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Literary Analysis of the 4 Gospels
(NOTE: THIS IS MY ACADEMIC SUBMISSION FOR A CLASS I AM TAKING TOWARDS MY DEGREE TO BECOME A TEACHER FOR SPECIAL NEEDS CHILDREN. IN THIS CORE CURRICULUM CLASS WE HAD TO WRITE TWO LITERARY ANALYSIS PAPERS, ONE FICTON AND ONE NON-FICTION THIS IS ONE OF THEM)
(by Christopher Fredrickson)
In the Seminaries there is some confusion that troubles Christian scholars and has for almost 2,000 years and that is how the 4 gospels are supposed to harmonize. There seem to be striking differences in the 4 when read as a literal text. So the Christian community decided there is a source which all the gospel writers copied from and from each other that they decided to call Q. Now first of all it must be noted that there is no evidence whatsoever that a Q source ever existed, none of the early commentators sourced a source named Q or a source which all the gospel writers copied from. This theory was taken out of mid air. What is the problem then? Are the gospels fake? Was the Bible written by fallible men who made many mistakes in the text? Or, was the hermeneutic much older than something in the 1st century? And are the gospels not supposed to "harmonize"?
Most scholars attribute the differences in the texts based on the supposed backgrounds of the 4 gospel writers (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). Now the thing that is interesting is that all but one of these guys had Jewish names. This tidbit of information helps greatly in his writing style. If we analyze the gospels from a literary perspective and from the vantage point of hermeneutic as well as who these people were, we see the reason why the number of people Yeshua (Jesus) fed varies and chronology differs.
There is an ancient hermeneutic known by the acronym PaRDeS (which is a Phoenician word meaning "Paradise") but to Hebrew speaking individuals it has another meaning. It is an acronym for a Biblical hermeneutic known as Pashat, Remez, Drash and Sod. We will get into what exactly these mean as we progress.
The book of Mark, is very linear, which would make sense it is written on the hermeneutic level of Pashat, which is the literal form of interpretation. We see Mark go into great detail in the when Yeshua (Jesus) healed the paralyzed man, he paints a picture for you that you can visualize literally the events happening. Mark is the shortest gospel and he is writing his gospel as though he were reporting stories for a newspaper. Everything is cut and dry with Mark this is why he uses amazing detail in terms of the surroundings and the places Yeshua was at, the things that were said to him, how he responded etc. You can read Mark like a novel and the spiritual message is cut and dry within Mark.
The book of Luke is written on the level of Remez. Remez means the "hint" level of hermeneutic. You are given a taste of something but not the full meaning, it is almost like subliminal messages being inserted into the text. Putting something familiar in a text to make you think of something else. It is like if one were to write a book and they would pay homage to the Wendy's corporation by inserting the lines "where's the beef?" in the story. Adding that phrase would direct the reader to think of Wendy's and the old commercial indicating that there was hardly any meat on her sandwich. Luke does the same thing. In chapters 1-2 Luke is inserting the prophecies of Zechariah, directing them to read Zechariah to understand the message he is giving. He does the same thing in Luke 1:7 where he says, "But they had no child, because Elisheva was barren…" Luke is pointing to Genesis 11:30 where it makes note of Sarah not being able to conceive. Luke is trying to show immaculate conception and the parallel to understand story and forcing the reader to use research as opposed to Mark who hands it to the reader on the plate. Luke kind of speaks like Yoda from Star Wars essentially.
Luke is likened to that of a level of jewish writings known as "Mishna", mishna means repetition. This is why Luke keeps harboring back to the previous sources to give people the correct connotation of what is going on, so they do not split up into 30,000 denominations. Luke is essentially saying you need to know and apply the old to understand the new. Mark does not do this. This would be likened to the old testament book of Deuteronomy which is considered a "mishna torah" (a repetition of the Torah, where the same laws are mentioned throughout but given more clarity and also pointing to the Sanhedrin saying "these guys have authority to tell you how to do these things if they are not covered here") .
The next step in the Rabbinic ladder is the gemara, which parallels the book of Matthew and the Drash level of interpretation. The drash is the sermon level of interpretation known in Judaism as "Midrashim". What the Gemara does then, is he explains the repetition (the mishna) and has the foundation as the pashat. It s like, if a scroll written in Hebrew has the letter tzadi written like ץ at the beginning of a word instead of צ the question would be asked, "was this a mistake that the sofit version of the letter tzadi ץ was at the beginning instead of the beginning form of the letter tzadi צ or is there a message being given to us because it is upright at the beginning as opposed to the end of the word (brief tidbit here: there are letters called sofit in Hebrew that have a different form if they appear at the beginning or the middle of a word than they do at the end of a word as the last letter, the tzadi is one of them). The drash level text has these textural anomalies often indicating there is another message beneath the text through the letters and through the message itself. Now it must be noted that the gospels were originally written in Aramaic via the Khabouris Codex but Aramaic follows the same rules as Hebrew. You find a lot of word play in the Aramaic you don't find in the other gospels that have confused the greek translators because they didn't understand this level of hermeneutic. Such as Matthew 19:24 Yeshua says, "it is harder for a rich man to get into heaven than for a gamala to go through the eye of a needle. Now, in Aramaic you have half vowels as opposed to whole vowels. The greek translators rendered it gamla as opposed to gamala, thinking it said "camel" as opposed to "heavy rope". When properly translated to "heavy rope, through the eye of the needle" there is a spiritual dimension that is given to the text that it didn't have before. Because, in the drash level of hermeneutic you have to think about the process. One has to ask, "did Yeshua say it was impossible for a rich man to get into heaven?" G-d forbid. Instead, he said it was really hard, so if you think of a heavy rope, a heavy rope is made up of many strands forming a sturdy rope, which represents financial strength but if a person takes a strand at a time they can fit that heavy rope through the eye of a needle. Showing the rich man must not be controlled by his wealth and he must unravel it as a safeguard one strand at a time. (As a side note my argumentative paper may be on Aramaic vs Greek Primacy).
To understand the Drash level a person first of all must understand the first 2 levels of hermeneutic (Pashat and Remez) and they must also know idiomatic expression such as "snakes a vipers" (Matthew 23:33) if it was meant as the level of insult Christians claim it is then why would he say to listen to them and do as they say 20 verses previously in Matthew 23:3? It would seem to be a contradiction correct? But the fact is it isn't because because even the Rabbis of the Orthodox call each other "snakes and vipers" meaning their theological strike comes through the knowledge in the head as opposed to the heart. Though it was an insult it wasn't like calling someone a "piece of crap" in today's time.
Finally there is the Sod level of hermeneutic which is the gospel of John, as well as Revelation and several other "mystical" books of the Bible. The Sod level is the mystical level of interpretation. It uses a lot of numbers and word play. This is why John's census numbers do not align with Mark's, because John's is not an actual number. They deal with gemaria values (which is saying that each letter represents a number and you add up the numbers in a word to reveal a parallel or message). Take for instance John 3:14 "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness so must the son of man be lifted up". Now there is a parallel here, because the semitic word for snake is "nachash" has a gematria value of 358, the word Mashiach (meaning Messiah) also has a gematria value of 358.
With the Sod level texts, you cannot get the full meaning from a translation either. You have to go back to the original texts and languages. One example of this is the first line in John, which is "Bereishit atohi hwa miltha…." Most render this as "in the beginning was the word." Though technically correct it does not render but ¼ of the meaning. Because the word "miltha" has several meanings all of which are correct and each one the reader is expected to know and understand. The word "miltha" means "manifestation, word, instance and substance." The greek translation which renders "logos" has taken away a great deal of the meaning thus causing the text to not fully be understood.
With these writing styles, through the hermeneutic process of PaRDeS we can think of it as the Pashat being like a child's understanding and having a pop-up book being read to them. They can visualize easily what is being said. The Remez being like the old Boxcar Kids books, which were novels written on the elementary school level to young teens level. The Drosh is like your James Patterson and the popular authors today. Obviously, language skills are defined at this time. Then the Sod is likened unto Einstein's paper presented to his acclaimed peers in the science community .
These premises are not understood in the western world, because the seminaries teach the same as the academic world from elementary school through low level college classes as the world being linear and thought patterns linear. Voiding the texts of any internal meaning. This is why the sages of Judaism said, "cursed is any man who teaches greek or raises swine and teaches greek wisdom." Now this was said to the Jewish community not to the rest of the world, keep this in mind. Linear thought, does not work in Biblical hermeneutic, otherwise we have issues for instance when it says in Exodus 33:20 "But," he said, "you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live." But in Exodus 33:11 it says "The L-RD would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend. Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent." But when student must write their senior thesis or they take a philosophy course, then they see through Jewish thought in many ways because they see the world as three dimensional in the hermeneutic of life.
One can tend to see the greek mind is the knowledge one obtains in school to become a surgeon, they learn where the heart is and all the vital organs. But the Jewish mind kicks in when they actually do surgery and there are judgment calls that need to be made. They learn and develop through seeing things as three dimensional and endless in terms of possibility and practice. Dr Ben Carson for instance was able to separate siamese twins successfully by looking beyond the textbook and applying the foundation and building off of it. Taking the established things that may not seem on the surface to be interconnected such as "math' and "english" and applying the two together when the action must be carried out.
It can also be compared to the formation of a soft drink, Coca Cola and Dr Pepper are both soft drinks correct? They have similarities, even though Dr Pepper is an independent bottling company, and Coca Cola is made by Coca Cola Corp. many of the ingredients are the same, though they may taste very different. Both still classify as a soft drink. Thus, all 4 gospels are not based on a mystical Q source but rather the Torah (aka the Pentateuch) and one goes down the rabbit trail deeper than the other. Though all 4 are true, each was written on a level of understanding and interpretation. Would Fonzie be saying "Eyyyyyy" in the 21st Century if they were to remake Happy Days and Fonzie was in his 50s? Would he be wearing a leather jacket or Dr Shouls?
Let me conclude with saying, I am not speaking in any way shape or form Unitarianism, like that would matter in an academic setting anyway. But what I am saying is an incompatible hermeneutic or a "make it up as you go along" mentality doesn't work when doing a textural analysis of ancient texts. There is a different level and dynamic that is often ignored. When a person takes a 1st Century text they cannot analyze it without looking at how people at that time would have written and analyzed it. But sadly today, the Biblical "academic" community such as the CBL do just that. It is like saying, "why didn't Herman Melville give his protagonist a speed boat or a military vessel in Moby Dick with sonar gear to track down that whale?". If I wrote that paper in a college they would find me to be a nit-wit and I would fail that paper horribly.
Therefore, I would conclude with this paper in saying, that one thing we have yet to cover in this class and the text book doesn't say which I personally think it should; is when doing literary analysis one must take into account where the author resided, where he received his education, what time period he existed in, cultural implications to his writing style and the language which his text was originally in. If a person analyses any paper in this fashion, they will in turn get more out of their academic achievements because they can back up their theories on the texts in question.
Literary Analysis on Frankenstein and the Golem of Prague
Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, by today's standards seemed that when it was written in the 1800s could have been a revolutionary publication. It is considered very "out of the box" and imaginative. Yet, it is very possible that the literary masterpiece, which is, Frankenstein actually dates back 100 years before Mary Shelly was even born, with the legend of the Golem of Prague.
The story of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein is about a doctor (who is named Frankenstein….the monster is not named Frankenstein) who reanimates a dead corpse using things at his disposal. His experiment is successful and the monster is created. The monster reeks havoc among the people in the village and call for the head of the monster.
