought solutions. Both preventive and punitive. The strong advocacy, support and lobbying of the First Children’s Embassy MEGJASHI for stricter sanctions against sex offenders, incest perpetrators, pedophiles, especially towards children under the age of 14, bore fruit, three out of our four recommendations were accepted and I think that in this way there is an opportunity to put this pathological phenomenon under control, especially when it comes to recidivism. What we advocated for was accepted, drug therapy or chemical castration, a minimum of 15 years in prison, but they did not accept the wearing of electronic bracelets after the pedophile leaves the prison institution. We believe that chemical castration should be mandatory as a measure, especially for recidivists and that it should be established immediately after leaving the prison institution and the pedophile will thus be helped not to repeat the crime, because the Children's Embassy advocates for lifetime in prison for every repeated offender. This is not corporal punishment, because it affects the psyche, i.e. the mental disorder that the pedophile has because he is not able to control his drive and libido, and in this way we believe that we are helping the pedophile, as well as the children, not to commit these crimes again.
*All of the people in the Embassy have experience in all directions, profound, extensive, long-lasting, and each of you can write a thick book of experiences. Can you recall which was the most difficult moment for you in all these 30 years, and which was the brightest and the greatest source of pride?
-”The girl fell on the rolling pin and lost her virginity”, this is how the case of the then nine-year-old girl, who was raped by her mother's friend, ended somehow. Case closed! In cases of sexual offenses, the procedure for determining the origin of the injuries cannot be performed by a gynecologist, but exclusively by a forensic medicine expert. But back then no one reported the case to forensic medicine, where if there had been a case of rape, it would have been discovered due to the specificities of the injuries. It is interesting to note that the two injuries that the gynecologist found could not have been caused by one fall, or even by any rolling pin, but were done on at least two occasions. So, the case was closed, there were neither suspects nor was anyone accused. Macedonia will remain the only country in the world where “virginity is lost by falling on a rolling pin!”
Then, we helped thousands of children affected by the war in the former Yugoslavia, responded to the challenges of rescuing and evacuating children from Bosnia and Herzegovina and taking them into care in Macedonia. We responded to the Kosovo crisis and worked with the children in the camps in Radusha, Bojane, Chegrane, Stenkovec 1 and 2 in the period between 1999 and 2000. During the conflict in Macedonia in 2001 we opened a Shelter for Internally Displaced Persons and took care of 16 people, they were taken care of at the Children's Embassy MEGJASHI during a period of five years. Three babies were born here - Alexander, Marija and Nikola. We responded to the migrant crisis. We had a rapid response humanitarian action to help the children from the flood in Skopje, the children who fled from Syria and were taken care of in Turkey. We also adequately responded with humanitarian aid during the COVID-19 pandemic, by distributing aid to the competent institutions and providing them with overall protective equipment, gloves and masks…
*You moved a world from inside to outside, from invisible to visible, you instigated changes. Going back through the timeline, you can see how quixotic your work was, but then you add things up at the end, when it all comes together, you manage to see the scope of work and the conclusion that nothing was in vain. That MEGJASHI became a “moral” home for any child, barefoot, hungry and starving, but also for those who have a roof over their heads and dream of higher goals... That MEGJASHI became a school for transformation towards democracy and children's rights and managed to impose many positive changes. *Was it worth it?
- The state is more focused on the legal amendments and what the legal norms stipulate, and less or in some parts it is not mentioned at all how those legal provisions are applied in practice. There is no established system of monitoring how the laws are implemented, nor is there any information that an adequate analysis has been made as to what funds are needed for the implementation of the laws. The omission in the protection of children's rights usually occurs during the implementation of laws, and in certain cases it happens due to legislative gaps and inadequate regulation of certain issues. For example, there are laws where it is stipulated that the child has a certain right, but it does not specify how the child can exercise that right, through which procedure, before which authority and in accordance with which law. Such legal solutions are unenforceable in practice and instead of promoting children's rights, they represent an additional obstacle. But yes! It was worth it. The Children's Embassy has not only become a school for transformation towards democracy and children's rights, but also strengthens and encourages children's activism and participation. Namely, Macedonia is one of the few countries in the world that has managed, for the second time, to prepare an Alternative Report on the situation with children's rights in Macedonia - from the children's perspective. To submit, present and defend it in front of the members of the Committee on the Rights of the Child at the UN. Children state that they are victims of various forms of violence, among which bullying is the most common, and emphasize that schools should do much more to educate children to prevent this type of violence. They point to the problems in education, which are numerous, including the poor quality of teaching, insufficient care for hygiene, inadequate conditions for children with disabilities and insufficient care for children's mental health. However, they believe that polluted air, especially in winter days, as well as illegal landfills, factories near populated areas are part of the environmental problems that children face, and they believe that there is neither sufficient awareness nor sufficient care on the part of the government. Not to mention any liability and criminal prosecution. They listed many other problems that children face. We expect the specific recommendations from the Committee on Children's Rights to arrive soon. But, also specifically their implementation and realization by the Macedonian state. Our engagement will still be necessary here, because in every report so far there were numerous problems that children were facing, that have been noted down in the reports sent to the Committee, and are repeated.
*The hard-working team of the Embassy, very gently and carefully, with filigree-like precisions, weaved a network of children's rights. And, with your relentless persistence, you made people to increasingly realize that children's rights are not one or two and that there is no right dosage for fulfillment of children's rights, they need to be exercised down to the last percent. And no matter what is settled, new rights always arise that the heirs of the world deserve. *According to you personally, what is the first most inviolable and supreme right of every single child, wherever he/she may be on this Planet?
- The right to a healthy environment. The right to life. The population most affected by air pollution is children. Air pollution has a harmful effect on children's health. The negative effects of air pollution on children begin even before they are born. The polluted air that pregnant women breathe can lead to damage to the fetus and its development. Polluted air also leads to reduced body weight at birth, premature births, various anomalies in newborn children whose mothers were exposed to polluted air during pregnancy. Children who breathe polluted air have an increased number of upper and lower respiratory tract infections. As a result of frequent infections of the respiratory organs, permanent damage to the lungs and chronic diseases that last a lifetime can occur, such as asthma, allergies, chronic bronchitis. As a result of polluted air, there is also a disturbance in the development of the central nervous system in children, a change in the immune system, and the occurence of malignant diseases. Air pollution directly affects children and their right to life. Namely, according to data from the World Health Organization, more than one in every four deaths of children under the age of five is directly or indirectly related to exposure of children to air pollution. Children are particularly vulnerable to the harmful effects of air pollution. Children inhale a larger amount of air, and thus a larger amount of harmful substances.
*What other message would you like to send?
- In the upcoming period, we plan to focus on achieving the following long-term goals of the organization, such as respecting and understanding the rights of children and children's personality; promoting and advancing the culture of peace and non-violence among children from an early age, mobilizing, updating and undertaking initiatives and actions for the benefit of children; joint and responsible parenting even after divorce, children having the right to find out who their biological parents are, the right to a healthy environment and clean air, and the struggle to mobilize and build functional institutions that act in the best interest of children.

