#Afghanistan needs 22 off the final over to win

[thehungrycity]

Watching a great Australia vs Afghanistan T20 world cup match! Also great to see such a large Afghan turnout for it, they're really enjoying the game and it's really coming down to the wire. On the edge of my seat to see who wins!

[newagesispage]

OCTOBER                           2021

 THE RIB PAGE

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We miss U Charlie Watts!!

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The Stones performed at a private party for Patriots owner Robert Kraft of all people. The test run looked like just that. Shark jumped. I am becoming disillusioned.

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SNL is back with Owen Wilson as first host of season 47. Kacey Musgraves is the musical guest. Episode 2 will have a ridic choice for host. Halsey will sing. I suppose $ is power with the Kardashians. I could think of about 10 million other people to host but more and more Lorne goes for the shiny object , what he THINKS people want instead of taking risk. Beck Bennett is out.

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Is everybody watching the Amber Ruffin Show?? I loved her before but now… I learn so much from her show. Sometimes it takes a comic to get to the real serious shit. For example: Have you heard of drowning towns? Towns like Oscarville, Kowaliga, York hill, Seneca Village, Prentiss and countless other black towns that were drowned out to make lakes for the local whites. Central Park was also made after a black community was erased from history. Development displacement? Alleyway dwelling authority? Even those rabid for history can find out new things everyday. Thanks Amber!!

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Bob Woodward and Robert Costa are finally giving us Peril !!!!!!  I’ve been waiting!!** I was in political nerd heaven on Sept. 24 when Yamiche hosted Robert, Bob and Weijia Jang on Washington Week. All of my favorite pundits all together at one table, my dream team!!

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Iman looked great at the Met Gala!! Other great looks belonged to AOC, Tessa Thompson, Maluma, Helen Lasichanb and Pharrell Williams. Gigi Hadid, Kiki Layne, Ashton Sanders, Hailee Steinfeld, Kehlani, Zoe Kravitz, Michaela Cole, Lili Reinhart, Kate Hudson and Shai Gilgeous- Alexander were great. Whoopi Goldberg seemed a bit off.

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Jason Isbell is back with his latest offering, Georgia Blue.

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I see a lot of Title Max type establishment are closing down. Are they a thing of the past? Let’s hope.

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Law and Order is coming back to NBC for season 21. Dick Wolf will own 2 entire nights of television. Some of the old cast is reported to be returning.

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Britney Spears Father was suspended as her conservator.

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Timothy Chalamet, Rowan Atkinson, Sally Hawkins and Olivia Coleman will star in Wonka.

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The 2022 Super Bowl halftime show will bring us Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, Dr. Dre and Kendrick Lamar.

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People are doing test runs for school board positions to see if their political ideas will play well for the big leagues. If they don’t seem to work, at least they can sometimes change the rules in their own area.

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Joe Rogan got Covid.

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Lake Michigan beaches were closed down thanks to a US Steel plant chemical leak.

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Is this country the master of endless administrative work?  None of us should have been surprised at the red tape that the slowed down the end of the war in Afghanistan.** Uber donated 50k for rides and meals to the Afghans when they arrive.**And why do so many waste taxpayer $ on useless recounts and recalls when people need real help with food and healthcare? They must really hate humanity.

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R. Kelly was found guilty of 8 counts of sex trafficking and 1 count of racketeering.

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Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. – Dwight D. Eisenhower

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Texas has put a law into effect to allow most Texans to carry open without permit or training.

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Texas has banned abortion at about 6 weeks. Uber and Lyft will pay drivers legal fees if sued under Texas abortion law. Lyft donated $1mil to Planned Parenthood. ** Look for the ruling in the Mississippi law over Roe V. Wade in June 2022.**Hear us roar!** BTW.. Go Jen Psaki!!!!!!!

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They seriously banned plastic straws and abortion before assault rifles? – Eden Dranger

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Please stop banning abortions, the last thing the world needs is more Americans. –Sarah Beattie

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Women don’t inseminate themselves. Vasectomies are reversible. Should every man have one until he’s deemed financially and emotionally fit to be a Father? – Bradley Whitford

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90 year old William Shatner will go to space for Blue Origin.

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The Q Anon Shaman pled guilty to a felony for obstructing the Electoral College proceedings. I say 20 years and a $250K fine.** 600 others have been indicted.

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Days Alert: The Beyond Salem thing was ridic but it was so great to see some old characters.  Days is so great at visiting old family. Who can resist Shane, Austin and Carrie, Billie and the old Kristen? I do wish that Peacock would get their kinks out!! Back to the real Days: Are we smelling an Emmy for Susan Seaforth Hayes and Bill?? ** Good to have Abigail back. It is always fun to wonder which actress and or personality it will be. ** Deidre Hall got her star on the walk of fame.**And just in time for Halloween, the Devil is making a comeback. The end of the year in Salem is always the best!! It is so brave to give the 96 year old man the old switcheroo into the Dark Lord.  It was fun to see the grandkids discover Grandma Marlena’s story. Delicious!! Hail Satan!!** It is past time for Tate and Teresa to come back to town. Brady needs to be put in his place. And thanks for the Philip and Chloe flashbacks!!

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The breakdown of the vaccinated: 90% of Atheists, 86% Hispanic Catholic, 84% Agnostic, 79% White Catholic, 73% White mainline protestant, 70% Black mainline protestant, 57% white evangelical. 1 in 500 Americans have died of Covid.

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So Mike Lindell and Jim Baker have teamed up to sell children’s Bible pillows.** Piers Morgan has returned to the Murdoch organization by joining Fox. That sounds about right.

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Please stop saying the vaccine does not have severe side effects, I took my shots and now I’m alive and have to keep working. –Mohand Eishieky

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In theatres Oct. 22: The French Dispatch.** October also brings us a new season of Curb your enthusiasm and Oct. 17 will catch us up on Succession. Whew!!!

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So people under conservatorship are not free to marry who they want? What?

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46% of Americans believe in ghosts.

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Simone Biles, Mckayla Maroney and Aly Rasiman testified at  the Senate judiciary hearing about the FBI’s handling of accusations against Larry Nassar and it was eye opening!

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We wanted a no -nonsense Dem who pushes on and does not puss out.  I am a bit surprised to see we have it. There are so many pressing issues that I hope Biden works a bit more on Haiti though.

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The National Police Act was passed to celebrate cops. Still no police reform.

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John Mulaney and Olivia Munn are going to have a baby.

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The Emmy’s were a little different this year with more of a Golden Globe look.  Cedric the Entertainer hosted with Reggie Watts as DJ. Lots of minority noms but barely a win. It was a white people night. Ted Lasso had a great night. Mare of Eastown took home a few with Evan Peters, Julianne Nicholson and Kate Winslet. Now, Kate is great but how did Anya Taylor- Joy not walk away with that? Queens Gambit did win a couple and gave the longest speech with the seemingly arrogant director Scott Frank who opened up 2 page acceptance. Categories were tough but I was routing for Renee Elise Goldberry and Bowen Yang but perhaps next year. The people in England who had their own party for all the statues that the Crown won seemed to be having more fun! Hacks won for writing and directing and Jean Smart!! It was nice to see the Norm Macdonald love which was barely mentioned by Lorne but celebrated by John Oliver. Colbert ‘s election night special won as did JB Smoove. Hamilton won and Debbie Allen got the big one. I do not understand why real singers and or musicians have to be there for the in Memoriam. It takes me out of it a bit and concentrates the focus on them. Do they think that people will pay attention more? Do they want to keep the home audience or live audience from the bathroom?  My best dressed were Anya Taylor-Joy, Michaela Cole who won for I may destroy you, Jean Smart, Josh O’Connor, Kathryn Hahn, Billy Porter, MJ Rodriguez, Keenan Thonpson, Leslie Odom Jr., Catherine O’Hara, Trevor Noah, Eugene Levy, Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys, Bowen Yang,  Anthony Anderson, Leslie Grossman, Amber Ruffin, Allyson Felix, Renee Elise Goldberry, Samira Wiley and Rege- Jean Page. My worst were Sarah Paulson, Gillian Anderson,  Beanie Feldstein, Elizabeth Olsen and Aidy Bryant. To me the best part of the show was the enthusiasm of Conan and the way he injected himself into much of the evening .He was the show.  Go Conan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Next year there must be some Emmys for Sarah Paulson and Cobie Smulders in Impeachment!!!!!

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Oh Boy!! The Eyes of Tammy Faye!!

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Looking forward to the Electric Life of Louis Wain with Benedict Cumberbatch and Claire Foy.

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Abba has a new album!!

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Shang Chi is the biggest Labor Day opening with a $71.4 mil opening.

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Sen. Amy Klobuchar has announced she has breast cancer.

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Is it the 70’s? A streaker ran past the studio of the Today show.

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Rascal Flatts Joe Don Rooney was arrested for DUI.** Nicholas Cage was thrown out of a prime rib pace in Vegas after being drunk and disorderly.

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Jennifer Eckhart has filed a lawsuit against former Fox news anchor Ed Henry for rape and retaliation after allegedly being handcuffed and beaten.

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Scarlett Johansson has settled her Disney lawsuit.

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Pete Buttigieg and Chasten had twins they named Penelope Rose and Joseph August.

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I noticed a commercial for Dancing with the Stars. Are we onto the E list because I have heard of hardly any of these people. ‘Stars’is really stretching it. And as I post this I see there are some covid issues there as well.

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Virgin River was renewed for 2 more seasons.

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Trevor Noah is right? Why do they stop giving lollipops to adults at the doctor?

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Jon Stewart is back on Apple tv with ‘The problem with Jon Stewart.

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Brooklyn 99 had about the best finale (other than Newhart) that I can recall. I had my fingers crossed that Chelsea would be back. Will they honor us like they did in the show and come back for a special about once a year? That would be fucking awesome!!

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Don’t expect compliments from an insecure person.- Mr. Pickles

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Thousands and thousands of people are in need. Haitian refugees and other immigrants have seen nothing like this what with assassination, a hurricane and earthquake. The Southern border is a mess.** Why does Fox news keep telling refugees the border is open as they sit back and laugh at Biden’s predicament.  Spreading false info to intentionally hurt poor, distressed people has no end for them.

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Do companies know how fucked up their employment websites are? It is true that some people do not want to work. It is true that people schedule interviews and don’t show up. It is also true that companies have made it so hard to apply that many can’t. I suppose it is easier for them but the poor who may really want to work have a hard time. Paper applications are almost completely gone. The old fashioned way of walking into low paying job sites and finding a connection with a manager rarely exist. Some places only accept texts or have long ridiculous psych tests that a working Mother may not have time for. A Father working many hours already, may not be able to go to the library to get online if they cannot afford a computer. Many websites tell you that there no positions available in your area while there is a huge sign in front of the establishment. Can’t find people to work.. Gee I wonder why?? And treat people with respect once you find them, how about that?

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Keep your head up in failure, and your head down in success. –Jerry Seinfeld

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Hey.. There was a van air B’n B biz going that got busted. Hey.. The poor need vaca’s too. It is wrong but If they are willing to sleep in a van, why not. I truly think that many do not understand how much people are struggling.

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Free coffee day came and went but only a few places really gave you free coffee without rules to govern the promo. Some places wanted to sell you something else and some made you belong to their club. Starbucks held that customers had to come inside for the free cup of Joe, handicapped or not.

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One would think the Republicans would run out of $ for recounts but they have deep pockets. Just think how much good they could do for the huddled masses with that scratch.

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Sad to lose Mick Brigden, protégé of Bill Graham who managed The Stones and worked with Frampton, Dylan and Santana.** And the comics were very vocal about the loss of Norm Macdonald. He was one of a kind and he will be missed!

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R.I.P. Ruth Marx, Lee Scratch Perry, Willard Scott, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Isadore Bleckman, George Wein, Michael K. William,George Holliday, Anthony Johnson,  Basil Hoffman, Al Harrington,Willie Garson, Mick Brigden, Tommy Kirk and Norm Macdonald.

[newstfionline]

Wednesday, September 22, 2021

Trudeau’s Liberals win Canada election, but miss majority (AP) Canadians gave Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party a victory in Monday’s parliamentary elections, but his gamble to win a majority of seats failed and nearly mirrored the result of two years ago. Trudeau’s Liberals were leading or elected in 156 seats—one less than they won 2019, and 14 short of the 170 needed for a majority in the House of Commons. The Conservatives were leading or elected in 121 seats, the same number they won in 2019. The leftist New Democrats were leading or elected in 27, a gain of three seats, while the Quebec-based Bloc Québécois remained unchanged with 32 seats and the Greens were down to two. “Trudeau lost his gamble to get a majority so I would say this is a bittersweet victory for him,” said Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal. “Basically we are back to square one, as the new minority parliament will look like the previous one. Trudeau and the Liberals saved their skin and will stay in power, but many Canadians who didn’t want this late summer, pandemic election are probably not amused about the whole situation,” he said.

COVID has killed about as many Americans as the 1918-19 flu (AP) COVID-19 has now killed about as many Americans as the 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic did—approximately 675,000. And like the worldwide scourge of a century ago, the coronavirus may never entirely disappear from our midst. Instead, scientists hope the virus that causes COVID-19 becomes a mild seasonal bug as human immunity strengthens through vaccination and repeated infection. That would take time. “We hope it will be like getting a cold, but there’s no guarantee,” said Emory University biologist Rustom Antia, who suggests an optimistic scenario in which this could happen over a few years. For now, the pandemic still has the United States and other parts of the world firmly in its jaws.

Why Louisiana’s Electric Grid Failed in Hurricane Ida (NYT) Just weeks before Hurricane Ida knocked out power to much of Louisiana, leaving its residents exposed to extreme heat and humidity, the chief executive of Entergy, the state’s biggest utility company, told Wall Street that it had been upgrading power lines and equipment to withstand big storms. That statement would soon be tested. On the last Sunday in August, Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana and dealt a catastrophic blow to Entergy’s power lines, towers and poles, many of which were built decades ago to withstand much weaker hurricanes. The storm damaged eight high-voltage transmission lines that supply power to New Orleans along with scores of the company’s towers throughout the state. Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses were without power for days. Ida damaged or destroyed 31,000 poles that carry lower-voltage distribution lines in neighborhoods, nearly twice as many as Hurricane Katrina, according to Entergy. Lawmakers and regulators require utilities to ensure safe, reliable service at an affordable cost. The grid failure after Ida is the latest display of how power companies are struggling to fulfill those obligations as climate change increases the frequency and severity of extreme weather. In California, electricity providers have been forced to shut off power to tens of thousands of customers in recent years to prevent their equipment from setting off wildfires and to reduce energy demand during heat waves. In February, the grid in most of Texas failed during a winter storm, leaving millions of people without power and heat for days.

White House faces bipartisan backlash on Haitian migrants (AP) The White House is facing sharp condemnation from Democrats for its handling of the influx of Haitian migrants at the U.S. southern border, after images of U.S. Border Patrol agents on horseback using aggressive tactics went viral this week. Striking video of agents maneuvering their horses to forcibly block and move migrants attempting to cross the border has sparked resounding criticism from Democrats on Capitol Hill, who are calling on the Biden administration to end its use of a pandemic-era authority to deport migrants without giving them an opportunity to seek asylum in the United States. At the same time, the administration continues to face attacks from Republicans, who say Biden isn’t doing enough to deal with what they call a “crisis” at the border. Immigration is a complex issue, one no administration has been able to fix in decades. And Biden is trapped between conflicting interests of broadcasting compassion while dealing with throngs of migrants coming to the country—illegally—seeking a better life.

Haitian journey to Texas border starts in South America (AP) Robins Exile downed a traditional meal of plantains and chicken at a restaurant run by Haitian immigrants, just a short walk from the walled border with the United States. He arrived the night before and went there seeking advice: Should he try to get to the U.S., or was it better to settle in Mexico? Discussion Monday at the Tijuana restaurant offered a snapshot of Haitians’ diaspora in the Western Hemisphere that picked up steam in 2016 and has shown little sign of easing, demonstrated most recently by the more than 14,000 mostly Haitian migrants assembled around a bridge in Del Rio, a town of only 35,000 people. Of the roughly 1.8 million Haitians living outside their homeland, the United States is home to the largest Haitian immigrant population in the world, numbering 705,000 people from the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country. Significant numbers also live in Latin American countries like Chile, which is home to an estimated 69,000 Haitians. Nearly all Haitians reach the U.S. border on a well-worn route: Fly to Brazil, Chile or elsewhere in South America. If jobs dry up, slowly move through Central America and Mexico by bus and on foot to wait—perhaps years—in northern border cities like Tijuana for the right time to enter the United States and claim asylum.