Mary Shelly then humanizes the monster, which is something that was indeed revolutionary at the time, there were glimmers of gentleness in the monster when he approached children. This was unheard of, and I think it is possible that Mary Shelly was influenced by the history of Petrus Gonsalvus, a man who lived in the middle ages that had a condition known as Ambras Syndrome. Ambras Syndrome is a condition that causes a person to be covered in hair from head to toe. Petrus was captured and jailed in Spain, and the guards and scientists discovered he had human like characteristics though he was on the cusp of being feral. But luckily he was a child, they found he possessed intelligence and gave him an education. He then was made a nobleman, despite his appearance. He was given a wife by the queen of amazing beauty and they had children together. Sadly the children were sold by the rulers as "pets" essentially. But a people they found to be "beasts" and have been recorded as "beasts" since the dawn of time in the instance of Petrus Gonsalvus was considered to be slightly human for the first time. And this is where you get the story of Beauty and the Beast. Yet this hasn't been done in a literary source as of yet, and it is a trend that has continued and influenced many other great novels and movies, so with this we can give Mary Shelly credit in this respect.
However the entire story of Frankenstein, was "borrowed" with literary license obviously taken, from something that the Jewish community still maintains actually happened in the 16th Century with the story of the Golem of Prague. The story of the Golem was not written down till many years after the supposed event. And since that time, countless authors have battled over whether this happened or whether it was just folklore. The story is a very bizzare story, yet at the same time, there are indeed evidences that it is possible these events happened.
The story starts in Prague, in Prague the Jewish community is under attack by the Catholic community. At this time Europe became predominantly Catholic and when you look at the history of Constantine, The Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust you see the Catholic Church has not taken to kindly to the Jewish people. This was the case in Prague, the Bishops of the church would blame the Jewish leaders whenever disappearances of Catholic children saying that the Jews used the blood of Catholics to make their matzah bread. This is something the Muslims now claim against the Jews as well. The Jews refused to leave, despite this. Then physical violence broke out, many Jews were murdered in the village of Prague during the curfew hours. No witnesses, came forward because all stayed inside. When Rabbi Loew (also known as the Maharal of Prague) found that several of those in his congregation had been arrested for crimes they did not commit, he set out to put a stop to it.
The story goes that the Maharal (Rabbi Loew) went into the woods with his son in-law and some say they drew the figure of a man in the sand, others say they built a man out of mud, they went in a circle around the figure or mudman and recited the 72 letter name for G-d found in the book of Exodus (known as the Shemhamphorasch). On the forehead of the mud man they wrote the word אמת (emet: meaning in Hebrew "truth"). And the mud man came to life. The mud man for the most part was under the control of the Maharal. But it became increasingly harder for the Maharal to control the golem (which is what the mud man was "golem" is the Hebrew word for a beast without a soul, the word is used in Isaiah and in the book of Revelation when it comes to "The Beast"). The golem's job was to protect the Jewish people and the children of Prague from the persecution that was happening. The golem would wander the streets after curfew and intimidate the judge in the courts by sitting in the court room with a blank stare.
But the golem, like Frankenstein, got out of control. The Maharal could no longer control the golem. The golem started to destroy structures and scare the people. Now the golem, "lived", in a room above the synagogue. During one service the Golem was making a lot of noise and caused the chandeliers to shake, the noise was over powering. So the Maharal left the service went upstairs to the room of the Golem and erased the letter א from the head of the golem, rendering the word מת (Met: which in Hebrew means "death") and the golem turned into a pile of sand and died.
The similarity of the stories, are that you have a monster that was created by a person of high education, yet the understanding of the human intellect no matter how brilliant they may be cannot create life by unnatural means that functions at the same caliber as the Creator. The only real difference between the two stories were the attempts to make the creature discussed human in some way. Mary Shelly was able to humanize Frankenstein's monster to a level of degree in which you feel sorry for the monster. The story has made it's way into modern culture as a social commentary almost in sociological circles. The golem however, did not possess these characteristics, though I am sure, many of the Jewish community were thankful for the service of the golem they were happy he was killed by the Maharal.
This also brings about a stark difference in social commentary. One could say that the story of Frankenstein is to see the human element and to embrace the differences and that is why the death of the monster in Frankenstein was seen as tragic despite the fact it reeked havoc on the people and killed a little girl. The story of the Golem of Prague however, has cast speculation in Jewish communities on the Kabbalist Maharal. He was considered a great man till this point. In fact, in his most popular work Derech Chaim (The Way of Life), which was a commentary on a tractate in the Talmud called Pirkei Avos (The Ethics of the Fathers) is something that has been studied for over 300 years in Jewish Yeshivot (schools). It is considered one of the greatest commentaries of oral Torah (law) ever written.
The lesson in the story of the Maharal however is very much different. It is saying that a man cannot play G-d. The Jewish sages in the Zohar say that Hashem (G-d) puts a divine spark into each thing he creates, an eternal nefesh (soul) that exemplifies their personality and causes it to be. The golem had no personality, thus he wasn't considered "living" a stark difference to Frankenstein's monster, the doctor exclaimed in those famous words "it's alive." The golem may have been animated but he wasn't alive. He was essentially a robot who had his motherboard messed up and went haywire.
The social commentary of both of these stories are both applicable. If we render social acceptance as the message of Frankenstein, or if we render that man cannot create a soul from the story of the Golem of Prague. This is actually a moral dilemma that has been going on for close to 20 years since the cloning of the first sheep to embryonic vs adult stem cell research. This is a constant social commentary in which no matter how archaic it may seem from the stories of Frankenstein and the Golem of Prague, both of these stories have lived on in their respected communities because of the wars of acceptance and who has the authority to create life outside of natural means. Both also have extreme views as well that have been implanted into them in the 21st Century.
These extreme views are ones that we see in movies and television and other media and alternative media today. We live in a society where the most popular series on Netflix is The Making of a Murderer, where they try and humanize this monster of a person who slaughtered a woman and make him out to be the victim. This is like saying that "Hitler was just misunderstood."
The other, would be those who push against modern medicine and say that it is poison. As an individual who is a type 1 diabetic I thank G-d for the advances in modern medicine. One individual once told me because I take insulin I am being kept alive artificially and thus my soul has departed from me and I am no more than a Golem. This is ridiculous and crazy talk.
The fact of the matter is that there is a balance where the stories of Frankenstein and the Golem of Prague and when read objectively through the messages of acceptance and the ideal of who creates life and has the authority over it then we can see the truth of the matters are in the grey matter. As we get older, we realize that truth אמת (remember that word emet?) is in the grey 90% of the time, and only 10% of the time black and white.
A Review on the Film "Risen"
My Instagram and Twitter has blown up with people going to see this new movie "Risen". Many telling me, "this is the most accurate film about Biblical events that has ever been made." I found it interesting because most people in Christianity and the Hebrew Roots condemn any movie that comes out about Biblical things because they tend to not fit the story the way they want to interpret it. Most still think still on this linear greek aspect that the linear greek, pashat only way of seeing the Scripture is the only way to see it, based on their own viewpoint and anyone else's be damned.
Because of my education I didn't see the movie Noah as the huge abomination most in the Hebrew Roots and Christianity did, because I praised how in the movie Noah they took much from the information found in the Talmud and the Zohar and Jewish thought in terms of the story of Noah. How the rock men were a symbolism of the golem, which is actually a parallel to the beast of Revelation, how they showed the heathens eating live animals, which is the way goyim (heathens) are presented in Biblical literature and Jewish thought, and Noah making teffilfin from the snakeskin of the serpent from the garden is straight from the Zohar. I had never seen such a jewish movie in my life. Most however thought, "these were things added into the story of Noah from the film makers" it simply isn't so. So I was curious about this new movie, Risen. The trailer looked interesting and so I went to it, thinking I would be pumping my fist in the air because of authenticity. Sadly, I couldn't do that.
The premise of the film is wonderful, The premise is about stopping a revolt because Yeshua said he would be resurrected from the dead. When this happens Clavius, a Roman soldier, sets out to get the facts on this matter. He works side by side with Pontus Pilate. When the film ends, he becomes a follower of Yeshua and travels with the disciples of Yeshua. Sounds great right?
The issue is, the move presents the Romans to be the truth seekers, and the Jews as paying off people to left and right to say that Yeshua's body was stolen. They make the Jewish people look like the ones cutting all the deals and the Romans (including Pilate) as people who are just searching out for truth and those Jews are the trouble makers. The Passion of the Christ had hints of anti-Semitism, lets be honest, but the anti-Semitism in this movie, Rising, is 5x more obvious and in your face compared to the Passion of the Christ. I would dare say, the Passion of the Christ is a more Jewish movie by far than Rising.
I think the thing that got many people excited about this movie in the Hebrew Roots is the sacred name usage in the film. Any sacred name film or documentary they are quick to put their stamp of approval on and dismiss anything else. They were taken in awe that a variation of the 4 letter name of G-d was used every 2 minutes in the film and they rendered the Messiah as Yeshua as opposed to Jesus. Because of their feeling of validation for use of the sacred name of G-d in this film they see the film as something that shows the world "see I am right and Hollywood confirms it." Too many in the Hebrew Roots find that the use of the 4 letter name of G-d and the variation they choose is a salvational thing, not walking out the Torah (which the Torah isn't mentioned once in the film). These two things made me almost leave the theater several times, but I stuck it out.
Another major issue, is chronology. Many of the stories in the gospels before his death were presented as though they happened after his death, this is going to confuse many people first of all. Another thing is that the actors that played his disciples looked and acted like they were taken out of Woodstock and placed in this movie. The hippie vibe was prevalent in the way the disciples were depicted in this film. The one why played Bartholomew has the most lines out of any disciple and looked like he was stoned with acting, and it almost seemed like that is how they wanted to make the disciples seem, as stoned out hippies.
The film also does what was a staple of Hollywood, which has made it's way not the pulpits saying that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. Sadly, there is no indication of this in any of the Scriptures or even Jewish commentaries. This ideal was propagated in the early 20th century by the Hollywood. Not only does the film say she was a prostitute but still was a prostitute after the resurrection of Yeshua. Not only this but it has Mary Magdalene as being the teacher of the disciples after the resurrection.
To the film's credit on the other hand, the production was great, it was visually wonderful but it relied on style as opposed to substance. I do not give this film high marks at all, I personally found it to be horribly inaccurate and deeply anti-semitic and rather liberally political above all else.
Christopher Gets Interviewed in Slate Magazine on the History and Future of Podcasting
I was recently interviewed for an article in Slate Magazine, they interviewed 5 podcasters who had been around from the beginning essentially, and in their words, "Podcasters who had gained a level of notoriety and following." I was honored to be interviewed. Only parts of the interview will be featured in the publication but here is the entire interview done through email correspondence.
Jennifer: Today with us we have Christopher Fredrickson, who has been one of the few podcasters to still be going strong after 12 years. Here to talk to us about the podcasting experience. Christopher, what kinds of changes have you seen in the podcasting market and brand?
Christopher: Well Jennifer, in all honesty not much has changed. Hosting companies have come and gone, the choices are more massive, Dr Laura is now doing podcasts exclusively and has left terrestrial radio, you have Adam Corolla falling in line and I think there is a bit of bubble right now in the branding.
Jennifer: What do you mean a bubble?
Christopher: Well, there is a show on Netflix called Maron, it is about the failed Air America host Mark Maron, and he is zealous over the fact he does a podcast in his garage. Now it almost seems ridiculous that he thinks he is something special because he has a podcast. The fact is, though it seems ridiculous, this is how most podcasters are these days. Mark Maron, actually does have a popular podcast and he is actually that way. He has this attitude like, "I have a podcast so what do you know?" When the fact is any kid with $12 can buy a microphone and have a podcast. Lets be honest here, if you go to the popular podcast servers you will find some beautifully produced programs that do not fit the format of terrestrial radio, but the top 3 in most categories are either brand new people, and maybe one who has been podcasting for 3 years and everything below there are programs of shows of people who thought it was cool for a few months and then they drop off the face of the earth. They haven't produced anything for years. And the mentality of podcasters has changed in the past decade.
Jennifer: How so?
