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Showing posts with label Vladimirovo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vladimirovo. Show all posts

Saturday, January 8, 2022

Covid Feuilleton #7

As published at SubStack, 1/8/22:





[Berovo, 9/23/20]

To balkanize is to break up into small, mutually hostile political units, as prompted by ethnic or religious differences. Though Yugoslavia was touted by many leftists as a multicultural paradise, it was held together by a high-living dictator, Tito, who ruled for 35 years, until his death in 1980. Right or left leaning, the infantile love dictators, a Big Daddy to take care of everything, but what they’ll get is a Big Brother to step on their smooth, soft face, with a few tatts to mask its naivete. Hypnotized by Jewish thinking, privileged, pampered Western “radicals” have no idea, so they openly worship red tyrants, the only kosher kind. How many cliché sputtering dough-faced soyboys have I met in my life? “It’s the only hope for the downtrodden, man!” Granted, Tito was not nearly as bad as Hoxha in adjacent Albania, but why should anyone have a hypocritical dictator lord over him for life?

Post-Tito, Catholic Croats, Catholic Slovenians, Orthodox Serbs, Muslim Bosnians and Muslim Albanians violently balkanized, with the mostly Orthodox North Macedonians, who are essentially Bulgarian, also breaking off. 

On 9/23/20, I took a bus from Belgrade to North Macedonia. My first few days there, I spent in Vladimirovo, the home village of my friend Aleksandar Todorovski. Since we were only ten miles from the Bulgarian border, I asked Alex if he would be understood on the other side.

“Of course!”

“So you speak the same language?”

“Pretty much.”

“So you’re Bulgarian!”

“No, we’re Macedonians.”

With only 1.5 million people, North Macedonia is a weak, landlocked country. “Wouldn’t it make sense, Alex, for North Macedonia to merge with Bulgaria?”

“No! Why should we take orders from Sofia?”

This exchange about a tiny, obscure nation is pertinent because it stresses, again, that most people are essentially regionalists, with an attachment to a very specific region and way of life. Often, we bristle at commands from 500 miles away (and sometimes, from just across the room!), so obeying diktats from any global government makes no sense whatsoever.

If Macedonians and Bulgarians already have different demands, how can you impose uniform policies on Angolans, Vietnamese, Costa Ricans, New Zealanders and Ukrainians, etc., but that’s what globalists are trying to do with their “vaccines” and “health” passports, with Covid as a pretext.

Klaus Schwab, “The world will be a very dangerous place if we do not fix multilateral institutions. Global coordination will be even more necessary in the aftermath of the epidemiological crisis, for it is inconceivable that the global economy could ‘restart’ without sustained international cooperation. Without it, we’ll be heading towards ‘a poorer, meaner and smaller world.’”

Verbal tricks from a mass murderer, that’s all. By coordination and cooperation, Schwab means universal subjugation under a cartel dominated by Jews and blue-blooded whites, all Satanic. Even if Schwab was Vietnamese and not Jewish, I would still say fuck you! Nothing is uglier than unchecked arrogance. Coupled with power, it’s genocidal.

The Vladimirovo house where we stayed needed fixing up, which Alex was doing bits at a time, for he worked in Skopje, 95 miles away. This will be his refuge, though, should everything go to hell. With its tiny plot of land, Alex won’t be able to grow much, but at least he’ll be surrounded by hundreds of people who have known him, and his family, forever. Unlike most of us, Alex has maintained ties to his organic community, with its wattle and daub houses, religious festivals, goats, sheep and solid, friendly folks with a deep-rooted heritage they would be willing to die for. No society has survived any other way, although often, even that isn’t enough.

[Berovo, 9/24/20]

Communist countries and other dictatorships used to have nearly-impossible-to-get exit passports, to prevent their citizens from going abroad. None ever tried to keep millions locked inside their own homes for weeks, or even months, until the Covid plandemic, a truly unprecedented achievement! To repeat myself, the most salient feature of totalitarianism is control of movement.

Life wasn’t virtual decades ago, though. Now, a man in solitary confinement can have all sorts of autonomous, masturbatory pleasures, such as venting impotently at honeypot websites that dissipate if not misdirect his anger. Jerking off, though, is his main political and social opiate.