‘We were them:’ Vietnamese Americans help Afghan refugees (AP) In the faces of Afghans desperate to leave their country after U.S. forces withdrew, Thuy Do sees her own family, decades earlier and thousands of miles away. A 39-year-old doctor in Seattle, Washington, Do remembers hearing how her parents sought to leave Saigon after Vietnam fell to communist rule in 1975 and the American military airlifted out allies in the final hours. It took years for her family to finally get out of the country, after several failed attempts, and make their way to the United States, carrying two sets of clothes a piece and a combined $300. When they finally arrived, she was 9 years old. These stories and early memories drove Do and her husband Jesse Robbins to reach out to assist Afghans fleeing their country now. The couple has a vacant rental home and decided to offer it up to refugee resettlement groups, which furnished it for newly arriving Afghans in need of a place to stay. “We were them 40 years ago,” Do said. “With the fall of Saigon in 1975, this was us.” The crisis in Afghanistan has spurred many Vietnamese Americans to donate money to refugee resettlement groups and raise their hands to help by providing housing, furniture and legal assistance to newly arriving Afghans.

‘Crisis of trust’: France bristles at US submarine deal (AP) France’s top diplomat declared Monday that there is a “crisis of trust” in the United States after a Pacific defense deal stung France and left Europe wondering about its longtime ally across the Atlantic. France canceled meetings with British and Australian officials and worked to rally EU allies behind its push for more European sovereignty after being humiliated by a major Pacific defense pact orchestrated by the U.S. Speaking to reporters in New York, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said European countries won’t let Washington leave them behind when shaping its foreign policy. Le Drian reiterated complaints that his country was sandbagged by the submarine deal between the U.S., Britain and Australia, which led to France losing a contract to sell subs to Australia. Washington, London and Canberra say the deal bolsters their commitment to the Indo-Pacific region, and it has widely been seen as an effort to counter an increasingly assertive China. But Le Drian, who is in New York to represent France at the U.N. General Assembly, said it was a “brutal, unexpected and unexplained breach” of a contract—and a relationship.

Pedestrians take to the streets of Paris to celebrate the city’s seventh annual ‘day without cars’ (Business Insider) On Sunday, Paris turned over its streets to pedestrians so that citizens and visitors could enjoy its seventh annual “day without cars.” Announced by socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo in 2015, the city received enthusiastic support from both ordinary Parisians and unlikely parties including the head of a French drivers’ association, USA Today reported. From 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., cars, motorcycles, and scooters are banned throughout Paris, and any offenders face a fine of 135 euros, according to the Paris Without A Car website. Certain vehicles like buses, emergency vehicles, taxis, and private drivers are allowed to circulate, although their speed is limited to 20-30 kilometers per hour (12-19 miles per hour) in certain areas. Events at this year’s “day without cars” included a techno parade, picnic, bicycle fair, rollerblading marathon, and street art exhibitions, according to the event website.

More evacuations as lava gushes from Canaries volcano (Reuters) Lava gushing from the Canary Islands’ first volcanic eruption on land in 50 years has forced authorities to evacuate another part of El Paso municipality on the island of La Palma and to urge sightseers attracted by the phenomenon to stay away. About 6,000 of the 80,000 people living on the island have been forced to leave their homes to escape the eruption so far, TVE said. The volcano started erupting on Sunday after La Palma, the most northwestern island in the Canaries archipelago, had been rocked by thousands of quakes in the prior days. It has shot lava hundreds of metres into the air, engulfed forests and sent molten rock towards the ocean over a sparsely populated area of La Palma. Experts say that if and when the lava reaches the sea, it could trigger more explosions and clouds of toxic gases.

Magnitude 6.0 earthquake strikes near Melbourne (Reuters) An earthquake with a 6.0 magnitude struck near Melbourne in Australia on Wednesday, Geoscience Australia said, causing damage to buildings in the country’s second largest city and sending tremors throughout neighbouring states. The quake’s epicentre was near the rural town of Mansfield in the state of Victoria, about 200 km (124 miles) northeast of Melbourne, and was at a depth of 10 km (six miles). The quake was felt as far away as city of Adelaide, 800 km (500 miles) to the west in the state of South Australia, and Sydney, 900 km (600 miles) to the north in New South Wales state, although there were no reports of damage outside Melbourne and no reports of injuries.

‘An iron curtain’: Australia’s covid rules are stranding people at state borders (Washington Post) The four figures huddled in the shade on the side of the highway, eight miles from a border they had hardly noticed until it slammed shut behind them. As flies buzzed and crows circled and their supplies ran low, they waited for emails that would allow them to leave New South Wales and return to their home state of South Australia. Teresa Young and her husband had been stuck at the rest stop—little more than a toilet in the middle of the Outback—for 10 days. “All of a sudden, Australia has been cut up like pieces of a cake,” the 75-year-old said on a recent day. Welcome to covid-era Australia, where state border closures designed to keep the coronavirus from spreading have turned retired office workers into roadside nomads. When the pandemic began, many Australians found that the leaders of the country’s six states and two territories, rather than the federal government, suddenly controlled the most vital things in people’s lives, including who could go to work and where they could travel. The closures have upended domestic travel and stranded scores of Australians internally, even as a vaccination ramp-up means some states—and international airports—will soon open up. People in Sydney could find it easier to fly to Singapore or Los Angeles than to Adelaide.

Sudan’s coup attempt (Foreign Policy) Sudanese state media reported a “failed coup attempt” early Tuesday morning. The coup reportedly involved an attempt to take control of the state radio services. If confirmed, the attempted power grab would be the fourth putsch attempt the African continent has seen this year, following military takeovers in Guinea and Chad and an unsuccessful coup in Niger.

[themoonandotherslikeit]

The Hand That Reaches for God- Chapter 22

Warnings: Graphic violence, gore, some insinuated violence toward children at the very end, dark material, and language.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Monsters are real, ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes they win.” – Steven King

-2 Years Before-

Dean laid in his hospital bed, watching the ceiling tiles warp and wave from the morphine pumping through his IV into the vein in his arm. It quieted the ache of his leg, his burns, but it didn’t quiet the ache that was so deep inside of him that no surgery could possibly reach it. He was only grateful that he didn’t lose his sight, because at least the way that he was kept him from seeing Charlie at all hours of the day. He only saw her when he closed his eyes, and he only heard her in his nightmares. So he tried to stay awake, but the drugs made him tired, so the nightmares came and most of the time he accepted them like an old friend. It was what he deserved, after all. They were laughing, for god sakes. The image of her smiling face was burned into his retinas, the last moment when he was still Dean Winchester, when his friend was still alive. He’d never forget laying there in the dirt, with his leg twisted the wrong way, pain coming in waves just knowing that no one was coming. He used to believe that hope was something essential, something that everyone had, but as he laid there in the heat of the desert among the broken pieces of his friend, he felt the hope leave his body like a piece of his soul. It was something he feared that he’d never get back. Maybe he didn’t deserve to have it back.

A brief knock came to his door, and he groaned internally before turning his head away from the door. “I don’t want any visitors. Come back later.”

“That’s no way to greet your Commanding Officer, Winchester,” a familiar, gravelly voice met his ears and for just a second his heart squeezed.  

It was only for a second.

“Don’t have one of those.”

“Dean.” Castiel opened the door to his hospital room, but stayed hovering in the doorway, presumably taking in Dean’s broken state.

“Cas, I’m… I’m tired, can you just come back later?” Dean asked desperately, gripping the sterile bed sheets in his fingers.

“I can’t come back later. You know that,” his friend sighed. “You won’t let anyone in to see you.”

“But yet you’re still here,” he grouched, the sting behind his eyes almost enough to risk closing them. Almost.

“Turns out the nurses like a man in uniform,” Castiel joked as he closed the door. His boots making the familiar heavy-footed sound as he crossed the room to Dean’s hospital bed. “Plus, they’re worried about you.”

His lip curled up at that, and he hastily turned over on his side, wincing from the new angle against his bad knee. “Well everyone should just mind their goddamn business. How am I supposed to heal if people won’t let me rest?”

“Dean,” he sighed, standing no more than a foot away from the bed. “Shutting everyone out isn’t the answer. I… we miss you. It wasn’t your fault. If anything, I shouldn’t have sent her along. I should’ve checked on you both sooner… I should’ve…”

“Stop,” Dean said sharply, Castiel’s words hitting him like shrapnel. He rubbed his aching chest with the heel of his hand. “It’s no one’s fault.” But mine, he silently reminded himself.

“You’re almost right.” His striking blue eyes met Dean’s. “The only one at fault is whoever placed that landmine. No one else’s. No matter how much we want to beat ourselves up over it.”

Easier said than done, Dean thought bitterly. He offered a smile that settled on his lips, but it reached no further. Cas was his friend, after all, he didn’t deserve the silent treatment. None of them deserved the shit that they got, though. It was the luck of the draw. “I’m glad you stopped by. Nice seein’ your face.”

“Glad yours is all in one piece.”

“Right,” Dean said tightly. He grunted and shifted his weight to lay flat on his back. “Can you get the nurse? I just... I think I need some more meds.”

“Sure, Winchester. Of course.”

He hoped he appeased his former officer, as he watched Castiel disappear into the hall, and he let out a breath that he’d been holding. It hurt. Everything fucking hurt and no amount of morphine would help. Not this time.

-30 Days After-

In a different circumstance, it might have been funny watching Castiel in a gas mask waving his arms like he was at some kind of concert. He was running out of the smoke like it was a dramatic display, and it kind of was, but there was something deeply unsettling about the way he pulled his mask up to uncover his lips, despite the risk in the air, just to shout. “Rouges!”

As if on queue, a hand reached out from the mist, grabbing ahold of Castiel’s shoulder and yanking him backwards, knocking the feet out from under him. His gas mask rolled away as his head slammed onto the ground. He didn’t move immediately, likely dazed from the impact. It wasn’t until the Rogue bent down onto its knees that he finally started to scream.

Dean let go of Emerson’s hand and instantly started to run, his bad leg be damned.

“Dean!” Emerson called, moving her own gas mask. She stared at him with wide, terrified eyes. The world was unbelievably still, quiet, the bleep bleep bleep of the alarm ringing out into the air, matching Castiel’s screams. It broke the quiet like shattering glass.

Before Dean could reach him, another set of hands reached out of the mist. It was like when rain would start to fall, one or two drops at first before a complete downpour.

Dean didn’t slow, he wouldn’t, he couldn’t. Not after what happened when he was in Afghanistan. He refused to lose anyone else, not on his watch. Emerson knew that about him, she knew as he pushed forward harder. Something settled within her then, as she watched the Cas hold off the Rogue with his forearm, as it’s fingers dug hot into the fabric covering his skin. She knew that they wouldn’t be able to save everyone. A lot of people were about to die.

Sam had dropped Pheli’s hand when Emerson wasn’t looking, and he was running after Dean, too. The older brother hoisted his gun off of his back and pointed at the Rogue, ready to shoot.

“Dean!” Emerson called, her feet leaving the ground before she could consider the ramifications, because the mist was clearing, and she could finally see that they were fucked.

A shot rang out in the air as the Rogue on top of Castiel collapsed onto him. Cas pushed the limp corpse away, looking to Dean with fearful gratitude. The ground was soft under Em’s feet as her and Pheli ran after the stubborn Winchester brothers, who were running directly into a massive horde of Rogues.

Sam held out his arm, stopping Dean mid stride. They were frozen in place, as Cas’ grateful smile melted on his cheeks. He started to get on his feet, but before he got the chance he was surrounded by gripping hands, biting teeth, peeling, bubbling flesh. A larger Rogue stumbled to him, and when Cas caught the look of him his mouth hung open.

Emerson caught up to Dean, grabbing his shoulder in order to hold him in place, and that’s when she saw it. The hat on the head of the Rogue, the hair prickling through the burning skin on its chin, the military jacket that matched Castiel’s. “Benny,” she murmured as the Rogue reached forward with a strong hand, grabbing Cas’ throat and yanking hard.

There was so much blood. It sprayed out of the open neck wound, between the Rogue’s fingers, onto it’s face. He couldn’t even scream, he just gurgled, staring with wide eyes as another Rogue reached behind him, it’s teeth biting into his shoulder, burning through his layers of clothing. When he opened his mouth to try to scream again, black blood spurted from his lips, his face was pale as they watched the life fade out of him. Four more Rogues surrounded him, circling, grabbing at him, screaming an inhuman wail.

“Dean we have to go,” Emerson said tightly, finally able to force her body to move before they were spotted. “Dean, hey, we have to go.” Her voice was gentle, but her hand on his shoulder was firm and squeezing.

He turned to her, and although she couldn’t see his eyes, she knew that something clicked with him. He nodded, and grabbed her hand again. He held up his gun in his free hand, and Emerson held hers up in agreement. She pulled her mask back down and they all turned to look for the Jeep.

Time was running out, a count down, a ticking clock, it was always like that with them. There was never enough time, but they always managed to pull out, didn’t they?

-5 Years Before-

The countdown to Midnight was winding up. Pheli was already celebrating, sitting in Sam’s lap, her arms tossed around his shoulders lazily. Her fingers were tugging on his growing hair.

Emerson rolled her eyes and stared into her cup. It was just Coke, but she wished it was more. She never fit in at parties. She wasn’t the type.

She sat down her coke and flattened out the black dress that Pheli picked out for her, deciding that maybe she would go to the bathroom. She was sick of standing around and not being talked to, no one ever talked to her at parties, and Phel said it was her resting bitch face, while she insisted that it was something else altogether.

She tugged on the black lace choker around her neck, feeling unbelievably claustrophobic. The party was at Sam and Dean’s house, since their parents were on a ski trip. The house was pulsing with music, and filled with people from Dean’s graduating class and some that were in classes with Sam and the girls. Em hadn’t seen Dean all night, not that she was looking for him, but it was still weird that he wasn’t hanging around annoying her.

She ran her fingers along the wall, squeezing past bodies kissing in the hallway. It was hot in the house, the air damp from the sheer amount of people. Emerson wanted to just be away from it all. A party wasn’t her idea of fun, she would’ve rather been home, somewhere open, somewhere that she could hear herself think, somewhere that maybe she could just sit and talk with another person. Her stomach flipped at the insinuation deep in her mind, and she pushed it back, because there was no point.

She’d splash her face with some water in the bathroom to get some clarity. They were so close to Midnight, that she would be able to easily sneak out when the year changed. She opened the bathroom door, and immediately stopped in her tracks. There was a couple in the bathroom, the woman was being kissed down her neck, her back was arched, and her head was lulled back, her hair dipping into the sink. The man held her up, her hand in his pants, as he groped her chest. The muscles on his bare back flexed as his hands moved over her curves. Emerson wanted to turn and walk away, but she couldn’t make her feet move. She couldn’t make them move until the girl squealed, covering up her breasts with the man’s own naked chest.

He turned and met Em’s eyes. Dean. His mouth hung open. “Em, what...”

“Sorry!” She squeaked, slamming the door. She ran, pushing past the couples in the hall. Her fingers gripped her choker, ripping it away from her neck, because fuck, she couldn’t breathe.

“Five, four, three, two, one! Happy New Year!”

Emerson opened up the front door, running into the yard, her stocking covered knees falling into the snow. The yard was dark despite the explosions of fireworks overhead. She needed to get up, go home, and shower at the very least. She wanted to curl up in bed and never leave again.

“Em,” Dean said, behind her.

Goddamnit! “Its midnight, don’t you have someone to kiss?”

“No.”

“Sure looked like it to me. I bet your date will be missing you. I’m good, just... go.”

“Em.”

Her bare fingers curled into the snow, and she clamped her eyes shut tightly. What is the point of it all? Why is he doing this? “What, Dean?”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what? You can do whatever you want.”

She heard his heavy boots taking steps toward her through the soft padded snow. “You shouldn’t have had to walk in and see that.”

“No one should. You need to learn how to use a lock,” she said tightly, urging herself to stand.

“I...”

“What?” She turned to look at him and immediately frowned. He’d shut the door behind him, but he stood there, out in the yard in just his jeans, his t-shirt was balled up in his hands. “What the fuck, dude?”

“What? I... oh.” His cheeks turned a deep shade of scarlet and he quickly put his shirt on, covering up his freckled chest, and that line of hair from his belly button all the way below his belt. “Shit I just saw you upset and I... I’ve had a bit to drink,” he said sheepishly, his hand reaching behind his head to scratch the back of his neck awkwardly.

“So, you just left her there?”

“Uh, yeah. I guess I did.”

She couldn’t help but smile a bit. “Why would you do that?”

He shifted his weight. “Wasn’t really about her.”

“Right,” she murmured. What was it about?

“Em, I...”

He had that look. Emerson knew that look all too well, it was the look that told her that he was going to say too much. It was that confession look. He was drunk, some girls hand was just down his pants, and no matter what else happened, or what she may feel for him when he looked at her with that face, he was still Dean Winchester. It still wasn’t right. So she reached down and grabbed a hand full of snow and threw it at him.

“What the...” His eyes were wide as he looked down at the snow rolling down his chest. “Did you just throw a snow ball at me, Maklen?”

“You must be drunk. Do I need to spell it out for you?”

“You’re dead,” he said with a smirk, reaching down and balling snow in his own hands.

Emerson quickly shuffled to her feet, not able to get away before a snowball hit her back. She turned to him with her mouth wide open in shock. “You seriously hit me?”

“You hit me first!”

They stared at each other, eyes narrowed. It was a challenge and they both leaned down, grabbing snow, and pelting it in each other’s direction. It was cold, wet, and they were laughing. He dumped handfuls of snow down the front of her dress. “Dean!”