Christopher: Well, when I first started, podcasts were like audition tapes for terrestrial radio. Now it is working backwards and it is really bizarre. I started doing a conservative political podcast over a decade ago. My goal was to get a shot in terrestrial radio. At that time there were like a dozen podcasts for conservative politics, there was basically me, a guy named Mr L, and another guy who called himself David Cholesterol and that was about it. All of us, except for DC were basically auditioning and polishing our craft for terrestrial radio. I got a shot, and am in terrestrial radio now teaching on Judaism and the New Testament, but it didn't happen over night. Now, I mentioned Dr Laura before, she is now doing podcasts and attempting to make a living off of podcasting. And lets be honest, she is not going to make Rush Limbaugh money or Howard Stern money podcasting. Because the advertisers are not there, and the fact is, she doesn't even have a fraction of the audience she used to have and advertisers drop like flies because the volume of the audience isn't there. Now people do podcasts and don't have any ambition to go onto terrestrial radio. I have 3 AM and FM affiliates now, and I am still working to get better to get more affiliates, internet radio and podcasting the archives are still to me audition tapes for terrestrial radio spots.
Jennifer: So you don't think podcasting is the future of broadcasting?
Christopher: Let me ask you, how many advertisers are looking to invest in podcasters? They are still paying out millions to terrestrial radio and satellite radio. When I mentioned before the bubble, look at how many podcasts are out there, it is a big pond and only a few fishing lines, if you say you want one out of a million fish in that pond and it has to be that specific fish, you are going to millions of others going after the same piece of food on the line. Like I said there was maybe a dozen conservative politic shows when I started and now there are thousands. Now I teach Messianic Judaism, most haven't heard of Messianic Judaism but there are hundreds and hundreds of podcasts of "Messianic Jewish teachers" and only a dozen or so are actually qualified to be teaching and out of that dozen only maybe 3 are any good.
Jennifer: Do you put yourself in that 5?
Christopher: I walked right into that one didn't I? Ummm, I would say that I do ok. I'm the middle ground. I think I am above the fray in quality considering the massive amounts I have spent in equipment in that respect. In production, my show doesn't need to be flashy because it is broadcasted on terrestrial radio and they are not looking for Game of Thrones on radio, terrestrial radio is a different animal. In terms of my qualifications, I think I definitely have had the training the qualifies me to talk about what I do, which doesn't mean I don't have to correct myself at times, but at least I am honest and say, "I was wrong" when I am, and yes I have done that. I am just gonna say, I do ok.
Jennifer: From our RSS feed statistics you do very well in the listenership.
Christopher: Well, lets be honest here, I was also one of the very few teaching a Messianic Jewish podcast when I got into teaching on the podcast and radio. There may have been 30-40 at the time and I was one of them, but I am one of the few who has not quit. So I have massive archives, thousands of shows, on any topic you can think of, so if someone is searching for something Jewish or about the New Testament on iTunes….boom chances are Brutal Planet will pop up. Most search subjects some search people but most search subjects. People also find comfort in knowing that I have been doing this so long that I am not gonna just quit abruptly, so they know they are not wasting their time subscribing and then I leave them high and dry after they have started to enjoy the show. These are things that have worked in my favor and plus I think the knowledge I have on the subject.
Jennifer: Why do you think you have lasted as long as you have? And do you feel you will eventually quit.
Christopher: I think that feeling of excitement of being behind the mic still after all these years is one of the reasons. I have also never been a quitter, I started out horribly. If you heard my first few years of recordings, you would say, "this guy is horrible." And I honestly was, and it is that drive to always get better at things I am not so great at. People now tell me I am a natural at it, and that would be true if I started doing this yesterday but the fact is I have been doing this over a decade, and I worked hard to get decent. And I think I always want to get better, I find myself reading a lot on the things I teach and I always get the "ooo ooo" moments when I see something others are not talking about or I haven't heard other teachers talk about and that is always something that puts excitement in me to get behind the mic. Will I ever quit? I have tried in the past, but I cannot walk away now. There may be a time when I say, "ok that's it…there is no more to say." Or there may come a time when other things are more important in my personal life…..and then I will make that decision. When I do, it will be when I have no reservations of quitting. But I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Jennifer: You have made the jump to video podcasting?
Christopher: Well, there is a podcast feed for my videos it is secret really and I use it for Nashama Chochmah Television, the reason it isn't "official" is because the feed is filmed in 720p HD for the TV station in the on-demand section, that is the reason it was created. If a person subscribes to the video version on their tablets or phones it will eat up all their space because of the big file sizes, which ultimately hurts you in the long run in terms of your numbers.
Jennifer: Do you feel video podcasting is going to be the future?
Christopher: I think many are loosing interest in video podcasting because YouTube is so massive an you don't have to eat up your storage space an your data usage on your cell phone plans replenish every month. The same is not true for hard drive space. Now with that being said, technology is advancing, what I would like to see happen, and I think Apple would be the company to do this. I would like to see hard drives become a thing of the past and everything go to Cloud servers. I didn't get the cloud concept until recently when I switched to all Mac products and it is incredible. I don't think that technology is far off either. Say you buy a laptop, and your laptop will have a limited amount of storage for when you are not connected to the internet to run applications, when you are connected things go automatically into the cloud and can be accessed on any device and you pay a certain fee each month or year and you can upgrade from 1 terabyte to 2 when you have filled the 1 terabyte. If that happens, then I think it would be a slight push for more video podcasts. But I don't think it will ever be at the level that audio podcasts have been or can be. And the reason for that is because we like radio, that sounds simplistic but if a person is watching a video in their car then they are gonna have problems. Mp3s are compact they are small, and they are quickly downloaded for those long road trips. But you also have another side of the equation as well, audio technology in terms of podcasting has not changed much in the past decade….other than some servers coming and going. But the video technology is coming along quicker. It has a ways to go still. You can buy an HD movie on iTunes and it is going to look wonderful on your HD TV but it still is not gonna compare to the Blueray. But I think that technology will progress because of devices like the Roku and the AppleTV and the Chromecast and all the others. When you see the major networks such as CBS and NBC and Fox getting contracts with Hulu as well as launching their own on-demand channels on these devices…..I think cable will soon be a thing of the past because of things like SlingTV and USTVNow. But also there is a wall right now in terms of this progressing, new file formats are going to have to be created to make better quality video smaller for what is about to happen. In Japan right now they are making TVs that are double the quality of 1080p HD televisions we have today here in the states. Now for me to film a 1 hour teaching in 1080p that is a 1.5 GB file, it is massive and take hours to upload and it takes a while to buffer and it may have to buffer a while and then you pause it so it is not interrupted and then you have to hit play after it loads a little, everyone is familiar with this. Now, what happens when these televisions become the craze over here and makes you current HD TV look like an old black and white television? Well these streaming companies are going to have to up their game with…..bigger file sizes which means more buffering and more hard drive space being used. Right now, the internet services cannot handle it, they simply can't. But in order for this technology to come here and for you to be able to watch Netflix on your TV the internet companies are gonna have to go to new cables and redo their entire systems to support this. This will also translate to higher monthly fees. You have numerous technologies that have to work together. YouTube has to rely on their servers, you rely on their servers as well as your device and your internet speed. Though YouTube us not a podcasting outlet, you see how all these things have to work together and when you incorporate new technologies that are being made every day, all these rely on each other and they have to move in sync with each other. So it is really complicated.
Jennifer: I know you do videos of your podcast also. This is why I ask. You have 150,000 weekly downloads with the podcast how do those compare to the videos? The Alexa numbers show big waves are made with your podcast.
Christopher: Well if we are up to 150,000 then they have gone up, I thought we were at 120,000 last time I looked. And the fact is the video numbers are not even close. I get 10% of those numbers on the videos. And this could be for numerous reasons. One being I have a face for radio, the second could be that I am on 4 radio affiliates, and only one television outlet that is only available on the Roku. And also, again it is more compact the mp3s. There is also the reasons of podcast feeds as opposed to stand alone videos where you have to go to a website to see them manually, there are many factors. Also…I don't think the technology is there just yet….it is close, but not quite there yet. And it's funny I work backwards compared to most. I use the videos to promote the mp3s, not the other way around. Because you have to ask, "how do I build an audience?" most say "social media", and I am not on social media. It is about venues it is about distribution, now I a personally not a fan of YouTube, YouTube works great for many but not for me. Before my YouTube was hacked I had only 600 subscribers on there and YouTube really limits your capabilities. But I used to put them there anyway but I didn't push the YouTube, I think Vimeo is where the serious promoter goes. Vimeo has a better format and they allow people to download the videos in various formats and so I put them on Vimeo, it is far superior for what I do and accessibility. I think in 10 years you will see YouTube fade and Vimeo will be the standard for stand alone videos.
Jennifer: What advice do you have for freshman podcasters?
Christopher: Consistency, consistency, consistency. Here is the reality. Many believe that they will do a few episodes and it will get amazingly popular because they have something interesting or important to say or because they have wonderful production, that is not enough. Consistency is what will help you retain an audience and help you build an audience. If they rely on a new show every week, and you do a show every week, you better do it, the first week you don't you are at risk of loosing many listeners. Many of those who listen to podcasts see someone has not done an episode in the time span they usually have a new one up, they subconsciously feel the podcaster has quit because it happens so often. Even if you are behind, put a 2 minute podcast up explaining why a new episode will be late and that will help. Secondly, do not think you will get an audience at the beginning, you may get 30 subscribers the first month, don't worry, know building an audience takes time. You mentioned my numbers before, when I first started I had like 12 subscribers in the first month. But, I kept at it and I changed formats to something that worked and I changed formats many times, I realized I needed to get better over time, too many attack others and don't instead take criticism, criticism will help you in the long run. It will take a few years till you build a good sized and loyal audience. Thirdly, be yourself, don't try and copy someone else. Fourth, don't be fooled into thinking you will make money off of podcasting and sponsors will run to you, the reality is, it doesn't happen. I have been doing this for over a decade and have not made a single penny, realize you will be paying out and not bringing in. Unless your name is Rush Limbaugh it is not gonna happen. Fourth, back up everything, every episode make sure you have copies on CDRs and an external harddrive. I lost my first 7 years of archives because of the fact the servers I was using quit doing business and I lost all those archives. Make sure you have them and do not skip around from server to server, you will loose a majority of your audience. What I did, was I have been utilizing Weebly Pro, to host my files because they have unlimited storage space, and I have been paying Squarespace $20 a month to make them RSS accessible, I just link the files to Squarespace and all my archives are in the feed. Be creative and make sure you have control over your episodes in terms of hosting. Lastly, slowly invest in equipment upgrades. Start out with a junky mic from Radio Shack or Wal-Mart, then set yourself a challenge, say, "when I reach 100 subscribers I am going to upgrade my mic" then upgrade to a mid-grade mic. Then, after another mark upgrade your editing software, then slowly progress. I usually buy a new mic every 2 years and I upgrade in the quality. Right now I am using a MXL, before I used the mics from Blue, such as the Snowball and the Yeti. Don't invest thousands of dollars or even hundreds of dollars until you know you will be doing this for a while.
Jennifer: What is in your rig right now?
Christopher: I am using an MXL 900 microphone, with Phantom Power supplied to it. I use Audacity on my Macbook Air to record and Adobe Audition CS6 for editing. I use an iPad Air and a GoPro Hero as well as an SJ400 for the videos. I use Pinnacle Studio Pro for editing the videos and I make the slides for certain videos using Keynote. I host my files on my Weebly website and I make the RSS feeds for iTunes using Squarespace and of course nothing is better than iTunes for ID3 tagging, which you want to do for those who download individual files, you want to make sure they remember your name, and where they got the mp3s. When they import it into their mp3 devices they need to be reminded where they can get more, and inserting album artwork is always helpful.


