Reflections on the swastika and the RNE movement

"Here the lion loves the lamb, here the predator is gentle and meek. Long live our paradise — a paradise of cages and bars." Niru Bobovai/G.L.O. HI SKEPTIC !!! ;) I'm also writing to you in my wonderful :) MWD. Recently it tried to wipe out a really big chunk of text on D-Man — but the text had been saved beforehand, so it all worked out. The bug's been caught and executed — it happened whenever the format parameters changed while working with a large volume of text. Watch out! The fixed version won't be out for a while yet (that'll be v2.0). Anyway, once you're done typing up this letter (better to type it than to keep swapping ;) sit down with Alasm and write a delete-confirmation procedure for blocks, since it looks like you're really struggling without one ;). By the way, I haven't noticed that kind of thing in PC editors, so it's probably better to turn it on via setup. Or check the first bank, and if it's buggy — that means you started up MWD ;-) and need to switch on confirmations. Thanks for the 12TK buyer! The guy actually sent the money. I already sent a copy a while ago. Drop me a line about how he's doing — was he disappointed or not? I don't feel like writing an article for Buzz, for two reasons. First, Buzz has gone belly-up (whatever D-Man says about it, it'll probably only come out for the Second Coming). Second — I don't want to upset people, softwriters in particular, with news of my commercial flop (default ;), in case some young Mednonogov, or worst case some young Shirokov, gives up on writing their new game once they find out they won't be able to make money off it. It's good that no cracks for 12TK have shown up yet. But I've heard about two more hacking attempts :(, but one of them definitely doesn't work, and as far as I can tell, the second one probably doesn't either. I'm glad my friends from Velikiye Luki have some conscience left. Did you ever answer him, or did you just blow him off? Also, there's something I wanted to talk to you about. It's about using private letters in the e-zine scene. You stuck a piece of Sergius's letter into Born Dead — he's furious about it now. Please don't do that with my letters — I don't like it when random people read my nonsense. That's actually why I'm sending you this letter without going through D-Man. I NEED the viewer's source code !!! I'm urgently working on a text compiler as an overlay for MWD 2.0 (I think I already told you about my plans). Eddie (the one living somewhere in time) is coming along slowly: I'll send you the first sketch through D-Man — take a look, tell me what's off, share your thoughts, and I'll finish drawing and coloring it to match your vision ;). About the boot screen: it's a bit awkward to admit, but that whole thing is bogus and none of my code is in it — it's yours! As far as I remember, that boot got modified specifically for the disks sold through the Kovrov consignment shops, and I have no idea how it ended up with you guys. Please don't include it in the compilation! As for the real author — the boot came to me under the name Softstar, but that's definitely not the real author either. I think the author has to be from Moscow — maybe it's KSA? By the way, my own boot screen does exist — it's called Dark Boot (what else would it be called ;), you've probably seen it: a skull with burning candles, and filenames written on a torn scroll. About your new CD: what's the story with the price? For me it's still the discounted rate — 70 rubles, or do I need to scrape together 5x (I don't think I'll be able to sell it here at that price)? Also, I need to get on your case: where are my disks that I sent you? I've got a catastrophic shortage of disks, and now someone here is trying to hoard them too ;). If it's not too much trouble, load some new PC stuff onto them — like the new Yudin emulator and similar things (on 720kb) and send them back home. Your disc is going to come out great. What's not needed (imho): — video — duplicate programs (better to keep them as .tap), since I see you've already got special folders set aside for duplicates. — scanned game maps. — and most of the artwork too, except for pieces that are clearly original posters from well-known games and are also well drawn. Most drawings don't meet that bar. And the pictures from those "500 games" compilations only make the overall impression worse. What is needed: — constant updates of emulator and software versions for PC. — more console emulators (like Nintendo 64) with a small amount of software for them. Thanks to those, the disc basically costs me nothing, and