In Skopje, I met a 36-year-old dentist, Zoran, who was just waiting for Covid restrictions to be lifted, so he could emigrate to Australia. His English was halting but improving rapidly. In Perth and Melbourne, Zoran had relatives ready to take him in. Not only that, there were four Macedonian women down under willing to marry him. Spinsters, obviously, so no great beauties, but they were still under 40. When Zoran told Alex he would only wed for love, Alex set him straight, “Just pick one with a house! That’s the most important thing. You need a house to live in. If you make enough money there to buy a house, you’ll die before you’ve paid it off!”

After five weeks in North Macedonia, I decided to fly to Lebanon, where my friend “Taxi” would put me up for as long as I wanted. Moreover, it was in Hezbollah country, so how could I resist? I’d get to look into Israel without entering it.

Near midnight on 10/27/20, Alex drove me to the airport, with his son and Zoran also in the car. Saying goodbye, I joked with Zoran that perhaps we’d see each other in Australia. Neither one of us expected that free, open country to still be closed more than a year later and, not only that, to suffer the worst Covid policies anywhere, with extended lockdowns, forced “vaccination,” vast quarantine camps and protesting citizens lustily beaten up.

By 1/1/22, two despairing Aussies have set themselves on fire, with the New York Post reporting on the second victim, “Australian man self-immolates after ranting against COVID vaccines.” Very unbiased, eh? Madmen rant.

Undeterred, Zoran has consented to be Pfizered twice. It’s just the new normal. To live again, one must be Jew jabbed, even if it means to die, abruptly even, or be maimed.

No one knows how much longer must Zoran wait, but he will certainly wait, for at the end of the Covid rainbow, an unloved, unattractive wife and much needed house beckon. Also promised is an early death that can come at any moment. Hundreds of thousands have already dropped.


[to be continued, of course and unfortunately]

[Bitola, 10/8/20]





Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Aleksandar of Macedonia

As published at Smirking Chimp, OpEd News, Unz Review and TruthSeeker, 9/29/20:





Can I be frontally honest and even a bit shameless with you? (No, not that, but maybe later.) What I’m trying to say, and do brace yourself here, what I’m really trying to bare, fess up and gently confide here, behind a curtain and under a sheet, sotto voce, is that I simply do not like burek!

Shit, man, but if you ever witnessed my buddy Aleksandar wolf down one of these, you’d think he hadn’t eaten in a month, if ever. What’s the hurry, Alex? There’s plenty more, like tons. It’s hard to take five steps in the Balkans without having another greasy burek slap you in the face, with bits of minced meat, cheese or spinach splattering from Subotica to Burgas, if not Istanbul.

I’m in North Macedonia, thanks to Alex. In 2016, he wrote me, “Would like to thank you about your wonderful description of your travels. It feels like am traveling myself.” Answering, I vaguely expressed a wish to see his homeland. And, “When I just got to Germany, I took a wrong train, and a Macedonian woman helped me out. She was very lovely.”

Seeing that I was in Belgrade two months ago, Alex insisted I come to Skopje, so last week, I finally did. My all-night bus pulled into town at 5AM. There was a casino at the station, with two bald and burly guys standing outside, one very loud and smirking, his eyes lit up. Cabbies addressed me in terse English. A travel agency advertised express buses daily to Istanbul. All roads still lead to Constantinople, you better believe it. I slid coins into the coffee machine. Revived, I also felt grateful to have a smooth border crossing, because you just don’t know, man, especially during this time of the coronavirus.

I had no idea what Alex looked like. Spotting me, he shouted like a Texan. His English was rapid and fluent, which made me suspect he had lived in the States, but Alex had only spent two months in Houston.

“Did you go anywhere else while you were there?”

“No, I was working.”

Heading to Vladimirovo, we were in his tiny, beat up car, with his quiet son in the back. It was still dark. Dim apartment blocks sped by. Now and then, a radiant gas station.

“How did you learn English?”

“I taught myself.”

“No way, man! Seriously?”

“When I was a kid, I spent all my time at the US Information Agency, reading.” Alex’s English vocabulary is larger than most Americans’.