I'm participating in Read an Ebook Week over at Smashwords this week from March 5 - 11, 2017.
You can find my books if you scroll down on my profile page.
WAR: Disruption is being offered for free. WAR: Intrusion, WAR: Opposition, Betrayal, and Retribution are 75% off. Payback and Aftermath are 50% off.
When you go to a book's page, Smashwords will show you the reduced price and the applicable coupon code. To get the reduced price you have to choose Buy with Coupon.


text:
package alipay

import "strings"

type PayResponse interface {

	/**
	 * Getter method for property <tt>code</tt>.
	 *
	 * @return property value of code
	 */
	GetCode() string

	/**
	 * Setter method for property <tt>code</tt>.
	 *
	 * @param code value to be assigned to property code
	 */
	SetCode(code string)
	GetMsg() string
	SetMsg(msg string)
	GetSubCode() string
	SetSubCode(subCode string)
	GetSubMsg() string
	SetSubMsg(subMsg string)
	GetBody() string
	SetBody(body string)
	GetParams() map[string]string
	SetParams(params map[string]string)
	IsSuccess() bool
}

type PayResponseImple struct {
	Code    string
	Msg     string
	SubCode string
	SubMsg  string
	Body    string
	Params  map[string]string
}

func (resp *PayResponseImple) GetCode() string {
	panic("implement me")
}

func (resp *PayResponseImple) SetCode(code string) {
	panic("implement me")
}

func (resp *PayResponseImple) GetMsg() string {
	panic("implement me")
}

func (resp *PayResponseImple) SetMsg(msg string) {
	panic("implement me")
}

func (resp *PayResponseImple) GetSubCode() string {
	panic("implement me")
}

func (resp *PayResponseImple) SetSubCode(subCode string) {
	panic("implement me")
}

func (resp *PayResponseImple) GetSubMsg() string {
	panic("implement me")
}

func (resp *PayResponseImple) SetSubMsg(subMsg string) {
	panic("implement me")
}

func (resp *PayResponseImple) GetBody() string {
	panic("implement me")
}

func (resp *PayResponseImple) SetBody(body string) {
	panic("implement me")
}

func (resp *PayResponseImple) GetParams() map[string]string {
	panic("implement me")
}

func (resp *PayResponseImple) SetParams(params map[string]string) {
	panic("implement me")
}

func (resp *PayResponseImple) IsSuccess() bool {
	if strings.TrimSpace(resp.SubCode) == "" {
		return false
	}
	return true
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Ava's specialty pepperoni pizza will be available Sept. 17, with profits benefiting A Special Wish. (Spectrum News 1/Jenna Jordan)
Pizza restaurant helps grant kid's wish
By Jenna Jordan Cleveland
PUBLISHED 10:15 AM ET Sep. 17, 2022 PUBLISHED 10:15 AM EDT Sep. 17, 2022
CLEVELAND —An Ohio restaurant is celebrating its anniversary by giving to others.
Crust is celebrating 10 years in business by donating $10,000 to A Special Wish Northeast Ohio
The non-profit is helping grant a girl in remission from leukemia get her wish to visit Disney Worldr
Crust is holding a fundraiser Sept. 17 and donating all profits to the cause
It's Crust's 10th year in business and the Cleveland pizza place is planning to donate at least $10,000 to help grant a wish for a child with a life-threatening illness.
The owner, Michael Griffin, said he plans to donate all profits Saturday, Sept. 17 to A Special Wish Northeast Ohio. He said he is also planning to match that donation.
The money will go toward helping Ava Jarrett, 9, and her family travel to Disney World.
Ava was diagnosed with leukemia about three years ago. She's been in remission for almost a year.
"I've never been this far in a pizza place," Ava said, as she and her younger brother, Jameson, were invited in the kitchen to design their own specialty pizza to be sold during the fundraiser.
"This is the best day of my life," Jameson said.
Griffin showed the siblings how to make a pepperoni pizza from scratch. On Saturday, the pepperonis will be in the shape of a smiley face.
"You're helping out a family and you're doing what you like," Griffin said. "It's like a win-win."
Ava's mom Emily said she's thankful for the restaurant's support.
"Makes you realize that there are still really good people out there and the world's not all bad," she said.
A year ago, she said it was a difficult time as Ava was nearing the end of her treatment.
"I think it's gonna be a lifelong battle and struggles, but she's a rock star," Emily said.
The fundraiser will take place from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 17 at Crust.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Most orders placed prior to 2:00 pm Pacific Time ship same day.
Our warranty is behind every product we supply and we match the warranty of the original manufacturer.
All of our products are manufactured in an FDA approved facility and are ISO 9001 and CE certified.
We guarantee our products to be 100 percent compatible with the OEM part that we are replacing.
Copyright © 2019 Sensoronics, Inc. All rights reserved.


text:
from f5_cccl.resource.ltm.policy import Condition
from mock import Mock
import pytest

conditions = {
    'http_host': {
        'httpHost': True,
        'host': True,
        'equals': True,
        'values': ["www.my-site.com", "www.your-site.com"],
    },
    'http_uri': {
        'httpUri': True,
        'host': True,
        'equals': True,
        'values': ["bar.com", "foo.com"],
    },
    'http_uri_path': {
        'httpUri': True,
        'path': True,
        'not': True,
        'equals': True,
        'values': ["/", "/home.htm"]
    },
    'http_uri_path_segment': {
        'httpUri': True,
        'pathSegment': True,
        'index': 2,
        'startsWith': True,
        'values': ["articles"],
    },
    'http_uri_extension': {
        'httpUri': True,
        'extension': True,
        'startsWith': True,
        'values': ["htm"]
    },
    'http_uri_unsupported': {
        'httpUri': True,
        'queryString': True,
        'equals': True,
        'values': ["expandSubcollections=true"]
    },
    'http_unsupported_operand_type': {
        'httpMethod': True,
        'equals': True,
        'values': ["GET"]
    },
    'http_cookie': {
        'httpCookie': True,
        'tmName': "Cookie",
        'contains': True,
        'values': ["sessionToken=abc123"]
    },
    'http_header': {
        'httpHeader': True,
        'tmName': "Host",
        'contains': True,
        'values': ["www.acme.com"]
    }
}