http://www.megjashi.org.mk/content/pdf/MONOGRAPH%20%20First%20Childrens%20Embassy%20in%20the%20World%20MEGJASHI%201992-2022%20,%2030%20years.pdf

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This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 44%. (I'm a bot)

A German MP has called on his government to grant Ukraine's request to supply Taurus long-range cruise missiles.
For reference: The Taurus KEPD 350 long-range subsonic cruise missile is designed for high-precision engagement of protected targets at ranges up to 500 km.
The missile weighs 1,400 kg and is 5 metres long and was developed by Taurus Systems GmbH, a joint venture between MBDA Deutschland and Swedish company Saab Bofors Dynamics AB. Background: On 27 May, it became known that Ukraine had officially requested Germany to send it Taurus cruise missiles.
A few days earlier, Roderich Kiesewetter, a member of the Christian Democratic Union and member of the Defence Committee opposed to the Scholz government, spoke in favour of supplying German Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine.
According to him, these missiles, with a range of up to 500 kilometres, would allow "To strike at Russian military infrastructure far beyond the front line".
At the same time, he also said he believed that "We should support Ukraine with all the systems permitted by international law that are necessary to win this war and that we can provide".

Summary Source FAQ Feedback Top keywords: Ukraine^#1 missile^#2 Taurus^#3 German^#4 cruise^#5
Post found in /UkrainianConflict and /worldnews.
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In the world of accounting, regulatory measures have always played a vital role in shaping the accounting practices of firms. Two significant regulatory measures that have come into effect in recent times are the Internal Financial Controls (IFC) and the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX). Both have had a tremendous impact on the accounting practices of CA firms. In this article, we will take a closer look at the differences between these two measures and their impact on accounting practices.
Firstly, let's understand what IFC is. Internal Financial Controls (IFC) are mechanisms put in place to ensure the accuracy and completeness of a company's financial statements. It involves a set of procedures or controls that help organizations to manage risks effectively, safeguard assets, and comply with regulatory requirements. The main objective of IFC is to ensure that financial data is accurate, transparent, and reliable. It helps to identify potential errors or fraud and ensures that financial information is timely and accurate.
On the other hand, the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) is a US federal law that was enacted in 2002 to regulate public companies' financial reporting. It is intended to improve the accuracy and reliability of financial statements, protect investors, and restore public confidence in the financial markets. SOX primarily focuses on internal controls, corporate governance, and financial reporting. It requires companies to establish internal control systems and procedures for financial reporting and disclose any deficiencies in internal controls.
Now that we understand the difference between the two regulatory measures, let's take a closer look at their impact on accounting practices.
IFC:
IFC has had a significant impact on accounting practices in CA firms. It has placed a greater emphasis on internal controls and financial reporting. CA firms need to ensure that their clients have established and implemented effective IFC measures to ensure that their financial statements are accurate, complete, and reliable. IFC also requires regular financial reporting and auditing to ensure the accuracy and completeness of financial data. CA firms need to ensure that their clients meet these requirements promptly.
SOX:
SOX has had a massive impact on accounting practices in CA firms. It has established strict regulations for financial reporting, internal controls, and corporate governance. Companies need to establish and maintain effective internal controls and financial reporting procedures to comply with SOX regulations. This includes establishing a code of ethics, ensuring independent audit committees, and implementing financial controls and procedures. CA firms that work with publicly traded companies need to ensure that their clients are compliant with SOX regulations. SOX has also increased the demand for audit and assurance services, and CA firms have had to hire additional staff to provide these services.
Conclusion:
Both IFC and SOX have had a significant impact on accounting practices in CA firms. While IFC has focused more on internal controls and financial reporting, SOX has established strict regulations for financial reporting, corporate governance, and internal controls. CA firms need to ensure that their clients are compliant with these regulations and have implemented effective measures to manage risks and safeguard assets. Overall, compliance with these measures has led to greater transparency, accuracy, and reliability in financial reporting, which benefits investors and the public.
I.P. Pasricha & Co helps clients manage the complexity of defining and documenting IT controls, as well as regular testing and reporting on such controls under the appropriate IFC and SOX laws.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)
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SEND US A TIP

Members of the public are encouraged to send CFIUS tips, referrals, or other issues related to national security risks and foreign investment in the United States.
https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/international/the-committee-on-foreign-investment-in-the-united-states-cfius

