Auntie, Sister. Grandmother, Great-Grandmother,
Mother and Wife of German Descent
I've lived in Australia since 1959 together with my husband Peter. We have four children, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. I started blogging because I wanted to publish some of my childhood memories. I am blogging now also some of my other memories. I like to publish some photos too as well as a little bit of a diary from the present time. Occasionally I publish a story with a bit of fiction in it. Peter, my husband, is publishing some of his stories under berlioz1935.wordpress.com
The atrocities in Bucha and a couple of other liberated Ukrainian towns seem awful, and are getting full media coverage in the West. The outrage is obvious and palpable, and the pressure to “do something militarily” is increasing fast.
Yesterday the awful videos of bodies in the streets of Bucha were confirmed by satellite images. They show that the bodies were in the streets for days, while Bucha was still under Russian control. So those civilians must have been killed by Russians. It seems conclusive that the Russians committed war crimes by the dozen.
Not so fast. We’ve been fooled like this before. Remember the stories about the Iraqi soldiers killing babies in incubators in Kuwait before the first Gulf War? Turned out to be totally made up. Then there was the Tonkin Gulf incident that got the US into war in Vietnam, which never happened anything like they said at the time. And of course there was the Lusitania sinking, which was used to get the US into WWI under false pretenses.
Then there is the well-established pattern of deception from the Western media around recent wars, from the exaggerations about the Iraq WMDs to the later discredited Syria chemical attack. Talk about undermining our confidence!
How easy is it to change the date on a satellite image? How can we check?
The Russians totally deny the atrocities. They make some strong points. From the official Russian protest:
During the time that the town has been under the control of the Russian armed forces, not a single local resident has suffered from any violent action.
For as long as the town was under the control of the Russian armed forces locals were moving freely around the town and using cellular phones. So they could post on social media any photo and video footage of any theoretical “harassment” if this were the case. However, that did not happen.
Let me address the developments in chronological order.
On March 30, … Russian Ministry of Defense announced the withdrawal of forces from a number of regions, including Bucha.
That fact was confirmed the next day by the mayor of Bucha. In his video of March 31 Anatoly Fedoruk presented the withdrawal of Russian forces as a victory of Ukrainian Army. Interestingly, he had not mentioned any mass atrocities, dead bodies, killings, graves or anything like that. It is hard to imagine that a city mayor can “forget” to address such a devastating scenario.
Let me show you the video posted by Mr. Fedoruk. As you will see, he looks happy and smiling. It is hard to imagine that he is acting like this against the backdrop of “massacre” in the streets. That’s in Ukrainian, but as I said, he is very happy that Russian troops withdrew, which he regards as a great victory of the Ukrainian army. He makes no mentioning of any atrocities in the city.
T
his video was posted on “Ukraine 24” channel on the 1st of April. I would like to stress — nothing about “atrocities” was revealed on April 1st.
Let me also show a photo of Zhan Belenyuk, a deputy of the Ukrainian parliament, who, according to his reports in social media, visited Bucha after regaining control by the Ukrainian government. As you can see, he is also smiling. He is joyful. In his reports he mentions no dead bodies. Not a single reference to “atrocities”.
On April 2nd the National Guard of Ukraine posted on official resources a video from Bucha. Let me show you the footage. The video captures members of Ukrainian armed forces entering Bucha. The footage shows no dead bodies in the streets. The Ukrainian military interviewed several people in different locations across the town. None of them said a word about any “massacre” or mass killings. Camera also captures background behind these people, with no dead bodies in sight.
To sum it up, there are no reports of atrocities which are accredited to the Russian military in Bucha, which happened before the Ukrainian army took control of the town. Four days after the Russian military left the city of Bucha there was not a single sign of any “atrocities”. I repeat — not a single reference to it, anywhere.
Only after that do videos show up in the West:
The infamous video depicting bodies on the city roads only appeared on April 3rd. It is full of discrepancies and blatant lies. According to its authors, the bodies were lying on the streets for at least 4 days by the time the video was filmed.
However, the bodies are not stiffened. How is that possible? It is against the law of biology. The bodies do not have signs of decomposition known to forensic experts, including cadaver stains. The wounds contain no blood.
Another point illustrating that this video is fake.