He laughed and pulled her into a hug, nuzzling his face into her hair. She took the opportunity to slide her leg between his and kick his feet out from under him, unknowingly sending them both backward into the snow. His back hit the ground, and he stared up at her, out of breath. She laughed, looking down at him.

Dean reached up and brushed her hair out of her face and held her cheek. “You should smile more often.”

She rolled her eyes. “You shouldn’t tell people when to smile. It’s rude.”

“It’s just the truth. You look beautiful when you smile, and when you don’t, but even more when you do.” He leaned up, his eyes fluttering closed and holy fuck, he was trying to kiss her.

“Dean,” she squeaked, putting her fingers on his lips to stop him.

“What? Oh shit, I’m sorry. You don’t want to, I was reading the signal wrong.”

“You were just kissing another girl five minutes ago. It sort of looked like you were going to do more than kiss her. She sure as hell was going to do more than kiss you,” Emerson said, shifting her weight off of him. She sat in the snow, suddenly feeling the cold that seemed to seep through her clothes and her skin, deep into her bones until it chilled her soul. “It doesn’t matter that you left her in there. You don’t want me, Dean. If you did, you wouldn’t have been there in the first place.”

She brushed her fingers along his jaw, staring at him with more longing than she usually allowed herself. “You are very sweet, Dean Winchester. You know just the right things to say, but you don’t just have to say what’s right. It has to be right.”

“It...”

“Shh, don’t,” she pleaded softly. “Go back inside. Celebrate with your brother. I’m just the girl next door that you like to annoy. Sleep off your hangover, and I’ll see you later.” She stood up, brushing the snow off of her tights, offering him a hand to help pull him up. He put his hand in hers and stood up effortlessly, without using her help at all. He just stood there then, looking down at her, with her hand in his. He was looking at her like he wanted to say something. It was that same face again that made Emerson’s stomach hurt. “Dean...”

He pulled her against him, cradling her head in his hand, his face in her hair. He seemed to breathe in the scent of her. They stood there for a few seconds, before he pulled back and placed a kiss on her forehead. “Happy New Year, Em.”

-30 Days After-

The Jeep was in running distance, but in the exact direction of the Rogues. It was still parked near the fallen gate, and the fact that it was still parked there amidst the disaster left Dean with a really bad gut feeling.

He pointed to the Jeep and looked to Sam, who nodded knowingly. The two brothers were able to read each other easily after their years together. They would have to run and fight their way through the horde. He turned to Emerson and pulled up his mask. She followed suit. “Listen to me,” he said, immediately holding her face. “We’ve gotta run. We are gonna have to fight, hard. If something happens to me you will not stop.”

“What I...”

“Shh, stop. We don’t have time to argue.” His thumb traced her jaw, and his chest ached looking at her. Something inside of him worried that he may never see her again. “You run and you don’t look back. You get the fuck out no matter what the cost, because I...” Fuck. I can’t say it, not like that. “You’re family, and I don’t want to lose you.”

Her eyes scanned his and she nodded, pulling his lips to hers for one last urgent kiss. He bled his heart and soul into her, pressing their bodies full flush together, and the moment that they released their embrace, he felt an emptiness that travelled through him so deeply and endlessly that he thought he may never feel whole again.

They pulled their masks back on, and they ran forward.

The mist had almost completely dissipated, revealing the true amount of Rogue’s that they were dealing with. There were dozens. Some had clearly migrated from the city, they were older, almost all bones and hanging flesh, compared others who looked more like Benny. They were new, recently changed. Dean hadn’t believed it before, not really, but when his eyes met the dead, lifeless eyes of Ash, his mullet still swinging low behind his head, matted with blood, he couldn’t deny it anymore.

He didn’t want to do it, but it seemed like just about everything that Dean Winchester did was something that he didn’t want to do. So he raised his gun, aimed, and blew his old friend away.

The mob that was leaning over Castiel popped up at the sound of the shot echoing through the camp. The Rogue that used to be Benny turned, and opened his mouth that was covered in wet blood and let out an unholy screech. His bony finger pointed out to the group, and the twins ran. It was all that they could do. Sam and Dean hung back, picking off the Rogues that they could with their guns as the girls pushed forward, their feet slipping in the mud.

The continuous sounds of shots ringing in the empty air was muffled from the sound of Dean’s heart racing in his ears, and the breathing that filtered in and out of the gas mask. Keep it together, Winchester. He glanced back to see that the girls were almost at the Jeep, and he let out a sigh of relief. He knew that’d be the hardest part. They could get away if they reached the Jeep. All they had to do was reach the Jeep.

He gave himself a second to breathe. He should’ve known better.

He felt the fingers curl around his shoulder, blistering, bony, with a grip that was paramount to a professional wrestler. Dean turned immediately on instinct and raised his weapon, sending the butt of the gun into the jaw of the Rogue. It dislocated with a loud crack. The creature blinked at him, it’s jaw hanging loose on its hinge, being held together by molten, dripping flesh. It’s tongue wiggled out like it hadn’t experienced fresh air before, and Dean thought he was going to throw up. He swallowed back the bile that grew in his throat, and turned the gun back on the creature, pressing the barrel to its forehead. Bang!

Another hand grabbed his shoulder from behind and just as he turned to administer another blow, he caught sight of a mask. Sammy, he thought weakly. His brother raised his weapon and shot over Dean’s shoulder, causing his ears to ring out. Sam grabbed ahold of Dean’s arm and they ran.

The Rogues were on their tail. Dean could tell by the heat radiating at their backs, and the increasing sounds of groaning. It was either the horde, or the early bird special at Denny’s.

He couldn’t even pull a smile from the jokes floating around in his head, his own coping mechanism failing to let him relax back into step with Sam. It was all too close. They were running out of time. One misstep could ruin everything. He knew that all too well. He couldn’t even count how many two-steps back he took. Letting his father wail on him, swearing into the military, not kissing Emerson at the homecoming dance all those years ago, putting his tongue in the mouth of a sorority girl on New Years Eve, getting in the humvee with Charlie, giving Lisa the shit he should’ve given to Em, and letting Emerson walk away to the fire and sit down with Gordon. There were some things that were just on him. He knew that. There was nothing he could do about the past, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to make the same mistakes again. He was going to get the girls and Sam out alive, no matter what the cost.

“What’s the hold up?” He asked as they reached the Jeep, pulling up his gas mask.

“There are no keys,” Emerson said anxiously, her own mask on the seat in the Jeep.

“I can hot wire it,” Dean said quickly, handing her his gun. “Keep ‘em away.”

He opened the driver side door and crouched down to look under the steering wheel. He pulled out his pocket knife, flipping out the screwdriver extension and twisted his wrist to unscrew the panel. Bang! “Fuck,” he mumbled, pulling the pieces apart to display the wires. He ran his tongue along his bottom lip. It stung and burned from the rain. He knew he had to look like hell, because fuck, he felt like it. There were a variety of colors twisted within he wire column, and he swallowed heavily. Not every vehicle was the same, but he anticipated if he connected the pink with the blue that he would get the engine going.

“Dean, what’s the hold up?” Sam called out, his voice shouting after several shots in conjunction. “We have company!”

“I’m fucking hurrying!” He shouted back, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead with the back of his glove. He held the wires between his fingers and brushed them together a few times before the took. One last thing. He grabbed the red and yellow wires, saying a quick prayer to a god that he didn’t believe in before brushing them together. The Jeep started with a quick growl. “Thank god! Get in!”

Bang!

He slid into the drivers seat and the other three quickly piled in, slamming the doors shut. “Lock them manually,” he instructed, and looked up, putting the Jeep in gear, just to see that they were surrounded. “And put on your seatbelts.”

After the four consecutive clicks of metal buckles sliding into their locked position, Dean pressed his foot on the gas pedal. The Jeep jolted forward, his chest pressing against the locked belt, the vehicle climbed over the bodies with the unsettling sound of crunching bones. Emerson’s hand shot to his, her fingers gripping his tightly. He wanted to turn to look at her, but he couldn’t. He needed to focus forward and drive through the open gate. He had to get them to safety.

Dean glanced over his shoulder to check his blind spot before turning toward the gate. “Dean!” Emerson screamed, her hand squeezing his tightly.

“What? Fuck!” He slammed on the breaks, his heart pounding and his mouth dry. There was a figure in front of the Jeep staring at him, directly into his soul, with its head tilted, dark hair matted from blood, but still hanging limply down a bubbled, blistered arm. It’s mouth opened in a desperate biting motion, black saliva dripping out of its mouth and over its once nice teeth. The eyes never left Dean’s, and he wondered suddenly if they could remember. If they knew. The Rogue’s fingers were twisted into a red stained white blanket, and even through the blood stains he could see a careful blue embroidery name stitched in the corner of the blanket. Ben.

“Lis,” Dean muttered, his lips barely moving as her fingers raised and reached for him like she was asking for help, as if he could still help her, as if he didn’t fuck up so deeply again.

—————

Chapter Twenty-Three

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[justinsdaysinthedark]

Post #1 - Welcome

Firstly, welcome. Whether you’re family, a friend or even somebody I don’t know - welcome to what will be my journey. I’ll be honest and upfront about what’s going on and I’m not afraid to express my deepest feelings.

Will this blog be everybody’s cup of tea? Absolutely not. I’ll give you the heads up now - this will be boring. This will lead down some dark and negative paths (don’t stress, it’ll be mostly positive!). I do feel however that I need to express myself this way and explore my emotions as they clash with what is going on. Sit back, relax and come with me in what will be some light slightly heavy reading.

Where does one start with such a blog? Let me preface this by saying once all is said and done, I will never complain about anything trivial again. Ever. The past six weeks has been an emotional roller coaster - not only on myself but those close to me. I wouldn’t wish this upon anybody I know and I don’t say that lightly!

Where am I at now? Monash Hospital - Clayton. Over the past six weeks, I’ve spent 26 days in hospital across three different stints. It’s currently 22:49 on Monday 15th July and I’m about to endure what will be the most confronting couple of days I’ve experienced in my life... but let’s roll it back a few weeks and fill you in.

What’s wrong? Where and how did it all it begin? Let’s touch over a few things...

Sunday June 2nd - It all started with an immense eye pain one Sunday afternoon. I’d stayed up late into the night to watch Australia’s first Cricket World Cup clash with Afghanistan. Getting to bed at roughly 3am Sunday morning and waking up normally by 10am, I thought this particular Sunday was going to be a stock standard one. I stayed over at my partner Courtney’s house and we went to watch her nephew play football. 4pm rolled around on Sunday and I thought I was suffering from what I thought was a simple case of eye strain - a deep, immense pain in my left eye. After all, my mum, dad and sister all have glasses so I assumed my time was up!

Courtney booked me an appointment at the optometrist for the following weekend and I kept on in my evening assuming this eye pain would settle with some rest.

Monday June 3rd - Waking up Monday morning, the pain was still there. Had it gotten slightly better? Not at all. I continued on my Monday as normal with an incredibly busy day at work and headed around to Courtney’s for the weekly ‘Monday night roast’ courtesy of her mother. Knowing I had a rostered day off on Tuesday, I knew I could sleep in, relax, take it easy and my eye would eventually get better - surely! It has to!

Tuesday June 4th - With the day off, no alarms set I was woken up at 8:30am with the call I was least expecting. My mum was in tears as she somehow bravely blurted that my grandfather had passed away that morning. Poppy was ill and attempting to recover from a recent hip operation he had after a fall - we all thought he’d fight through it and keep battling but unfortunately his time was up and nanny had called him to join her. A man I was so close with, a fighter had suddenly left us. I was in shock, but raced to pick mum up from work. We made the decision to join my family in Bairnsdale - 3 hours away from where I live. Mum and I shared the driving there, no worries in the world. My eye pain was still there - Worse than it had been, but that was secondary this day. I could still see perfectly normal still assuming it was just eye strain.

Wednesday June 5th - As soon as I woke up, I knew something wasn’t right with my left eye. The pain had slightly subsided however my vision just wasn’t right. I can’t explain what I felt that morning. My left eye was still moving as it should however the vision just wasn’t right. I chose to close my left eyelid and primarily look through my right. It was at this moment I just knew it wasn’t an eye strain - it was something worse.

Mum went down the street that morning and I tagged along. Fortunately, Specsavers (Bairnsdale’s local optometrist) was open and they could squeeze me in for an eye check. I knew I had to rule that out before attending a hospital.

Not to my surprise, my vision was 20/20 out of each eye as it had been for my life. The optometrist suggested if I’m having issues, to head to the local hospital - so that I did.

Rolling on into Bairnsdale Regional Hospital at 2pm on a Wednesday afternoon wasn’t exactly on my schedule when heading down to Bairnsdale originally, but that’s what it had come to. The triage nurse saw me immediately and rushed me through to be seen (within 30 minutes and a waiting room full of patients!) The doctor - who was only in his second year out of uni was quick to assess that I was having issues with my third nerve (something that wouldn’t be mentioned again for a couple of days). In consultation with the Eye and Ear Hospital in Melbourne, it was recommended I leave Bairnsdale immediately and go and present myself to them - a 4 hour drive. With other matters on my mind, I was hesitant to go. My family basically pushed me out the door and it was at that moment that I knew I had to go.

9pm I walk in the entrance to a ridiculously busy waiting room. I present myself to triage and they pull the papers they had from earlier in the day. I thought this may mean I’d get through a bit quicker - boy oh boy I was wrong! Fortunately, State of Origin I was on and that entertained me until 10:30... and from there it was a genuine slog. 11:45pm I walked through the sliding doors and was met by who I can best describe as an overenthusiastic young(ish) Pom who was keen to have a look at me. It was late. I was tired. This bloke was over the top, but my word did he know his stuff! Did that help him diagnose me? No. 2am came around and he sent me home, telling me to expect a call at 9am with plans on what to do next.

Thursday June 6th - Just to his word, a phone call comes in at 9am from the doctor I’d seen only seven hours earlier. He advised I needed a CT scan (at 1pm) and an appointment with a specialist (3pm). The CT scan went well and I assumed I’d be out by 4pm and be able to head to the Sandown Greyhounds for the night as I’d been busy organising a night out over the weeks prior. This all changed when we saw the specialist. She ran her basic tests and ordered an MRI scan ASAP. I got taken over to St. Vincent’s Private Hospital for the scans via an underground tunnel - yes! They exist! My very first MRI scan was done and back to the Eye and Ear Hospital we went. The specialist that I’d seen earlier in the day was rostered on that night in emergency fortunately for me! She got the scan results back and ruled out a stroke and bleeding on my brain pretty early. This was a relief, I suppose. I wasn’t going to die in the short term! It was from here where she advised i’d be required to be admitted to St. Vincent’s Hospital that night for further tests over the next few days. It was at this point where I felt helpless. Disappointed and helpless. I was expecting to have a few tests done and go home and continue my life as per normal. I didn’t want to be admitted to a hospital so far away from home. I didn’t want to wait around for tests. I wanted to be home. In my bed. Some normality at least. This is where my mindset had to change and that it did - pretty quickly.

Dad walked with me over to St. Vincent’s and we entered the emergency department. We were told “you won’t have to wait long... they are already expecting you.” Well, once again, what was I thinking? A city central hospital with no waiting in emergency? In retrospect, I was definitely getting my hopes up.

A solid 3 hour wait finally saw me enter through the doors and be seen to. This is where dad left me - for the first time in this ordeal I was alone. Was I scared? I won’t lie. Yes, yes I was. At 24 years old, no idea what’s wrong with me and alone in a major hospital in the city? I think that’s justified.

How’s the eye at this stage? Terrible. In the prior 24 hours I’d developed double vision and my left eye had significantly moved with no ability to control it - as you can see below.

Friday June 7th - 4am I was finally taken to a ward and had a bed to myself. It was on the 9th floor in the ward that generally deals with major bone breaks and reconstructions/replacements. I was wheeled into a twin-share room with an old guy who had just had his hip replaced. In retrospect, I had such a good room in what turned out to be an incredible hospital. The food was excellent, the nurses went above and beyond to make sure you were comfortable and as happy as you can be and in the end, I had a great view of Melbourne.

10am came by and I saw the first of what felt like 100 doctors that day. They were pretty quick to diagnose me with Third Nerve Palsy in my left eye - something I hadn’t heard since I first presented in Bairnsdale two days prior.

Unfortunately, being a part of the neuro team of doctors - things didn’t happen too quickly. Just my luck too, this upcoming weekend was the Queens Birthday long weekend. I didn’t realise or even think that hospitals go on skeleton staff over the weekends and scans don’t get done very quickly... I wasn’t booked in for a follow up CT and MRI scan until Tuesday...

Monday June 10th - I’m not going to lie. Mentally I was struggling. Presented to a hospital on Thursday night/Friday morning for what was Third Nerve Palsy and they just left me there over the weekend. No follow ups. No nothing. I didn’t realise how much hospitals shut down over weekends - I certainly do now! I was a mess. I felt lost. I didn’t know what was going on or even why for that matter. My eye was doing something it had never done and I couldn’t control it. I felt helpless and lonely.