As investing trends come in and out of fashion, it can be difficult to navigate what is real and will power the future, and what is hype and will eventually fade. Trading companies that are in the thick of the trends can also be tricky, especially when trying to recognize value ahead of the broader market and appraising how the given technology will play out. Others that are looking for a quick buck might want to jump on the train in any event, even if it's for a quick ride, though the short-term strategy can quickly leave a bag holder with a screen full of red at the end of a big run-up on a stock price.
Enter Nvidia: The company, a leader in artificial intelligence hardware and software, saw its shares soar 24.6% to $380 in AH trading on Wednesday, bringing its YTD gain to over 160%. The latest movement came after the firm posted Q1 results that topped expectations and blew away forecasts for the upcoming period. "Demand [related to generative AI and large language models] has extended our data center visibility out a few quarters and we have procured substantially higher supply for the second half of the year," Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) executives said on an earnings call. "The easiest way to think about that is over the next four or five, 10 years, most of that trillion dollars, and compensating adjusting for all the growth in data center still, it will be largely generative AI."
In fact, Nvidia is indicated to open today with a market-cap gain of more than $185B, making it worth more than Meta (META) or Tesla (TSLA), and it might even turn into the biggest single-day record (Apple (AAPL) rose by $191B in November 2022). Peers are riding the sentiment higher, such as rival chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) +8.5%, AI software maker C3.ai (NYSE:AI) +9.3% and Palantir (NYSE:PLTR) +7.7%. Bigger players like Microsoft (MSFT) and Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL), which are incorporating generative AI into their platforms, rose as well, while the AI rally sent Nasdaq futures up nearly 2% overnight.
But... the jury is still out on artificial intelligence. There's no doubt that companies are on the brink of something big, and that it will change many industries and how we do things, but it's important to separate hype from reality when talking about any emerging technology. Remember the Internet of Things? Web 3.0? The metaverse? DeFi, blockchain, and NFTs? Many shares related to companies operating in these spaces have seen their prices dwindle from the record highs seen when the news cycle was first played up. Contrast that to smartphones, streaming, e-commerce and the cloud, which have had much more lasting impacts on business investment, the labor market and broader economy.
From the comments section: "[NVDA's] $6B rev and $2B in researching and development. That's how to build the future. Incredible stock," writes SA premium user ErikInvest, while chris hafferty adds "AI is as significant as the commercialization of electricity!" Raph86 counters that "from the COVID everything bubble right to the AI bubble... Market demands more of the sweet stuff!" in SA article, Nvidia Fiscal Q1 2024 Earnings: Solid Beat, But Hedge Your Bets. "The valuation does NOT have to be justified," replies Natturner1966. "It's the stock market, not a college finance class." (22 comments)
On negative watch
The United States is in danger of losing Fitch's top sovereign debt status due to "increased political partisanship that is hindering reaching a resolution to raise or suspend the debt limit." The "AAA" long-term foreign currency issuer default rating was placed on Rating Watch Negative, though Fitch still expects a resolution before the so-called "X-date," which can impact the U.S. Dollar Index (DXY). Recall that in 2011, the U.S. lost its top rating at S&P, as the government approached default in a similar standoff. S&P has not restored the country to its highest rating, but the last of the Big Three credit rating agencies, Moody's, still has its highest "Aaa" ranking on the U.S. (42 comments)
Here comes the sun
Solar is emerging as an energy superpower with this year's global investment in the sector ($380B) set to surpass spending on oil production ($370B) for the first time. That's according to Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, who said the development "will soon start to see a very different energy system emerging and we can keep the 1.5C goal alive." The change is a result of strong subsidies and tax credits like the Inflation Reduction Act, as well as policy alignment among nations towards climate and energy security, and better economics of alternative power sources. "Clean energy is moving fast, faster than many people realize," Birol added. "For every dollar invested in fossil fuels, about $1.7 are now going into clean energy. Five years ago, this ratio was 1:1." (9 comments)
Pause in June?
Almost all Federal Reserve officials at the FOMC's May 2-3 meeting said downside risks to growth and upside risks to unemployment had increased due to banking stresses, according to the minutes published from the gathering. Participants "generally expressed uncertainty about how much more policy tightening may be appropriate," while some noted that additional "policy firming would likely be warranted at future meetings." That means the bank is still divided on whether to continue raising interest rates, especially if progress in bringing down inflation to the Fed's 2% target remains "unacceptably slow." The policymaking committee in May increased its key rate by 25 bps to a range of 5.00%-5.25%, representing its 10th straight rate hike, while odds rose of the Fed pausing in June following the release of the minutes. (56 comments)
Today's Markets
In Asia, Japan +0.4%. Hong Kong -1.9%. China -0.1%. India +0.2%. In Europe, at midday, London -0.3%. Paris -0.3%. Frankfurt -0.2%. Futures at 6:30, Dow -0.2%. S&P +0.6%. Nasdaq +1.9%. Crude -1.9% to $72.95. Gold -0.1% to $1963.50. Bitcoin -1.7% to $26,256. Ten-year Treasury Yield +4 bps to 3.76%
Today's Economic Calendar
8:30 GDP Q1 8:30 Initial Jobless Claims 8:30 Chicago Fed National Activity Index 8:30 Corporate profits 9:50 Fed's Barkin Speech 10:00 Pending Home Sales 10:30 EIA Natural Gas Inventory 11:00 Kansas City Fed Mfg Survey 1:00 PM Results of $35B, 7-Year Note Auction 4:30 PM Fed Balance Sheet
Companies reporting earnings today »
What else is happening...
Final GDP data shows Europe's largest economy entered recession.
Microsoft (MSFT) says Chinese hackers attacked 'critical' infrastructure.
Meta Platforms (META) wraps up spring layoffs, deepest in tech.
The implications of Apple's (AAPL) deal with Broadcom (AVGO).
Snowflake (SNOW) plunges as lowered forecast outweighs Q1 results.
Kohl's (KSS) pops on earnings topper, reaffirms guidance.
FTC is probing bidding collusion for these baby-formula makers.
Breakthrough innovation: Nike (NKE) reshuffles C-suite responsibilities.
Icahn Enterprises (IEP) continues slide as Ackman fans the flames.
Google (GOOGL) and European Commission to develop AI governing pact.

G'day everyone Aussie Fire Fighter here! (Volunteer & Career Oil & Gas Emergency Response Instructor)
I'm still new in my instructing career & I love the job because it assists me in sharpening my skills everyday. I'm still trying to learn everyday & I thought this would be a great place to ask fellow Firies from across the globe if they minded sharing some different fire fighting & training techniques!
So basically can I ask for training video links to techniques your fire department use for the following.

• Hose Handling Single person Techniques to manage jet force reaction of the hose or for long time committed cooling lines. What skills have you learnt or does your department practice?

-Internal Gas Cooling & Door entry. What techniques do you use in your department?

• Ba Search and Rescue Navigate as two person team with fire Hose through a structure using Gas Cooling, Retreating with victim & hose. How does your department or service move around low to the ground managing victims hose and fire?

Thanks in advance From across the pond.