@pytest.fixture
def bigip():
    bigip = Mock()
    return bigip

def test_create_http_host_match():
    name="0"
    condition = Condition(name, conditions['http_host'])
    data = condition.data

    assert condition.name == "0"
    assert not condition.partition
    assert data.get('httpHost')
    assert data.get('host')
    assert data.get('equals')
    assert data.get('values') == ["www.my-site.com",
                                  "www.your-site.com"]

    assert not data.get('startsWith')
    assert not data.get('endsWith')
    assert not data.get('contains')

    assert 'httpUri' not in data
    assert 'httpCookie' not in data
    assert 'httpHeader' not in data

    assert not data.get('index')
    assert not data.get('path')
    assert not data.get('pathSegment')
    assert not data.get('extension')
    assert not data.get('httpCookie')
    assert not data.get('httpHeader')
    assert not data.get('tmName')

def test_create_http_uri_match():
    name="0"
    condition = Condition(name, conditions['http_uri'])
    data = condition.data

    assert condition.name == "0"
    assert not condition.partition
    assert data.get('httpUri')
    assert data.get('host')
    assert data.get('equals')
    assert data.get('values') == ["bar.com", "foo.com"]

    assert not data.get('startsWith')
    assert not data.get('endsWith')
    assert not data.get('contains')

    assert 'httpHost' not in data
    assert 'httpCookie' not in data
    assert 'httpHeader' not in data

    assert not data.get('index')
    assert not data.get('path')
    assert not data.get('pathSegment')
    assert not data.get('extension')
    assert not data.get('httpCookie')
    assert not data.get('httpHeader')
    assert not data.get('tmName')

def test_create_http_uri_path_match():
    name="0"
    condition = Condition(name, conditions['http_uri_path'])
    data = condition.data

    assert condition.name == "0"
    assert not condition.partition

    assert data.get('httpUri')
    assert data.get('path')
    assert data.get('values') == ["/", "/home.htm"]

    assert 'httpHost' not in data
    assert 'httpCookie' not in data
    assert 'httpHeader' not in data

    assert data.get('equals')
    assert not data.get('startsWith')
    assert not data.get('endsWith')
    assert not data.get('contains')

    assert not data.get('missing')
    assert data.get('not')
    assert not data.get('caseSensitive')

    assert not data.get('index')
    assert not data.get('pathSegment')
    assert not data.get('extension')
    assert not data.get('httpCookie')
    assert not data.get('httpHeader')
    assert not data.get('tmName')

def test_create_http_uri_unsupported_match():
    name="0"

    with pytest.raises(ValueError):
        condition = Condition(name, conditions['http_uri_unsupported'])

def test_create_http_unsupported_operand_type():
    name="0"
    with pytest.raises(ValueError):
        condition = Condition(name, conditions['http_unsupported_operand_type'])

def test_create_http_uri_path_segment_match():
    name="0"
    condition = Condition(name, conditions['http_uri_path_segment'])
    data = condition.data

    assert condition.name == "0"
    assert not condition.partition

    assert data.get('httpUri')
    assert data.get('pathSegment')
    assert data.get('values') == ["articles"]
    assert data.get('index') == 2

    assert 'httpHost' not in data
    assert 'httpCookie' not in data
    assert 'httpHeader' not in data

    assert not data.get('equals')
    assert data.get('startsWith')
    assert not data.get('endsWith')
    assert not data.get('contains')

    assert not data.get('missing')
    assert not data.get('not')
    assert not data.get('caseSensitive')

    assert not data.get('path')
    assert not data.get('extension')
    assert not data.get('httpCookie')
    assert not data.get('httpHeader')
    assert not data.get('tmName')

def test_create_http_uri_extension_match():
    name="0"
    condition = Condition(name, conditions['http_uri_extension'])
    data = condition.data

    assert condition.name == "0"
    assert not condition.partition

    assert data.get('httpUri')
    assert data.get('extension')
    assert data.get('values') == ["htm"]

    assert 'httpHost' not in data
    assert 'httpCookie' not in data
    assert 'httpHeader' not in data

    assert not data.get('equals')
    assert data.get('startsWith')
    assert not data.get('endsWith')
    assert not data.get('contains')

    assert not data.get('missing')
    assert not data.get('not')
    assert not data.get('caseSensitive')

    assert not data.get('index')
    assert not data.get('path')
    assert not data.get('pathSegment')
    assert not data.get('httpCookie')
    assert not data.get('httpHeader')
    assert not data.get('tmName')

def test_create_http_cookie_match():
    name="0"
    condition = Condition(name, conditions['http_cookie'])
    data = condition.data

    assert condition.name == "0"
    assert not condition.partition

    assert data.get('httpCookie')
    assert data.get('tmName') == "Cookie"
    assert data.get('values') == ["sessionToken=abc123"]

    assert 'httpHost' not in data
    assert 'httpUri' not in data
    assert 'httpHeader' not in data

    assert not data.get('equals')
    assert not data.get('startsWith')
    assert not data.get('endsWith')
    assert data.get('contains')

    assert not data.get('missing')
    assert not data.get('not')
    assert not data.get('caseSensitive')

    assert not data.get('index')
    assert not data.get('path')
    assert not data.get('pathSegment')

def test_create_http_header_match():
    name="0"
    condition = Condition(name, conditions['http_header'])
    data = condition.data

    assert condition.name == "0"
    assert not condition.partition

    assert data.get('httpHeader')
    assert data.get('tmName') == "Host"
    assert data.get('values') == ["www.acme.com"]

    assert 'httpHost' not in data
    assert 'httpUri' not in data
    assert 'httpCookie' not in data

    assert not data.get('equals')
    assert not data.get('startsWith')
    assert not data.get('endsWith')
    assert data.get('contains')

    assert not data.get('missing')
    assert not data.get('not')
    assert not data.get('caseSensitive')

    assert not data.get('index')
    assert not data.get('path')
    assert not data.get('pathSegment')

def test_equal_conditions():
    name="0"
    condition_1 = Condition(name, conditions['http_host'])
    condition_2 = Condition(name, conditions['http_host'])

    assert id(condition_1) != id(condition_2)
    assert condition_1 == condition_2

    condition_1.data['values'].pop()

    assert not condition_1 == condition_2
    assert condition_1 != condition_2

    fake_condition = {
        "httpHost": False,
        "values": ["www.my-site.com"]
    }

    assert condition_1 != fake_condition
    assert condition_1 != conditions['http_uri_path']

def test_str_condition():
    name="0"
    condition = Condition(name, conditions['http_host'])

    assert str(condition)

def test_uri_path(bigip):
    name="0"
    condition = Condition(name, conditions['http_host'])

    with pytest.raises(NotImplementedError):
        condition._uri_path(bigip)


text:
<?php

namespace Oro\Bundle\DataGridBundle\Tests\Unit\Extension\MassAction;

use Oro\Bundle\DataGridBundle\Datagrid\DatagridInterface;
use Oro\Bundle\DataGridBundle\Exception\LogicException;
use Oro\Bundle\DataGridBundle\Exception\UnexpectedTypeException;
use Oro\Bundle\DataGridBundle\Extension\Acceptor;
use Oro\Bundle\DataGridBundle\Extension\Action\ActionConfiguration;
use Oro\Bundle\DataGridBundle\Extension\ExtensionVisitorInterface;
use Oro\Bundle\DataGridBundle\Extension\MassAction\Actions\MassActionInterface;
use Oro\Bundle\DataGridBundle\Extension\MassAction\MassActionExtension;
use Oro\Bundle\DataGridBundle\Extension\MassAction\MassActionHandlerInterface;
use Oro\Bundle\DataGridBundle\Extension\MassAction\MassActionHelper;
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\ContainerInterface;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;

class MassActionHelperTest extends \PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase
{
    const MASS_ACTION_NAME = 'massActionName';
    const HANDLER_SERVICE_ID = 'handlerServiceId';

    /**
     * @var ContainerInterface|\PHPUnit\Framework\MockObject\MockObject
     */
    protected $container;

    /**
     * @var MassActionHelper
     */
    protected $massActionHelper;

    protected function setUp()
    {
        $this->container = $this->createMock(ContainerInterface::class);
        $this->massActionHelper = new MassActionHelper($this->container);
    }

    public function testGetHandlerWhenNoHandlerOptionExists()
    {
        $this->expectException(LogicException::class);
        $this->expectExceptionMessage(sprintf('There is no handler for mass action "%s"', self::MASS_ACTION_NAME));

        $massAction = $this->creatMassAction(ActionConfiguration::create([]));

        $this->massActionHelper->getHandler($massAction);
    }

    public function testGetHandlerWhenNoHandlerServiceExists()
    {
        $this->expectException(LogicException::class);
        $this->expectExceptionMessage(sprintf('Mass action handler service "%s" not exist', self::HANDLER_SERVICE_ID));

        $massAction = $this->creatMassAction(ActionConfiguration::create(['handler' => self::HANDLER_SERVICE_ID]));

        $this->container
            ->expects($this->once())
            ->method('has')
            ->with(self::HANDLER_SERVICE_ID)
            ->willReturn(false);

        $this->massActionHelper->getHandler($massAction);
    }

    public function testGetHandlerWhenHandlerIsOfBadInterface()
    {
        $this->expectException(UnexpectedTypeException::class);

        $massAction = $this->creatMassAction(ActionConfiguration::create(['handler' => self::HANDLER_SERVICE_ID]));

        $this->container
            ->expects($this->once())
            ->method('has')
            ->with(self::HANDLER_SERVICE_ID)
            ->willReturn(true);