Courtney was just getting over a serious case of the flu, so I hadn’t seen her in over a week and it was killing me.

I broke down Monday night after I’d calmed down from what was a good win by my Pies. 8pm came around, visitors were gone and I was there by myself. No clear plan about what was wrong with me or how they were going to fix it. I was an emotional mess.

Tuesday June 11th - Finally. The long weekend was over and didn’t I notice the difference. 7am and the hospital was a hive of activity. My CT and MRI scans were booked in for later that day as well as what will turn out to be my first of many lumbar punctures (LP) - something that scared the life out of me. Mentally, 24 hours later I was doing okay. I could see things progressing...but one thing was playing on my mind. Poppy’s funeral was on Friday and I knew within myself I had to be there to say my final goodbye. I let the nurses and doctors know and they seemed to be okay with letting me out on day leave - however logistically that left an issue. 4 hour drive with an 11am funeral wasn’t going to be possible.

Wednesday June 12th - At this stage, my eye hadn’t got any worse. It was just the third nerve affected and otherwise, I was perfectly fine. The results of my scans and LP came back which showed inflammation on my third nerve (which was expected) as well as a high white blood cell and protein count. This lead the doctors to believe it was due to either inflammation or infection. The doctors pretty quickly leant away from infection as I wasn’t presenting with any other signs so they treated me with an incredibly high dosage of a steroid called methylprednisolone to treat the inflammation.

IV drip for the first lot on Wednesday night and 10x 100mg tablets on each Thursday and Friday.

Thursday June 13th - The doctors agreed to let me out Thursday afternoon providing I had no further reactions to the methylprednisolone. Turns out I didn’t, so they fortunately let me out at 3pm to do what I needed to over the following few days. They were happy not to see me again unless of course things progressed and got worse and organised a follow up scan in two months time. At this stage, the diagnosis was Third Nerve Palsy due to inflammation of the nerve that was treated via steroids and may get better over the following weeks or months - or may not get better at all.

Friday June 14th - Sunday June 16th - Whilst Friday was a heavily emotional day saying my final farewell to Poppy, physically I got through it okay and had no further issues. This was my life now - whether I liked it or not. Deep down I had confidence it would get better in time and I’d have to see St. Vincent’s every few weeks to check up and I was okay with that.

Monday June 17th - I wake up Monday morning at home incredibly sick. What was wrong with me? I didn’t sleep during the night and was having hot and cold flushes, dizzy spells, hallucinations, no appetite and had absolutely no idea where I was. It was the flu, without having the flu or feeling sick. It was such a strange feeling. I started to develop an immense pain in my right jaw - incredibly similar to my eye. I started to worry - instantly. I called the doctor who was looking after me at St. Vincent’s and he wasn’t worried about it. He advised me to go to my GP and just get an X-ray to make sure everything is okay.

Deep down, I knew something was wrong but didn’t know what. I suspected the sickness was the come down from such a high dosage of steroids (which was later confirmed) but this jaw pain felt all too similar and I was scared.

Needless to say, I didn’t go to the GP or get an X-ray purely because I didn’t want another round of doctors looking at me, wasting the prior time at St. Vincent’s.

This continued through Tuesday and Wednesday. Exactly the same symptoms... I got further worried.

Thursday June 20th - Mum was on my back about going to my GP. I was resentful, but booked an appointment for 4pm to get checked out. I was still a mess, but better than I had been. Dad took me to my GP appointment and came in with me. By this stage, I couldn’t chew. I’d lost all strength completely in my jaw - both right and left side. My regular doctor took one look at me, checked my files she got from St. Vincent’s that morning and advised that I needed to head back into hospital - be it St. Vincent’s or Monash Hospital Clayton. She recommended Monash Clayton for two reasons; 1. Closer to home & 2. Well renown Neuro doctors.

I was hesitant, but knew I had to. I was more open to going than I had been a fortnight prior and was happy to be in for the long haul. Mentally, I was in a good spot. I knew something more was wrong and it wasn’t just inflammation. Alas, in I went. Straight to Emergency Department at Monash Clayton.

Friday June 21st - To cut a long story short, to get a bed at Monash Clayton was horrible! I spent a few hours in emergency, followed by 5 hours in short stay and eventually 24 hours in a day ward before I was moved onto a general medical ward. Friday was spent in the day ward with Neuro doctors coming back and forth obsessing over my eye and jaw issues.

I’d bloody done it again. Gone into hospital late on a Thursday... this time I knew not much would happen over the weekend and I was prepared for that.

Monday June 24th - As expected, not a whole lot happened over the weekend. I got moved to a general medical ward and that was it.

Monday afternoon finally brought some news once the Neuro team had looked at me properly. I’d lost my third nerve (which we already knew) and my fifth nerve (jaw) was also shot and gone. Great. I couldn’t eat. I was put on what was called a ‘minced and moist diet’ which can only be described as an unknown meat, minced with gravy with a few unknown vegetables on the side (see below). It was horrible. I didn’t have much of an appetite however what I did have was quickly swept away with the sight of this food.

Over the next few days, more CT, MRI, Ultrasounds and LP’s were done. Blood tests twice daily. I was quite frankly getting sick and tired of getting poked, prodded and scanned only for the Neuro doctors to come in once (maybe twice) a day to tell me there’s no real update and they needed to wait for tests to come back.

Thursday 27th June - During the week, things had progressively gotten worse. I’d lost my sixth nerve in my left eye as well as feeling in my chin (just below my mouth) and started to develop quite a large, painful lump underneath my right earlobe.

Doctors were then forced to act fast. They’d suspected I was suffering from either a virus that hadn’t made itself too known and was attacking my nerves or an auto immune disease that was forcing my white blood cells to attack my own nerves, picking them off one by one.

They did some more tests and sent them to both Brisbane and Canberra to be looked at as Monash Clayton or anywhere in Melbourne couldn’t get the results they wanted.

Immediately, they started to treat me for both of these conditions simultaneously. I was having an anti-viral drip 3x/day every 8 hours for the virus as well as what was called IVIG (derived from blood) to fight the auto immune disease and kill off my bad white blood cells.

I was scared. Every day I was getting worse and I suppose I just wanted to know what was wrong with me. I probably felt most for my direct family and Courtney who all had no answers despite all the tests and scans I’d done previously. They were left in the dark - as was I. 22 days it had been since I felt some sort of normality and it was killing me. The fact they had no answers was slowly eating away at me, but I put on a smile and a positive attitude as I always do. They’ll find something soon. They have to. It’ll come back positive for auto-immune, I’ll get treated and away we go back to normality. I was wrong.

Friday July 5th - This treatment cycle went on for the next week or so. The doctors were happy I wasn’t getting worse, my sixth nerve had slightly returned so they were happy to let me go home. 15 days in hospital this spell. It didn’t feel like 15 days though, not to me anyway. I think that’s probably because of the positive mindset and willingness to stay in until they found what was wrong with me. I’d started to develop muscle aches and pains in my left leg but I thought nothing of it - assuming that was just because I’d been in hospital and confined to a 3x3 room for 15 days!

I’d had a full body MRI scan and ultrasound on my leg the day earlier and they saw something around my stomach they wanted to investigate a little bit further. Before they let me out, we agreed to have a follow up MRI in two or three weeks as well as a PET scan within the next week and a bit to investigate my stomach a bit more. I was happy, the doctors were happy and away I went. Back into the world they call life. I was happy.

Monday July 8th - After spending a relaxing weekend between home and Courtney’s, I had an unexpected call at 1pm. It was a woman from Moorabbin Hospital wanting to urgently book me in for a PET scan and was wondering when I was available. She advised she only really had the following day at 2:30pm available for the next three weeks and advised I need to be there. So I took it. I had no bloody idea what a PET scan was, so as any 24 year old would do, I gave it a Google.

“A positron emission tomography (PET) scan is an imaging test that allows your doctor to check for diseases in your body....”

My heart sunk as I read a bit more. PET scans are generally used to pick up cancers. Wait. What? Why do the doctors want to do this so urgently? They were talking over the next week and a half, so why are they doing it now? My gut feeling wasn’t good. I knew something deeper was wrong but I brushed it aside - my condition despite being unconfirmed was in my mind, still auto-immune.

Tuesday July 9th - I’d never had a PET scan before but I did a YouTube search so I knew what to expect. It was like a CT scan pretty much. They inject the radioactive glucose into you, wait an hour so your body can absorb it and have a scan. Simple.

For the first time in this whole ordeal, something went exactly as I expected it. It was an easy process made easier by the wonderful nurses in there. My PET scan went well and I was happy. I was convinced nothing would show but still had that deep feeling in my gut that something wasn’t right.

I had a call that night and booked myself in for a follow up MRI at Monash Clayton for the following day - once again a few weeks earlier than expected. The woman on the phone said the doctors wanted to rush it through and once again, my gut sank. Something just wasn’t right. Why are the doctors pushing through these scans when we’d only discussed 4 days earlier about having them in a few weeks. Whatever. I’ll go. I have to. I just want to know what’s wrong with me!

Thursday July 18th - 16:32. An unknown number calls. This is how I’ve been getting my scans booked. Is it another one? “Is that Justin?” the gentleman on the other end of the line goes.

“It’s Jason from the haematology department at Monash Clayton. I’m not sure if your Neuro doctors have called you yet, but I’ve just had a look at your PET scan from Tuesday with them. We can see significant areas in your stomach, liver, gall bladder and groin that has lit up which we weren’t expecting. It’s your lymphnodes that have reacted with the glucose and are showing us we need to investigate a bit more. We’ll need to get you in for another LP and we’re going to have to do a biopsy of those lymphnodes to get more of an idea. At this stage, we’re looking at lymphoma as a genuine cause of what’s wrong with you...”

I tune out. I’m still processing his first few sentences. What? You mean they’ve found something that isn’t related to the nerves in my eye? Lymphoma? Isn’t that cancer? I might have a type of cancer? But I’m 24? That can’t be right.

I finish the conversation with him and hang up the phone. I was home with mum and the time. She looks at me and asked what the phone call was about. I break down. I cry. I don’t know how to process the news. I’m a mess for a solid 15 minutes. I eventually get strong enough to tell mum. She breaks down as well. It must’ve been incredibly difficult to hear your 24 year old son may have lymphoma. I call dad and let him know....and Courtney. Other than that, I keep it on the downlow. I don’t want to get ahead of myself. What if it is nothing?

Jason calls back later that night. Pretty much says I have an appointment on Monday for another LP and they want to do the biopsy ASAP. He said not to go to ED at Monash Clayton and just to expect a call at any moment between then and Monday that they have a bed for me. When I get the call, I had to go in. I was okay with this. It wasn’t going to happen for a few days!

Sunday July 14th - Court and I went down to dads for the lunch and catch up with his wife and her kids. It was a great day to forget about the reality of life for a few hours. That was until we went to Coles to get stuff for lunch and I had a missed call from a private number. Without listening to the voicemail, I knew what it was. My gut dropped. I told Courtney and we listened to the voicemail together.

“Hi Justin, we’re just letting you know a bed is available and if you could come into the ward ASAP.”

I’m okay with it. I knew it was coming... then a few minutes later I broke down in the middle of Coles. What hit me? I don’t know. Reality I suppose. I didn’t want to go back in. I knew I had to. I knew this trip was going to be about whether or not I have lymphoma - a type of a cancer. I was scared. I grabbed Courtney’s shoulder and just cried. Cried for a solid 5 minutes. I couldn’t control myself. It just hit me.

I thought I’d wait until they called back instead of making that call to enquire further to bide myself an extra hour or two. Half an hour later, they call and I answer. I was able to arrange an extra four hours until I had to be in there. This gave me enough time to get home, pack a bag and mentally prepare myself to head in.

By 5pm that night, I was in a bed with the lumbar puncture booked for the following day at 2:30pm.

Monday July 16th (Today) - I’m not afraid to say I hate LP’s. Being larger than your average 24 year old, they can’t do the blind and require them under CT guidance. It makes the process easier, but it certainly doesn’t feel as pleasant!

I saw the haematology doctor at 11:30 this morning. He was open and honest with me. Which I appreciated. He basically said up front “We’re 90% sure you have lymphoma. All we are waiting on is the biopsy to come back positive and we can start treatment...which will be chemo...”

That’s about all I took out of the conversation. It hit me. Not hard that I’d cry, but the reality hit me hard. Here I am, apart from overweight, I’m a normal otherwise healthy 24 year old. In the space of six weeks, I’ve developed symptoms I don’t wish upon anybody and getting told the doctors are 90% certain I have lymphoma.

I’m not going to lie, it’s not easy to be where I am at the moment. It’s a funny time in my life. I’m being as positive as I can however I know I’m about to face the biggest battle of my life. In a way, I really hope the biopsy does come back positive - just so we finally have something. Confirmation on something and can start treatment pretty much instantly.

With my biopsy scheduled for between 8:30 - 11:30 tomorrow, I’m not going to lie, i’m shitting myself. Sedate me. Put a camera down my mouth to my stomach. Take tissue samples of my lymphnodes. Sounds like a great Tuesday morning to me. For once in my life I think I’d prefer to be at work!

Realistically, I’m expecting the results back from the biopsy in 24-36 hours from tomorrow morning and expect if confirmed to be lymphoma, to begin my chemo treatment late this week.

As I said earlier, it’s going to be the biggest fight of my life...But I’m ready. I’m not prepared to fail, I never have been. I will beat whatever is wrong with me.

If you’ve made it this far, kudos. It’s now 1:32am and I’m starting to get the tired eyes. As I started, I feel as if I had to start this blog to move forward mentally. Whilst this will be my longest entry I’ll have, it certainly won’t be my last. I assure you of that.

Wish my luck for tomorrow!

Juzz xx

[boloorsportsmania]

#746 Nadal wins HISTORIC 19th slam after beating Medvedev in epic 4′50″ US open finals;  Nadal is just 1 behind Federer in terms of Slam count; Medvedev for sure is a future tennis SUPERSTAR; Cummins and co help Australia win Ashes in England after 17 years; Rashid became first Test captain to hit a fifty and grab 10-fer in a test match as captain debut and more...:-)

Australia needed 8 wickets on final day of 4th test to retain ashes. England to fight hard to save the test. They needed atleast 2 partnerships lasting 30-35 overs. Day started off well as Roy and Denly had a stand worth 24 overs before Cummins castled Roy for 31. England 66-2. Cummins then dealt hammer blow by dismissing Stokes for just 1. England 74-4. Lyon dismissed Denly soon after. England 93-5. Bairtsow and Butler showed composure before Starc trapped the former. England 138-6. There was still 44 overs left. Overton and Butler took England to tea without anymore fall of wickets. These 2 battled for 22 overs. It looked like England would force a draw when Hazelwood castled Butler.  England 172-7. It son became 173-8. Leach and Overton played for 14 overs. It looked like Leach would be part of another thrilling match for England. Paine bought in Labuschagne to change the rhythm of batsmen and it worked. He dismissed Leach. Overton was dismissed soon after. Australia beat England by 185 runs. England had to bat for another 81 balls to save the maytch but not to be. Australia have been far superior team in this series. Baring Stokes, Broad, Archer and Burns, others have not raised hands and contributed well enough to take England to a winning position. Steve Smith has been clear difference between 2 teams. He has been playing in a different planet. Cummins has been the best bowler of the series from both sides. He has grabbed 24 wickets in 4 matches.

Afghanistan needed just 4 wickets to win their 2nd test match in 3 international matches. Rashid starred again with 6 fer as Afghanistan won by 224 runs. Rashid became just 3rd captain to hit fifty and grab 10 fer as a captain. Imran Khan and Allan Border are other 2 players. He became first player to do it as test captain debut. He is truly a star when pitch has something to offer for spinners.

US open men’s finals was between tennis’s latest superstar Daniel Medvedev and legend of tennis Nadal. Things started well for Medvedev early on as he won handful of long rallies against Nadal. It was Nadal though who won the opening set 7-5. He broke Medvedev early to win 2nd set 6-3. He took early break in 3rd too. It looked like one sided finals before Russian star rose from the ashes. He broke Nadal back. He mixed drop shots and volleys with precision to rattle Nadal. Nadal did look rattled. Medvedev won 5 of 7 games to win 3rd set 7-5. Some of his groundstrokes from backhand was delight to watch. Nadal’s first serve was looking suspect. Russian was looking very much confident in 4th set. When Nadal was about to serve to stay in 4th set, Medvedev put pressure on Nadal serve. Nadal choked to make it 2-2 sets all. Medvedev was on a roll. He had 3 break points in  2nd game of final set.  Nadal looked nervous. He managed to hold by putting some first serves in. Nadal needed that boost. He had showed signs of nerves in final set when he was given penalty of serve for time violation. Just when it mattered Nadal upped his ante. He not only broke Medvedev once but twice. In 5th game and 7th Game, Medvedev was up 40-0 and 30-0 but Spaniard made Medvedev work hard for every point which hurt the Russian as he looked a bit tired due to cramps. Nadal raced to 5-2 lead and looked certain to win the 19th slam. Medvedev again put pressure on Nadal with net game and broke Nadal back. In break point, Nadal was given serve penalty for time violation. Medvedev held serve to make it 5-4. Nadal had 2 match points on his serve. Nadal was put under pressure again as he faced break point. Good first serve saved him. 2 minutes later, Nadal beat Medvedev in 4 hours 50 min. This was Nadal’s 19th slam and 4th US open. It is an incredible feat. With his game to win 4 US open titles is sensational stuff. Heart goes to Medvedev though who played like a champion. He for sure would win a slam in future.  This was 2nd longest US open final. 1988 finals between Lendl-Wilander and 2012 finals between Murray-Djokovic lasted 4 hours 54 minutes.