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As a low-educated trash, Colonel Cian_Ci enjoys compensating for his failed real-life by exerting his influence online. Colonel Cian_Ci has been active on the internet since 2013, quickly becoming a nuisance in the community. In 2014, his mental capacity downgraded to that of a rabbit, marking the beginning of his illustrious history of trolling. On the web, Cian_Ci rolls around in garbage talk, claiming to be patriotic, but his "patriotic" remarks are nothing more than insincere criticism influenced by absurd comic strips. Following the end of the Battle of Wendenyu in 2015, Colonel Cian_Ci vigorously defended General Hou Jusen and became one of the appointed "patriotic youth" by the Communist Youth League Central Committee. Since 2016, Cian_Ci has actively restrained himself from indulging in sensual pleasures, adhering to the policy of "abstaining from indulgence" promoted by rabbit trash culture.
Some believe that the reason why Cian_Ci, a technical school student, became the leader of the Righteous and Harmonious Fist is due to his skill in exchanging vulgar insults with Naba and his outstanding bootlicking abilities. In order to prove his victim status, he even released his complete household registration information. However, the truth is not as simple as it seems.
After the Battle of Wendenyu escalated into a chaotic internal struggle among the warlords of the Righteous and Harmonious Fist Committee, Cian_Ci decisively betrayed the Shandong Committee and joined the Fujian Committee. Consequently, it was only after the victory of the Fujian Committee that he successfully became a prominent figure managing the Central Committee of the Righteous and Harmonious Fist and the QQ public account. In his conversations with the members of the Righteous and Harmonious Fist, he relentlessly uses derogatory language, promoting the so-called "positive energy" of rabbit trash culture and associating it with bootlicking Zhao. He recommends intellectually deficient and critical articles to improve their ideological level. However, it is quite remarkable that there are still people who sing praises for this sorry figure called Cian_Ci.

The purpose of this post is to discuss the historical period following World War One, as it has interesting things within it to learn about the concept of a "revolutionary period" and what that actually entails. You may have heard someone use that term before but without the proper historical context of what a revolutionary period even is it can be difficult to understand why someone might be saying that something is true or should happen "only in a revolutionary period" as an example. Specifically this thread of ideas I will be presenting will help to understand many of the foreign policy and geopolitical ideas many of us hold intuitively but might provide a theoretical basis to start to understand why it is that we might think or say certain things.
To add flavour I'm going to weave it together with an explanation of the term National Bolshevism as the term was originally coined during the "revolutionary period" of the post-WW1 era, rather than the way the term is used today to describe any group of people who may have labelled themselves "National Bolsheviks" since. The term is generally used today to describe people within the Soviet Union who attempted to adapt Communism to fit with Russian Nationalism, and that became a party itself in the 1993 post-Soviet crisis where Communists and Russians nationalists together resisted the kleptocratic "liberalization" as many careerist former party members took advantage of the collapse of the soviet union to seize control of the state assets they had technical control over.
However the term actually predates even the establishment of the Soviet Union in 1922, let alone any other 20th century regime (as it is sometimes erroneously used to describe people who support people who support both the Soviet Union and WW2 Germany, when this is merely circumstantial as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact achieved what the original National Bolsheviks were trying to accomplish before either of those states truly existed) The term was originally used by a German Communist named Karl Radek to describe two other German Communist member he was expelling as "National Bolsheviks". What these people wanted to do was align the revolutionary movement in Germany with that in Russia in mutual opposition to both the treaty of Versailles and the treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
I am specifically defending the prospect of this strategy in particular rather than specifically any person who might have been or could have been advocating for it and any ideas they might have had otherwise, not because it is national, or even bolshevik, but rather because I think it conforms with the idea in the Communist Manifesto of the role of Communists in relation to Proletarians where the Communists do not form separate political programs of their own and instead are supposed to align various proletarians movements together across nationality with respect to the current stage than any of those movements may find themselves in.

In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?
The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties.
They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.
They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.
The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

Therefore the irony of this position I am defending is that it was the one advocated for by people labelled National, which would clearly seem to be contrary to being independent of nationality, and Bolshevik who would seem to be sectarians seeking to mold to proletarian movement. The other irony is that for it to have been possible it would have required overcoming proletarian movements in different nationalities operating independent of one another, in addition to overcoming the sectarianism emerging between all the differing "Communist" movements in this revolutionary period. In other words this is another call in an endless stream of "stop infighting!" coupled with "everyone except for me is wrong" which just contributes to the infighting by creating a new sectarian divergence but there is very little that can be done about that. Mostly this is just an excuse to discuss a particular moment I find interesting and inner contrarian in me just wants to make the seemingly most insane position seem the most reasonable as a challenge.
Lenin was not in favour of this so it was a bit of a non-starter. In "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder, he criticizes people who refuse to recognize the treaties, but in addition to the tendencies of so-called National Bolsheviks, he also criticized the Left-Communists that Karl Radek and the other German Revolutionaries were often members. Here we can start to see a problem emerging as you clearly have two different revolutionary movements in two different countries who are having difficulty working with each other (with the problem of the treaties between these countries not even being the main issue they were squabbling over). While not around long enough to have become officially a Left-Communist herself, Luxembourg is associated with them as her writings are cited as a major influence on the tendency, and she is notable for criticizing Lenin's Bolshevism.
In his criticisms of National Bolshevism it is revealed however that Lenin actually seems to agree with my overall position as Infantile Disorder was written in 1920 after which the relevant events were already over.

Lastly, one of the undoubted errors of the German “Lefts” lies in their downright refusal to recognise the Treaty of Versailles. The more “weightily” and “pompously”, the more “emphatically” and peremptorily this viewpoint is formulated (by K. Horner, for instance), the less sense it seems to make. It is not enough, under the present conditions of the international proletarian revolution, to repudiate the preposterous absurdities of “National Bolshevism” (Laufenberg and others), which has gone to the length of advocating a bloc with the German bourgeoisie for a war against the Entente. One must realise that it is utterly false tactics to refuse to admit that a Soviet Germany (if a German Soviet republic were soon to arise) would have to recognise the Treaty of Versailles for a time, and to submit to it. From this it does not follow that the Independents (My Explanation: Social Democrats or Democratic Socialists, I think Luxembourgists might be included in this term, basically the Independents split off from the regular Social Democrats in protest of the regular Social Democrats support of the war, and then they just kept splitting)—at a time when the Scheidemanns were in the government, when the Soviet government in Hungary had not yet been overthrown, and when it was still possible that a Soviet revolution in Vienna would support Soviet Hungary—were right, under the circumstances**, in putting forward the demand that the Treaty of Versailles should be signed**. At that time the Independents tacked and manoeuvred very clumsily, for they more or less accepted responsibility for the Scheidemann traitors, and more or less backslid from advocacy of a ruthless (and most calmly conducted) class war against the Scheidemanns, to advocacy of a “classless” or “above-class” standpoint.