The Ukrainian forces use either blue or yellow armlets or stripes. Because members of Ukrainian militia do not always wear military uniforms, local civilians in Bucha wore white stripes on their upper arms when the Russian forces were stationed in Bucha. That was done to prevent misidentification of civilians from members of militia. When the Ukrainian forces entered the town, they fired at the people with white stripes, killing the civilians. There is a video showing a conversation between members of Ukrainian units. It was published in social media by the so-called “territorial defense” — a radical nationalist fighting group. One of the radicals asks if he can shoot at the people without blue stripes. The other confirms that this is permissible.
Russian speakers know that, but let me translate for the rest of you:
Question behind the scene – «There are folks without blue bands, can I shoot them?»
Answer: «Of course».
I hope the evidence we demonstrated today leaves you with no illusion that the video circulated by the Kiev regime is a crude forgery. It does not stand any scrutiny. However, some Western leaders, for example German Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and of course British Foreign Minister Liz Truss have already lined up to promote this false narrative.
What happened in Bucha is exactly a false flag attack by the Kiev regime and its Western sponsors. The possible goal of this provocation is horrifying and brings back the nightmares of the Nazi crimes during the Second World War.
Vladimir Zelensky, once he arrived in Bucha, hinted that this “incident” justifies any “uncivilized response”. ..
Maybe Ukrainian forces shot some people thought to be collaborators. Or perhaps it was an awful wartime mistake — never let a tragedy go to waste, right? Or maybe it is an out-and-out hoax. In any case, the western narrative-spinners really like the Russian atrocity story, and are boosting it to the max.
The Russian case makes sense. I will be taking the narrative of Russian atrocities with a grain of salt — maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not. Perhaps we will never be sure, one way or the other.
Censorship is essentially the hallmark of neoliberalism. Have you noticed that? Our leaders seem to spend a lot more time trying to control what we say and think than trying to improve our country and that means that anyone who orders the wrong words, even accidentally, gets fired or banned or ostracized or even charged with a crime. …
Censorship now defines America’s public conversation. …
Why are the authorities suddenly so intent on controlling our words? Why are they so afraid of free speech? This is a new thing and the answer is pretty simple. It’s an act of self-preservation.
If voters were allowed to think for themselves, the entire system would teeter and possibly collapse. Sound like an overstatement? OK. Consider the ideas of the people in power used to justify their power and the rule over you. Here are some of their slogans, not one of which you’re allowed to disagree with:
“America is a racist country.”
“White supremacy is our biggest threat.”
“January 6th was a coup.”
“Ukraine is a vitally important ally.”
“Gender is a social construct.”
“Climate change is an existential crisis.”
“This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
And so on.
These phrases are so common now that you might not even think about them anymore. You hear Biden or Pelosi repeat them for the fifth time in a single day and you just start to go numb, but take a break from the numbness, pause and think about it.
Consider each of these slogans on its merit. Are the words actually true? Do they correspond to reality? Observed reality? No, they don’t. None of them do. In fact, they’re ridiculous.
They’re laughable and that would be very obvious to all of us if we were allowed to think about it, but we’re not allowed to think about it.
Effectively, all rational scrutiny of the regime’s claims have been banned with the help of so-called news organizations. Our social media platforms, which once promised to give every American a voice, now function like the North Korean State News Agency. They’re organs of propaganda. This crept up on us and it caught a lot of people by surprise, particularly conservatives.
Conservatives were taught from a very young age to support big business because big business was a bulwark against government overreach and that made sense and it was true for quite a while, but very few imagine what it would look like if big business harnessed monopoly power and then joined that power with government power to strip us of our constitutional rights.
Again, this happened incrementally, but now it’s here. So these aren’t really free market companies. They resemble repressive governments. They’re too big. They’re too powerful for you to do anything about. You can’t resist. So, if you want to talk in public in 2022, you have to submit to their censorship. …
I, Uta, borrowed a large print edition of this thriller from the local library here in Dapto, NSW, Australia. It looks to me like Robert Dugoni is dealing here with a very interesting subject. I am very much looking forward to start reading this thriller!
An Amazon Charts, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal bestseller.
A pulse-pounding thriller of espionage, spy games, and treachery by the New York Times bestselling author of the Tracy Crosswhite Series.
Former CIA case officer Charles Jenkins is a man at a crossroads: in his early sixties, he has a family, a new baby on the way, and a security consulting business on the brink of bankruptcy. Then his former bureau chief shows up at his house with a risky new assignment: travel undercover to Moscow and locate a Russian agent believed to be killing members of a clandestine US spy cell known as the seven sisters.