[militant-holy-knight]

Why the Palestinian Cause is So Hard to Support

I'd usually stay clear off from getting involved in the debate regarding Israel and Palestine because you are guaranteed to offend all sides of the political spectrum if you stand with either. You get labelled a fascist by liberals and "pro-kike" by the far-right if you say anything positive about Israel, or being accused of supporting terrorism if you stand with Palestine. I know that many of my Christian brothers and sisters will easily support Israel because its the only place in the Middle-East where Christians are safe and protected. It's a very convincing argument... One that Palestine cannot make for itself unfortunately in effort to gain the hearts and minds of the people. Let me explain why.

Palestinian nationalism is often erroneously associated with Islamism due to the massive support and sympathy Palestinians receive from the Muslim world because several holiest sites in Islam - the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Cave of the Patriarchs and the Dome of the Rock - are within Jewish control and they can’t abide that. Also because Arab = Muslim in the minds of many people in the West, nevermind that not all Palestinians are Muslims. Here is a little known fact: the Munich terrorist attacks were carried out by a group of Palestinian Christians. The operation was titled “Iqrit and Biram”, named after two Christian settlements seized by Israeli Defense Forces and their terrorist leader used the codename Isa (Jesus in Arabic) was a Christian born from a Jewish mother and a Christian father. Back during the cold war, Palestinians were mostly a mostly secular movement in part because they were backed by the Soviet Union and they believed that regardless of your faith - whether Christian or Muslim - you were fighting to liberate yourself from Israeli oppression.

However, this changed in the 80s with the foundation of Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Nationalism had been viewed as an ungodly ideology by early Islamic thinkers, substituting "the nation" for God as an object of worship and reverence. The struggle for Palestine was viewed exclusively through a religious prism, as a struggle to retrieve Muslim land and the holy places of Jerusalem. While 90% of Palestinians are Sunnis, there has been a conflict between secularism and adherence to Islam. In the case of Hamas, Palestinian nationalism has almost completely fused with the ideologically pan-Islamic sentiments originally held by the Islamists.

The Islamic bitching about the Palestinians suffering oppression under the Israeli occupation doesn't convince me because for every Palestinian there are ten more Copts and Assyrians that do not enjoy equal rights. Muslim land is under occupation? The holy Christian sites of Alexandria and Constantinople are in the hands of the Muslims for centuries now. You could argue Antioch is also under Islamic occupation since Lebanon is now a Shia majority though this is only a recent development and Lebanon used to be the only Christian majority country in the Middle-East, and to be technical, the President of Lebanon is always a Maronite Catholic.

The occupation of Constantinople is particularly lamentable.  Itself It wouldn't be so bad if Turkey was a pluralistic society that respected the rights of other peoples, but its sham of secularism (which is pretty transparent to anyone observing current events) showed they never actually committed themselves to it even after abolishing the Ottoman caliphate. Consider the Christian Holocaust they have committed in the early 20th Century against the Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians (which they still deny it while at the same time boasting about it in private) and that now Turkey has less of half a percent of Christians. By contrast, Iraq under Saddam Hussein had at least a million Christians though this number has obviously went down because of its civil war. Let me ask you: what kind of secular society is this where the brutal dictatorship that is guilty of genocide actually treats its Christian minority better in comparison? And there are people that still use Turkey as the model of democracy for Muslim countries. Lets not pretend its the USA is the same way in regards to Islam demographics: there was a sizable Christian presence in Turkey before they discovered too late the appeal of pan-Islamism and decided their gavour subjects needed to die. 

The reality is that Turks don’t pray in the Hagia Sophia because mosques are lacking in Constantinople, they do it to rub it in the faces of the Greeks - and by extension - all of Christendom. Its a symbol of Islam prevailing over Christianity never mind that we were ahead of the curve, technologically and scientifically.

The reality is that Islamists can’t take infidels being in control of something they can’t have. Just like how Osama bin Laden denounced Sudan and Indonesia for granting independence to the Roman Catholic countries of South Sudan and East Timor - both of whom considered insignificant by the world community - because he believe any sort of land that was owned by the ummah should never be given to infidels. This is why these dipshits lay claim to Spain and Greece as theirs by right.

The reality is that whether you like it or not, Muslims are poised and eager to be biggest aggressor against Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu is quoted as saying  “If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more ‎violence. If the Jews put ‎down their weapons ‎today, there would be no ‎more Israel”. I certainly don’t like the man and you certainly don’t have to, but to say he is incorrect would be a bold-faced lie. Even back in the day when the State of Israel was established, the General Secretary Abdul Rahman Azzam of the Arab League has been quoted as saying this genocidal threat:

"I personally wish that the Jews do not drive us to this war, as this will be a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Tartar massacre or the Crusader wars. I believe that the number of volunteers from outside Palestine will be larger than Palestine's Arab population, for I know that volunteers will be arriving to us from [as far as] India, Afghanistan, and China to win the honor of martyrdom for the sake of Palestine … You might be surprised to learn that hundreds of Englishmen expressed their wish to volunteer in the Arab armies to fight the Jews.

"This war will be distinguished by three serious matters. First—faith: as each fighter deems his death on behalf of Palestine as the shortest road to paradise; second, [the war] will be an opportunity for vast plunder. Third, it will be impossible to contain the zealous volunteers arriving from all corners of the world to avenge the martyrdom of the Palestine Arabs, and viewing the war as dignifying every Arab and every Muslim throughout the world …

"The Arab is superior to the Jew in that he accepts defeat with a smile: Should the Jews defeat us in the first battle, we will defeat them in the second or the third battle … or the final one… whereas one defeat will shatter the Jew's morale! Most desert Arabians take pleasure in fighting. I recall being tasked with mediating a truce in a desert war (in which I participated) that lasted for nine months…While en route to sign the truce, I was approached by some of my comrades in arms who told me: 'Shame on you! You are a man of the people, so how could you wish to end the war … How can we live without war?' This is because war gives the Bedouin a sense of happiness, bliss, and security that peace does not provide! …

"I warned the Jewish leaders I met in London to desist from their policy, telling them that the Arab was the mightiest of soldiers and the day he draws his weapon, he will not lay it down until firing the last bullet in the battle, and we will fire the last shot …"

"I foresee the consequences of this bloody war. I see before me its horrible battles. I can picture its dead, injured, and victims … But my conscience is clear … For we are not attacking but defending ourselves, and we are not aggressors but defenders against an aggression! …"

Granted the authenticity of this quote has been questioned and many have accused it of being taken off context. But that is largely irrelevant because the discourse about Jews in the Muslim world would have been considered unacceptable by Western standards. Children over there are indoctrinated to be intolerant and hateful, the exact opposite of what us Westerners are taught. Rather than enjoying childhood, their kids are taught the glories of martyrdom and to die in the name of defeating Israel.

And that lead us to Hamas, a political party that was democratically voted into power and it’s explicit in wanting to exterminate all Jews - not just the ones in Israel though, but in the entire world. In case you don’t believe me, just read their Covenant, which is a official political document they established.

Article 7 mentions a prophecy attributed to Muhammed. 

The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree (evidently a certain kind of tree), would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.

Article 22 states that the French revolution, the Russian revolution, colonialism and both world wars were created by the Zionists or forces supportive of Zionism:

You may speak as much as you want about regional and world wars. They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.

Article 32 of the Covenant refers to an antisemitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion:

Today it is Palestine, tomorrow it will be one country or another. The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.

I know that not all Palestinians support Hamas since the PLO doesn’t recognize them, but enough Palestinians voted to get them into power - they are not a fringe movement. Following the 2007 coup, the Gaza Strip had exhibited the characteristics of Talibanization, a process whereby the Hamas government had imposed strict rules on women, discouraged activities commonly associated with Western or Christian culture, oppressed non-Muslim minorities, imposed sharia law, and deployed religious police to enforce these laws. While their PR wing denied efforts of Islamicizing the Gaza Strip, they have also added they don’t oppose it and believe in “persuasion”. One woman complained that women were not free to speak their minds or travel alone, and added:

"Hamas want to force themselves onto the people. They want the people to submit to them, this is their cover. They destroyed the reputation of Islam, by saying we're doing this because it is religion. This is how they won the elections."

Despite this, Hamas is somewhat aware of the weight of their words considering they have completely different rhetorics differing in the audience. When talking to an Arab crowd, they are explicitly anti-Semitic as one deputy member said on the Al-Aqsa TV:

If the enemy sets foot on a single square inch of Islamic land, Jihad becomes an individual duty, incumbent on every Muslim, male or female. A woman may set out [on Jihad] without her husband's permission, and a servant without his master's permission. Why? In order to annihilate those Jews. ... O Allah, destroy the Jews and their supporters. O Allah, destroy the Americans and their supporters. O Allah, count them one by one, and kill them all, without leaving a single one

When talking towards the international audience, they slightly alter their tune to being simply anti-Zionist when talking to CBS:

We are not fanatics. We are not fundamentalists. We are not actually fighting the Jews because they are Jews per se. We do not fight any other races. We fight the occupiers.

What Hamas may not realize it is that their adherence to fundamentalism and marginalization of Palestinian Christians, who would have once fought on their side are now on the verge of extinction, plays directly into the hands of Israel’s PR. I am sure you have already heard this being said many times that Israel is the safest place for Christians in the Middle-East - a rather dubious claim given only two percent constitutes the Christian population in contrast to Lebanon’s 40%.

Of course this is a shrewd plan that Israeli politicians play to gain the support of the United States and Christendom at large, including the current President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro, a Roman Catholic like yours truly. This helps hide the more uncomfortable, darker reality around Israel: that far-right Jewish gangs regularly vandalize churches with price tag attacks, Orthodox Jews regularly spit on Christians when they come across in the streets or how some of them might have sympathies for extremists like the followers of Meir Kahane. I’ve also have personal criticism of Israel tolerating Islamist parties in the Knesset which is really galling considering that the MB is banned in certain Arab countries like their long arch-enemy Egypt (despite what their political enemies in the Islamic world would like to pretend, Zionism isn’t necessarily anti-Islam). Of course none of this can be even comparable to what Christians are facing in the Islamic world itself.

"Christians, natives of Arab countries, are escaping their countries of origin. This is a common statement nowadays everywhere and it is correct one hundred percent. Statistics show that a large number of them have emigrated to safer countries for them and for their children, like the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe. The reason is the harassment to which they are subjected to by government agencies on the one hand and extremist groups on the other hand in countries they have inhabited for thousands of years…

"The Christians have lived in the territory currently referred to as [the Arab countries] for centuries alongside other religious groups, and particularly with Muslims who shared with them the afflictions of life. But the Christians have lost their partners for many reasons, including religious extremism among some Muslims, the demographic increases out of religious reasons, and the acts of discrimination, coercion, and individual and collective expulsion of Christians, and the pressures placed upon them even when they were serving their countries. There are many examples of that in Palestine, Iraq, Sudan, Lebanon, Egypt, and other countries.

"Approximately 4 million Lebanese Christians have emigrated from their country as a result of the pressures placed upon them by others. About half a million Iraqi Christians have left their country for the same reasons… The situation gets worse today because of the discrimination by salafi [Islamic fundamentalist] extremists. In Palestine, the Christians are becoming almost extinct as a result of the control of extremist Muslims on the Palestinian issue and the marginalization of the role of the Christians, apart from the negative impact of the Intifada, which is led by Islamist organizations, on the Christians of Palestine. With regard to Christians in Egypt, the Copts, what happened and is happening to them equally on the part of the state and the Islamists will suffice to fill pages of books and newspapers to explain the coercion, discrimination and persecution. What is happening in Algeria, Mauritania, Somalia, and others is too long to explain.

"This situation is also reflected in non-Arab [Muslim] countries. In Islamic countries like Pakistan, Indonesia and Nigeria, Christians suffer from persecution. In Pakistan, Islamist [spiritual leaders] have issued a fatwa [religious opinion] permitting the killing of two Christians for every Muslim killed by the American attacks in Afghanistan, as though the Americans represent Christianity in the world. In other countries they [Christians] live in fear, under the shadow of threat, and face a growing cycle of assaults whenever the United States and its allies carry out a military operation against any country.

"Christians are afraid of what might happen to them in these countries. The situation is quite critical and requires urgent attention. It is difficult for us to imagine any other time in which the Christians have felt a greater danger than the danger they feel today in these countries…"

Keep in mind, this report I shared was from 2004. Things surely must have gotten worse like in the wake of the Arab Spring. But this brings me back to my original point... While our brothers in Christ have their priests killed, their churches bombed, their women raped and their people forced to flee, don’t expect me to take the Palestinian cause seriously, if even their own Christians are being persecuted. If Muslims argued that the Palestinians have lived in this patch of land that is now occupied by the Jews, remember the Copts, Assyrians, Armenians and Greeks have lived in these lands long before Muslims arrived, but that is just my Christian perspective. 

As a long Islamist saying goes “before Sunday, comes Saturday”. 

[ozma914]

The Heroes of 9/11

Much as I tried, I couldn't write anything new this year to memorialize the events of 9/11.

I was so heartsick over our horribly bungled and costly withdrawal from Afghanistan, I found myself unable to say anything that wouldn't just attract pointless political arguing. Oh, I found words--I'd even go so far to say they were eloquent. But despite the obvious connection, writing about it now would only take away from remembrance of the terrorist attacks.

So I deleted the whole thing, thus saving the internet another corner of hate throwing and name calling. Instead, I'm reprinting here the column I wrote for the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Sadly, I didn't need to make many changes.

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              I've mentioned before that I’m uncomfortable using the word “hero”. Like many words, it’s overused and clichéd. What is a hero? Not a sports star. Being tough doesn’t make a hero. Not a skydiver. That may make you brave, but not heroic.  

Ronald Bucca was a member of the 101st Airborne, then served in the Special Forces and Green Berets while on active duty in the army. He became a New York City firefighter in 1978, and on September 11, 2001, became the only FDNY fire marshal ever killed in the line of duty.

           Does somebody become a hero when they take on a dangerous occupation? I don’t know … the flagger who controls traffic during road construction has an especially dangerous job, but I don’t know if you’d call it heroic. You could even argue that a firefighter or police officer doesn’t automatically become a hero the moment he puts on the badge. Maybe – potential hero?  

           But then, isn’t everyone a potential hero?  

           Steve DeChiaro is a businessman, and was just entering the Pentagon for a meeting when the building was struck by an airplane. No one would have blamed him for saving himself; he had no legal responsibility to act. Certainly he never thought he’d end up winning the Defense Department’s highest civilian award, the Medal of Valor, for his actions in rescuing and treating people that day.

           Sometimes, maybe, a hero is just someone who overcomes their fear and acts – not on a lark, but to do something important, something vital.  

Tom Burnett was the vice president of a medical devices company. He found himself on United Airlines Flight 93, and after his plane was hijacked he learned, in a cell phone call to his wife, of the attacks on the World Trade Center. He didn’t know for sure what the hijackers were planning, but it must have quickly become clear they also wanted to kill.

           Burnett must have also known that an attempt to take the plane back would likely be fatal … but that if it failed, they still might keep the hijackers from taking a large number of civilians on the ground with them.

           Sometimes being a hero is a matter of relativity. A firefighter might do something on a day to day basis that others see as heroic, while he just calls it another day on the job. But others wouldn’t normally expect to see a crisis, beyond a paper jam in the copy machine.  

Welles Crowther was an equities trader. The biggest risk for him on the job was a paper cut, or a coffee burn. He was on the 104th floor of the South Tower when the first plane hit.

           Witnesses described how Crowther, a former volunteer firefighter, took control, organized people, and got dozens out of the building before it collapsed.

           Sometimes it’s the call of duty, of course.  

Moira Smith, a 13 year veteran of the NYPD, had already been decorated for heroism. It’s hardly surprising that she headed into the World Trade Center to rescue people, and became the only female member of the force killed that day.

           Her daughter would be 22 now. I hope people tell her about her mom.

           Or … maybe heroism just runs in the family?  

Eric Moreland was a George Washington University student at the time, but also a volunteer firefighter and paramedic. As often happens to off duty emergency personnel, he was just happening by when an airplane crashed into the Pentagon.

           Moreland, at great risk, charged into the burning building and carried injured people to safety. Then he stayed to help remove the dead. Then he drove all the way to New York to help out at the world Trade Center.

           Moreland’s grandfather, Lt. Col. Conway Jones, was one of the famous Tuskegee Airmen of World War II. His father flew 80 combat missions in Vietnam.

