Or more likely Jehovah's Witnesses born and raised here.
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Balls banned from school
- Thread starter nfq
- Start date
Or more likely Jehovah's Witnesses born and raised here.
With some it's a religious issue. I'm not talking about the usual whipping child (Muslims) either. Jehovah's Witnesses have long refused to salute flags or sing anthems as they consider it to be a form of idolatry, and that their allegiance should be only to the nation of God and not to flags or other symbols of "lesser" nations.
I grew up in a Communist (at the time) country. Nobody sang or played the national anthem on a daily basis, but we did learn to play it in music class (simple tune, national significance).
Interesting. Being raised in a military family and then joining the military during the tail end of the Cold War, my perceptions of Communists countries are largely formed by what was fed to me on a need to know basis. Perhaps propaganda goes both ways. At any rate, the closest I ever came to visiting a Communist country was when I took a military tour of the Czechoslovakian border. I would be interested in hearing about what life was really like behind the Iron Curtain.
Even as kids we were to stand still, no talking and heads straight up while singing the anthem.
...and no, its not a communist country
Red_Liner740
Well-known member
You wont get that from FireStart, he didnt grow up behind the iron curtain, but Yugoslavia, like myself.
Yugoslavia had the benefit of western interaction and wasnt "technically" a communist country but a Socialist one, not that there is a huge difference. The huge difference came from the fact that Yugo stradled the line between capitalist PIGS! Lol and the Communist bears!
I dunno about others, but i had a GREAT childhood growing up in Socialist Yugo. weeks long trips to the seaside in summer and ski resorts in winter on the government, professional kindergarten from the age of 5, excellent health care....As a kid, anything you needed was provided for you...
Free university education.
Working for the government in one form or another netted you your own condo...crazy concept but my moms grandparents were given a 3 bedroom condo because he was in the military. It wasnt "yours" technically, but you never had to pay anything but a little bit of the maintenance, and you would get to keep it even if you retired/quit.
And then the nationalistic ****ing idiots had to ruin it all....
Interesting read, although I'm not sure I want to know what "professional" kindergarten entails.Yugoslavia was another country that soldiers were not allowed to visit, so I appreciate your insight.
Probably meant that it was designed as a kindergarten from scratch.. Had a cafeteria, pull-out bunks, toys an craft tables in every room, balanced meals (2 snacks an a lunch, while we were also expected to eat breakfast and dinner at home), 2 well trained teachers supervising about 20 kids. Big bonus: They actually cared about their jobs and left very warm memories. 25 years later, I still remember their names.
There were additional activities, like cops coming in and teaching us about traffic safety (crossing the street safely and how to move in groups), field trips (including trips to seaside resorts for older kids), walks to the local parks.. We got plenty of exercise.
The communities over there were planned, so when designing townhouse and condo complexes, they would also design parks, schools, kindergartens, clinics (free dental care) and supermarkets/shopping malls. That's why they'd typically make sure that the kindergartens and schools were close together (helps familiarize the kids).
Over here, I've seen some pretty dingy houses right next to crackhouses passing as "kindergartens". Those kids probably get 20% of the floor space that we did and because many of them are converted houses, it's not an open layout where it's easy to supervise the kids.
One negative from that era: The priest had to sneak into my great-grandmother's house late at night in order to baptize us (did a 2 for 1 with my little cousin since she's about the same age). By that time, it would not have raised legal issues, but overtly being religious was not a career move that brought advancements.
In a way, it's understandable.. Not only was the Church competition to the state cult, but they also remembered that the Church helped maintain the feudal system that was close to slavery all over Europe and in China. The feudal system really tried hard to repress the idea of communism, to the point of making Pinoche look like an angel. In ex-Yugoslavia, before World War 2, being a communist was a hanging offence. My great-grandfather had to desert his unit while they were on their way home (once the WW1 hostilities were over), bury his party membership card and flee to Romania because they found out (and he was a decorated war hero, with multiple wounds and he lied about his age to be allowed to defend his country in the first place). The Church worked within that system, both by informing on suspected communists and by indoctrinating the sheep.
Thanks for all that, Firestart. As I alluded to already, my knowledge of Communist and Facist countries is pretty limited. I'd heard that religion was kept under wraps and services done in secrecy, makes me wonder how it managed to survive especially in places like Russia.
May I ask why you left the relative utopia of Yugoslavia for a new life in Canada?
May I ask why you left the relative utopia of Yugoslavia for a new life in Canada?
Wasn't there an ethnic cleansing/mass killing/civil war??
I guess...
there are some who still believe there were no genocide of jews during WWII
The Greeks were able to hold on to their religion even being under slavery for 400 years...
I've heard girls still run around naked there and the island of Lesbos still exist
Not to mention the Amazon women
In Serbia, Christianity survived 500 years of Ottoman Turk occupation with an active program to convert everyone to Islam. 50 years of Commies is nothing.
The utopia I grew up in ended once a cleptocrat dictator (Slobodan Milosevic) became the first democratically elected leader. He sold off quite a few of the state enterprises for pennies on the dollar, while pocketing most of the cash. Then he got the new "Yugoslavia" involved in a couple of civil wars, but without investing enough in PR, so the country ended up under economic sanctions. (*) It got to the point where fuel was sold on the side of the road out of coke bottles and you had to find your own gauze and bandages for hospital treatment. Hyperinflation hit and it became a pretty crappy place to live. Your $100 monthly salary in the morning, became $5 by the time you picked it up at the end of the work day. I still own a few 500,000,000,000 (yes 11 zeros) dinar bills
Currently, the conditions are much better, but what's left of the country is being sold off to the Western European and US business interests. US Steel got facilities worth $600,000,000 for about $20,000,000, for example. Whatever Milosevic failed to sell is being sold as we speak. On a good note, quite a few German manufacturing jobs are being outsourced to Serbia lol.
(*) Note on the civil wars: All sides committed serious war crimes for which many individuals should hang. They were all equal participants. Only one ethnic group faced international media stink and military intervention from NATO for it, though.
N3WMAN
Well-known member
I've heard girls still run around naked there and the island of Lesbos still exist
Not to mention the Amazon women
Amazon may be Greek, but I can't see her running around naked
Amazon may be Greek, but I can't see her running around naked
then you're not doing it right
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