        $this->container
            ->expects($this->once())
            ->method('get')
            ->with(self::HANDLER_SERVICE_ID)
            ->willReturn(new \stdClass());

        $this->massActionHelper->getHandler($massAction);
    }

    public function testGetHandlerWhenHandler()
    {
        $massAction = $this->creatMassAction(ActionConfiguration::create(['handler' => self::HANDLER_SERVICE_ID]));

        $this->container
            ->expects($this->once())
            ->method('has')
            ->with(self::HANDLER_SERVICE_ID)
            ->willReturn(true);

        $handler = $this->createMock(MassActionHandlerInterface::class);
        $this->container
            ->expects($this->once())
            ->method('get')
            ->with(self::HANDLER_SERVICE_ID)
            ->willReturn($handler);

        $this->assertSame($handler, $this->massActionHelper->getHandler($massAction));
    }

    public function testGetMassActionByNameWhenNoMassActionExtension()
    {
        /** @var DatagridInterface|\PHPUnit\Framework\MockObject\MockObject $dataGrid */
        $dataGrid = $this->createMock(DatagridInterface::class);

        /** @var ExtensionVisitorInterface|\PHPUnit\Framework\MockObject\MockObject $extension */
        $extension = $this->createMock(ExtensionVisitorInterface::class);

        $this->setDatagridExtensions($dataGrid, [$extension]);

        $this->expectException(LogicException::class);
        $this->expectExceptionMessage('No MassAction extension found for the datagrid.');

        $this->massActionHelper->getMassActionByName(self::MASS_ACTION_NAME, $dataGrid);
    }

    public function testGetMassActionByNameWhenNoMassAction()
    {
        /** @var DatagridInterface|\PHPUnit\Framework\MockObject\MockObject $dataGrid */
        $dataGrid = $this->createMock(DatagridInterface::class);

        /** @var MassActionExtension|\PHPUnit\Framework\MockObject\MockObject $extension */
        $extension = $this->createMock(MassActionExtension::class);
        $extension
            ->expects($this->once())
            ->method('getMassAction')
            ->with(self::MASS_ACTION_NAME, $dataGrid)
            ->willReturn(null);

        $this->setDatagridExtensions($dataGrid, [$extension]);

        $this->expectException(LogicException::class);
        $this->expectExceptionMessage(sprintf('Can\'t find mass action "%s"', self::MASS_ACTION_NAME));

        $this->massActionHelper->getMassActionByName(self::MASS_ACTION_NAME, $dataGrid);
    }

    public function testGetMassActionByName()
    {
        /** @var DatagridInterface|\PHPUnit\Framework\MockObject\MockObject $dataGrid */
        $dataGrid = $this->createMock(DatagridInterface::class);

        /** @var MassActionInterface $massAction */
        $massAction = $this->createMock(MassActionInterface::class);

        /** @var MassActionExtension|\PHPUnit\Framework\MockObject\MockObject $extension */
        $extension = $this->createMock(MassActionExtension::class);
        $extension
            ->expects($this->once())
            ->method('getMassAction')
            ->with(self::MASS_ACTION_NAME, $dataGrid)
            ->willReturn($massAction);

        $this->setDatagridExtensions($dataGrid, [$extension]);

        $this->assertSame($massAction, $this->massActionHelper->getMassActionByName(self::MASS_ACTION_NAME, $dataGrid));
    }

    public function testIsRequestMethodAllowed()
    {
        /** @var MassActionInterface|\PHPUnit\Framework\MockObject\MockObject $massAction */
        $massAction = $this->createMock(MassActionInterface::class);
        $massAction
            ->expects($this->any())
            ->method('getOptions')
            ->willReturn(
                ActionConfiguration::create(
                    [
                        MassActionExtension::ALLOWED_REQUEST_TYPES => [Request::METHOD_GET, Request::METHOD_POST]
                    ]
                )
            );

        $this->assertTrue($this->massActionHelper->isRequestMethodAllowed($massAction, Request::METHOD_GET));
        $this->assertFalse($this->massActionHelper->isRequestMethodAllowed($massAction, Request::METHOD_DELETE));
    }

    /**
     * @param $datagrid
     * @param array $extensions
     */
    private function setDatagridExtensions($datagrid, array $extensions)
    {
        $acceptor = $this->createMock(Acceptor::class);

        $acceptor
            ->expects($this->once())
            ->method('getExtensions')
            ->willReturn($extensions);

        /** @var Acceptor|\PHPUnit\Framework\MockObject\MockObject $datagrid */
        $datagrid
            ->expects($this->once())
            ->method('getAcceptor')
            ->willReturn($acceptor);
    }

    /**
     * @param ActionConfiguration $actionConfiguration
     * @return MassActionInterface|\PHPUnit\Framework\MockObject\MockObject
     */
    private function creatMassAction(ActionConfiguration $actionConfiguration)
    {
        /** @var MassActionInterface|\PHPUnit\Framework\MockObject\MockObject $massAction **/
        $massAction = $this->createMock(MassActionInterface::class);

        $massAction
            ->expects($this->any())
            ->method('getName')
            ->willReturn(self::MASS_ACTION_NAME);

        $massAction
            ->expects($this->any())
            ->method('getOptions')
            ->willReturn($actionConfiguration);

        return $massAction;
    }
}


I just through this together, I hope you like it.
If $data = "" Then $data = "N/A"
If $data = "8" Then $data = "Forever"
$data = ControlListView("µTorrent 1.6", "", "SysListView321", "GetText", $i, $r) & "|"
If $data = "|" Then $data = "N/A"
If $data = "8|" Then $data = "Forever|"
Interesting idea zero. I guess if you had a really important download this would come in handy!
There is no functionality yet, it is the layout and the data file handling only.
If I had a T-Mobile I would give it a go.
uTorrent has a _really_ great WebUI btw.
This is a great concept. With modifications, this coudl be used to show you updates on many different things using your cell phone.
No doubt i will use this for something!
Thank you, The script is not yet done and may not even function properly but my up-to-date code is there. I am working on the PHP script so that everyone that wants this just has to run the script and create a user account on my site and just login and get,edit, or add torrents.
this web ui is great.
Still looking forward for an update, specially the "Error handling"


- Dimensiones: 22.86cm. x 15.24cm. x 1.90cm.
Welcome to the world of Family constellations. Family and other forms of constellations constitute one of the most effective and thrilling modern therapeutic / Counseling methods that will help you improve your relationships and life in general by allowing love to flow again. Not since Freud has the realm of psychology and Counseling seen such groundbreaking insights as those provided by Hellinger, the founder of Family constellations. Constellation work is a universal tool that will enable you to identify and resolve problems in any sphere of life, including personal relationships, health, and the workplace. This easy-to-read book comprehensively explains the method and theory of Family constellations. To augment understanding, the text is illustrated with detailed, authentic case studies from Indras practice. The latest research and innovative applications of systemic constellations, such as organizational, structural, and table constellations, are also discussed, as well as relevant scientific research. Whether you are a layman or spiritual seeker interested in improving your life or a therapist / counselor interested in adding another dimension to your therapeutic skills arsenal, this book is an indispensable treasure trove of information and insights that will go a long way in helping you find true understanding about Family constellations and how relationships work. The second edition comes with a general improvement of language and grammar.


In recent years, the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism has been putting a focus on encouraging Japanese travelers to visit Vietnam. Part of this effort has been to make it easier for tourists to get visas.
Most Japanese visitors traveling to Vietnam will fly into Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang International Airport in Da Nang, or Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi. Some of the most flown airlines between the two countries are Vietnam Airlines, Japan Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Asiana Airlines, Cathay Dragon, Cathay Pacific, Korean Air, and All Nippon Airways. Much like with many other starting locations, the most inexpensive flights are usually to Ho Chi Minh City, but many Japanese tourists are finding Da Nang to be quite accommodating with its seaside landscape and welcoming culture. It also offers vacationers a quiet, peaceful beach setting away from the busyness of Ho Chi Minh City.
Do You Need a Vietnam Visa from Japan?
Japanese citizens don't always need a visa to travel to Vietnam. If your trip is 14 days or less, you can visit the country without an entry visa. When you go for more than two weeks or will be making multiple visits within a longer period of time, you have to apply for a Vietnam visa. Additionally, Japanese travelers will need to wait 30 days after leaving Vietnam before returning if they do not want to go through the process of obtaining a visa for the second visit.
The easiest and most recommended option for getting your Vietnam visa when traveling from Japan is to do Vietnam Visa On Arrival. This method is only available to those flying into one of Vietnam's international airports. To request an entry visa, simply fill out the application form online through our website. In as little as one hour (up to two business days), you will receive a visa approval via email. Print this out and take it with you on your flight. When you get to Vietnam, immigrations officers will give you your stamp and entry visa.
The second way to get your Vietnam visa is to go through the closest consulate to you. You will need to submit your passport and a visa application to your Vietnam Embassy. In less than two weeks, you will be able to go back and pick up your stamped visa, which you must take with you on your trip to get into the country.
If you have any questions about how to acquire your Vietnam visa and whether you need one, contact our support team by email at support@vietnamvisa.govt.vn, or call us at +84 12 32 320 320.