           Whether it runs in the family or not, some people are just born to serve.  

Special Agent Leonard Hatton fought crime as an FBI agent, fought fires as a volunteer, and fought for freedom as a US Marine. He reported the second plan crashing into the south Tower – not from inside the World Trade Center, but from the roof of a nearby hotel. Then he went in. What else could he do? He died that day, but if he’d turned his back on the call for help, he wouldn’t have been able to live with himself.

           There will always be some who suffer for their service.  

Jim Ryan survived, but was still a victim of 9/11. A New York City firefighter, he came back to the WTC site again and again, for months. He helped search for survivors, then victims, and as time went by there was nothing left but to search out bits of what were once people.

           What else could he do? Over three hundred of his brother firefighters were there.

           The cancer diagnosis came in 2006. His lungs finally failed him on Christmas, 2009. He was 48, and died on the same day that someone else grabbed the headlines by trying to bring down another plane, with a chemical bomb strapped to his leg.

           On September 11, 2001, 341 FDNY firefighters and 2 Fire Department paramedics were killed; 23 NYPD officers died, along with 37 Port Authority PD officers and 8 private EMS medics.  

           On 9/11 at least 200 people, faced with the horrors of burning to death, jumped from the Twin Towers. Among the almost 3,000 who died in the four sites linked in the attack were citizens of over 70 nations. I don’t know how many of those people qualified as heroes. A lot of them, certainly. And just as certainly, the dead from that day are only a fraction of the victims.  

           Every now and then some short sighted person will suggest we stop obsessing so much about 9/11, that we “let it go”. After all, it’s been twenty years, right?  

           They’re wrong. They’ll always be wrong. Ten times twenty years, they’ll be wrong. Not only because we must keep this from happening again, but because heroes vanish too quickly, in the flotsam and jetsam of pop culture and the concerns of everyday life. Their memory goes too quickly, just as they do.  

           Be inspired by their stories. Saddened. Enraged. But never forget.

[gokul2181]

CSK vs SRH: Young Indian batsmen shine in Sunrisers Hyderabad's win, MS Dhoni fails to finish game for Chennai Super Kings again | Cricket News

New Post has been published on https://jordarnews.in/csk-vs-srh-young-indian-batsmen-shine-in-sunrisers-hyderabads-win-ms-dhoni-fails-to-finish-game-for-chennai-super-kings-again-cricket-news/

CSK vs SRH: Young Indian batsmen shine in Sunrisers Hyderabad's win, MS Dhoni fails to finish game for Chennai Super Kings again | Cricket News

DUBAI: There was no end to Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Chennai Super Kings‘ woes as former India captain yet again struggled to take his side past the finish line, falling short by seven runs against Sunrisers Hyderabad in an IPL match on Friday. HIGHLIGHTS | SCORECARD CSK controlled the first innings for a large part before youngsters Priyam Garg (51 not out) and Abhishek Sharma (31) lifted SRH to a competitive 164 for five after electing to bat.

Just the kind of performance that makes you want to whistle 🧡#CSKvSRH #OrangeArmy #KeepRising https://t.co/UuygEdg90p

— SunRisers Hyderabad (@SunRisers) 1601662036000

Their top guns not contributing much, former India U-19 World Cup skipper Garg scored his maiden IPL fifty and with Abhishek raised a 77-run stand for the fifth wicket. SRH collected 53 runs in the last four overs to make it a contest. Playing a record 194th IPL game, the stage was set for Dhoni to silence his critics but all he could manage was 47 runs off 36 balls as CSK fell short.

💔 https://t.co/XD7bi7R36X

— Chennai Super Kings (@ChennaiIPL) 1601662268000

Coming to bat at number five, Dhoni had enough balls at his disposal, a manageable target and trusted aide in Ravindra Jadeja (50) for company but again his attack came too late. It was Jadeja who took CSK closer to the target before getting out while Dhoni struggled in their 72-run stand for the fifth wicket. Except for a few hits, Dhoni struggled to time the ball. He also lost steam towards the end, having batted in hot conditions for over an hour. He hit Khaleel Ahmed for a massive six in the 19th over, which had to be completed by him because Bhuvneshwar Kumar hurt his leg after bowling just one ball.

That was a nail-biting game here in Dubai. @SunRisers win by 7 runs.#Dream11IPL #CSKvSRH https://t.co/TFKp2Uz5kP

— IndianPremierLeague (@IPL) 1601661894000

CSK needed 28 runs from the final over and skipper David Warner handed the ball to 18-year-old J and K spinner Abdul Samad. It was a gamble which paid off. Samad started with a wide that yielded CSK a boundary but held his nerves to see his side through. SRH spinners, specially Rashid Khan deserve the credit for the win. The Afghan was, as usual exceptional, as he choked CSK with his well-measured deliveries. He did not get a wicket but conceded only 12 runs his four overs. It was third defeat in a row for CSK in four matches, one of the worst starts for the three-time champions.

The legacy of Dhoni tells you to keep believing. Even when he’s visibly physically spent and isn’t timing the ball… https://t.co/eaNj9NDhH9

— Aakash Chopra (@cricketaakash) 1601662242000

Not only a quick start eluded CSK, they lost three quick wickets — Faf Du Plessis (22), Shane Watson (1) and Amabati Rayudu (8). The Indian pace trio of SRH — Bhuvneshwar, T Natarajan and Khaleel — kept the rivals under pressure. Bhuvneshwar sent back Watson (1) while Natarajan spoilt the comeback of Rayudu (8). Garg after a splendid knock, effected Du Plessis run out. Afghanistan’s Rashid Khan choked the runs with ever-reliable leg-spin while Jammu and Kahsmir’s Abdul Samad got rid of Kedar Jadhav (3).

Great win by @SunRisers full credit to the youngesters of the team. As for #csk they started accelerating too late… https://t.co/AKEQpuCEri

— Irfan Pathan (@IrfanPathan) 1601662628000

CSK needed 96 runs from the last six overs and some quick runs upfront would have helped them. After struggling in their initial matches, CSK brought Ambati Rayudu, Dwayne Bravo and Shardul Tahakur for Friday’s game. That CSK came into the match rejuvenated following a one-week break was evident with the way Deepak Chahar (2/31) troubled the SRH batsmen with his swinging deliveries. Sam Curran too showed control. Chahar was rewarded for his effort when he deceived Jonny Bairstow (0) with an in-swing ball that uprooted his stumps. Manish Pandey (29) was in good touch as he timed the ball nicely when pitched up and did not hesitate to play lofted shots while Warner worked the ball around. They managed 42 runs off the Powerplay overs. Pandey drove straight to Curran at mid-off off Thakur. Realising that time is ticking away, Warner tried to look for big shots but fell when Du Plessis, jumped perfectly to catch him near the boundary ropes. To make it worse for SRH, Kane Williamson (9) was run out next ball in a mix up with Garg. The responsibility to carry the team forward fell on the young shoulders of Garg and Abhishek, who did not disappoint. That Abhishek is talented is already known and the southpaw further enhanced his reputation with some confident and cracking shots. Garg too found his touch as he spent time at the crease and went on to score his maiden IPL fifty.

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The Indian cricket team are two times World Champions. In addition to winning the 1983 Cricket World Cup, they triumphed over Sri Lanka in the 2011 Cricket World Cup on home soil. They were also runners-up at the 2003 Cricket World Cup, and semifinalists four times(1987, 1996, 2015 and 2019). They came last in the Super Six stage in the 1999 Cricket World Cup and have been knocked out 4 times in the Group stage (1975, 1979, 1992 and 2007). India's historical win-loss record at the cricket world cup is 46-27, with 1 match being tied and another one being abandoned due to rain.

*HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 2019 WORLD CUP:*

The much-awaited India vs Pakistan clash took place at Old Trafford, Manchester on 16 June. However, this match turned out to be another no-contest in favour of India. India were made to bat first in a match which was affected by rain. Once Pakistan missed the chance to get Rohit run out in the seventh over[22], the game was over for Pakistan as Rohit went on to make a brilliant century (140 off 113 balls, 14 fours, 3 sixes), ably supported by Rahul (57 off 78 balls, 3 fours, 2 sixes) and Kohli (77 off 65 balls, 7 fours), however a good death-bowling performance from Mohammad Amir, who took 3/47, restricted India to 336/5 when at one stage, they were cruising towards a post-350 score. Pakistan's reply, however, had little effect. Barring a 104-run second-wicket stand between Babar Azam and Fakhar Zaman, the rest of the Pakistan batting crumbled against India's bowling attack, with a combined bowling effort from Pandya (8-0-44-2), who took the wickets of veterans Mohammad Hafeez and Shoaib Malik in consecutive deliveries, Vijay Shankar (5.2-0-2-22) and Kuldeep (9-1-2-32) leaving Pakistan at 166/6 in the 35th over before the rain began to fall. After the rain, Pakistan's target was reduced to 302 which had to be scored within an impossible 5 overs by the Duckworth–Lewis–Stern method, thus handing India yet another win against their arch-rivals and maintaining their all-win record against them in the World Cup. Pakistan managed to finish their innings at 212/6. India won the match by 89 runs (D/L).[23] Unfortunately for India, Bhuvneshwar sustained a hamstring niggle during the match while bowling, ruling him out for the matches against Afghanistan and the West Indies.[24]

India then played the teams who had qualified for the World Cup through the qualifying tournament, Afghanistan and the West Indies,[25] at Southampton and Old Trafford respectively. The match against Afghanistan was a thriller which India managed to win by 11 runs. On a slow pitch,the Indian batsman struggled to make runs against the Afghan bowling attack, with Afghan's spin attack of Rashid Khan, Mujeeb Ur Rahman and Mohammad Nabi, as well as the medium-pace of captain Gulbadin Naib, never allowing the Indian batsmen to settle down. India limped its way to 224/8 in their 50 overs, which was their lowest total batting first and completing their 50 overs since 2010.[26] In the chase, Afghanistan played sedately, with Naib, Rahmat Shah and Nabi making significant contributions, with Nabi going on to score 52 off 55 balls. However a strong bowling performance from India, with contributions from Bumrah (10-1-2-39), Shami (9.5-1-40-4) and Chahal (10-0-36-2) and especially Bumrah and Shami's death-over bowling, kept a check on the Afghan run rate. In the final over, the Afghans needed 16 runs to win the match. Once Shami got Nabi out in the third ball of the final over, the match was over for Afghanistan as he got the wickets of tailenders Aftab Alam and Mujeeb in consecutive deliveries to achieve a hat-trick, which was only the second by an Indian bowler in a World Cup since Chetan Sharma in 1987.[27] Afghanistan was all out for 213 in 49.5 overs.[28] The match against the Caribbeans on the other hand, witnessed a clinical performance from India, with the team winning by a huge margin of 125 runs. Though India, who batted first, lost Rohit (18 off 23 balls, 1 four and 1 six) early, a good knock from Kohli (72 off 82 balls, 8 fours), supplemented from Dhoni (56 off 61 balls, 3 fours, 2 sixes), which averted a potential middle-order collapse, and also a cameo from Pandya (46 off 38 balls, 5 fours), brought India to a respectable 268/7 in 50 overs. This was followed by yet another strong performance with the ball, with Shami (6.2-0-4-16) taking 4 wickets again, as the Windies were bowled out for just 143 in the 35th over.[29]

India’s first loss in the 2019 World Cup came against hosts England in the first of 2 back-to-back matches at Edgbaston, Birmingham, the other match being against Bangladesh. India, who were put to bowl first, bowled poorly for the first time in the tournament, including Shami (10-1-5-72), who was expensive despite taking a 5-wicket haul, as the English batsman, including openers Jason Roy and Jonny Bairstow, who cracked an attacking century, as well as all-rounder Ben Stokes, who scored 79 off just 54 balls, made merry of the Indian bowling attack. England posted 337/7 in their 50 overs. Chasing 338 to win, India lost Rahul early for a duck and from there, they were never able to recover, batting slowly due to a deteriorating pitch. In their first 10 overs, India was only able to score 27 runs for the loss of 1 wicket. Despite Rohit’s third century of the tournament (102 off 109 balls, 15 fours) along with Kohli’s fifth-consecutive half-century (66 off 76 balls, 7 fours), England’s total proved to be beyond India’s reach and they ended their innings at 306/5, losing by 31 runs. Dhoni (42 off 31 balls, 4 fours, 1 six) in particular was criticised by former players and fans for his inability to accelerate the scoring rate in the end overs.[30] In contrast, the match against Bangladesh which took place two days later was for the most part, a one-sided affair in favour of India, though Bangladesh put up a strong fight. India started in the strongest possible manner, with Rohit (104 off 92 balls, 7 fours, 5 sixes) scoring his fourth century in the tournament. Along with Rahul (77 off 92 balls, 6 fours, 1 six), the duo put up a partnership of 180 runs for the first wicket, which was the highest partnership by India for the first wicket in the World Cup at the time, beating the previous record of 172 by Rohit and Dhawan against Ireland in 2015. A score of 400 plus seemed likely at one stage, but once Rohit departed, there was a middle-order collapse due to pacer Mustafizur Rahman's 5/59 off his 10 overs. However cameos from Pant (48 off 41 balls, 6 fours and 1 six) and Dhoni (35 off 33 balls, 4 fours) brought India to 314/9 in their 50 overs. In response, Bangladesh fought back, with all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan scoring 66, but a spirited bowling performance from India, courtesy Bumrah (10-1-55-4) and Pandya (10-1-60-3), who also took Shakib's wicket, brought Bangladesh down to 179/6 in the 34th over. Despite a valiant rearguard action from the Bangladesh lower middle-order, with a 66-run partnership for the seventh wicket between Mohammad Saifuddin, who scored a fighting half-century, and Sabbir Rahman, Bangladesh folded for 286, India winning by 29 runs. With this win, India qualified for the semifinals of the 2019 Cricket World Cup.

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[boloorsportsmania]

#722 Bairstow’s century and Woakes’s first 3 maiden overs help England to keep World cup SF hopes alive; Rohit and Shami shine for India and Plunkett-Archer for England; Pakistan beat Afghanistan in a thriller ; Australia humiliate NZ; Its Brazil vs Argentina and Peru vs Chile in Copa America SF and more..:-)

Pakistan had gained immense confidence after beating SA and NZ. They had to beat Afghanistan and Bangladesh and expect England to lose one of the 2 matches to seal their SF spot. Afghanistan chose to bat first. None of Afghanistan batsmen scored beyond 42. They couldn’t get any decent partnership. They still posted a competitive score of 227. Shaheen Afridi starred again with the ball as he grabbed 2nd 4 fer in as many matches. Fakhar Zaman was dismissed of 2nd ball. Imam and Babar then had 72 run stand before Nabi dismissed both in 2 overs. That changed the match. Pak 81-3 from 72-1. Hafeez and Haris then pushed past 100. It looked like they would take Pakistan to comfortable victory. Mujeeb-Rashid then dismissed Hafeez and Haris respectively. Pak 142-5. Sarfaraz ran himself out. Pakistan 156-6. Afghanistan were favorites to win from here. Pakistan needed a hero and they found one in Imad Wasim.  He played cautiously initially. He had 50 run stand with Shadab before later got runout. Pakistan needed 46 runs from last 5 overs. There was 4 overs of spin remaining but Afghan captain gave gulbadin the ball. Imad smashed 16 runs of him which changed the match. Rashid and Mujeeb kept Afghanistan in the game. They needed 16 of last 2 overs. Wahab hit a six of Rashid which closed the gap. Imad hit the winning boundary with 2 balls to spare. Heartbreak for Afghanistan and relief for Pakistan. They need to now pray that India beat England which would mean that win against Bangladesh could seal their SF spot. Pakistan is on a roll now. They are a team which plays on rhythm. They have got that now. Most players are in form.

Australia were confirmed of SF spot. They were one win away from almost sealing top 2 spot. Boult and Ferguson reduced Australia to 92-5. Their openers and Smith failed for a change. Khawaja and Carey then had 109 run stand which steadied Australian ship. Carey was dismissed for 71. Khawaja made 88 as Australia set NZ a score of 244 to win. Boult even grabbed a hat-rick in final over. Its been a rare world cup where we have observed 2 hat-tricks.  Though openers fell early, Williamson and Taylor had 55 run stand to rescue NZ. Once Starc dismissed Williamson, wheels of NZ came off. They were dismissed for 157 from 97-2. Starc grabbed his 2nd 5 fer of the world cup. Starc has 24 wickets now in this world cup. Next best is 17 by Ferguson.They have now lost 2 in a row. They have depended on Williamson in batting. Taylor, Guptill and Latham have been out of form. Their SF seem to be certain as they have superior run rate when compared to Pakistan. If England win both the matches, they would qualify. In that case, NZ could tie with Pakistan on points but since NZ have superior run rate, they might qualify.