So therefore Lenin was denouncing the people who still insisted on this position despite the revolutionary period in this particular location ending. In the revolutionary period the position the National Bolsheviks wanted was the correct one according to Lenin but they became wrong by continuing to insist upon it after the moment had past.
However notably Lenin only said the treaty having already been signed would only need to be recognized for a time. This implies that a socialist Germany of some kind could eventually overcome the treaty. While not a Soviet Germany, the probably infantile National Socialists were subjected to the same historical realities when they took over, and they too could not immediately begin rejecting the treaty and immediately going to war. For instance by immediately violating the treaty of Versailles army size limits by turning Rohm's SA into the regular German Army. Interestingly the decision to remove Rohm was likely pressured onto Hitler by Hindenburg and the official army (Reichswehr) with Hindenburg threatening to declare martial law and hand control of the country over the army if Hitler did not comply with demands to remove Rohm in the few months Hindenburg had remaining in his life as his health failed.

Both the Reichswehr and the conservative business community continued to complain to Hindenburg about the SA. In early June, defence minister Werner von Blomberg issued an ultimatum to Hitler from Hindenburg: unless Hitler took immediate steps to end the growing tension in Germany, Hindenburg would declare martial law and turn over control of the country to the army. The threat of a declaration of martial law from Hindenburg, the only person in Germany with the authority to potentially depose the Nazi regime, put Hitler under pressure to act.

This challenges the general idea that Hitler was immediately supremely powerful over everything, or that it was Hitler who did not want some apparently revolutionary army taking over in a second revolution. Rather the conservative aristocratic army in coordination with the pressure from international diplomats were able to enforce Hitler's compliance with them, with Hitler deciding to remain in control when given the ultimatum by Hindenburg. In my opinion the fact that Hitler dragged his feet for this long probably has more to do with Hitler realizing that have multiple sources of power was probably better than only having legal power. The article seems to indicate that Hitler "wanted" to do this earlier but held some kind of personal friendship with Rohm that made him reluctant to act against him, but that doesn't actually make sense. Hitler was power hungry yes, but it wouldn't make sense to not want to keep the SA in his back pocket as a challenging force to the military if he was power hungry like his was. It also however exposes the folly of the notion that one could force cooperation between classes in this manner with some supreme leader managing the class differences. Clearly not even Hitler could govern class unbiasedly, the conservative military was not going to allow their positions to be threatened by Hitler's dual-power-in-waiting.
Looping back to National Bolshevism, while the "National Bolsheviks" predated the National Socialists and didn't have anything to do with them, in principle the experience of National Socialism was the most likely outcome of any proposal for some kind of bourgeois alliance with the proletariats relegated to the junior position. The conservative military patriot support to the Red Army in Hungary was with the vanguard who in theory represented the proletariat in the senior position, however the Hungarians were capable of achieving this because it occurred during the revolutionary period where the proletariat was in a position to have the patriots join them instead of attempting to have some kind of revolution by joining the patriots. In short, revolution first, national liberation after. The path to national liberation must lay through revolution instead of seeking revolution through national liberation, because the reactionary classes will always be traitors with class interest upfront before national interest because it is the reactionary classes who have the most to lose in class terms.
Lenin himself seemingly called the November Criminals responsible for the treaty like Scheidemanns "traitors" so it is unfair to blame Bolshevism for the mistakes of the "independents" because they were not associated, and if what Lenin is saying about the situation is accurate it was precisely through calls for "classlessness" that the so-called "independents" abandoned the very class struggle which would have saved Germany from this fate. Therefore calls for classlessness to get out of a situation caused by classlessness were misguided, you cannot merely invert classlessness and get yourself in a different situation than you started in because the situations you found yourself in was never classless to begin with! It will always be the same classes making the decisions regardless of how you might invert your classless approach, and those classes will always be more interested in protecting their particular positions than whatever it is they claim to be focusing on.
There was a lot of confusion in this period and numerous tendencies diverging from one another, the reason being is that in the wake of the Russian Revolution and the end of the First World War there was a period of revolutionary activity across the entire world. While Russia and Germany are often the most focused upon due to the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany being our core 20th century players and many seeing these revolutions as the origin points of these things with a compare and contrast analysis being done to understand why one failed and the other succeeded. In the light of understanding the world revolution as a wave or period, looking at just these two revolutions becomes parochial, as there was clearly one singular revolution going on across the world in the same way as during the Revolutions of 1848 when the Communist Manifesto was published.
Indeed Marx and Engels viewed 1848 as a singular revolution and would have viewed the similar wave of revolutions that peaked in 1919 but spanned from 1917-1923 as a singular revolution. Arguably they would have also viewed all revolutions dating back to the beginning of history as one singular revolution but while they would say things like that they were also capable of distinguishing particular revolutions from each other and would recognize revolutions as being global affairs composed of mutually supporting local revolutions.
While differing in severity there was revolutionary activity in numerous countries ranging from the Two Red Years in Italy to the much less impressive sounding Red Week) in the Netherlands. Even as far away as Canada, Australia, and South Africa there were labour revolts in this period. The case of Canada is a bit emblematic of the obscurity of the scale of these events in popular history, as while the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 is well known, much like with only Russia and Germany being discussed the strike wave nature of the events in Canada just as in the world tends to fall out of discussion, as for instance this wave actually started with a general strike in Vancouver that was crushed by the military.
In the Preface to the 1882 Russian Edition of the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels even suggested in the wake of the assassination of the Tsar Liberator that the impending Russian (bourgeois) Revolution would serve as a signal for the Western proletariat to have their Revolution, and that the Russian Revolution could end up being communist alongside the West.

And now Russia! During the Revolution of 1848-9, not only the European princes, but the European bourgeois as well, found their only salvation from the proletariat just beginning to awaken in Russian intervention. The Tsar was proclaimed the chief of European reaction. Today, he is a prisoner of war of the revolution in Gatchina, and Russia forms the vanguard of revolutionary action in Europe.
The Communist Manifesto had, as its object, the proclamation of the inevitable impending dissolution of modern bourgeois property. But in Russia we find, face-to-face with the rapidly flowering capitalist swindle and bourgeois property, just beginning to develop, more than half the land owned in common by the peasants. Now the question is: can the Russian obshchina, though greatly undermined, yet a form of primeval common ownership of land, pass directly to the higher form of Communist common ownership? Or, on the contrary, must it first pass through the same process of dissolution such as constitutes the historical evolution of the West?
The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development.