Desperate for money, Jenkins agrees to the mission and heads to the Russian capital. But when he finds the mastermind agent behind the assassinations—the so-called eighth sister—she is not who or what he was led to believe. Then again, neither is anyone else in this deadly game of cat and mouse.
Pursued by a dogged Russian intelligence officer, Jenkins executes a daring escape across the Black Sea, only to find himself abandoned by the agency he serves. With his family and freedom at risk, Jenkins is in the fight of his life—against his own country.
Today we had a look at the flowers in the Leighton Gardens of Moss Vale. We also had a nice visit with our friends in Bowral. Peter took all the pictures for I still have not replaced my lovely digital camera. I miss it so much! On the way home we stopped at the Robertson Pie Shop where we had pies for lunch which taste as good as ever. For afternoon coffee we took some fruit pies home that were filled with beautiful fresh cream. Very yummy indeed!
We were lucky to see some tulips at Moss Vale. We did not mind so much that we did not see the tulips in the Corbett Gardens of Bowral where an immense crowd had gathered for the opening of the tulip festival.
We have some pictures to prove that we were at Bowral in 1982 and also in 1983. In 1982 we were in Bowral with our friends and their daughter Ellen who was a good companion for our daughter Caroline who was four at the time. I remember that in 1982 we were not only at Corbett Gardens in Bowral, but we had also tickets to visit a number of private display garden. We enjoyed very much looking at all the gardens.
Caroline and Ellen with Dutch Girls at the Bowral Tulip Festival in 1982
Bowral 1982: Caroline with us, her parents, also Ellen with her parents
For the following pictures it says in our album “Bowral Oct.83” During that visit Caroline was not quite five yet. The Tulip Festival was on again in the Corbett Gardens, the same as every year. Since Caroline is to be seen in the picture with some Dutch girls from the Festival, I think that the Tulip Festival must still have been on, even though it was already October.
Sunday morning I was up early again, early enough to walk to the early Mass at the Catholic Church in Dapto. Our Vietnamese priest is still on vacation, however the old priest who is taking his place for the time being, is a dear old man with a wonderful singing voice. Gee, I love the way he sings his hymns so enthusiastically! On my walk to the church I had touched my ZEN stone a lot. The fingers of my right hand had not been able to make a fist for over a month. However the painkilling tablets and exercising the fingers with this stone and sometimes also with some Chinese Iron Balls made my hand much better now. It was so comforting to say some prayers during mass. I came to realise once more how important my Catholic faith really is to me.
As I said we had to do a lot more shopping on Sunday. We also bought some lovely flowers. For afternoon tea we used our red teacups. We took pictures of our afternoon tea with the newly bought flowers on the table as well.
Today, Monday, we had another beautiful sunny day. Peter and I drove to the lake and took quite a few pictures there. I am going to show these in another post.
I had taken the painkilling tablets the doctor had prescribed for me. I was supposed to take three times two tablets per day, however not more than six a day with intervals of at of at least six hours. For three days I took the six tablets per day. On Friday I already felt much better. I walked a lot in the sun. The right hand didn’t feel as painful any more. There was still some feeling of pins and needles, but I was able to do a lot more house-work than during the past few weeks. Friday afternoon Irene and Marion came to my place. We played a game of scrabble as we always do when we meet on a Friday afternoon. Then we had our coffee break. And after coffee and cake it was time for some games of Rummy. Irene said she’d have to leave early for her son was to come to have dinner with them. She went home just before five. We had had three hours of togetherness. For me three hours was plenty. I honestly felt very, very tired and was glad when Marion decided to go home too. Maybe she would have liked to stay a bit longer. I don’t know. However I did not hold back and proclaimed that I felt dead tired and desperately needed a bit of a rest. I did lie down on the sofa in the living-room.
Peter had been doing his things all afternoon but he agreed that he would cook dinner. He cooked some lovely cauliflower with breadcrumbs in plenty of butter. I needed only a short rest. Soon I got up again to have dinner with Peter. I felt very grateful that Peter had undertaken kitchen duties. This bit of a rest was so good for me. Before Peter started cooking he took my blood pressure. It was extremely low, however the pulse rate was very high. Peter gave me a glass of water. When he took my blood pressure again after about half an hour, the pulse rate had normalised and the blood pressure seemed pretty normal overall. It’s amazing what a difference a bit of rest can make!