India faced England in Edgbaston. England won the toss and chose to bat without hesitation. India brought in Pant for injured Shankar. England dropped Moeen and Vince. Roy and Plunkeet were picked. Roy and Bairstow though were lucky early on started hammering India all over the park. Bairstow had a couple of Chinese cuts missing the stumps. Roy was caught behind off Hardik but India didn’t review.  Both crossed fifties and score beyond 100 inside 15 overs. They hammered Chahla and Kuldeep to short boundary sixes. Against the run of play, Roy was dismissed by Kuldeep for 66. India 160-1 in 23rd over. Bairstow reached his maiden WC century post that. He was dismissed by Shami trying to accelerate. India 205-2 in 32nd over. Prior to that dismissal, India had a phase where just 25 runs came in 6 odd overs. India controlled phase between 25-40 as runs dried up. Morgan also was dismissed trying to accelerate. Root and Stokes had a 70 run stand before Shami dismissed Root for 44. England 277-4 in 45th over. England scored 60 of last 6 overs thanks to some late hitting by Stokes-Butler. Bumrah bowled brilliantly for 1-44. He just conceded 3 runs in last over. Shami had 1-25 after 7 overs ended up at 5-69 in 10. England had put a target of 338 to win, 1 less than what India had set England in 2011 world cup. Stokes scored 79 of 54 balls which gave impetus later in the innings. India needed a great start but got reverse of it. 3 of first 5 overs were maiden (all by Woakes). ROhit was dropped on 4 by Root off Archer. Woakes dismissed Rahul for duck. Kohli and Rohit played very cautiously for first 15 overs. England bowlers were bowling loads of cutters and slow balls which was smart thinking. India had to get a move on. Kohli started by creaming few runs. He reached fifty, his 5th consecutive. Rohit also brought up his fifty. They took past 100 in 22 overs. Runs started to come a bit freely. Against the run of play, Virat was dismissed by Plunkett for 66. Pant took time to get going. He milked singles initially. He and Rohit had 52 run stand before Woakes dismissed dangerous Rohit for 103. India were always chasing 8+ required run rate due to slow start. Pandya joined Pant. They started hammering a few lusty blows. They had 28 run stand in 3 overs before Pant was dismissed by a stunning catch from Woakes. He dived full length to dismiss Pant. India 226-4 in 39 overs. India needed Hardik to fire. Dhoni joined him. He started quickly unlike previous games. India needed 104 runs of last 10 overs. Pandya was dismissed for a well made 45 of 33 balls by Plunkett. It came down to 71 from last 5 overs. Plunkett, Woakes and Archer bowled brilliantly in this phase of 40-45 overs.  Plunkett ended with 3-55. He was prime reason for England to pull back India. Dhoni and Kedar Just couldn’t maneuver the ball. India lost by 31 runs. Dhoni and Jadhav didn’t show any intent in last 5 overs. It looked like they were playing for averages rather than getting close to target.

In Copa America, Argentina started off poorly as Columbia hammered them 2-0 in opening game. They just managed draw against Paraguay. They outclassed Qatar to qualify for QF where they handsomely beat Venezuela 2-0. Martinez and Giovani have been goal scorers. They would clash with Brazil now in SF which could be mother of all clashes. Brazil have been unbeaten so far. They won QF on penalties 4-3 against Paraguay. They had last 2 Copa America cups in QF in penalties. Defending champions Chile beat Columbia in penalties as well. They would face Peru in Sf who beat Uruguay 5-4 in penalties. Suarez missed penalty.  

[zeroviraluniverse-blog]

Rashid Khan's five-for keeps Afghanistan alive | Cricket

Visit Now - http://zeroviral.com/rashid-khans-five-for-keeps-afghanistan-alive-cricket/

Rashid Khan's five-for keeps Afghanistan alive | Cricket

© Getty Images

Afghanistan 178 for 5 (Naib 74*, Najibullah 63*, Naveed 2-37, Qadeer 2-38) beat United Arab Emirates 177 (Anwar 64, Naveed 45, Rashid 5-41, Dawlat 3-45) by five wickets Scorecard

Afghanistan overcame a plucky United Arab Emirates in their Super Sixes match at Old Hararians to win by five wickets. Rashid Khan’s 5 for 41 helped to bowl UAE out for just 177 in 43 overs, but Afghanistan slipped to 54 for 5 in their chase, and were put under serious pressure by UAE’s new-ball bowlers, Mohammad Naveed and Qadeer Ahmed. A 124-run partnership between Gulbadin Naib and Najibullah Zadran repaired Afghanistan’s chase, as UAE lost their appetite for a fight on a stiflingly hot afternoon. Both men passed fifty before guiding their team home with more than 15 overs to spare.

While UAE have lost all of their Super Sixes matches, Afghanistan’s win takes them to four points, level with Ireland, whom they will meet in their final game on Friday. If they win that game by a big margin, and Scotland and Zimbabwe both lose their remaining matches, this victory will give Afghanistan a slim chance of making it into the final.

It seemed that the match might be over very quickly when UAE were asked to bat on a helpful surface and were reduced to 18 for 3 inside the Powerplay. Opener Chirag Suri dug in tenaciously, taking 72 balls for his 22, but it was not until Shaiman Anwar arrived at the crease that UAE started to show some real grit.

Fittingly, Anwar wore a a floppy sun hat, continuing a fine UAE tradition that started with Sultan Zarawani’s incredibly brave decision to bat against Allan Donald at the 1996 World Cup wearing only a wide-brimmed floppy for protection. Disappointingly, Anwar traded his hat for a helmet when Afghanistan’s quicks were on, but his knock was anything but disappointing.

Mixing stolid defense with daring attack, he reached a 69-ball fifty with a fiercely struck six down the ground off Mujeeb ur Rahman. Naveed’s knock was even more adventurous, and he showed scant regard for Afghanistan’s attack as he plundered seven fours and two sixes in his 45. But theirs were the only innings of substance for UAE, and Rashid took advantage of the batsmen’s inability to read his variations to record his fourth five-wicket haul in ODIs. Rashid now has 96 wickets in this format, and needs just four more within his next nine ODIs to become the quickest bowler to 100 ODIs wickets in the history of the game.

So dominant had Afghanistan been with the ball – Naveed’s 45 and Anwar’s competent fifty notwithstanding – that much of the lunchtime chat around the ground revolved around how quickly Afghanistan might want to chase down the middling target to boost their net run rate.

But as Boycott’s third law states, one should never judge how good a score is until both sides have batted on the pitch. Mohammad Shahzad, in his second match back from a demerit suspension during the group stages, didn’t even last two overs before Qadeer Ahmed’s bustling medium pace trapped him lbw. Energy buzzed through UAE after the early strike, and it quickly became apparent that this chase could be a lot more tricky than Afghanistan might have hoped.

Gulbadin Naib, elevated to No. 3, endured a particularly torrid time from Naveed. Naib struggled to lay bat on ball, repeatedly playing and missing, as Naveed found just as much lift and movement off the surface as Dawlat Zadran had earlier in the day.

Importantly, though, he did enough to survive, while Rahmat Shah kept the scoreboard ticking over with flicked boundaries on the leg side. But just as the pressure brought about by the early wicket seemed to be dissipating, UAE struck again. Naveed burst a quick length delivery through Shah’s defensive push, tipping the bails off, sparking off a mini collapse. Naveed trapped Samiullah Shenwari lbw in the same over, and in the very next, Qadeer had a hooking Asghar Stanikzai caught behind as Afghanistan slipped to 43 for 4.

Mohammad Nabi has pulled Afghanistan out of situations like these in the past, but the drinks break seemed to break his concentration, and he nicked Ahmed Raza behind first ball after the resumption. With Afghanistan tottering at 54 for 5, UAE had the game by the scruff of the neck.

Naib, who had so obviously struggled against the new ball and watched wickets tumble from the other end, was joined by Najibullah, and despite a couple of early scares, they soon set about rebuilding the innings. Najibullah’s boundary-hitting ability was particularly valuable, each hit bringing the target a little closer and allowing Naib the time and freedom to grind his way into some sort of form.

Najibullah was into double figures at better than a run a ball, his first boundary coming via a shimmy-and-swipe six over long-on off Ahmed Raza’s left-arm spin in the 18th over. Najibullah also put the reverse sweep to good use, particularly against Imran Haider’s legspin, and with his second six, he joined Naib in the 40s. Naib reached his fifty from 84 deliveries; Najibullah followed him to the milestone two overs later, from a more rapid 53 deliveries.

With the afternoon sun lifting moisture out of the earth, enormous billowing cumulonimbus clouds built up around the ground, and the extreme heat seemed to sap UAE’s energy with the game slipping out of their grasp. When Rohan Mustafa let slip with a chest high no-ball, which was carted to the square leg boundary, and followed that up with a leg-stump half volley that was smashed to wide long-on, the white flag was raised. With the pressure off, Naib finally came into his own, lifting Naveed and Mustafa for massive leg-side sixes. His gritty innings won him the Player of the Match award, while Afghanistan’s win kept them in the competition. Just.

Liam Brickhill is a freelance journalist based in Cape Town

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.

[whatisonthemoonarchive]

Confessions of a Deprogrammed Trump Supporter

Originally posted here: strategic-culture.org/news/2021/01/22/confessions-of-a-deprogrammed-trump-supporter/

As many people are aware, CNN recently aired a wonderful interview by former Moonie-turned-cult-deprogrammer Steve Hassan giving advice to Americans wishing to deprogram their MAGA-hat wearing loved ones, now that the age of Trump is coming to an end.

Video included in the original post: https://youtu.be/TnblPVMEYAc

I was fortunate enough to have read Hassan’s book and had the loving scrub-brush of truth wash my brain of all of its formerly pro-Trump sympathies and can honestly say that I am most certainly better off for having left those old delusions in the past.

For one thing, I used to enjoy my right to free speech… but thanks to the terrible events of January 6, 2021 that left 3 people dead, horned Q supporters doing photo ops for media, pro-Trump rioters let into the capitol building by guards, and busloads of conspicuous violent figures whom some say were “provocateurs” (whatever that means), I have come to realize that I was all wrong. Free speech is actually very dangerous. Words we took for granted like “patriot”, “nationalism”, or “vote fraud” are actually very racist and using them is a sure fire sign that you might be a domestic terrorist. At any rate, using them should at least be enough to get someone banned from social media and put under surveillance.

For a long time, I thought that record numbers of Black and Hispanic voters supporting Trump in 2020 meant that Trump was not racist, but I now realize that these poor folks just suffered from “multiracial whiteness”.

I thought that questioning voting machines that had been caught red handed manipulating elections across the world was patriotic and that somehow some conglomeration of Big Tech, the media, intelligence agencies and a thing called “deep state” were colluding to create a color revolution in the USA… but I now realize that I was actually supporting conspiracy theories and thus violence and thus domestic terrorism.

I was so far gone that my pre-deprogrammed self was actually persuaded in the crazy idea that depopulation agendas hid behind the cover of a “Great Reset agenda”, concocted by a shadowy elite of sociopathic oligarchs. I have now learned that this was either a silly conspiracy theory, the result of my own delusions or if it was true, then I can at least say with certainty that it is all for my own good.

The truth that I have now come to discover, is that free speech has just gone too far. This practice has reached its limits, and Twitter’s legal executive Vijaya Gadde is absolutely right. Social Media should do its civic duty and extend its censorship of “dangerous thoughts” to citizens and political officials outside of the USA in order to protect the world from itself. If other world leaders are worried about this new truth, then they should seriously do some soul searching and learn to think differently.

The old me is long gone, and now all I can say is “thank god” Joe Biden has found himself in the position of leader of the free world at this historic moment of change.

For awhile it was looking like Donald Trump would actually stop forever wars, and untie the U.S. military’s involvement from the CIA. That white supremacist actually came precariously close to destroying the foundations of globalization that many enlightened billionaires had put decades of energy into organizing- first destroying Obama’s Transpacific Partnership, then the Paris Climate Accords and THEN he had the nerve to scrap NAFTA itself by giving nation states a say in economic affairs!

He even committed the sin of criticizing NATO itself- the very foundation of western collective security from the obvious threats of Russia and China!

He called for insane things like “bringing back manufacturing to the USA”, “restoring protectionism”, and “making space exploration and arctic development a priority for the nation” and everyone knows that this is all so 1963.

But now the “disturbance” is over, and the age of Biden has arrived!

Joe Biden is a man who understands what liberal values and the “rules-based order” are really about.

He was wise enough to get onto the unipolar bandwagon before it was popular by drafting the 1994 surveillance bill that John Ashcroft later used verbatim for the Patriot Act after 9/11.

He was smart enough to know that Wall Street couldn’t lead America into the 21st century as long as Glass-Steagall was in place and voted for its repeal in 1999.

He was one of the loudest supporters of NAFTA which helped reduce carbon emissions drastically by exporting dirty industrial jobs oversees where they should be.

He also gave the Credit Card companies the political support they needed to stop citizens from abusing their generosity which went a long way to help Americans build character and take responsibility for their short sighted consumer decisions.

After 9/11, Biden also brilliantly supported the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq (who may not have had anything to do with 9/11 but at least showed the terrorists who’s boss).

Unlike those cultish Trumping fascists, Biden was courageous enough to proclaim even before the horrible insurrectionary riots of January 6th, that a new Patriot Act/Domestic Terror Bill would be needed to purge the republic of dangerous terrorism and the insidious thought crimes which spread doubt in honest elections, and distrust in the benevolent political structures leading the western world. Thinking people know, that thought does sometimes cause action… and if we want to truly remedy wrong actions like the riots of January 6th, or dangerous COVID-denialism, then we should most certainly take the battle to the realm of the mind.

The brilliant Steve Hassan even recognized this reality in his CNN interview when he said that “the bottom line is all of America needs deprogramming because we’ve all been negatively influenced by Donald Trump.”

Sure, some people think that the 46 deaths and 32 riots caused by Antifa and BLM over the past six months might qualify as domestic terrorism, but that’s only because they are infected with racist wrong think and don’t realize that these groups were just fighting against fascism and racism.

Certainly, the first 100 days after Biden’s inauguration will be inspired.

Already, Biden has made commitments to sign the USA back onto the legally binding Paris Climate Accords to help us win the war against climate, and has shown the good sense to reverse Trump’s disastrous decision to break the anti-China TPP in 2016. Biden always said he would renegotiate the TPP in order “to hold China accountable”, and everyone knows Trump’s selfish decision only helped China by freeing up its neighbors to work together on the BRI. If only Trump hadn’t killed TPP, then the 14 nation strong Regional Cooperation Economic Partnership which China just finalized would never have happened.

Most importantly, our benevolent overlords who meet at Davos every year are happy once more and have even kicked off Biden’s inauguration with a special celebration entitled “the Davos Agenda” running from January 25-29. According to the WEF, this event will “mark the launch of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset Initiative and begin the preparation of the Special Annual Meeting in the spring. Each day will focus on one of the five domains of the Great Reset Initiative.”

The USA’s new Special Envoy on Climate, John Kerry, captured the excitement of this wonderful moment perfectly when he said: “The notion of a reset is more important than ever before… we’re at the dawn of an extremely exciting time.”

According to the Great Reset architects, this is definitely the right idea.

WEF President Klaus Schwab has taught us that the “age of owning things” is so passe, and we know that this obsolete relic of capitalism isn’t compatible in our new age of global peace and brotherhood.

Ownership of “things” just makes us selfish and forget about the real purpose of life.. which is really about sacrifice. Establishing new supranational organizations to manage the levers of consumption and production according to evidence-based standards and scientific realities of carrying capacity is the only remedy to the evils of populism and being ignorant to this reality doesn’t lessen the fact that boards of experts who are smarter than you say that it is so.

According to the WEF’s Great Reset website global CO2 output collapsed by over 7% during the 12 months of global COVID-19 shutdowns… which means the COVID-19 is more of a blessing than many dim witted selfish nationalists who like owning things realize.

So what if the world population will contract under the shutdown of the world economy under COVID lockdowns? And so what if we lose our capacity to support industrial civilization through the imposition of global green energy grid?

Didn’t the late great Maurice Strong (who was WEF Executive Director and father of the Great Reset), ask the question in 1991:

“What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment. Will they do it? The group’s conclusion is ‘no’. The rich countries won’t do it. They won’t change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”

So get ready for an exciting time in history, and hopefully China finally learns that the new world order is Unipolar – with a big green hug for all well behaved leaders who get rid of such silly ideas as “nationalism”, “industrial progress” or “ending poverty through development” which dangerous concepts like the Belt and Road Initiative threaten to unleash. Most importantly, China has to really deprogram itself from her belief that Russia is a worthwhile partner in the 21st century. Xi made a good decision to attend this month’s Great Reset conference and both he and Modi would do well to abandon dirty fossil fuels, their support of nuclear energy development or space mining in order to adapt their realities to the computer models which have been telling us how to hitch our destinies to a world of entropy and diminishing returns.

[raystart]

Technology, Innovation, and Modern War – Class 3

We just held our third session of our new national security class Technology, Innovation and Modern War. Joe Felter, Raj Shah and I designed a class to examine the new military systems, operational concepts and doctrines that will emerge from 21st century technologies – Space, Cyber, AI & Machine Learning and Autonomy. Today’s topic was Sourcing, Acquiring and Deploying Technology for Modern War.