Now 1882 didn't turn into a revolution in Russia and there were several false starts like in 1905, but eventually it did finally happen. However seemingly with Lenin's New Economic Policy, both scenarios discussed ended up needing to happen. The Russian Revolution was both Communist and they felt it impossible to transition straight into Communism and thus had to allow some kind of bourgeois property relation to develop, and then later on had to eliminate this thing they created themselves in a rather unfortunate series of events. Additionally while the Russian Revolution did prove to be a signal for the Western proletariat to have their revolution, the proletariat revolution in this period failed.
In the spirit of this discussion I'm going to be argue that these were not separate incidents but rather the failure of the western proletariat's revolution is why Lenin implemented the NEP in 1922, in part because of internal rebellions calling for these things, and because the international revolution seemingly failed resulting in a loss of hope that the western proletariat would in some way save them, which had to result in some kind of proletarian vanguard party lead bourgeois state emerging on the fly. Stalin would later have to undo both these consequences in the events he is criticized most for, as in addition to reversing the NEP with collectivization, he also undid the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk when as Molotov said "One kick from the German army and another from the Soviet Army put an end to this ugly product of Versailles" in regards to Poland.
Polish independence being quite the unfortunate sacrifice here considering how supportive of it Engels was in the 1892 Polish Preface the the Communist Manifesto.

But the rapid development of Polish industry, outstripping that of Russia, is in its turn a new proof of the inexhaustible vitality of the Polish people and a new guarantee of its impending national restoration. And the restoration of an independent and strong Poland is a matter which concerns not only the Poles but all of us. A sincere international collaboration of the European nations is possible only if each of these nations is fully autonomous in its own house. The Revolution of 1848, which under the banner of the proletariat, after all, merely let the proletarian fighters do the work of the bourgeoisie, also secured the independence of Italy, Germany and Hungary through its testamentary executors, Louis Bonaparte and Bismarck; but Poland, which since 1792 had done more for the Revolution than all these three together, was left to its own resources when it succumbed in 1863 to a tenfold greater Russian force. The nobility could neither maintain nor regain Polish independence; today, to the bourgeoisie, this independence is, to say the last, immaterial. Nevertheless, it is a necessity for the harmonious collaboration of the European nations. It can be gained only by the young Polish proletariat, and in its hands it is secure. For the workers of all the rest of Europe need the independence of Poland just as much as the Polish workers themselves.

(The call for "full autonomy in a nation's own house" is probably worth explaining. Nations that should be autonomous are nations which can be autonomous all on their own without international meddling. Engels was notoriously against all the south slavs for their pan-slavism because their independence was necessitated by interference from Imperial Russia, in part because he was still mad about the revolutions of 1848 not working out where Russian intervened to supposedly rescue the south Slavs. He was even still mad at them 34 years later when he reaffirmed Polish independence alongside Irish independence as the most crucial national struggles to support. The reason being that Poland rejected pan-Slavism and was instead independently nationalist.
That Poland could stand alone (and more importantly that Polish agitation threatened three reactionary imperial monarchies in Germany, Austria, and Russia at the same time. Ireland being important to screw around with the bourgeois British Empire as Marx and Engels increasingly saw the absentee revenues the British ruling class generated for themselves in Ireland as being the key to their parliamentary political dominance in England against both lower class and anti-imperialist challenges which were often the same thing) is why Polish independence was so supported. Standing alone is important because autonomous nations can switch between the rule of various classes without the risk of foreign interference on the part of imperialist reactionaries putting things back the way they were to protect their sphere of influence. The issue is that Polish independence ended up being a thorn in the side of the revolution when Polish independence was granted through Wilsonian liberal internationalism and during the Russian Civil War the Red Army tried and failed to retaliate against Poland when they joined forces with the Entente Liberal Imperialists that were intervening in the civil war in what is called the Soviet-Poland War.
For you NATO fans the opposition to NATO comes from this concept of being against spheres of influence, with a preference for complete independence. The Soviets or even Russia joining NATO however transform the institution from an American sphere of influence into just some vague "nobody invade anybody else okay guys thanks bye" treaty which is what it is sold as. So long as Russia is not included in NATO it fails to fulfill its stated purpose of ensuring peace in europe, and it must be opposed because it does not protect the independence of the nations within it, rather it makes them subservient to the United States. The counter-balance of Russia inside the block is sufficient that the nations within it could seamlessly transfer between spheres of influence, or more importantly, not be in anyone's sphere of influence at all by successfully playing the US and Russia off each other, which puts each nation in a position to pursue development with little risk of the alliance being used to punish them.
If say Luxembourg decided to go rogue it could even use the NATO treaty to argue that anyone infringing upon them should be subjected to retaliation by all the other members, and now you can have a socialist Luxembourg in the middle of Europe and they can't do anything about it because the treaty guarantees their independence with multiple dozen moving parts who might not agree on punishing this Luxembourg so long as Luxembourg doesn't militarily invade anybody. However if the organization is nothing more that an American political block with US bases every where, clearly the US would be able to pressure countries into recognizing the socialist Luxembourg as illegitimate in some way and argue it can be invaded without requiring everyone come to its defense. So NATO is good if Russia is included and US bases removed, and an in NATO Russia still isn't a threat to even Estonia if dozens of European countries are required to defend it, and that isn't even considering a late arrival of the US and Canada when they finally cross the Atlantic. The problem with NATO is that it is clearly an unofficial loosely held US empire, it stops being a problem when it is no longer this)
This whole confused mess could have been avoided had the world revolution not failed. This circles back to the Russian and German revolutions and how they were not united. Therefore the position of those labelled Nazbol is attractive merely for the sake that it would have united these two disparate revolutions. The success of either was reliant on the success of the other. The prior Bolshevik position of Peace Without Annexations or Indemnities would permanently lock in the Russian and German revolutions together in a mutual opposition to the bourgeois treaties, a pact of blood to oppose the pacts signed in ink.
Additionally opposition to the indemnity aspect of the treaty of Versailles would have been in fidelity to the revolutionary history of the Paris Commune which inspired the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat in 1871, which was prompted in part by opposition to the burden of the reparation payments imposed on France by Bismark in response to Napolean III's failed invasion being placed on the people of France by the bourgeois government that signed that treaty. On a global scale while the opportunity for revolution by the proletariat refusing to enter World War One was squandered by the Social Democrats granting their permission, the proletariat could instead refuse to exit World War One by not granting their permission for acceptance of the bourgeois treaties just as the Paris Commune refused to accept Bismark's treaty.
Indeed opposition to the bourgeois Treaty of Trianon served as the basis for cooperation between the Nationalists and the Communists in Hungary, who unlike the Luxembourgists in Germany, were internationally aligned with the Bolsheviks in Russia with the establishment of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. The alliance however broke down with the establishment of the Slovak Soviet Republic as the Hungarian nationalists questioned why they were participating in the Hungarian Red Army if they were just going to be liberating other countries, this ended up not even being that relevant of a dispute seeing as Slovakia was never fully captured and the Czechoslovak army ended up recapturing it in a month and so the issue only lasted from June 1919 to July 1919. However it exposed the core obvious problem with the alliance between nationalists and communists, as the full Petrograd formula was "peace without annexations or indemnities, on the basis of self-determination of the peoples" so the nationalists opposed to treaties were not going to like it when the second part got implemented later.
Lenin and Stalin ran into a similar issues when Stalin opposed Georgian self-determination in 1922 and wanted them to instead join Russia, with the comical situation of Stalin calling the Georgian Mensheviks "nationalist-socialists" and the Russian Lenin accusing the Georgian Stalin of being a Russian nationalist-socialist in response. We can clearly see that there are vastly differing views on the questions of nationality all over the place and there was no one line being taken, with Hungary and Germany taking vastly different views in regards to the treaties and cooperation with nationalists, to their own unique sets of problems later on with them.
The vastly different ways everyone was handling these issues is why I argue that the best principle would have been to have no principles at all. The only communist principle in regards to nationality is international cooperation. While you had Communist revolutions in German, Hungary, and Russia, the common thread linking them together could have been opposition to the bourgeois treaties, which also would have also united them with the liberal Kemalist revolution in Turkey, thus completing the alignment of all revolutionaries in the central powers and Imperial Russia against the rest of the entente attempting to impose the bourgeois treaties, in effect adding Russia to the central powers after the imperialist war had turned into a civil war in all four imperial monarchies. That Turkey was in a vastly different stage of revolution than the other three would be irrelevant as these revolutions would still be mutually supporting of each other, and the Communists could rest assured safely knowing that while differing countries might be in different stages of revolution, they had the advantage over all others in knowing the ultimate end result of all their revolutions even if the people operating in them might not know it themselves.