text:
A long farewell to Yugoslavia
In an interview with Martin Meyer and Andreas Breitenstein, Peter Handke discusses what happened in the break-up of the former Yugoslavia
With Montenegro's declaration of independence three weeks ago, the multi-ethnic experiment that was Yugoslavia has come to a conclusive end. The story of the Yugoslavia's war of dissolution, from 1991 to 1999, has still not been settled – its causes are far too complex. Since 1996, Austrian playwright Peter Handke has taken a stance for the Serbs, feeling that guilt was assigned to them irresponsibly.
Contesting the decisive role of Serbian nationalism in the war, Handke comes more and more to the defence of Slobodan Milosevic and his regime. With the recent retraction of the Heinrich Heine Prize, Handke is back in the headlines.
Neue Zürcher Zeitung: Peter Handke, we live in "interesting" times. There have been polemical controversies and discussions about the Heinrich Heine Prize, which was awarded to you and then retracted. (more here) Now you have said you don't want it. What do you make of all this?
Peter Handke: If I were not the one affected, I would respond emotionally – with Schadenfreude or disgust, fury or gratification. But because I'm the object of all this, I can't. I'm calm, I feel like I'm living in the midst of a paper storm.
As the political author that you are, the outcry must have an impact. Or are you able to remain distanced?
I don't want to be distanced. I'm not a distance person by nature. I'm someone who shapes feelings – I am moved and I want to move others. Distance is very important in literature. Maintaining the right distance from people – when am I too far, when am I too close. Of course, I'm involved. I want it to continue. I want something to open up, which is why I wrote an article in Liberation, hoping that people will return to what it is that I actually wrote. That they don't just look at what I wrote about Yugoslavia, but that they consider how I write, my view, my rhythm. It seems to me that now we can hold a kind of discussion about the Yugoslav problem that would not have been possible before.
With the Yugoslav problem, the walls went up immediately. There were some who knew: this is the situation, this is how we should talk about it. You can only say this and that and only in a particular journalistic style. But in the meantime, another way of speaking has emerged that is not going to disappear.
Has the understanding of the role Serbia played in the Yugoslav war changed since you first took your stance in 1995?
It's a tragic thing. Serbia is the most lost country in Europe. You can't say that the people are to blame for what happened. But by immediately subjecting the story to black and white logic, something went very wrong, in my opinion. There were and are other bad things, but this issue with grammatical-linguistic form was extreme; journalists think that they can write history. I am constantly being accused of wanting to write history anew, simply because I write differently. I always thought it was historians that wrote history, which is questionable enough in itself.
In order to understand Yugoslavia, don't we have to go way back in the history, and ask how it ever came to this, look for the original constellation that gave rise to the situation that developed?
How far should we look back? You can go back to two centuries before Christ, as the Slovenes did, and say, we're not Slavs, we're Illyrians and therefore we don't need Yugoslavia. History can be used for any purpose. I see Yugoslavia II beginning with Tito's partisan army, following Yugoslavia I, which began in 1918 and ended with the German invasion in 1941. From 1941 to 1945, Yugoslavia was enslaved by the Nazis, and it was the first to liberate itself, pretty much on its own. The people of Yugoslavia can be very proud of their second Yugoslavia.
And the first one, the royal Yugoslavia?
Yugoslavia was a very complicated country. It is said that Yugoslavia was artificial from the beginning. That's not fair. What's artificial? Every country is artificial from the beginning. The kind of enthusiasm that the people of Yugoslavia showed in 1918, after the First World War, during which it suffered unbelievable losses, is not artificial. After the Second World War there was even greater enthusiasm among Yugoslavs for having liberated themselves. Added to that is the fact that Yugoslavia went its own political way after 1945. The movement of the non-aligned nations was targeted against Stalinist communism and American "imperialism". But because the economy no longer functioned in Yugoslavia, all was lost. Wherever the economy doesn't work, nationalisms arise. Brutal and aggressive. Every country looks to its own advantage.
Is it not an over-simplification to reduce the Second World War to a war of liberation for the Balkans? It was also to a large extent a civil war, in which everyone was fighting against everyone else: Ustasha (the Croatian fascists), Chetniks (the Serb royalists), communist Partisans, Bosnian Muslims, Germans, Italians… Historically, the internecine murder after 1945 was never overcome.
One has to consider that the Partisans were in all of Yugoslavia. They were also in Slovenia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia. The Partisans were Yugoslavs.
But there was first, of course, an anti-movement. A war of liberation has to be fought against something.
Against the German occupation. The Chetniks were a Serbian liberation movement and the Partisans, a Yugoslav one.
But it's also a fact that many internal scores from before the war were settled in the course of it. Roughly half of the 1.7 million Yugoslav war victims were killed by fellow Yugoslavs. Just think of the British army's handover of the Slovenian homeland army to Tito's Partisans in the spring of 1945. 12,000 men who had sought asylum in Austria met their death. The same happened to 20,000 Croats in Bleiburg. They were shot right away or died on death marches.
That's a horrible story. But it was clearly revenge against those who had allied with Hitler and Stalin, who had caused immense atrocities. They were killed out of revenge.
These crimes were taboos in the Tito-state; Partisans could only be "heroes". But the spirit of revenge and evil lived on in the collective unconscious. After the iron brace of communism had fallen away, it was easy to be re-awakened with propaganda and provocation.
No, no. It was Hitler's army that wrought unprecedented damage on the Balkans. The Germans had used the nationalists to murder. That was the clever thing about the Nazis. They avoided getting their own hands dirty. It's clear to me that the revenge was revenge. As a writer I can't say that I'm for revenge but that's the way it must be seen.
A Fourth, NATO Reich over Europe, preparing to fight Iran and Russia
As a writer, you stand for the opposite of revenge.
You can't understand revenge, you can only describe where it comes from. But you can't posit the two sides as equals. The Partisans were really freedom fighters, people who fought for Yugoslavia.
The rebirth of Yugoslavia after the Second World War has a lot to do with its need to defend itself. Is that enough to carry a multi-ethnic state into the future?
It wasn't just that. The need to defend came more out of the enthusiasm for Yugoslavia. For a Yugoslavia beyond the kingdom, whatever that might be. That was Yugoslavia energy. I can't imagine that it will ever die – whether you call it nostalgia or not.
What exactly went wrong later?
The economy went wrong.
In other words, the system?
The Yugoslav system was, contrary to communism in the East Bloc, a utopian system, with its model of self-determination or self-regulation of enterprise. Obviously it could only work if global import and export was functioning smoothly. The fall of the Berlin Wall made Yugoslavia a loser.
The transformation of a federal state into a federation of states could have been the solution.
Yes, but not a civil war.
At first, the Western states responded with helplessness to the war.
The cluelessness of many Western states stems from a certain long duration which defines history. It all goes back to Sarajevo in 1914. How the Islamic states responded to the disintegration of Yugoslavia relates to the long period of Turkish rule. The longue duree determines the outcome of many critical moments – that seems to be a rule of history, and a horrible one. There is a deep enmity between the peoples and this comes to the fore in particular moments. But when the economy no longer works… God help us. I love the economy. It's part of human movement. It enlivens, it liberates, it expands. At least as a possibility. Whether it works in reality is another matter.
If Yugoslavia was failing for economic reasons, what was spark that caused the system to explode?
There were many Croats, Slovenes and Bosnians who fled the country after World War II for political reasons and who had the means to get things started again. Whether in Milwaukee or Buenos Aires – they were waiting for Yugoslavia to show a weakness. They didn't want to spend all their lives abroad. The result is obvious today: Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia have rightist governments. They have built up their states.
Why were these enmities so tenacious?
That's the Balkans. If Yugoslavia as a system had continued to function as an encompassing state, they would have weakened. I have to keep returning to the economy. The downfall of Yugoslavia was, among other things, a self fulfilling prophecy. In the ten years after Tito's death, it was hammered into them. Yugoslavia will collapse. But precisely at that time, I was aware of an unbelievable enthusiasm for Yugoslavia.
How did the government in Belgrade respond to the threat of collapse?
Serbia was the only country that could only lose in the collapse of Yugoslavia. It was the country that had large minorities in almost all the other republics. A million Serbs were living in Croatia, they made up over 30% of the population in Bosnia. That's why Milosevic was against the collapse of Yugoslavia right till the bitter end – unlike the Croats and Slovenes. How were the Serbs supposed to react? In Croatia, the horribly anti-Semitic Tudjman was at the helm – unfortunately almost nobody in this country knows what kind of evil stupidities he wrote. And in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Izetbegovic wanted to found a theocratic Islamic state.
Even if the Muslims had wanted that, which we doubt, they wouldn't have been able to achieve it. The Muslims wanted to hold onto the entire Bosnian state. The Yugoslav People's Army and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia were dominated by Serbs. The general problem was that anyone in Croatia or Slovenia who opposed the communist power apparatus and demanded democracy, was automatically turning against Serbia.
That's not true. Tudjman had pushed through a constitution that made the Croatian Serbs a minority and thus second class citizens. That's war, is it not? What were the Serbs supposed to do? I personally would not have started a war. But it's clear that the war was started by the physical law of action and reaction.
The problem was that Yugoslavia would have had to enact a complete economic and political system change at the same time. That's what caused the failure of the Soviet Union as well.
The economic system change would have come. Milosevic was in the USA for a long time, he was at root a banker and a lawyer. His kind of socialism was one that served the interests of the market. We shouldn't damn everything. And leave the Soviet Union out of it. Yugoslavia is Yugoslavia.
Milosevic and his people did everything in their power to monopolise and unleash nationalist sentiment.
Slobodan Milosevic wanted to hold onto Yugoslavia to the bitter end. Have you read a statement from him that was comparable to the nationalist baiting of Tudjman or Izetbegovic? Never. He never wrote anything, never said anything. There was the speech in 1989 on the Kosovo Field, on the occasion of the 600 year anniversary of the Serbian defeat by the Turks, where he said that the Serbs were engaged in battles and were facing battles. I think it's malicious to interpret this as the aspiration for a greater Serbia. He says other fighting awaited – not new fighting. And anyway, that's the only place where you can discuss what was meant. I'm convinced that he wasn't thinking of war.
Nonetheless, Serbian nationalism and the idea of a greater Serbia became a factor that drove on the war. Ethnic cleansing was conducted on a grand scale in the name of greater Serbia, especially in Bosnia.
Where is the order from Milosevic? How can he be brought together with Srebrenica? I don't know. By the way, Milosevic was no dictator, he was an autocrat at the helm of a semi-authoritarian regime. The press was free, television was state-run. I have no opinion about Milosevic. None. I can't find him good or bad. I don't want to compare him with Hitler or Ceausescu or Saddam Hussein, I find that wrong. To posit Milosevic as the big bad guy of the wars in the Balkans is an over-simplification.