I'll only be able to sell it thanks to them too, since ZX alone doesn't interest many people. — still try to make this disc bootable ;-). I can't go into more detail, since I still don't have a CD-ROM drive. I'm gradually going through the disc, downloading it via DarkLion (my hard drive's decent too — 250Mb :). Meanwhile the other guys who chipped in on the purchase have gotten to the emulators. They've already beaten both Sonic games and Mario. They're demanding more games. The Amiga didn't impress them much: most of the games are just worse versions of PC games there, nothing worth keeping. Just don't touch the Speccy stuff — it's fun to look at: it's basically like the Speccy with a ton of colors, everything they managed to squeeze out — ideas, design, effects, graphics, music ;-). "The trouble with that damn swastika is that it's far too multivalent a symbol..." A. Burgess, "The Power of the Earth" [paraphrased title]. On the topic of RNU [Russian National Unity]: yes, the swastika really is a pagan symbol, and not just for Slavic peoples but for Western peoples too, and really worldwide. As far as I know, it came from India, both as a symbol and as a name. It was also used in Christianity (they used to carve it on gravestones), and it was even printed on Soviet money for a while, believe it or not. Basically, a swastika shouldn't stand on its edge: turned clockwise it stands for the sun and everything good (like a pentagram point-up), while counterclockwise it stands for night and everything dark — ??? bad ??? (like a pentagram point-down) — that version is called a sauvastika. There are actually lots of names for the swastika, every people calls it something different. Like you correctly wrote, ours was called the "sun-wheel." There's also the "thunder mark," except that one has six bent rays instead. Now, about RNU: some of their ideas resonate with me, but far from all of them. They just hide behind Slavic identity, while underneath it's just ordinary fascism. Just look at their greetings, their Hitler Youth-style get-ups. Maybe someday they'll grow into a genuinely Slavic party. By the way, so far the Russian people have only seen good things from them — maybe that transformation has already started, or maybe once they get into power we'll get a second "Russland über alles." Here's an interesting thing: some German neo-fascists nowadays consider Russians their Aryan brothers and now want to use them to deal with Jews and people of color. Guess we didn't do such a bad job on them in World War II ;-). It's kind of like that joke: "— So, who's coming at me? — Well, I am! — What's your name? — Fedya... — Who's coming at us and Fedya?" Despite the ramble above, I never actually gave you a clear answer on whether the RNU logo is a Slavic symbol. So here it is: more NO than YES. It's more of a fascist Hakenkreuz than a "sun-wheel." Since we're on the subject — I recalled an opinion that the symbol of the Soviet Union, the hammer and sickle, actually stands for more than just the peasant and the worker — it's supposedly a disguised symbol combining two religions: the hammer for the Christian cross, and the sickle with the star for the star and crescent of Islam. So much for the opium of the people ;-). There's nothing really stopping me from "writing a couple of pop-sci articles," just not for Buzz, obviously. The only question is what to write about so it'd actually be interesting to people. So that some jerk doesn't say: he's just trying to show off in front of us. Here's a concrete example: some guy with a fancy name (I don't remember exactly, something Latin) from Optron keeps writing these philosophical treatises stuffed with Latin quotes. Not interesting at all, imho, the guy's just showing off. I wouldn't want to be like him ;-). Honestly, their whole zine is one big showoff-fest: whether you're reading a review of "plasma" ;-) demos from Fantop or a press review, it's all the same. Don't you know some ZX guy who's also into metal, who you could ask to write reviews of death/doom metal events for Born Dead? Because absolutely no information reaches us here in Kovrov: what albums have come out, who Varg's [Vikernes] whacked lately ;-). By the way, I think I sent you my essay on Slavic paganism at some point — did you ever read it? Demiurg Ash EI Kovrov 19-22/03/99 p.s. I've already added a delete-block confirmation request to MWD2.0, switchable via setup. Actually it's about time I made setup itself loadable/unloadable — there are just way too many parameters now. ---ModernWorD 2.0 alpha Origin: "Good... Bad... I'm the guy with the gun" (13:666) Caleb/BlooD