Four Secrets of Ukrainian Freedom
How to Resist the Tyranny of the Elites
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Ukrainian Freedom News Weekly Special
How to Resist the Tyranny of the Elites: Here Are Four Ukrainian Secrets
After nearly a year of full-scale war, some of Ukraine's leading victory volunteers gathered at a hidden Carpathian mountain retreat called MC6—not MI6!—to recharge and strategise for victory.
Tucked into the Carpathian mountains, we all found a weekend of peace from missile strikes and air-alarms, although the war’s presence was still heavy, with frequent blackouts and lack of heat. Mountain people know how to survive such things and we carried on by stove and candlelight.
After traditional and nourishing family-style Ukrainian meals, the attendees, about 30 or so, walked up 300 snow-laden steps from the guest house to the mountaintop retreat center. There, ah, in a refugee from the stress, we talked by day and by night, with the help of American musicians, sang and danced in the old set-style. To outsiders, it might seem incongruous: singing and dancing in the war. But to everyone there, Ukrainian, American, and Canadian, it was necessary.
The next morning, I met three of the key volunteer leaders and asked them to define the essential ingredients of a free and civil society, where the people, and not the elites, rule.
Here are the core requirements of a civil and free society, as we devised in the snowy Carpathians:
1. Trust: you’ve got to know, respect, and talk with your fellow citizens
2. Agency: you’ve got to believe you can make good changes
3. Threat: you’ve got to clearly define that which threatens your happiness
4. Roots and rituals: you’ve got to have some anciently-devised traditions that enable conversation, strengthen identity, and reveal hope and beauty With these, I think you can have a will to freedom. But then, sadly, evil elites who like to control might come trying to stomp out your freedom, because such a society is the greatest threat to tyranny. Then you’ve got to fight.
What do you think? What makes for a free society? What makes people work together? Do you have these virtues in your own society? And is it worth the cost, the blood and angst?
For starters, despite the horrible daily news, I see so much joy and especially purpose around me in Ukraine.
DAILY WAR JOURNAL—ON CHICAGO’S WGN RADIO:
War Day 392: The Fierce Freedom of Ukraine's 'Wild Fields'
How Russia Tried to Kill Crimea
from Thursday 23 March: My daily Ukraine report on Chicago's WGN Radio with Bob Sirott
"We could build a future, where people are free," sings Jamala, a Ukrainian Eurovision-winning musician from Crimea, which Russia occupies now and from which in 1944 Stalin brutally deported her people.
Today we talk about what unites Ukrainians, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hutsul, Tatar, Cossack: the freedom of the wild fields. I share the powerful story of the grandmother of my friend Marta, deported by Stalin’s agents to the steppes in a cattle train in the 1940s, only to fight her way back home.
You can listen to Jamala’s song “1944” here. It’s an indictment of Russia from the times of Stalin to now. Her family was exiled in 1944; and again she was exiled in 2014 when Russia took Crimea once again:
“We could build a future, where people are free …
you think you are gods, but everyone dies. Don’t swallow my soul …“They kill you all and say, we’re not guilty”
Xi Jinping’s fake peace proposals
from Rock Rachon on Poland’s English language TVP World
Why did Zelenskiy’s government refuse to condemn Beijing’s abuses on liberty in 2021? Many Ukrainian people were not happy about this.
Guests: Joe Lindsley and Hanna Shen
Xi Jinping's visit to Moscow and talks with notorious war criminal Vladimir Putin are the main subjects of our program today. Our friend Joe Lindsley brings us the perspective of Ukraine into this diplomatic offensive by the leader of communist China. Journalist specializing in Asian affairs Ms. Hanna Shen brings us the perspective of Taiwan, which itself lives in the shadow of great, aggressive, and expansive power - the same one that today in Moscow tries to be considered a „missionary of peace”.
“[It's something rare in our world of corporate and automated radio regular, real humanity.”
—Neil Steinberg, in the Chicago Sun-Times, on Joe Lindsley’s daily Ukraine reports with Bob Sirott of Chicago’s WGN Radio. We invite you to follow on YouTube.
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ABOUT US: Ukrainian Freedom News: The wild story—so far—of free people standing for democracy, faith, dignity
"Joseph Lindsley's reports are enlightening, frightening, heart-wrenchingly and poetically descriptive." —a regular listener to the daily report from Ukraine on Chicago's WGN Radio with Bob Sirott
“I just returned from three months in Ukraine. Not my first time there, and certainly not my last; a powerful experience for me personally, but I must say that JOE’s REPORTING, HIS INSIGHTS, and, OBVIOUSLY, HIS HEART, ARE SPOT-ON.” —Jim, a Telegram follower of Ukrainian Freedom News
American journalist Joe Lindsley, in Ukraine since 2020, leads the Ukrainian Freedom News team of Ukrainians and foreigners on a mission to share real talk and real life in war-time with the world. Every weekday since late February 2022, he has reported live from Ukraine on Chicago’s WGN Radio with host Bob Sirott. You can listen to all episodes at UkrainianFreedomNews.com or via our YouTube channel.
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UKRAINIAN FREEDOM NEWS
Truth to the World | Supplies to Ukraine
Joe Lindsley, Editor-in-chief
Vitalii Gulden, Creative Producer
Beata Szrom, Operations Director
Pavlo Vitenko, Chief Reporter
Anton Hutyriak, Associate Editor
Luka Oleschyuk, Video Editor
Jean-Baptiste Besson, Field Editor
Brennan Phillips, War Columnist