On Saturday morning I got up very early because I had gone to sleep early the night before. My right arm and hand felt like it was improving a lot. I took a shower and continuously did exercises with arms and hands. Since I felt so much better and it promised to be a calm sunny morning, I had the idea to be walking to the pool. I very much longed for the solar heated water of the pool. Just the perfect morning to stretch out in the water for a few minute, I thought.
I had breakfast with Peter. I planned to arrive at the pool towards ten o’clock. There was some time to do a few things around the house and in the kitchen. Ten thirty am is the time when we like to watch the German News Program from Berlin. At the same time we usually have a cup of morning tea. When I told Peter I would be walking to the pool he reminded me I would not be able to watch the German News then. My response was that if he picked me up from the pool by twenty minutes past ten we could both be sitting in front of the TV by half past ten. Peter agreed that he would pick me up at the set time.
So I walked to the pool. It was a very pleasant walk. I did not have to walk too fast. Very cheerfully I arrived at the pool and talked to some attendants at the entrance. I soon noticed there was a class of women in the deep end of the pool. The instructress stood at the edge of the pool and gave instructions to some lively music. I was happy to stay at the shallow end of the pool. I had the whole area to myself. The water was flooded with beautiful sunshine. Doing my movements I felt very invigorated. I loved to have this bit of music from the top end. It helped me with moving about rather enthusiastically. I thanked God for such a wonderful morning.
After a few minutes all the women from the class did get out of the pool and assembled in the shower room. I soon followed. I was ready on time for Peter to pick me up. A bit after eleven we got ready to go to Dapto Shopping Centre. It took us nearly an hour to finish our shopping there. We bought some very good food and felt very happy with our purchases. However on our list were a lot more things to buy at another place. This would have taken us another hour. We decided to buy the other things on the following day, which was a Sunday. We wanted to go home and get lunch ready.
Saturday night I did fall asleep in front of the TV. When I woke up I noticed the TV had been turned off and Peter was in the other room talking to his sister Ilse on Skype. Ilse lives in Berlin where they have a great heat wave at the moment. I could hear every word Peter was saying and also every word Ilse was saying. After a while Peter came looking whether I was awake. He suggested I come over and talk to Ilse for a bit too. I love having a conversation with Ilse. I went to talk to her. There is always something to talk about with Ilse. This talk with Ilse cheered me up a lot.
83 a movie based on India’s triumph of 1983 cricket World Cup, which is being released in OTT platforms and getting lot of rave reviews.
I am yet to see the movie, which I would certainly do it as it has rekindled my memories associated with this great win by Indian boys in blue.
On 24 June 1983, I boarded the Grant Trunk Express with lot of anxieties as it was my maiden trip to Delhi to take up my first appointment in Central Government.
When I entered my compartment, the passengers were discussing aboutIndiareaching the final of theWorldCup. Yes, the discussion forced me to forget about my maiden trip toDelhiand its related anxieties.
I became more anxious aboutIndia’s probability of winning thecup. I also started participating in their discussion, the more we discussed the more we got excited.
On 25thnight, when the great final began, almost all the passengers took out…
This post of Gerard’s brought on quite a few comments. I think, my first comment to this post of Gerard’s was this one:
“Gerard, your imaginary ‘obituary’ shows your great imagination and humor! It is so humorous, that I made me laugh instantly.
But then I thought a bit more about it, why is it that ‘obituaries’ nearly always deal only with the ‘good’ things a person has done during a life-time?
It leads me to what I call my ‘personal’ belief about ‘Jesus’. I am not sure, whether I am a sort of ‘odd’ Catholic convert. I really do not have a lot of contact to other Catholics. I do not want to go into the reason for that. It is really another subject I would have a lot to say about . . . .
So, at age 40 I became a Catholic convert!
I was attracted by everything that related to what Jesus is supposed to have said.
He said, something like that if a great sinner (for instance someone who did commit murder) if this ‘mortal’ sinner is truly sorry for having done such a horrible sin, Jesus says, In this case a forgiveness of this sin can be granted!
I find the ‘Hail Mary’ Prayer has great faith value!
The first part of the Prayer says how blessed Mary is.