You were certainly aware that going to his funeral and holding a speech would be seen as a provocation.
I know Milosevic's hometown of Pozarevac well, it's a beautiful city on the River Morava. The fact that the correspondent from Le Monde called it a soulless city was reason enough for me to go to the funeral. It's true, I felt strange about it. But I thought that I'd like to see it. A year before, I had visited Milosevic in jail and his family called and asked if I would like to be there. At first I thought, no, that will be torture. But then I read in the newspapers all that hatred of a man who had just died.
US-Neocons-Israel threaten Iran-Europe-Japan-Russia-China with War in the Gulf
One of the main reasons for your engagement in Serbia is the media, the reportage that you found massively distorted.
It's the language. That one is not allowed to write that way about Yugoslavia. That the language is debauched with one stroke. There are journalistic articles that open the heart or fire the spirit but here, something horrible happened. When I was writing my "A Journey to the Rivers" (review), I experienced Serbia in a totally new way under the embargo. Later, people made fun of me for writing that the noodles in the Belgrade market were "off-yellow". They were, really. It's the country of such things.
Let's talk about the war crimes tribunal in the Hague. You called the whole thing illegitimate.
No, only with respect to Milosevic. In the courtrooms, where the actual war crimes are at issue, they are doing good work to clarify and judge. But in the trial of Milosevic, many mistakes were made due to biases. I would have liked the trial to be held in Serbia. Unfortunately Izetbegovic and Tudjman are dead, they should also have been put on trial.
You made fun of the judges from Korea and Jamaica. They may not have been criminal justices but is it not possible that they had extremely good common sense?
That's possible. I agree. The Koreans were the only ones who spoke out against the other two judges who wanted to deny Milosevic the right to defend himself. That allowed him to continue to act in his own defence.
Can you understand why some people take unkindly to your disqualifications?
I'm still convinced it's not right for civil rights experts from Korea to rule on Balkan matters. You have to understand the Balkans to do that. Common sense. Whatever. There's definitely a problem there.
But that means that you think the court in the Hague could have a positive effect.
Certainly. I thought I had made that clear. The Balkan problem is the role played by the local bosses. It's often compared to the Hitler system but that's a false parallel. Things were not centrally steered.
Would you support Mladic and Karadzic being delivered to the Hague?
I would not find it unproblematic, because they have already been so pre-judged. Their guilt would have to be proven. I personally would like to know what exactly the charge against Mladic is. And why, after the fall of Srebrenica, he let women and children get in buses and then disappeared for a few days. But of course: the trial has to take place. And if Mladic did what he has been accused of, then he has to be convicted.
The evidence in the case of Srebrenica seems to us to be quite clear.
There were thirty to forty Serbian villages around Srebrenica which the Muslim militia attacked when they broke out of the siege. That doesn't mean that what happened after Srebrenica was occupied in July 1995 can be justified. It's gruesome what the Serbs did there, the Serbian paramilitary that came from the other side of the River Drina. It's horrible, an eternal disgrace.
In trying to explain the massacre at Srebrenica, you have mentioned the one at Kravica, in which Muslim fighters killed around 50 people, roughly a third of them civilians. As horrible as that was, it's hard to compare it to the systematic murder of thousands of Muslim men. The murder at Srebrenica was a major logistical action. It's not easy to kill thousands of people in a few days.
That's true. Grotesque. But, today "relativise" has become a bad word. I relativise. I say "Srebrenica" was blind and evil revenge for the murder of over a thousand Serbs around Srebrenica in the three years before.
No one contests the crime of Kravica. But your revenge thesis seems to play it down. Revenge is situated on the affective plane. But what characterises the massacre of Srebrenica is its very scale. Perhaps it would be better to use the term hatred.
You're not wrong there. I did experience hatred, in Kosovo. Once when I was there I asked Serbs why they hate the two million Albanians so much. They said they were angry that all this had happened after they'd done so much, even wooed the Albanians to stay in Yugoslavia. With the Albanians it's different. I saw that in the villages, those impoverished, appallingly doleful Serbian enclaves we visited by bus. The bus was covered with Cyrillic letters. The first time a stone hit it, you could still see the humour. But when it started happening every ten minutes, it wasn't so harmless any more. That's hatred.
Where does that hatred come from?
I don't know. Don't ask me. People turn a blind eye to it.
You said the Kosovo Albanians had been wooed. But in 1989 it was Milosevic who did away with their autonomy, which was a remnant from Tito's times. In doing so, he added fuel to the Yugoslav republics' aversion to Belgrade, and accelerated the dynamic of disintegration. The Serbian repression in Kosovo and in Vojvodina worked in favour of nationalists in Croatia and Slovenia.
The Serbs are a generous people. Please believe that. Nowhere in Europe have so many minorities been able to live so freely as in Serbia.
Milosevic also put the screws to that in the final days of Yugoslavia.
That's not true. It's tragic: two million Kosovo Albanians. The Kosovo Serbs were backed into a corner for purely demographic reasons. The Albanians had bought up the land from the Serbs, and all the Serbs had left was fear. That's why I was so impressed when I went to Pristina in 1996. Huge banners with the words "We are not alone" in Cyrillic lettering hung from windows in the city centre. The Serbs were totally surrounded.
One consequence of the Serbian massacre in the UN protection zone of Srebrenica, which took place practically under the public eye, was the NATO bombing of Serbia. The fear was rife that something similar could happen in Kosovo.
In Kosovo there was the so-called massacre of Racak. But when a journalist from Le Monde found out that a lot of that was staged he was neutralised by the Paris desk. Racak was what sparked the NATO war on March 24, 1999. But do you believe the Albanian masses really fled out of fear? When you wage war, you have to be smart. The Albanians were smart. With around 5,000 soldiers, the Serbian troops weren't in a position to expel two million Albanians.
NATO Launches New Black Sea Force to Target Russia
How would it have been possible to stop the conflict otherwise?
Ask Gerhard Schröder, Tony Blair, Javier Solana or Wesley Clark.
We've never been able to understand why, in taking sides with Serbia, you never showed support for the democratic opposition. That would have been sensible.
Which democratic opposition? There's no democracy any more.
It was the autocrat Milosevic, who you continually defend, that oppressed the opposition and tried to rig elections.
What are you saying? That I support dictatorships – or what? That I'm a communist?
So you do have certain things in common with the opposition.
The term "autocrat" doesn't describe Milosevic. He wasn't even an autocrat in the narrowest sense of the word. He simply couldn't control all the groups of swindlers around him. When the elections were lost, a lot of people in his party just started looking out for themselves.
Resisting a system like that is entirely legitimate.
It was a strange type of resistance. In a lot of places what we're seeing now are Soros democrats. But for me, democracy sponsored from abroad is not a real democracy – it has to come from the people. You can't finance democracy, and you can't export it either.
If democracy has to come from the people, does it have a future in Serbia?
There's no future other than liberal democracy. That is – or could be – the future. But in post-Milosevic Serbia you can't say it had heroic beginnings. There was a pseudo revolution, if you really want to call it that. The storming of the Serbian parliament building in 2000 (timeline). And by the way: when he saw that the people were against him, Milosevic stepped down. I'm not saying all the demonstrators were funded from abroad, but a lot of them were.
We'd like to see Serbia move in the direction of freedom and democracy.
What else? Nobody wants dictatorships or autocrats. That's over for good, I hope. But there are hidden autocracies, even in the West. So the question about my relationship to the Serbian opposition is entirely legitimate. But how should I signal my readiness? No one ever approached me. It's typical of the Balkans that very few people attempt to talk outside their own small circle. No one manages to, not even politicians. But in fact it would be relatively easy. What's missing is the language. Kostunica has no language. Tadic has no language. Seselj is a loudmouth.
How do you view Serbia's perspectives?
Serbia is lost for the moment, but not forever. It doesn't exist any more. The banks are in foreign hands. The post office, television and papers are all in German, Austrian, even Swiss hands. Serbia still exists here and there in the countryside, but Belgrade is a foreign city. Everywhere you can read "Raiffeisenbank". "US Steel" is written across the Serbian steelworks. I'm not saying that's a catastrophe, because the economy has to regenerate itself. Serbia is in a recovery thanks to foreign investment, and there's work. You can't say anything against that.
Will nationalism in the Balkans be tamed when all the new small states enter the EU one day? It seems many peoples need their defiant 19th century.
Yugoslavia was the proof that Europe could have been different. Now almost all we have is the power and dictum Europe and the moralising Europe. Yugoslavia was really a free country.
That's hard to believe.
It was not a country of coercion, not a Stalinistic country.
But it was a country with a system that didn't function economically.
Ultimately I agree with you there. I believe Yugoslavia ran aground on the world system. There's nothing to be done against capitalism and the free market. I repeat: Milosevic wanted the free market, but when it came to that, the Serbs had nothing more to offer. It was too late.
To a certain extent the old Yugoslavia seems to still exist among the intellectuals who provided intellectual cohesion during the war. Authors like Drago Jancar, Slavenka Drakulik, Dubravka Ugresic, Bora Cosic and Dzevad Karahasan. Why are you excluded from this group?
I'm sorry, those are all professional ex-Yugoslavs.
It seems there's no chance for dialogue.
Dialogue is not going to work for the time being.
Are there any Serbian intellectuals that you admire?
Sure, there are many opposition figures, but they aren't supported by Soros. They epitomise what Yugoslavia used to be. I don't speak with nationalists. There are a lot more nationalists than opposition figures. Serbian nationalists that have become orthodox all of a sudden – I'm not interested in that.
And Slovenia, the "ninth land" (a reference to Handke's 1991 book "The Dreamer's Farewell from the Ninth Land" – ed), is no longer a home for you?
Three or four years before the war, Slovenian poets started to say we aren't Yugoslavs, we're Central Europeans. In Croatia we'll make a two-storey high wall against the Serbs, the Macedonians, the Muslims and the Albanians. To put it another way: my hackles rise at the way a region has been made into an ideology. So I said goodbye to Slovenia. To its poets. They've wreaked considerable havoc. Maybe that's overdoing it, but I'd never have done something like that: using a region as a cudgel, using a countryside you love, where the rhythm of the language comes from, to disparage other people.
Slovenia is considered the success story among the countries of the former Yugoslavia. It's in NATO and the EU, its politics are solid, and it is becoming more affluent.
The Slovenians were clever. They thought, we have tourism, we're close to Austria, Germany, Italy. When money's at stake, we don't give a damn about Yugoslavia. I salute Slovenia, if you like. But I don't go around waving the flag. My heart no longer swells at the thought. But maybe that's my problem.
The interview originally appeared in German in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on June 17, 2006.
Peter Handke, born in 1942 in the Austrian town of Griffen, is one of the most successful German-language authors of the post-war generation. He lives near Paris.
Translation: nb, jab.
Published at http://www.signandsight.com/features/819.html
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