There are quite a few Telegram channels that I follow, so not here as much due to that, but a couple of the channels have interesting observations on life, Europe and the Ukraine conflict. Now, that doesn't mean that what they say agrees with the overall theme of spandrell.ch, but I find it interesting and it's a good conversation starter. I already posted some of Sharij's material on the 'Modern Inquisition' thread. He's a bit of a flawed character who used to be the leader of the second most popular opposition party in Ukraine and is living in exile in the EU since 2013. Before being an opposition leader, he was a journalist who started his own reporting cite from the EU that focused on revealing corruption and the moral bankruptcy of leaders and the systems that they create, most famously in Ukraine. Recently in March 2024, the Zelenskiy government tried to kill him. I'll try to post his thoughts on society from time to time in this thread that I find interesting, and give a link to the original post. The first one of his pearls of wisdom will be in the first comment.
Sharij thought: society
The first post if from Palm Sunday and links to a video where in a church celebrating Easter, the believers who brought along willow (I think that is the tree?) leaves are being thrown out of church along with the priest. This is probably because they are celebrating on the old calendar that was changed last year to be the Western one, so whoever celebrates according to the old calendar is a secret Russian. This is also a way for the government church to confiscate one from the old church. Sharij makes an interesting observations that Ukrainians are uniquely a snitch and traitorous nation. I think that it is both true and not true. Probably all people are the same, but that area of the Steppe has a history of being taken over by enemies since forever. You had to be nice to the new ruler and betray your neighbor to survive. This happened in the 20th century as well, so that gets passed down, making the people more willing to betray and snitch due to relatively recent stories from older relatives. Here's the video. https://t.me/ASupersharij/28737 And a modified Google Translation:
“Russian propaganda” - people with willows, as I understand it - are being driven out of churches. They shout and curse at them.
Or again the “Christians” are trying to confiscate another church.
We discussed this today. There is some kind of flaw in us. It's like a gaping wound in the nation.
I have not seen in other places, that in such dark hours they killed THEIR OWN with such frenzy. They themselves killed their own.
They snitch, they cheat, they killed at the very beginning [of the war] at checkpoints, they threaten to kill, threaten to hand over over, to lie about someone, to frame, and to rob.
This is the celebration of the Feast of the Entry of the Lord into Jerusalem. They waved palm leaves, but we don’t have palm trees, that’s why willow leaves are used.
And also during Holodomor, they would say that all villages were cordoned off exclusively by Russians sent from Moscow... of course. And only Muscovites and Jews wrote denunciations to the NKVD.
Seriously, you look at this nonsense, this utter ignorant, peasant women with the faces resembling those of Van Gogh’s potato eaters, you clearly understand that you don’t want to have anything in common with them"
Sorry, by all people 'are the same' I meant Europeans. Obviously Ukrain/England are quite different from Uganda. This reminds me of an interesting anecdote from when Kruschev, who was from Ukraine actually, and had the recent example of the same type of people going to the Nazis to snitch on their neighbors who were communists or Jews, and then just a couple of years later going to the NKVD to snitch on other neighbors who worked with the Nazis. Kruschev just took over from Stalin and was leading a party meeting where he was talking about Stalin's repressions and berating people for being so willing to go along with the excesses. Someone shouted 'and where were you!?' and Kruschev shouted back 'Who said that!?' and started looking around the suddenly quite giant hall. After a while and when people in one are were clearly making moves to identify the culprit, he cut off further activity by saying, 'You see! That's where I was.'
It's really very telling that they are so threatened by one priest and a few old ladies holding willow branches. I think most of these hostile takeovers of churches are by godless sovoks, not even so much schismatics from the fake and gae rival church. The level of sincere and consistent observation of Christianity is rather low in Rus', maybe 2%.
A few technical details.
Since Easter is a moveable feast, the difference is not only about Gregorian versus Julian calendar, but about the rule for how to calculate it (in both cases the rule is a lunar rather than solar calculation but the rules differ in how they relate to the Jewish Passover).
The willow branches in place of palm leaves are common across many Slavic lands, including Catholic Czechia and Poland, where you can find ancient willow trees behind old churches that have obviously been harvested for countless generations. The fact that the invaders of the church are not carrying the branches themselves is another indication the invaders aren't even fake and gae Christians.