Alex has also worked with Brits and Americans, he said, mostly Texans. His current employer is Norwegian. As a project or inventory manager, Alex has been sent to Norway, Chile, Italy, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, and for fun, he’s traveled to Greece, Bulgaria, Albania, Turkey and, of course, all over the former Yugoslavia. “But I’ve never paid for a plane ticket! I can’t afford it.” Although his €600 a month salary is excellent for Macedonia, he has a wife and two kids to support. Alex’s son needs special care.

Supplementing his income, Alex gives encyclopedic walking tours of Skopje, and he’s even won two TV quiz shows, with another appearance next month. Nearly everything we’ve discussed, Alex knew way more about it than I did, not that’s saying much. My ignorance is encyclopedic.

Vladimirovo is only ten miles from Bulgaria. The 2002 census counted 861 people, with everyone Macedonian except for two Serbs, with no Gypsies or Albanians, which is extremely rare in North Macedonia. Now, Vladimirovo has less than 400 people, with the rest dead or emigrated. The easiest way out is to claim Bulgarian citizenship, through ancestry or bribery, and just like that, you’re in the European Union! About the only ones left are old folks, subsistence farmers and sheep shepherds.

“That’s a very rough job. People don’t know. Screaming at all these animals all the time is very stressful. Many of these shepherds have strokes or heart attacks. Most are alcoholics. Many of them can’t get married. Who wants to marry a drunk that smells like sheep?”

Alex’s maternal grandparents had a house in Vladimirovo. In its four bedrooms, 19 people slept. By 2000, it was so decayed, hardly anyone wanted it, but Alex’s mom got half, which she then gave to Alex. After she broke a leg falling down stairs four years ago, Alex has been taking care of her. She also has Alzheimer’s.

“My mom gave me life twice. Once, when I was born, obviously, then she gave it to me again when I was eight. I loved Bruce Lee, you see. You know that movie where he fought in the glass house? I made my own nunchucks, with two pieces of wood, some chain and two nails. After I saw the movie, I went home, played with my nunchucks and crashed through a glass door.” Alex had to laugh at the memory. “I was bleeding here and here,” he pointed to his arm and neck, “but my mom did not panic. She stopped my bleeding and told my sister to call an ambulance. It arrived within 15 minutes! I was in the hospital for 23 days. I will always remember that. I will never abandon my mom. I will stay with her until the very end.”

After an aunt fell and broke her hip, Alex also took care of her for eight years. “I changed her diaper twice a day. I got her the XXL ones, for extra absorption.” Inheriting her apartment, Alex is renting it out.

Vladimirovo is filled with all these picturesque but at least semi-abandoned buildings. Windows miss panes. Daub deprived walls expose wattle. Meandering around, Alex greeted or bantered with everyone, for this soil was his anchor, comfort, blood and deepest resonance, what we should all have. We passed a middle-aged man on his way to picking beans, and a beefy fellow cutting firewood with a tractor-rigged saw. As sheep surged towards us, a dog angrily barked at his charge. A hippo sized pig begged to be petted.

“This is the church. The sexton was a very old man. When he allowed a candle to burn down almost the entire church, he was so heart broken, he died soon afterwards.” Alex shook his head. “Maybe two months afterwards.”

Leading me to a chapel in an open field, Alex explained, “Saint Elijah is our village’s patron saint. This is his chapel. Every year, there’s a huge festival. Over there is where we cook the food. Last year, five thousand people came, but this year’s celebration was canceled because of the coronavirus.”

When Alex said he was going to a nearby town, Berovo, for a haircut, I decided to join him, for the last one I had was nine months earlier, in Hoi An. With mostly white hair sprouting in all directions, I looked like a wild man or a bum.

Deep green and beige plastic strips curtained the barbershop’s door. Barging through them, we found an old man sitting against the back wall, reading a newspaper. The tiny room was covered with pictures or calendars, some going back a decade. Relatives jostled with Jesus, Mary, soccer stars and even Tito, abutted by a crawling nude.

“He’s 86-years-old,” Alex said of the barber.

“How long have you been going here, Alex?”

“Forever!”