The second part of the Hail Mary goes like this:
Holy Mary,
Mother of God,
Pray for us Sinners,
Save us from the Fires of Hell,
And bring all Souls to
Heaven, especially those
That most need thy mercy. Amen
The Catholic belief, as far as I know, is that every person can become as wholesome as Jesus at death’s door, and then go straight to ‘Heaven’ so to speak. So when a person is dead and has regretted every bit of ‘Wrongdoing (Sin)’ then this person is totally blame-free, meaning nothing bad at all should be said about this deceased person!
Church people, that tend to threaten a mortal Sinner, as for instance
a murderer, with everlasting ‘Hell’ in my view do not act the way the (imaginative) ‘Jesus’ would have acted towards a ‘mortal’ Sinner!
The way, I imagine Jesus, he would have talked gently towards this person who committed a very grave Sin! Probably in most cases, there would not have been an instant forgiveness, but some urging to do a lot of ‘penance’!
When you do ‘penance’, you try extremely hard, to lead a life of a kind of self-sacrifice to make up for the very great wrong of mortal Sin!
Now to Mary, who is called ‘Mother of God’: This, to my mind wholly imaginary ‘Mother of God’, is just someone, that can pray for us so much better than we can ever be praying for ourselves!
In the Hail Mary Prayer, we think especially about those who do need most this special kind of mercy, so are in need of a lot of prayer!
My feeling is, that it is quite alright, ‘to speak only well’ about the deceased.
However, somebody who says on his deathbed that it was right that it was right to murder a person because that person is from a different race, how a person like this can ever be forgiven – – – – Well, I do not have an answer to this.
What I write here, are my personal feelings.
At this stage, I do just express my personal belief!
I do not claim, that my interpretations about ‘Belief’ are of general value: Really, not at all!
I assume, to be able to talk more sufficiently about the subject of belief, would, for sure, require some proper studying!”
Liked by 1 person
My other comments, to what Gerard published, I might publish soon as a follow-up!
It is impossible to read a bad word about those that have gone. All of us, men and women are faultless when in the icy embrace of the dearly departed. Here some examples from the obituary page of the Sydney Morning Herald: “Norman. Devoted father and beloved husband, sadly missed at 98 years old after 68 years of unstinting love to his dear wife Gladys, unselfishly gave to the community. Or Mavis, at 102 years sadly passed surrounded by loving family at Eventide Home, fascinating and loving wife of Geoffrey (who remained, faithful till the bitter end). She pioneered tirelessly for the sport of indoor sword fighting, boxing and gun clubs.”
With all the rain it did make me somewhat melancholic or inward looking and spend the time as usefully as possible and of late have come to peruse the paper’s Deaths and Funerals pages. It is amazing how few…
Today is the4thSunday after Peter died/On th 8th of November, that is just a few weeks ago, when Peter was still alive and able to visit the local doctor (with Olivia’s help that is), yes on the 8th of November I republished one of the posts from November 2011.
Now, I assume that most of my readers would not like to go to the trouble of looking up all these posts. However, for me it was most interesting to read through all of them again. It helps to give some kind of substance to what I do remember about the past nine years or so. These posts show me, that already nine years ago I could not help myself thinking about what would happen when Peter and I would come into our eighties. Well, Peter made it to 85 without any significant changes in our surroundings. I am 86 already. I must admit I am not at all used to organising some trades people to do any necessary repairs. Peter always did this. He always pointed out to me: “You can do it if you like!” But did he really want me to do it? I don’t think so. Whenever he was supposed to show me something, he soon got impatient and took over, doing whatever needed to be done rather himself. I must admit, I am a rather slow learner and always got scared I would not learn fast enough or forget soon again, how to do certain things. This also went very much so with work on the computer too. Whenever something went wrong on the computer he would take over totally, yes, maybe showing me a few things but without making sure that I had understood it properly. And it was very hard for me to ask for repeat instructions. He would just say: “But I showed you already!” and leave it at that.
In a lot of ways I am now totally dependent on the help of my children. I am extremely lucky to have three capable and loving children. But it is difficult for me to accept that I may have to disrupt their lives too much. I would like to have a certain type of independence where I feel that I am still capable of making my own decisions in every way and where I have not to told by anyone how to live my life!
One of my concerns at the moment is the ever increasing need for an overhaul of my backyard. When I look at that post from 22nd of August 2016 about the loss of three of our big trees, I am astounded how this backyard has changed again over the last four years or so!
AuntyUta 