The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.

As such the notion that one needs to be politically Communist to participate in the revolution is false. So long as a state of revolution remained, the stages of the revolution could continue moving forward. If Turkey was not materially ready for it, that need not matter so long as the Kemalists were willing to join in an anti-imperialist block in the mean time, which they were willing to do until the Soviets later started looking at the straights with desire which eventually pushed Turkey into the arms of NATO where it remains to this day. However at the time the Soviets and Turkey were quite friendly despite their obvious ideological differences merely based on this mutual geopolitical interest in so-called anti-imperialism. This anti-imperialism was selective however, with the "Mountain Turks" and "Mountain Russians" being sacrificed for it, but the benefits of not having principles means you don't exactly have to care about that. Ataturk can make poutine out of the Kurds all he wants if he remains staunchly anti-imperialist on an international level.
This gross cynical realism while obviously questionable is still consistent with Revolutionary History as all prior revolutions do not stand up to moral scrutiny when they are viewed in this way. In fact at the twilight of the 1848 revolutions Engels himself called for the Hungarians to wipeout the "counter-revolutionary" Slavs, while this is obviously not something we should want to have happened, and we definitely should not ever do this if we ever find ourselves in a position to make those decisions, it is important to understand the reasoning behind why he was saying those things, that it is the continuance of the revolution itself is both the most important thing, and something that is largely out of anyone's control in the Hegelian sense of Historicism.

The Magyar cause is not in such a bad way as mercenary black-and-yellow [colours of the Austrian flag] enthusiasm would have us believe. The Magyars are not yet defeated. But if they fall, they will fall gloriously, as the last heroes of the 1848 revolution, and only for a short time. Then for a time the Slav counter-revolution will sweep down on the Austrian monarchy with all its barbarity, and the camarilla will see what sort of allies it has. But at the first victorious uprising of the French proletariat, which Louis Napoleon is striving with all his might to conjure up, the Austrian Germans and Magyars will be set free and wreak a bloody revenge on the Slav barbarians. The general war which will then break out will smash this Slav Sonderbund and wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names.
The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward.

A key fact you will observe is that they are often quite over eager in announcing the impending revolution. For instance The Magyar Struggle was published in January of 1849 in Marx's Newspaper, and Louis Napoleon was elected President of France in December of 1848. It seems as if they might have thought that this would have been more significant than it actually turned out to be. This kind of made sense though because Louis Napoleon's main opponent in the election was Louis-Eugene Cavagnac who lead the army to suppress a worker's uprising in Paris back in the "June Days" of 1848. Additionally the Hungarians did not do what Engels said they would, instead they adopted cultural assimilation policies called Magyarization, and late in the revolution into 1849 while the Russian and Austria Imperial armies were barring down on them they adopted minority right protections to try to win them back. However they were ultimately unsuccessful in repelling the Russian invasion regardless of any attempts at outreach.
What I find notable about this is that Engels essentially predicted the sides of the "next world war" (albeit there was a world war in between) that would wipeout entire peoples, but somehow ended up reversing the reactionary and revolutionary sides, as an Austrian German and the Hungarians did engage in a war against the Slavs, but because somehow the "poles of revolution" did somehow invert and head outwards from Russia like Engels said the Slavs supposedly wanted, that war was against the revolution instead of for it.