Catch up with the class by reading our summaries of Class 1 here and Class 2 here.

Class 3: Our guest speaker for session 3 was Anja Manuel, former State Department official, founding partner of Rice, Hadley, Gates and Manuel and author of This Brave New World: India, China and the United States. Some of the readings for the session included: Esper’s Convenient Lie, How to Win the Tech Race with China, The Age of Great-Power Competition.

If you can’t see the slides click here.

Winning the Wars We Knew Joe Felter, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia, started the class showing excerpts from General MacArthur’s famous Duty, Honor, Country speech given to the Corps of Cadets at West Point in May 1962. In what would be his final address to his alma mater, MacArthur admonished these future leaders of the United States military that, “Through all this welter of change, your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable: it is to win our wars. Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication. You stand as the Nation’s war-guardian, as its lifeguard from the raging tides of international conflict.”

Back in MacArthur’s day, fighting a conventional conflict akin to the wars America experienced in the 20th century was certainly not expected to be easy. Confronting the massive armored formations of the Soviet Union in the Fulda Gap or engaging in a proxy war fought in another theater would be costly and difficult to prevail (not to mention the specter of escalation to a nuclear exchange). But with known adversaries and technologies the weapon systems and operational concepts we expected to rely on to win our future wars were, however, easier to anticipate and simpler to define. 

For example, in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor the U.S. knew how – and largely where – to respond. The country mobilized its resources and industrial base, raised powerful military forces and projected power – directing it at a defined enemy and the enemy’s industrial base. In conventional state-on-state warfare, the operational and tactical level activities that support a strategy to win are often clear. You mass fire power on objectives. You destroy the enemy’s military and industrial capabilities and seize terrain. All those things are missions that the military can get their head around. 

In MacArthur’s time we defeated our enemies and drove them to unconditional surrender. We did so by using the superior power (both quantity and quality) of our weapons and how we employed them. 

After WWII the weapons and defense systems we acquired and deployed reflected this experience. In the 1950’s we leveraged our industrial capacity and innovated by producing five new fighter designs and three new classes of aircraft carriers, and nuclear-powered attack and ballistic submarines.

As we pointed out in previous class sessions, in the 20th century, requirements were known years ahead of time and the DoD built incrementally better versions of the same platforms. (Although our experience in Vietnam would foreshadow the issues of unconventional warfare the U.S. faced in Iraq and Afghanistan.)

Winning our wars remains-as MacArthur characterized- the military’s fixed and inviolable mission. However, the conditions we will fight in the future are much different, than in the wars we prevailed in during MacArthur’s time. How we prepare for and fight future wars must reflect these new realities of modern war. Adaptability has always been an essential attribute of successful militaries. 

We will discuss these ideas further in later class sessions.

Two Acquisition Paradigm Shifts  Raj Shah, former head of the Defense Innovation Unit, pointed out that men and women in uniform have signed up to support national security with the equipment that they are given and must make do with what you give them. These men and women are quite resourceful to achieve the mission as best they can with the gear they have.

However, if we give them equipment that fails to keep up with the threat or state of the art, our warfighters bear a cost (ultimately with their lives) that they and the nation will pay.  So, it’s incumbent on us to think about the ramifications of these acquisition decisions.  It’s better to take risk in the hallways of the Pentagon than on the battlefield – risk aversion in the former will force risk acceptance in the latter, with potentially grave consequences.

There are two paradigm shifts going on in the DOD. The first, the transition from buying a small number of exquisite systems versus large number of low-cost systems. And the second, the shift from the DOD contracting everything from defense primes to building software themselves or serving as the integrator for off-the-shelf commercial systems.

To illustrate the escalating cost of military hardware, Norm Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed famously graphed out how much each airplane costs. On the bottom left, a Wright brothers plane in 1910 cost ~$5,000 in today’s dollars. If you follow the cost line up and to the right, the F 22 Raptor – is a $300 million a plane (if you include all the R&D costs).

Augustine’s tongue-in-cheek conclusion was that if we followed this trend line, by 2050 the entire defense budget will purchase just one aircraft. And that aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and the Navy for three and a half days a week, except on a leap year when it will be available to the Marines for that extra day. 

While Augustine was being facetious, the consequence of escalating costs of these exquisite systems plays out in the way he described. The Air Force said we needed 750 F-22s to meet all the threats. They ended up buying 187. They said they needed 132 B-2 bombers. They ended up buying 21. We design these world-beating systems, but because they’re so expensive, and it takes so long to build them, and the threats change before they get deployed, we’re going to be left behind.

The same story is being played out in our satellites in space. The National reconnaissance office builds satellites the size of school buses and they can do more than any other countries. But we just have a handful of them — all of them big, fat targets. But Planet Labs and SpaceX are launching thousands of satellites that individually aren’t as good, but collectively illustrate the trend of mass commodity versus exquisite. 

At the same time, the Department of Defense has finally realized how important software is. In fact, many of our most advanced airplanes and ships are really software delivery vehicles, meaning the software, not hardware, is the primary driver of capability. Over the last few decades, the ability of the DoD to design and even understand modern software design had atrophied. The good news is that DoD has recognized this and has announced a new policy for acquiring software, and have start building ‘software factories’ with names like Kessel Run (USAF) and Kobiyashi Maru (Space Force). Raj had a front row seat in this revolution: 

  If you can’t see the video click here.

Many of the innovations that will shape future conflicts will increasingly occur in the commercial technology base. Advancements in these technologies will be driven by consumer demand and the potential for profit- not government directives. Requirements are not known years ahead of time. So, the DoD needs a new way of engaging and acquiring these fast evolving technologies. Fortunately, real progress is happening across the DOD. There had been a wellspring of new initiatives and reform. Hopefully the most successful of these initiatives will be broadly scaled across the department and federal government. These positive trends include: Software color of money reform, Middle-tier acquisitions, Other Transaction Authorities (OTAs), Commercial outreach organizations, SIBR reform, software factories, talent pipelines, rapid prototyping, digital engineering, and more (it’s a very exciting time to be a reformer in the DoD). But these initiatives will need to overcome institutional barriers to scale; our hope is that Congress, uniformed leaders, political appointees, and traditional contractors will continue to work together to improve the ability of democracies to deter and prevail against potential adversaries.

Guest Speaker – Anja Manuel Anja Manuel is the author of This Brave New World, an overview of the political and economic relationships between India, China and the US.

If you can’t see Anja Manuel‘s talk click here 

Lessons Learned

20th Century U.S.-centric rules for war were built around known adversaries and technologies

The conditions we will fight in the future are much different 

The Vietnam War would foreshadow the issues of unconventional warfare the U.S. faced in Iraq and Afghanistan

The Department of Defense is coming to grips with two major transitions

from buying a small number of exquisite systems to a large number of low-cost systems

from the DOD contracting everything from defense primes to building software themselves or serving as the integrator for off-the-shelf commercial systems

[newsnigeria]

Check out New Post published on Ọmọ Oòduà

New Post has been published on http://ooduarere.com/news-from-nigeria/world-news/bolivia-color-revolution/

Bolivia – A Color Revolution – or a New Surge for Latin American Independence?

by Peter Koenig for Ooduarere via The Saker Blog

Like Túpac Katari, indigenous Aymara leader more than 200 years ago, confronting the Spaniards, Evo Morales was betrayed and ‘dismembered’ by his own people, recruited and paid by the agents of the most destructive, nefarious and murderous dark elite that governs and has governed for over two hundred years our planet, the United States of America. With their worthless fiat-Ponzi-pyramid money, the made-out-of-thin-air US dollar, they create poverty throughout the globe, then buy off the weak and poor to plot against the very leaders that have worked for years to improve their social conditions.

It’s become a classic. It’s being called a Color Revolution, and it’s been taking place on all Continents. The list of victim-countries includes, but is not exhaustive – Colombia, Honduras, Argentina, Paraguay, Ecuador, Chile, Brazil, in some ways also Uruguay (the current left-leaning government is powerless and has to remain so, otherwise it will be “changed”… that’s the name of the game). – Then there are Georgia, Ukraine, Iraq, South Sudan, Libya, Afghanistan, Indonesia; and the lawless rulers of the universe are attempting to “regime change” North Korea, Syria, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua – and on a larger scale China and Russia (I just returned from China – where the Government and people are fully aware what Washington’s intentions are, behind every move they make).

In Africa, Africom, the US military Africa Command, buys off almost every corrupt African leader put in place by Africa’s former and new European colonialists, so they may continue sucking the riches out of Africa. These African leaders backed by Africom keep the African population in check, so they will not stand up. In case they won’t quite manage, “they” created the fear-squad called, Boko Haram, an off-spring of ISIS / IS – the Islamic State, created by the same creator, the CIA, Pentagon and NATO. The latter represents the European US-puppet allies; they keep raping Africa and reaping the benefits of her plentiful natural resources, and foremost, make sure that Africans stay subdued and quiet. Those who don’t may easily be “disappeared”. It’s Arica. But, have “they” noticed, Africa is moving, is gradually waking up?

And yes, not to forget, the “developed” and industrialized Europe, where sophisticated “regime change” over the years has subdued a largely well-off population, numbed and made apathetic by endless consumerism – Germany, UK, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, France, Italy, Spain – look what they have done to Greece! – Greece has become a red-flag warning for every EU nation that may dare to step out of US-dictated lockstep, of what might happen to them.

The list goes on with Eastern European EU countries, mostly former Soviet republics or Soviet satellites. They are EU members thanks to the UK, Washington’s mole in the EU, or as I like to call it – the European non-union – no Constitution, no solidarity, no common vision. They are all fiercely anti-Russia and most are also anti-Europe, but are made to – and love to eat and drink from the bowl of the EU-handouts, compliments of EU taxpayers. That’s about the state of the affairs we are in. There is, of course, much more coercion going on, but you get the picture. US interference is endless, merciless, reckless, without scruples and deadly. —-

Bolivia is just the latest victim. The process of Color Revolution is always more or less the same – a long preparation period. The coup d’état against Evo has been under preparation for years. It began already before Evo was first elected, when Washington realized that after the Bolivian people’s purging of two of Washington’s imposed “stooges” Presidents, in 2003 and 2005, Bolivia needed a respite. But the empire never gives up. That is a golden rule written in their unofficial Constitution, the PNAC (Plan for a New American Century), the writing of which has begun just after WWII, is regularly adjusted and updated, even name-changed (from Pax Americana to PNAC), but is still very much alive and ticking.

The first of the two US-imposed Presidents at the turn of the century, was Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, also called “Goni”, who privatized Bolivia’s rich hydrocarbon resources to foreign, mostly US, petro-corporations for a pittance. He was “elected” in 2002 against the indigenous, Aymara candidate, Evo Morales. When Goni was disposed of in a bloody people’s coup (about 60 dead) in 2003, he was replaced by his Vice-President, Carlos Mesa, the very key opponent of Evo’s in the 20 October 2019 elections – who, following Goni’s privatization policies, was also overthrown by the Bolivians in 2005. This led to a new election late 2005 – and that’s when Evo finally won by a landslide and started his Presidency in January 2006.

What he has achieved in his 13 years of Presidency is just remarkable – more than significant reductions of poverty, unemployment, analphabetism, increase in health indicators, in national reserves, in minimum wages, pension benefits, affordable housing – in general wellbeing, or as Evo calls it, “living well”.

That’s when Washington decided to step back for a while – and regroup, to hit again in an appropriate moment. This moment was the election three weeks ago. Preparation for the coup intensified a few months before, when Bolivia’s Vice-President, Álvaro Marcelo García Linera, told the media that every day there were reports that US Embassy agents were interfering in the country’s internal and local affairs.

The manipulated election in 2002 is recorded in an outstanding film, “Our Brand is Crisis”, a 2005 American documentary by Rachel Boynton on American political campaign marketing tactics in Bolivia by Greenberg Carville Shrum (GCS) – James Carville was previously President Clinton’s personal assistant – the documentary: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6dqysa.

Then, like today, the coup was orchestrated by the CIA via the “legitimate” body of the Organization of American States (OAS). The US Ambassador to the OAS openly boasts paying 60% of OAS’ budget – “so, better don’t mess with us”.

Less than a week before the October 20 election, Carlos Mesa was trailing Evo Morales with 22 against 38 points. Under normal circumstances it’s is virtually impossible that in a few days a candidate picks up that much of a difference. The election result was Mesa 37% and Morales 47% which would give Morales a first-round win, as the winning candidate needs a margin of ten points. However, already before the final tally was in, the OAS, the US and the usual puppets, the European Union, complained about election ‘irregularities’ – when the only irregularities were manufactured in the first place, namely the drastic increase in Mesa’s percentage from 22 to 37 points.

Evo declared himself the winner on 20 October, followed immediately by violent anti-Evo riots throughout the country, but mostly in the oil-rich Santa Cruz area – home of Bolivia’s oligarchs and elite. The protests lasted for about three weeks during which at least three people died, when last Sunday, November 10, Evo was “suggested” by the military brass, supported by the OAS (US) to step down with his entire entourage, or else. He resigned, and asked for, and was granted political asylum in Mexico.

The Vice-President, Alvaro Linera, and most of Morales’ cabinet members followed him to Mexico. The President of the Senate, Ms. Adriana Salvatierra, also of the MAS party, according to the Constitution, would have been the legitimate interim-President. But she was also forced to resign, and so were Victor Borda, the leader of the Chamber, and Rubén Medinaceli, First Vice President of the Senate. They all had to resign. In total some 20 high-ranking officials of Evo’s Government took refuge in the Mexican Embassy in La Paz, before they flew to Mexico.

On Tuesday, 12 November, an extraordinary session of both chambers (Deputies and Senate) of the Plurinational Legislative Assembly (Parliament) was convened, to officially accept President Morales’ resignation, but the representatives of the Movement to Socialism (MAS), which are the majority in both vchambers, did not attend because they were told by the opposition that their safety and that of their families could not be guaranteed. As a consequence, Parliament had suspended its session due to the lack of quorum.

Nevertheless, Jeanine Añez, an opposition senator, declared herself interim-President, and the Constitutional Court confirmed the legality of the transfer of power. She is from the right-wing Social Democrat Movement (not to confuse with MAS = movement towards socialism), and she is known to be fiercely anti-Morales. If her coronation looks and sounds like the one of Juan Guaido in Venezuela, it is because her self-nomination is like Juan Guaido’s, a US-supported farce. The US has immediately recognized Ms. Jeanine Añez as (interim) President of Bolivia. She, as well as Carlos Mesa, have been groomed to become the next Bolivian President, when new elections are held – probably some time in January 2020. Especially, Carlos Mesa is well known as a US-supporter from his earlier failed stint at the Bolivian Presidency (2003 – 2005).

Earlier, the new self-declared, racist-with-fascist-tendencies President of Bolivia, Jeanine Añez, tweeted, “I dream of a Bolivia free of satanic indigenous rites, the city is not for the Indians who should stay in the highlands or the Chaco”. That says it all, where Bolivia is headed, unless – unless another people’s revolution will stop this nefarious course.

One of the internal drivers of the ‘golpe’ is Luis Fernando Camacho, a far-right multi-millionaire, from the Santa Cruz region, where the US have supported and encouraged separatism. Camacho, a religious bible fanatic, received support from Colombia, Brazil and the Venezuelan opposition – and, of course, he is the US henchman to lead the ‘coup’ internally.

As Max Blumenthal from “The Grayzone” reports, “When Luis Fernando Camacho stormed into Bolivia’s abandoned presidential palace in the hours after President Evo Morales’s sudden November 10 resignation, he revealed to the world a side of the country that stood at stark odds with the plurinational spirit its deposed socialist and Indigenous leader had put forward. – With a Bible in one hand and a national flag in the other, Camacho bowed his head in prayer above the presidential seal, fulfilling his vow to purge his country’s Native heritage from government and “return God to the burned palace.” Camacho added “Pachamama will never return to the palace,” referring to the Andean Mother Earth spirit. “Bolivia belongs to Christ.”

Still, there is hope. Bolivians are known to be sturdy and staunch defenders of their rights. They have proven that best in the overthrow of two foreign-imposed successive Presidents in 2003 and 2005, “Goni” and Carlos Mesa respectively. They brought their Aymaran Evo Morales to power in 2006, by an internationally observed, fully democratic election.

There are other signs in Latin America that things are no longer the way they used to be for decades. Latin Americans are sick and tired of their status of US backyard citizens. There is movement in Brazil, where Lula was just released from Prison, against the will of Brazil’s fascist also foreign, i.e. US-imposed, Jair Bolsonaro. Granted, Lula’s release from prison is temporary, but with the massive people’s support he musters, it will be difficult for Bolsonaro to put him back in prison – and preserve his Presidency.

Social upheavals in Chile for justice and equality, against a racist Pinochet era Constitution, violently oppressed by President Piñera’s police and military forces, have lasted for weeks and will not stop before a new Constitution is drafted, in which the protesters demands are largely integrated. That too is a sign for an awakening of the people. And the enduring resistance against North America’s aggression by Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, are all positive vibes for Bolivia – not to be trampled over.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press, TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.