“And how long has he been a barber?”

Alex asked the old guy, then said, “Since he was sixteen!”

“Wow! So he has never had another job…”

“I wouldn’t think so.”

It was my turn to ease onto the ancient chair, which was crafted during the Ottoman Empire, probably, if not the reign of Philip II, Alexander’s daddy. As the old man clicked clicked his scissors all over my head, I thought that one of these days, when the inevitable heart attack knocks him over, he will slit the throat of his last customer, which could have been me that day. Guided by knobby fingers, the extra long razor nudged, glided and skated against my defenseless flesh, without somehow nicking.

“Nul ne meurt avant son heure,” Montaigne said, but that’s bullshit, amigo. Even if a man lives to be 150, he’s killed way too early, for each of us needs several lifetimes to learn or do anything, and, hopefully, right a fraction of our wrongs.

Though death didn’t smooch me that day, its fragrance sure did, for each time the old man leaned over my white sheeted carcass, I could tell he was no longer, you know, holding it all in. We'll all get there soon enough. Da Vinci, “When a man dies, he’ll pass through his own bowels.”

During several visits to Berovo, we always ate at the same place, for Alex had his habits, “In a small town like this, you can’t serve bad food, for words travel fast. Once people complain, you’re done. This place is great, and cheap!”

“How long have you eaten here?”

“Decades.”

Alex has his favorite waitress. When another showed up at our table, Alex quite cheerfully asked for Angela.

Thinking it a bit odd, I asked, “Was that rude?”

“No, no.”

“She’s not offended?”

“No.”

In her late 40’s, Angela has not had it easy, though you wouldn’t know it from her always cheerful demeanor. Her father was violent to his wife and children, so Angela married at 17 just to escape home. She then moved to southern Serbia.

Her husband was a waiter who, soon enough, also beat her. They had a daughter and a son. After 15 years with this brute, Angela returned to Berovo.

She then emigrated to Switzerland to pick fruit, before being hired by a fellow Berovian to take care of his senile and incontinent mother. A successful immigrant, he owned a supermarket in Zurich. After the old woman died, Angela came home for good.

Last year, Angela visited Berlin for four days and had Chinese food for the first time, she told Alex with a bright smile. (She thought I was Chinese.) Always mirthful, Angela’s truly angelic.

Despite all of his traveling, Alex has never eaten Chinese, Japanese, Indian or Thai, and the one time he tried bratwurst, Alex thought it was awful. “I like my own food,” he has said to me several times.

Halfway through our meal, a stocky, cheerful man came to our table to say hello. We shook hands. Leaving, he said to me in English for no apparent reason, “Thank you very much!”

“He was a very good soccer player,” Alex said. “We call him Savić, after Branko Savić, you know, the guy who played for the Red Star.”

“What does he do now?”

“He lives in Vladimirovo, but has a grocery store in Bevoro. Each morning, he buys milk from farmers, then resell it to the dairy companies.”

That evening, we again ran into Savić, and again he said to me, “Thank you very much!” It’s his one English phrase.

At least for now, I’m running out of English phrases myself. You think it’s easy to weave, feather, dab, daub and scumble endlessly out of one’s ass? This quick sketch of Vladimirovo and Aleksandar of Macedonia will have to do.

Say Macedonia and people will think of Alexander the Great, if they’ve heard of him, and maybe Mother Teresa, who was born in Skopje. The capital’s recent remake into a rather strident Hellenic theme park has been much derided, and we’ll get to it, OK, soon enough. I’m just glad that my introduction to North Macedonia was through its down-to-earth, low-key and honest aspect, so many thanks, Alex!

All over the globe, villages like Vladimirovo have been compromised and degraded, if not wiped out completely, but this trend must be reversed if humanity is to have a future. Though it’s hard to believe it during this grim and uncertain moment, that’s exactly what will happen. Soon.

Fame, infamy, honor, anecdotes, jokes and songs must be local, and they already are, mostly, in all ways that matter. Gravity will return.






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Saturday, September 26, 2020

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Ancient Zastava and jeep on 9-25-20--Valdimirovo









The Serbian Zastava is still in operation. I'm not sure about the jeep.



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