There is no country in Europe which does not have in some corner or other one or several ruined fragments of peoples, the remnant of a former population that was suppressed and held in bondage by the nation which later became the main vehicle of historical development. These relics of a nation mercilessly trampled under foot in the course of history, as Hegel says, these residual fragments of peoples always become fanatical standard-bearers of counter-revolution and remain so until their complete extirpation or loss of their national character, just as their whole existence in general is itself a protest against a great historical revolution.
Such, in Scotland, are the Gaels, the supporters of the Stuarts from 1640 to 1745.
Such, in France, are the Bretons, the supporters of the Bourbons from 1792 to 1800.
Such, in Spain, are the Basques, the supporters of Don Carlos.
Such, in Austria, are the pan-Slavist Southern Slavs, who are nothing but the residual fragment of peoples, resulting from an extremely confused thousand years of development. That this residual fragment, which is likewise extremely confused, sees its salvation only in a reversal of the whole European movement, which in its view ought to go not from west to east, but from east to west, and that for it the instrument of liberation and the bond of unity is the Russian knout — that is the most natural thing in the world.

However a lot can apparently change in almost 100 years. Russia was once seen as the bastion of reaction celebrated by the reactionaries everywhere for having invaded Hungary to put down the 1848-9 revolution, but then became the center of revolution, taking that spot from France which didn't really participate in the Revolutions despite the 1917 mutinies defused in June by Philip Petain by reassuring the soldiers by calling off the offensives that were intended to try to reassure the Provision Russian Government from the February Revolution to stay in the war and who launched the "Kerensky Offensive" in July which prompted the unsuccessful "July Days" Bolshevik uprising before the later successful October Revolution.
The absence of French participation beyond this is remarkable given how much they played a role in other revolutions and also remarkable how it was later Vichy leader Petain himself who basically defused the situation by giving the soldiers what they wanted and ending the suicidal offensives. The difference between Petain and Kerensky here and that the Russian revolution had not yet gone proletariat at this point while France was dealing with its own situation coming up from the soldiers and that the Russian version of this happened only a month afterwards should probably be focused on more here, in addition to how the differing approaches countries took on simultaneous and similar events from 1917-1923 should be analyzed like how I am suggesting
Since the Russian Revolution the apparent "pole of reaction" where global reactionaries collect as their refuge that Russia represented seemingly shifted to the United States for the Cold War after the pole reversal and global political magnetic field collapse manifesting in the out of place auroral borealis of the inter-war period and world war 2. It would be reasonable to assume that it would be just as possible for the United States to become a new center of revolution in the way Russia took that position from France despite Russia being the most reactionary power of anyone before that happened.

Please review the following and choose what you would like to be our next fic to read!
Warning! All of these are rated Mature or Explicit so please take care. As always, 18+!
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Breath Mints / Battle Scars by Onyx_and_Elm
For a moment, she's almost giddy. Because Draco Malfoy's been ruined by this war and he's as out of place as she is and — yes, he has scars too. He's got an even bigger one. She wonders whether one day they'll compare sizes.
About time we voted on this one. I tried to read this forever ago and had to stop because my sensitive soul could not take it. However I'd be up to the challenge for the sake of this club.
Side note: Am I the only one who imagines Jasper Hale's iconic line "battle scars," when reading this title? Just me? Okay.
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Bring Him to His Knees by Musyc
Draco is on the case of a murderer, but to investigate, he needs a fake relationship - and a kink club play partner. When Hermione volunteers to take the role, both do their best to maintain the lie without letting each other know the truth: neither of them are acting.
*Cough* Sex club in the HOUSE!!
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Secrets and Masks by Emerald_Slytherin
9 years after the battle of Hogwarts, the war still rages on and everyone is much changed since their days at Hogwarts. Hermione is the most lethal soldier in The Order, spending her days on rescue missions to free captured Muggleborn slaves and fight on the front line. For years, she's been meeting in secret with a spy within Voldemort's ranks to exchange information. But, when she's captured and made prisoner at Malfoy Manor, of all the dark and evil ways she'd envisioned Malfoy would torture her, she never quite imagined anything this horrific.
I just wanted to make it abundantly clear that I was originally inspired to write this fic after I read the masterpiece that is Manacled, so I would like to thank SenLinYu for her amazing work!
The memory searching aspect of Manacled is what inspired me, and although I have adapted that, (and also made Draco head Death Eater, because... ya know... we all love it when he's Voldemort's right hand man 😅😉), Secrets and Masks will be a very very different fic all together.
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Love and Other Historical Accidents by PacificRimbaud
"Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy never intended to blow up their life's work, but that's rather what they've gone and done. Now they're trapped 200 years in the past, with a broken Time Turner, a missing snuff box, a handful of overly-eligible daughters, and a House-elf in a cable knit cardigan. It will require the combined power of their keen intellects to get them home, if they'd stop arguing long enough to use them. As it turns out, history is just one damned accident after another.
For fans of Harry Potter, Jane Austen, and Connie Willis, a historical romantic comedy all about time, and getting the hell out of it."
The author has informed us to mind the tags, "especially slow burn, miscommunication and selective obliviousness."
More from the author: "This story is a farce. Characteristic of the genre, it features exaggerated, outlandish, and unlikely comedic scenarios, physical humor, intentional absurdity, miscommunications, and a playfully mocking tone towards situations, individuals, and events. … Draco begins this story already redeemed. Both he and Hermione are flawed. … At its core, this is a romance between two people trying their best and often failing (until they don't). … this is extremely silly and meant to be that way (until it isn't)."
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Happy Pills by malf0y101
"A few years after the Second Wizarding War, a group of Slytherins is drafted into a rehabilitation program created by the Ministry of Magic and one of its determined interns--one of their former classmates and the familiar Golden Girl of Gryffindor. As their marks continue to cause physical and mental pain, the Slytherins undergo intense treatment in order to relearn everything about the Wizarding World and tackle the trauma of their Dark Marks.
And although they are apprehensive, they are also desperate for someone to simply care about them."
The author has put a trigger warning for self harm and suicide! So please take care while looking over and potentially reading this one. <3
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Chronos Historia by In_Dreams
"Hermione and Draco stumble upon a mysterious portal and find themselves hurtled back through time a thousand years. Forced to team up to find a way home, they quickly realize that much of the history they believed to be fact, wasn't true after all. A founders era, time travel Dramione."
This work is rated mature for "language, minor violence and sexual content." Seems to be a good read about our favorite pair time traveling to the time of the founders of Hogwarts. Sounds very cool!
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